Free Transmuted by Karina Cooper Page A

bless his abnormally large heart, had taken in many of the pleasure garden’s strays.
    “Master gilds sometimes,” Levi continued, struggling into the lighter jacket Mrs. Booth had mended for him. Even below the drift, a man of a certain distinction wore a jacket. Levi was learning a trade, ergo, it was expected that he do the same. “Mercury’s needed for the washgilding, which comes out shiny and smooth.” A pause. “At least when he does it.”
    I chuckled, unable to keep myself from ruffling the boy’s hair. “You’ll get better, right enough. Keep working hard.”
    “Aye, miss,” he replied cheerfully.
    “Good lad. Now be swift,” I added, “or no letter will excuse your tardiness.”
    “Aye!” Fishing another roll from his bulging pockets, he crammed it into his mouth and took his leave.
    I rested a cupped palm over my weary eyes.
    Mercury, aside from its state as a liquid metal used in various trades, also tended to be a common alchemical artifact. Like arsenic, it could be highly dangerous in the wrong hands. Less overtly deadly, of course, but there were no shortage of cautionary tales of alchemists ingesting the stuff and subsequently expiring.
    Whether it was the ingredients themselves, whatever chemical reaction caused by mixing them, or mere coincidence, I was not inclined to favor an explanation of harmlessness.
    To think overly long upon it might be lending too much conspiracy to nothing at all. I was not so far gone as to start looking under every rock for the merest mystery.
    So enmeshed in my thoughts was I that I failed to take note of steps upon the stair, or of the pale blue eyes that surveyed the less than courteous tableau I displayed.
    “Cherry, my dove, have you forgotten where you are?” Fanny’s mild censure slipped through my focus.
    I snapped to attention, back straighter than my corset forced, and a ready welcome came to my lips. “Good morning, Fanny.”
    Although my chaperone had always been old, it seemed to me as if she wore it more openly these days. Her skin was ghostly pale but for the blue veins dancing beneath, and her hair much more white than the iron it had once displayed. Her hands, gloved now as dictated by the strictures to which she stubbornly ascribed, bore the mottled signs of her age.
    The physician had come and gone once in the past fortnight. Fanny had complained of an inability to breathe fully, and I had thought it best to have her examined. The laudanum he prescribed remained under Ashmore’s care.
    That I was very much aware of that was a matter of course.
    No sooner had Fanny seated herself than Booth appeared to make short works of my strewn papers and the settings of each place. “Thank you,” I said to him.
    As was his rote, he inclined his head and departed for his wife’s company. The food would come soon enough.
    “Did you sleep well?” I asked.
    Fanny slanted me an arch stare. “You needn’t speak to me as though I am made of porcelain. I slept quite well, thank you,” she added before I could protest. “Though some concerns earlier that briefly woke me. A bit of a disturbance, I gather?”
    An understatement, but one I let alone. “Nothing to worry about,” I assured her. “A simple matter easily rectified.” I always trod as lightly as possible when it came to such difficulties as that which I took a hand in. For all that Fanny, once a severe woman of careful distinction, had come to tolerate—if not welcome—my interests, there were still many things that worried her.
    I no longer wished to be a source of worry.
    So I skated over truths, touched on such matters as might make her less nostalgic for the Society functions to which she had been accustomed, and when I could force myself to do so, shared what gossip I gleaned from the periodicals.
    I no more fooled her than I did myself, but she allowed me the attempt. Fanny graciously thanked Booth as he brought out first the tea, then the repast Mrs. Booth had so dedicatedly