Most of Edinburgh physicians’ houses had good libraries. When her mind was busy acquiring information, it quieted. She would find the library here and regain her equilibrium.
Ahead, the glow of candlelight peeked through a door that stood partially ajar. She pushed it open and discovered her goal, well stocked and with comfortable furniture.
“Excellent,” she said.
A feminine cry of distress came from across the room. A man’s thick grunts followed.
Libby had heard such noises before. Living wherever her father’s patients required, in the homes of wealthy families with randy sons and unwilling servants, hiding in stairwells and cabinets, she had seen.
She rushed forward around the sofa.
There was abruptly a lot of movement: the woman dragging a sumptuous gown up over her breasts, the man leaping up from between the woman’s thighs and clutching the open fall of his breeches to cover his genitals, and both of them gaping at her as though they had caught her half naked and not the reverse.
“Oh, it’s only her,” the woman whispered. Her jewels tinkled as she giggled.
So. Apparently neither unwilling nor a servant.
Libby pinned her gaze to the floor as they made sounds of putting themselves in order. Then, with laughter and more giggles, they were gone.
She felt cold all over, and a little nauseated.
Moving to a bookcase, she plucked out a volume. But the words entrapped her, and she looped back again and again to memorize them. She could not remember them well enough, yet she must.
Shoving the book onto the shelf, she put her back to it and tried—tried to draw slow, even breaths. She needed her surgical instruments in her hands now, or her model bones, to touch and feel and know their familiar shapes again. They would calm her enough to be able to read. They always did.
Casting her gaze about for such an object, she caught the gleam of a painting illumined by the hearth’s light.
Done upon some ancient mythological theme, it featured a woman draped in filmy white cloth that amply revealed the curves of her hips and breasts and even her aroused nipples. Beneath a pomegranate tree she danced, her arms and legs and neck gracefully lissome. Before her knelt a man clad in a suggestion of a cloth about his loins. With both hands he was offering her fruit.
Moving toward it, Libby stared at the god’s glorious body. Endowed in the musculature, like a laboring man, but one who had plenty of nourishment to support thick muscles, he was likewise lush, and anatomically perfect. Even his position kneeling before the woman was balanced; Libby could practically feel his knees digging into the earth, his heels against his buttocks, the shifting muscles in his limbs. The woman was the same: ideal without exaggeration. They were both entirely human and gloriously divine.
Libby sighed. To be able to study the human body freely—as this artist obviously had—and to understand it so well was her dream.
The artist had made his signature in the lower corner, barely visible against the dark grass: I. Kent.
Now she understood how he had recognized her despite the disguise, and how two and a half years ago, after speaking with her for only minutes, he had drawn her face with perfect accuracy. To render the human form and features so honestly as he had done in this painting, a man must perceive them as few did.
Abruptly the sounds of conversation in the drawing room came into the library and the young gentleman from earlier entered.
“Miss Shaw,” he said, closing the door. “My sister feared that you took offense at her teasing and bid me come after you to beg your pardon.”
“Pardon granted,” she said, crossing the room. “Good night.”
“I cannot be happy unless I am certain you know she meant you no insult.”
“Of course she meant insult. But I am nearly impervious to slights, so it hardly—”
He moved swiftly, blocking her exit.
“Miss Shaw, allow me to seize this rare opportunity of privacy to tell you how ardently I admire you.”
“Admire me? You don’t even know me.”
“I have been watching you from afar, afraid to make myself known to you.”
“That is certainly a lie, for I haven’t any great beauty to admire from afar. Please, sir, I wish to leave this room now.”
“You must believe me, Miss Shaw. I haven’t approached you before because I was—well—intimidated.” He offered a crooked smile. “You must know that you make a man feel weak and foolish.”
“That is ridiculous. A woman cannot make a man anything he is not already.” She reached around him for the door handle. “Now you must—”
He grabbed her shoulders and his mouth descended upon hers. Then his arms were around her and his tongue pushing at her lips.
Libby tore her mouth away and shoved against him. “Release me now or I will scream.”
“That you haven’t already shows me you want this.”
That she had not already was because she loved Constance and her father and did not wish to shame them. She had come into this room alone. For years she had known better.
She hauled her knee into his groin.
He staggered back, gasping and clutching his crotch.
Hurrying back to the party, she found Constance and her husband, Saint.
On the carriage ride home, she barely attended to Constance and Saint’s conversation.
“Libby,” Constance said after a time. “Did you hate it so much?”
Yes. “No.” She wanted to ask Constance why a man would thrust his tongue into a woman’s mouth. And if it was uncomfortable doing sexual congress on a sofa. And what exactly happened when two people who were engaged in sexual congress were interrupted in the middle of it.
“You seem distressed,” Constance said, and kindly.
The need to ask the questions was climbing up Libby’s throat and tightening her chest. “I cannot speak of it now,” she forced herself to say.
“I saw you escape to the library. What did you discover there?” Constance knew distraction helped. She was a wonderful sister.
“A painting. It was beautiful.” Extraordinary.
“That reminds me of excellent news I heard this evening, Libby. It seems that just as your father is traveling to London, Mr. Charles Bell is journeying here to Edinburgh for a brief visit to deliver a trio of lectures at the Academy. Isn’t this marvelous? You will finally have your dream of hearing him lecture.”
Libby’s dream was not to hear Mr. Charles Bell lecture, but to apprentice with him.
“How did Libby’s mention of a painting in the library remind you of Charles Bell?” Saint said.
“Mr. Bell is an artist.”
“I thought he was a surgeon.”
“He is both,” Libby said. “His artistic studies have allowed him to understand the body better than any other surgeon or physician in—” Her heartbeats were abruptly quick. “In Scotland.”
An idea was forming, a brilliant idea that could enable her to formally study surgical medicine.
Only one man could make it possible: a reclusive portraitist whose mysteriousness would be the ticket to her dream.
Chapter 4
A Proposal
The knocker sounded precisely as the sun withdrew its blade from the scabbard of the horizon and set the girls beneath his brush aglow. For this reason he had positioned the canvas as close to the window as possible, to capture the light required to bring these insipid maidens to life.
The clack came again at the front door.
It was early for his housekeeper to arrive, and unusual for her to forget her key. But Ziyaeddin had been sitting too long. He needed to move. Snuffing the lamp, he went forward through the house still sunk in darkness as the knocker clacked thrice more.
He opened the door not on Mrs. Coutts but on a young woman.
“I need your help,” she said. She wore a straw hat atop her riot of golden curls, which were cinched with a ribbon, a plain cloak of unbecoming brown wool over a likew
ise dull gown. Yet her cheeks were bright with morning’s chill and her breaths puffed into quick little silvery clouds.
No insipid maiden, this one.
“We are clothed according to our sex this morning, it appears,” he said.
“It appears we are,” she said, giving him that up-and-down sweep of appraisal that she had in the alley. “Do invite me in.”
Briefly, Ziyaeddin considered his options.
Those lips. Unconcealed this time by false whiskers.
He opened the door wide.
“Why did you answer the door?” she said. “That is, I am glad you did. It is much more convenient than waiting in a parlor for you to see me, which is what I assumed would happen. Actually, I thought I would probably be turned away, but I brought a calling card in that event. Do you not have servants?”
“They have not yet arrived. I don’t suppose you noticed it is barely dawn.”
“Of course I have. I couldn’t wait.” She seemed to balance on her toes. “Shall we go to the parlor now?”
He gestured toward the parlor door.
“Oh, I like this!” She circled the chamber, then halted at its precise center. “It is perfect.”
Perfect for what, he could not imagine. She did not seem the sort of young woman to be happy sitting at a tea table for long.
“Don’t you?” she said.
“Don’t I?”
“Don’t you have round-the-clock servants?”
“I don’t. Miss Shaw, I am under the impression you are not aware that this is an unusual call.”
“I know it is. But I don’t care about social conventions and I assumed you don’t either. You are obviously a recluse. Amarantha says you rarely go anywhere even though you are invited everywhere and that you even declined an invitation from the Academy of Edinburgh to lecture on painting. And you said that you would not tell anyone I had gone to the dissection dressed as a man, so you are unconventional too.”
“An impressive list of evidence, to be sure. Nevertheless, as a gentleman it behooves me to note that you should not in fact be in a bachelor’s home, even at dawn.”
“Then you are unmarried?”
That a frisson of warning slid through him now, accompanied by a rather focused awakening, made him pause a moment before he replied.
“I am.”
“Excellent,” she said. “That will make this much easier. A wife might need to know all of your business and that could ruin everything.”
Ziyaeddin had allowed her into the house from curiosity and because the Duke of Loch Irvine, the man to whom he owed his life, and the duke’s wife held great affection for her. He was reconsidering the wisdom of that decision.
“You have succeeded,” he said. “I am thoroughly perplexed. What could my nonexistent wife ruin by knowing?”
“The subterfuge in which I am hoping you will engage with me. Soon. Beginning today, if possible. Time is of the essence. Charles Bell will arrive in Edinburgh momentarily and I haven’t any time to waste if I am to convince him.”
“Convince him of what?”
“To help me become a surgeon.”
He stood entirely still, saying nothing, and the urge to say more pressed at Libby. Instead, she counted silently. Waiting for any response was extraordinarily difficult for her. But her father had taught her that men often had difficulty following her speech; her mind moved too quickly for them.
Nothing about Mr. Kent moved at all. He was remarkably still.
“A surgeon,” he finally said.
“Yes.”
“It has been my impression—correct me if I am mistaken—that in this country women do not practice medicine,” he said as though they were conversing about any subject. A good sign. Perhaps this man’s mind moved more rapidly than most men’s.
“That is not precisely true. There are women all over Britain with medical knowledge who are wonderfully capable of caring for patients. It is in fact perhaps the strongest point in our case, as regards mere power, both physical and intellectual, that women have been able to do so much while debarred from the advantages of early education open to most men. Women are midwives and nurses. We are not permitted to be physicians and surgeons.”
“You wish to be the first.”
“I don’t care if I am the first. I only wish to be a surgeon. Not one of those hack barbers that removes teeth and such.” The sort that lopped off men’s limbs in battlefield hospitals, that had no doubt done so to this man’s lower leg. Mr. Kent was young, but old enough to have fought as a youth in war. “I don’t wish to hang a red and white striped pole before my shop. I wish to be a true scientist, the sort of surgeon that understands the complexity of the human body and, through that understanding, heals people.”
“Your ambition is admirable, Miss Shaw.”
“Rather, it is rational. I am more intelligent than most men, and my father gave me an excellent education in mathematics, chemistry, and mechanical philosophy, not to mention Latin and some Greek and of course the modern languages. I am already remarkably learned in medicine from studying independently and from assisting my father for years.”
“I see. I don’t, however, see what your rational ambition has to do with me.”
“To become a surgeon, I must first apprentice under the direction of an established master surgeon.”
“Aha. Thus your interest in Mr. Bell.”
Her heart skipped. “You know of Charles Bell?”
“I have made his acquaintance.”
“You have? How? He has lived in London for decades.”
“I came to know him at the Royal Academy there.”
“Where the greatest artists in Britain gather?” This was too good to be true. “How extraordinary! But you are exceptionally talented, after all.”
He lifted a single brow. “Am I, then?”
“Of course you are. I said that about the portrait of the duke and Amarantha to tease you as you were teasing me. This is marvelous! Even better than I imagined. Last night I saw one of your paintings hanging in a physician’s house. The figures were beautiful. You must have spoken with Mr. Bell at the Academy about painting the human form.”
“If you have come seeking painting lessons, Miss Shaw, you have come to the wrong man. But you needn’t despair. There are plenty of artists in Edinburgh happy to teach painting to fashionable young ladies.”
“I am not at all fashionable and I don’t need those men. I need you.”
His gaze sharpened for a moment. Then he gestured with his hand that she should continue. He had beautiful hands, long-fingered and graceful. He walked with such awkwardness: the pole that served him as a right foot and ankle made his stride uneven. That he could break his stillness now with such a satiny gesture startled her.
She could not lose courage. Her future depended on this.
“I would like to commission you to paint a few pictures,” she said. “Of people. The figures must be at least as unclothed as those in the painting I saw last night. And it would be best if they were of sick or injured people, the sort that Charles Bell paints.”
“You have come here to commission work on behalf of your father?”
“No. My father is in London now, for an entire year in fact. I want these paintings for myself.”
He regarded her thoughtfully while the pressure rose in Libby to continue speaking. His eyes were full of perception, rich dark brown with long, ebony lashes. There was a quality to the set of his mouth that suggested natural arrogance yet an unwillingness to actually be arrogant. She could not imagine those full lips sneering, not even in mock pleasure as the rapacious young man had done at the party the night before.
“My work is not inexpensive,” he said.
“That is inconsequential.” If she must, she would borrow the money.
“Unfortunately, my schedule is full at present.”
“Yes. I have heard your works are sought after. You are outrageously fashionable. Everybody wants a portrait by the Tu
rk. You must know they call you that? Not by your name. Only the Turk. It is disrespectful. Although it’s true that you are unique in Edinburgh. That is, there are plenty of foreign sailors in Leith, of course, and many other foreigners, in this city too. Why, there is a taxidermist from Jamaica right down the street from here. But I don’t believe foreign portrait artists crowd Britain’s salons, at least no more foreign than Americans or Irishmen.”
“At least.” He was smiling a bit now, barely, but it made him even handsomer. A suggestion of morning whiskers ran along his jaw and about his mouth, carving his lean cheeks into further shadow. She had rarely seen a gentleman unshaven. It rendered his good looks rather fierce.
“Certainly no other Turkish portrait artists,” she added. “Are you actually Turkish? Some people who have traveled abroad with the East India Company or the military believe you may be Persian rather than Turkish. They wonder aloud why you wear no beard or robes or turban. You can tell me.”
“Yet I will not.”
“As you wish. Still, I think it’s shabby that gossips do not refer to you by name, although of course the newspapers mostly do.”
“I appreciate your concern. My schedule is still full.”
“They could be small paintings.”
He smiled again, but only a slight lift of one side of his lips.
“Very small paintings,” she said.
“Aha, I see. Then perhaps I could do one or two very small pieces. Between other projects.” A teasing gleam lit his eyes.
She ignored it.
“The sooner the better,” she said. “And the pictures must include a particular detail.”
“What detail is that, Miss Shaw?”
“I require my name at the bottom. As the artist.”
The amusement drained from his features.
“I do not mean you any insult,” she said hastily. “I assure you.”
“And yet,” he said shortly.
“Truly. Anybody would be proud to hang one of your paintings on her wall. I don’t know why that physician had his hidden away in his library, except perhaps some callers wouldn’t like the scantily clad god and goddess. Most people are uncomfortable with nudity. As a student of medicine, of course, I am not. It is only that Mr. Bell must believe I painted the paintings.”
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