Page 15 of Dark Embrace

Wrapping her arms around her waist, Sarah watched him. His expression was unperturbed, his posture relaxed, but something felt off. Then she realized his lips had drawn taut. That was the only sign of hisdispleasure.

He turned to face her once more and after a long moment said, “You are pale. Have you eatentoday?”

“I—” She hadn’t. Usually, she bought a bowl of salop from a street vendor near the lodging house, but this morning she had taken a different route to King’s College, one that did not carry her past the old woman and her still. She had hoped that by varying her route she might evade the one who stalked her. A foolish hope. He had been behind her, clinging to the darkness, his footsteps keeping time withherown.

Mr. Thayne made a sound of frustration. “Have you brought food with you? Or do you intend to work the day through with nothing in yourbelly?”

It would be neither the first time nor the last. But that was none of his affair. She lifted her chin. “A manisdead.”

Silence hung between them. “Fetch a stretcher,” Mr. Thayne instructed, his voice soft. “I shall wrap him in asheet.”

“I can summon one of the other nurses to help me.” She wondered why he offered to do this chore himself. Surgeons were not responsible for wrappingthedead.

Only forkillingthem.

She shuddered at the thought. What was it about Mr. Thayne that made her mind travel such a path? She knew that the physicians and surgeons at King’s College did the best they could. That more than half the surgical patients died was a fact indisputably assigned to every hospital inthecity.

But as she watched Mr. Thayne where he stood looming over Mr. Scully’s corpse, she wondered how it was that he had been present at two such similar deaths. No...not two. Four. He had been nearby when each of the four patients had been found with their wrists torn open, and the bloody pool that ought to have accompanied such injury inexplicablyabsent.

He looked at her in the dim light, his eyes hidden behind his spectacles. She had the fanciful thought that he could see as deep as her soul, while she could see only the mask he chosetodon.

Who—what—did he hide behindthatmask?

Sarah took a small step back. She stopped herself from taking another, disturbed by her ownwariness.

What was she thinking? Mr. Thayne was a healer. He spent an inordinate amount of time at the hospital. More than any of the other surgeons. He was dedicated to his patients. She had witnessed his care and kindness in the months she had worked these wards. Was she now to imagine that he had killed four people by tearing open their wrists? To what purpose?Whatend?

Confusion buffeted her, and she was appalled by her own thoughts, disdainful of them. She could not think why she allowed her mind to travel suchapath.

“There is no blood,” she said, challenge in her tone.Explain that if you can, Mr.Thayne.

“So I see,” he replied, too savvy to takethebait.

“What do you knowofthis?”

His expression did not change. “I know that a man is dead. All else would be mere supposition orconjecture.”

“Is it some sort of experiment? A study of the congealing properties of blood or…” She could think of nothingtoadd.

“A question or an accusation?” His tone was as calm as it had been a moment past, and there was nothing to suggest that her answer mattered in any special way. But it did. It mattered to her and she thought it matteredtohim.

She categorized the facts in her mind, weighing truths and suppositions. She did not believe he had done these vile deeds. Not because she was foolishly blinded by her infatuation, but because logic decried that such an intelligent, thoughtful man would carry out such heinous crimes in a manner that could easily link them to him. “It was a question,” she saidatlast.

Before he could respond there came a shocked cry. “Oh, my word. Another one with his wrist looking like he’s been chewed by a beast,” Elinor exclaimed, her palm pressed to the base of her throat. She reared back and looked about, her gaze pausing first on Sarah, then on Mr. Thayne. She paled as she looked at him, and blurted, “You were here. When theothersdied...”

“I was, yes.” He made no effort to disagree, his tone calm and even. “I am a surgeon in this hospital—” he made a small, sardonic smile “—and am expected to attend onoccasion.”

He appeared to take no umbrage at Elinor’saccusations.

“But you were thereeverytime. No one else. Only you,” Elinor whispered in horror, and the patients in the neighboring beds began to pick up the words and repeatthemanew.

For an instant, Sarah felt a dizzying disconnection at the oddity of the situation. Here they stood among beds that held people whose limbs had been sawed off, whose skulls had been trephined, who suffered all manner of terrible wounds, yet the sight of a torn wrist elicited such horror anddismay.

Because therewassomething sinister about Mr. Scully’s wound. It was not clean. It was not a slash or a cut made with a precise instrument. As Elinor had said, itdidlook as though an animal had chewed it open. One would think that a pool of blood would be cause for horror, yet the absence made the wound so much worse. She could not think of any injury or disease that left one drained ofblood.

The murmurs in the ward grew andswelled.

Sarah turned to Mr. Thayne, and said, “Please do not let us delay you, sir. Mrs. Bayley and I can see to Mr. Scully. I am certain you have other things to occupy yourattention.”