Potion and Providence

England, 1887. Dr. Iris Calloway has spent three years building the finest professional defenses available to a woman botanist in Victorian Britain: meticulous research, careful boundaries, and a rivalry with Oxford alchemist Dr. Sebastian Vane conducted entirely through the scientific literature. She has been doing this since a colleague stole her work and her trust in a single season.

Then someone adds a compound to the drinks at the Grand Apothecary Convention, and everything changes. The compound, which lasts 2 weeks and that has no antidote, does not manufacture feelings, it reveals them. This means the warmth Iris finds herself feeling toward the insufferable Dr. Vane is not the compound's invention. It is hers, and apparently has been hers for some time.

As the compound works its patient chemistry through their professional rivalry, Iris and Sebastian are forced into collaboration, and more.