Penny knelt next to her and laid a hand on Kate’s shoulder. “You’ll find a way to do both. But not if you lop off a finger.”
Kate’s frantic cutting stilled and she looked up, her gaze softening. “I wish I had your conviction. Every second Imogen is in that horrible form, the further she slips from me. She seems to hate me because I kept her alive on that table at Bedlam. All she does is sit and listen to that hellish recording of her voice hour after hour.”
“It’s only been a couple of months. I hate to tell you but you may have a long path ahead of you.” Penny took a deep breath and added, “Kate, my brother Charles wasn’t born lame you know. He looked the wrong way crossing Oxford Street. That was all it took, a second. A carriage hit him. He almost died. He wanted to just quit, claimed he had nothing more to live for. Which was rot! It took all I had to convince him to keep going.” Penny’s blue eyes bore into Kate’s, glistening with memory but not with tears. “I had a plan, you see. While Charles lay on his sickbed and Mama cried herself to sleep, I stayed awake at night in the attic, welding metal struts, running out into the alley for any parts I could salvage. I even purloined a few things, whatever I had to.”
“You made Charles’s auto-motive chair.”
Penny nodded sharply. Her lips pressed tight together. She tucked a lock of her hair roughly into the strap of her goggles. “Things changed for him then. He saw a future suddenly and he took it.”
“He was lucky to have you as a sister.”
“I’d say the same for you and Imogen. You’ll make it happen, Kate. I mean, my God, you’re bloody brilliant.”
Kate gave a low snort. “If I’m so bloody brilliant, why can’t I help her? Everyone seems to be helping her but me. Even Aethelred hardly leaves her side, sleeps outside her room as if he can sense she’s so afraid of the dark he might be needed to comfort her at any second. Meanwhile, I flail in my laboratory. I’m able to make all sorts of potions, and I hardly think about them. I even made Greek fire one night when I hit a blind alley with Imogen, but I’d trade it all for even a small clue as to how to fix my sister.”
“You will. Wait. Did you say Greek fire?” Penny tilted her head in astonishment. “Actual Greek fire? You seem rather blasé about it.”
“Some form of it.” Kate’s expression turned hard as they moved to the next mound. “I find myself thinking more and more of weapons. Instead of elixirs to heal or potions to protect, I want to make fire that never stops burning.”
“That should come in handy.”
Kate stood. “When it’s ready, it will burn the Devil himself.”
Penny gave an admiring shake of her head. “So where did you learn your alchemy? Are there schools for that?”
“There are, of a sort, but they’re all in dismal spots run by decrepit old alchemists half-mad from mercury poisoning.”
“So Oxford then?”
Kate laughed. “Not quite. I’m self-taught mostly. You may not have noticed, but I’m not the most normal woman on the social register. Prior to Simon’s wrenching me out of my laboratory, I was content to spend most of my time staring at beakers and studying plants.”
“You taught yourself all those marvelous things you create?”
“Through trial and much error. And, honestly, my father had nearly unlimited resources so I don’t pretend to be any sort of romance heroine who struggles to feed her children while studying to become a nurse. I started with many benefits.” Kate’s smile was warm and genuine. “What about you? Is you’re engineering self-taught?”
“I wish. I’m not like you. Ever hear of the Maddy Boys?”
Kate shook her head.
Penny arched a disappointed eyebrow. “They are a wild bunch of engineers and scientists at Cambridge. Britain’s finest. Being a woman, I couldn’t go to school, but our mother worked for a dear man named Professor Westgate, a scientist at Cambridge. He always thought Charles would rise in the world, but Charles had no scientific desires; he only wanted to help me because I had always been a tinkerer. Charles begged him to put me in touch with the Maddy Boys.”
“So they accepted a woman?”
“Not officially, but there were a few women who worked with them, in secret.” Penny’s chest puffed out in pride. “Just because we’re not allowed doesn’t mean we don’t. Right?”
Kate grinned. “Right.”
Penny returned the expression. “I stayed at Cambridge for near three years. Wrote home to Charles every day. At Christmas, I’d bring him some of the smaller things I made. That gave Charles the idea to start up our shop. His business sense was very astute. We were an instant success. Respectable gentlemen brought their family heirlooms for repair, and their equally respectable wives came to coo over adorable Charles and purchase his wonderful toys for their children.”