Eve Silver (5 page)

Instead, she answered his question.

“This is food,” she said. “Human beings require it to survive.”

His head jerked up sharply. A rusty laugh escaped him. The way he looked at her in that instant…it was as if he were seeing her for the very first time.

“You are a brave little mouse,” he said at length.

Darcie shook her head, but said nothing. She was not brave at all; rather, she was foolish in the extreme to speak to him so, and she was at a loss to explain why she did. She should have simply set the tray down and scurried away.

Turning to do just that, she was surprised when his fingers closed lightly about her wrist.

“Stay.” His voice was low and rough.

She glanced back at him, taking in the half-empty brandy snifter on the desk, her senses catching the aroma of alcohol that hung dark and rich in the air. Cook had mentioned Dr. Cole's melancholy. A warning bell clanged in the corner of Darcie’s mind. A man and a brandy glass could be a dangerous combination. She knew that so very well. Her eyes met his and she found them clear, not bleary and red-flecked as Steppy’s had been when he drank too much brandy. She did not dare place much confidence in that.

In one hand, Dr. Cole held a small gilt framed miniature. She knew it was a picture of a pretty dark-haired girl in a softly ruffled dress for she had dusted it daily since beginning her employment here. For a moment, she was tempted to ask him about her, about the girl who meant enough to him that he kept her picture close at hand.

She held her tongue. It was not her place to ask such things. And it was not wise to feel such curiosity about Dr. Cole’s personal business.

Shaking her head, Darcie drew away, dropping her gaze to the floor. She sidled in the direction of the door, but the sound of his voice rolled over her before she could escape.

“Thank you,” he said gruffly. “I'll leave the tray outside the door when I'm done.”

Darcie nodded and stepped into the hallway, closing the heavy portal behind her with a soft click. As she descended the stairs on her way back to the kitchen, she could not help but wonder why that brief encounter had left her heart pounding and her thoughts in turmoil, why his quiet request that she stay had thrilled her to the depths of her soul.

Chapter Three

Darcie moved the feather duster back and forth across the window ledge the following morning as she stared fixedly through the glass pane of the large window overlooking the cobbled drive to the rear of the house. She absently cleaned the same spot over and over, her attention focused on Dr. Cole where he lounged beside the carriage house on a small ornamental bench. Next to him, a patch of petunias burst from the stone confines of a small flowerbed like prisoners from a jail.

The sun glinted off his hair, and as she watched, he shifted his tall, lithe frame as if to redirect the mid-morning glare away from his eyes. She wondered at the book that held his rapt attention. He'd been immersed in it for hours. Not for the first time she pondered his interests, his likes and dislikes, the things that might fascinate him and those he would disdain.

She knew what it felt like to have his attention turned on her. She could picture his clear gray eyes, focused with unwavering intensity on the object of his interest. He had that way about him, a way of looking at a person and listening to her words as though every syllable was of great concern to him. She felt ambivalent when he looked at her thus, as he did even when he made a simple comment or request. His attention brought her joy. Yet, at the same time, she was terrified of his notice, accustomed as she was to hiding in the shadows.

With a final glance, Darcie forced herself to turn away. She had lingered overlong as it was. Poole, the butler, would surely rebuke her, just as he had scolded her for washing the dishes too slowly, wasting precious time. Then he took her to task for washing them too quickly, not paying enough attention to the chore. And all the while he watched her with those icy eyes, pale and chilly as a winter morn.

With deft movements Darcie dusted the desktop. The gilt-framed miniature of the dark-haired young woman sat in one corner. She recalled the expression on Dr. Cole’s face and the way he had held the miniature the previous day, and she wondered who the woman was, what place she held in Dr. Cole's life.

Turning away, Darcie began to arrange the books on the dark wood shelves that lined the doctor's study. They were in constant disarray. She straightened them daily, but it seemed Dr. Cole came at some point between cleanings and pulled the tomes haphazardly from the shelves, then left them where they fell. Carefully she lifted a journal and slid it back into place, noticing as she did so that it was a publication of the Royal Society of London, dated 1665.
Micrographia, or some physiological descriptions of minute bodies made by magnifying glasses, with observations and inquiries thereupon.
Darcie shook her head. The doctor's books and journals had interesting names, but more often than not she had no idea what the titles actually meant.

“Hurry, Darcie! Poole's in a foul mood again.”

Darcie jerked her hand back as if burned and whirled to find Mary Fitzgerald standing in the doorway, her unruly red hair escaping from her cap, her sparkling green eyes wide with concern.

“Oh! Mary!” Darcie exclaimed. “You gave me a fright.”

Mary nodded her head in the direction of the doctor's shelves. “Those books are what give
me
a fright. You ever looked in them? Horrible things.”

Running her index finger over the spine of the closest volume, Darcie frowned. William Harvey. 1628.
On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals.
She read the unfamiliar title out loud.

“Oh! You can read! I just look at the pictures.”

“What is it about the pictures that gives you a fright?”

Mary glanced around to make sure that there was no one else about. She quickly crossed the room and approached Darcie's side. “You really never looked at them? I'd 'ave thought that you'd 'ave poked your nose in one of them by now. You've been here a month. And I told you the doctor's a strange one.”

“And I told you that it's plain as the nose on your face that he's a good man. He has a kind heart.” Darcie decided not to mention that she had, in fact, opened one or two of the doctor's books, and had found the writings therein both fascinating and confounding, perhaps even frightening.

“A good heart? You think so, do you? Just 'cause he took you in. Well, you work hard for your pay, Darcie Finch. Harder than the rest of us.” Mary narrowed her eyes as she glared at Darcie, then leaned close and spoke just above a whisper. “I think he has no heart. I've seen people come and go at odd hours of the night when no honest person ought to be out. I think he's doing something...I don't know, something evil, I think.”

Darcie recalled the corpse that had shared her coach the night she arrived. Pushing aside the thought, she rolled her eyes and scolded Mary. “Dr. Cole is not evil, Mary. You have such an imagination. People have no control over when they take sick. If they need a doctor at a late hour, then that is when they need him!”

“Sick? Ha!” Mary pushed her face close to Darcie's, her words low and hard. “I never said they were sick. I remember a time when I first started in the doctor's service, five years ago, or thereabouts. Dr. Cole had a good practice then. Lots of society matrons and their snooty daughters. Then he started to restrict his hours, to spend more time at his surgery in the East End, or in that place”—she jerked her head towards the window where the shadow of the carriage house darkened the back of the large yard—”in his laboratory on the upper floor, and suddenly it seemed as though the people who passed his door were more likely dead than not. There's something wicked in there, mind my words, Darcie Finch. Something wicked.”

As Mary stepped forward, Darcie moved aside, allowing the other maid easier access to the shelves.

“There was Janie, the maid who was here before you.” Mary lowered her voice even further, and sent a quick, furtive glance over her shoulder. “One day she was just up and gone, like she'd never been, and no one ever heard from her again.” She paused dramatically, waiting for the meaning of her words to sink in.

Darcie held her silence, but a recollection tickled the edge of her thoughts. Yes, she remembered now. Dr. Cole had made reference to a missing maid on the night he had first hired her.

“And once,” Mary continued, “I found his handkerchief tossed on the floor. It was soaked in blood, still bright and wet.”

Darcie felt as though a cold wind whispered against the back of her neck. “He's a doctor, Mary. Doctors sometimes get blood on their handkerchiefs.”

Shaking her head, Mary said nothing as she peered at the spines of the books that lined the shelves, then her eyes lit on the volume she desired, and she pulled it out.

“I recognize it 'cause it doesn't 'ave no fancy gold writing like the others,” she said, gesturing at the book's plain binding.

It wasn't a printed book, Darcie saw, but rather a leather-bound sketchbook. Casting another quick glance over her shoulder, Mary then flipped the cover open, turning the pages carefully until she found what she sought.

“Look at this,” she said. “Right here.”

Darcie looked, and her breath caught and hung suspended in her throat. The page revealed a detailed sketch of a leg, though it was not the subject that was so disturbing, but rather the manner of detail that was depicted. The drawing showed the skin pulled back from the naked limb, and even the muscle in parts, so the underlying bone was revealed. Tracing the image with shaking fingers, Darcie noticed that the artist was one of mediocre skill. The foreshortening was wrong and the weight of the lines uneven.

Footsteps echoed in the empty hallway. With a squeak Mary dropped the book to the floor, shoving it with the toe of her boot until it was partially hidden beneath the desk. She whipped a cloth and small bottle of lemon juice mixed with salt from the voluminous pocket at the front of her apron. With shaking hands she began to polish the brass fittings on the doctor's desk.

“What are you doing in here?”

Both women turned at the sound of the harshly barked query. Poole stood in the doorway, his glance targeting Mary, and then growing wintry as it moved to Darcie.

“We thought if we worked together we could get things done quicker,” Mary said smoothly, keeping her eyes fixed on the gleaming brass fittings.

“More likely, you thought you could waste the doctor's paid time by chattering away like a pair of magpies,” Poole replied.

“No, sir,” Mary insisted, shaking her head to emphasize her point.

“Go now, Mary.”

Mary gathered her cloth and slunk toward the door, turning sideways to slide past Poole, as he made no move to vacate the entryway. With a quick, pitying glance at Darcie, she fled. Poole watched her go, and something indecipherable flickered in his eyes.

“I—” Darcie cleared her throat nervously as Poole swung his head, freezing her with his wintry scrutiny. “I'm almost done here, sir.” She allowed herself no hesitation as she rushed on. “I've noticed that no one goes out to clean the doctor's laboratory, sir. I could do that if you like.”

“You are not to go near the doctor's laboratory.” It seemed that the butler bit the words out through gritted teeth. Darcie could imagine him spitting metal pieces from his mouth. “You are to notice nothing. You are to do as I tell you. You are not to think. You are not to overstep your bounds. Have I made myself clear?”

Darcie nodded, feeling the force of the words buffet her as though she had been struck.

“You, Darcie Finch.” Poole continued, speaking her name as though the taste of it was vile on his tongue. “There are many maids in this fine city, any of whom would far surpass you in both manner and mien, who would be glad for this position. Watch yourself, Finch, for I am watching you.”

Running his finger over a tabletop that Darcie had dusted earlier, he then rubbed the pads of his index finger and thumb together, a slow precise movement. His cold eyes scanned the room before he advanced on her, moving close enough that she could see the small dot of dried blood on his chin where he had nicked himself shaving. She couldn't seem to drag her gaze away from that tiny, dark spot.

 “Do not overstep,” he said, then wheeled about and stalked from the room.

 Darcie waited at least a minute after his departure, her heart pounding in her chest. Eventually the frantic rhythm began to slow, and she bent to scoop the fallen book from the floor beneath the desk.

Laying the book flat, she carefully smoothed the pages and with a practiced eye assessed the drawing of the leg that Mary had shown her earlier. Yes, if the outer edge was moved here and the bottom, there...Darcie ran her finger over the paper, imagining how she would draw the thing. It mattered not that the subject was unpleasant. She viewed it with an artist's eye, seeing beauty where others would not.

Unthinkingly, she reached for a quill and dipped it in the nearby inkwell. How long was it since she had enjoyed the luxury of drawing? Passion rose within her, an instinct she could no sooner deny than the natural urge to draw breath into her body. With a few simply placed lines she rendered her version of the shape of the limb right next to the original on the page. Several rapid strokes added light and shade. There, she thought with satisfaction. That looked better.

Suddenly, the enormity of her trespass hit her. She had taken up pen and ink and marked one of the doctor's books, perhaps his own sketchbook. What had possessed her? A shaking began at her core and spread like a palsy through her limbs. He would send her away, back to the street, to the hideous fate she had barely escaped. She could scarcely believe her own foolishness, the temerity of her actions.

Horrified by what she had done, Darcie snapped the sketchbook shut. She slid the book back onto the shelf and stared at the spine in morbid fascination. She could do little now but hope that she had replaced it in the correct spot and that the sketch would fail to draw the doctor's notice.