With Mr. Scully wrapped in his sheets and removed from his bed, Sarah went off to fetch fresh linens. Another poor soul would arrive soon to take that bed, to lie moaning in pain, or stoically white-lipped.
That was the part she found difficult. She had little enough to offer the patients save for a cool hand on their brow or a cup of gin. The physicians doled out laudanum with a miserly fist, for the cost was dear and the stores low. So the patients suffered, and that suffering wore at her. She longed for a way to alleviate it.
She paused only long enough to carefully wash her hands in the basin at the side of the ward. She knew that others watched her with suspicious interest, wondering at her obsession with cleanliness. Mostly, the nurses washed not at all, and the surgeons only after a messy surgery to clean away the blood and gore. But Sarah’s father had thought it important to wash both before and after patient care, so she did as she had been taught, and wished that others might learn by her example.
A mouse scurried in the shadows as she made her way along the wide corridor, the noise and clamor of the wards fading behind her. Slowing her pace, she turned down a narrower hallway and, finally, stepped into a small, dark alcove that housed the storage closet. The door was an ill-fitting slab of wood that stuck fast until she pulled hard, and then it scraped along the floor with a grating rasp.
She stared into the interior of the closet, and thought that she ought to have brought a candle, for though the day was bright, the closet was set in a dim corner. There were no windows in the alcove or in the short, narrow hallway that led to it. The only light filtered from the windows of the wider corridor, and it was far enough away that paltry illumination strayed this far.
The pale linens were easy enough to see, set on the middle shelf, a low stack of oft-mended, yellowed cloths that had been scrubbed and boiled time and again, and still bore the stains of many uses.
Sarah stepped into the storage closet, then held herself very still, an eerie sensation tickling the fine hairs at her nape. Heart racing, she spun and peered into the gloom, but saw nothing more than dust and shadows.
Feeling foolish, she turned back to her task, stacking sheets and choosing several tallow candles to add to her pile. She paused, then added a stack of torn strips of cloth to act as bandages, for she had noticed that the stores in the ward were quite depleted.
Something alerted her. The faint scent of citrus. A whisper of sound. She could not say, but eerie conviction coalesced inside her, and she sucked in a startled breath, certain now that she was not alone.
Certain that Killian Thayne was directly behind her.
Her heart thudded hard in her breast and the walls of the small closet seemed to move closer still. There was a flicker of fear in her heart, true, but there was something else as well, something bigger and stronger, a stirring excitement that raced through her veins, dangerous and alluring at once.
Resting her hands on the shelf, she swallowed, struggling to gather her wayward emotions. He was here, behind her. If she turned, he would be only a hand span away, and she would…What? Dare to touch him? To lay her hand on his arm and know the strength of him?
‘Twas one thing to dream it in her secret heart, in the dark of night while she lay in her cold, narrow bed. Quite another to be faced with the reality.
Strange how this moment so closely resembled a thousand others. The difference was, those moments had taken place in her dreams, or in the waking daze as she broke from slumber’s embrace, alone in her bed, her thoughts focused on imagined shared moments when Killian Thayne came to her as a lover would.
The touch of his hand on her cheek. The scent of his skin. The feel of his lips, warm, soft, as they brushed hers. Those were the secret, naive imaginings of a girl who had never been courted, never been kissed.
But standing here, in the dark little closet, with Mr. Thayne at her back, blocking her way, was a far different thing, entirely.
Slowly, she turned, her heart pounding in anticipation, a wild, untrammeled rhythm, her mouth dry, her cheeks hot.
Did he know? Could he tell that she had dreamed of him and watched him and fantasized about him for as long as she had been employed here at King’s College? Foolish, girlish dreams, because he was beautiful and mysterious and far more intriguing than any other man she had ever met.
She saw now that he was not so close as she had first anticipated, and she did not know if she was disappointed or relieved. He was standing in the alcove beyond the door, the insubstantial light that leaked from the main corridor creating a faint nimbus about him, leaving his features obscured by shadow.
“Miss Lowell,” he greeted her, so polite, his tone low and smooth.
“Mr. Thayne.” The words came out a cracked whisper, and she dropped her gaze to the tips of his polished boots. Always polished. His trousers always neat and pressed. His clothes impeccable and obviously expensive.
An enigma.
While physicians to the upper class might earn quite a respectable income, a surgeon was less likely to do so, and was definitely a rung below on the social ladder. All the more so a surgeon who practiced in a poor hospital such as King’s College.
Rolling her lips inward, she swiped her tongue across the surface, and waited, wondering what he was doing here. He had followed her. She could have no doubt of that, but the reason for such action escaped her.
“You defended me,” he murmured. “I would like to know why.”
He asked only why she defended him, not why she lied for him. The differentiation did not escape her.
Was there some import, some key relevance to his choice of words?
She wondered if it had been his shadow she had seen earlier, or just a trick of the light. She could not say with certainty, could not state unequivocally that in defending him, she had not lied for him.
From the open doorway of the little closet he watched her, the shadows and his ever-present darkened spectacles masking his eyes and any secrets his expression might reveal.
“I defended no one. I merely pointed out possible explanations for what had occurred, and since no one came forth with any other, it appears my suggestion was given full merit”—she paused—“though I suspect this is not the end of the inquiry, nor the end of supposition and accusation.”
His lips curved in a ghost of a smile, and she found herself staring at his mouth, the hard line of it, the slightly squared, full lower lip, so incredibly appealing. She could not seem to look away.
He had not shaved. She noticed that now, and realized that more often than not, his jaw was shaded by a day’s stubble. His grooming was otherwise impeccable, but he eschewed the razor. She wondered if there was a particular reason for that, or merely that he found it a bother.
There was no question that she liked it. Liked the look of his lean, squared jaw with the faintest hint of a cleft at the front of his chin. Of its own volition, her hand half rose, and she stopped the movement with a tiny gasp, wondering what she thought she had meant to do. Touch him? Lay her fingers against his jaw and feel the golden hairs beneath her fingers? She wondered if they would be soft or scratchy, and she could not suppress a small shiver.
“No, I suspect it is not the end of the inquiry,” he agreed, and she wondered at his calm amiability. He seemed not at all distressed by the observation.
Suddenly reckless, she dared ask, “Were you there this morning? Before I arrived? Was it you that I saw?”
His fine humor dropped away, and his expression turned cool and blank. “What did you see?” A harsh demand.
“I—” She backed up a step, put off by the sharp change in his tone, but the shelves were at her back and there was nowhere else for her to go.
He prowled a step closer. Her heart slammed hard against her ribs and she stared at him, afraid and appalled and tantalized all at once.
“Whom did you see, Miss Lowell?” He moderated his tone now, made it gentle and smooth. But he did not step back. He held his place, close enough that she had to tip her head far back to look into his eyes.
“Do you crowd me on purpose, sir?”
His teeth flashed white in a brief smile, and despite her words and tone, he made no move to step away. “And if I do?”
“Then I would ask you to stop.”
“I like being close to you,” he murmured, his words warming her blood and leaving her dizzy. “Your hair smells like flowers.”
He left her at a loss, breathless and warm and so aware of his assertion that it hummed in her blood. Her hair did smell like flowers. She bathed every other day using scented soap. The soap was her one excess, her baths her sole luxury, one she worked hard for, heating water and dragging it up the stairs to the hip bath she set up in her chamber. Her landlady and the other lodgers in Coptic Street thought her mad.
Dipping his head until his cheek brushed against her hair, he inhaled deeply. She stood very still, her pulse racing, her breath locked in her throat and all manner of strange and bright emotions cascading through her like a brook.
Only when he eased back did she dare to breathe, and even then it was only a short, huffing gasp.
“Tell me what you saw,” he coaxed.
“I am not certain.” She was grateful for the change in topic and the tiny bit of space he allowed her. Her heart raced too fast; her nerves tingled with excitement. He made her lose her common sense, and she did not like that. “Perhaps I saw a shadow cast through the windows. Perhaps nothing.” She paused and lifted her gaze, but found only her own reflection in the dark glass of his spectacles. “Perhaps I saw you.”
“If you think that, then why did you defend me?”
Humor laced his tone, and she was not certain if she was relieved or dismayed. He confounded her, made her wary, and yet he fascinated her.
“I never said I thought it. You asked what I saw, and as I truly do not know, I offered a variety of options.”
She told only the truth. She could not say why she had leapt to his defense. She only knew that she could not find it in herself to believe that he had ripped open the wrists of four patients at King’s College and drained their bodies of blood.
Even standing here in the gloomy little closet with the height and breadth of him—the threat of him—blocking her path, the possibility that he had done murder seemed absurd. She had seen him work far too hard to save patients’ lives to believe that he would choose to kill them.
He reached up and slid his bottle-green spectacles down his nose, then dragged them off entirely, leaving his gaze open to her scrutiny. His eyes glittered in the darkness, and the shadows only served to accent the handsome lines and planes of his features. The slash of high cheekbones, the straight line of his nose.
For a long moment, he studied her, saying nothing, the only sound the escalated cadence of her own breathing. He was so focused, so intent.
Again, she wondered if he was a mesmerist, for she found she could not look away. Had no wish to look away.
Her limbs felt heavy, languid, and her blood was thick and hot in her veins.
Raising his hand, he laid his fingers along the side of her throat, and her pulse pounded harder, wilder.
“Sarah.” Just her name, spoken in his low, deep voice. The sound thrummed through her body, leaving her limbs trembling and her thoughts befuddled. “Such a wise and brave creature you are.”
Wise. Brave.
He could not know her thoughts or he would not say such things to her.
Her pulse was racing like a runaway cart, but the emotion that suffused her was not fear. Her skin tingled, her nerves danced, and she was aware of Killian Thayne’s every breath, of the sweep of his dark gold lashes as he blinked and the thick, bright strand of hair that had worked free of its tie to fall against his lean cheek.
A sound escaped her, a breath, a sigh. He leaned closer, until their breath mingled and the faint hint of citrus on his skin became more discernible. She wanted to rest her nose against the strong column of his throat and simply breathe him in, but she held her place, paralyzed by incertitude and inexperience.
He would kiss her now. She wanted him to kiss her now.
Her lips parted.
Voices carried to them from the main corridor, laughter and the murmur of conversation. The moment dropped and shattered, fractured into a thousand bits. Sarah felt the loss like a physical blow.
With a rueful smile, Killian Thayne drew his thumb across her lower lip, the brief contact making her shiver. Then he stepped away, leaving her body aching in the strangest way, as though her breasts and belly were pained by disappointment.
She closed her eyes, drew a deep breath, and when she opened them once more, he was gone and she was alone. Alone with the shadows and the dark and the memory of the way he had looked at her. Focused. Appreciative.
Hungry.
Five days passed, with Sarah coming to work before dawn each day, and walking home each night long past dusk. The sun she saw only through the grimy windows of the wards or the corridors.
She had grown wily, careful to vary her route between her room in Coptic Street and the hospital, which meant she could not help but skirt the dangerous edges of St. Giles. The sensation that someone stalked her had not abated. In fact, the certainty that she was followed had grown and solidified until she trusted it without question.
Twice more, she had seen a man standing in the shadow of the gravestones, watching her as she entered the building. He never approached her, never made any truly menacing move, but he was there, always there, and his presence unnerved her.
Yesterday, she had dared to turn in his direction and take a step toward him, intending to call out to him from across the way. Her attention had forced him deeper into the gloom. Clearly, he had no wish to entertain her company, only to watch her from a distance.
A menacing conundrum.
Now Sarah turned her attention to Mrs. Bayley, who stood by her side holding a stack of clean bandages to replace the blood and pus-stained cloths that Sarah had just unwound from a dressed wound. The patient was stoic, lips pressed together in a tight line, eyes dull with pain.
Adept at changing dressings and bandages, she worked with calm efficiency. Her father had shown her the way of it when she was twelve and she had had much practice in the intervening years.
She turned her full focus to her task, glad to be trusted with this duty, for it was usual that only the sisters or a surgical apprentice would be allowed to bandage wounds. But today, two sisters were sick with the ague, and one apprentice as well, which meant that the day nurses were set to do what needed to be done, for the surgeons were occupied elsewhere.
With a quick glance about, Mrs. Bayley stepped close and asked, “Do you think he done it? Killed them in a mad fit?”
Sarah sighed as she continued bandaging the patient. There was no question that Mrs. Bayley was asking about Mr. Thayne. The entire hospital had been buzzing with conjecture and whispered supposition for days.
A mad fit. The question nearly made her laugh. She had never seen Killian Thayne less than composed and controlled…except for a single moment in the closet when she had thought he might kiss her. There had been a fleeting instant there where she thought she challenged his control.
“I think Mr. Thayne is an extremely competent surgeon,” Sarah replied, avoiding the question altogether, for whatever response she offered could only fuel the fire.
Mrs. Bayley made a huffing sound of displeasure when Sarah failed to snap at the bait.
“An officer was here yesterday,” she confided, “from Bow Street.”
Sarah murmured a wordless reply, for she already knew of the officer’s visit, but Mrs. Bayley was undeterred by her lack of enthusiasm for the topic.
“He spoke with Mr. Simon and Mr. Franks, and after that with Mr. Thayne, but in the end, he left. I thought he might like tea, so I went after him and asked about that.” Mrs. Bayley shook her head. “He very politely declined the tea, saying he found the place off-putting.”
“I can’t imagine why…” Sarah said, and exchanged a glance with the other woman, a shared commiseration. “If it wasn’t the bleak and sad atmosphere, then surely the smell had done.”
Mrs. Bayley snorted. “He did share enough conversation that I can tell you he was called in to investigate by Mr. Simon, and that he will not be back.” She unfolded another bandage and handed it to Sarah. “It seems that the officer holds the opinion that people die in hospitals, and without further evidence, he cannot think there is foul play afoot.”
Something in her tone made Sarah pause in her work and turn her head to offer her full attention.
Mrs. Bayley tapped her foot on the wooden floor, a rapid patter. She pursed her lips, and after a moment continued. “But I wonder. I do. I worked at Guy’s Hospital before I came here, and in all the years, I’ve never seen the like of that wound, ripped open and not a drop of blood shed.”
Sarah stared at her for a long moment, having no words, but so many thoughts. Because she did wonder, not just about the wound, but about the shadow she had seen the morning Mr. Scully died, and about Killian Thayne’s presence beside the bed of the woman who had died two weeks before that.
Wetting her lips, she shook her head. “We need more bandages, Mrs. Bayley,” she said, her voice soft, her heart heavy, for she did not want to wonder about him. She wanted to believe that he was exactly the man she conjured in her dreams.
The trouble was, she had learned in the months since her father’s death that the boundary between dreams and nightmares was wont to blur.
Sarah drew her frayed and much-mended cloak tight about her shoulders. The night was very cold and very clear, the stars winking bright and pretty against the dark blue-black sky, a sliver of moon offering pale, cool light. Her gaze strayed to the graveyard. There was nothing there save old stones and a single ancient tree, its gnarled branches casting creeping shadows along the ground.
Still, she shivered, in part from the chill, and in part from the certainty that he would come, the man who watched her, and he would follow her through the wretched, twisted streets and alleys of St. Giles. She sighed. The night was so cold, and the temptation to take that route so strong, for it halved the distance. But it was not safe, and so she would take the longer route and hope the crowds kept him away.
She began to walk, her cudgel gripped in her fist beneath the material of her cloak. Her steps were quick and sure, her senses alert. She heard nothing, felt no creeping certainty that she was being watched, but she had come to understand that the streets were far from safe and she was yet far from home.
Home. Such a strange word to apply to the tiny, cramped room where she slept each night. She had grown up in a pretty house with fine china and chocolate every morning. They had not been wealthy, but they had made do quite nicely, she and her father, a physician who saw to the health needs of merchants and tradesmen. Not the upper class, but not the poor, which meant her father had always been paid moderately well.
She had never thought beyond her pleasant life.
But then, inexplicably, her father had changed drastically, his temper fraying, his thoughts and actions growing irrational. After months of frightening and unusual behavior, he was alive one night and dead the next morning, fallen in the Thames, his body never found. It was a terrible and tragic culmination of months of descent into what she suspected was opium addiction.
Sarah had found herself without funds, evicted from her home, without relative or friend. She could not say how that had happened. She had never thought her father the type to squander his money, but in the weeks before his death, he had spent it on something that defied her understanding.
A cure, he had insisted. He was searching for a cure.
She could have told him that the only cure was to stop taking the drug. She thought now that she should have told him that.
Well, it mattered little, she thought now as she passed small, cramped houses that backed onto the slaughterhouses, the smell of death and old blood always heavy in the air. Come morning, there would be children running in the street next to a herd of pigs, with inches of blood flowing beneath their feet. A terrible place, really. Before her father’s death, she had never imagined the like.
She kept her head down as she hurried past. It was too late to change what he had done, what he had become—an opium addict. She must only find a way to go on.
Turning left on Queen Street, she was confronted by light from the streetlamps and sound and a tight press of bodies that she navigated with care. Near Drury Lane, the public houses spilled their patrons into the streets. To her left, two men engaged in fisticuffs, dancing about to the taunts and calls of their fellows. To her right, three women were screaming like harpies, pulling and yanking on an old dress stretched out between them, none of them willing to relinquish their grasp.
The next street was narrower, with fewer people, and the street after that narrower and less crowded still. Now her route brought her to a place where she could no longer avoid the dimness and the shadows. There was only one working lamp on the street, and tonight it was unlit, so perhaps it was working no longer. She quickened her pace and ducked down an alley.
A staircase ascended the outside of the building and a man, bowed and bent, slogged up the steps, a sack of cabbages slung over his back. He would peel the outer leaves off on the morrow and take them to sell as fresh, though they were likely already several days old.
Sarah scanned the shadows and moved on, unease trickling through her now. This was the part of her trek she liked the least.
Again, she turned, this time into an alley narrower than the last.
Almost there. Her boots rang on the cobbled pavement; her heart pounded a wild rhythm.
She was walking very quickly now, the wind tunneling down the alley to sting her eyes, her cheeks, and behind her, she heard footsteps. Not ringing like her own. Shuffling, sliding.
He was behind her. The man who watched her and harried her each day. He was there, behind her. She could hear him.
Her breath came in ragged harsh rasps, and she dragged her cudgel free of the draping material of her cloak, holding it before her at the ready as she quickened her pace even more.
There was nowhere safe, nowhere she could turn.
The courtyards that fed off the narrow alley held their own dangers, for she knew not what manner of men, or women, might lurk there. In this place, poverty forced even women and children to toss aside morals and do what they must to survive. Calling out for help was therefore not an attractive option.
Ahead of her loomed a dark shadow, and she skidded to a stop, horrified to realize that a large wooden cart blocked her path.
From behind her came the sound of cloth flapping in the wind, and she whirled about, the open palm of one hand pressed to her chest, her cudgel clutched tight in the other.
The light here was so dim, there was only charcoal shadow painted on shadow, but she knew what she saw. The shape of a man loomed before her, some twenty feet distant. He was draped in a dark cloak that lifted and fanned out in the wind like the wings of a raven. His features were completely obscured by a low-crowned hat pulled down over his brow.
He was tall and broad and menacing…familiar somehow, his height and the shape of his shadow…similar to the shadow she thought she had seen on the ward the morning Mr. Scully died.
Trembling, she clenched her teeth tight together to keep them from clacking aloud. If she dared cry for help, she might bring down a dozen worse creatures on her head.
Taking a step backward, and another, she pressed against the wood of the cart, her legs shaking so hard, she knew not how they yet bore her weight.
Run, her mind screamed, and she dared a rapid glance in each direction. To her right was a courtyard, to her left, another alley.
The man before her took a single step forward, menacing. Terrifying. He was done toying with her. He was coming for her, as she had always known he would.
Still clutching her cudgel, she snaked her free hand behind her back and groped for the wooden cart. It was high-wheeled, and she could feel the lower limit of it at a level with her waist.
There was her best choice.
Sucking in a breath, she held it and dropped to the ground, rolling beneath the cart.
She heard a sound of surprise. For the briefest instant she wasn’t certain if it was a hiss, or her name—Ssssarah—but she did not pause to look behind her. Bounding to her feet as soon as she reached the opposite side of the cart, she grabbed her skirt with her free hand and hauled it up to her knees, then ran as fast as she could, her legs pumping, her breath rasping in her throat.
The cobbles were caked with years of grime and refuse, and her feet skidded and slipped on the sludge. Once, she slammed hard against the wall, nearly falling, but she pushed herself upright and ran on, weaving through the alleys, taking any turn she recognized, not daring to take those that were less than familiar.
The only thing worse than being chased through this warren would be running blindly without having a clear concept of her location.
Twice, she dared look behind her. She saw nothing to make her think she had been followed.
Finally, she ducked into a shadowed niche beneath a narrow wooden stairwell. Her lungs screamed for air, and she huddled as deep in the gloom as she could, pulling her body in tight to make herself as small as possible. Her ears strained to hear the sound of footsteps pounding in pursuit, but there was nothing.
From the window above her came the discordant noise of an argument, a man’s voice, then another, deeper voice in reply, and a moment later, the dull thud of fists on flesh and a cry of pain.
Panting, she struggled to satisfy her desperate need for air.
She waited a moment longer, then crept from her place. Staying close to the wall and the sheltering gloom, she made her way clear of the labyrinth of alleys to New Oxford Street. There she crossed and then continued north to the small lodging house where she rented a room from Mrs. Cowden.
The building was old, musty, her chamber very small and dark and damp, but it was inexpensive and it was located not in St. Giles, but in Camden, both high recommendations as far as she was concerned.
She made her way quickly along the street toward the front door of the tall, narrow house. She had almost reached the place when she drew up short and stumbled to a dead stop. A man lounged against the lamppost several houses away.
A tall man, garbed in a long, dark cloak.