Sweet Enemy (48 page)

And now here they were, surrounded by their family. Liliana and her aunt had made both amends and apologies and seemed to be settling into a comfortable relationship.
As for he and his mother—well, she’d attended the wedding and, to his surprise, had even come along this morning. Though he couldn’t ever foresee great warmth between them, perhaps there was hope for peace.

“I wish they could be here to see this,” Liliana said, and Geoffrey knew she meant their fathers.

He looked out at the assemblage—scholars, scientists, philanthropists and the curious alike—eagerly awaiting a glimpse of Cleopatra’s corselet, which had been the talk of the town when Liliana had worn it in their wedding, and which had then been generously donated to the British Museum by Lord and Lady Stratford.

As the director of the museum began his speech, filled with half-truths about how the corselet came to be in British hands, and dedicating the donation to Lord Edmund Wentworth and Sir Charles Claremont, Geoffrey watched his wife.

He sent up silent thanks to their fathers. Without their having met, he’d never have found Liliana. Geoffrey kissed the top of her head, hugging her to him.

“Your father would have been very proud of you,” he said.

She turned in his arms. “And yours would have loved to see the man you’ve become.”

Geoffrey smiled, content. Yes, his father would have been happy, for his son had finally learned what it meant to love and be loved.

Author’s Note

I

hope you enjoyed reading
Sweet Enemy
. The spark of idea for this story came from my visit to the Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering and Technology in Kansas City, Missouri, which was hosting an exhibition on Napoleon’s scientific expedition to Egypt. While perusing the fascinating display, I learned that Napoleon abandoned his scientists there and that the British, while rescuing them, also confiscated their findings. I started to wonder,
What if? What if a French scientist had been able to sneak out a valuable treasure…
Then I had to decide who that French scientist would try to enlist to help him fence said treasure, which led me to an English scientist—Liliana’s father—and a story, and his daughter was born.

Of course, while creating the character of Liliana, I had to delve into the chemistry of the time, to really discover what made her who she was. The late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were exciting times in the world of chemistry. Arguably the two best-known “fathers of modern chemistry” were the English scientist Joseph Priestly and his French counterpart Antoine Lavoisier. Lavoisier, however, distinguished himself above all others and is credited with starting the Chemical
Revolution in 1789 with the publication of his paper “Elements of Chemistry.” Moreover, he encouraged modern chemists to begin investigating and disproving the long-held hypothesis of the ancient Greeks, and he conducted some of the first truly quantitative chemical experiments, a crucial jump that would lead to the rapid advancement of chemistry in his age. Tragically, his life was cut short upon the guillotine in a political move during the Reign of Terror. A year and a half later, Lavoisier was exonerated as wrongly convicted as a traitor, but the world had lost a true genius.

It was during this time that Liliana’s father would have been working as a chemist. Charles Claremont started out in the fields of eudiometry and pneumatic medicine, philosophies that believed that there were “bad airs,” which were detrimental to the health and safety of the public and could be measured around marshes, sewers, cemeteries and the like, and “good airs,” which could heal a body through their inhalation. Claremont would have naturally carried his studies into the quality of water, as well.

By the time Liliana would have come into her own as a scientist, the field of eudiometry had been mostly debunked. However, she took her father’s dreams to better the health of humankind a step further, trying to isolate the chemicals within living things so that they might be re-created and reproduced medicinally. She would have been just a little ahead of her time…Between 1826 and 1828, a German chemist, Johann Andreas Buchner, and a French chemist, Henri Leroux, did just what Liliana was attempting to do—isolated salicin from willow bark. Salicylic acid would later become the main ingredient of aspirin.

I chose to use the modern names for some of the chemical substances you read in the story. While sodium chloride and sodium sulfate, for example, were well-known, experimented with and easily produced, they
would have been called by different names you mightn’t have recognized. Therefore, for the ease of the modern reader, I put the more familiar names in the book.

Margaret Cavendish, the Duchess of Newcastle, was indeed the first woman allowed to attend a meeting of the Royal Society—and only once, in May of 1667. The first paper written by a woman to be presented at the Royal Society was by an astronomer named Caroline Herschel in 1798. Another wouldn’t be presented until Mary Somerville’s paper on magnetism in 1826. Of course, neither woman was allowed to present the papers herself—they were read to the Society by Herschel’s brother and Somerville’s husband, respectively, as women were not allowed to attend meetings of the Royal Society.

As for Liliana’s hope to become the first woman member of the Royal Society? Sadly, she wouldn’t have lived to see it. The first woman was not admitted until 1945, though Queen Victoria was made an “honorary member.”

Derbyshire, August 1817

T

he medieval tower rose high and proud above the bilberry heath covering the castle’s grounds, its vibrant red bricks proclaiming it a foreigner among a plateau of white limestone. Derick Aveline, Viscount Scarsdale, exhaled with a snort—he certainly knew what
that
felt like.

If there was one place on earth he’d hoped never to set eyes upon again, his northernmost family estate was certainly it. He supposed that would surprise most people, given the dangerous and often unpleasant spots he’d been to over the years. But these lush rolling hills and deep, narrow valleys of his childhood boded ominously and more treacherously for his well-being than even the filthiest of French prisons that had once held him.

With a sharp tap of his heel, Derick directed his steed down the knoll and onto the lane as a wealth of memories he’d thought long locked away assailed him. The restless boy he’d been, roaming the hills and dales of White Peak, with endless summer days stretching out before him. His mother’s red-rimmed eyes, looking at him with alternating sadness and indifference. The last day he’d seen this patch of England, the day his identity had crumbled away like the ancient limestone the area was named for.

Gravel crunched beneath his stallion’s hooves as they entered the stable yard, shaking Derick from his thoughts. He’d been a fool to come back. If not for this last mission for the Crown, he would have never returned. But he always did what must be done for love of country.

Even when it wasn’t his country to love.

“Boy!” Derick called out, throwing his leg over his saddle and dismounting. He rolled his shoulders, stretching knotted muscle. He’d had to race to stay ahead of the weather and felt every rough mile bone deep. If God were merciful, a hot meal, a warm fire, and a clean bed waited within. He scanned the yard for a stable hand.

The lane leading up to Aveline Castle was in clear view of both the stables and the main hall. It was inexcusable that no one waited to greet him, particularly as he’d sent word well ahead to expect him.

Several moments passed, yet no one appeared.

“Damnation,” Derick grumbled, turning up his collar against the chilly wind. The clime this far north had yet to recover from last summer’s unimaginable cold, and with dusk fast on Derick’s heels, there was little sun left for warmth. He’d only managed to beat the coming storm by minutes, he guessed. He led his horse to the deserted stable, secured the mount, and promised the animal he’d send a groom straightaway to brush him down.

Derick strode along the north side of the fifteenth-century castle, his gait far from the languid, leisurely manner he usually affected. He would slip into his ne’er-do-well persona once there was someone about who might observe him.

He climbed the front steps two at a time. When he reached the stoop, he found the massive door half-open. Had the staff lost all discipline since his mother had died? The place was drafty enough without them carelessly leaving the door unlatched. He pushed it wide, the ancient carved English oak giving way with a groan.

No candlelight greeted him. Indeed, it was as if the place were deserted. Derick frowned, his steps echoing as
he walked into the stone foyer. The hairs on the back of his neck rose. His trunks, which had been sent ahead and should have long been unpacked, sat stacked at the base of the grand staircase. No fire burned in the grate. No lamps had been lit.

Where the devil was everyone?

“—take this area, from the bend in the creek to the waterfall—”

A female voice, full of authority, drifted to him from the back of the house.

Curious, Derick started in that direction.

“—and Thomas, you and John Coachman take from here to Felman’s Hill.”

Derick furrowed his brow. There was something eerily familiar about that voice, which was ridiculous given the only woman he’d known in Derbyshire was his mother, and she’d been dead two years. As he turned into the long hallway leading toward the kitchen, light spilled from the dining hall and a low murmuring of voices reached his ears.

He slipped unnoticed into the room, melting into the shadows along the far wall. It wasn’t even a challenge, as no one paid him a bit of mind. His eyes took in the whole room at once, a skill honed through years in the espionage game.

A dozen and a half people of mixed age and company hovered around the table—all servants from their dress. Aveline Castle only employed a skeleton staff now that his mother was gone. So who were all these people whispering quietly, their faces grim?

The room smelled crisp, filled with the tang of the outdoors carried in on the clothing of people. And indeed, most of the room’s inhabitants were dressed for the elements, garbed in coats and hats or scarves. Several noses were red, as if they’d been long out in the wind, and many boots were dirty, covered with mud.

The group seemed to be waiting for something or someone. Derick shifted more into the corner until he
found a break in the wall of people large enough to see through.

Ah, the source of the mysterious voice, he’d wager. The woman stood at the head of the table, but he could not see her face, as she was leaning over a large square of paper that was rolled out across the polished mahogany. Her position made it difficult to gauge her height as well, but there was no mistaking the ample curves her simple muslin dress couldn’t hide.

Her well-tailored frock was a vibrant green, the dye not faded as a castoff would be. A lady of quality, then. One slender hand braced her as she marked furiously upon the paper. The tilt of her head and the way she held herself in determined focus niggled at his memory. Derick tried to place her, but locks of chestnut hair had slipped her coiffure, obscuring even her profile from him.

He turned his attention to the paper and squinted in the low light. That looked suspiciously like— A discarded frame propped up against the wall caught his attention then. His eyes snapped back to the table, to the blotchy-inked areas the mystery woman was currently drawing lines through.

She was scribbling all over an irreplaceable Burnett map of the countryside that his grandfather had commissioned over a half century ago.

He should have been appalled. But Derick had long ago shed any care for the trappings of the viscountcy. Instead he eyed the scene with detached curiosity, angling for the best way to use it to his purposes.
Hmmm
. Outrage would be precisely what people would expect of the pampered aristocrat persona he typically used for these missions. And Little Miss Map Despoiler had given him the perfect opening. All he had to do was take to the stage she’d inadvertently set for him.

“What the devil are you doing?” he barked as he pushed off from the wall. His exclamation had the desired effect. A chorus of gasps registered, but Derick ignored
them as he reached the head of the table in three long strides and snatched the priceless map from atop it.

He rolled the map with deceptive casualness, the dry paper making a hissing sound against his palms in the now otherwise silent room. He raised a brow and injected a supercilious tone into his voice as he turned to the woman standing frozen before him.

“Do you mind telling me just who you are”—his gaze traveled up her body in an intentionally arrogant perusal—“and why you are vandalizing
my
property?”

The last word caught in his throat as his eyes finally reached hers.

A flash of memory came, of a scrawny blond pest who’d trailed behind him every summer like an unwanted hound, a little hoyden with unforgettably wide amber eyes.