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“Something is amiss,” Harriet replied firmly. “I know it is. She is not herself.”

“She is dedicated to her work,” he told her. “Perhaps she has happened upon some cure or other that requires more of her time.”

Harriet huffed out a breath. “Did you do something to upset her?”

“What?”

“She has been acting peculiarly since we left London,” his grandmother replied. “Did something happen?”

He narrowed his eyes at her, setting down his quill. “Not that I am aware.”

Did I do something?

He traced his mind back to the ball, but she had been lively enough company after they danced. And though he had kept telling himself to push her away, he had not done so. All in all, they had enjoyed a pleasant evening together.

“Well, something is not right,” Harriet grumbled. “I feel it in my bones.”

“Perhaps that is just your rheumatism,” he replied with a smile.

She shot him a pointed look and turned to leave, still muttering as she marched out of the door, not bothering to close it behind her.

Marina sucked her fingertip, tasting the blood of yet another papercut. Switching hands, she flipped the page of the translated book on Chinese herbal medicine, her eyes skimming the words for anything that might be of use.

Thus far, she had noted three plants that were known for their calming effect on the liver. However, the difficulty was not just a matter of importing the ingredients in a timely fashion, but experimenting with quantities and preparations. All of the plants were unknown to her, meaning she would be starting from nothing.

“If I could make a potent enough tincture with milk thistle and… maybe the turmeric I have, with some of the last bit of ginseng…” she mumbled to herself, looking over the stack of notes she had been making. “It could last a few months. Yes, and then that would give me time to get more.”

She was upstairs on the mezzanine, lost in Latin names, benefits and potential disadvantages, possible measurements, ancient remedies, and a translation so confusing that it might as well have been written in the original language.

“Can we go out into the woods now?” William’s voice shouted from below, the sound making her eye twitch.

“Not just yet,” she replied, turning back to an entry that seemed to show some kind of purple flowering plant.

Do I need the whole plant? The flowers? The stems? The roots?

The entry just said: Efficacious as a tea or a tonic. Salvia. The next word was smudged, almost bringing an expletive to her lips.

“You said we could go into the woods in ten minutes!” the boy complained in a jarring whine. “It has been thirty.”

Marina sat back and rubbed her tired eyes. “I am just a little occupied at present. We will go out to the woods later. At two o’clock.”

“It is two o’clock now!” William protested.

Is it? She blinked, astounded that time had run away from her yet again.

“Half-past two, then,” she said. “Besides, you cannot be finished with the inventory yet.”

To distract him while she worked, she had asked William to go through the jars and bottles of herbs and powders that were yet to be put away, writing out a list for her.

“I don’t want to anymore,” he retorted. “I want to play in the woods, like you promised we would.”

She leaned forward, holding her head in her hands. “I would like to play too, but I am very busy.”

“Doing what? You’re just reading.”

“Reading very important things,” she corrected.

Of course, she could not tell him what. Bernard had asked her to keep his illness to herself. Even if he had not, it was not the sort of thing that a young boy needed to hear about, especially not one who had lost his mother.