by Eve Silver
“Hope matters,” her father used to say, the words lifted by his smile. “There is power in belief.” If she closed her eyes and concentrated very hard, she imagined she could hear her father’s voice. She missed him. She missed their talks. She missed the way he saw her not only as a daughter, but as a person, one with valid thoughts and opinions. She missed the smell of his tobacco and even the way he slurped his soup. She missed his laugh. She missed their life.
Again, came the sound of footsteps behind her, the pace matched to her own. She stopped. They stopped. She walked on and they followed, neither speeding up nor slowing down, and when she glanced back, there was only fog and darkness.
Almost there now. She quickened her pace and strode past the crumbling graveyard. It was a horrific irony that King’s College Hospital was situated squarely between that graveyard and the slaughterhouses of Butcher’s Row. She had her own well-guarded opinion that while some doctors and surgeons at King’s College were dedicated souls bent on easing suffering, others might be better suited to work in the abattoirs.
At least there, death was an outcome both expected and sought after.
As the hospital loomed before her, she paused and glanced back once more. There, near the graveyard, she saw a black-cloaked figure, painted in shades of pewter and coal and ash, clinging to the shadows. Watching. A shiver chased along her spine.
Many nights she had harbored unnerving suspicion that she was being followed, but proof of her supposition had, for the most part, been absent. This was only the second time that a form had actually materialized from the mist. Or had it? She stared hard at the spot, but could not be certain she saw anything more than a man-shaped shadow that could be cast by any one of the statues by the graves.
She had her cudgel in hand. She should walk to the graveyard and discover if it was statue or man that cast the shadow. And if it was man? Her fingers tightened on her weapon. She was torn between confronting the miscreant and avoiding such confrontation at all costs. After a moment, she decided on the latter and headed for the doors of King’s College.
She hurried into the building and made her way first to the nurse’s cloakroom, where she divested herself of her damp over-garment, then through the dim hallways to the women’s sick ward. There was a patient here she wished to check on, a woman who was so ill she had not been able to eat or drink or even void for two days. It was as though her body refused to carry out the normal functions of life. Sarah hoped she had taken a turn for the better, though it was more likely that the woman had taken a turn for the worse.
She paused in the hallway near the ward. The first rays of dawn filtered through grimy windows to steal across the floor in pale slashes. The sounds of suffering carried through the place, eerie moans and louder cries, a sob, the creak of a bed as someone shifted, then shifted again.
Sarah stepped through the doorway and took a second to acclimate to the smell. No matter how much limewash was slapped on the plaster, no matter how many scrubbings with yellow soap the floors took, the smell—the metallic bite of blood, the raw-onion stink of old sweat, the harsh ammonia of urine—never quite melted away. These small battles might beat back the wretched stench for a time but, in truth, the war was long lost. The sick ward was forever infused with the vestiges of human misery.
Her gaze slid over the beds. Each one was full. Some even had two patients crowded into a space meant to hold only one.
In the corner was the bed she sought. Little light penetrated that far into the gloom. She took a step forward, then froze with a gasp.
There was someone sitting on a stool at the far side of the bed, a man, garbed all in black, the pale shape of the patient’s partially upraised arm a stark contrast against the dark background offered by his coat.
He held the woman’s wrist. Sarah could see that now. And she could see the breadth of his shoulders and the pale gold of his hair. She knew him then.
Killian Thayne.
Her pulse jolted at the realization. No matter how many times she saw him, how many times they interacted, she could not seem to put aside the schoolgirl infatuation that had struck her the first time they met. She rolled her eyes at her own foolishness.
She must have made a sound that alerted him to her presence, for he raised his head.
“Miss Lowell.” His voice reached across the space that separated them, low, pleasant.
“Mr. Thayne,” she acknowledged.
University-trained physicians were addressed as doctor, apprentice trained surgeons as mister, and there was a distinct barrier between them, not only at King’s College, but at any hospital throughout the city. Mr. Thayne belonged to the latter group.
“You are here early,” he said, though he did not turn his head to look her way.
“As are you,” she replied, unsurprised that he chose to engage her in conversation. On several previous occasions, there had been moments in the ward where Mr. Thayne walked his rounds and Sarah came to be in his path. To her befuddlement, and secret pleasure, he had deigned to speak with her, to ask her opinion of the patient’s progress, to note her responses with interest and grave attention.
Once, he had even followed her suggestion, refusing to allow a patient with an open wound to be placed in a bed until the linens from the previous patient were removed and exchanged.
Matron had been aghast. “The linens already there will do,” she’d said. “The bed was made up fresh only a week ago, and the previous patient didn’t soil them.”
But Mr. Thayne was not to be swayed and thereafter he had insisted on clean linens each time a new patient entered the ward. The other surgeons scoffed, but Mr. Thayne remained resolute.
It was rare for a surgeon to consider the opinion of one of the nurses, even less so a day-nurse who was little more than a char. The fact that Mr. Thayne valued hers was a gift, one Sarah treasured. She had spent her life being treated as an intelligent being by her father. But at King’s College, she was only a girl who served meals, cleaned bedpans, and changed soiled sheets, a fact that made an ugly slurry of resentment and anger and sadness mix in her gut. She had so much more to offer.
“Not early for me,” Mr. Thayne said, his tone holding a hint of dry amusement. He turned his head to look at her over his shoulder. The thin light glinted off the spectacles Sarah had never seen him without, metal rimmed, the lenses a dark bottle green. She wondered how he could see through them in the dimness.
“Late for you, then. You’ve been here all night?” she asked. He often was. Mr. Thayne seemed to prefer night to day.
“I have.” He paused. “What brought you here a full half hour before the start of your shift?”
“My feet,” Sarah said.
Mr. Thayne offered a soft huff of laughter. “Your skirt is wet.”
Her cloak had not shielded her completely from the weather and while her torso was dry, her skirt from the knees down was wet, the hem dappled with mud. “The weather is inclement,” she said.
Even in the dim light, she could see that he frowned. “I have not left the hospital in two nights and a day.” He sounded as though that fact startled him, as though he had not, until this moment, marked the passage of time.
“It is not the first time,” Sarah said, then pressed her lips together, realizing her words made clear that she was aware of his comings and goings, and wishing she could call them back.
“No, it is not,” he said.
“It was kind of you,” she blurted. “To give Mrs. Carmichael the coats.” Mrs. Carmichael was one of the night nurses. Mr. Thayne had given her warm coats for her two growing sons.
“I am not kind,” Mr. Thayne replied. “I was merely disposing of items which no longer appealed to me.”
“Of course,” Sarah replied. “The fact that they had clearly never been worn and were both far too small to have ever…” She broke off, unwilling to state aloud that the coats were sized for adolescents and would never have fit Mr. Thayne’s broad-shouldered form, for that would b
e a clear admission that she noticed his broad-shouldered form. “Those coats will be put to good use.”
He stared at her a long moment before turning his attention back to the patient.
She meant to walk away then, but something held her in place and she stood frozen, staring at the patient’s white forearm where it contrasted with the cloth of Mr. Thayne’s black-clad form.
A moan sounded from behind her, drawing her attention. “Water,” came a woman’s plea. “I am so thirsty. Please, water.”
The night watch nurse was curled in the far corner of the room by the fire, sleeping. Sarah could not help but feel pity for her, a widow with three small children who, after working the day as a charwoman came to sit the night through for a shilling and her supper, leaving her little ones with a neighbor, and paying her in turn.
She had not the heart to deny the woman a few stolen moments of rest, so she turned away to tend to the patient herself.
When she was done, she looked back to where she had seen Mr. Thayne.
He was gone, the patient asleep, her head lolled to one side, her arm hanging across the far edge of the bed.
Another patient called out. Sarah hesitated, wariness prickling through her. Stepping forward, she almost went to the patient Mr. Thayne had been tending. Then she wondered what she was thinking. What could she do for her that he had not? The woman was sleeping now. Best to leave her undisturbed.
Again, a voice behind her called out, becoming more insistent. Sarah helped the woman sit up and take a drink of water. When she was done, she noted the time and then made her way to the surgical ward.
Only hours later did she learn that the patient Killian Thayne had tended had died in the silvered moments when night turned to day, discovered by the night nurse when she roused from her slumber.
Only then did Sarah hear the whispers that the woman’s wrist had been torn open, with nary a drop of blood spilled to mark the sheets.
Mr. Simon, the head surgeon, determined that the patient had injured herself on a sharp edge of the bedstead, and in truth, they found a smear of blood there that offered some proof of the supposition. But there were no bloodstains on the sheets or the floor. And the woman herself looked like a dry husk, like something had drained her of both blood and life.
Death was no stranger to King’s College. But this manner of death would be strange anywhere, all the more so because it had happened before. Two months ago, a man had died in the surgical ward with his wrist torn open and no blood to be found. Three weeks after that, it had been a woman, dead in her bed, a dried-out husk.
And now, a third person, dead in a manner both strange and frightening.
Throughout that day and well into the night, Sarah could not dispel the memory of Killian Thayne, swathed in darkness, his head bowed, and the woman’s arm white against the black of his coat.
* * *
Continue Reading Dark Embrace.
Also by Eve Silver
Dark Gothic Series
(Books in this series can be read in any order)
Dark Desires
His Dark Kiss
Dark Prince
His Wicked Sins
Seduced by a Stranger
Dark Embrace
* * *
The Sins Series
Sins of the Heart (Book 1)
Sin’s Daughter (Book 2, Novella)
Sins of the Soul (Book 3)
Sins of the Flesh (Book 4)
Body of Sin (Book 5)
* * *
Northern Waste Series
(Eve Silver writing as Eve Kenin)
Driven (Book 1)
Frozen (Book 1.5)
Hidden (Book 2)
* * *
Compact of Sorcerers Series
Demon’s Kiss (Book 1)
Demon’s Hunger (Book 2)
Trinity Blue (short story)
* * *
The Game Series (Young Adult)
Rush (Book 1)
Push (Book 2)
Crash (Book 3)
* * *
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About the Author
(photo credit: Shanon Fujioka)
National bestselling author Eve Silver has been praised for her “edgy, steamy, action-packed” books, darkly sexy heroes and take-charge heroines. In 2015 she won the OLA Forest of Reading White Pine Award, her work was shortlisted for the Monica Hughes Award for Science Fiction and Fantasy (2014), and was both an American Bookseller’s Association Best Book for Children and a Canadian Children’s Book Centre Best Books for Kids and Teens (2013). She has garnered starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and Quill and Quire, two RT Book Reviews Reviewers’ Choice Awards, Library Journal’s Best Genre Fiction Award, and she was nominated for the Romance Writers of America® RITA® Award. Eve lives with her husband, two sons, an energetic Airedale terrier and an exuberant border collie/shepherd. And a snake called Ragnar.
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www.evesilver.net