The Love Remedy by Elizabeth Everett

Author:Elizabeth Everett [Everett, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2024-03-19T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

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“Did you find a home for your plants?”

“Did you have a nice chat with your father?”

Thorne leaned against the doorway of the apothecary office, his mouth partly open. It wasn’t a fitting answer to his question about the plants, but it had been on Lucy’s mind since they had parted ways at the Physic Garden three days ago.

“Thornwood,” she said thoughtfully. “And that was your father, Ezekiel Thornwood, Lord Blackstone,” she said.

A long breath escaped his pursed lips and Thorne rocked back on his heels, putting his ungloved hands in his jacket pockets.

Jonathan Thorne was not the only person capable of investigations. The day after she’d learned his real name, Lucy had stopped by the local pub and bought an ale for Katie’s da, Joe Quinlavin. After she finished making her case, once again, that Katie be allowed to attend school and received, once again, Quinlavin’s refusal, Lucy asked what he’d known about prizefighting and one Jonathan Thorne in particular.

Although Thorne had told her about the prizefighting, she’d no idea of how widespread his fame was as the “Gentleman Fighter.” Quinlavin had been astonished that Lucy hadn’t known of Thorne’s boxing fame and his lofty beginnings, but how should she have found out?

Apothecary apprentices were not in the same social strata as barons’ sons, nor had Lucy ever done anything as scandalous as go to a prizefight. Her family straddled the working and the middle classes carefully. There were parts of London she’d never set foot in, not because she would feel out of place—she would—but because there was no reason for her to leave her Newton Street shop unless it was on apothecary business. Even then, her travels had never taken her to places like Hyde Park or Fitzrovia.

For the past three days, she’d avoided him while mulling over the information she’d collected. All the while she chastised herself for listening to gossip. Thorne’s past was not her business. Lucy had no claim on him and no belief in his permanence.

This man was not of her world.

She’d known that the day he pulled her arse-first out of a second-floor window, and it had only become clearer every day since then.

He liked accounting, for goodness’ sake.

“Yes. I’m the third son,” Thorne acknowledged. “The spare’s spare.”

“What does your father think of your current occupation as an agent masquerading as a bookkeeper?” she asked. “Does he view it as a step up or down from prizefighter?”

Thorne’s mouth bowed into a frown of consideration. “I didn’t ask him. I believe the notion of occupation is what my father finds most confusing.”

Lucy knew little to nothing about the members of the aristocratic class. She’d no time to follow the gossip columns and never would have met any of them in her lifetime had it not been for Athena’s Retreat. She had attended various functions at the Retreat, both public and secret, and had overheard some of the ladies talking about the confines of the aristocratic life. If Thorne had remained in his

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