“I do not need an escort, doctor,” Azmin protested as the wretched man caught up with her and offered his arm. She was not particularly petite, but Dare’s size was intimidating. “Go back and admire your new sitting room, have your dinner, and tell Louisa what a brilliant child she is.”
“I cannot in all conscience allow you to wander these streets alone. It’s bad enough to have the guilt of one disabled female on my hands. Should anything happen to you. . . I should have to find a monastery and drop out of the world.” In impatience, he took her arm and threaded it through his.
Guilt? Monastery? She had so many questions. . . She stuck to the pertinent.
“Have you ever been to Calcutta, sir? I have spent these last ten years walking filthy streets mobbed with pickpockets and thieves, stepping over crippled, homeless beggars and unimaginable filth. I am neither helpless nor a child.” She should resent his assumption that she needed a man’s protection, but apparently she was an idiot. She was inordinately pleased that he’d noticed her. She probably should soak her brain and wash it out with lye.
“You were never helpless, although your behavior has always been childish,” he said, confusing her brief moment of pleasure. “I at least outgrew impulsiveness. Obviously, you haven’t.” He halted at an intersection.
“I recommend that monastery,” she retorted. “Perhaps once you inter yourself, Louisa could go somewhere with more family around. She’s a lovely child, with a cheerful attitude that conceals a great deal of loneliness.”
Azmin wasn’t certain why she was speaking to him like this. He was older, well-respected, a gentleman, and no doubt heir to fortunes and title. She needed people like him to support her cause. She should just slap herself now.
Except she knew herself well enough to know she was trying to chase Zane away. She didn’t want him to know where she kept her workshop. That was ridiculous. Professor High-and-Mighty would never lower himself to come looking for her.
“Which way?” he demanded.
With a sigh, she started down the cross street, heading in the direction of Holyrood.
“With my mother out of the country, I am the only one of the family left with medical training,” he replied, apparently in explanation as to why Louisa couldn’t go elsewhere.
“Sommersville?” she inquired, remembering the medical duke his mother often consulted, who was somehow related to the Malcolms.
“Isn’t in Yorkshire these days. He’s in the south battling his own problems. You think we should ask a duke to watch over her?” he asked in derision. “If Louisa overexerts herself, she has weak spells. I am always close at hand. The servants and the neighbors know how to find me at any minute of the day. The rest of our family. . .”
He hesitated at describing the hordes of Malcolms Azmin remembered with such fondness.
“Is rambunctious,” she finished for him, understanding his predicament. They would exhaust Louisa beyond measure. “Has she found any gift that might keep her amused? Perhaps she is a librarian. They lead a quiet life.”
“Like me, she seems to have been bypassed by the family’s eccentricities. Or it could be a side effect of the disease. It leaves her feeling left out,” he said with what sounded like sympathy.
“Ah yes, I remember those days. We are the outsiders—unable to cast spells or order dogs to do tricks or anything of use.” She said that with a hint of irony. Malcolms kept journals of their various inexplicable gifts, talents, and eccentricities. Spellcasting had never been among them.
His laugh was short. “My sisters were equally untalented, and most of the boys in the group had no interest in playing mind games, so I did not care so much.
Azmin was the one who cared. She wanted to have an extra sense or perception. With no family of her own, she longed to feel a part of her extended one. She’d buried the loneliness by staying busy.
Their path took a turn past the tavern where she’d attempted to catch an image of the drunkards. The stench of gin and vomit polluted the spring air. Dim light barely reached through the filthy tavern windows. This part of town wasn’t precisely reputable.
“You are fortunate to not care how others view you.” Resigned to showing him her workplace, Azmin turned down a dirt path too small to qualify as an alley between the tavern and a garden wall. “And I am glad that you understand Louisa is not you. But she does need female relations who might notice if she’s gifted. We cannot always tell on our own.”
“Does that mean you’ve discovered your talent?” he asked, with what almost sounded like interest.
At this hour, the Blairs had locked up the back gate and gone home. “Nothing of use,” she said blithely, hiding both hope and despair as she opened the lock. “You can leave me here. My companion is waiting.”
He glanced up at the solid structure which resembled an enormous carriage house more than an office or home. There were lights in the upper story. Keya would be ready to leave. Mr. Morgan had a suite and lived here. There were guest rooms for when the Blairs’ household spilled over. Azmin rather liked the eccentric building.
“You don’t live here?” he asked in incredulity, stepping into the yard, uninvited.
“I work here. I thank you for seeing me—” Azmin gave up. The professor’s insatiable curiosity had taken him to the garden wall overlooking the street in front of the noisy tavern.
“You took that photograph the other night that had the rowdies climbing the wall?” he demanded. He’d already found the dog shed and chicken coop she’d used as steps and climbed up to look.
“I had a photographic plate prepared that I couldn’t use because you interrupted me. I’ve been waiting to test my equipment in that spot. The lampposts and the tavern’s carriage lights and the window form a pool of illumination. I hoped I could learn how to use artificial light if accompanied by my magnesium reflector.”
He climbed back down, shaking his head in disbelief. “You’re unnatural,” he muttered. “No right-minded female in all those furbelows—”
Azmin headed for the back door. “I was appropriately garbed at the time. You simply didn’t notice, as always. Good-night, professor.”
He caught the door and held it for her. “One of those young thugs attempted to beat me up when I prevented him from climbing over the wall after you. I don’t advise any more impromptu photographic experiments. I cannot even imagine capturing more than light and shadow, at best.”
“And you’re a photographic expert as well as a medical one?” she asked caustically, giving up on being rid of him when he followed her into Mr. Blair’s workshop. He was a friend of Mr. Blair’s, she remembered. Her landlord wouldn’t mind.
Dare had been beaten up because of her? Azmin winced. She supposed she should apologize, but it wasn’t her fault that men were violent animals who reacted to a flash of light.
“I obviously know more about human behavior than you,” he replied with equal irritation. “One does not startle drunks. Their reactions tend to be unpredictable.”
“Illogical and violent,” she concurred. “Like all men, except to an extreme when reinforced by alcohol.” She stomped up the stairs without looking back.
Zane knew he had no right to follow the female upstairs. He had exceeded all boundaries already. But if this lofty brick structure was an office, it couldn’t be entirely inappropriate to see where his niece’s tutor worked. And it simply didn’t seem safe to allow an unprotected lady to wander around in this vast, poorly lit structure in an unhealthy part of town.
She would hit him with a brick if he said that aloud. She’d walked the streets of Calcutta. The stories emerging from that hellhole. . . He shuddered.
Miss Dougall led him down a corridor lit by only one lamp. “It’s just me, Mr. Morgan,” she called as she passed a door with light seeping under it.
The occupant grunted a greeting.
She knocked on another door. “Keya, I’ve brought a guest.”
There was a distinct warning in her voice. Zane doffed his hat and held it under his arm, his fascination outweighing his hunger.
A brown-complexioned, older woman opened the door. She looked as if she belonged in the colorful saris Azmin used to flaunt, but she was modestly garbed in servants’ attire. A narrow scar ran from her mandible to the zygoma. The wound had damaged the orbicularis oris, distorting her mouth.
“Keya Trivedi, may I present Dr. Dare, the gentleman who hired me to teach his niece?”
The woman was no maid. She carried herself with pride, bobbed no curtsy, and didn’t lower her eyes in respect. She also didn’t offer her hand. She merely opened the door wider and gestured entrance.
“To what do we owe this honor?” she asked in low, musical tones.
“Dr. Dare is seeing that I arrive safely. Apparently, the tavern’s clientele is prone to aggression.” Miss Dougall drew off her gloves and glanced around. “The photographs? Did printing help?”
Zane was too intrigued by the workshop to notice the companion’s reaction. Neat and orderly, the tools of Miss Dougall’s trade lined the walls and benches. A pair of comfortable chairs and stools faced the grate, where a coal fire burned. A low table held the necessities for tea preparation and consumption.
Framed and unframed photographs filled every available space not meant for walking. Not just black and white either. There were tintypes and old-fashioned daguerreotypes and methods he didn’t recognize. The lady had experimented with them all, adding rosy colors to cheeks, depth with clarity—even he could recognize her talent.
“Before I say anything, tell me what you see,” Miss Dougall said, studying the photos her companion handed her.
Even oblivious as he was, Zane heard her suppressed excitement. He swung around to find out what they were doing.
“I do not have enough knowledge to know if these odd shadows were caused by light conditions or poor dispersion of chemicals,” Miss Trivedi said cautiously. “This one—the lighting is very bad, but there does seem to be an odd. . . perhaps a dual image?”
Drawn by curiosity, Zane peered over Miss Dougall’s shoulder. He grimaced at the outline of the corpse from the other night. The sheet was recognizable. Most of the rest of the picture was just dark shadows. A lighter. . . shadow?. . . hung above the sheet. “Probably a reflection of your flashing light off the sheet.”
Miss Dougall shot him a look of disgust and reached for the second photograph. “Keya? What do you think? The light is better in this one.”
Zane felt almost comfortable arguing over foolishness —as if they were still the two young people they’d once been.
He couldn’t afford to be that young whelp again. Slapping his hat on, he prepared to leave.
Again, the companion answered cautiously. “There is an odd. . . gloom. . . on the one gentleman’s back. Again, it could be a bad wash.”
“That’s the tavern photo?” Zane asked, unable to resist examining the results of what had caused such a commotion.
The drunkards were clearly depicted. At the time she’d taken it, all three were standing under the lamppost, smoking cigar stumps, from the look of it. Dressed in shabby student attire, coats unfastened, caps covering their shaggy hair, they simply looked disreputable as far as Zane could tell. Jenkins was taller and leaner than his muscled companions. It looked as if he’d thrown a pack over his shoulder, but that part of the image was obscure.
“They’re a disreputable lot of drunks. Your experiment shows no more,” he said in disgust. “For this, you risked your life?”
“I was perfectly safe behind the wall,” she retorted. “And if you don’t see the darkness, you are blind.”
Zane snatched the photo and tilted it away from the light, but the image didn’t change. “He’s not by the tavern window. There is no similar shadow in the image. It appears as if he is wearing a pack of some sort on his back, or your photography could just be bad.”
Azmin looked as if she wanted to smack him. Zane refused to accept that blots on a piece of paper meant anything at all.
“And what do you see?” the companion asked of Azmin, looking worried.
“Evil,” Miss Dougall said distinctly, taking back the photograph and turning it face down on the workbench. “It is as if he has a demon on his back. And in the other photo, I see the corpse’s spirit lingering above the body. To me, it is quite distinct. And I understand that no one will believe me when they cannot see what I see or feel what I feel. I feel malevolence.”
A demon?
She turned and held out a polite but cool hand to him. “Thank you for escorting me, professor. Our carriage will arrive shortly.”
Zane ignored her hand and picked up the photo she’d discarded. He pointed at the so-called demon. “He’s one of my students. He is not the one who attacked me. Do not let your imagination run away with you.”
Azmin offered a brittle smile and retrieved the photograph. “Do not become too attached to that young man. He is a danger to himself as well as others. Good-night, Dr. Dare,” she said formally, holding open the door.
Zane slammed his hat on and strode out, not understanding why he was so damned irritated by her dismissal.