The Golden Spider (The Elemental Web Chronicles Book 1) (2 page)

“At least a wedding is a suitable pursuit for a lady,” Olivia persisted as she stomped over to the buffet. “Carlton says women have no business pursuing a career.”

Amanda rolled her eyes. She was thoroughly sick of hearing her future brother-in-law quoted, so she stuck in the proverbial scalpel and gave it a sharp twist. “Carlton simply wants nothing to distract you from your duty as brood mare.”

Her sister’s jaw unhinged, and she all but dropped her plate of dry toast on the table. “You are so crass. It’s to society’s benefit that you’ve set course to become a dried up old maid.”

“If that’s what it takes to be permitted to use my talents.” It wasn’t that she opposed marriage. Or children. It was the limitations a husband imposed upon a married female member of the peerage. Not a single man had yet met her standards. “Though Mr. Sommersby shows promise,” she added aloud. He was the only male classmate who didn’t sneer at her presence in the lecture hall. Quite the opposite. Not that she had
feelings
for him, but she’d promised Father she would husband hunt.

“The second son of a baron. A mere commoner,” Olivia sniffed, but when she turned toward Father, her expression grew concerned. “Speaking of marriage and rotten siblings, any news of Emily?”

Another manifestation of Olivia’s obsession with marrying a title. Scandal might break at any moment. The
ton
believed Lady Emily visited relatives in Italy, but if society learned the truth‌—‌that their sister had run off with gypsies to study ancient herbal lore‌—‌well, Carlton wouldn’t want anything to do with Olivia.

Worse, Emily had also married Luca, a gypsy she’d known since childhood‌—‌a fact she and Father had kept from the rest of the family. No need to send Mother and Olivia into a blind panic. Though Amanda herself was proud of her sister for taking her future into her own hands, Father’s response was more tempered. He respected Emily’s decision, but had three as-yet unwed children to manage and a wife who valued her social connections among the
ton
above all else. As such, all communication with her sister had been severed.

Father’s narrowed eyes appeared over the top of the paper. “Not a word.” He carefully folded the paper, placed it on the table and pointed to an article. “Though I worry for her every day.”

Amanda leaned forward, reading over her sister’s shoulder. There in all its gruesome detail buried at the bottom of page eight:

South London. Another gypsy slain, eyes torn from sockets. One must wonder to what he bore witness.

A small frisson of worry skittered down her spine. Luca’s family often settled in South London during the coming winter months, and gypsies traveled in tightly knit family groups. She could only hope that this year his family had chosen another city.

~~~

Amanda stepped through the French windows of the library into the crisp, cool autumn air and strolled through the gardens toward the chicken coop. “A good morning to you, Penny,” Amanda greeted a fat, white hen.

Penny clucked her usual cheerful response.

Eight years ago, the Town and City Food Act of 1876 had legislated that all homeowners, peers not excepted, contribute to the problem of city-wide food shortages. As duchess, Mother had decreed they would produce eggs rather than put her precious gardens to plow.

Amanda had appropriated the use of the coop’s storage room as her laboratory and enlisted the orange-striped cat, Rufus, who now twined about her ankles, as her laboratory assistant. His duties included providing her with mice suffering from spinal injuries, patients obtained during their ill-fated night-time raids on the chicken feed. The cat followed as she moved to a door in the back wall where a lock was mounted. She dialed in a ten-digit security code. Tumblers fell into place and the door swung open.

Potentially useful items cluttered the room. Shelves of glassware, bottles and rubber tubing. Boxes of clockwork components. Stacks of papers and stubs of pencils.

Yet none of the contents mattered save one. On the wide workbench before her, a single cage rested. Inside, a tiny mouse tucked into cotton batting was curled on his side as if in deep sleep. For a brief moment, she held her breath and let herself hope. Perhaps that’s all it was, sleep.

She crossed to the bench and bent to examine her patient, watching for the gentle rise and fall of the mouse’s ribcage but saw no movement. Still, Amanda clung to hope. Perhaps he breathed shallowly due to the pain of the surgery. That she could ease.

Except there was a smear of blood on the cotton, a clear indication the surgery had failed. Again. Her heart sank.

Rufus leapt beside her and sniffed the mouse through the wire mesh of its cage, performing his own examination. He looked up at her with mournful golden eyes and let out a gut-wrenching yowl.

Dead.

Breakfast congealed into a hard lump in her stomach. She’d had such high expectations last night. Swallowing her disappointment and frustration, Amanda fell back on protocol. She opened the cage, scooping the small, cold mouse from his bedding and slid him into the aetheroscope’s observation chamber to seal him from the outside atmosphere. She cranked the handle of the machine, sending concentrated aether though its pipes and valves while activating the vacuum chamber. The device, a birthday present from her brother Ned, replaced oxygen with aether, allowing her to resolve far smaller objects than her other microscope ever had, no matter its powerful objectives.

Perching on a stool, Amanda peered through the eyepiece and twisted the dials into focus. Rotating first one knob and then another, she brought the neuromuscular junction of the muscle into view and sighed. The connection had indeed failed.

Five years ago, after Ned’s tragic accident stole the use of his legs, her life-long interest in medicine had found a clear focus. She’d concentrated her efforts on the neuromuscular system, conceptualizing and then building a neurachnid, a programmable, clockwork spider the size of a bronze halfpence, one that could spin a replacement for a damaged motor neuron following spinal injury.

It sat in a place of honor on a wooden shelf above her workbench. Eight long, hinged legs arched out from a finely mechanized clockwork thorax that controlled the weaving mechanism. Lodged in the abdomen were two other key features. A tiny slot for a miniature Babbage card to direct the neurachnid’s activities and a small glass vial, a reservoir for a potent nerve agent administered as the spider worked. The patient’s nerve fibers needed to be quieted, but not fully anesthetized, in order for the spider to trace the pathway of the damaged neuron and, using thin gold fibers, reconnect spinal cord to muscle and restore movement.

Last night, the neurachnid had successfully replaced a spinal motor neuron in this mouse. The patient had been able to extend his lower leg. He’d walked for an entire hour. She’d returned her patient to his cage, confident she would find him walking about the cage this morning.

He hadn’t. It was still the same problem. The neuromuscular junction always failed to hold. And when a mouse discovered itself unable to walk, often it reacted by chewing at the fine gold wires, growing increasingly stressed until blood loss and panic simply overwhelmed the tiny creature.

Amanda sat back, punching a button to release the gasses. The microscope hissed and spat, echoing her frustration. She wanted to scream, to fling the spider against the wall and weep for all the hours lost in her futile efforts in this smelly, dim room barely worthy of the term laboratory. She took a deep breath and pushed away the urge.

If only she had a properly equipped laboratory and trained colleagues.

Instead, she picked up the small neurachnid from its shelf and racked her brain looking over the myriad gears and pins, clicks and rivets. If she only could deduce what the problem was, she could devise a solution. But it looked as it always had. She needed fresh eyes. She needed help, competent help that could provide a leap of insight.

She’d tried communicating by post, seeking help from notable neurophysiologists. Most ignored her missives outright, but the handful that responded suggested she abandon her project, citing its impossibility.

But it couldn’t be impossible. And she wouldn’t quit.

Ned
had
to walk again.

Chapter Three

T
HORNTON STOOD AT
the front of the lecture theater frowning as students filed into the room. The men jostled and shoved, laughing and joking as they crashed about, eventually managing to land in seats. He supposed he’d been much the same as them. Once.

Lister University School of Medicine, founded by the Queen as a co-educational institution to seek out the brightest young medical minds, had not yet managed to find an equal number of women who were capable of passing the rigorous academic exams required for admission. Only three women, all dressed in dark hues, filed into the back row of seats, perching there stiff and solemn, staring down at him intently, like a murder of crows. He distinctly recalled being told there were four women in this class. One of their number was missing.

What had the dean been thinking forcing him to take on this task? Thornton belonged in his laboratory, pressing the boundaries of neuroscience, consulting with the Queen’s agents to stop a murderer who sought to turn Britain’s own technology against them. Not stuffing anatomical facts into impenetrable brains.

Ordered by the Queen to the Orkney Islands to investigate a sudden spike in reported sightings of selkies off the coast, Corwin, professor of anatomy, had headed north late last night. The suspicion was that Iceland was dispatching altered Inuit for reasons yet to be determined. Thornton didn’t envy the man the dark and cold October nights he would spend perched on the rocky coast. Nevertheless, it meant Professor Corwin required a replacement for the term, and Thornton’s physical injuries were no longer considered sufficient excuse for him to avoid teaching obligations.

But lectures were just the start of it all. There would be students in his office asking all manner of questions. Most of them would be ridiculous. Both the questions and the students. So many of them couldn’t think their way out of a paper bag. Even worse, there would be exams. Exams he would have to grade. Thornton sighed thinking of the sheer quantity of red ink he would require in the near future. Waste of his time, all of it.

He walked to the podium where the limelight lantern rested, glass projection slides of the human nervous system at the ready. He twisted the gas lines providing both oxygen and hydrogen into “on” positions, picked up the striker and lit the cylinder of quicklime.

There was a lull in the conversation. Thornton cleared his throat and looked up at his audience, expecting all eyes to have focused attentively upon him. Instead, he saw the backs of fifty odd heads and only one face.

A very beautiful face. One with deep pink lips, high cheekbones and a dainty nose between wide eyes that had just a hint of an exotic tilt. Smooth skin, all surrounded by elaborately coiffed hair the color of midnight. Unlike the crows in the back who rolled their eyes in disgust, this woman was garbed in the latest of fashions, a tightly corseted and bustled teal gown with a low cut neckline that had all the men leering.

All but him, of course.

Striking blue eyes met his gaze.

He lifted his eyebrows and drew out his pocket watch to consult the hour. It was five past. She was late.

Her lips curved upward at his obvious reprimand, but she made no effort to hasten her steps. A gentleman in the front row stood, gesturing to a vacant seat he clearly intended for her to occupy. She nodded in greeting, then with the twist of a knob at her waist to collapse her bustle, she removed her feathered hat and settled into the chair beside the smug-looking gentleman.

Instinct told Thornton she would be a problem. A woman with such obvious physical charms expected attention. Best to not provide it. He waved his hand at his assistant and the room plunged into darkness. Sliding home the first glass plate, an illuminated image appeared on the large screen hanging at the front of the hall.

Tomorrow, he would not wait. If she could not manage to arrive promptly, she could damn well stumble her way down the stairs or sit in the back.

“Neurons and glial cells,” he intoned. “Later in the laboratory you will closely study the features of both.”

~~~

Amanda leaned forward in her chair, entranced by the deep, booming voice of this new professor. The light cast by the limelight lantern threw his angular face into sharp relief. What captivating facial bone structure. Prominent zygomatic arches and a long square jaw made the planes of his face appear wide and harsh. Between his dark eyebrows, nasal bones stretched into a long, straight and distinctive nose. Damp hair severely slicked back from his forehead betrayed the man by daring to curl at its tips. Full lips formed words in a tone that made the features of a neuron sound utterly entrancing.

She rather thought she could be content to spend the entire morning listening to him read the index of her anatomy text. Clearly brilliant, he was also the best physical specimen she’d laid eyes on in a long time. Too bad about that clause in the school’s charter forbidding professors from entering into relationships with their students.