Tom stood with his back to me lifting a spherical flask up to the window. The sunlight licked indigo flames through his hair and limned the long muscles of his back through the translucent linen of his shirt. Round and round he swirled the cloudy liquid in the flask, held it still to note how it settled, then swirled it again. He set the vessel into a frame and reached beside him to a gas-jet burner spouting a yellow flame. Bending to steady an elbow on the counter he set to work in deft, delicate movements, soldering a copper wire round the lip of another, slimmer vial.
As I hung there watching him at his tasks, my fear edged into sheer fascination. I was looking at Tom, and he was utterly oblivious to my gaze upon him. Shirt buttons open, sleeves rolled past his elbows for work, his body was caressed by light. Filled with light. He tilted his head a little, and I watched how the light poured through his ear, making it a glowing whorl of red and gold. For the second time that day a voyeuristic thrill raised the fine hairs on my arms.
At last I blinked and tore my gaze away. I forced myself to take advantage of Tom’s absorption to examine the rest of the room—my brother-in-law’s laboratory, I surmised. Apothecary jars lining the glass shelves refracted light against the tiled counter, a watery mosaic of blues, ambers, greens. There were dozens of racked pipettes with tan rubber bulbs, and an assortment of ceramic dishes stained with resin. On the wall nearest me hung several papers filled with mathematical calculations and chemical formulae. One page displayed a complicated diagram: a flame, a glass bulb like the one Tom had set down, a snaking tube, and a hollow reed sharpened to a point.
Tom straightened from his work.
I said, “What is it you do for him, precisely?”
He spun round, open-mouthed.
“Do you manufacture the drug that is killing your own beloved Daisy?” Mimic was again using Mrs. Fayerweather’s voice, but Tom was too surprised to notice.
“Did—did he bring you here?” he whispered. “Thornfax?”
“Of course not.” I couldn’t prevent a note of pride from creeping in. “I followed him and Dr. Dewhurst.”
Tom looked aghast. “Milady, you cannot be here. If he finds you—”
“What will he do, Mr. Rampling? Will he let my brother-in-law prescribe me a course of his deadly medicine? Or will he let you send me forth into a deadly explosion?” I had not realized until this moment just how very angry I was with Tom Rampling. My fury overtook any lingering shyness I felt at intruding on him, and I closed the distance between us so fast that he stumbled back against the counter.
I snatched up the copper-ringed vial. “And what is this?”
He shook his head and reached to retrieve it. “It will be a syringe, milady. The doctor—”
I flung the tube onto the counter with all my strength. It shattered with a satisfactory pop, scattering fragments in all directions.
There was real fear in Tom’s eyes now. “Listen to me. Mr. Thornfax is not the mild gentleman you believe him. He mustn’t find you discovering him in this way!”
“Perhaps it is you I mean to discover,” I retorted. Reaching past him I lifted a black notebook from the counter, tipped the shards from its cover, and riffled through its pages. Daniel’s spidery script laid out long columns of patients’ names, dates, dosages. Harriett Cooper (Hattie), I read, on a page dated from the night of her death. Potency adjustment. Over-dosage .
“Hold me here, Tom,” said Mimic, using Hattie’s voice, “so’s I dun’t go to him.”
“Oh no, milady. Please don’t,” Tom whispered.
In my anger I’d cornered him against the counter, and even as he leaned away, Tom’s body was only inches from mine. We’d been in this position once before—after Hattie’s collapse in the parlour, when Tom had tried to bar my exit from the room. Then I had felt surprise and embarrassment, the self-consciousness of my own position as a lady and his as a servant. This time my anger overrode everything else. This time my every pore awakened to Tom’s closeness, and my rage cartwheeled into a kind of wild, surging excitement. One of my hands leapt from the book to circle the white column of his throat. I felt his larynx jump under my thumb and I pressed into it, hard.
“Did you inject her?” The words seared my tongue.
“No,” he rasped. “I swear it!” His shock at my assault had him gaping and wide-eyed. His fingers covered mine, trying to loosen my grip.
Mimic switched into Daisy’s stupefied drawl: “Tom Rampling. My sweet’art. He said he’d take me away in a heartbeat!”
Tom pried my fingers from his neck, and the book fell to the floor between us as he twisted both my wrists behind me, turning me and pinning me to the counter. “Stop,” he said.
I struggled, panting half in pain and half in exultation. “He’ll keep me safe. Tom is the best man I ever known, mum.”
Tom’s body pressed tight to mine as he tried to hold me still. I felt his low, agonized groan reverberate through his chest against my jaw. “Stop, stop, stop,” he begged.
“The doctor’s doses make ye fly and fly, forever!” I took a shuddering breath, and then another, deeper one. After a few moments I let myself relax into Tom’s embrace.
He released me at once, dropping my wrists and stepping back to make a foot of space between us. While it did little to dispel the tension and upset that charged the air, at least it permitted my heart to slow its crazed thumping inside my ribs.
Tom bent to pick up the doctor’s book and set it on the counter. Slowly, cautiously, he reached for my hand where it hung, trembling, at my side. Two of his fingertips slid beneath the rim of my glove. “You have me wrong, milady. I am not your enemy, nor the enemy of those poor, wretched girls whose voices you mimic. I have tried—I have been trying, with all my power—to save their lives. To prevent more deaths.”
His gaze had been fixed on my arm. Now he lifted his eyes to meet mine. Clear and grey, fringed all round with curling lashes. The heat from his touch on my bruised wrist went straight up through my chest and down my spine.
I shook him off. “How have you t-tried? I m-must know it all, Tom!” Desperation hoarsened my voice. I wanted so badly to believe him that I could scarcely breathe.
“I swear I will explain it all. Only please, let me take you home now,” he said.
The heavy tread of footsteps sent us lurching apart.
“That’s Thornfax returned!” Tom gasped. Covering my mouth and grasping me by the back of my neck he wheeled me so fiercely round the end of the counter that I was too flustered to mention my plan of greeting Mr. Thornfax openly until it was too late, and we were crouched tight together behind the open door of a tall cabinet.
“Cozy quarters for a lord,” came a nasal male voice from next door.
Mr. Thornfax’s smooth chuckle came in answer. “I am nothing if not a patient man, Mr. Watts. And if you will be patient but a moment longer, I’ll have you directly on your way.”
I pulled Tom’s hand from my mouth and whispered, “I won’t c-call out.”
“It’s Mimic I fear will holler,” he replied. He smelled of cedar and woodsmoke and clean cotton. And something else—I recognized the warm, male scent of Tom Rampling’s own skin from the times we’d shared a carriage, from sitting close to him that day in his grandmother’s room. I straightened my shoulders, grasping for some of the dignity I’d tossed aside moments earlier, but the movement only brought my side more snugly against his. I heard the sharp intake of Tom’s breath and felt perversely gratified that our closeness affected him, too.
“There,” said Mr. Thornfax. The desk chair scraped the floor. “Two o’clock Thursday, to the station master’s own hand. I won’t learn you’ve passed it off to a clerk. You’ll do the job for which I’m paying you.”
“Why forewarn ’em like this every time? I mean, if you’ll tolerate my askin’—”
“I won’t tolerate it, in fact,” Mr. Thornfax cut in. “Mind you don’t leave a fingerprint on the envelope, either. They say each man’s is unique unto him, like a signature.” I heard the tidy snap of his pocket watch, then: “Rampling?” Footsteps came striding our way. “That little bastard had better not have scarpered off without locking the door.”
“I’m here, Lord Rosbury.” Tom sprang out from our hiding place just as the men rounded the doorway. I could see, through the seam of the cabinet door, that Mr. Thornfax’s man Watts was sunburnt, with a crushed nose and a twisted, sneering mouth. With a shock I recognized him from the alley, from the day I’d been tailing poor young Will. Mr. Watts had been the man at the table inside Mrs. Clampitt’s hovel. The man who, when I was attacked, had merely stood there in the doorway smiling at my “fuss.” If he was Mr. Thornfax’s employee, it would explain how my suitor had known about my being attacked.
“What happened here?” Mr. Thornfax said, frowning at the disarray on the counter.
“Nothing, milord,” Tom hastened to assure him. “A dropped syringe.”
Mr. Thornfax picked up the round flask and lifted it, as Tom had done, to the window. “Amazing, isn’t it? Add one chemical, boil another chemical away, and morphine quintuples its potency and value.”
“That simple, is it?” said Watts.
Mr. Thornfax laughed. “Well, no. If it were that simple, I’d do it myself.” He replaced the flask and turned to Tom. “Tell us about this dreadful whore of yours. Daisy, is it? Does she have enough sense left in her head to follow our instructions?”
“Daisy is ill, milord.”
“Morphomania. They all suffer that, of course. How else should they keep coming back to us?”
“’Tis worse than the normal craving for morphine, milord. Undosed she is feverish and faint. Dosed she sleeps or talks nonsense.” Tom’s voice shook a little. “I think she may mistake the direction, or collapse in transit.”
Mr. Thornfax leaned forward and cuffed him hard across the mouth. Swiftly he smoothed back the curls that had fallen into Tom’s eyes at the blow. He pinched Tom’s chin to pull him closer, and when Tom tried to pull away Mr. Thornfax clapped his other hand to the base of his skull and gripped harder, holding him caught there, so that Tom’s jaw and cheek whitened under the bruising fingertips. At the same time Mr. Thornfax thrust his lips next to Tom’s ear and said, “There now,” and “Shh-shh,” in mock-soothing tones that spurred Watts into nasty laughter.
I wanted to avert my eyes but found I could not—I couldn’t even breathe. The change in Mr. Thornfax’s bearing and demeanour rendered him nearly unrecognizable. It was as if a mask had suddenly been torn away. The relaxed, good-natured gaze to which I was accustomed was flashing with hateful resentment, and his voice was a hiss. His easy gait and open, confident stance had become coiled and predatory as a striking snake.
He eased his grip on Tom now, and stood back to regard him scornfully, fists on hips. “Well, what do you suggest, Master Rampling, as Daisy’s champion? Shall you go along with her and lay your coat over the street for her to tread upon?”
Tom’s hand came up to his face and dropped again. He squared his stance, breathed deep. “I’ll go in her stead, milord. Gladly I will.”
Another sharp, open-handed blow, and more laughter. I cringed and pressed my palm to my own mouth as blood sprang to Tom’s lips.
Still Tom stood quiet, holding himself tightly in check, looking at the floor. I watched his fist clench at his side and then deliberately relax.
Mr. Thornfax’s voice was cold: “You would go in her stead. And risk damage to that pretty face of yours, my boy? I should say you’ve a better future in Daisy’s profession than she has.” He touched a finger to Tom’s injured mouth and smeared the blood like rouge across Tom’s lips. Then he showed off his handiwork to Watts, who sniggered in approval of Tom’s prettiness.
“Only mind you don’t start sampling Dr. Dewhurst’s medicine,” Mr. Thornfax advised Tom. “It seems to do dreadful things to one’s appearance.” He wiped his bloodied finger on Tom’s shirt, took out his riding gloves, and smoothed them over his hands. Then the two men withdrew and, as their steps retreated, I heard Mr. Thornfax say, “The desperate and perishing classes, Watts. Now there’s a romance to weep over!”
Tom wiped the blood from his face. His ears were scarlet with insult and humiliation, and I inched back from my peephole, hoping he wouldn’t know I’d watched him being beaten.
Or perhaps I hoped he wouldn’t see what I was feeling. The practiced nonchalance with which Mr. Thornfax had hurt Tom shook me in a way that no impassioned display of temper might have done. The new Lord Rosbury was indeed perfect. A perfect monster.
And underneath my shock at witnessing Mr. Thornfax’s true face there was another feeling, something much more secret and shameful to me. I had first sensed it two days ago in the surgery with Daisy, like a needle burrowing under my skin, and now I had to admit that it had fanned my anger at Tom, too.
The shameful thing had stabbed at me again as Mr. Thornfax taunted Tom about Daisy, twisting deeper still when Tom offered to go in her place. Now it was lodged like a knife in my chest. I took a ragged breath, swallowing the tears that rose in my throat.
Tom Rampling loved Daisy, else he would not have offered to die for her. And I—here was the secret I could no longer conceal from myself—I loved Tom Rampling, else I would not mind how he felt about another girl.