-27-

Jem

The servants had covered Linfield with a sheet, which Jem turned down, mostly to prove to himself it was his former employer and tormenter lying still on the doctor's slab. Someone had balanced pennies on his eyelids and cleaned the blood splatter away, for which he muttered a silent thanks, uncertain he could have borne the sight of an empty stare and blood-ringed lips. His shoulders cramped as he stood gazing down at the still and silent form. It hardly seemed possible that a face that had been so animated only a short time ago was now frozen never to laugh or scowl or demand again. Jem determined to leave once Bell set about his work. He couldn't stay for that. To see a man who he'd made love to rendered into a piece of meat and carved open so that his viscera could be inspected. Much as he'd curse him, and it would put him right back into the early pickle in which he'd existed, he longed for Linfield's brows to crease, a clownish smile to stretch his cheeks and for him to sit and laugh at Jem for being fooled by his theatrics.

Alas, this was no make-believe. Two people he trusted in this matter had both confirmed it, and he knew it in his soul too. There was a stillness, an absence that came with death, a sort of primal revulsion for the thing that was no more even while enduring the pain of their loss and desiring to cling to what had been. He'd been too young when his parents had died to experience death in such proximity. He'd despaired over the inability to say goodbye. Now… now he was pleased he hadn't been given the opportunity to witness their silence.

Anon he retreated to the corner and the confines of the saggy wingback chair. "I wish I could say you didn't deserve this and truly mean it," he said into the palms of his hands before peering over his fingertips at the corpse as if in expectation of a reply. "You were rarely kind, and you've been a bastard since the day we came to Cedarton. Not just to me. To your wife, to George, to all of us. Watching Bell assault you with his leeches was one of the few highlights of being here. I realise that makes me sound horrid, but… it's the truth. You were an arse. I hated you more frequently than I liked you." Especially after all the business with Eliza.

Eliza whom he'd now lost for good, and for no good reason, since the whole bedding debacle was irrelevant now.

Then again, perhaps, much as it hurt, that was for the best. She'd have learned what manner of man he was eventually. Better now than later.

"We had some fun though, didn't we?" He addressed Linfield again. "I wish I knew what you'd done to make someone… Who was it? Who's done this? I keep thinking you must have done something really foul, because you never pushed me that far, even at your worst, and you did some deplorable things. Then again, I suppose we all have different limits.

"Whoever it was, I'm not condoning what they've done. I'm just pointing out that you probably provoked them. That's if you were the intended target. You must have been. There's no reason for anyone to attack Lady Linfield." She was a sweetling. Then again, someone had been attempting to scare her witless. "I thought that was you. Doesn't make sense, now for that to be the case. None of this does. Were you trying to murder her and accidentally killed yourself?"

Was one supposed to laugh or cry over such a notion?

The door creaked in the room beyond. "Mrs Honeyfield…" he heard Bell say. "What is it? Ah, this isn't a good moment for a consultation, I'm rather—"

The housekeeper's replies were too quiet to discern, her voice reaching him only as a higher-pitched susurration.

"Very well, I agree. Now isn't the moment to be absent from your duties."

Had she finally consented to having her troublesome tooth pulled? Bell's voice continued to drift to him in snatches. She'd presumably come to him because Linfield's valet was currently riding south to Bellingbrook.

There'd be no merry making in that great house this Christmastide.

A sudden draft curled around Jem's knees, tugging his attention away from the surgery to the door he and Eliza had found onto the secret stairwell, and it was she who peeped around the jamb of that camouflaged portal now.

"I know you are there, so you may as well step in."

Never one to prevaricate, Eliza emerged from the darkness shielding a candle flame. She set the candleholder on the nearest bare surface, before taking in his pensive squat position on the chair, then Linfield's draped body.

Jem regarded her over the fingers that covered his lower face even though it wrenched his heart to do so. So much loss and for so little gain. Her hair, simply knotted at the back of her neck, was coming unwound from its coil. He recalled the floral smell of it, the tickle of those strands against his body earlier, and it caused a cry to wriggle free of his throat. "Why've you come?" he asked.

"Hm." The vocalisation was accompanied by the tilting of her head towards one shoulder, which didn't provide any enlightenment. Her tongue ticked against her eye-tooth. Perhaps she was determined not to speak to him. Had probably only spoken to him earlier due to the shock of the events.

Then, "I'm sorry for your loss," she said, upending that theory. She crossed to gaze at Linfield's frozen face.

"Mine? He wasn't mine to lose." Never had been and never would be, and more importantly he hadn't desired him to be. Linfield was not the love of his life snatched away from him too young, leaving him behind to suffer the devastation. This tragedy was not that. Truth told; Linfield's death had delivered Jem's freedom.

To think, it'd all started as merrymaking. A lark to take his mind off other matters…

He held Eliza's elegant form fast in his field of vision.

…to make him forget what he couldn't have.

Oh, the hilarity, that those actions were now the thing that had torn her from him.

"Eliza, whatever you imagine you know about…" His voice cracked, preventing him from saying Linfield's name. "About me and him, it's wrong… It's more complicated… thornier."

She drifted closer to the corpse in a purposeful sort of way that compelled him onto his feet.

"You were lovers," she said. It was not a question.

He gave her a nod. There was no sense in denying it. Yes, he and Linfield had been lovers. Yes, despite everything he was hurt by Linfield's death. An ongoing relationship with Linfield might not have been something he wanted, but this was not the way it ought to have ended. The fool was too young to have been snuffed out of existence. "I ought to have told you the truth, though I imagine you can deduce for yourself why I didn't."

Her head whipped towards him. "I'm not sure that I can, Jem. I feel you've led me a merry dance, but then if one doesn't offer forever, one cannot expect to receive it, and I guess I did not demand your fidelity either."

"Eliza." It tore at the cavity inside his chest to hear her so choked. "I'd gladly commit to you forever. What you saw between Linfield and me earlier, it was not something I sought."

She gave a disbelieving tut, then shushed him with the raising of her hand. He supposed this was hardly the moment for a declaration, while standing vigil at his former lover's side. At best it would make him seem guilty… Not to mention heartless, fickle, and insincere. "I didn't set out to deceive you. It was already over between us—Linfield and I—leastways on my part."

"Was it, Jem? Was it truly? So, I didn't watch him lick your spendings from his fingers, and you weren't set for his bedchamber this evening… or rather his wife's?"

He heartily wished he could answer in the negative. "It's complicated." Although this hardly seemed the moment to get into the wherewithal of how he'd been cajoled into compliance. "You have to understand what he was like, Eliza. Possessive, spiteful… entitled. Lord, so damned entitled. There was never a damn thing he wanted he didn't get."

"Yet, you loved him."

Is that what she believed?

Jem vigorously shook his head. "Love? Lord, no. We made merry with one another for a time, but I was never in love with him. It was just… physical between us. Lust, I suppose. Foolishness. It ought never to have lasted more than a few…" Shags, was the word he refrained from saying aloud. "But he had his ways. He could be very charming, very persuasive." His shoulders slumped, feeling the sudden weight of all the promises of funding he'd put faith in, but had yet to materialise. "I wanted no part of the business with his wife. If you believe nothing else, please believe that. I was eager to be free of him."

"Free?" she echoed.

"Aye." The realisation how his words might be understood dawned. "But not like… you can't think," —he glanced at the body— "that I did this or even desired it. I didn't want him dead. I just no longer wanted the level of intimacy between us that formerly existed. This…This is…"

He hadn't the words to express the magnitude of his horror. It roiled within his belly and bile wormed its way up his throat and filled his mouth with a sickly acidic tang.

"'Tis a nightmare," she concluded for him. Her hand curled around his forearm, bringing a sensation of warmth even through the layers of his clothing. The knots in his innards loosened. They stayed posed thus for a long while, until Eliza broke the contact, and moved to the opposite side of the table on which Linfield was laid out.

"You are too shocked by this for me to believe you did away with him, Jem, but you are not the man I supposed you to be, so perhaps my judgement is suspect." He could see the shivers of anxiety racing through her limbs now, making her quake. She met his gaze for the briefest of moments, digging her teeth into her plump lower lip. "I ought to know better than to put my faith in a man. You'd think I'd have learned by now. Men can only be relied on to do the wrong thing. Always. That is always the outcome. My father and brother have both proved that a thousand times over. Why the devil I imagined you'd be different, I don't know. While you may not be a murderer, Jem Whistler, I can't see there's any future for us. I thought I could trust you, but you've been lying and misleading me from the start. I thought there was… Well, I believed…" Her limbs trembled with what he interpreted as barely contained rage. "It's of no matter. Our arrangement is done. Pray forget it ever occurred."

Forget that she had ever been in his arms, that he had tasted her, loved her. He could not. All he wanted was to be able to worship her, be with her. He had only ever hidden the truth from her so as not to drive her away, and he could not even say now that had been the wrong thing to do, given that it was his poxy relationship with Linfield that was stealing her from him now.

He ought to have admitted the truth of how he'd felt instead of agreeing to a grand passion and then concealing how vehemently he loved her. Had a man ever been so folious?

If he'd pursued her following their first meeting, instead of crawling away like a snivelling worm, then he'd never have fallen under Linfield's spell, and at least he'd have given her some agency over the matter. Instead, he'd shuttered his heart away in a box, and salved his wounds with the sort of sins that got men hanged.

"Why could you not have been honest with me, Jem?" she demanded, throwing up her hands in frustration. "If you'd admitted your attachment to Linfield, and your preferences—"

"My preferences!" He laughed, voice creaking with the strain. "Eliza, if I have any preferences, they are for you. I love you. What existed between Linfield and me was… It was… about physical pleasure, not genuine affection, and I have found it difficult enough to explain how I feel about you as it is, so that other conversation would have been nigh on impossible."

Addressing it now was every bit as traumatic as he'd ever envisaged it, but he refused to let her concoct an idyllic picture of boundless love between him and Linfield. There had never been anything even remotely romantic about it.

"You could have tried."

"Could I? And what should I have said? That it so happens that sometimes I whore myself to other men. That they ask me to fuck them, and I oblige, or horror upon horror, they fuck me. And, by the way, my current beau is none other than your dear friend's husband. But don't worry about it, I don't much care for him, and eventually he'll tire of me. It's you I want, really. Would that have made anything better? Of course, it would not. You would just have despised and been revolted by me sooner."

Tears burned his eyes by the culmination of his speech, so he snapped them closed and bowed his head. Twin rivulets escaped, nonetheless. He wiped them away hastily.

"It would have been honest."

"Shit!" he swore, nerves so wrought he couldn't help but give in to further vulgarities.

Then, "I'm not revolted by you, Jem."

That would be why her hands were curled into tight fists, and her lips into a grimace.

"I'm revolted by me," he spat, and marched himself off to the darkest corner of the room.

"What I am is hurt, and perplexed as to why you never trusted me, nor gave any hint that you felt—"

Given no hint! Good God, he had made love to her, did she imagine his passion for her faked?

Irritably, he stared at the wisps of tattered cobwebs, and the corpses of spiders shrivelled down to husks caught among those threads. Damp had lifted the paint off the walls in patches, leaving behind concentric rings of feathery flakes. Jem clawed at the front of his hair; he'd do anything to be outside of his own skin at present.

"Eliza, if you want the truth from me, then I will tell you it." Why conceal it anymore. He'd already ruined even the infinitesimal chance he'd had with her. "I've loved you from the moment we were made acquainted at Stag's Fell, but I knew there was no chance that I could win you. I thought for sure that Joshua Rushdale would, and what am I compared to the brother-in-law of a Marquis?"

"He's just a man the same as any other."

"Nothing, that's what. A near penniless dreamer who lives off his uncle's graces, who tutors idiot lords to pass exams they deserve to fail. And who isn't even much good at that." He'd spent more time fornicating with Linfield than he ever had teaching him how to conjugate Latin verbs. "I'm a sinner and a sodomite and I don't deserve you, Eliza. I'm so sorry that I'm not the man you hoped me to be, but know this, I would wed you in a heartbeat if you would have me. I know that is not the future you wish, you made that plain enough, and I would never try to gainsay your pursuit of learning, but it is the truth of how I feel."

He heard her gulp but dared not turn around.

If she wished to leave, he prayed only that she did so and spared him the look of revulsion on her face. He heard her move, then a gentle hand pressed against the centre of his back.

Warily, he turned. "Eliza?"

Her pretty face sat anguished, eyes ablaze with heat and watery with emotion. "I want to believe that all you say is truthful and sincerely meant, but—"

"I understand," he said. It was no more than he expected or deserved.

"I'm not sure you do. I'm not sure I do. Your actions and words don't map out."

Bell barrelled through the door at that moment, almost colliding with them both. He didn't seem the least bit startled to find two persons standing in his cadaver laboratory gawping at him. "I need a scalpel, the lancet's not enough." He slid sideways over to the cupboard and pulled open a drawerful of instruments. "I daren't use the pliers, I'm likely to extract half her jaw along with the tooth. There's so much pus and decay in there it's near impossible to see what I'm doing, let alone get a grip on the devil. The abscess needs to be drained first, then I can perform the extraction."

They both stared at him.

"You're extracting Mrs Honeyfield's tooth?" Eliza said. "But you're a physician!"

"Got you!" He held aloft the desired instrument. "I'll admit, Miss Wakefield, that dentistry isn't my forte. Nor do I wish it to be, but the state of matters is decidedly poor. I've seen corpses twelve month rotted with better gnashers." He clacked his teeth together for emphasis. "But there's been a death, and the servants are already stretched thin. The household simply cannot do without its housekeeper." He about turned towards the door again.

"Would it help if I assisted?" Eliza offered.

Bell levelled her with a look of intense haughtiness over his shoulder. "Draining an abscess, I can manage alone, Miss Wakefield, but if you stay right there then there's something you can help me with. Jem here is a glorious note taker, but I think unsuited to pathology."

Indeed, Jem paled and clutched the cupboard for support at the mere suggestion. "I can't stay for that."

Bell blessed him the sort of benevolent smile one would give a child before his attention fastened upon Eliza. "Given your history of extracting pistol balls from marquis's legs, one presumes—"

"I can assist, yes."

"Very good, Miss Wakefield. Very good. On this occasion I will overlook your sex."

"And I yours," she replied.

"I'm sorry," Jem muttered once Bell had returned to the other room. "I just can't."

"It's perfectly understandable."

"Is it? Bell seems to have no qualms—"

"Was Bell his lover?"

Jem swallowed hard. "No," he croaked. "No, I don't believe so. Point taken. Not that it's really about that. I doubt I could stomach it even it wasn't someone I knew. I much prefer numbers, potions at a push, but not viscera. I've seen one amputation, and that was more than enough."

"'Tis Bell's profession."

"Aye," he agreed, head still bowed. "Aye, that's true. And yours too."

She shrugged. "Not quite, but I do what I can."

A sharp trill came from next door, which they both took to mean the dentistry was done.

Bell barrelled back in, wearing a splatter of blood, which he wiped as best as he could from his waistcoat and cravat. "Gory business. I'm not a devotee." He cast a pair of stained gloves into a laundry pail. "That is by far one of the most putrid things I've done in my career. I've handled corpses in better health." His gaze strayed to the table, and he sucked his lips into a pucker on seeing them standing so close and face to face. "Whistler. Miss Wakefield. I realise that you are embroiled in making yourselves miserable with a torrid love affair, but if you could perhaps take time out of that mission, I intend to determine the cause of Lord Linfield's death now and will be needing this area to do that."

He turned to the drawer he'd left open before and began assembling a tray of instruments.

"Is Mrs Honeyfield all right?" Eliza asked, turning away from Jem to give Bell her attention, as if she hadn't been about to shatter Jem's heart into even smaller smithereens.

"Down a trio of teeth, but alive and about her business. I've prescribed a garlic-salt rinse, followed by a compress of thyme and cloves. And a tincture of opium for the pain. Necessary, I think. Despite what you think Miss Wakefield, I don't routinely dose my patients with opiates. Have I performed to your approval?"

"I'm sure Mrs Honeyfield is exceedingly grateful to you for such care."

He snorted. "Cursing and grumbling over my insensitivity and what I've prescribed, I imagine. She's some knowledge, I'll admit, but her thoughts are antiquated. Whistler, you may wish to leave, unless you mean to assist in undressing him."

"No." Jem curled his knuckles to his mouth. "Sorry, but no. I'll go next door. I don't want the vision of him laid out for you in my head," and it would be. It'd stick as a reminder of what was to come, and the images his mind conjured were gruelling enough. He glanced at Eliza, but she'd already turned away ready to assist Bell.

"Have you an apron I can borrow, Doctor Bell?"

She was still in the gown she'd worn to dinner. It was wool rather than satin, muslin, or whatever confounded thing dresses were made of, and devoid of excessive broidery, but comely nonetheless, and not something she would want ruined.

The last thing he saw as Jem hastened away was a streamer of pale cloth flying in Eliza's direction.