“Dr. Ambrose, is there something wrong with Hawthorne?”
He went still. Whatever warmth had softened him closed at once, sealed behind a reserve so complete it might as well have been a locked door.
“I believe there are a great many things wrong with us all,” he mused, turning his attention to my hands and dismissing any further discussion on the topic.
It was obvious neither he nor Agnes intended to discuss Hawthorne, or whatever was wrong with the peculiar servant.
“Do you have any other symptoms?” he asked, putting a definitive end to my investigation. “Dizziness? Shortness of breath?”
I hesitated a beat too long. “No.”
His jaw tightened as he searched my face. “And have you seen a physician?”
“Yes, of course. I am perfectly fine, as I have said.” I forced brightness into my voice, though I was certain it convinced neither of us. “It is just poor circulation. There’s nothing to be concerned about.”
He inclined his head, clearly aware it was a lie. “You may get down now.”
I moved to slide off the table, but my legs were unsteady beneath me—from sitting too long, from the heat that had made me almost drowsy, or from the sustained proximity of a man to whom I had no reason to respond to so strongly.
I suspected the honest answer was all three.
I swayed, and his hands were there instantly, steadying me. “Careful.”
We stood close enough that I could see the flecks of gold caught in his amber eyes, close enough to feel the tension held in him just beneath the surface.
“I am fine,” I said, though my voice came out weaker than it should have.
“You keep saying that.”
He held me a moment longer than necessary. The heat of his skin penetrated the thin material of my dress, tempting me to split him open and crawl inside so that the ice filling my veins might finally thaw.
He released me without warning, turning away and focusing on the belladonna with an attention it almost certainly did not require.
“You can assist by cataloging those specimens,” he said gesturing to a table where various plant seedlings sat in labeled containers. “Record their condition and note any changes from my previous observations. The logbook is there beside them.”
I moved to the indicated table, grateful for the distance, and examined the dozens of seedlings before me. Hemlock, foxglove, yew, oleander—and other, more exotic species I had encountered only in my father’s references or in the illustrations of botanical texts I had studied as a child. I still recalled tracing each rendered leaf, trying to memorize the details with the dogged persistence of someone who understood, even then, that knowledge was the thing most worth keeping.
I flipped through the dense logbook, noting the attention given to each page.
“This will take most of the afternoon,” I said, already calculating the hours required to document everything properly.
“Then I suggest you get started.”
I glanced up to find Dr. Ambrose grinning as he leaned over his own work, thoroughly pleased with himself for assigning me what amounted to several hours of solitary and tedious labour. The expression made him look almost boyish. It made me want to smile back despite my irritation at being relegated to glorified clerical work.
I did not dare give him the satisfaction. I picked up my pen and got to work.
Chapter 5
The afternoon passed in mutual silence.
Now and then, I caught Dr. Ambrose assessing me between his own tasks, his gaze briefly fixed on me before returning to the delicate extractions before him. Each time I noticed, that sourceless mourning rose beneath my ribs, and each time I forced myself to look away first.
The cataloging was, I was certain, far less exciting than the extractions he was conducting across the greenhouse, but the seedlings proved fascinating enough to keep my attention from drifting too often toward the man performing them.
I breezed through documenting the species of flora I recognized. Others required consulting Dr. Ambrose’s extensive collection of reference guides—which took considerably longer.
The first wasDatura stramonium. Devil’s trumpet, my father had called it, always with a certain relish, the drama of it delighting him. Even in seedling form, the plant carried that toxic elegance—leaves slightly waxy, stemstinged purple at the nodes, and distinctive spiny seed pods already forming.
