Her movements made awkward by the stretcher she carried, she inched closer to the small group.
“Tis Thayne’s doing,” Mr. Simon insisted, the words resonating with tension. “We all know it. He attended each of the four deaths, and we had words over the care of each of the four victims. Does no one else wonder at the strange coincidence?”
“What do you suggest, sir?” asked Mr. Franks. “That he bled the man dry? For what purpose? To what end?” His voice lowered still more. “Do you accuse him of murder?”
Sarah stifled a gasp, the sound faint in comparison to Mrs. Bayley’s huffing exclamation of dismay.
“I make no accusation.” Mr. Simon offered a sneering, ugly smile. “I state only facts. Thayne disagreed with the treatment of each patient. He insisted that there was no hope for recovery, and that death was the definitive outcome.” He paused dramatically, and looked about at the neighboring beds as though attempting to be circumspect. A carefully structured ploy, for had that been his genuine intent, he would have taken this discourse to a more private venue. “I postulate that Thayne was the last to see this man alive, and that it is well past time for us to summon the authorities.”
She could not say what possessed her in that moment, but Sarah stepped forward as though in a trance, and spoke in Mr. Thayne’s defense.
“Sir,” she said, “I was here when Mr. Scully died. Mr. Thayne arrived only later.” Not precisely the truth, but not exactly a lie, either. Mr. Thayne had arrived later…at least, she thought he had, for she could not say whose shadow she had seen. And as to her assertion that she had been here when Mr. Scully expired, well, she had likely been on the premises somewhere, though not at his bedside. Gently bending the truth was a far cry from breaking it. “And perhaps his wound might be explained by the bugs.”
They all stared at her.
“He was…That is…” She wet her lips.
“What place have you in this discussion, miss?” Mr. Simon demanded with enough force and fury that Sarah almost silenced herself.
Drawing her courage about her like a cloak, she forced herself to continue in a calm and even manner. “Mr. Scully was complaining yesterday that his skin itched. He said it was bedbugs, and perhaps the added distress of the fever made him scratch. Could the injuries to his wrist be excoriation?”
She felt the urgency of her defense, as though she was driven to offer an alibi for Mr. Thayne. Something inside her would not let them mark him as a murderer.
Because he was not.
She felt that certainty to her marrow.
“You suggest that all of the four patients tore at their own skin, driven mad by the itch?” Mr. Franks scoffed.
“Matron said we ought to hire a man to see to the bugs, the way they have at Guy’s Hospital.” Sarah cut a glance at the other woman, who nodded her agreement.
“But to tear the skin clean through? And the blood vessels, as well?” Mr. Franks folded his hands across his ample belly and peered down his nose at her.
Sarah bit her lip. The possibility was ludicrous, but she had set herself on this path and now saw no clear way to proceed. Her thoughts skittered this way and that as she tried to summon an appropriate reply.
“Let us examine his body for signs of excoriation,” came Mr. Thayne’s low voice from close behind her. Gasping in shock, she spun so quickly that she nearly unbalanced herself.
He had arrived just in time to save her from her attempt to save him.
Calm and steady, his gaze met hers for an instant, his green-tinted spectacles nowhere to be seen. She almost wished that he were wearing them, for they offered some protection from his piercing, too-knowing gaze.
“Yes, let us examine for such signs,” snarled Mr. Simon, and with little care for propriety or respect, he reached down and yanked aside the neck of the nightshirt that covered Mr. Scully’s pale torso. Deep runnels were gouged in his chest from where he had, indeed, scratched himself raw.
His face a mask of shock, Mr. Simon jerked back and let go his hold on the cloth. “It means nothing.”
Mr. Franks shook his head from side to side. “It means a great deal.”
And Sarah was immensely glad of Mr. Franks’s contrary nature. If Mr. Simon claimed the sky was blue, then Mr. Franks would argue that it was green, simply because he could not help himself. A boon, under the circumstances, for it offered her an unexpected ally.
With everyone’s attention locked on this new evidence, Mr. Thayne leaned in and spoke for her ears alone.
“My champion, Miss Lowell?” He sounded amused.
She shook her head. “Only the voice of reason,” she whispered in return. “They were ready to name you a ravening beast.”
When no reply was immediately forthcoming, she glanced back at him over her shoulder, and found him far too close for either propriety or comfort. Too tall. Too broad. Too male.
Golden stubble dusted his jaw and a lock of his sun-bright hair had come free of its queue to fall across the sculpted line of his cheek.
“A ravening beast,” he mused, and his lips curved in a dark smile. “Perhaps the descriptor is fitting.”
His eyes glittered, gray and brooding as a storm-chased sky, myriad emotions reflected in their silvered depths. Dark emotions.
She turned forward once more to stare straight ahead at Mr. Simon and Mr. Franks, who bickered back and forth like two boys in short-pants.
Buffeted by both confusion and dismay, she heard not a word of their discourse. In that moment, with the heat and the leashed threat of Killian Thayne so close at her back, she had the strange thought that he was not like other men, that there was something inside him, something dangerous and barely restrained.
That perhaps the label of beast was most apt.
Three
With Mr. Scully wrapped in his sheets and removed from his bed, Sarah went off to fetch fresh linens. Another poor soul would arrive soon to take that bed, to lie moaning in pain, or stoically white-lipped.
That was the part she found difficult. She had little enough to offer the patients save for a cool hand on their brow or a cup of gin. The physicians doled out laudanum with a miserly fist, for the cost was dear and the stores low. So the patients suffered, and that suffering wore at her. She longed for a way to alleviate it.
She paused only long enough to carefully wash her hands in the basin at the side of the ward. She knew that others watched her with suspicious interest, wondering at her obsession with cleanliness. Mostly, the nurses washed not at all, and the surgeons only after a messy surgery to clean away the blood and gore. But Sarah’s father had thought it important to wash both before and after patient care, so she did as she had been taught, and wished that others might learn by her example.
A mouse scurried in the shadows as she made her way along the wide corridor, the noise and clamor of the wards fading behind her. Slowing her pace, she turned down a narrower hallway and, finally, stepped into a small, dark alcove that housed the storage closet. The door was an ill-fitting slab of wood that stuck fast until she pulled hard, and then it scraped along the floor with a grating rasp.
She stared into the interior of the closet, and thought that she ought to have brought a candle, for though the day was bright, the closet was set in a dim corner. There were no windows in the alcove or in the short, narrow hallway that led to it. The only light filtered from the windows of the wider corridor, and it was far enough away that paltry illumination strayed this far.
The pale linens were easy enough to see, set on the middle shelf, a low stack of oft-mended, yellowed cloths that had been scrubbed and boiled time and again, and still bore the stains of many uses.
Sarah stepped into the storage closet, then held herself very still, an eerie sensation tickling the fine hairs at her nape. Heart racing, she spun and peered into the gloom, but saw nothing more than dust and shadows.
Feeling foolish, she turned back to her task, stacking sheets and choosing several tallow candles to add to her pile. She paused, then
added a stack of torn strips of cloth to act as bandages, for she had noticed that the stores in the ward were quite depleted.
Something alerted her. The faint scent of citrus. A whisper of sound. She could not say, but eerie conviction coalesced inside her, and she sucked in a startled breath, certain now that she was not alone.
Certain that Killian Thayne was directly behind her.
Her heart thudded hard in her breast and the walls of the small closet seemed to move closer still. There was a flicker of fear in her heart, true, but there was something else as well, something bigger and stronger, a stirring excitement that raced through her veins, dangerous and alluring at once.
Resting her hands on the shelf, she swallowed, struggling to gather her wayward emotions. He was here, behind her. If she turned, he would be only a hand span away, and she would…What? Dare to touch him? To lay her hand on his arm and know the strength of him?
‘Twas one thing to dream it in her secret heart, in the dark of night while she lay in her cold, narrow bed. Quite another to be faced with the reality.
Strange how this moment so closely resembled a thousand others. The difference was, those moments had taken place in her dreams, or in the waking daze as she broke from slumber’s embrace, alone in her bed, her thoughts focused on imagined shared moments when Killian Thayne came to her as a lover would.
The touch of his hand on her cheek. The scent of his skin. The feel of his lips, warm, soft, as they brushed hers. Those were the secret, naive imaginings of a girl who had never been courted, never been kissed.
But standing here, in the dark little closet, with Mr. Thayne at her back, blocking her way, was a far different thing, entirely.
Slowly, she turned, her heart pounding in anticipation, a wild, untrammeled rhythm, her mouth dry, her cheeks hot.
Did he know? Could he tell that she had dreamed of him and watched him and fantasized about him for as long as she had been employed here at King’s College? Foolish, girlish dreams, because he was beautiful and mysterious and far more intriguing than any other man she had ever met.
She saw now that he was not so close as she had first anticipated, and she did not know if she was disappointed or relieved. He was standing in the alcove beyond the door, the insubstantial light that leaked from the main corridor creating a faint nimbus about him, leaving his features obscured by shadow.
“Miss Lowell,” he greeted her, so polite, his tone low and smooth.
“Mr. Thayne.” The words came out a cracked whisper, and she dropped her gaze to the tips of his polished boots. Always polished. His trousers always neat and pressed. His clothes impeccable and obviously expensive.
An enigma.
While physicians to the upper class might earn quite a respectable income, a surgeon was less likely to do so, and was definitely a rung below on the social ladder. All the more so a surgeon who practiced in a poor hospital such as King’s College.
Rolling her lips inward, she swiped her tongue across the surface, and waited, wondering what he was doing here. He had followed her. She could have no doubt of that, but the reason for such action escaped her.
“You defended me,” he murmured. “I would like to know why.”
He asked only why she defended him, not why she lied for him. The differentiation did not escape her.
Was there some import, some key relevance to his choice of words?
She wondered if it had been his shadow she had seen earlier, or just a trick of the light. She could not say with certainty, could not state unequivocally that in defending him, she had not lied for him.
From the open doorway of the little closet he watched her, the shadows and his ever-present darkened spectacles masking his eyes and any secrets his expression might reveal.
“I defended no one. I merely pointed out possible explanations for what had occurred, and since no one came forth with any other, it appears my suggestion was given full merit”—she paused—“though I suspect this is not the end of the inquiry, nor the end of supposition and accusation.”
His lips curved in a ghost of a smile, and she found herself staring at his mouth, the hard line of it, the slightly squared, full lower lip, so incredibly appealing. She could not seem to look away.
He had not shaved. She noticed that now, and realized that more often than not, his jaw was shaded by a day’s stubble. His grooming was otherwise impeccable, but he eschewed the razor. She wondered if there was a particular reason for that, or merely that he found it a bother.
There was no question that she liked it. Liked the look of his lean, squared jaw with the faintest hint of a cleft at the front of his chin. Of its own volition, her hand half rose, and she stopped the movement with a tiny gasp, wondering what she thought she had meant to do. Touch him? Lay her fingers against his jaw and feel the golden hairs beneath her fingers? She wondered if they would be soft or scratchy, and she could not suppress a small shiver.
“No, I suspect it is not the end of the inquiry,” he agreed, and she wondered at his calm amiability. He seemed not at all distressed by the observation.
Suddenly reckless, she dared ask, “Were you there this morning? Before I arrived? Was it you that I saw?”
His fine humor dropped away, and his expression turned cool and blank. “What did you see?” A harsh demand.
“I—” She backed up a step, put off by the sharp change in his tone, but the shelves were at her back and there was nowhere else for her to go.
He prowled a step closer. Her heart slammed hard against her ribs and she stared at him, afraid and appalled and tantalized all at once.
“Whom did you see, Miss Lowell?” He moderated his tone now, made it gentle and smooth. But he did not step back. He held his place, close enough that she had to tip her head far back to look into his eyes.
“Do you crowd me on purpose, sir?”
His teeth flashed white in a brief smile, and despite her words and tone, he made no move to step away. “And if I do?”
“Then I would ask you to stop.”
“I like being close to you,” he murmured, his words warming her blood and leaving her dizzy. “Your hair smells like flowers.”
He left her at a loss, breathless and warm and so aware of his assertion that it hummed in her blood. Her hair did smell like flowers. She bathed every other day using scented soap. The soap was her one excess, her baths her sole luxury, one she worked hard for, heating water and dragging it up the stairs to the hip bath she set up in her chamber. Her landlady and the other lodgers in Coptic Street thought her mad.
Dipping his head until his cheek brushed against her hair, he inhaled deeply. She stood very still, her pulse racing, her breath locked in her throat and all manner of strange and bright emotions cascading through her like a brook.
Only when he eased back did she dare to breathe, and even then it was only a short, huffing gasp.
“Tell me what you saw,” he coaxed.
“I am not certain.” She was grateful for the change in topic and the tiny bit of space he allowed her. Her heart raced too fast; her nerves tingled with excitement. He made her lose her common sense, and she did not like that. “Perhaps I saw a shadow cast through the windows. Perhaps nothing.” She paused and lifted her gaze, but found only her own reflection in the dark glass of his spectacles. “Perhaps I saw you.”
“If you think that, then why did you defend me?”
Humor laced his tone, and she was not certain if she was relieved or dismayed. He confounded her, made her wary, and yet he fascinated her.
“I never said I thought it. You asked what I saw, and as I truly do not know, I offered a variety of options.”
She told only the truth. She could not say why she had leapt to his defense. She only knew that she could not find it in herself to believe that he had ripped open the wrists of four patients at King’s College and drained their bodies of blood.
Even standing here in the gloomy little closet with the height and breadth of him—the thre
at of him—blocking her path, the possibility that he had done murder seemed absurd. She had seen him work far too hard to save patients’ lives to believe that he would choose to kill them.
He reached up and slid his bottle-green spectacles down his nose, then dragged them off entirely, leaving his gaze open to her scrutiny. His eyes glittered in the darkness, and the shadows only served to accent the handsome lines and planes of his features. The slash of high cheekbones, the straight line of his nose.
For a long moment, he studied her, saying nothing, the only sound the escalated cadence of her own breathing. He was so focused, so intent.
Again, she wondered if he was a mesmerist, for she found she could not look away. Had no wish to look away.
Her limbs felt heavy, languid, and her blood was thick and hot in her veins.
Raising his hand, he laid his fingers along the side of her throat, and her pulse pounded harder, wilder.
“Sarah.” Just her name, spoken in his low, deep voice. The sound thrummed through her body, leaving her limbs trembling and her thoughts befuddled. “Such a wise and brave creature you are.”
Wise. Brave.
He could not know her thoughts or he would not say such things to her.
Her pulse was racing like a runaway cart, but the emotion that suffused her was not fear. Her skin tingled, her nerves danced, and she was aware of Killian Thayne’s every breath, of the sweep of his dark gold lashes as he blinked and the thick, bright strand of hair that had worked free of its tie to fall against his lean cheek.
A sound escaped her, a breath, a sigh. He leaned closer, until their breath mingled and the faint hint of citrus on his skin became more discernible. She wanted to rest her nose against the strong column of his throat and simply breathe him in, but she held her place, paralyzed by incertitude and inexperience.
He would kiss her now. She wanted him to kiss her now.
Her lips parted.
Voices carried to them from the main corridor, laughter and the murmur of conversation. The moment dropped and shattered, fractured into a thousand bits. Sarah felt the loss like a physical blow.
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