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Jem

"Dear God, are you really going to let him assault you with those things?" James Whistler declared, watching with rapt fascination as Ludlow Bell extracted a coterie of leeches from a glass jar in which he had them stored and set them on a saucer.

Linfield, idly sprawled across the chaise Bell had procured from the attic a few days ago to serve as a consulting couch, turned his head, only to recoil from the plate of invertebrates. "I don't see that I have much of a damned choice. Having been coerced into marrying the wench, I'm now expected to produce a brace of tailfruit." He gulped and shot an imploring glance at Jem.

"There's no use looking at me. I'm not the medical man, and if I were, I'm not sure I'd ever prescribe anything quite so revolting."

"Bodies are revolting," Bell intoned, his expression sepulchral. Jem hadn't yet decided whether it was an affectation intended to add gravitas or if the doctor spent so much time around corpses that he had one foot in the grave himself. "Diseased and injured bodies, particularly so."

Linfield wriggled backward as if he could escape into the ghastly pattern on the upholstery. "Would this be the time to point out that I'm neither?"

"Yet you are, by your own admission, afflicted by a debilitating malady."

"Acutely debilitating," Jem droned. It was hard not to feel a smattering of sympathy for the sod, though Jem was finding it equally difficult not to laugh at his lordship's predicament. It was, after all, a pickle of his own making. He could have refused to marry the girl his family had picked out. Lord knows why he hadn't. Linfield wasn't usually one to docilely bow to pressure. If he had one strength, it was that he was rarely galled or swayed, and while his opinions weren't always based on sound rhetoric, they were always his own.

Bell's shadow fell across the chaise. "You'll need to lower your falls."

Linfield reached for the fastening but showed a deal of hesitation over slipping the buttons. "You're sure this will work?" He gave doctor and the saucer both sickly glances, and rightly so, given the delicate part of his anatomy they were headed for.

Bell captured one of the wrigglers between a pair of forceps. "There are no guarantees in this life of anything other than eventual death. However, this treatment is based on firm scientific principles. Erections depend on blood flow, and one thing leeches are very good at is drawing blood."

"That's because they bite, with teeth." Jem flashed his own pearly whites. "Up to sixty of them so I've heard." It wasn't that he'd made a study of leeches, but he knew a fellow who had.

"You're not helping," Linfield whined.

"If you prefer, we can forgo the treatment, and go back to playing cards or whatever other vice you might care to entertain us with." Bell said.

Relief released the tension from his lordships jaw. His eyes lost their nervous squint. Hope blazed like a sentinel beacon.

"That is, if you don't mind remaining a bungler."

And was snuffed out.

Jem snorted. The situation was positively ridiculous, albeit unfortunate, given the entire point of marriage was procreation, and Linfield's prick had evidently lost all its vigour the moment he said I do.

Bell, too, was fighting off a smirk and catastrophically failing. Linfield swung a fist at one then the other of them.

"Oh, yes, it's hilarious. Let's laugh at the man who was doing no more than minding his own business, and had a lass thrust on him without so much as an opinion asked and is now stuck in fumbler's hall because of it."

"Had his arm twisted right up his back, he did," Jem said to Bell over the top of Linfield's head.

"I know, I had to treat the sprain."

"You're devils, both of you. I should dismiss you both." He smacked them both, Jem on the wrist and Bell the thigh. It did nothing to kill their humour. They both knew he wouldn't send them away. He couldn't afford to. They were his only hope, albeit for ostensibly different reasons.

"You didn't have to wed the woman," Jem said.

"You say that, but you've no papa breathing down your neck, threatening to disinherit you if you don't comply."

Jem, whose parents had both departed this life when he was a boy of eight, took this statement with the sort of stoicism necessitated by an acquaintance with Linfield. The young viscount was an entitled, indolent rogue, and he said that with as much affection in his heart as he could muster, but truly, he was the sort Jem had ruthlessly avoided throughout his own studies, and regularly had nightmares about being allowed to run the country. The man had barely a bean of sense, no head for numbers, only a smattering of Latin, no Greek and maintained a mien of complete lassitude, stirring only when there was mischief to manage or a wager to make. How they had come to be acquaintances was a lengthy tale, but reduced to its simplest form, Jem had been employed by Linfield's papa, the Earl of Bellingbrook, as a tutor for his wayward eldest son. Five years of Oxford education was deemed quite sufficient. It was time he shouldered the burden of responsibility, passed the confounded exam, produced an heir, and got on with learning the ropes of managing the ancestral estate. Not necessarily in that order, but now, while the earl still had wits enough about him to set his son right. Jem couldn't fault Bellingbrook's logic. If left unsupervised, Linfield would reduce the earldom to penury inside a decade, which would be an accomplishment indeed given that the family owned half of Lincolnshire and stretches of Rutland and Yorkshire too.

If not for the tutoring, they would never have met. Jem wouldn't have got sucked into Linfield's set, or come to be wintering in the wilds, or endured a host of other questionable activities which took him away from his studies. Still, he couldn't deny there were benefits to the association too. Trailing after Linfield reminded him of his younger years, constantly surrounded by his cousins and being embroiled in endless adventures and escapades. It'd reminded him that life didn't always have to be serious, and that joy could be found in unlooked-for places.

His gaze fell on Linfield's face again. He was hardly the handsomest man he'd seen, being somewhat weak of chin, but he had eyes that were forest green and flashed like the summer peeking through leafy bowers, and hair that stood out from his head like puffs of smoke. Jem curled his hand over Linfield's shoulder, whereupon the other man clasped his fingers tight.

"Ready?" Bell lowered the first of the leeches.

They were some of the most disgusting creatures Jem had ever come across, right up there with slugs, centipedes, and weevils. Likely, there were more repulsive creatures on this Earth, but fortuitously, he'd avoided encountering them.

"Jem," Linfield moaned. He squeezed Jem's fingers tight while he loosened his front fall with the other hand. "Say something. Distract me."

"Like what? This is making my eyes water, and I've the good sense not to let one near bare skin." He continued to squint and clench his thighs as Bell positioned the beast. Truly, one had to wonder if it was worth it. There had to be other means, a kinder means of curing impotency, or performance anxiety, or whatever affliction it was Linfield claimed to be suffering. Maybe if he drank a little less, or a little more, or thought of his wife as something other than a shackle, then he could fix his tallywhacker and make this whole procedure entirely unnecessary.

"Oh!" Linfield turned his head to look at the leech sitting on his cock. "I thought it would hurt, but there wasn't even a pinch."

"It's still disgusting, and I remain unconvinced as to the efficacy," Jem said.

"Are you a physician?" Bell placed the remaining leeches. Four… five of them in total, which seemed unduly excessive considering Linfield wasn't especially well endowed, and he was currently as limp as a wet stocking.

"I prefer to stick to the mechanics of iron and steel to that of flesh," Jem retorted. Numbers were a deal less messy and rarely drew blood.

"Then I'll thank you not to persist in offering your opinions."

Bell could be a soulless killjoy.

While Jem might not care for flesh-tailoring, that didn't mean he wasn't intrigued by the mechanics of it. That said, he wasn't desperate for a lesson on leeches. Actually, he was rather surprised to find them in Bell's repository, given his reputation as a proponent of modernised medicine. Leeches were the province of quacks, along with old theories of imbalanced humours and cupping.

"I suppose the theory is that the little devils draw out the bad blood, allowing the good to flow and produce a rise, or is it just a matter of sucking fluid into his cock? If it's the latter, I have to say there are more pleasant ways—"

"No," Linfield released his grip on Jem's hand in order to hold up his own, thus stopping Bell before he replied and got into the guts of the theory, and Jem from expanding on alternative means of creating inflation. "I don't care to know. It doesn't matter how it works, as long as it does. The pair of you are dull enough with your constant scientific blathering without it involving my cock." He flicked a glance up at Bell. "I don't feel it doing anything."

"They've not been on you a minute."

Linfield huffed, then settled himself more comfortably. He closed his eyes.

Jem used the moment of quiet to rub the residual ache from his fingers. They'd been crushed almost to numbness by Linfield's grip. "I've one question," he said to Bell.

Go on, the doctor nodded.

"I can't help wondering… Assuming this here treatment works, surely… Well, is it a temporary fix?"

"Erections are by their nature temporary. The aim isn't to give him permanent priapism."

"No, no… of course. But… if it's temporary, then how does it help him to get it up for his wife?"

It seemed Bell didn't have a straight answer for that, given he found a sudden interest in rearranging the shelves of pills and potions he'd accumulated since they'd set up at Cedarton. "It'll… um, well, it'll unblock the mechanism."

"Assuming it was blocked?"

"It was blocked," Bell said, and Linfield waggled his noggin in agreement.

"Couldn't get it to half-mast, never mind full tilt. Bloody disaster of a wedding night. Had hoped I could be done with the whole thing by now, duty done and all that."

"I feel that was a tad optimistic," Jem said. "I think it's more usual for it to take a couple of attempts, or in some cases, many."

"And what would you know of such matters?" Linfield's jade-green gaze pinned him with an inquisitor's zeal. "Proper studious little saint weren't you before we got our hands on you? Where would your knowledge of such carnal matter come from?"

Jem surrendered, offering no explanation and no resistance. It was a topic fraught with peril, and he had no desire to quarrel or linger on the matter. The fact that he knew he was right, helped immensely. He might not have spent his Oxford days roistering and frequenting whore-houses, but he wasn't wholly unacquainted with womenkind. The same could not be said of his lordship.

~Ж~

Jem had been tottering on the edge of a doze when a knock on the door brought him to. Watching leeches suck blood had turned out to be as dreary dull as watching paint dry. Bell turned to answer, but Jem leapt up. "I'll get it." He hobbled across the room, thighs stiffly protesting having been tensed for so long. Usually, he'd have thrown the door wide as was his fashion, but with Linfield prone upon the couch with his tallywhacker out, he strove for a less boisterous approach.

"Lady Linfield," he enunciated, throwing a glance back into the room, before slipping out and pulling the door too, so that only the presence of his fingers kept it from shutting. "Are you looking for Linfield? He's a tad indisposed right now."

"Oh!" Her ladyship, a demure, strawberry-blonde with a thousand freckles, clasped her hands together and blinked at him owlishly for a moment. "No, we weren't looking for anyone, but the door was closed, and I know Doctor Bell is so particular, so it seemed prudent to knock. Eliza wanted some things, you see. For a remedy. Mrs Honeyfield has the most awful toothache, and—"

"Eliza?"

Jem's attention slid past Lady Linfield to the turn of the corridor. He had not seen the other figure initially, her form concealed by the thickness of the shadows in this part of the house. Bell's suite occupied a stretch of the lower floor accessed only via a servant's tunnel beneath the wreckage of the old drawing room. The physician had chosen the location precisely because of its separation from the main body of the house. Servants, he'd observed, did not fare well with the notion of corpses being stored and dissected in the places of their employment, and given Cedarton's whispered-about history, not alarming the few servants they'd managed to secure was rather a priority. On that basis alone, he had not thought to look for another figure. It was surprising enough to find Lady Linfield before him. He'd especially not imagined he'd find this particular woman blinking at him in reciprocal wonder.

"Eliza Wakefield. What are you—? This is quite the last place I expected to see you."

"Mr Whistler." She came forward to him, holding out her hands so that he might take hold of them, while they both looked one another over. The contact sent a frisson of heat straight to his groin, and with it an entanglement of memories and daydreams. She smiled impishly, "You know, that rather implies that you were expecting to see me someplace else."

"Having made your acquaintance, I freely admit I wasn't averse to the idea of doing so again."

Jem dropped a bow over her hands, a broad smile stretching his cheeks into aches. Rakishly, he planted a kiss on her bare knuckles and his pulse quickened at her gasp. He'd thought of her often, probably too often for his own good. Their acquaintance over the summer had sadly been too short-lived for him to have made anything of it, but that didn't stop him imagining how things might have been if time and circumstances had been on their side. The haze, the passion of those summer days made his heart swell, and wakened parts shrivelled by fear at what was going on in the room beyond. His gaze lingered on her fingers, and finding no wedding band, muscles he hardly knew he'd held clenched, relaxed. It seemed his friend and rival had not pipped him to the post. He'd not forgotten the kiss she'd granted. First he, then Joshua, thus ensuring complete fairness.

"Mr Whistler, if that is so"—Eliza said, a merry old glint dancing in her eyes—"you might stoop to replying to the correspondence I sent you."

"Ah." He offered up a sheepish grin. "I confess my laxity in such matters. I am a dreadful correspondent."

"Letters," Jane interjected. "What is this?" Her lips quirked into a pursed smile before she levelled a meaningful stare in Eliza's direction. "How exactly come you to be acquainted with my husband's tutor?"

"His tutor?"

"As you see me," Jem replied, making another bow. "And allow me to enlighten you, Lady Linfield. My aunt and uncle, Sir Thomas and Lady Lartington, were good enough to introduce us at Stags Fell last summer."

"And Jem was good enough to show me both his work sheds and to converse with me about mathematics," Eliza added. "He's fanatical about steam engines. Did you know that, Jane?"

"I confess I didn't. Nor did I realise it was something that interested you."

"I'm woefully ignorant about them."

The statement prompted a cough from Jem. "Not so very woefully. I recall you being a willing and very able student." He looked her over, failing to take in the details of her appearance, instead seeing her as she'd been, with a borrowed leather apron tied over her skirts, and a smudge of soot on her nose, side by side with him and Joshua in the workshop at Stags Fell. Her delicate hands had been covered in grease that day, and her rose-scent entwined by the tang of metal filings. They'd both been utterly smitten.

"Well, I confess I was sorry to leave for I did have half a mind to petition for membership of the Puffing Devils. Did you ever solve the conundrum you were working on?"

"Hm, not as yet."

"The Puffing whats?" Jane interjected.

"His society of gentlemen engineers," Eliza replied, without breaking eye contact with him.

"Forgive me," he mouthed. "How did I not know that you were to join us here?"

"Eliza, should I be the one to point out that you are neither a gentleman nor an engineer?" Jane remarked, though neither other party paid her any heed.

Eliza's attention was raptly fastened on Jem. "I had no notion of your presence either, but it's a joyous surprise."

"Aye, it is that. But tell me how? How comes it to be?" He looked back and forth betwixt the two ladies, seeking answers.

"Jane and I were at school together. You're looking at the co-founders of the Women's Natural Philosophical Fellowship."

Jane swished aside the remark. "More like the founder and her simpering devotee. I never could get my head around most of your arguments, even though I was thoroughly bewitched by them."

Eliza jeed her head, dismissing her friend's remarks as poppycock.

"You know it's the truth. I've not looked at a sum nor read anything that wasn't a novel or attached to a fashion plate since we left school, Eliza. But I see that Mr Whistler falls prey to the gravitational effect you exert. She is so very engaging, is she not?"

"What? Oh." Jem relinquished his grip upon Eliza's hands, which he had clung to far too vigorously and for far too long, judging by Lady Linfield's remarks. While Jem mourned the loss of contact, Eliza clapped her hands together, glee painting a fresh glow across her cheeks as she turned to her friend.

"See, you say that, yet you still recall Mr Newton's theory."

Jane rolled her eyes toward the ceiling before casting her attention to the door once more. "Only in the vaguest sense. I couldn't scrounge together the details no matter how hard I tried."

"It relates force and mass," Jem elaborated.

The lady only shook her head at his explanation.

"The one is directly proportional to the mass of the other and inversely proportional to the square of the distances between their centres."

Bewilderment swept across his hostess's face, while Eliza clapped again in delight. "Oh, how I have missed you, and I know I shouldn't say it, but there it is, and I shall very much look forward to hearing about all your progress and new theorems, but we did come with a purpose. I wonder, if we might…" She cast a meaningful look towards the door at his rear.

"Ah, yes, you wished to see Bell. You're in good health? No—you already said you require a remedy."

"Not for myself. I'm very well, thank you. It's for the housekeeper."

Jem supposed there must be one but couldn't rightly recall having met her. If he was quite honest, he couldn't recall much at present. That was the effect of Eliza Wakefield's luminescence. He quite forgot himself. "I'll fetch Bell."

He turned, only for Eliza to grasp his arm, stilling him instantly. A touch through clothing should not affect him so greatly, but his innards turned loops.

"No-no don't bother him. I simply need a few ingredients. I can easily gather them and mix it myself."

She took a step forward, leading him, her hand outstretched to raise the latch.

"Ah!" Reality burst through his lovelorn haze. He moved with all speed, inserting himself between Eliza and the door, acutely cognisant of what was occurring on the other side. Even ignoring the fact that Linfield was stretched on a couch with his privates on display, that there were issues with his lordship's knob wasn't something he'd want getting out, particularly to his bride. Additionally, there was the fact that Jem was wretchedly ill prepared to have the hereto unconnected parts of his life collide. "You know, now isn't really a good time. Do you have a list? Maybe I could gather—"

"It really will only take a moment." She patted his hand, clearly expecting him to move aside.

Jem stood firm.

"The thing is—" He chewed on the words. "Bell, he's—well, he's in the middle of an experiment. Vital that it's not disturbed."

"Experiment?"

Of course, her eyes lit.

"What manner of experiment?"

Lady Linfield groaned. "Eliza!" She clasped her by the hand and tried to turn her about. "You're not to tell her, Mr Whistler. I invited her here to be my companion, not to lose her to whatever nonsense it is you gentlemen find to do down here. I've heard enough talk of fish heads and entrails this last week. I had hoped additional female company might make for a little less of it."

"Entrails?" Eliza hadn't budged an inch despite Jane's continued tugging. "And fish heads."

"I did tell you he was an anatomist."

"Yes, and you know that I'm positively enthralled. I must say that Cedarton is far exceeding my expectations. Jane, you implied I would be quite sorry to visit such a place, but why if it isn't filled with the most intriguing and engaging characters." She turned her smiles on him. "Jem, you can't think me the least bit squeamish. Let me in at once."

"Definitely not, on both counts."

Eliza was brimming with so much barely contained joy, one might assume she'd just received a proposal from the man she'd hoped would marry her.

The matter was made moot by Bell wrenching the door open from the inside. His lanky form filled the space and swept over the assembled persons. "Is there some issue here?"

"Doctor Bell, I assume," Eliza said, peering around Jem and offering her hand to the cadaverous brute. "Miss Wakefield. Pleased to make your acquaintance. I was wondering if I might bother you for a few things—supplies to make up a remedy, and Jem says you are in the midst of an experiment. I should be honoured if you'd allow me to observe, I'm most fascinated by such things."

The luscious curls of Bell's full-bottomed wig trembled, though whether in horror at the thought of a woman entering his surgery or mirth over the suggestion that she might relish looking at Linfield's leech dotted cock was uncertain.

"Most assuredly not, madam," he replied. "If on the other hand, someone is ill, and you require my—"

Jem raised a warning hand. "It's the housekeeper, a minor ailment, nothing that can't wait."

"I'm perfectly able," Eliza stuck her nose in the air. "If you'll just allow me—"

"No." Bell rasped.

"—I can have the remedy mixed in a matter of minutes."

"That really won't be possible, Miss Wakefield, was it? You see, I don't allow women in my surgery. And I certainly don't allow them to meddle with the preparations I put a great deal of effort into assembling. If Mrs Honeyfield requires any treatment, I will see to it myself. Good day now." He closed the door in her face.

"Well of all the rude…" She slapped her hand against the door.

"Eliza," Jane beseeched.

"How dare he treat me…us…you like that? This is your house."

"And my husband has given Bell these rooms. We should leave him to whatever it is that he's about. Eliza, I did warn you that this would be the likely outcome."

In other circumstances, Jem would gallantly have risen to Eliza's assistance. Bell, like many a man of learning, could be hopelessly backwards over the matter of female intelligence, seeing them as inferior creatures, mentally and constitutionally suited only to child-rearing and housekeeping tasks, and on par with domestic pets. When Jem had raised the notion of there being lady physicians in the future, the phlegm explosion had necessitated three clean shirts. However, presently, it seemed wiser to let his bullishness stand for the sake of expediency and Linfield's dignity.

"Let us go now. It can't be far off time we changed for dinner. It was most kind of you to offer to help Mrs Honeyfield, but I'm sure Doctor Bell has it in hand, and I didn't mean for you to come here to Cedarton to administer treatments to my staff. I desired your company. Your friendship. And you to have a restful break."

"Of course. Forgive me." Eliza turned to Jane with a bright smile plastered across her face, and they looped their arms together. "You know I never did have the knack of idleness."

"I know it. I know it well, my friend."