Eve Silver (8 page)

Her attention shifted away from the picture, back to the sketchbook that had brought her to this pass. It lay on the desk, the pages open to the very drawing she had tampered with. The soft snick of the door closing behind her alerted her to Dr. Cole's return.

He moved to her side, his warm hands gentle as he dressed the cut on her hand, wrapping it in fresh gauze and tying off the bandage with a small neat knot. “Not as deep as I first thought,” he observed. “The bleeding has already stopped.”

She realized that her hand still rested in his.

“Thank you,” she said, and pulled her hand free. She made to rise, but he rested his open palm on her shoulder, holding her in place.

“You are welcome.” Reaching across the desk, he drew the sketchbook closer, turning it so they both had a clear view of Darcie’s drawing.

“Can you do this again?” He pulled a chair next to hers, and sat in it, leaning close to examine the drawing before them.

“Yes.” Darcie closed her eyes, inhaling the clean male scent of him. He smelled like...
summer.
What an odd notion. Still, the comparison was apt. She could feel the warmth of his leg where it pressed against hers. She shivered, though the room was not cold.

He had rescued her. Again.

The thought made her oddly uncomfortable. She glanced at her bandaged hand. He had tended her wound. Darcie touched the base of her thumb, wondering why she felt both elated and appalled to have Damien Cole as her own personal savior.

“Is the pain very bad?” he asked, his breath fanning her cheek, rousing the strangest sensations in her breast.

“No.”
Yes,
she longed to say. Yes, the pain was very bad. The pain of lost dreams. The pain of knowing that once, as a wealthy merchant's daughter, she might have sat next to this man at a soiree or country ball, flirted with him, danced with him. Now, she was reliant on his largesse, his tolerance in allowing her a place to stay, a means of support. Whereas once she might have dreamed of having him as her beau, now she was reduced to praying that he did not toss her out on the street. The enormity and poignancy of her loss nearly overwhelmed her. She pushed the feeling aside, disgusted by her own melancholy.

The fright of only moments ago, when she had imagined herself homeless and on the street, trapped once more in the horrible cycle of poverty from which she had escaped, was as fresh a wound as the one to her hand. Yet her thoughts fixed on Dr. Cole, on the dream, the fabrication, of what might have once come to pass. In some dark, hidden recess of her mind, she acknowledged that part of her fear had been based on the realization that once removed from this house, she would likely never see Damien Cole again. And that possibility did cause her pain.

“I noticed your scar.” He touched the tip of his index finger to the puckered, raised mark on her hand. She drew a shuddering breath. “It looks deep,” he continued. “I'm surprised you suffered no permanent loss of function.”

Shooting him an assessing glance, Darcie pulled her hand from his, burying it in her lap. She could feel him watching her. Measuring. Waiting.

“Secrets, Darcie?” he prodded gently.

She stared down at her clasped hands. Silence was her only defense against the concern in his tone, against the horror that lurked in her memories. Those memories were too private, too terrible to share.

He drew back, as though acknowledging her need for distance, and turned his attention to the sketch on the desk. He took no obvious offense to her less-than-enthusiastic response to his query. She supposed he was caught up in his own thoughts, his own vision, willing to let her secrets stay buried, to turn their combined efforts to the task he wished her to undertake. Or he was simply a man who respected privacy?

Dr. Cole tapped his fingers on the sketch she had made.

“You see, I have no talent with charcoal, ink or paint,” he began. “My art lies in the ability to slice the specimen in such a way that in drawing it, the artist could truly represent the muscle, the sinew, the bone. Here—” His finger moved across the book to the opposite page, to the ink sketch of a human foot. “It looks nothing like the foot I set out to draw. But you could be my hands. You could draw all that I wish to study. Make detailed diagrams of my dissections.”

“I'm not certain that I can, sir,” Darcie protested, unwilling to mislead him, though her admission might well cost her everything.

Dr. Cole’s brows rose. “Why ever not? You drew the leg. There's little difference between a leg or an arm or a foot, save the specifics. If you can draw one, I suspect you could draw any of them.”

Shaking her head, Darcie tried to articulate her thoughts. “The idea of standing by while you systematically dissect a body, expecting all the while that I will document the results…” It was an expectation she felt little able to live up to. “I have heard that in Edinburgh, even here in London, some anatomists sell tickets to the spectacle of their dissections, as though it is a form of entertainment.”

“They do.” He paused. “You do not approve.”

The idea disgusted her. But that, she would not say aloud, for she did not know his thoughts on the matter and she was well aware that her fate poised on the sharp edge of a blade. Offering offense was not her best way forward.

Dr. Cole rose and crossed to the window. Resting his shoulder against the frame, he pulled back the edge of the curtain and stared out toward the carriage house. At length, he spoke, uncannily voicing her thoughts aloud as though he sensed and understood her fears.

“You get used to it, Darcie. The bodies are a means to an end. They are treasure chests just waiting to be unlocked.”

At his mention of a treasure chest, she thought of the two men who had dragged the trunk across the back drive to the carriage house laboratory in the dead of night. She shivered.

He turned to face her. “The knowledge hiding in those bodies is tremendous. They hold the key to life and death.”

“Is that what you want, sir? To understand life?”

“Life, Darcie?” he asked softly, his voice threading silkily over her senses. “I have little interest in the secrets of life. I leave that to rash young scholars and fools.”

Darcie's breath hung frozen in her throat. She knew what he would say next. She
knew.

“I want to know death,” he said. “For in knowing the enemy, I may find a way to cheat it.”

Simple words, spoken in the same tone that he might say he wished for sunshine, or balmy weather. A cold flame flickered in the center of her heart. She sensed the dark undercurrent of his thoughts, and the enormity of his meaning unleashed a new terror. Not the dread of being thrown on the street, or the fear of being cold and hungry and alone. She felt the trepidation of losing herself in Damien Cole's quest.

Yet despite the deep foreboding that permeated her mind, she would not deny him. He had offered her a life. She would help him seek the secrets of death. A reasonable exchange.

Looking up she met his eyes, searched the bleak landscape of his controlled gaze, and she thought that the barricades erected about his emotions were surely cast in iron, hewn of stone. The days and nights he spent barricaded in the carriage house, doing whatever terrible things he did behind the drawn shades and locked door, were the product of a battered and lost soul.

o0o

Weeks passed, and the days began to meld together until Darcie forgot whether it was Monday or Thursday, Friday or Sunday. Dr. Cole was not a harsh taskmaster, nor did he demand of her that which he was not willing to do himself—though he harbored such enthusiasm for his topic that he often forgot to sleep or eat. Hence, Darcie, who was by necessity following his schedule, found herself eating dinner at midnight or sleeping until noon.

They worked together, side by side, his thigh pressed tight against hers, the callused tips of his fingers brushing her hand, his chiseled lips inches from her own. And all the while he was respectful and kind, seemingly unaware of the desperate twinge of adoration that flickered, then roared within her aching heart. At least, it seemed that he was unaware of her the majority of the time, yet there were those occasions when she caught him watching her with an intensity that was both frightening and alluring, his eyes gliding over her like liquid silver, leaving her feeling shaken and breathless.

For endless hours, Darcie drew and redrew better versions of the sketches that filled endless books, pictures that Dr. Cole had drawn, but which had failed to capture his vision of anatomy. More than once he derided his lack of artistic skill. More than once he praised hers, sending a warm glow cascading through her veins.

In time, Darcie became inured to the images on the pages. No longer did they represent pieces of a broken body. She began to see Dr. Cole's perspective, to share his conception of their beauty. Yet, every so often, she would remind herself that there was a great deal of difference between making sketches of Dr. Cole's drawings and actually coming in contact with human remains. She was undecided as to whether or not she would be able in reality to draw an original specimen.

Having worked particularly late the previous night, Darcie came to the study one morning, yawning, covering her mouth with her palm.

“Good morning, Dr. Cole,” she said, pausing in the doorway, watching as he finished an informal breakfast at his desk.

He looked up. “Damien.”

Darcie blinked at his abrupt tone. “Excuse me, sir?”

“No more 'sir' and 'Dr. Cole.’ My name is Damien. Given that we spend hours together each day, and given that I have been calling you 'Darcie' for weeks, I believe that the use of my given name would be more appropriate.”

Drawing a deep breath, she hovered in the doorway, uncertain of how to proceed. In her mind, she had called him by his name more than once. In whispers, in the dead of night, she had spoken those treasured syllables, caressing the sound like a precious thing.
Damien.
But to say it out loud and in his presence...that was another matter entirely.

Ignoring her incertitude, or perhaps not recognizing it at all, the doctor rose, folding a cloth serviette around a roll and some cheese.

“You can eat on the way.” He gestured for her to precede him out the door.

Darcie hesitated. “On the way, sir?”

He fixed her with a stern look.

“Damien,” he prodded. “Say my name, Darcie. I promise it will pain you less than you imagine.”

The side of his mouth curved slightly, accentuating the dimple in his cheek. Darcie felt that strange sensation, the tightening in her chest that she felt so often when he was near. Oh, she loved the sight of that too infrequent smile.

“On the way to where...Damien?”

He stared at her for a protracted moment, his eyes darkening. Darcie shivered, darting her tongue across her lower lip, feeling uncertain and fluttery.

“There. You said my name. You see? It was not so difficult.” His voice rolled over her, low and rough, and she felt as though each syllable touched her.

She watched him, caught in the snare of his magnetic gaze. He cast a glance at her lips, and unwittingly she followed his lead, her own eyes drawn to the hard, firm line of his mouth. What would he taste like? The thought whispered in her mind, snaking insidiously through her body, making it thrum with a fierce longing.

With a gasp, she stepped back, and her movement seemed to pull Dr. Cole from whatever contemplation had occupied him. She felt a sense of loss as he turned away.

Handing her the cloth-wrapped bundle of food, he then put his palm against the small of her back. Darcie felt the warmth of his hand through the fabric of her dress. At his silent urging, she preceded him into the hallway and down the stairs, aware that he had not answered her question, and that she was as yet unenlightened as to their destination.

They rode in the same carriage that she had arrived in those many nights past. The side shades were pulled up, letting the light of day stream through the windows. And they were alone on this ride. To Darcie's boundless relief, no dead man shared the conveyance with them.

“Where are we going, sir?”

In response to Darcie's query, Dr. Cole merely turned his head and stared at her intently. Seconds passed, and still he did not respond.

Darcie shook her head. “Where are we going,
Damien?
”

He smiled, and she thought the sun had surely grown brighter.

“We go to Whitechapel.” He gestured to a flat case on the floor. “I have brought supplies, and I would like you to sketch the human form.”

Whitechapel. The East End. A part of her had hoped that she would never return there. The remainder of his explanation registered—the plan to sketch the human form—and Darcie swallowed at the thought of being so close to a dead body. The time of reckoning had come and she wasn't at all certain that her nerves would prove worthy of the challenge, but she intended to try her best. In fact, a part of her was profoundly interested, curious about the reality of human anatomy. During the past weeks, she had done more than just copy pictures. She had begun to learn what those pictures represented, to memorize the strange and fascinating words that anatomists used to describe the body.

Each muscle had its own name.
Peroneus tertius. Scalenus anticus. Opponens pollicis.
She had mixed emotions about her new and unusual position as assistant to an anatomist; she was entranced by the subject even as she was repelled by the thought of watching the dissection of human remains.

“I hope I shall be up to the task,” Darcie murmured.

“Why would you not be?” Damien frowned. “Ah, because the woman will be unclothed, you mean? Well, you are a woman yourself. There will be no surprises.”

Darcie stared downwards as the fingers of her right hand closed around those of her left, clasping and unclasping with nervous energy. So the body was that of a woman....Old? Young? Diseased? Or dead by some terrible accident? She conjured all manner of dreadful thoughts.

“Darcie,” Damien said softly, “I would prefer that you look at me while we speak. I find it disconcerting to engage in conversation with the top of your head.”