Page 46 of A Devilish Element
Well, he might be one of Linfield’s cronies, but he was not at all like that man.
“Thank you.” She accepted the gift with a smile. “It was a kindly thought.”
“Perhaps. You may not think so when you give them a look.”
Given the weightiness of the pile, Eliza took them to the table she and Jane had sat at yesterday afternoon exchanging gossip. Jem didn’t enter the bedchamber, but lingered on the threshold instead as if he expected a raucous alarm to sound if he did anything so transgressive as entering.
Eliza opened the cover of the topmost volume. It was a novel. Something her younger sisters would have delighted in and had likely read a dozen times apiece. It would, she supposed, pass some hours, though Cedarton had mysteries aplenty of its own, without the need to dive into those of an imaginary abode.
“Mrs Cluett was keen to lend her expertise,” Jem explained. “That top volume is one of her recommendations. She was rather dismissive of my choices, said they were not at all the sort of thing a young lady would appreciate, but then I said to myself, she doesn’t know Eliza as I do, and I made the rest of the selections accordingly.”
Intrigued by his words, Eliza opened the second volume, the title of which startled a gasp of delight from her lips. A treatise on algebra,and below it,Zoonomia part oneby Erasmus Darwin.
“That latter one I managed to persuade Bell to temporarily part with. He was not entirely complimentary about its author, but agreed there was merit to the discourse. There are chapters about motion and various organs.” He took a tentative step into the room, leaving the door wide open, then another few bolder steps when he wasn’t immediately struck down for the transgression. “I thought you might especially appreciate the chapters on diseases and the oxygenation of the lungs and placenta.” He pointed them out in the index with one long finger.
“Fascinating,” she agreed, provoking a broad grin from him that was at once both boyishly charming and intellectually gleeful.
“I’m sorry I’m making such assumptions, and I shouldn’t. Maybe you’d have preferred a stack of novels—”
“I definitely wouldn’t.”
“It’s just, I’ve never met a woman with such a similar passion for science as myself.”
“These are all marvellous, and I will thoroughly enjoy them all.” Though she would also not be surprised if Jane woke the moment she turned the first page. That would be a very Jane-like thing to do. She’d never decried Eliza’s thirst for knowledge in the way others did, but nor did she entirely understand it, and she did possess a remarkable knack for derailing Eliza mid-thought.
“I believe I’ll start with Mr Darwin, and then move onto the mathematics. Shall I follow it well enough, do you think?”
“Oh, I should say so. I’m afraid there are rather a lot of my notes in the margins. I hope you won’t mind them. I do like to make sure I’m following as I go along.”
“I shan’t mind them at all.” She would read them all and perhaps add a few of her own that he might read once she’d returned it to him.
“I ought to go,” he said throwing a disheartening glance towards the open doorway. “If Linfield catches wind…” A dark thought, judging by the storm clouds that gathered in his eyes, hit him causing him to pause. “No matter. I shouldn’t linger. I’ll let you get back to nursing Lady Linfield.”
“An overgenerous description,” Bell said from the doorway. He entered, leading with his completely unnecessary cane, the ends of his wig trembling. “How is my patient?”
“Sleeping.” Eliza could not find it in herself to be entirely welcoming.
“Best restorative for a woman in her position.”
He lingered only long enough to take Jane’s pulse and lift her eyelids to shine a light into her pupils. They were, Eliza observed, still narrowed to pinpricks.
“You drugged her far too severely,” she admonished.
“Are you a qualified apothecary, Miss Wakefield?”
He knew she was not, as only men were permitted to qualify.
“Then I will take your advisement with a pinch of salt. Lady Linfield will awaken when her mind is fully rested and her wits and senses restored. That is the outcome we all desire, is it not?”
Grudgingly, she admitted so, but that didn’t stop him being a pompous twit.
-13-
Jem
“…unbuttoned my breeches,
My prick in full vigour does stand;
