Page 7 of Dark Embrace

He was back. She could sense him there, watching her. Even when his footsteps grew silent, she knew he was there. Rage ignited even as unease uncurled, the two blending in an unpleasant mix. She resented his presence, feared it, but had no real idea how to remove it. The best she could do was ignore it just as she had been, but she didn’t know how long she could continue with that course, how long he would be satisfied to remain at adistance.

As she passed the graveyard, the shadows breathed and waited. She hurried on, resisting the urge to turn and search for him in thegloom.

Even once she reached the ward, she felt as though someone watched her here among the sick and dying as she moved between the beds, checking on the patients, taking note of glassy eyes or rapid breathing, offering water to those whoasked.

She looked to each corner in turn. In one was a bucket and mop, in another a straight-backed chair. The third held a table and the fourth was empty. Nothing was out of place. There was no danger here unless it was the danger of human suffering andtragedy.

Moments later, two boys hauled in a massive cauldron of porridge and set it on the floor beside the square table. As Sarah drew near, she detected an acrid scent; the gruel had cooked on too hot a flame. One more unpleasant scent to add to the slurry. She was careful not to dip the ladle too deep or scrape the burnt gruel up from the bottom as she ladled it into small bowls and lined them in neat rows on the tray atop the table byherside.

With a swish of her black skirts, Elinor Bayley approached. She was a young widow, just a few years older than Sarah, and she had once confided that she regretted the loss of Mr. Bayley not at all. He had been forty years her senior, over-fond of drink, and—Sarah understood from the things that Elinor didn’t say—a strong believer in physically disciplining his wife for any transgression, real orimagined.

During the first several weeks they had worked together, Sarah had been polite but reserved. Then one day, Elinor had thrown up her hands and said, “You must call me Elinor. And I shall call you Sarah. It’s ridiculous that we should work together, changing linens stained with other people’s sh—” She had pressed two fingers toherlips.

“Shite,” Sarah had finished for her,unoffended.

“Quite,” Elinor had replied. “It is ridiculous that we call each other Miss Lowell and Mrs. Bayley. We are friends. I am Elinor. You are Sarah.” And that hadbeenthat.

Now Elinor turned and dipped her chin toward one of the beds, the gathered tufts of blond corkscrew curls on either side of her head bouncing. “Mrs. Cook’s covered in bites. Bed bugs. And this morning the cockroaches are knee deep in thecorners.”

Sarah cut her a sidelong glance. “Kneedeep?”

Elinor smiled, dimples in both cheeks. “Well, ankle deep. Just last week, the matron said we ought to hire a man like the one at Guy’s Hospital to deal withthebugs.”

“The matron’s right, but we have not the funds,”Sarahsaid.

“A sad truth.” Elinor lined up three more empty bowls onthetray.

As Sarah ladled porridge and filled the bowls, she caught a flicker of movement from the corner of her eye. She glanced at the half open door to the hallway just in time to see the back of a black clad form—broad shouldered, long limbed, sun-bright hair drawn back and tied athisnape.

That glimpse was enough. Sheknewhim.

Mr.Thayne.

Light in thedarkness.

Her belly fluttered and danced, the sensation having nothing to do with ill ease, and everything to do with KillianThayne.

With her head cricked to one side, she leaned back, just a little, trying to see the last of him. But he was gone, and she was left with only the faintest echo of his boot-heels on thefloorboards.

She was both amused and embarrassed by her own behavior. She had no reason to crave the sight of him, no reasonatall.

But reason or not, shedidcrave the sight of him, and she spent far too much time thinking about him. He was a mystery, a man who kept to himself, preferring the night and shadows over the daylight, and the company of his books to that of hisfellows.

She found him both fascinating andfrightening.

“What are you looking at?” Elinorasked.

“Cockroaches,” Sarah said. “Kneedeep.”

Elinor snorted. “Oh, I think not, missy.Youwere—”

The bell tolled cutting off her words—once, twice, thrice—a solemn and sinister peal that carried through walls of ancient, crumbling plaster and floorboards of greasy, rotting wood. It rang out not to mark the time, but as asummons.

A moment later feet pounded in the hallway. Summoned, they came, burly men in stained coats. The attendants. Their footsteps echoed through walls and closed doors, down the dim corridor toward the surgical ward, heavy andominous.

They came because there was no laudanum for the poor and so the attendants would hold the patient down and the surgeon would be quick, the blades sharp, the ligatures tight, but it would not be enough. It was never enough. The screams would come, the tears and pleas. But the surgeon would cut off the limb regardless. And for all that suffering, by tomorrow or the next day, the patient was as like as not tobedead.

It was not surgery itself that disturbed Sarah. She had assisted her father so often that she thought she could likely perform one herself,longedto perform one herself, to apply all he had taught her. It was the ineffectiveness, the limited options the surgeons could offer. They saved few and lost many, and that was what ate at her. She ought to be used to it by now, ought to have learned to slam the door against her horror and dismay at the futility of trying to save them all. But she had not, and that was no one’s failing butherown.