“But are there women of great learning there too?”
“Some,” he said. “There, as here, they are rarely given their due.”
On the other side of the house, the doorbell rang, immediately followed by pounding on the door. A voice came muffled from out on the street.
“Joe Smart!” It was Pincushion.
Here?
The bell rang again, then more pounding.
“Joe! Answer the door!”
Libby met her host’s curious regard.
“You are expecting a guest?” he said. “A guest who, it seems, has been imbibing on Sunday morning? Fine men you consort with.”
“He is twenty, hardly a man.” She slid off the stool. “Since his illness and loss of weight, the spirits go to his head more quickly. You and I both know what havoc that can wreak, of course.” She crossed the room. “I must quiet him or he will rouse the neighbors.”
“Elizabeth,” he said behind her, and her heart thudded against her ribs. He had never before said her given name.
She looked around at him.
“You cannot answer the door.” His gaze slid down her skirts, slowly. He had been studying her for three quarters of an hour already. But this perusal was different. It was intimate.
“I will speak with him through the closed door.” Her throat was a collection of pebbles. “You should tell me your real name.”
He set down the paintbrush and went past her and out of the studio. Going after him, she ducked into the parlor. He opened the front door just as the bell sounded again.
“How do you do, sir? I’m Peter Pincher, a student with Joe.” His usually nasal voice sounded oddly deep and formal. “Is he at home?”
“Not at present.”
“Blast. That is, pardon me, sir! I’ve news from Bridges, and there’s a ticking clock here.”
“Perhaps you would care to write a message?”
“Yes, sir.”
Libby ran to the drapery and tucked herself behind it.
“Mighty decent of you, sir. Thank you, sir,” Pincushion said as he entered the room.
“There is pen and paper.”
Libby heard the tip of the cane cross the floor toward where she hid. He must truly be tired to make such noise. Then, in an instant, she realized he intended the noise to warn her: there was no lamp lit in the room. She dove deeper behind the curtain a moment before he drew it aside to admit daylight.
“Any friend of Joseph’s . . .” he said very close to her.
Pincushion wrote the note, said copious thanks, and finally Libby heard the front door close. She went into the foyer and found the missive.
“Thank you for that,” she said to her host. “Oh! I should not have liked to miss this, indeed. Mr. Bridges invited a handful of students to attend a surgical dissection course in his private theater. Six of us only. He said it would begin as soon as anatomical subjects could be acquired, and now it shall, tonight.”
“At nighttime?”
“I don’t know why it should take place at night, but perhaps because Mr. Bridges is too busy during the days. By day there would be better light for our work. Six students only. It is thrilling! Each of us will have our hands in every part of the subject.”
“Does it not concern you that this is taking place at a location other than Surgeons’ Hall?”
“There are many private practical anatomy and surgical schools in Edinburgh. Most of the hosts are hacks, of course, selling dissections for students to supplement their income from pulling teeth and dispensing drugs. But Mr. Bridges is not one of those.”
“You mustn’t go.”
“Of course I must. Mr. Bridges considers me one of the best among the new students. I cannot refuse this invitation. Now, shall I hurry and enter”—she gestured to the studio door—“ahead of you and steal a glimpse of your work in progress?”
He passed her by. “I will accompany you tonight.”
“I have lived half my life in this city,” she said, appreciating the beautiful breadth of his shoulders and the fall of his coat over his buttocks, and wishing she had had the presence of mind to study that when he had been shirtless. “I am not afraid to be out and about at nighttime, especially dressed as a man.”
“Nevertheless, I will accompany you.”
“I appreciate your concern, but—” Her words choked up. In the bright morning light, she saw herself on the easel.
This. He had been working on this late into the night, after their conversation at the party.
She.
As Joseph Smart.
He had painted her as a man.
Hair swept back with oil, revealing her entire brow, the youth in the picture sported whiskers soft as feathers, a neck cloth tied neatly and tightly about his collar, a coat that flared at the hips where he perched on a stool, trousers tugging at his thighs, and shoes too big for his ankles. Beneath one arm he clutched a stack of books almost negligently, wearing them as easily as a woman wore a bracelet. A single crease dove from his brow down his nose like a trepanning perforator, and his eyes were brilliant. There was about him an air of both intensity and insouciance, as though even in his confidence he was unsatisfied.
“It is the under painting only,” he said beside her. “Color will come when this has dried.”
She opened her mouth, but words would not come.
“I will not be swayed,” he said. “I will drive with you to the address and wait there with the carriage until you are finished.”
“But I don’t know for how many hours—”
“There is no use in arguing, Miss Shaw. While I would prefer that you not attend, I cannot make that so by locking you in your room, can I?”
She turned away from the portrait to him. “I would climb out the window and down the wall.”
“I have no doubt.”
“In pursuit of my desires, I have hidden beneath carriage seats, inside cabinets, and once in a museum after it was locked up for the night. I am tenacious.”
“I have noticed that. Now, come. Seat yourself. For another quarter of an hour—”
“I am yours.”
“No. You are your own. And I would have it no other way. Now, sit.”
She went to the stool and said nothing else for the remainder of the hour.
Chapter 14
The Maiden
Archie was waiting for her in the covered alleyway.
“Got the fee?”
The five guineas snug in her pocket, Libby nodded and they entered the building.
Dozens of candles lit an octagonal room. Two tiers of benches rose from the floor, empty now. In the center, atop a table and covered with a crisp cloth, the subject waited.
To Mr. Bridges’s left stood George, his complexion sickly already, and Pincushion. At the surgeon’s right was Maxwell Chedham and two other students, all donning smocks over their coats. On another table surgical instruments gleamed invitingly: knives, lancets, saws, cauteries, trephines, perforators, elevators, probes, lenticulars, scrapers, forceps, catheters, cupping vessels, clamps, hooks, needles, and the like.
“Mr. Chedham,” Mr. Bridges said. “Uncover the subject.”
Chedham drew back the linen. The subject was of middling age, his joints and skin revealing decades of labor and poverty. Libby had seen worse with her father. Yet she gaped.
“This man died only hours ago,” she exclaimed. Even the cadavers of criminals who perished in prison came to students’ dissecting tables older than this. Fresh cadavers were the sole privilege of master surgeons.
“That is for you gentlemen to determine,” Mr. Bridges said. “Before sunrise you will entirely dissect the subject system by system, while preserving the organs for further study. Mr. Smart, your incisions are exceptional. You will begin tonight.”
Chedham’s stare was hard. George was pale and panting. Archie was grinning. Sweat dripped down the gully of Libby’s tightly bound breasts.
Putting it all out of her mind she reached for a knife.
“Did you—” She licked her lips. They were dry, her skin flushed despite the chill of dawn. “Did you wait here all night?”
“Yes.” He rapped on the ceiling and the carriage jolted forward.
“That was . . . It was amazing. We dissected the subject from husk to marrow, the six of us, without any assistance. Mr. Bridges did nothing except instruct.”
Reaching into his coat, he drew forth a flask and wrapped her hand around it. She drank deeply. Watching her exhausted eyes imbued with soft ecstasy, and the pink tongue licking wine from the glistening lips, he felt as though he were watching her pleasure herself. He could watch forever the simple act of this woman drinking.
Then she swiped her sleeve across her mouth and a great hiccough ushered forth.
“Thank you! That tasted spectacularly good. The surgical chamber was sweltering.”
He folded his arms and tried to settle back against the squabs. “You smell wretched.”
“No one asked you to smell me. But in fact I feel wretched. Wretched and magnificent. I understand so much more now.” Her words slurred a bit. “To be able to study it all, at once, in such depth and detail, and so soon after death—it was revelatory. The subject perished only hours ago! That was the reason for Mr. Bridges’s haste in alerting us today. He wished us to have the experience of working with a body that had not yet cooled entirely, which is nearest to working on a living patient. It was extraordinary.”
The carriage halted. The street was empty and he descended and offered his hand, but she jumped down onto the pavement without aid.
He paid the drooping coachman and ascended the steps behind her. She was moving more slowly than he had imagined possible. But after two sleepless nights now he would barely be able to keep his eyes open if not for the pain.
“Mrs. Coutts will arrive short—” He turned from locking the door to find her slumped on the footman’s chair. Eyes closed and lips lazy, she slept.
“Wake up, Joseph,” he said, removing her cap from her damp curls and smoothing his hand around the side of her face. Her hair sliding through his fingers was silk and it filled him with the most insane sort of need. “Mr. Smart.” Passing the pad of his thumb over her fuzzy cheek and the clean line of her jaw, he caressed her into waking. By Allah’s grace, she was so soft. “Elizabeth.”
Her eyes cracked open. “Did I fall asleep?”
“You did.” He stroked the pale skin of her temple.
“I am extraordinarily tired,” she said. “And you are touching me.”
“Come now,” he said, taking hold of her arm and assisting her to stand.
“I don’t know that I can make it up two flights,” she muttered, dragging her feet toward the stairway.
“I would carry you up, but we know that is not an option, alas.”
“And you haven’t slept either, I suspect. But you needn’t have worried. It was all aboveboard,” she said, climbing like oxen dragging a plow through mud. “Also, you should not carry me anywhere, even if you could, for we are not that sort of housemates, are we? I am Joseph Smart,” she mumbled, “exceptional incisor and future surgeon.” She disappeared into her bedchamber.
He went into the kitchen, put the largest pot on the stove, lit the fire, and began pumping water, never more seriously considering hiring round-the-clock servants than now, yet never more certain that he could not—not while Joseph Smart lived in his house.
When his housekeeper arrived he sent her up with the first buckets of hot water. Then he pumped two more pots full, put them to heat, and retired to his quarters. Not, however, to sleep.
He did not know Lewiston Bridges. If she would be spending entire nights in the surgeon’s operating theater, he must assure himself of the man’s character.
She did not want a champion, but he would serve her in that manner if necessary. Dipping quill into ink, he began writing letters.
Libby could hardly see around the beleaguered blood vessels in her eyes. Her neck and shoulders ached from bending over the dissecting table for hours. Her feet were swollen from standing through the night. And her coat smelled like a butcher’s shop.
But she was happy.
Yet neither pleasure nor excitement could keep her eyes open. An hour of exhausted dozing while Mrs. Coutts was dumping pots of water over one’s head did not equal a restful night’s sleep. It occurred to her that Mr. Bridges had scheduled his nighttime dissection intentionally, to prove his students’ abilities to withstand lack of sleep. She had been with her father in enough midnight sickrooms to know late nights were common for medical men.
At the infirmary, trailing Mr. Bridges beside Chedham—who looked horrible too—she wrote copious notes, said as little as possible, and marveled at her mentor’s vigor. He had practiced surgery on battlefields in Spain and Belgium. Now in the big operating theater at the top of the Royal Infirmary he operated on patients and made them well again. Each time she sat on the riser watching him perform surgery, or stood beside him at the table, she felt even more certain that this was her destiny.
While she admired Charles Bell’s scientific and surgical brilliance, she had no desire to lecture or write books in addition to caring for patients. She wanted only to practice as Mr. Bridges did. Mr. Bell had matched her to the ideal mentor, after knowing her only a few days.
Perhaps he had advised Mr. Bell: her housemate who seemed to understand her so well yet remained so adamantly distant—except when he had caressed her face, as though he had not even noticed he was doing so.
She wanted more of his hand on her face, more of his voice softly speaking her name.
By the time she emerged from the infirmary, she was ready to drop. Walking down the alley in which she usually sat on the wall and ate lunch, she saw Coira with two other women on the brothel’s stoop.
“Good day,” she said, giving Coira the pail. “I’m off to sleep till lecture, so you must eat the entire lunch today.”
“Lad, you’ve a heart as big as the sky.” Coira drew one of the others forward. “Joe, this be Bethany.”
“I am pleased to meet you, Bethany.”
“Sir,” Bethany mumbled and looked at the ground, submissive like a pup.
Libby was becoming accustomed to this. As a man she was very young and small. Yet since she had been Joseph Smart, women who would have looked Elizabeth Shaw straight in the eye now deferred to her.
“This be Dallis,” Coira said with a dismissive gesture.
Lounging against the railing, Dallis was slender like Coira, with eyes shaded by long lashes and the lushest lips Libby had ever seen. With a cat’s smile on those lips, she winked.
“Bethany here’s in the motherly way.” Coira set her palm over her friend’s flat abdomen. “For the sake o’ the wee one she’s gone off the bottle.”
“An excellent decision, Bethany. I commend you.”
“Now she’s feelin’ poorly,” Coira said.
“How so, Bethany?”
“I’ve the shakes, sir,” Bethany said like a mouse. “An’ my belly’s all twisted up.”
“The headache too,” Coira added.
“Your stomach upset could be a combination of the pregnancy itself with the sudden cessation of drink,” Libby said. “The shaking and headache are probably signs of your body craving spirits.”
“Aye, sir,” Bethany mumbled. She looked guilty.
Suspicion tingled in Libby.
“Haven’t you an older woman, a mother, or a procurer perhaps, who can give you counsel about this?”
“Aye, Joe,” Coira said, her brow low.
“Oh. Then what you wish from me is not counsel but laudanum to calm the tremors and soothe the head. Am I correct?”
Bethany nodded.
“I am sorry, but I cannot provide you with laudanum.”
“O’ course you canna.” Dallis’s fel
ine eyes narrowed.
At her father’s side, Libby had seen people who had grown too accustomed to laudanum, and it was far from pretty. For this reason her father dispensed it rarely.
“For your stomach, Bethany, chew fresh ginger. I also recommend a tea made of Hypericum perforatum. Drink plenty of fresh water. Licorice root tea would be soothing too. I can supply you with those. You must also take sufficient sleep, especially when your meridian clock expects it.”
“Her what?”
“The body’s natural internal timetable. In ancient times—Oh, never mind. Just be certain to sleep through the night, Bethany.”
Bethany dropped her gaze. Coira lifted her brows. Dallis chuckled with derision.
Heat rose into Libby’s cheeks.
Forget that you are a maiden and instead be only a surgeon.
“Sleep at night as you are able,” she amended. “I will bring the herbs tomorrow.”
She did not now have time to rest but went straight to lecture. She gave only half an ear to Dr. Jones’s discourse on malformations of the spine, which she could already recite from memory, and instead drafted a letter to the Duchess of Loch Irvine. Amarantha had once served at a hospital for paupers, and her teacher had been a woman. She would have ideas for natural remedies that were safe for Bethany and the baby, and which Libby would trust more than anything the apothecary in Leith could recommend.
She penned a note to Alice too. Given Alice’s past, she must know of effective remedies for the discomforts of pregnancy that would be shared among sisters of the trade. Perhaps she even knew some local midwives with whom Libby could consult.
Her father had never asked her counsel on uniquely feminine matters, despite his many female patients. Nor to her knowledge had he ever consulted with a female midwife. Not once.
She folded the letters to Amarantha and Alice and tuned her ears again to Dr. Jones’s lecture.
When she arrived in his studio on Sunday as the clock in the parlor chimed ten, he saw her for the first time since dawn the previous Monday. In the intervening days he had told himself it was for the best, but he suspected he had gone a little mad. The temptation of seeking her out had been such that he had taken on another commission, which would require him to spend every day for weeks at the client’s home. The result was two portraits to be completed in insufficient time.
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