“Hmm.”
“I used to enjoy looking at medicine labels in shops. Dr James’s Fever Powder. Tincture of Peruvian Bark. Radcliffe’s Purging Elixir.” She flashed him a smile. “That last one always sounded promising for an entertaining evening at home.”
Doubly foolish of him to have doubted her. For all her playfulness, Thea had a practical streak. Rafe cleared his throat. “I…might have…reacted in a manner that was…unnecessary. Sometimes I lose my temper but I…I do no harm.”
She barely noted his awkward apology. “Do you make your medicines alone?”
“I merely grow the plants. Martha has expertise in their medical properties. It is her family’s specialty. They built their knowledge over generations living alongside indigenous people in the Spanish colonies, combined with knowledge handed down since her ancestors were first enslaved in western Africa and taken to Peru.”
“So that’s where she fits in. Why did she come to England?”
Rafe shrugged. “Ask her. All she said was she needed a safe home and she refused to say more.”
“What do you do with your medicines?”
“We plan to start a business selling them. That’s what the money is for. From the marriage.”
“You’ll go into trade?” Her eyes opened wide. “That’s even worse than witchcraft. ‘By George,’ everyone will say, ‘man’s an earl, better he consort with demons than lower himself to behaving like a merchant.’”
Her charming humor loosened his tongue. “I have to do it. It’s the one thing that gives me…”
The words eluded him, though the devil knew where it came from, this need to make her understand his purpose. Never before had he even tried to explain, though Christopher, Martha, and Nicholas likely knew him well enough to guess.
He gestured at his scars. “After the attack, I recovered in a village, where the people had a medicine for calming the mind, using a plant they knew. It seemed like something I could do. So I went looking for more information, and in Peru I met Martha’s brother, and then Martha, and here we are.”
Thea’s eyes were kind as she studied him. “So if the jaguar had not attacked you, none of this would be here. Where would you be?”
“Still traveling, perhaps.”
“That would be sad, never to come home.”
Her thoughtful scrutiny discomfited him and he pivoted away. A stone caught under his boot; he picked it up and threw it into the trees. He had revealed too much. But her mere presence seemed to turn his own body into a stranger, as if it belonged to a different man, one who chatted and laughed and touched and played.
“Were you taking a medicine last night?” she asked.
“I was testing one for Martha, her latest variation on a concoction called bhang. The original is based on a plant that the people of Hindustan call ganja; they have extensive medical knowledge, and have long known this plant can ease pain and increase appetite, in addition to its intoxicating effect. Which you witnessed. I apologize. I fear my behavior was offensive and frightening.”
“Not at all. It was—”
She stopped short and her gaze veered away. He waited. She rolled her shoulders and he indulged the fancy that she was reliving his embrace. His memories of the night before were unreliable, but he did not doubt the memory of holding her in his arms. The shared memory of that hug enveloped them, as real as the birds singing in the woods. Neither mentioned it. Neither ever would.
“The grave… It’s in a pretty spot,” she ventured. “In the woods, with the morning glory.”
Despite her claims of being a coward, she was braver than he, but the air around them was mellow, not tense, and he found it unusually easy to reply.
“The morning glory was Katharine’s favorite flower,” he said. “She liked it because it grew as it pleased and could never be forced into a vase. Katharine hated being confined to small spaces, so I had her buried there rather than in the family mausoleum. Sheer folly, of course, for there is no smaller space than a coffin.”
“I’m so sorry,” Thea blurted out. “In London, I made those stupid jests about dead wives and your victims and the whole time she was buried here. I didn’t even think—”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“—And I’m always bungling things and disappointing people, I know, but I never meant to hurt you.”
“Hush. You have never disappointed me.”
“I haven’t?”
Her expression lightened. He’d done that! He’d told her a simple truth and made her world a better place.