Free The Alchemist's Daughter by Katharine McMahon Page A

jerked back and he fumbled for his staff, which instead fell to the floor with a clatter. I picked it up and gave it to him. “What do you think?”
    “I think you will not marry anyone, especially not him.”
    “I believe I must.” I thought of the weight in my breasts, my lack of appetite, my desire to avoid scrutiny by Mrs. Gill. “I believe I may be carrying his child.”
    The effect of this news on my father was so terrible I could almost have wished the last month undone. He seemed to shrivel before my eyes until he was yellow and ancient. His hand came up and covered his face.
    “Please, Father, I know I shall be happy.”
    He wouldn’t speak to me, though I knelt there for some minutes stroking his coat and hand, pleading with him. Then I retreated to the window. “Father. Please give me your blessing. I am sorry if I have hurt you. But please, Father. You know how it is to love. I believe you loved my mother. Don’t you remember? So you must know how it was. Father. Father.” My voice faded. Outside it was almost dark, but I could still see the bars of the old gates. I wanted to be on the other side of them, driven by Aislabie into a painless new life.
    After half an hour, I crept away, and from that day I was shut out of the laboratory and the library. If we happened to meet in the passage, my father ignored me; and though every few hours I went and knocked on the door, he never answered.
    I dreaded to think what he wrote in his notebook that night.

C HAPTER T HREE
    Three Letters in Between

    [ 1 ]
    O N THE DAY after my father’s return, Mrs. Gill found me in the screens passage, where I was keeping watch on the library door in case he came out. “Follow me,” she said.
    I followed. There was no disobeying Mrs. Gill when she used that voice. She stood me under the high kitchen window and took hold of my shoulders so she could study my face. “What have you done?”
    I couldn’t speak for dread of what she’d say next. Suddenly she cried, “While your father was gone, you were in my care, Emilie.” I stared at her. I had never seen her weak or incapable, but now she was both. Her skin was clammy and her lips trembling.
    “I love him,” I said.
    She pushed me away, picked up the corner of her apron, and rubbed her eyes. “Love him. Love him. You know nothing about it. I should have seen. I should have known what was coming. I should have been here.”
    “It’s not your fault,” I said.
    “It’s too late for fault. Or so it seems. Sit down, Emilie. Listen very carefully. You don’t have to marry this Mr. Aislabie. There are other choices. The baby, if indeed there is a baby, might miscarry.” She looked me hard in the eye.
    “What do you mean?”
    “I mean you do not yet know if the baby will survive to full term.”
    “I want to marry him,” I said, “baby or not.”
    “Your father will relent in the end. I’m sure. We could keep the baby here. Or you could marry him in time, when you know him better.”
    “I’ll marry Aislabie soon,” I said.
    “You don’t know him. What do you know of him except that he is the type of man who seduces a girl the moment her father’s back is turned?”
    “Seduce.” I considered the word. Seducere . To lead aside. “No. I wanted him.”
    Suddenly she took me in her arms and pressed my head to her shoulder. “Oh, my lamb. We have failed you.”
    “No. No.” I drew back and looked at her in horror. Why was I pitiable because I loved Aislabie? I hurried out of the kitchen, and there was Gill hanging about at the scullery door, well within earshot. He looked blindly past me as if terrified of meeting my eye and admitting the truth of what had happened.
    [ 2 ]
    A PALL OF silence fell on Selden as the four of us crept about, miserably isolated. I had fractured the rhythm of our lives. Every few days I wrote a letter to Aislabie. My writing covered both sides of a page crossways and down, as if by writing I would forge an inky chain between us. I