Anatomy: A Love Story(9)

Hazel gave a small nod. “I think, if you don’t mind, I’m going to walk a bit more. Just down the promenade. Before I take the carriage home for supper.”

Bernard looked around nervously. “Without a chaperone? I don’t think—”

“Just a few moments more. We’re a block from your home. Look, it’s just there. I’ll be in sight of it the entire time.”

“If you’re sure,” Bernard said uncertainly.

“I insist.”

“Well, all right then.” It was that easy. Bernard nodded, satisfied, his face affable again. He was the son of a viscount, and nothing in the world was wrong. He was steps away from his home, where there would be a roast waiting for supper. “I’ll come to Hawthornden next week. Tell Percy I insist on playing him again in whist.”

Hazel responded with the closest thing to a smile she could manage. She kept it on her face as she watched Bernard’s long legs amble down the street, until they disappeared in the shadows of Almont House.

Only then did she allow herself to look down at the crumpled remains of the broadsheet she had kept hidden in her wardrobe, safe from the prying eyes of her mother and Mrs. Herberts, so that she could share it with Bernard. Only a few words on the page hadn’t yet dissolved in the muck that ran in the gutter along the edge of the road, fragments like puzzle pieces.

LIVE SUBJECT

BEECHAM

EDIN—ANAT—

EDUCAT—

—EW TECHNIQUE



She sighed and walked toward the carriage waiting for her. Someone was outside Almont House, at the side gate, where the road curved away from Charlotte Square and toward Queensferry Street Lane, the spire of Saint Mary’s Cathedral stabbing the needle of its iron cross into the blue sky beyond.

It was a woman with reddish hair—which might have looked redder if it weren’t so dirty—tucked beneath a maid’s cap. One of the Almonts’ maids? Hazel didn’t recognize her, but that in itself wasn’t surprising. A household like theirs would certainly have a dozen or so maids, and they would try to stay invisible when guests were present. Maybe she was new. She looked young—very young. Younger than Hazel. She looked as though she was waiting for someone, from the way she glanced over her shoulder and down the street, but she didn’t seem nervous.

Hazel stopped and watched her, curious. And then, in the blink of an eye, she was joined by a man. No, not a man. A boy. A tall boy, all vertical lines and sharp edges. The two of them were talking, and the maid furtively handed off a piece of paper.

Could they be robbing Almont House? It was broad daylight. The square was far from abandoned—several carriages had already rumbled past Hazel as she stood watching the pair. No one seemed to be paying them any mind. True, they were hidden in the manor’s shadow, but surely even thieves preferred the cover of night.

Hazel crept closer, pretending to be fascinated by a small rosebush. Though she was only thirty yards away now, the two strangers didn’t look up. The maid with copper hair extended her hand, and the tall boy deposited a few coins into her palm. Now that she was closer, Hazel could make out a long, slim nose extending behind the boy’s dark hair. “Careful with that one, Jack,” the red-haired maid said.

With the coins secured in her waistband, the maid disappeared back against the stone exterior of Almont House, slipping around the corner, back through the servants’ entrance.

Strange, Hazel thought.

“Home, miss?” It was her carriage driver, Mr. Peters, calling from the end of the block. He gave the reins a quick flick and brought the horses into action.

The boy in the shadows looked up, and for a moment Hazel locked eyes with him, the hairs on the back of her neck standing at attention. His eyes were bright and clear and gray. With his long nose, he looked like a bird of prey, Hazel thought. He gave something that might have been a smile or a smirk or maybe just a trick of the light, because an instant later he was gone, trotting up toward the main road, where the smoke of the Old Town hovered black and thick, and Hazel was stepping into her carriage, back to Hawthornden, trying to conjure his face in her mind again, but the memory of it was already fading.





4




IT WAS AMAZINGLY EASY TO DIE IN EDINBURGH. People did it every day. There were grease fires, and stabbings in the alleys behind dingy bars. Scrapes that you thought you could ignore turned green and oozing, swollen and hot, until you were gone before you even had time to see the public doctor. Thieves were hanged in Grassmarket Square, Jack had seen them himself, the way the bodies twitched on the way down and then became still.

It was easy to die in Edinburgh, but Jack had made it seventeen years because he knew how to survive.

Jeanette was already waiting at the side gate of the house by Queensferry by the time Jack made it down the hill. “It’s a new job,” she said almost pleadingly, before he could even apologize for being late. “I’m fixing to keep this ’un, too. The food is good. Proper porridge for breakfast every morning, with cream.”

“It was you who told me to meet you in the middle of the bloody day.”

“I have a job now, Jacks, case you need reminding. Means I can’t be trotting off to your stink-holes day and night to deliver whats I know.”

The hairs on Jack’s neck lifted, his senses taut as a string pulled between fingers. There was a girl watching them, fifteen yards away, on the street. Jeanette didn’t notice. The girl was too far away to hear them, he guessed, but she had definitely noticed them, even though now she was pretending to smell a rose. She was wealthy—her clothes gave that away, the fine fabric and real feathers in her headpiece. She was the wife of someone, must be if she was out walking in the New Town without a chaperone, but she looked no older than he was. She was maybe sixteen or seventeen. With these wealthy girls, made up like paper dolls, it was hard to tell.