'You will never be happy with somebody else as long as Lady Mary walks the earth.' It had been accurate, though perhaps not proper to admit to it; he would be devoted to none but her. They had what Branson, in his agreeably charismatic way, called 'chemistry' it was appropriate; the structure, composition, properties, and reactive characteristics of substances.Their chemistry was smouldering, undomesticated, all encompassing, it was tangible, and yet insubstantial, it was a rose not weathered, nor withered, by time. They were composed of the same material; each a fire that could only be kindled by the other. His core, his fundamental nature, was hers. He was damned, in the sweetest and most overwhelming of ways, to be ardently, reverentially, devoted to her as long as she worked the earth.