Authors: Dark Desires
Startled, she glanced up, meeting his gaze.
“I'm sorry,” she whispered, then with a bit of unexpected bravery added, “One's life tends to shape one's habits.”
“And what has happened in your life that makes you cling to shadows and view the world through indirect glances?”
She rubbed the tips of her fingers over her scar, silently marveling that he had noticed so much about her. Her heart sped up, the rhythm loud and frantic in her ears. She didn't want to talk about Steppy, about what had become of her life after her stepfather's ships went down, one after the other, taking her hopes, her dreams, a piece of her soul to the depths of the ocean. Once she had been a girl warm and loved, one with a future, or so she had thought. That was a memory from a long-ago time, before her mother died, before her stepfather's fortune sank to the bottom of the unforgiving Atlantic. For a time, she had held fast to her dreams, and then she had woken and faced the reality of her nightmare.
“Nothing happened.” She chewed her lower lip.
Damien's eyes glittered as he watched her. “We all have our secrets,” he mused. “Who am I to demand the confessions of your soul?”
His words sent a strange vibration through Darcie.
Who was he to demand her confessions?
“I have no confessions to make.”
He said nothing to that and looked up, his gaze focused out the window. “We have arrived.”
He opened the door and stepped from the carriage, then turned to help her down. Not for the first time, Darcie marveled at the courtly manners he showed her, as if she were more than a maid elevated to the level of assistant in his employ. He showed her courtesies fit for a lady of standing, the lady she might have been, once.
She stepped from the carriage into the narrow street. The rank smell of poverty struck her. They had arrived, indeed. Whitechapel. Unpleasant memories flooded her. She had lived here, on these streets, and survived by some miracle.
Damien reached past her and retrieved the case of artist's materials from the floor of the coach, along with his black leather physician's bag.
“Return for us at three o’clock, John,” he said to the coachman. Taking her arm, he led Darcie around the back of the carriage and through a narrow alleyway.
They walked for a bit before Damien drew her to a doorway. Suddenly, Darcie balked, her feet freezing in place, her entire body straining away as she recognized the house he had brought her to. Her pulse began to race as she turned her head to look at him. Damien returned her gaze, confusion evident in his expression. Then slowly, like the sun rising over a hill, understanding dawned.
“I hadn't thought...” he began. “That is, I
had
thought that with Mrs. Feather being your sister, you would not be adverse to working here at her house, but if you find the concept so offensive, we could fetch her and take her elsewhere.”
Darcie shook her head, her heart wrenching in her breast as she stared at the door they had arrived at, a door she had thought never to return to. Mrs. Feather's house.
Oh, please, not Abigail. Let the dead woman they had come here to draw not be Abigail.
Damien's hand cupped her elbow, steadying her.
“Is she—” She swallowed against the knot of dread that clogged her throat. “Is the dead woman Mrs. Feather?”
Chapter Five
“Tell me,” Darcie repeated. “Is the dead woman Mrs. Feather?”
Damien stared at her oddly, as though she were speaking in a language unfamiliar to him. Then his brows rose and the corner of his mouth lifted slightly.
“There is no dead woman, Darcie. Only a live one. I want you to draw a live woman. Her leg, to start with. She has a fetid carbuncle that I've come to drain and I want you to document it, a record of sorts. In payment for my medical services, she's agreed to let you sketch her form.”
“Sketch her form?” Darcie echoed uncertainly. “Unclothed?”
“Yes.” He made an unconscious gesture with his hand. “I hardly require a drawing of a clothed woman. That would make it exceedingly difficult to track the changes in the carbuncle before and after treatment.”
“Oh”, she said vaguely, disconcerted by the thought of being in a room with Damien and a naked woman.
“Darcie, many artists have documented medicine throughout history. Da Vinci. Rembrandt. Hans Holbein. Though art and healing appear two disparate fields, they are in fact in perfect complement with each other.” He gave a self-deprecating shrug. “Unfortunately, I was born with talent for only one. You know this.” He lifted his brows, clearly questioning her hesitation.
Darcie looked away, her gaze roaming the dirty street. A lumpy form huddled in the shadows at the end of the roadway—a man or woman with no place to call home, sleeping in the paltry protection of a doorway. Her gut twisted. She had slept in one very much like it not so long ago. “You are kind to come all this way to treat her. I doubt that there are many physicians who would venture here. A West End surgery is the goal of most.”
“Kind? An odd choice of words.” Damien shrugged lightly at her observation. “I'd wager that some would venture here readily enough at night.”
She made no reply. Likely, his statement was neither more, nor less, than fact. Had
he
come here at night, to her sister’s den of debauchery? she wondered forlornly.
“I vowed that I would never return here.” So she had promised her sister that night weeks ago.
At her softly uttered statement, something hard flickered in Damien’s eyes. “So, once, did I,” he stated enigmatically, leaving her wondering when, and why, he had made such a vow. “People have a habit of changing their minds.”
Lifting his hand, he rapped sharply on the door. A woman answered, her eyes rimmed with smudged kohl, her fine hair falling in tumbled disarray, the pale skin of her body barely covered by the hastily donned dressing gown. She was small, with delicate features and a sweet smile.
Darcie felt bile rise in her throat. A girl. She was barely more than a girl. Working here in this terrible place.
“Dr. Cole,” the girl greeted him respectfully, tugging on her dressing gown and covering herself as best she could. “Everyone's still asleep, but we can work in my room if we're quiet.”
“That will be fine, Sally,” he said, motioning Darcie to precede him through the doorway as the girl stepped back to allow their entry. “This is Darcie Finch. She's come to draw you.”
Sally frowned, then her soft brown eyes widened in shock after a brief moment of contemplation. She looked Darcie up and down, examining her as though she were something very interesting indeed.
“Darcie Finch!” she exclaimed. “But you were here before. I remember, 'cause it was the night Lord Albri—” The girl broke off abruptly, sending a quick glance in Damien's direction. “Well it was the night that one of our regular gentry was last here. We had a spot of trouble with him, and he hasn't been back since. I’m the one who opened the door to you that night, the one who fetched Mrs. Feather. Do you recall? You were so skinny and wet, looking like some half-dead thing the night dragged in. You don't look anything like that now. Why, you're fair pretty!”
Darcie opened her mouth to speak, but could think of no reply. She had known that her form had filled out a bit since she had entered Dr. Cole's employ—regular meals could do that for a body. And she knew, too, that her cheeks boasted a bit of color...but it had been a very long time since she had thought of herself as pretty. Pretty had mattered in the life she had lived long ago. It hardly mattered now.
Embarrassed, she glanced at Damien and found him watching her, his eyes focused on her with the same intense regard that she had seen more than once of late. Something in the way he looked at her made her think that he agreed with Sally’s comment, and that he, too, thought she was “fair pretty.” The realization brought a hot blush to her cheeks. She looked away, focusing her attention on the floor. Her heart thumped in her breast, each beat pounding in her ears.
“Well, don't stand there all day,” Sally said, pulling the door wide and stepping back so they could enter.
Silently she led them up the narrow staircase to her room on the upper floor. “All the girls are asleep,” she whispered, softly closing the door to her bedroom.
Darcie scanned her surroundings as unobtrusively as possible. The room was small, dominated by an enormous bed draped with heavy cream-colored velvet curtains. The walls were painted a garish shade of dark red, making the bed seem all the more conspicuous with its pale linens and curtains.
“Sally, we'll need some fresh water.” Damien spoke quietly as he put the case of artist's materials at the foot of the bed and his black leather surgeon’s bag beside it. “And soap, Sally. I'll need some soap.”
As the girl ducked out to do his bidding, Darcie moved to the foot of the bed and retrieved paper and charcoal from the case. Perching on the small chair angled in the corner, she began to sketch with practiced ease. A hand emerged on the paper, and beneath it, a tabletop boasting an orderly arrangement of knives, scissors and tongs, a pile of clean white linen strips and a small brown bottle.
In short order, Sally returned with a pitcher of water and some soap. Damien washed his hands slowly and carefully.
“I shall tell you one secret of death, Darcie,” he said as he rinsed his hands. “Dirt on my skin or my tools can cause disease in the wound, for the dirt harbors the nature of contagion.”
Darcie frowned. How odd. She remembered the physicians who had attended her mother. None had ever washed their hands before examining her.
Dr. Cole turned to Sally where she reclined against the multitude of pillows. He pulled aside her dressing gown and Darcie stared at the large red wound that marked the girl's thigh. It looked so painful.
“I'm sorry for it, Sally my girl, but this will hurt more than a bit,” Damien said as he gently probed the open and oozing sore.
“It'll hurt more if you don't fix it and the poison seeps into my blood,” Sally piped up good naturedly, but her voice was strained, and the color slowly leached from her cheeks. “I'd rather have it hurt now, than end up needing the leg sawed off.”
Turning to a fresh page, Darcie began a new sketch.
“See here, Darcie.” Damien pointed to the large pustule and the angry red streaks that radiated from it. “The disease has spread to the subcutaneous tissue. Draw it carefully, for when next I examine Sally’s leg, your sketch will serve as a comparison.”
Darcie had no idea what he meant by subcutaneous tissue, but she could see that the skin of Sally's thigh was red and swollen and looked terribly painful.
“Sally, I'm going to incise it now, and drain it. It'll hurt like the blazes,” Damien warned.
Sally nodded, fisting her hands in the covers at her sides.
Quickly finishing her sketch, Darcie waited as Damien lanced the lesion, then with rapid strokes she sketched what she saw.
“All done now.” He wrapped his used tools in a square of linen.
“Wasn't so bad.” Sally grimaced.
Damien opened his black leather bag and removed a jar full of what appeared to be grayish green slime. He washed the area he had just lanced, then opened the jar.
“Are those leeches?” Sally asked shrilly, forgetting to whisper as she stared at the jar in disgust.
“No.” Damien shook his head, and laid a reassuring hand on her arm. “I told you before Sally. I don't use leeches, and I don't bleed my patients.”
Darcie's head jerked up in surprise. Not bleed his patients? She had never heard of such a thing. Her mother had been bled until Darcie thought that all her blood had pooled in the dishes at her bedside and that none remained to course through her veins. “Why ever not?” she blurted.
Damien glanced at her. “I cannot see the benefit in drawing the life blood from one who is ill.”
“But does the bloodletting not draw the evil humors from the body?” she asked, frowning.
“Evil humors,” Damien repeated her words. “I have yet to see an evil humor, to touch one, to feel one. No, Darcie. My opinion of the nature of disease and contagion goes against popular theory.” He looked back at Sally, who watched them wide-eyed, apparently confused by the exchange. “We can revisit this issue later. For now, let us proceed.”
Removing some of the green slime from the jar, he then placed it on Sally's wound. She watched him warily, but made no protest.
Though she sat nearly three feet from the bed, Darcie could smell the fetid odor of the concoction. It smelled like something rotten. “What
is
it?” she whispered.
“Bread rot. An old Irish woman imparted the secret to me. Some called her a witch.” Damien paused, clearly lost in a distant memory, his gaze fixed on the far wall. Then he shook his head and continued. “I called her a healer. A wise woman. A friend. She knew much about the care of the sick, and she graciously shared some of her knowledge with me before she died. One of the things she gave me was this jar, with instructions to feed it periodically.”
“Feed it?” Sally squawked, recoiling from Damien's touch.
Saying nothing, Darcie grimaced, her own disgust mirroring the emotion evident in Sally's expression.
Damien quirked a brow. “Just some crusts of bread,” he said dryly. “Not blood or body parts.”
Sally grimaced, clearly unimpressed by Damien's wit. But Darcie couldn't help the tiny smile that tugged at the corner of her mouth. He saw it, and winked at her. Winked at her! Darcie pressed her lips together and lowered her head, pretending interest in her drawing. But that wink had sent a song soaring through her heart, for it implied an intimacy, a kinship that was warm and welcome.
“Speaking of body parts,” Sally said, her voice dropping to the softest whisper. “There's been another killing.”
Darcie looked up, her attention caught. Her heart gave a hard kick and her mouth felt suddenly dry. Another killing. She noticed that though Damien's hands stilled for a fraction of a second, he made no other outward indication that he had heard Sally's words.
“There was old Marg a couple of months ago. Cut up something awful, they said,” Sally continued. “Then the old man, but I think he might not have been killed by the same person.” She emphasized her conjecture with a nod. “’Cause all the others have been women, and he was the only man. Besides, nothing was taken.”