“I’m a chemist, not an alchemist.”Her lips quirked.“Besides, you were only gone for eighteen minutes.”
He widened his eyes.“How long does transmutation take?”
“Three hours and forty-seven minutes,” she told him with a twitch of her lips.“If you’re a madman who believes in such things.”
“Like James Price?”Nicholas cast his gaze skyward.“I was still in leading strings when he published that ludicrous claim about inventing a powder that turned mercury into gold, but even back then I knew he was a charlatan.”
Penelope frowned.Nicholas read essays on alchemy?
“Price has his shortcomings,” she admitted.“As does his acolyte, Josias Humphries.”
“Humphries doesn’t have shortcomings.He’s a blithering idiot,” Nicholas said with a groan.“Do you know what happens to iron at 2,800 degrees?It melts.”
“I did know that,” Penelope said.“Why do you know that?”
The wry humor vanished from his eyes.“I… Doesn’t everyone know that?”
“Most people don’t know the temperature at which water boils, and it’s a task they perform every day.”She narrowed her eyes.“Do you melt iron every day?”
“I prefer to make tea out of water,” he assured her.“Otherwise the leaves get all stuck.Have you ever tried to stir sugar into a glass of molten iron?”
“I don’t imbibe more than the daily recommended dosage,” she said with a straight face.“Now, confess.Why do you know about iron?”
“If you owned a carriage, you too could spend more time in a blacksmith’s shop than actually driving.I’m thinking about getting a sleigh.”
“I should’ve known,” she said with a laugh.“Rakes have one interest, and it isn’t science.”
A shadow crossed his eyes.“I did pay attention to lectures.Does it surprise you?”
Did it?She supposed it should not.If she could be a woman and a spinster and a chemist, there was no reason he had to limit himself to being a single-minded rake.
“Did you get good marks?”she asked.
“The worst,” he answered cheerfully.“Just to appease my father.He believed a man’s interest should lie in women, not scholarly pursuits.”
She arched a brow.“Were there many women at Eton?”
“Regrettably, it remains a school for boys.”His blue gaze was intense.“You would have done very well there, I imagine.Been ‘top prefect’ in no time.The utterly obnoxious sort, with exemplary marks and perfect recall of every lecture.”
She shook her head.“I like to think I would’ve been the one accidentally blowing up the chemistry laboratory.”
He burst out laughing.“You’d like that?Is blowing up laboratories a particular dream of yours?”
“An occupational hazard,” she corrected with a smile.“You’ve seen the metal door.Thick sheets of metal also span the interior of the walls all around the laboratory in case of fire.Even if it blows, the rest of the house should stay standing.”
His brow furrowed.“But what about you?Is your smock some sort of anti-chemical, anti-fire material?”
“Oh, I would be incinerated with the rest of my equipment,” she replied.“I’d be famous in no time.”
“Please don’t get famous,” he said fervently.“I prefer seeing your molecules clumped together in their current form.”
Her cheeks warmed.“Even my freckles?”
“Especially your freckles.”His voice had grown hoarse.
Her stomach flipped.
“You do?”she whispered as he slowly lowered his head toward hers.
