by Julia Bennet
“We were going to run away together.”
“I see,” he said again, and this time the words sounded like a curse. “I can imagine him. All fine features and moneyed charm. Sterling said he was a pretty fellow.”
Pretty? Yes, she supposed Vaughn had been that. Unbidden, her thoughts returned to last night in Will’s room. I’m not handsome, he’d said, and he was right. Handsome was too insipid a word. He was powerful, he was strong, he was sensual…he was everything. How could he feel jealous of Vaughn, of anyone for that matter?
She opened her mouth to tell him her thoughts, but she knew he would never believe them. “Why do I feel as though I should apologize?”
He had been gazing at the fire, but now his head jerked up. “No, please don’t feel that way. Not on my account. My reaction has nothing to do with you. Vaughn’s actions were unconscionable. As were mine last night.”
Perversely, she didn’t want him to absolve her in either case. “Last night was entirely my doing. You didn’t even kiss me back. As for Vaughn, Dr. Sterling is right. I was selfish. I used Vaughn to get out, and until recently, the only thing I regretted was that it didn’t work.”
“If Vaughn was worth a moment of your concern, he’d have helped you without you needing to offer incentives.” Will got up and walked as far as the door, then back to the mantelpiece, where he stood, shaking his head. “When I think of you here alone with Sterling and Fletcher… No wonder you were willing to do anything to escape. You must know I’ll help you, and you won’t owe me anything.”
His gray eyes shone with emotion as he looked at her. “Tell me you know that. Tell me you understand that caring for you is my job, that if I fail to do so, I’ll be negligent.”
“I…” This obviously meant something to him, but hard as it was for her to trust anyone, it was even harder to admit her trust aloud. A small part of her still feared disappointment, but she quashed it. “Yes, I know that. I know that you will help me as much as you can, and I know that you want nothing in return.”
“And you don’t owe me anything.”
Ah, that was the difficult part. Her gratitude grew every day, along with her esteem.
“I don’t owe you my body. Does that suffice?”
His answering smile lit her up inside. When had another person’s happiness made her feel so alive? She could spend her days like this, just trying to make him look that way.
“Let’s be clear,” she added, “I don’t owe you my body, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to give it to you.”
“Helen.” His voice was gruff with warning. He had the earnest eyes of a man about to embark upon a lecture.
“Let’s talk about something else,” she said quickly. “This honesty business is exhausting, don’t you agree?”
He smiled and sank back into his chair, quite willing to move on to less controversial matters. “What shall we talk about?”
“Well, there’s something I’ve always wondered about,” she began, striving for an innocent air. “I’ve never understood the medical establishment’s peculiar attitude to genital massage.”
His eyes widened, as well they might. Though she’d never met a doctor who prescribed this particular treatment for hysteria, she’d heard plenty of rumors.
She went on as if she hadn’t noticed his reaction. “I’ve heard that the doctors who practice it dislike doing so because it’s time consuming. Because it leaves them with aching wrists. If that’s true, it’s a strange attitude. Do they think that because conception of a child isn’t possible without penetration, only the act of penetration itself is truly sexual? But a man and woman can do a great many things together without conceiving a child. Are all of those suitable medical treatments as well? For instance, if I were to touch your—”
“Helen, I beg you, don’t finish that sentence,” he said, holding up his hands. His eyes widened again as he spoke, making him look almost comically horrified, so much so that she nearly laughed.
“Oh dear. Quite right. I do apologize.” But she’d made him smile again, and she couldn’t feel sorry for that.
“Why do I continue to see you alone when you turn me inside out every time?”
“Is that good or bad?”
“Not sure,” he said. “You make me look at myself in new ways, and I don’t always like what I see, but talking to you never fails to lift my heart.”
What a wonderful thing to say, but how unfair that she wasn’t allowed to kiss him for it.
“Truly, Dr. Carter, what do you think? Do you offer that particular treatment? Oh!” Too late, it occurred to her he might take her line of questioning as a request for that particular…medication. “I wasn’t asking you to—”
“No,” he said quickly. “I don’t practice it. Only a mountebank would. I’ve never met a physician who’d admit to such a thing. It may only be a rumor stemming from the advice often given to married hysterics.”
“To let their husbands bed them more often? Goodness. The husbands must love that.”
“I’m sure many of them do.”
She admired his attempt at a businesslike tone when he was clearly uncomfortable. The least she could do was try to emulate it. “What about unmarried hysterics? If sexual pleasure is thought to help in such cases, aren’t they unfairly disadvantaged? Is there nothing they can do to ease the tension?”
She waited for an answer, but none was forthcoming. If she’d thought he seemed uncomfortable before, that was nothing to the way he looked now.
“If the woman isn’t married and you say it isn’t right for a physician to perform genital massage, what should she do?”
Despite her best effort at a neutral tone, the tips of his ears had turned a vivid crimson. “I think you know.” His tone conveyed mild rebuke, and she deserved it. Her good intentions had come to nothing because she couldn’t resist flirting with him.
Sensing that an apology for again overstepping his stated boundaries would only deepen his discomfort, she offered none, but she vowed to improve. She couldn’t be sorry they’d discussed the subject, though, because his answer pleased her. She didn’t want him touching other women that way.
“We need to talk about what’s going to happen next,” he said, meeting her gaze again. “I need to know who put you here, and since Sterling won’t volunteer the information…”
Again, she waited. If this were anyone else, they’d be about to say—
“I’ll have to obtain it by underhand means.”
That.
She sipped her tea—almost gone cold again now—to hide a smile.
“I saw that,” he said.
“Well, let’s be honest, Dr. Carter. Unlike me, you’re not exactly the underhand sort.”
“Nonsense.”
“In fact, you’re the most honorable man I’ve ever met. You don’t have any past experience at being devious.”
“I was a little boy once. All little boys are devious.”
This time it was Helen’s turn to look away and shake her head. “I have tried to find out for myself, you know. With Fletch breathing down my neck, it’s been almost impossible to slip away by myself, but I tried anyway.”
She’d lost count of how many times over the years Fletch had caught her ransacking the filing cabinets on the ground floor, but there were dozens of them, and the water treatment she’d received as punishment had acted as a most effective deterrent.
Will nodded, lost in thought. “Sterling would keep the information close. I take it you’ve tried his office?”
“When he’s not in there, he keeps the door locked. I tried to steal the key once, but he caught me.”
“Don’t you know how to pick a lock?”
To say the least, Will’s question took her by surprise. “No,” she admitted. “I tried to teach myself, but it’s much harder than it looks… Wait, don’t tell me you know how to pick one.”
His only response was a smile, but when she saw that self-satisfied curl of his lips, her heart beg
an to pound. After so many failed attempts, she hardly dared believe they’d find the information they sought, but in Will she had a true ally. No matter what happened, that meant the world to her.
Chapter Eleven
They’d agreed to meet at midnight outside Sterling’s office. Will checked his pocket watch, his eyes straining to see the face in the dim light of a single paraffin lamp turned low: a few minutes past midnight.
The longer he lingered in the dark, the greater his chance of discovery. If he didn’t need someone to hold the blasted light steady, he’d never have asked Helen to help. Where the hell was she? He wasn’t worried for himself. If anyone came around that corner, he’d say he couldn’t sleep and that prowling about the house, dark neo-Gothic monstrosity that it was, relaxed him. But if she’d met with trouble somehow, they’d punish her.
A floorboard creaked. He held his breath.
“That lamp reeks,” Helen said, or rather stage-whispered. “I don’t think you’re cut out for this sort of thing.” She materialized out of the shadows, and the white of her nightclothes in the feeble light added to her ghostly appearance.
So, she did own a robe. Where had that been the night she came to his room?
“You’re late,” he whispered.
“Sorry. It took Elsie forever to drop off.”
“You’d think she’d be exhausted keeping up with you,” he said, his clipped tone masking his relief. He didn’t want her to know how nervous the prospect of tonight’s work made him, not when she was so certain he was out of his depth. “Here,” he added, thrusting the lamp her way. “Turn that up.”
“Very well, but I’m still unclear on what precisely you want me to do, besides hold the light. I take it from your businesslike demeanor we’re not here to make mad, passionate love.”
She stepped closer, bringing with her a faint waft of carbolic soap. Somehow he knew he’d never smell its tar-like aroma again without remembering her words and the thoughts they inspired: her spread-eagled across Sterling’s desk, Will over her, pressing down on her…
Stop, or risk becoming the only man in the world who develops an instant erection at the sight of carbolic soap.
“You’re going to hold the lamp steady while I pick the lock,” he said for his own benefit as much as hers. “Then you’re going to go back to your room, and I’m going to search the office.”
Her silence was loud with disbelief, presumably because she still wasn’t convinced he could do what he claimed. He fumbled in his pocket for his tools, though “tools” was perhaps a grandiose term for his one and only tiepin—the end now tragically bent at a right angle—and a long, thick needle.
“So, you’ve really done this before?”
“Is that so shocking?”
She gave a little shrug. “Frankly, yes.”
He didn’t have time to argue the point now. Encircling her wrist with his fingers, he guided the lamp until as much light as possible shone on the lock. He hadn’t done this in years, and succeeding seemed like the most important thing in the world. Not since he’d sent Sir Clifford his first letter home from boarding school had he felt so keen to impress someone.
He knelt and slid the now knackered tiepin into the keyhole, slipping it past the wards. The fiddliest part was persuading the pick to turn once it connected with the bolt. In the end, he had to use the needle to apply pressure; he felt himself growing hot under Helen’s gaze.
The click as the lock finally gave made him jump.
“How did you learn that?” Her breath tickled the back of his neck.
Will closed his eyes in relief that he’d accomplished this much of his plan, in pleasure at the hint of admiration in her tone, and in agony because of her proximity. “I told you, I had a misspent youth.” As he stood, she took a step back. “Let me take that,” he said, reaching for the lamp.
Helen didn’t relinquish it, and his hand brushed hers. “William Carter, petty thief,” she whispered with something like fondness in her eyes.
They stood there, each with one hand on the lamp stem, his fingers tingling where they touched hers, until he remembered why they’d come. Her hand fell away as he held the lamp higher and opened the door.
Like the hero in a penny dreadful, he crept to the desk. Wood scraped against wood as he pulled open the top drawer. He glanced up as the office door closed, and of course Helen, being Helen, stood on the wrong side. This was not what they’d agreed.
“You should go back,” he said.
“I think we both know that’s not going to happen.”
“The longer you stay, the more likely—”
“Elsie’s a deep sleeper.”
“Yes, but—” He stopped as a terrible thought occurred. “Helen, tell me you didn’t drug her.”
“Certainly not,” she snapped. “I’d never be so unoriginal as to use the same trick twice. Though, in all frankness, this evening would have gone more smoothly if I’d made an exception.”
He shook his head. “My God, woman. You come and go as you please. You slip valerian into the tea. What’s next, rat poison? Knives hidden in your mattress? Is anyone keeping an eye on our stores of morphia? Sometimes I think…”
Sometimes I think you have no morals, he’d been about to say, but he remembered her astonishment when he’d picked the lock; she thought him staid enough as it was.
“How do you see me?” he wondered aloud. “I didn’t come into this world reciting the Hippocratic Oath, you know.”
“Where on earth did that come from?”
So that he wouldn’t have to look at her anymore, he peered into the drawer. Inside he found ink, writing materials, and a large stock of Blackwell-headed stationery. Nothing of any significance. Bugger.
Helen still stood on the threshold, her head lowered, her shoulders slumped.
“Well, don’t just stand there,” he said. “If you’re staying, you might as well help me search.”
…
Helen almost wished she’d done as Will had told her and gone back to her room. She had no idea how much time really passed while they went through Sterling’s filing cabinets, but it felt like hours—long hours of peering through the almost total darkness to read one dull document after another.
Fletch’s employment record had seemed an important discovery until Helen realized it only covered the time before her tenure at Blackwell. To add insult to injury, and like everything else she’d read, it was also dry as dust. So far, the most interesting part of the night was getting to sit in Dr. Sterling’s chair, but now even that illicit pleasure had begun to wane.
Since they only had the one lamp, Will stood next to her the entire time, silently working through his own enormous stack of papers. He’d been a revelation this evening, and not because he knew how to pick a lock. The man had nerves of steel. If someone were to walk in on them, nothing they could say would explain their presence, leafing through confidential files. Even so, Will seemed utterly calm, utterly focused on the task at hand. Good, kind, decent William Carter, willing to break any rule that kept him from doing what he believed was right. How she admired him for that.
When he turned the page, she knew immediately he’d found something; he stilled and frowned at the paper.
“What?” she asked. “Will? What is it?”
“It’s a letter about you. About arrangements for your care.”
In the dim light, she couldn’t make out the words from where she sat, but the sight of the crest at the top of the page made her heart beat loud in her ears.
“Who?” she said. “Who’s it from?”
Will moved the page so she could read it.
At first, she felt nothing. Then a strange pressure built in her chest. She covered her mouth with her free hand to stop the tears she felt sure were coming, but instead stifled a splutter of laughter.
Will pulled her to her feet and turned her in his arms. The urge to laugh almost evaporated in the shock—a voluntary embrace from the restrained Dr. Carter.
“I’m…” She swallowed another mad cackle. “I’m not crying.”
He smoothed her hair back, his hand warm and soothing on her skin.
“I know, love,” he whispered. “It’s all right.”
“I’m…” To her fury, her voice shook. “I’m not upset.”
He said nothing. Just held her there, his body hard and unyielding. Strong and solid in a world of confusion. She didn’t need his comfort, but what she wanted…that was another matter entirely. She leaned into him, into his strength, and when she slid her arms around his waist, for once he made no protest.
“You didn’t suspect?”
“No,” she said and realized her voice was still shaking. This infernal winter! She should have worn a blanket over her robe. “I knew he must be rich, important even. In my wildest dreams, I thought perhaps a baronet or…” She shook her head. A duke? Why stop there? Why not the Prince of Wales?
“Are you all right?” he asked.
When she didn’t immediately answer, he eased her away so that he could see her face.
The concern in his expression forced her to respond. “Why wouldn’t I be?” Will opened his mouth to speak, but she kept going. “Obviously, this letter proves the Duke of Harcastle pays my fees, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s my father. Perhaps he has other reasons for wanting me here, or perhaps he’s a more distant relation.”
By the time she finished speaking, her voice sounded normal. Whatever that silly outburst had been about, she’d recovered. Will must have thought the same, because he released her.
“Even so,” he said, putting the letter back in its place, “I must talk to him.”
She hugged herself, chilled without his touch. “Why? Surely, you don’t expect him to help me. And perhaps you’ll lose your job.”
“I’ll be careful.”
“Please don’t do anything rash, Will.”
He gave her a strange look. “Rash? Men like me are never rash. I’m entitled to time off. Sterling doesn’t need to know where I’m going. I’ll visit the lunacy commissioners in London. I’ll be subtle about it.”