With a rueful smile, Killian Thayne drew his thumb across her lower lip, the brief contact making her shiver. Then he stepped away, leaving her body aching in the strangest way, as though her breasts and belly were pained by disappointment.
She closed her eyes, drew a deep breath, and when she opened them once more, he was gone and she was alone. Alone with the shadows and the dark and the memory of the way he had looked at her. Focused. Appreciative.
Hungry.
Five days passed, with Sarah coming to work before dawn each day, and walking home each night long past dusk. The sun she saw only through the grimy windows of the wards or the corridors.
She had grown wily, careful to vary her route between her room in Coptic Street and the hospital, which meant she could not help but skirt the dangerous edges of St. Giles. The sensation that someone stalked her had not abated. In fact, the certainty that she was followed had grown and solidified until she trusted it without question.
Twice more, she had seen a man standing in the shadow of the gravestones, watching her as she entered the building. He never approached her, never made any truly menacing move, but he was there, always there, and his presence unnerved her.
Yesterday, she had dared to turn in his direction and take a step toward him, intending to call out to him from across the way. Her attention had forced him deeper into the gloom. Clearly, he had no wish to entertain her company, only to watch her from a distance.
A menacing conundrum.
Now Sarah turned her attention to Mrs. Bayley, who stood by her side holding a stack of clean bandages to replace the blood and pus-stained cloths that Sarah had just unwound from a dressed wound. The patient was stoic, lips pressed together in a tight line, eyes dull with pain.
Adept at changing dressings and bandages, she worked with calm efficiency. Her father had shown her the way of it when she was twelve and she had had much practice in the intervening years.
She turned her full focus to her task, glad to be trusted with this duty, for it was usual that only the sisters or a surgical apprentice would be allowed to bandage wounds. But today, two sisters were sick with the ague, and one apprentice as well, which meant that the day nurses were set to do what needed to be done, for the surgeons were occupied elsewhere.
With a quick glance about, Mrs. Bayley stepped close and asked, “Do you think he done it? Killed them in a mad fit?”
Sarah sighed as she continued bandaging the patient. There was no question that Mrs. Bayley was asking about Mr. Thayne. The entire hospital had been buzzing with conjecture and whispered supposition for days.
A mad fit. The question nearly made her laugh. She had never seen Killian Thayne less than composed and controlled…except for a single moment in the closet when she had thought he might kiss her. There had been a fleeting instant there where she thought she challenged his control.
“I think Mr. Thayne is an extremely competent surgeon,” Sarah replied, avoiding the question altogether, for whatever response she offered could only fuel the fire.
Mrs. Bayley made a huffing sound of displeasure when Sarah failed to snap at the bait.
“An officer was here yesterday,” she confided, “from Bow Street.”
Sarah murmured a wordless reply, for she already knew of the officer’s visit, but Mrs. Bayley was undeterred by her lack of enthusiasm for the topic.
“He spoke with Mr. Simon and Mr. Franks, and after that with Mr. Thayne, but in the end, he left. I thought he might like tea, so I went after him and asked about that.” Mrs. Bayley shook her head. “He very politely declined the tea, saying he found the place off-putting.”
“I can’t imagine why…” Sarah said, and exchanged a glance with the other woman, a shared commiseration. “If it wasn’t the bleak and sad atmosphere, then surely the smell had done.”
Mrs. Bayley snorted. “He did share enough conversation that I can tell you he was called in to investigate by Mr. Simon, and that he will not be back.” She unfolded another bandage and handed it to Sarah. “It seems that the officer holds the opinion that people die in hospitals, and without further evidence, he cannot think there is foul play afoot.”
Something in her tone made Sarah pause in her work and turn her head to offer her full attention.
Mrs. Bayley tapped her foot on the wooden floor, a rapid patter. She pursed her lips, and after a moment continued. “But I wonder. I do. I worked at Guy’s Hospital before I came here, and in all the years, I’ve never seen the like of that wound, ripped open and not a drop of blood shed.”
Sarah stared at her for a long moment, having no words, but so many thoughts. Because she did wonder, not just about the wound, but about the shadow she had seen the morning Mr. Scully died, and about Killian Thayne’s presence beside the bed of the woman who had died two weeks before that.
Wetting her lips, she shook her head. “We need more bandages, Mrs. Bayley,” she said, her voice soft, her heart heavy, for she did not want to wonder about him. She wanted to believe that he was exactly the man she conjured in her dreams.
The trouble was, she had learned in the months since her father’s death that the boundary between dreams and nightmares was wont to blur.
Sarah drew her frayed and much-mended cloak tight about her shoulders. The night was very cold and very clear, the stars winking bright and pretty against the dark blue-black sky, a sliver of moon offering pale, cool light. Her gaze strayed to the graveyard. There was nothing there save old stones and a single ancient tree, its gnarled branches casting creeping shadows along the ground.
Still, she shivered, in part from the chill, and in part from the certainty that he would come, the man who watched her, and he would follow her through the wretched, twisted streets and alleys of St. Giles. She sighed. The night was so cold, and the temptation to take that route so strong, for it halved the distance. But it was not safe, and so she would take the longer route and hope the crowds kept him away.
She began to walk, her cudgel gripped in her fist beneath the material of her cloak. Her steps were quick and sure, her senses alert. She heard nothing, felt no creeping certainty that she was being watched, but she had come to understand that the streets were far from safe and she was yet far from home.
Home. Such a strange word to apply to the tiny, cramped room where she slept each night. She had grown up in a pretty house with fine china and chocolate every morning. They had not been wealthy, but they had made do quite nicely, she and her father, a physician who saw to the health needs of merchants and tradesmen. Not the upper class, but not the poor, which meant her father had always been paid moderately well.
She had never thought beyond her pleasant life.
But then, inexplicably, her father had changed drastically, his temper fraying, his thoughts and actions growing irrational. After months of frightening and unusual behavior, he was alive one night and dead the next morning, fallen in the Thames, his body never found. It was a terrible and tragic culmination of months of descent into what she suspected was opium addiction.
Sarah had found herself without funds, evicted from her home, without relative or friend. She could not say how that had happened. She had never thought her father the type to squander his money, but in the weeks before his death, he had spent it on something that defied her understanding.
A cure, he had insisted. He was searching for a cure.
She could have told him that the only cure was to stop taking the drug. She thought now that she should have told him that.
Well, it mattered little, she thought now as she passed small, cramped houses that backed onto the slaughterhouses, the smell of death and old blood always heavy in the air. Come morning, there would be children running in the street next to a herd of pigs, with inches of blood flowing beneath their feet. A terrible place, really. Before her father’s death, she had never imagined the like.
She kept her head down as she hurried past. It was too late to change what he had done, what he had become—an opium addic
t. She must only find a way to go on.
Turning left on Queen Street, she was confronted by light from the streetlamps and sound and a tight press of bodies that she navigated with care. Near Drury Lane, the public houses spilled their patrons into the streets. To her left, two men engaged in fisticuffs, dancing about to the taunts and calls of their fellows. To her right, three women were screaming like harpies, pulling and yanking on an old dress stretched out between them, none of them willing to relinquish their grasp.
The next street was narrower, with fewer people, and the street after that narrower and less crowded still. Now her route brought her to a place where she could no longer avoid the dimness and the shadows. There was only one working lamp on the street, and tonight it was unlit, so perhaps it was working no longer. She quickened her pace and ducked down an alley.
A staircase ascended the outside of the building and a man, bowed and bent, slogged up the steps, a sack of cabbages slung over his back. He would peel the outer leaves off on the morrow and take them to sell as fresh, though they were likely already several days old.
Sarah scanned the shadows and moved on, unease trickling through her now. This was the part of her trek she liked the least.
Again, she turned, this time into an alley narrower than the last.
Almost there. Her boots rang on the cobbled pavement; her heart pounded a wild rhythm.
She was walking very quickly now, the wind tunneling down the alley to sting her eyes, her cheeks, and behind her, she heard footsteps. Not ringing like her own. Shuffling, sliding.
He was behind her. The man who watched her and harried her each day. He was there, behind her. She could hear him.
Her breath came in ragged harsh rasps, and she dragged her cudgel free of the draping material of her cloak, holding it before her at the ready as she quickened her pace even more.
There was nowhere safe, nowhere she could turn.
The courtyards that fed off the narrow alley held their own dangers, for she knew not what manner of men, or women, might lurk there. In this place, poverty forced even women and children to toss aside morals and do what they must to survive. Calling out for help was therefore not an attractive option.
Ahead of her loomed a dark shadow, and she skidded to a stop, horrified to realize that a large wooden cart blocked her path.
From behind her came the sound of cloth flapping in the wind, and she whirled about, the open palm of one hand pressed to her chest, her cudgel clutched tight in the other.
The light here was so dim, there was only charcoal shadow painted on shadow, but she knew what she saw. The shape of a man loomed before her, some twenty feet distant. He was draped in a dark cloak that lifted and fanned out in the wind like the wings of a raven. His features were completely obscured by a low-crowned hat pulled down over his brow.
He was tall and broad and menacing…familiar somehow, his height and the shape of his shadow…similar to the shadow she thought she had seen on the ward the morning Mr. Scully died.
Trembling, she clenched her teeth tight together to keep them from clacking aloud. If she dared cry for help, she might bring down a dozen worse creatures on her head.
Taking a step backward, and another, she pressed against the wood of the cart, her legs shaking so hard, she knew not how they yet bore her weight.
Run, her mind screamed, and she dared a rapid glance in each direction. To her right was a courtyard, to her left, another alley.
The man before her took a single step forward, menacing. Terrifying. He was done toying with her. He was coming for her, as she had always known he would.
Still clutching her cudgel, she snaked her free hand behind her back and groped for the wooden cart. It was high-wheeled, and she could feel the lower limit of it at a level with her waist.
There was her best choice.
Sucking in a breath, she held it and dropped to the ground, rolling beneath the cart.
She heard a sound of surprise. For the briefest instant she wasn’t certain if it was a hiss, or her name—Ssssarah—but she did not pause to look behind her. Bounding to her feet as soon as she reached the opposite side of the cart, she grabbed her skirt with her free hand and hauled it up to her knees, then ran as fast as she could, her legs pumping, her breath rasping in her throat.
The cobbles were caked with years of grime and refuse, and her feet skidded and slipped on the sludge. Once, she slammed hard against the wall, nearly falling, but she pushed herself upright and ran on, weaving through the alleys, taking any turn she recognized, not daring to take those that were less than familiar.
The only thing worse than being chased through this warren would be running blindly without having a clear concept of her location.
Twice, she dared look behind her. She saw nothing to make her think she had been followed.
Finally, she ducked into a shadowed niche beneath a narrow wooden stairwell. Her lungs screamed for air, and she huddled as deep in the gloom as she could, pulling her body in tight to make herself as small as possible. Her ears strained to hear the sound of footsteps pounding in pursuit, but there was nothing.
From the window above her came the discordant noise of an argument, a man’s voice, then another, deeper voice in reply, and a moment later, the dull thud of fists on flesh and a cry of pain.
Panting, she struggled to satisfy her desperate need for air.
She waited a moment longer, then crept from her place. Staying close to the wall and the sheltering gloom, she made her way clear of the labyrinth of alleys to New Oxford Street. There she crossed and then continued north to the small lodging house where she rented a room from Mrs. Cowden.
The building was old, musty, her chamber very small and dark and damp, but it was inexpensive and it was located not in St. Giles, but in Camden, both high recommendations as far as she was concerned.
She made her way quickly along the street toward the front door of the tall, narrow house. She had almost reached the place when she drew up short and stumbled to a dead stop. A man lounged against the lamppost several houses away.
A tall man, garbed in a long, dark cloak.
Four
The lamppost obscured the man’s face, and Sarah’s heart skidded to a stop, then set off at a leaping, bounding pace as the wind caught his long black cloak and set it billowing like a sail. She froze, uncertain whether to run for the door of her lodging house, or flee down the empty street.
He shifted, and the light from the lamp spilled down, glinting off the metal rims of his spectacles and highlighting the sun-bright hair that framed his angular face in thick, shiny waves.
She knew him then.
Emotion slapped her, anger and uncertainty and fear.
As though aware that any sudden move might send her into frenzied flight, he watched her for a moment longer. Then he straightened, lifting his shoulder and the weight he had rested on it from the post, his breath blowing white before his lips.
His head was uncovered. Her gaze dropped to his hands, searching for a low-crowned hat like the one her pursuer had worn. But his hands were empty, his skin bare. He did not wear gloves, though the wind was bitter.
Had he followed her? Had Killian Thayne been the one stalking her—hunting her—in the dim alleys?
She shook her head, bitterly confused and distraught. If he had followed her, how had he come to be here before her, standing leaning against a post, waiting, while she fled through the poorly lit streets, her lungs sucking great gasps of air, her heart pounding a frantic rhythm?
If he was the one who had been behind her in the alley, then she did not think he could be standing so relaxed before her now unless he had taken to the skies and flown like a bat.
“Sarah,” he said, his brow furrowed in concern as he strode toward her. Not Miss Lowell. Sarah. The way he said her name in his incredible melted-chocolate voice made her heart twitch. “What is it? What has frightened you?”
He paused a foot away from her, making no move to touc
h her or accost her in any way. She knew not what to think, what to feel, what to say. Her emotions cavorted and danced from fear to elation. In that moment, she did not know herself.
“I was—” She glanced over her shoulder, almost expecting a second tall man to materialize behind her, one with black gloves and a black hat. When she saw no one there, she turned to face him once more. “—followed. Someone followed me from King’s College.”
Raising his head, he looked beyond her to the empty street. She felt a strange disorientation overtake her. The night was dark, save for the twinkling stars and a thin sliver of moon. The shadows were darker still. Only one lamp shone on this street, casting a bright glow in a circle some ten feet across, then fading away to nothing at the periphery.
Yet Killian Thayne—with his sight further dimmed by the dark glasses he preferred—perused the night-wrapped street as though he could see things that were veiled from her sight.
He said, “He is not there now.”
No, he was not. But he had been. She did not doubt her own perception of that.
“I cannot imagine that you can discern anything wearing those,” she murmured.
From a distance, a faded cacophony of laughter and shrieks carried to them through the cold air. He tipped his head a bit toward her, then away.
“I see as well with them as without. Better, in fact.” He shrugged, the casual gesture out of keeping with his normally reserved manner. “My eyes are sensitive to light.”
She stared at him, thinking his comment a jest. But his expression showed him to be in earnest.
“It is full night. There is very little light to be sensitive to,” she said.
A moment longer, he studied the street, and then he turned toward her and smiled. Despite everything—her breathless run, her fear, her disorientation—that smile touched a place inside her, making it crackle and flare like a spark roused to flame.
His gaze dropped to her hands, and she realized then that she was turning the thick stick she carried over and over in nervous inattention. Reaching out, he eased it from her cold and numbed fingers, then tested the weight of it on his open palm.
Nature of the Beast Page 23
