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Letitia shrugged. “If you insist.”

She turned the knob.

“It looks good,” Seraphina said. “It’s definitely going faster now.”

The funnel exploded.

Glass shattered and flew outward. Seraphina dropped to her knees, shielding her head with her arms. Fortunately, she reacted quickly enough that none of the glass cut her face, and her dress was long-sleeved, so her arms were protected as the glass rained down on them.

She glanced over at Letitia, who was in a similar position on the other side of the table. Her friend glared at her as she started to dust the glass chips from her hair.

“I warned you,” she groused.

Rolling her eyes, Seraphina unbent and checked that the liquid from the funnel hadn’t caused any damage to the surface of her desk. “You clearly turned it up too much. I said a little.”

“I only did turn it up a little,” Letitia protested. “If you aren’t happy with my efforts, next time you can do it yourself.”

Letitia smothered the flame, and Seraphina used a rag to mop up the spilled liquid. Fortunately, the solvent she had been using wasn’t particularly dangerous; otherwise, this could have been a whole lot worse.

While Letitia collected up the broken shards of glass from the desk, Seraphina swept the floor, gathering the smallest fragments, which had traveled an impressive distance. They dumped everything into a bowl to be dealt with later and stood side by side in front of the mirror on the wall to fix their hair and straighten their clothes.

Once they had each removed the glass that was visible in the reflection, they took turns checking the back of each other’s head. While Seraphina was blond, Letitia had dark hair, as did most members of her family, so the glass was easier to spot.

“At least it wasn’t loud,” Seraphina said, pinching a small sliver of glass between her fingers and carefully extracting it from a braid. If the explosion had made enough noise to bother her father, they would have been in so much trouble. “I’ll have to send Bessie out to replace the funnel. Hopefully I have enough pin money set aside.”

“If not, you can borrow one of mine,” Letitia assured her.

“Thanks.”

Her friend didn’t have to be as sneaky about her interest in science as Seraphina did. Her father and brother were independently wealthy, and even though Letitia had debuted five years ago and was practically a spinster by now, they hadn’t pressured her to take a husband nor discouraged her experimentation—primarily in testing Prout’s Hypothesis regarding atomic weights, but also the more dangerous attempts to separate aluminium from alumina.

Her father had even gone as far as to ensure that she would be provided for after he was gone, regardless of whether she married.

Seraphina tried not to be jealous, but sometimes she wished that her father were more like Letitia’s and would prioritize her happiness over anything else.

Letitia gestured to the row of vials on the table in the back corner of the room. “It’s a good thing we finished preparing the malaria medication before you got distracted by the latest willow bark extraction experiment and blew up your equipment.”

“We’re also lucky that my father has no interest in ‘perfumery.’”

Seraphina went to the pot of water that had been set aside earlier and rinsed her hands. She had found that it was good practice to clean off after being exposed to chemicals because otherwise her skin might dry out or start stinging.

Letitia followed suit, and then they packed the vials of quinine into a wooden box, closed it so that no one would know what was inside, and asked Bessie to summon her brother, Mark, who worked as a footman and was willing to be bribed to keep quiet about escorting them to places her father wouldn’t want them going.

They traveled in an unmarked carriage to a small church in one of the areas separating the wealthier parts of London from the slums. The church was relatively small and plain, and Mark stuck close to them as they walked inside and greeted the building’s caretaker, who took the box from them and bowed.

“Thank you, Miss Dalton. I can’t tell you how much we appreciate your generosity. I’ll make sure that the medicine is delivered to our partner churches in the countryside and poorer districts that are most at risk. You have no idea how much it means to them to have access to medicine that they don’t have to sell their soul for and which they know won’t harm them.”

Seraphina smiled. “No, thank you. It wouldn’t matter how much medicine I made if I had no way to get it to the people who need it.”

Mark cleared his throat, clearly eager for them to be on their way, so Seraphina bid the caretaker farewell, and their party retreated to the carriage for the return journey.

Letitia sat opposite Seraphina, something sly in her expression. “My cousin, Trevor, is coming to London.”

“Now? It’s an unusual time to join us for the season. It will be good to see him, though.”

She’d always liked Trevor, the Baron Fitzgerald—one day to be Earl of Wembley. He treated her like someone with a brain rather than just a pretty face, which was exceedingly rare, in her experience.

As they drew near Mayfair, the carriage stopped, presumably blocked by something on the road ahead. Seraphina opened the door and looked out, but before she could figure out what was going on, a man appeared on the side of the road, his hand raised to greet her, his full lips twisted in a smirk.