Painted Trust_Edith and the Forensic Surgeon

by Elsa Holland

  He growled and stepped forward. “In my experience women like you have no idea how to keep those two separate.”

  Her hands came to fist on her hips and she held eye contact. “Women like me?” He had no idea what she had seen and what she had been a part of, a shockingly delicious kiss in the dark was child’s play.

  Vaughn leaned down, his face so close that it almost touched hers.

  “Yes. As to the work, you will do what I pay you for, and nothing more. That, Miss Appleby, is the conduct of medical business during the day, and the day only. Now step aside.”

  He went to sidestep her, his lips a tight line of disapproval.

  Heart pounding, she blocked him again. ‘Women like you.’ They bumped together. She refused to move, refused to retreat even an inch. It was ridiculous, she’d achieved the distraction she needed yet her hackles were up. She would show him.

  CHAPTER 10

  The tension between them scorched. Vaughn ran his gaze over her tense body, chest rising and falling too fast, cheeks flushed. Not a hair’s breadth between them, their bodies so close the heat from her moved through his clothes, slipped past the weave that should protect him and pressed against his bare skin. Hot, palpitating awareness stalked through his anatomy and spiraled down towards the source of his ache.

  Her face showed her own struggle, too distracted to see the power she had over him, the shake in his hands, the rapid beat of his heart, his shallow breath.

  “You wouldn’t know the first thing about a woman like me.” His Apple taunted, then unexpectedly, her hands reached out, grabbed his shirt and jerked him down. She kissed him hard then pushed him back as they both breathed heavily. His thoughts reeled, his need to have her skyrocketing with her audacity. He leaned down, “tit-for-tat is fair play” he mumbled before tugging her back up to him and kissing her again until she wriggled away.

  Her hand went to her mouth, cheeks flushed. She was right, he had no idea what kind of woman she was.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll forget that before we start work,” she said.

  His six-foot frame loomed over her. “Liar.”

  She didn’t move, her face merely unreadable under the flush. Trust him to get soft on a woman with backbone.

  Vaughn placed his hands on her waist.

  She squeaked. He picked her up and pivoted her around and out of his way. She was back on her feet and he was halfway to the double doors before she called after him.

  “Not a second thought.”

  “You’ll have dozens.” Hell, she was damn lucky he hadn’t swung her over his shoulder and carted her off.

  “I’ve forgotten already,” she called out as the doors whooshed closed behind him. He strode through the house and up the stairs, slamming the bedroom door closed and pulling off his shirt. Desire, hunger and want pulsed across his skin as the shirt flew through the air to land just short of the mustard brocade bench at the base of his bed.

  The further he got from her and that kiss, the more he wanted to go right back down there and drag her back into that darkened corridor and finish them both off. But that wasn’t the kind of man he was, he had never been the type to prey on his staff. No, he played with bawdy types that allowed—nay, encouraged—him to do whatever the hell he liked. Appleby had found him raw. He should have bellowed at her to leave but she had stood there like a godsend in the light. Something about her was so intoxicatingly alluring she was impossible to resist.

  Now he felt like a cad, an idiot, exposed.

  Yet he was not the only one to blame, she had instinctively responded. The tight set of her jaw disappeared very quickly, the pink flush as she made the first tentative swipes of her tongue over his created images of where his hands and tongue could trail to make that jaw lax and open. Except he wouldn’t.

  Vaughn tugged off his boots and trousers, then washed with the cold water in the basin on top of the oak dresser.

  He pulled the thick, black curtains closed around his carved four-poster bed, a relic of Gothic effrontery ensuring the inside was pitch black and allowed him to sleep as the sun rose.

  In what felt like moments, Vaughn heard Price moving about the room. Vaughn flicked the curtain open and the light shouted rudely at him.

  “What time is it?” His muscles hung heavy as he lifted his arm to rest over his eyes.

  “Seven.” Price drew the second set of bed curtains back, flooding the room with the blasted light.

  Light. He had been hungry enough for it last night. During his sleep, his heretic mind had run incessantly through never-to-be-considered desires as the cool of the cotton sheets tortured him.

  Undoubtedly the worst three hours of so-called rest he’d had since the Henrietta debacle. Bruised and broken hearts were bad for sleep, deprived libidos were worse.

  Price placed a small silver tray with coffee on the bedside table, a letter beside it. “Arrived first thing.”

  Vaughn grunted. “The report to Felix?”

  “Dispatched at first light.”

  Leaning back against the headboard, Vaughn reached out and picked up the small cup of coffee. The smell, acrid and bittersweet, filled his nostrils as he threw the shot down. Few people had acquired the taste for coffee let alone the potent espresso shot he preferred.

  “Another,” he grunted to Price, picked up the letter marked from the Glasgow Coroner’s office and began reading.

  Price came back with another cup of the black liquid. “Will you be needing an overnight satchel?”

  “I will indeed, Price. Reschedule consultations for the next two days. I’ll do the morning at the hospital and then take the midday train to Glasgow.”

  Another murder in Glasgow, the third in six weeks. He had been expecting a call once he heard news of the second. The papers were hinting at a new black widow, poisoning seemingly random victims. The authorities wanted to confirm poisoning as the cause of the death, as well as the means of administration. Most likely the cause was bad canned meat, a fact authorities were loath to release to the public. Bringing a forensic surgeon in from another city, namely Vaughn, would ensure some measure of confidentiality.

  “Shall I have a cab waiting for you?”

  “No, I’ll go straight from the hospital.”

  “And Miss Appleby?”

  Was she to stay?

  He should let her go. Let her find her calling someplace better, find a surgeon who didn’t want to pound her soft flesh into the wadding of a mattress. She’d seen the child and read his report last night, nosey parker. What else would she inadvertently be exposed to if he let her stay? Him. His world.

  Yet the thought of seeing her made his chest feel lighter, a sure sign that he was a fool. If he kept her on, his days would be lifted by the sight of her, but hers would be dragged into the blood, death, rot and depravity that was his world.

  A wave of compassion washed through him, for her, for himself as a youth with all his hopes and dreams that were now nowhere to be found.

  He would send her off, say she hadn’t met the mark.

  “Sir?”

  So she would leave and he would never again taste her lips against his, nor enjoy her soft wriggles as desire trickled through her body and she wasn’t sure what to do about it. Another man would show her.

  His fingers tightened on the coffee cup.

  She’d dragged him down to kiss her, to show him she was a woman the likes he had yet to come across. It had worked. Logic said if she had that much gumption he didn’t need to have the compassion to save her from the life his job would drag her into.

  “Have her sign the contract. One year, and penalties for early exit.” He was a selfish bastard. “Thomas knows what needs to be done in the lab and direct Miss Appleby to check stocks and supplies. Go through the register with her and show her how to handle the cancellations for the next few days and the rescheduling.”

  Vaughn forced his legs out of bed and onto the rich carpeted floor. Price indicated his understanding and they slipped in
to their decade-old morning routine.

  A warm wash and shave, a crisp white shirt, subdued neck tie and navy worsted wool suit, breakfast large enough to prepare a man for caber tossing. Three quarters of an hour later, Price met him at the front door to slide on his coat and hand him his hat, bag and his medical satchel.

  As he walked down the street, every joint was rusty from lack of sleep. He felt too old to do anything with his trussed-up dove.

  CHAPTER 11

  The dawn gradually revealed the layers of grime that dressed Manchester’s Station. In the distance, syncopated looms still pulsed through the monster city. Morrison looked over at the pup. Dark circles sat under the kid’s eyes, but he continued to write in the notebook he’d given him, diligent.

  The kid had shown the first real gumption when he insisted they travel back to London with the body. In the end, Morrison let him win, let him have a victory. There was no point goading the boy to grow a pair only to geld him when he tested himself.

  In the growing light, they waited for the train. The girl’s body lay in a covered box flanked by two bobbies a short way up the platform. Even after a night roughing it, the kid’s skin was perfect, not even a hint of whisker-shadow. Too bloody young for all this business.

  A nameless emotion washed across his chest and was immediately evicted. There was no room for going soft on the kid because he was clearly younger than his papers of employment stated. Hell, twenty meant stubble even to the slowest of developers, yet the kid had baby soft skin, pale with not even the first signs of fluff on his upper lip. The kid was obviously much younger, yet he was clearly gifted past his years, annoyingly smart and full of unexpected talents. Last night he’d drawn renderings of the crime scene that vied photography in its life-like portrayal. The pup said it helped him to process all the details; that he remembered everything he saw as if in photographic form, but that drawing it out made him think about each element.

  Morrison stopped pacing and sat down next to his perhaps-not-so-useless sidekick. The right side of his black full-length coat flicked against the kid’s knee then slid away to settle between them, but the kid didn’t so much as pause in his scribblings.

  “How much do you know about what happened in London?”

  The kid looked surprised. Morrison assumed the Hurleys had briefed the kid before they sent him.

  “I read your reports to the Hurleys.” The kid’s face shuttered closed. Secrets.

  “Now’s not the time to keep any tidbits to yourself.” Morrison growled. The kid stayed stoic.

  There was no need to say the death here in Manchester was related. The necessary letters were already dispatched, telegram notifications had been sent immediately after visiting the crime scene, letters were in the last mail run to the Chief Commissioner in London and the Chief Coroner; each would need to gather their forces together. They were facing a mass killer; those bodies that had turned up in the Thames with patches of skin missing were tests, small ‘trial and error’ practices for the big event that was their girl in the box. Clearly, what that said was that geography would not be a limiting factor. At least the Ripper had stayed in one city, with one class of victim and in a predictable part of town. This one was roaming. All the regional Commissioners would need to be informed, to be briefed on what to look for.

  Then there were the unofficial letters, one to the Hurleys, one to Mr. Blackburn. Both parties paid him well to stay informed, though neither revealed the reason for their interest in the matter. The Hurleys would no doubt get a report from the pup. Both parties had queried his thoughts on the array of bodies that showed up around London with small patches of skin missing. He needed to find out what they knew.

  Morrison looked across at the pup, diligently back to his note taking. Instinct told him the pup knew. The first time at a murder scene of that nature usually gave rookies a crisis of faith, had them questioning their choice of career, of religion. His pup didn’t demonstrate any of those symptoms. No, the kid looked determined. Determined and angry.

  CHAPTER 12

  Edith slipped out of bed and splashed cold water on her face. Roosters. There were roosters in Edinburgh that would have her hunting back gardens with a bone mallet. Shouldn’t it be illegal to have one in the city? Weren’t gentry expected to have staff that went to market to buy eggs? After returning to her room, she’d twisted in the sheets trying to turn her mind from what she’d done, her body haunting her with yearnings from which she’d imagined herself immune. And as if all of Scotland wanted to drive her insane, no sooner had she fallen asleep then the blasted roosters had started crowing.

  Edith dressed and fixed her hair into a tight knot at the base of her neck then closed the bedroom door behind her, tightness wrapping around her chest like a tourniquet. She smoothed down her skirts in the narrow corridor of the staff floor, then made her way towards the stairs with silent steps on the thick blue hall runner. Unlike the other areas of the house that she had seen, this area was decorated in fashionable style, no doubt at the hands of the housekeeper, who seemed to have a fondness for Highland pastures. Lochs and sheep were portrayed in the small miniatures framed in ornate gold frames clustered together down the hall. The collections of art were interspersed by a brass pot containing a potted palm and, further down, a slim hallstand that contained a large porcelain vase of peacock feathers.

  They were not the things one expected to see in the servants’ area, but rather in the front parlor or throughout the main part of the house. Edith lifted the peacock vase for a closer inspection. It was not very old. She placed it back on the small hallstand, turned and looked with a keener eye at the array of decorative items. It was almost as if the artifacts were being put out of sight.

  The servants’ stairwell, a narrow dim construction, allowed passage to all floors while avoiding the main stairwell that would be used by Vaughn and his guests. Edith made her way down the steps and again noticed that every alcove and shelf was adorned.

  When she reached the bottom of the stairs, instead of heading into the servants’ dining room and kitchen, she turned to find the man responsible for her disquiet.

  It would be best to find out about her continued employment. Although Vaughn had not terminated her after the surgical shift, neither had he confirmed her position.

  The dread wallowing in her gut was the very real fear he would be uncomfortable with her presence after what happened last night. The light of day certainly made her feel foolish. What if he didn’t want the sight of her? That kiss, their altercation could have cost her very dearly indeed.

  Edith walked toward the front of the house.

  The swing door ahead opened abruptly, and Mr. Price walked briskly towards her, the doors whooshing closed behind him.

  “Miss Appleby. I hope you slept well?”

  “Good morning, Mr. Price. Yes, very comfortably, thank you. I was hoping to have a word with the doctor. Would he be available?”

  “No, I’m afraid you have just missed him.” Price reached her and swiveled his finger to indicate she should turn around. “Dr Vaughn has been called away on a criminal case.”

  Edith stopped. “A case? A murder?” Her heart pounded.

  “Yes, indeed, Miss Appleby. A poisoner in Glasgow, the press believe. But Dr Vaughn will get to the bottom of the matter.”

  Her hammering heart slowed. The Skinner would not poison. No, when they found a body after the Skinner was done with it there would be no mistaking the cause of death.

  “You are no doubt wondering about your position. Dr Vaughn instructed me on the terms of your contract and asked I have the paperwork drawn up for you to sign. We can set some time aside later in the day to go over the house rules, pay and duties.”

  The tourniquet around her chest released. He wanted her to stay. That thought sent an unwanted ripple of pleasure through her.

  “And surgery?”

  Mr. Price proceeded to walk her back to the staff dining room. “Cancelled for the next couple of d
ays. After breakfast I’ll show you the procedure for notifying patients. I have set up a small side desk in Dr Vaughn’s office that you can use to undertake the administrative aspects of the work, and for any patient aftercare that may be delegated to you.”

  “A desk in his office?”

  “Dr Vaughn was quite clear.” Price opened the servants’ door to the smell of warm oatmeal, pan-fried ham, and freshly-baked bread.

  Edith’s heart beat faster at the unimagined boon. She would be working in his office, an office that would most likely contain his medical degrees. She would be out of the house before whatever was happening between her and the doctor began to take shape.

  CHAPTER 13

  At the end of Vaughn’s twenty-minute walk, the charitable hospital stood in front of him in its brownstone finery, flashing hope over the city like travelling healers flashed their bottles of ‘cure-all’ tonic. It was a beacon promoting health to those unable to pay but, more importantly, attracted all those who lacked options and thus would willingly submit themselves for surgical experimentation and exhibition for the chance of a cure.

  The sick came in such numbers that despite the well-presented exterior, the rooms and corridors inside were bursting with cots, bodies and the rotten smell of unwashed pain. For him, it was a chance to help where he could, but more importantly make sure the next round of surgeons knew more than their under-educated predecessors.

  Vaughn took the steps two at a time, his muscles now warm from the morning’s exercise. Perhaps he wasn’t so old after all, but that was no reason to allow his mind its lustful wanderings about the vibrant and youthful Miss Appleby.

  “Dr Vaughn!” A young man called from a group waiting in the hall. The students were already starting to arrive back in town.

  “Master Johns, all ready to go I see.”

  Every year there were a handful of students, passionate, focused and looking for a younger voice of instruction. They gravitated to him, initially out of curiosity to see ‘The Butcher’. Upon getting to know him, those hungry to question, keen for better answers in a discipline renowned for its conservatism, made him their mentor of choice.