As Adam’s back collided with the child, he spun around and caught his skate on the wooden hockey stick. He stumbled forward, his legs skidding out from under him, as Immanuel reached out to catch his arm. The scientist’s feet slid back, but when the other man’s full weight hit him, his blades lost traction and slipped under Adam’s. They landed in a heap on the ice; their hats escaped the twisted limbs and floated down gracefully beside them. Adam froze on top of his friend, fearing he had snapped one of the man’s ribs, but when he looked down, Immanuel was staring up at him with wide eyes. His ink-stained irises dilated and his breath quickened but not in panic as it had in the museum. The accountant exhaled as a chill rippled through his body, teasing each strand of hair on end and stretching his pupils to darken the surrounding blue. The condensation of their breath smoldered as a tingling more mystifying than the one that stopped Immanuel’s heart ran between them. Several pairs of skates were clattering toward them, so Adam climbed onto his elbows and knees before pulling himself up and then his companion. Immanuel clamped the derby back to his head but couldn’t hide his burning cheeks. They skated to the nearest bench and began unfastening the leather straps of their skates.
“Are you all right? I didn’t mean to land on you,” Adam whispered. “I hope I did not hurt you. James warned me not to tax your system, and instead, I squashed you.”
Immanuel looked into his new friend’s worried eyes as they researched his body for any sign of injury and couldn’t help but laugh. Out of all the things to happen, he had never expected that. The silent chuckles rocked his body as he gave up on the buckle wrapped around his ankle. He laughed so hard tears came to his eyes and burned his cheeks, but it only made the redhead’s brows peak higher and his eyes grow even wider with concern. When the German covered his mouth and let out a string of lively, carefree giggles that culminated in a snort, Adam couldn’t help but join in.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. You must really think me mad now.” He dabbed at his eyes. “It is just that I was dreading this day out more than anything, but it has turned out to be the most fun I have had in years.”
“Really?”
Immanuel nodded. “I have not had much fun since I came to England, and I honestly never thought I would find a friend. With all of this,” he replied as he motioned toward his eye and chest, “I never expected anything good to happen anymore.”
“I know you have a hard time seeing out of that eye, but do you think it will get better with time?”
“Dr. Hawthorne says it should heal a little, but it will never be what it once was. I wish the scar would go away. It makes me look… seedy.”
Adam’s lips and mustache curled into a grin. “I think it makes you look mysterious.” When the eye under the scar lit up, he added, “If you are still feeling up to it, we could walk to Covent Garden and get dinner. There is no way you can come to London and not have real fish and chips.”
“I would like that very much.”
Chapter Fourteen:
An Old Friend
For the first time since his fever broke, Immanuel awoke not thinking about brick walls or autopsy notes. The view of Wimpole Street from his window was no longer daunting and tainted with unknown danger. Instead, the world outside was filled with color and life, and he couldn’t help but grin as he dressed and made his way downstairs even if his body ached from the fall. At breakfast, he ate with Emmeline and the Hawthornes, cleaned his plate, and made conversation rather than sitting there like a mute as he had done for nearly a week. When James and Eliza asked about his day with Adam Fenice, his face lit up. They gave each other the eye and smiled at his altered demeanor, knowing their plan had succeeded in drawing the real Immanuel Winter to the surface. A shrill bell resounded in one of the backrooms of the house and brought their conversation to an abrupt end.
“Ah, Mr. Porter must be here.” James Hawthorne left his plate for his laboratory but stuck his head back into the dining room while cleaning his glasses. “Mr. Winter, if you are up to it, I would greatly appreciate your assistance downstairs.”
As Immanuel nodded, Emmeline cried, “Why did he get to go out with his friends? Why does he not have to stay inside all day and do lessons?”
“He is studying at a university, and you could do the same if you applied yourself. Then, you wouldn’t need lessons. Today I am going to teach you about a woman’s legal rights,” Mrs. Hawthorne explained between the clinks of soiled dishes, “so one day you will be able to decide what to do with your inheritance.”
“Isn’t that what a husband is for?”
Immanuel excused himself and hurried down the hall to escape the fray that he knew was about to erupt in the dining room. Descending the creaking steps of the cellar, he rounded the corner only to find a pale, fleshy body deposited on the marble table in the center of the room. James Hawthorne was donning his apron and gloves when he made it to the dead man’s feet. For a moment, he wondered how the man arrived without being wheeled through the house until he noticed that behind the table and the apothecary shelf was a narrow hallway just wide enough to admit a gurney. The man’s stomach arched toward the ceiling and eclipsed the doctor on the other side. Across his mottled, mauve skin were wiry brown hairs that covered him like a threadbare sweater. Immanuel tried to suppress his disgust at the hairy, morbidly obese man but ended up grimacing as a puff of noxious gas escaped the man’s orifices.
“His family members suspect foul play,” James began as he waved away the smell. “I suspect the only foul that killed him was the goose his foie gras came from.” The doctor migrated over to the antiseptic steamer drawers that held his tools and artfully arranged the blades, saws, and forceps onto a tray. “Have you ever performed an autopsy before, Mr. Winter?”
“I have sat in on one and conducted one with a group of students but never on my own.”
“This time I will have you watch. You can take notes for me. It will be easier for you to read your own handwriting than mine when you transcribe them.”
Immanuel nodded as he picked up the portable writing desk and watched the doctor carve into the corpse’s chest with a scalpel. Within moments, the flesh and fat were peeled back and the organs exposed. The young scientist averted his gaze as Dr. Hawthorne gnawed through the man’s dense ribs with a bone saw. After a final snap, the front of his chest was removed, and the dignitary finally lay bare and ready to be explored. James called out descriptions of the whole thoracic and abdominal cavities before diving into the autopsy with his scalpel. With a few flicks of his wrist, the brown, slimy fish of a liver was unceremoniously plopped on the scale. The doctor continued to call out measurements and observations for his assistant to jot down as he moved through the cadaver.
“Ah, here is the culprit!” he cried as he reached the hollowed bottom of the man’s ribcage. “Mr. Winter, come take a look and tell me what you see.”
Putting the ledger aside, Immanuel stepped toward the table, but as he approached, the toe of his shoe caught on a hose. His hand landed squarely on the corpse’s arm when he caught his balance, and suddenly the acetone-laden laboratory was gone. At his fingertips was not a corpse but a plate of treacle tart topped with a dollop of clotted cream. Immanuel looked up from the dessert of shortbread and cinnamon and locked eyes across the table with a beak-nosed woman. She smiled sedately at him like a bird-of-paradise as a thin, grey lock broke from her tight coiffure. The fire crackled nearby in the dining room as the scent of tea and coffee mingled with the butter from the tart’s crust. His stomach suddenly tightened but quickly rushed away, and he was finally able to pull his hand from the man’s chilled arm. Immanuel shook away the image of the wifely woman only a few feet from him and gazed into the patient’s cavernous corpse. At the bottom was a pool of congealed blood beside an artery that had blown open to reveal the interior of its muscular tube.
“An aneurism?”
“Precisely. Mark down that the cause of death is an aneurism of the aorta.” James watched his proté
gé dutifully record every word. “You came highly recommended, Mr. Winter.”
He furrowed his dark blonde brows as he tried to read the doctor’s face but could glean nothing.
“I wrote to my father-in-law while you were recovering. At my cousin’s engagement dinner, he mentioned that his best student went missing a few months earlier. He was a German. I cannot imagine there are many Germans at Oxford.”
“Professor Martin is your— your father-in-law?” he stammered as his mind drifted back to the last day in the museum. Wimpole Street.
“Yes, he is Eliza’s father. He was relieved to hear you were alive and on the mend. He also wanted me to tell you he hopes you will return to finish your studies because you were the best student he has had in a long time.”
Immanuel’s ashen cheeks bloomed with pride as he put his head down and continued to write, hoping the doctor wouldn’t see the smile that refused to leave his lips. Even if his favorite teacher wanted him to come back, could he do it? Could he go back to where it all happened and walk among the ancient buildings that stood silently as he was drugged and carried away?
***
Tapping his pen against James’s desk, Immanuel stared out the window lost in thought. He wanted to write to Professor Martin, but he didn’t know what to say about returning to Oxford. He also wanted to visit Adam Fenice or at least write and thank him for taking him out for the day but wondered if it was too soon. A sooty steamer bounded down the street, flying around pedestrians and other cabs on two wheels. Only when it stopped at the edge of the road in front of the house did Immanuel take notice. From behind the desk, he couldn’t make out the man’s face beneath his top hat as he strode toward the door. In the house below, the doorbell buzzed and one of the Hawthornes bustled to open it. Immanuel lingered in the study, counting the time it would take for his trip downstairs to not look conspicuous. He adjusted his vest and smoothed back a wayward curl, hoping it was Adam.
The foyer was empty by the time he made his way down the stairs, and the house was silent. Had the visitor merely been a patient who came to the wrong door? The floorboards in the parlor whined under the slow tread of boots. Immanuel peeked around the doorway and spotted their guest standing in the harsh light of the hearth. The imposing gentleman had removed his jet top hat to reveal blonde hair much like his own, but it was uncurled and cropped short. His shoulder blades rolled beneath the fabric of his coat as he stretched and passed a gloved hand over his hair.
“Lord Rose, to what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?” James chided as he stood in the doorway between the parlor and the dining room with his arms barred across his chest.
He turned, revealing his ochre eyes and stony features. “I thought we needed to have a little talk about our project.”
The breath hitched in Immanuel’s throat and a tremor rippled through his body. His heart pounded against his ribs as he backed away from the threshold, groping for the banister behind him but never taking his eyes off the man before the flames. That voice had haunted his dreams for months, taunting and degrading him until he was nothing more than a shell that refused to die. His head twitched involuntarily as the clattering blow landed against his cheek with an explosion of pain and wood. The man who had beaten and starved him was in the house.
Immanuel’s breaths came in short spurts as he darted up two flights of stairs and ran into his bedroom. Grabbing the nightstand from beside his bed, he shoved it under the knob and backed away until his hand brushed the cool surface of the wall. He slid down and covered his head with his arms, weeping as the invisible blows replayed in his mind and jolted his body each time a foot or knuckle dug into his ribs. How could James let that monster into the house? How could the person who saved him let his captor in and know him by name?
A panicked thought flitted through his mind. The man could barge in at any moment and find him sitting in the middle of the floor. Immanuel crawled toward his bed, stifling his cries for fear the man two floors below would hear him. He started to slip under the frame when he stopped and scurried toward the dresser. Under the security of the oak frame and thick mattress, Immanuel tried to scrawl out a letter to Adam.
Between hiccupped sobs, he poured out his soul in incoherent blurs of memory. He wanted to tell him about being cornered in the library and waking up in the catacombs, the burning on his back that came with the reek of tobacco, and the moment he felt his heart stop when he gave Emmeline the potion, but the smatterings of sensation seeped from his body and evaporated into the aether before he could commit an entire image to paper. What words could adequately describe what he experienced? He lay with his head against the cool boards and closed his eyes until his exhalations returned to a nearly normal cadence. Wiping his eyes with the back of his hand, he pushed the indecipherable jumble of words away and wrote a simple letter to his only friend.
Dear Adam,
I must speak to you as soon as possible. I need someone to talk to, and the only one I can think of whom I can trust is you. Please come to Wimpole Street or send me your address if you prefer it. I need to tell someone.
Your friend,
Immanuel Winter
He would put it with the other post when it was safe to come out and the man was long gone. For now, he put his head down and curled up with his back resting securely against the plaster. As long as he was in his room, he was safe.
***
“What about our project?”
The nobleman smiled as he drew closer to the lanky doctor, but James merely stared back without flinching. “Why is it taking so long? You have not made any progress in months, and Her Majesty is growing restless.”
“She has been without the man for thirty years. A few more months will not make a difference.”
“You disrespectful little—”
“I had patients to attend to, and the living come before the dead, no matter how powerful they are. Since when were you reduced to the queen’s goon? She can easily send her own messengers to harass me.”
Lord Rose sneered as his eyes trailed back to the fire. His fingers stretched and contracted against the urge to strike the insolent man. “I have my own interests to promote, doctor. We will both profit from the completion of your part of the project, but I have been ready since I was given my charge.”
James arched a brow. “Your predecessor completed the task, not you. Inheriting it is not the same as actually doing it, Alastair.”
He was about to snatch his collar when a familiar dark head peered into the dining room before bounding in with wide eyes. “Lord Rose!”
For fleeting moment, Alastair’s heart quickened with fear. How did she get here? He widened his eyes and dropped to her level as he grasped her arms. “Miss Jardine, is that really you?” He let his mouth slacken and searched her face, not to confirm it was really her but for recognition of her captor. “We— we thought you perished in the fire like your mother.”
The young woman smiled up at him, taking in his handsome face as he stared at her with those brown eyes she still dreamed about. “I was kidnapped, but I escaped and came to Uncle James’s house. Are the other Spiritualists all right? Was anyone else hurt?”
“No, you and your mother were the only fatalities.” Lord Rose allowed his voice to falter as Eliza Hawthorne crept into the edge of his vision. “Everyone will be so pleased to hear you are safe. You should come to the Spiritualist society soon. Your mother would want you to continue your education.”
Emmeline turned to her aunt and pleaded, “May I, Aunt Eliza? I will complete my lessons if you let me go, I promise.”
Drawing in a deep breath, Eliza nodded. “As long you do what I tell you, I will allow you to go and act as your chaperone.”
“Tomorrow then. I will send Thomas with the address later,” Lord Rose smiled as he put the girl’s hand to his sanguine lips and turned to leave with a flourish of his hat and cloak.
Chapter Fifteen:
The Crown
Dr. Eliza Hawthorn
e watched curiously as her niece stared out the steamer window at Gower Street. For the first time since she appeared on their doorstep, Emmeline seemed genuinely happy and nearly bouncing with excitement, yet it was as if Emmeline and Immanuel had switched dispositions overnight. At breakfast, she thought maybe he had a relapse of his illness when he didn’t appear after she called him twice to the table. She was about to go up and check on him when he appeared in the doorway dark-circled and ashen. As Emmeline and James read the paper, Immanuel kept his head down and his fork in his hand even if he didn’t eat anything.
“Immanuel, I am going to be giving a lecture at the University College about post-mortem examinations. Would you care to join me?”
He cleared his throat, but when he lifted his head, he was as white as the china. “I would love to, but I do not feel very well. I think I may have over-exerted myself the other day.”
Satisfied with his excuse, the doctor gathered his bag and left before the others finished their breakfast. As Eliza stood to collect the dishes, Immanuel neatly stacked them and carried them into the kitchen. By the time she came in with the rest, he was elbow-deep in the sink.
The Ingenious Mechanical Devices Box Set Page 37