Chapters (30)
Jane pulled his arm away and undid the button herself. His hands were cold to the touch. ‘I was just there, and M. Chastain said you had returned to the house.’
‘I had planned to, but was delayed.’ He slid the shirt off, revealing his broad shoulders and the deep ribcage of a glamourist. ‘Why were you looking for me?’
Now that it was time to explain her idea, Jane’s doubt in her own abilities came back with force. ‘I had an idea and wanted to share it with you to see if you thought it had worth.’
He waited, prompting her to continue by his attentive silence. She explained. ‘I chanced upon Miette on the stairs, and she had a discarded crystal from a chandelier. She was using it to make rainbows on the wall.’ Jane smoothed the damp shirt and carried it to the fire, hanging it on the corner of the mantel, suddenly afraid that her idea was without merit. ‘It occurred to me that the prism bent the light in exactly the same pattern I use to create a glamoured rainbow. It seemed, looking at the prism and the rainbow, that one might craft a glass that could bend glamour in other ways, almost like a lens.’
‘Of course. Isaac Newton demonstrated this in his treatise on opticks. But splitting glamour into colours has no practical use other than giving us a greater understanding of how visible glamour relates to light.’ Vincent shook his head. ‘Besides, Newton’s theories have been discredited by Thomas Young, who proved that glamour and light are not particles but related wave forms. The effect is interesting, but not useful.’
Jane clenched her jaw, momentarily annoyed that he would assume that she had not read the latest works. Young’s paper had been written in 1803, and she had read it eagerly. ‘Actually, it is Mr. Young’s theories on the wave nature of glamour which led me to the realization that since glamour affects certain substances it might therefore be possible to record a glamour’s pattern in glass. Such a record might stand in for a glamourist’s hands, and create a path that the glamour is compelled to follow. The visual aspect, at any rate. I do not think it would work with other folds.’
Vincent stood exactly as she had left him, feet spread wide and hair slicked against his skull. His eyes glazed over as he sketched a rainbow in the room. ‘My God.’ He raised his hands, tangling them in his wet curls. ‘My God, Jane. That might . . . I think.’ Abandoning words, he pressed her to his heart, the fine hairs of his chest tickling her cheek. His pulse thundered in her ear. Vincent squeezed her tightly, then lifted her off the ground, spinning in place with a laugh.
‘You think it might work, then?’
Setting her down, he kissed her soundly. ‘Muse, we need to find a glassblower.’