Anatomy: A Love Story(6)
Though the survival rate is dismal, those who do prevail retain immunity. There is no known cure.
2
IN THE CARRIAGE ON THE WAY TO ALMONT House, Hazel tried in vain to scrub black ink from her knuckles and from beneath her nails. She had been up all night the previous evening, copying notes from her father’s old edition of Dr. Beecham’s book on anatomy. All the while, she had kept the broadsheet advertisement flat on the desk beside her, the one she had seen nailed to the door of a public house from the window of her carriage.
“Stop, stop!” she had shouted, pounding on the door of the carriage. She scampered out, tore the advert from the door, and returned to the carriage out of breath, too exhilarated to care whether anyone had seen her.
The advertisement was folded into the pocket of her skirt. Hazel reached in with her ink-stained fingers, touching it for comfort and luck.
Bernard wouldn’t care about the ink—Hazel doubted he would even notice—but Lord Almont would, and knowing his penchant for propriety, no doubt the incident would make its way back to her mother. I do wish you wouldn’t embarrass me in front of your uncle, Hazel, Hazel’s mother would say while lifting a teacup to her thin lips or pulling a thread through her embroidery as a servant added logs to the morning room fire. It’s not that I care that you make yourself look like a beggar woman when you visit town, but I do know it’ll only reflect badly on you when it comes to invitations for the upcoming Season.
Hazel couldn’t even imagine what Lord Almont or her mother would have done if they knew about the broadsheet in her pocket, an advertisement for an anatomy demonstration by the famous Dr. Beecham III, grandson of the legend, and certainly the most famous living surgeon in Edinburgh, if not the whole kingdom.
Hazel practically vibrated with excitement, thinking about it.
LIVE SUBJECT! FREE ANATOMY DEMONSTRATION!
SEE DOCTOR BEECHAM, HEAD OF SURGERY, EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY, PERFORM DISSECTION AND AMPUTATION USING HIS BRAND NEW TECHNIQUE. THOSE INTERESTED MAY ENQUIRE WITH REGARD TO THE DOCTOR’S ANATOMY SEMINAR.
8 O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING
ROYAL EDINBURGH ANATOMISTS’ SOCIETY
This was the sort of event Hazel wanted to attend! Not the dreary luncheons with dowdy widowers and insufferable debutantes or the dull, endless balls. As soon as Hazel turned fifteen, her mother had begun forcing her down to London for the social season, where Hazel would be squeezed into crinoline the size of a small sofa so that she could whiz around an assortment of ballrooms in the arms of various foul-breathed boys.
In theory, going down to London for the Season meant that one of those foul-breathed boys would fall madly in love with Hazel (or her respectable dowry) and marry her, although it seemed rather pointless, because it was all but a forgone conclusion that she would be marrying Bernard, keeping the Almont title and money in the family.
There was nothing wrong with Bernard, Hazel told herself. He was nice enough, his skin relatively clear. He was, well, dull, but so were the rest of them. He was a little vain, and cared more about his clothes than most other things in the world. But he was a good listener. He had played with Hazel when they were toddlers in the mud, and so he didn’t expect her to be the fragile porcelain lady other girls in their social circle pretended to be.
He had known Hazel for so long that he saw her wanting to be a surgeon as a mere quirk, not a scandal. Having a man at her side would be essential when it came to enrolling in classes and sitting for the Royal Physician’s Examination, all the better if it was a powerful man with a title. Hazel ran her fingers along the crease of the broadsheet hopefully.
It was a crisp day in autumn, and the September air was as clear as it ever was this close to Edinburgh’s Old Town, where those wooden buildings on top of the hill were stacked upon one another like crooked teeth in a mouth exhaling the wheezing black soot of daily life. Lord and Lady Almont lived across Princes Street Gardens—just down the hill, but a universe away from the Old Town: in the New Town, in an elegant white town house on Charlotte Square with pillars out front and enough room for their two carriages out back.
Hazel hadn’t been able to get the ink off her hands after all, and so as soon as the footman closed the carriage door behind her, she stuffed her hands into her pockets with her secret hidden broadsheet.
The footman opened the door before Hazel even rang, sweat dappling his collar and his bald spot glistening.
Something was happening in the main hall: it was a swirl of activity. Hazel met eyes with Samuel, the valet, who swept past carrying an empty basin and a rag. Samuel just bowed his head slightly.
A strange man sat nearby, a beggar in dust-colored rags, occupying a simple wooden chair that Hazel had never seen before, probably pulled up from the servants’ quarters. A doctor in a long coat was examining the inside of his mouth.
The beggar looked ill at ease in the well-curated manor house. Everything about him stuck out, felt out of place. His shirt was the only one in the entire hall not ironed and starched, his head the only one with hair uncombed, his face the only one uncleaned, with a ring of sweat and grime mottling the area beneath his chin where he hadn’t managed to wash. The doctor grimaced and patted the man’s cheek, and the man closed his mouth obediently.
Lord Almont—who had been sitting across the hall, in a wider, cushioned chair brought in from the dining hall—rose when Hazel came in. “Ah, Hazel,” he said in greeting. “My apologies for the state you find the house in today. I imagine Bernard will be down in a moment. Samuel, tell Bernard that Miss Sinnett has arrived.”