#DailyLines #MOBY #WrittenINMyOWNHeartsBLOOD #Book8 #advancesinmedicine #notalwaysagoodthingtobeapioneer


“No,” I said, with great casualness. “I spilled sulphuric acid on them, making--making ether.” The memory made my hands shake slightly, and I had to set down the cup of nettle-tea I was drinking.

“Jesus, Sassenach.” Jamie spoke under his breath—Felicitè and Joan were kneeling at his feet, arguing with each other as they busily burnished his brass shoe-buckles—but he met my eyes over their heads, appalled. “Tell me ye werena doing that drunk.”

I took a deep breath, at once reliving the experience and trying not to. Standing in the hot, semi-dark shed, the rounded glass slick in my sweating hands…then the flying liquid—it had barely missed my face—and the acrid smell and magically widening, smoking holes that burned straight through my heavy canvas apron and the skirt beneath. I hadn’t really cared at the time whether I lived or died—until it looked as though I were going to die in the next few seconds. That made rather a difference. It hadn’t convinced me not to commit suicide—but it did make me think more carefully about how.

“No,” I said, and taking up the cup, managed a deliberate mouthful. “I—it was a hot day. My hands were sweating, and the flask slipped.”

He closed his eyes briefly, all too clearly envisioning the scene himself, then reached across Felicitè’s sleek dark head to cup my cheek.

“Dinna be doing that again, aye?” he said softly. “Don’t make it anymore.”

To be honest, the thought of making ether again made my palms sweat. It was terribly dangerous. One wrong move, a little too much vitriol, a few degrees of heat too much… And Jamie knew as well as I did just how explosive the stuff was. I could see the memory of flames in his eyes, the Big House going up around us. I swallowed.

“I don’t want to,” I said honestly. “But—without it, Jamie, I can’t do things that I can do with it. If I hadn’t had it, Aiden would be dead—so would John’s nephew, Henry.”

He compressed his lips, and looked as though he considered that Henry Grey might be disposable—but he was fond of little Aiden McCallum Higgins, whose appendix I’d removed on the Ridge with the assistance of my first batch of ether.

Reply · Report Post