Dark Embrace

by Eve Silver

  “There is no blood,” she said, challenge in her tone. Explain that if you can, Mr. Thayne.

  “So I see,” he replied, too savvy to take the bait.

  “What do you know of this?”

  His expression did not change. “I know that a man is dead. All else would be mere supposition or conjecture.”

  “Is it some sort of experiment? A study of the congealing properties of blood or…” She could think of nothing to add.

  “A question or an accusation?” His tone was as calm as it had been a moment past, and there was nothing to suggest that her answer mattered in any special way. But it did. It mattered to her and she thought it mattered to him.

  She categorized the facts in her mind, weighing truths and suppositions. She did not believe he had done these vile deeds. Not because she was foolishly blinded by her infatuation, but because logic decried that such an intelligent, thoughtful man would carry out such heinous crimes in a manner that could easily link them to him. “It was a question,” she said at last.

  Before he could respond there came a shocked cry. “Oh, my word. Another one with his wrist looking like he’s been chewed by a beast,” Elinor exclaimed, her palm pressed to the base of her throat. She reared back and looked about, her gaze pausing first on Sarah, then on Mr. Thayne. She paled as she looked at him, and blurted, “You were here. When the others died...”

  “I was, yes.” He made no effort to disagree, his tone calm and even. “I am a surgeon in this hospital—” he made a small, sardonic smile “—and am expected to attend on occasion.”

  He appeared to take no umbrage at Elinor’s accusations.

  “But you were there every time. No one else. Only you,” Elinor whispered in horror, and the patients in the neighboring beds began to pick up the words and repeat them anew.

  For an instant, Sarah felt a dizzying disconnection at the oddity of the situation. Here they stood among beds that held people whose limbs had been sawed off, whose skulls had been trephined, who suffered all manner of terrible wounds, yet the sight of a torn wrist elicited such horror and dismay.

  Because there was something sinister about Mr. Scully’s wound. It was not clean. It was not a slash or a cut made with a precise instrument. As Elinor had said, it did look as though an animal had chewed it open. One would think that a pool of blood would be cause for horror, yet the absence made the wound so much worse. She could not think of any injury or disease that left one drained of blood.

  The murmurs in the ward grew and swelled.

  Sarah turned to Mr. Thayne, and said, “Please do not let us delay you, sir. Mrs. Bayley and I can see to Mr. Scully. I am certain you have other things to occupy your attention.”

  His brows rose and again his lips curved in a hard, sardonic smile. She thought he might answer her, might argue, might chastise. But he only asked, “I have been dismissed, have I?” He made a shallow bow. “Then I bid you good morning.”

  He strode away, his long limbs eating the distance to the door. Sarah could not stop herself turning her head to watch him go.

  And all around her, the whispers continued.

  Elinor squeezed Sarah’s shoulder.

  “He didn’t do this,” Sarah said.

  “How do you know?”

  Sarah positioned Mr. Scully’s arms so they lay crossed on his chest. “I know.”

  Elinor sighed. “I’ll wrap him. You fetch a stretcher.”

  When Sarah returned, she found that Elinor had been shooed off to the side. Both Mr. Simon and Mr. Franks stood by the edge of the bed, along with the matron. The three were involved in an intense whispered discussion with much gesticulation and wary glances cast about. Mr. Simon rounded the bed, lifted Mr. Scully’s savaged arm and spoke in a low, fervent tone. The content of his comments was lost to Sarah’s ears, obscured by the general hubbub of the ward.

  Her movements made awkward by the stretcher, she inched closer to the small group.

  “It is 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? To what end?” His voice lowered still more. “Do you accuse him of murder?”

  Sarah stifled a gasp, the sound faint in comparison to Elinor’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. “Thayne was the last to see this man alive. It is well past time for us to summon the authorities.”

  Sarah could not say what possessed her in that moment, but she 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; it could have been his. 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 Lowell?” 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 and the infection spreading through his body made him scratch. Could the injuries to his wrist be excoriation? Self-inflicted as he sought to ease the itch?”

  There was urgency in her defense; she was driven to offer an alibi for Mr. Thayne. Something inside her would not let them mark him as a murderer.

  “You suggest that each of the four patients who died in this exact manner 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 St. Thomas and other hospitals.” Sarah cut a glance at the other woman, who hesitated for an instant and then 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 change course. 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 voice from close behind her. 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 was wearing them, for they offered some protection from his piercing, too-knowing gaze. She had defended him, bent the truth for him. It was a dangerous path she had chosen.

  “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 and hooked his thumbs in his lapels. “It means a great deal.”

  “It does not explain the lack of blood.”

  “The poison from his wound would explain it,” Mr. Franks said.

  It would not, but Sarah had no intention of saying so. In this moment, she was immensely glad of Mr. Franks’ 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.

  “Only the voice of reason,” she whispered in return. “They were ready to name you a ravening beast that chewed flesh and drank blood.”

  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 his sun-bright hair had come free of its tie to fall in loose, thick waves.

  “A ravening beast,” he mused, and his lips curved in a dark smile. “Perhaps the descriptor is fitting.” There was no sarcasm in his tone.

  “Why would you say that?” she demanded.

  “People are often not what they appear.”

  His eyes glittered, gray and brooding as a storm-chased sky, myriad emotions reflected in their silvered depths. Dark emotions. Loneliness. Regret. Sadness. Attraction. Or perhaps she only saw the things that dwelled in the shadowed corners of her own heart and soul.

  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.

  Mr. Thayne leaned in again and whispered, “Thank you,” his breath fanning her cheek.

  People are often not what they appear. With the heat and leashed threat of Killian Thayne so close at her back, she had the strange thought that he was not at all as he appeared, that the calm and controlled face he presented the world was not his true nature. That there was something inside of him, something dangerous and barely restrained.

  That perhaps the label of beast was most apt.

  But not ravening.

  No, Killian Thayne would be more of a patient predator, one that watched and waited.

  7

  Only one attendant came to carry Mr. Scully away, which meant either Sarah or Elinor would need to haul the other end of the stretcher.

  “Would you rather fetch linens and make up the bed or lift and carry?” Elinor asked.

  “Linens,” Sarah said with a glance at the bed. Another poor soul would arrive soon to take that spot, 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 water or gin. The physicians doled out laudanum with a miserly fist when there was any to be had at all, for the cost was dear. So the patients suffered, and that suffering wore at her. She longed for a way to alleviate it.

  She paused only long enough to wash her hands in the basin at the side of the ward. Others had commented on her obsession with cleanliness, including Mr. Franks and the matron. 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. He had believed that miasma was the source of illness, foul smell taking root and causing disease, and so he had insisted on cleanliness to curb fetid smells.

  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 there were no windows in the alcove or in the short, narrow hallway that led to it. The linens were 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.

  As Sarah stepped into the storage closet, a shush of sound behind her made her turn. She peered into the gloom but saw nothing more than dust and shadows. Then a mouse scurried across the floor and disappeared into a hole on the opposite wall.

  Feeling foolish, she turned back to her task, stacking sheets and choosing several tallow candles to add to her pile. An eerie sensation tickled the fine hairs at her nape and again she heard a whooshing sound. She set down the gathered items on the shelf and turned to face the hallway.

  “Hello,” she called, feeling both wary and foolish.

  A long, thin shadow stretched across the floor, stopping at the closet threshold.

  Footsteps sounded from the distant corridor.

  With a groan, the door of the closet swung shut, trapping her in the dark.

  For an instant, she stood motionless, heart pounding, blood rushing in her ears. Then she placed both palms against the door and shoved, expecting it to be stuck or locked. It swung open with ease.

  Sarah surged into the alcove then the narrow hallway. No one was there.

  The wind caught her hair, pulling strands free of her pins. She spun to see that a window in the main corridor was open, the drapery flapping.

  With a shake of her head and a self-deprecating laugh, she went to drag the window shut and ensure the latch was set. Then she returned to the closet where she added a stack of torn strips of cloth to act as bandages, for she had noticed that the stores in the ward were depleted.

  Again, came the sensation that there was someone behind her, yet it was different than what she had felt earlier. Perhaps it was the faint scent of citrus that gave him away. Killian.

  Her heart thudded in her breast and the walls of the small closet seemed to move closer still. It was not fear that touched her now; it was something else, 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. 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?

  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 first broke from slumber’s embrace, alone in her bed, her thoughts focused on imagined shared moments where Killian 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. Fantasies.

  But it was one thing to dream those things 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. Standing here in the dark little closet with Killian behind her was a far different thing.

  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 sought her opinion and listened to her words, because he laughed at her dry humor, because he was beautiful and intelligent and mysterious, and far more intriguing than any other man she had ever met.

  Slowly, she turned, her heart pounding in anticipation, a wild, untrammeled rhythm, her mouth dry, her cheeks hot.

  She saw now that he was not so close as she had 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 down the narrow hallway from the main corridor 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 clothing impeccable and obviously expensive.

  An oddity. Physicians to the upper class might earn quite a respectable income but 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.

  “Killian,” he said.

  She blinked, believing she had said his name aloud. Then she realized it was an invitation to use his given name. An inappropriate invitation.

  “Mr. Thayne,” she said, her tone inviting no further discussion. There was danger in even the slightest intimacy with this man. Speaking the syllables of his given name aloud would only heighten that danger.

  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 said. “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?

  The shadows and his ever-present darkened spectacles masked his eyes and any secrets his expression might reveal.

  “Does it matter?” she asked.

  “You put yourself in a position of risk. That is…unacceptable,” he said.

  She wanted to laugh. She was in a position of risk more often than not. “Unacceptable to whom?”

  “To me.” His voice, low and rough wove through her.

  “You have no right to feel that way,” she whispered, hoping that her tone did not betray her, that he did not discern that part of her wanted him to have that right, the right of a friend…or lover.