A Golden Fury

Thea!” she exclaimed. “Can you never control your tongue?”
“My tongue?”
“If you had not argued politics with him—”
“You were the one screaming how stupid and charmless I am!”
“Who will take you now?”
“No one!” I cried. “Because I am not leaving! Do you think I do not know why you wish to send me away? But I will not let you, not when we are near to making the White Elixir! I will not be erased from our achievement!”
My mother gripped the table, bending over it. She was damp and trembling. She shook her head. She was ill, there was no other explanation for it all. The Comte saw it and stepped toward her in alarm.
“No, Thea,” she said. “You are wrong, entirely wrong. I do not want to send you away at all. It is only for your sake … for your safety…”
“I am not afraid of the National Convention.” I forced the words through my closing throat. I swallowed. I would not cry.
My mother shook her head. “The Revolution is not the only danger,” she said in a trembling voice.
“What then?” I asked.
She glanced into the corner again and looked away quickly. Again I looked where she looked. Again, nothing.
“Tell me, Mother.” My voice broke. I wanted an explanation more than I could bear to admit. I needed a reason, a good enough one to excuse her for banishing me.
But she did not answer, and so I turned my head away and left.
The Comte called after me, but I could bear to talk to him even less than I could bear to talk to my mother. Whatever my mother had left to say might make me angrier. Adrien’s sympathy would surely make me cry.

3
I lay on my bed in my shift, under the open window, breathing in the twilight scent of apple blossoms and swallowing angry sobs. I had cast off my green dress and left it and its ridiculous panniers where they lay. The warm spring air had turned cold with the sunset, and the fire burned down in the hearth, giving off little warmth. The hairs on my arms stood on end from the chill, but I didn’t feel it. My mind and heart were raging hot.
I could not stand it. I could not believe it. But I could not deny it.
My mother wanted to send me away.
It was worse than I had thought, worse even than Will had thought. She did not simply want to keep me subordinate to her, or keep me from sharing credit once we made the White Elixir, the substance that turned all metal into silver, the last step before the Philosopher’s Stone. Will thought she wanted to keep me for herself, to refuse to let me come into my own. But no. She did not want me at all.
Will …
It wasn’t true, what she had said, that he was only using me to get to her secrets. It couldn’t be true. She said she’d watched us together, but she hadn’t seen everything. She hadn’t seen him open himself to me, tell me about his parents’ rejection of him, his hopes for a more equal world. She hadn’t seen the way he’d looked at me before he kissed me. Still, her voice rang in my head.
You were as clumsy as a giraffe, and blunt as a bull!
I knotted my fists in the delicate white lace of my coverlet and felt it tear.
I threw myself off the bed, went to my dressing table, and opened my letter box. I lit a lamp and pulled all the letters out, searching frantically for the one that would disprove my mother best.
I found it, dated eight months ago, when Will was just settling into his contract in Prussia. I quickly scanned the first paragraphs, detailing the work and setting, and came to what I was looking for.
I miss you, Bee, and I worry for you. Do you remember when we talked of Rousseau, and the dim view he takes of marriage? I was inclined to agree with him, if you’ll recall, and you were not. But being so easily parted from you has given me another, more practical view of the matter. Your mother could not have claimed you and sent me away if we were bound by marriage. I could have severed the chains of motherhood she binds you with by chains of my own. I wish there were a way to free you from her without binding you to anything else, Bee. You deserve to be free, truly free. But even more than that, I wish I didn’t have to leave you there with her. I can well imagine how she is treating you, now that you have dared to have your own desires and goals. Don’t believe the things she says about you. You are more brilliant, more beautiful, and more full of life than she ever was or ever will be.
I read it again, and then again, searching against my will for any signs the letter was a lie. I saw none. We had no hopes of seeing each other again soon. What did he have to gain from writing to me at all, except the continuation of our friendship? Surely he could not think I would send him secrets through the mail. Still, my heart seized at the thought. I scanned the letters for hints, questions, anything that might suggest he was probing for alchemical information.
But no. There was nothing like that. I let out a sigh of relief and read the letter once more, this time letting myself believe it.
Don’t believe the things she says about you.
He had known this would happen, or something like it. And he was right. I breathed steadier. The tightness in my chest loosened. I took out my pen and yet another fresh sheet of paper, and started again.
Evening wore into night as I filled page after page with words I knew I would not send. I detailed all the cruel things she