“First, he blindfolds his patient,” Jacob explained.
“Why?”
“George says it releases the inhibitions which lead to hysteria, but I think it’s because when one of our senses is hobbled the others become more acute.”
“That sounds like the voice of experience talking,” she said, with a sideways glance. “Have you permitted one of your lovers to blindfold you, Jacob?”
No, but he’d done his share of slipping silk over his bedmates’ eyes. “I’m not talking about me. I’m trying to explain George’s medical methods to you.”
“Medical methods,” she repeated. “Quite.”
“Then he binds his patient’s hands and feet so they are immobile.”
“Heaven forefend that a woman should move.” She rolled her eyes at him.
“It’s not meant to hurt them,” Jacob explained. “If they are bound, his patients are not responsible for any sensation that is forced upon them, you see. They are free to merely accept what happens as the natural course of treatment.”
“How very convenient.”
“Yes, quite,” Jacob said. “I’m glad you understand the science of it.”
“Science, my foot. I meant it’s convenient for Dr. Snowdon,” she said drolly. “His patients are unable to see what he’s doing and if they are bound they can’t stop him either. They have no control over the encounter whatsoever.”
“Treatment, not encounter.” Jacob raised a pointed finger in correction and wished he hadn’t because Julianne took the opportunity to button up her glove again. “George assures me they do not mind. Especially once he administers warm oil and begins the massage.”
The patient on the other side of the door emitted a few rhythmic yelps.
“It’s a wonder he doesn’t slip a gag in their mouths,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest.
“He would if he thought it would help them.” Jacob frowned, not sure why she’d drawn away from him. “George takes his Hippocratic oath seriously. He’s dedicated to relieving suffering.”
George’s current patient made a piteous needy sound.
Julianne arched her brow. “Someone is certainly suffering by the sound of things.”
“Sometimes George says a patient must be brought to the edge of madness before a cure can be affected. Of course, since hysteria is a chronic condition, most of his patients return weekly for another treatment. Some more often.”
“Are you listening to the words coming out of your own mouth?”
“Yes, and I wish you and I were acting on them.” He took one of her hands, brought it to his lips, and pressed a kiss on her palm. “I could be the wise physician and you the hapless hysterical sufferer in need of a paroxysm.”
“Or I could be the doctor who’d cure your ills,” she said archly, “and you the poor bewildered man who can’t manage to figure out how his own body works.”
Amazingly enough, Jacob’s cock cheered this line of thinking just as heartily as his own little fantasy.
“If your friend truly wants to help his patients, why does he go through this farce?” Julianne asked.
The yelping grew louder.
“Honestly, there’s nothing wrong with her that skillful sexual congress wouldn’t fix,” she said. “If she’s unmarried, Dr. Snowdon would be doing her a favor if he took off her blindfold and showed her what to do to help herself.”
Jacob’s jaw dropped. A woman who took matters into her own hands, so to speak. He’d never heard the like, but his body warmed to the idea of watching Julianne try it.
“I believe he has a spinster or two who come for treatment, but most of George’s clients are married.”
“Do their husbands know about these treatments?” She balled her fingers into a fist, which Jacob tried unsuccessfully to smooth out.
“If they don’t, they are as willfully blind as their wives, but to be honest, most men don’t believe their wives capable of having such needs,” he said. “Don’t you see, Julianne? George’s patients don’t want to know the truth. As long as they believe they have a condition which requires treatment, they experience no guilt over the relief they feel.”
The woman in the next room nearly howled as she reached her “paroxysm.”
“Imagine if she had to confess to her priest that she let a stranger diddle her till she screamed,” Jacob said. “This way, she has all her knots untied, with her husband’s blessing. She’s perfectly happy and without a shred of guilt. Believe me, George provides a much needed service.”
“Rubbish.” Julianne pulled her hand away from him. “A woman needs to take responsibility for herself. In every area.”
“Much as I admire your forward thinking on this issue, I have to ask: Is that what you were doing in my bed last night? Just taking responsibility for yourself?”
“No, that was different. We were taking responsibility for each other,” she said with a twitch of her lips that turned into a reluctant grin.
“Well, I guess we were at that.” He leaned toward her and dropped a kiss on her forehead. “Wonder if you’d feel like taking responsibility for me again this evening.”
“Why?” she asked with a mischievous wag of her brows. “Are you feeling hysterical?”
Yes,
he almost admitted. He couldn’t be near the woman without wanting to swive her silly, but something made him resist telling her how he was growing to need her. Jacob was spared a reply when the door of George’s examination room creaked open.
“Be sure to take a long hot bath this evening,” his friend told the woman who stepped into the hallway. “And wear loose fitting undergarments for the next two days.”
“Then I suppose a chastity belt is out of the question,” the woman said. “My husband suggested I resume wearing one since I’ve shown such marked improvement under your care.”
“Absolutely not,” the doctor said, taking a pad of paper from his pocket and scribbling a note on it. “Give this to your husband. It’s my recommendation that you abstain from wearing that device in the future. In my experience, it greatly compounds the problem of hysteria.”
“Thank you, Dr. Snowdon.” She tucked the note into her reticule. “Same time next week then?”
“Yes, indeed. Even if you are feeling well, it’s better to be safe than sorry,” George said, his somber tone matching his words. “Skipping a treatment can only result in the increase of ill humors and could lead to a setback in your overall health.”
The woman smiled. “We wouldn’t want that, would we?”
“Not for worlds.”
“Very well.” She turned to go and then stopped. “Oh, I almost forgot. You mentioned once that a referral would be appreciated. I have a friend whom I suspect endures the same malady as I. Would you have time to see her tomorrow, say at two o’clock?”
George pulled the small notebook from his pocket again and consulted it. “Better make it two-thirty. Thank you for sharing the blessings of health and well-being with a fellow sufferer. As a token of my appreciation, the fee for your next treatment will be waived.”
The woman smiled brightly, then noticed Jacob and Julianne for the first time. “Oh, sir, how thoughtful of you to escort your wife to her treatments. My husband is too busy for such things.”
“I’ve never seen Dr. Snowdon for treatment,” Julianne said, retreating a step.
“Don’t fret. He’ll have you right as rain in no time.” The woman patted Julianne’s shoulder, then turned to Jacob. “You’ve brought her to the right place. Dr. Snowdon works miracles.”
C
HAPTER
15
T
o Julianne’s surprise, the examination room held all the usual accoutrements of a genuine physician’s office—an examination table, a privacy screen for the patient to decently disrobe if necessary, and a set of sheets for modesty draping. The jar of leeches on the windowsill proclaimed Snowdon a proponent of traditional medicine while the collection of surgical implements displayed in a glass case proved he was combining the disciplines of a physician and a surgeon in pursuit of “General Practice.”
“Well, Preston, it’s good to see you again,” George Snowdon said once he’d ushered them into his examination room and closed the door. While not handsome, the doctor was a lean, presentable fellow with pale blue eyes and a wide smile that displayed a good set of teeth. The warm oil he used on his patients evidently was scented with vanilla for the room was awash in the smell, though an undertone of a distinctly clinical stench lurked beneath it. “I’ll hazard a guess that you have not brought this charming young woman here for a treatment.”
Julianne narrowed her gaze at him. “And the charming young woman will thank you not to speak of her as if she’s not even in the room.”
Jacob introduced her to his friend, clearly hoping to forestall the riot she felt building behind her eyes.
Perhaps if Julianne had never read Mary Wollstonecraft she’d not have been so prickly when men treated her as if she were less than a rational being. But the writings of that somewhat scandalous feminine visionary only helped solidify Julianne’s own sense that she should not be relegated to less than adult status. Her education might be inferior to that of the men in the room, but her mind was not.
“Actually, George, we were hoping you could help us with a different sort of problem.” Jacob took the partial manuscript out of the carpetbag and laid it on the examination table. He thumbed through the pages carefully till he came to the part that was written in an ancient alphabet of unknown origin. “What do you make of this?”
Snowdon pulled a pair of spectacles from his pocket and peered down at the page. “Fascinating.”
“Do you recognize the language?” Julia asked.
“Shh!” The doctor held up a hand to signal for quiet while he skimmed over the pages. He leafed back to the beginning of the manuscript and then forward to the puzzling part several times. His silent reading was punctuated with an occasional “hmm” and once with an “astounding,” but he apparently didn’t feel compelled to elaborate further.
With a sigh, Julianne looked around the room and realized she’d located the source of the medicinal smell. Jars filled with unlikely objects in formaldehyde were propped on a shelf ringing the small space—an eyeball with a couple inches of the optic nerve still intact, a baby pig, a star fish. When she came to one containing what appeared to be a severed human hand, she jerked her gaze back to the doctor and Jacob, who were still bent over the manuscript.
“What have you learned?” she asked.
Snowdon looked up suddenly and blinked at her twice as if he’d only just remembered she was in the room. Then he removed his spectacles and began cleaning them with a handkerchief from his pocket.
“This seems to be a tale of the dispersion of a set of six ceremonial daggers,” the doctor said, putting his glasses back on and wrapping his fingers around his lapels in preparation for delivering a scholarly lecture. “There are some carefully worded clues as to the whereabouts of five of these blades—”
“My late husband has already discovered them,” Julianne interrupted, impatient for him to tell her something she didn’t know about the codex. “We are specifically hoping you can help us uncover information about the location of the remaining dagger.”
“I see. Well. Nothing immediately apparent about that here.”
Julianne’s shoulders sagged. “Then you can’t help us.”
“I didn’t say that. Now the first part of the manuscript is in Latin, and rather badly conjugated Latin at that. I suspect the Druids made a convert of a minor cleric, who penned this treatise. Or, and this is rather more likely, the monk was coerced into writing down their tale of the daggers. But even though he was no grammarian, the author was fiendishly clever,” Snowdon said. “He fixed the Druids good and proper. You see, this last bit isn’t in any known language at all.”
“What!” Julianne exclaimed, crestfallen. If the rest of the manuscript was gibberish, even if she located the last half, she’d never find clues to the other dagger. “How can you be sure?”
“I am familiar with a goodly number of ancient tongues, milady. However, judging from the apparent age of this codex, it’s highly unlikely the writer of the manuscript would have been acquainted with more than Latin. Possibly Greek, but if that portion of the text were in Greek, then even Preston could have rendered a translation.”
“You damn my scholarship with faint praise,” Jacob said dryly.
“Perhaps you’ll allow that my memory of our days at Cambridge is accurate. You were never one for pegging the books that hard, my friend,” Snowdon said, tapping his finger to his temple. “Nevertheless, the reason you can’t read this portion is because it’s in code.”
“Diabolical fellow.” Despite his words, the glint in Jacob’s eyes showed he was more excited than daunted by yet another twist in the mystery. “How do we crack it?”
“It looks as if our unknown author has obligingly left us a key, or part of one at any rate. See here.” George pointed to the penultimate line on the last page. “He switches back to Latin at this point, but I doubt many would notice this.” His finger traced an imaginary line back to the start of the coded bit. “The words in that last section contain exactly the same number of characters as the part that seems to be incomprehensible.”
Julianne peered around him to study the weathered parchment. “So one only needs to match up the letters in Latin to the corresponding symbols in the previous section and it should be readable.”
“Exactly.” George nudged Jacob. “Bright girl there, Preston.”
Julianne still wished the doctor wouldn’t speak as if she weren’t present, but at least he gave her a compliment that made her proud.
“However, there is a problem,” George said. “Since the manuscript is incomplete, so is the key. You wouldn’t happen to have the rest of it, would you?”
“Not yet,” Jacob said. “But we will shortly. Do what you can with this portion, will you, old chap?”
George smiled broadly. “Nothing I like better than untangling a puzzle for a friend.” A timid rap on the door interrupted him. “Unless, of course, it’s relieving a patient in need. That must be my eleven o’clock.”
“Keep this business under your hat, would you?” Jacob said as Julianne and he moved toward the door. “And keep the manuscript under lock and key when you aren’t working on it. There are other interested parties who might try to relieve you of it.”
George Snowdon tapped the side of his nose in the time-honored gesture of collusion and secreted the document in a desk drawer, which he promptly locked.
“I should have something for you based on this bit by tomorrow morning,” George promised.
“And with any luck at all,” Jacob said, “we’ll be in possession of the rest of the manuscript by tomorrow night.”
Luck has nothing to do with it,
Julianne decided. Surely Sir Malcolm had the other half of the Druid codex and she’d ferret it out when she attended her “initiation” into the Order within the Order. But Jacob’s words reminded her that the invitation was for her alone, and he still spoke as if he meant to accompany her when Sir Malcolm’s factor came for her tomorrow evening.
She’d deal with that later. Julianne turned to Jacob’s friend and offered her hand in gratitude.
“Dr. Snowdon, I thank you for your expert assistance. You have helped me immeasurably,” Julianne said as Jacob opened the door leading to the corridor.
A middle-aged matron with a worried frown fretted on the other side of the door, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. She brightened when she saw Julianne.
The woman squared her shoulders and breezed past them into the office. Then she pulled Julianne aside to whisper, “I wasn’t sure about this hysteria treatment business, but if Dr. Snowdon helped you, surely he can help me, too.”
The rest of the day passed peacefully enough. Jacob and Julianne made it a point to be seen strolling through Hyde Park at the fashionable hour and later supped at home with Viola and Quinn. They enjoyed a quiet evening with his cousin and her husband. Viola coaxed Jacob into playing her pianoforte and Julianne demonstrated that her singing voice was every bit as pleasant as her speaking one.
After their tranquil, almost domestic day, Jacob was once again plagued with thoughts of making his arrangement with Julianne permanent. It was an unwelcome idea for one as devoted to the delights of bachelorhood as he, but he couldn’t seem to shake it.
Whether they were plotting over the manuscript with George, wandering among the upper crust, or engaged in the homely pursuits of a domesticated evening, he simply enjoyed being with her. He found himself wondering what she thought before she expressed her well-considered opinions. He caught himself watching her when she wasn’t aware, simply for the pleasure of studying the play of light on her features.
When he retired for the night, instead of climbing into his bed, he paced his small chamber keeping one ear cocked for the sounds of the household retiring for the night. Julianne wouldn’t thank him for causing a scandal by being caught sneaking into her chamber, so he’d take pains not to be.
Caught, that is. He had every intention of passing the night in her room.
He looked out the window to the street below. Movement drew his eye to a shadowy figure down by the corner. Too short for a man. It was probably Gil, the boy he’d tasked with following Julianne. Of all the street rats he employed on a regular basis, Gil showed the most promise, exceeding his assignments and showing more than a flash of untutored intellect. Jacob had caught sight of the lad tailing them discreetly a few times while he and Julianne made their way about the city.
The longcase clock downstairs chimed the hour.
Not much longer now, if there’s a God in heaven.
He stepped away from the window and resumed pacing.
Jacob would have to give the boy an extra bonus for staying at his post so long. Perhaps a permanent position within his household wouldn’t be out of reason for such a likely lad.
Permanent.
There it was again.
He’d never considered such a thing before, but the thought of going back to his life before Julianne had entered it made his chest constrict smartly.
Granted, he was not considered much of a catch. His reputation was too wild. Marriage-minded matrons with debutantes to protect would not let him within a foot of their precious lambs, as if he’d be interested in a green girl.
Who’d want an insipid child when he could have a woman worthy of the name?
And what a woman! Beautiful, intelligent, courageous, Julianne was fast becoming his obsession. Of course, some women would be put off by his romantic history, but considering that Julianne’s theatrical past smacked of unsavory associations and behavior, he was hopeful she’d be willing to overlook his checkered reputation.
Then there was his dubious gift. It was one thing for him to go through life dodging unnecessary contact with metals, another to expect Julianne to deal with it daily as well. Then too, the ability to glean information from touch and pay for the privilege in pain seemed to run in his family. Perhaps she wouldn’t want to burden her future children with such an ill-omened legacy.
He snorted. Thinking about children meant he was really getting ahead of himself in the permanence department. Besides, there were plenty of other reasons for Julianne to reject him.
He had no title to offer her. She’d been a countess. That was important in the world’s eyes. Would simple Mrs. Jacob Preston be enough for her?
Of course, he was sufficiently well off. He’d make sure she wanted for nothing and—
He dragged a hand over his face. What was he thinking? He was not the marrying type and he knew it. He’d known her less than a fortnight. They’d made love only twice during that period—well, two and a half times if he counted the second interlude in the coach when he’d been gentlemanly enough to give pleasure without expecting it to be returned. Even so, it was a record of restraint for his relationships.
Perhaps that was why he was even considering something as rash as proposing matrimony. He was still in the white-hot heat of initial lust. If he found his way into the lady’s bed with more frequency, maybe this affair would burn out as quickly as his others had.
He was more than willing to find out.
Silent as a wraith, Jacob slipped out of his room, down the corridor, and into Julianne’s chamber.