The Death of Jane Lawrence E-Book

Caitlin Starling

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Seitenzahl: 585

Beschreibung

A haunting new imagining of gothic horror set in a dark-mirror version of post-war England that is not to be read alone at night. For fans of Crimson Peak, Shirley Jackson, Mexican Gothic and Rebecca.Practical, unassuming Jane Shoringfield has done the calculations, and decided that the most secure path forward is this: a husband, in a marriage of convenience, who will allow her to remain independent and occupied with meaningful work. Her first choice, the dashing but reclusive doctor Augustine Lawrence, agrees to her proposal with only one condition: that she must never visit Lindridge Hall, his crumbling family manor outside of town.Yet on their wedding night, an accident strands her at his door in a pitch-black rainstorm, and she finds him changed. Gone is the bold, courageous surgeon, and in his place is a terrified, paranoid man―one who cannot tell reality from nightmare, and fears Jane is an apparition, come to haunt him. By morning, Augustine is himself again, but Jane knows something is deeply wrong at Lindridge Hall, and with the man she has so hastily bound her safety to.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Copyright

Title Page

Leave us a Review

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter Zero

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Longlisted for the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Novel, 2021

“With The Death of Jane Lawrence, Caitlin Starling establishes herself as a queen of gothic horror. I absolutely loved this smart, compelling book about the weight and consequence of love, and how far we are willing to go in its service.”

Kat Howard,

Alex Award-winning author of An Unkindness of Magicians

“Don’t read this one alone at night; Caitlin Starling has done it again. Unsettling, atmospheric, and downright brutal at times, The Death of Jane Lawrence will continue to haunt you long after you leave Lindridge Hall… if the house lets you leave, that is.”

Genevieve Gornichec,

author of The Witch’s Heart

“With labyrinthine twists and characters to fall for, Starling’s gothic horror is a tale that haunts you even after you’re done. The Death of Jane Lawrence is Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell with sharp teeth and a Crimson Peak you’re scared to look in the eye.”

Linden A. Lewis,

author of The First Sister

“A sublime Gothic romance with bonesaw prose and a spreading stain of cosmic horror.”

Seth Dickinson,

author of The Traitor Baru Cormorant

“A magnificent ode to gothic horror, Starling meticulously unravels beloved tropes to create a horrifically-satisfying creation of her own. I loved every moment of this unsettling and brilliant tale!”

Erin Craig,

New York Times bestselling author of House of Salt and Sorrows

“A keen, visceral study in dread, The Death of Jane Lawrence is a harrowing plunge into the beating heart of hope and madness. The occult magic of Lindridge Hall captured me from the first page, and I never wanted it to let me go. Starling is a master of mind games with a twisted talent for dragging her characters through hell. I will read anything she writes next.”

Kate Dollarhyde,

Nebula award-winning game writer

“Elegantly atmospheric and grotesquely visceral, The Death of Jane Lawrence both haunts and tears open the ghost to show the gory insides. I loved every page!”

C.A. Higgins,

author of Lightless

“A sublime Gothic romance with bonesaw prose and a spreading stain of cosmic horror.”

Seth Dickinson,

author of The Traitor Baru Cormorant

“Inspired by Crimson Peak, the horror in this gothic set in an alternate postwar England subtly increases as the novel progresses, unease seeping into the pages.”

Buzzfeed

“A delicious Gothic romance… It has to walk the line between romance and horror and not flinch away from either.

The Death of Jane Lawrence is up to this task… By the time the book reached that point of no return, I was so invested that I would have followed Jane into the very depths of hell.”

NPR.org

“Starling is one of the new leading voices in horror.”

Locus Magazine

“Intense and amazing! It’s like Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell meets Mexican Gothic meets Crimson Peak.”

BookRiot

“A jewel box of a Gothic novel.”

New York Times Book Review

The Death of Jane Lawrence

Print edition ISBN: 9781803360515

E-book edition ISBN: 9781803360522

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First Titan edition: September 2022

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

© Caitlin Starling 2022. All Rights Reserved

Caitlin Starling asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

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For the observer

Dr. Augustine Lawrence’s cuffs were stained with blood and his mackintosh had failed against the persistent drizzle. He looked damp, miserable, and scared.

Of her.

Jane Shoringfield couldn’t take her eyes off him, even though her attention was clearly overwhelming. This was the man she intended to marry, if he’d have her. If she could convince him.

He was frozen in the doorway to her guardian’s study, and she was similarly still just behind the desk. Even from here, she could see that she had several inches on him in height, that his dark hair was full, slightly waved, and going silver already at his left temple, and that his wide eyes were a murky green, and gentle, but almost sad in the wrong light.

She hadn’t expected him to be handsome.

“Doctor!”

Her guardian’s voice boomed down the hallway, and the man startled, turning to face it. “Mr. Cunningham,” he greeted in turn. “I’m sorry, I’m afraid I lost track of your maid, and—”

“No matter, no matter. How good of you to join us! I was afraid you might change your mind.”

Jane couldn’t see Mr. Cunningham, but she could picture him perfectly: white hair carefully combed back, a fine but comfortable suit, bright brown eyes. Short and narrow, almost too narrow for his orator’s voice and charisma.

“I’m afraid I may not be the best or most decorous company,” the doctor said, hazarding a furtive glance back at her that lasted only one appraising second. “One too many house calls. I wasn’t able to stop back at the surgery.”

That explained the state of his cuffs, at least; but that meant he wasn’t early. Jane looked at the clock and winced. An hour had passed while she wasn’t looking. She wasn’t ready. She was still wearing her reading glasses, and she could feel a smudge of ink on her temple. Mr. Cunningham’s account books lay spread out before her.

She was not making the best first impression to aid her suit.

“Don’t worry,” Mr. Cunningham said, closer now but still out of sight. “You will find that this isn’t a peacocking courtship.”

The doctor’s cheeks pinked. “I understand, but I have given it some thought, and I must—”

“Before you continue,” her guardian said, cutting him off, “I want to remind you that you have not heard her logic yet. I think you should.”

It had been Mr. Cunningham who had presented the match to Dr. Lawrence last week on her behalf, when the doctor had come round to evaluate his lungs in preparation for the Cunninghams’ great move to Camhurst, capital of Great Breltain and a full day’s ride away from Larrenton. However her guardian had framed the proposition, it had been enough to get the doctor here, now, today.

Looking very pale and very nervous. Looking like he was about to flee.

“Please do let me explain,” Jane said, grateful that her voice came out more than a whisper. The doctor turned to her again, lips slightly parted in surprise, whatever protest he’d been about to voice—whateverdemurring—silenced.

Mr. Cunningham laughed and appeared in the doorway at last. “Ah, that explains what waylaid you.”

“I apologize, I hadn’t meant to… spy,” Dr. Lawrence said, weakly. “Miss Shoringfield.”

“Dr. Lawrence,” she said, inclining her head in greeting. “Will you allow me at least to make my argument in full?”

The doctor looked between her and Mr. Cunningham and recoiled, the reflex of a cornered animal.

She was coming at this all wrong; she should have paid better mind to the time, met him in the sitting room as Mrs. Cunningham had planned out the night before. But they were here, now.

Save me, she thought at Mr. Cunningham.

“The brandy,” he said, not hearing her desperate thought, “is in the sideboard.”

And then, chuckling, he was gone.

Jane and the doctor regarded each other again across the space between door and desk, and Jane gestured, as gently as she could, to a chair. The doctor hesitated, but at last took a few tentative steps into the study. He didn’t sit. Jane turned from him and busied herself pouring two glasses.

As her hands moved, she summoned up the steps of her argument, and selected, for her opening, the strongest and least specific to her situation. “Marriage is, at heart, a business arrangement, not one of hearts or souls,” she said, without turning. “It is best to discuss it plainly from the first.”

She could hear his startled exhale.

Still too much. And yet she didn’t know how else to approach this. She had already botched whatever chance at a gentle introduction they might have had.

Keeping her back to him as she stoppered the decanter, she continued: “I have evaluated our options thoroughly, Dr. Lawrence. Leaving aside dances, which I suspect you have no time for, and childhood acquaintances, whom I haven’t seen in many years, there are few opportunities for courtship for us.

“So I start from a premise of shared goals.”

She listened for his fleeing footsteps.

They didn’t come.

“Shared goals,” he said instead. “And what shared goals do we have? We have never met.”

There was no derision in his tone, no mockery. He sounded wary, but curious. She seized on it and turned back to him. She came around the desk, holding out his glass from a respectable distance. He did not retreat; instead, he took it from her, careful to avoid brushing fingers.

“We are both unmarried, and at an age where that is beginning to raise questions,” she said. “A man of your standing and appearance could choose whichever woman he wanted. You haven’t. For whatever reason, you do not wish for a normal marriage. I’m not asking for one.”

She watched him, trying to measure his response. At first, there was something very much like want in his eyes, but then it was replaced by the fear again.

Why?

She took a small sip of her brandy to keep herself from fidgeting.

“I cannot marry you,” he said.

The brandy burned in her throat.

“I don’t mean it as a slight against you, Miss Shoringfield,” he added. “But while your logic is—impressive, it is not appropriate for me to take a wife. Any wife.”

“You are unmarried,” Jane repeated, confused.

“I am not married,” he agreed. His jaw tensed as he considered his next words. The fear in his eyes had been replaced with something else. Something more distant, more pained. “Please, Miss Shoringfield. I understand that you have thought through your proposal at length, but I do not wish to cause you more pointless effort. I cannot accept.”

The polite, proper thing to do was to apologize, accept his refusal, and subside. Approach the next man on the list she had drafted, another who met her criteria, who might be more amenable. She needed to sit, and to smile, and yet she found she could do neither.

“Dr. Lawrence,” she said, gripping her glass tightly, “please.”

He ducked his head.

“My parents died when I was very young, when Ruzka began gassing Camhurst during the war,” she started, then stopped, hands shaking. She hadn’t meant to say it; she never spoke of her parents. But her honesty worked a change in him; he lifted his chin, brows drawing together in concern. She pushed forward. “They left me in Mr. Cunningham’s care, along with an annuity to support me. Here in Larrenton, it has been more than enough to cover my costs, even as I’ve grown into marriageable age. There is, however, no dowry, and now the Cunninghams leave for Camhurst within the month.”

She fought to keep her voice even as she spoke.

“Were I to accompany them—and they have requested that I do just that—my expenses would outstrip my annuity even if I were to largely avoid society, which would be impossible given Mr. Cunningham’s new judgeship.” And she would be surrounded by shell-scarred buildings and new construction that tried to replace what had been destroyed, none of which she could stomach even the thought of. But that was too personal to share, by far. “They are willing to pay the difference, but I am not willing to let them.”

The doctor’s mind worked. “But as you can’t remain here unmarried…”

“Exactly. If I’m to stay, I have to find a husband, or things will be quite a bit more difficult than even the capital would be.”

He shook his head, finally looking at her again. “I understand your plight, and I feel for you, Miss Shoringfield, but you do have other options. Surely there are other options. You are…” His cheeks colored, and she remembered again how he’d looked at her from the doorway. Fear, fear that had been caused by her proposal hanging above his head like a sword, knowing he would have to decline. But perhaps it wasn’t justfear—or if it had been fear, it had been fear of a different sort than she’d first thought.

His throat bobbed as he swallowed. “I can’t imagine you will have much difficulty finding a more suitable husband.”

“You are a perfectly suitable husband,” she said, steeling herself and stepping forward again. She could hear his breathing, they were so close. The wariness in his eyes was entirely gone now, replaced by fascination. “And I am not asking you for charity, Dr. Lawrence. I have skills that would be useful to you.”

“Skills?”

“I attended Sharpton School for Girls until I was fifteen,” she said. “And I have kept Mr. Cunningham’s books for the last six years. I maintain the ledger, I work with the banks, I help him set his fees and collect on them. I can only imagine work of the same sort must be done at a surgery.”

He sucked in a surprised breath. “You weren’t speaking in metaphors when you said this was a business arrangement.”

“My remaining annuity funds are not so large as to directly benefit you, I suspect,” she said. “But I do bring mathematical skill, and a methodical nature. I can run the business of being a doctor, and you can focus on the medicine.”

“You know nothing about a doctor’s life, about the business or the medicine.”

“I can learn. I want to learn.”

He hesitated, stunned, then fumbled out, “There is blood, and great sadness, and terror. Being part of it—it won’t be easy.” But it sounded less like a warning and more like a test. An invitation. “It is a calling, not a skill.”

“Ledgers and sums are my calling, just as medicine is yours. The rest I can learn, when the most important element is fulfilled.”

“It is thankless, and I often won’t be home. Night calls, and—”

“But if this is a business arrangement,” she interrupted, “then it is more employment than marriage. I won’t mind your absence. You are suitable.”

She had brought him to social concerns, down from professional; she was making progress. She held her breath.

He took a hasty swallow of brandy. He glanced toward the ceiling. Then he looked back at her, and said, “You would be alone. I spend my nights at my family home, several miles out of town. It would be an inviolable condition, that you never join me there.”

She nearly fell to her knees in relief. He had begun to consider. He hadn’t rejected her, not outright, not this time. She remained standing, but only barely, and managed to smile. “As I said—you are perfectly suitable.”

From the way his brow creased, she’d surprised him again. “You knew?”

“I have heard rumors,” she said. He had only been in practice in Larrenton for a little over two months, and Jane was no gossipmonger, but the Cunninghams always knew something about everybody in town. “Everybody knows you employ a runner at the surgery to fetch you, though most still think it’s because you’re often out on house calls at night. Only a few have noticed the extent of the waiting time, and how it’s consistently necessary to wait.”

“You are observant,” he said.

She laughed.

The sound prompted a final transformation in him. The fear left him entirely, and he regarded her, shoulders straight.

“I should not marry you,” he protested once more, but it was perfunctory.

“A chance,” she said. “Give me a chance. Let me prove to you my worth. I will meet your conditions, if you will meet mine.”

He thought a moment, then nodded. “Very well. Come by the surgery. See what it is like in the particulars, instead of the abstract, before we make any binding decisions. There will likely be blood, and certainly hard work.”

“When shall I come by?”

“Tomorrow, midmorning. Wear clothing you don’t mind getting soiled. I’ll have you take a look at it all, the patient files, the finances, and you can sit in on any calls that come in. While sums may be your calling, you will still need to become something of a nurse, in case anybody arrives at the surgery in my absence.”

“Of course,” she said. “Tomorrow, then, Dr. Lawrence. I shall attempt to prove myself. And you can do your best to scare me off.”

Jane made her way quickly across the center of town toward Dr. Lawrence’s surgery with the Cunninghams’ maid, Ekaterina, at her heels. Ekaterina was valiantly keeping up one side of a conversation: she had lived in Camhurst before coming to Larrenton, and was delighted to be returning, and with an improved position. Jane couldn’t blame her—not everybody in town was ready to trust a Ruzkan girl, not here, not even so many years after the war—but she could not summon up the slightest interest.

She was entirely fixated on thoughts of Dr. Lawrence and his surgery.

She’d told him the truth, the night before, about her reasons for marrying him. She was fairly certain he’d believed her. That was nice. Most men would have looked for an alternate cause, if Mrs. Cunningham was to be believed. And most men would not have accepted her eagerness to keep the marriage as a business arrangement, eschewing all the expected intimacies.

And yet it had been that premise that had won him. Miracle of miracles!

She’d told herself, when she realized that marrying was soon going to be the best option for her, that she could only marry if that distance was maintained. She wanted courteous indifference, not unwanted touches and a passel of children. She was not built for intimacy; she was built for numbers. For work.

Her guardians, the Cunninghams, were not built as she was. They had always been entirely proper in front of her, but Jane saw the way Mr. Cunningham looked at his wife, saw the shared easy touches as they passed in the hall. When they’d taken her in at her parents’ request, at the height of the war with their youngest child nearly full grown, they were still obviously in love. Jane admired them for it, but she was fully aware that the odds of her finding anything like they had were very low. She was not skilled at forming the sorts of emotional connections that affection seemed to require. No, a normal marriage was not for her. It would leave her harried and uncomfortable and resentful.

But some kind of marriage was a necessity, and so she had contrived to find a husband who would allow her to remain much as she had always been. And Dr. Lawrence, who lived well out of town and had to keep somebody in his place at his surgery, was impossible perfection. A man who wasn’t married, despite being in his early thirties, despite being a doctor, despite being, in his own way, quite handsome—a man like that had a reason as good as hers. It put them on equal footing, poised to make a mutually beneficial bargain.

“Miss Shoringfield!” Ekaterina called from behind her. Jane looked over her shoulder. She’d somehow managed to put a great deal of distance between herself and the girl over the last few streets. Jane readied an apology.

Ekaterina reached her side, smiling up at her. “You certainly are excited, ma’am.”

Her cheeks heated. Ekaterina had come to work for the Cunninghams only six months ago, but she had settled in quickly. To another woman, Ekaterina might have felt almost like a sister instead of a maid. She was certainly amiable enough.

The only problem was that Jane didn’t know how to be friendly. She could be polite, and kind, and could engage over work, but small talk had always been a struggle. Friendship had always been a struggle.

“I think,” Jane said, resuming her walk at a much more reasonable pace, “you will find the surgery very boring.”

“Oh, I had not planned to go in with you,” Ekaterina said cheerfully. “I’ll get the shopping in, then perhaps walk you home after?”

“That sounds appropriate,” Jane said. A younger, richer woman might have needed a chaperone, but the rest of the world had changed greatly over the last few decades. And besides—this was a business arrangement, not a courtship.

They walked the last few streets together. Between the Cunninghams’ home and the surgery were mainly private residences with a few shops on the ground floor. Almost all had been built at least a century before, though a few were newer, made of smooth concrete instead of old brick or stone, and lacking the worn sculptures on their lintels that people had once carved to protect their homes. The Cunninghams had one such figure, a face surrounded by wings that roosted just above the front door, and as a child, Jane had been fascinated with it. It was so similar to the carved downspouts that had loomed above her in Camhurst, but the ones she’d grown up with had been painted. Theirs was varnished wood.

She and Ekaterina turned the last corner toward the surgery, which put them once more on one of Larrenton’s main thoroughfares, alive with business in the clear weather. The street bustled with a mix of farmworkers, shoppers and shopkeeps, and visitors from farther afield. Larrenton was small enough to have only one doctor, but it was still a thriving town. Across the way, a small cluster of black-clad undertakers alighted from a retrofitted convent carriage and filed into a boardinghouse foyer.

Jane watched them a moment, their confident movements and swinging skirts. If the Cunninghams hadn’t taken her in, she might well have been one of their number. They were no longer dedicated to faith and ritual, but such women had always taken care of the dead, and many orphans had found sanctuary in their order.

She might have enjoyed that life.

But Ekaterina had not stopped to watch, and Jane had to hurry to catch up. They passed only a few more buildings before they reached the surgery. She slowed to a bare crawl as she approached the door, then turned and looked at Ekaterina. “Come by in a few hours? The work will be done by then, I suspect.” Her untrained part, at least.

“Yes, ma’am.” Ekaterina inclined her head and strolled off back to the main streets. Jane watched her go, then turned back to the surgery.

There were no steps up to the front door, the better to allow the injured and infirm to reach the doctor. The door itself was wide and a deep red, set into two stories of brick wall. The lintel here was similarly carved to the Cunninghams’, though this winged face was wreathed in incised laurels, and worn, nearly unreadable script down the sides of the doorframe. The building was old, built to house a previous physician of a previous era, with all the attendant faith behind it.

But Dr. Lawrence was a young, Camhurst-educated doctor; he likely held no truck with such superstitions. She wondered if he would have it all planed down or painted over.

She checked to make sure that her hair was still carefully pinned up beneath her black, broad-brimmed hat, then reached out and knocked.

The porter opened the door a moment later. He was an older man, perhaps once a laborer or even a prizefighter. He was stocky and muscular, and there was a faded scar across one side of his face, distorting the lay of his faint growth of stubble. He smiled at her, his cheeks a bit rosy from the day’s chill. Jane suspected her own nose was bright red.

“Miss Shoringfield?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, surprised and pleased at being awaited by name. “The doctor asked me to assist today.”

He stepped back, motioning her in. “He’s just finishing up something upstairs. He said to tell you to feel free to explore, though not to touch anything in the operating theater. I’ve got some tea on, if you don’t want to get into the nasty business right away. The butcher’s boy brought over some sausages, too. Can I take your hat and coat?”

Jane felt herself smiling back, infected by his good cheer. Dr. Lawrence was widely known to be quiet, reserved, hard to read and unsociable, but generally kind and likable. His porter appeared much the same, which spoke to good judgment on the doctor’s part.

“Oh, thank you, but I think I shouldn’t give my stomach any ammunition for the day,” Jane replied, stepping into the house. She looked around as she unbuttoned her burgundy coat and handed it to the man along with her hat. The hallway was filled with a stale, acrid stench that she tried to ignore, but her stomach flinched in warning. Books. She was best with books, not blood. At least chances seemed good that once she was working here properly, most coming to the surgery would be here from indigestion, or something else that could be solved by a small sit-down and a check of their files. The most ill would be bound to their homes.

She assumed.

“What’s your name?” she asked, turning back to the porter.

“Mr. Lowell,” he said, inclining his head.

“And you fetch him when he’s out of town, yes?”

“That, and help him move heavier patients, keep the kitchen stocked, that sort of thing. Though I suppose you’ll be helping with the kitchen more in the future, eh?”

Jane flushed. “He said that?”

Mr. Lowell chuckled. “In a fashion. Never expected him to take a shine to somebody, to tell the truth.”

A shine? Oh, no. Her stomach leapt in an altogether different manner at that, and she absently curled her hands over her belly to still it.

Mr. Lowell’s glance dropped down.

She lowered her hands, flushing. She was going to give him cause to spread rumors of alternate causes, and she couldn’t have that. “To tell the truth, last night was the first time we met.”

“Truly?”

How much to tell? He didn’t know about the marriage arrangement, and now he knew she wasn’t with child—at least, not the doctor’s—so she concluded he knew about as much as he needed to. “Yes, strange, isn’t it? I never thought to be a nurse,” she said, then took a few steps down the hall. Best to change the subject. “Does he keep an office on this floor?”

“Aye, first door on the right.”

“Am I allowed in?”

“He made a point of it, said you might look at his books.”

She quashed a small, pleased smile. His cooperation was a good sign, and beyond that, it made her feel welcome. Hopeful. Perhaps Mr. Lowell was only reading too much into that cooperation; in any other case a man being so amenable to a young woman would likely be read as affection.

“Thank you, Mr. Lowell. I think I’ll be fine from here, and I’ve kept you awhile now.”

“Not a problem, miss,” Mr. Lowell said, then inclined his head and went to a set of doors that she guessed led to the operating theater. The acrid smell increased for a moment as he opened one and slipped through it.

Jane looked at the hallway a moment longer. There were no portraits in the whole hall, and only one or two landscapes, right near the door and front sitting area. But there were some framed photographic prints of nebulous things. The daguerreotype closest to her appeared to be of a gnarled piece of wood. She frowned at it, puzzled, then made her way to his office.

The door stood open, and inside was a perfectly ordinary and clean room. Dr. Lawrence had a sizable desk that was in a much worse state than Mr. Cunningham’s, but beyond that, the room was spotless. There were two chairs across from the desk, as well as a large armchair by the far window, with a raised cushion to put one’s feet up onto. The walls were bare save for several bookshelves and cabinets behind the doctor’s desk.

Settling her reading glasses on her nose, Jane peered at the various drifts of paper, finding hastily scribbled notes with names in large script at the top right of each page. The cabinets, when opened, revealed row upon row of small folders, also all labeled with names, as well as a pad of preprinted paper. Ah. A look back at the desk showed a few leaves of that paper, with carefully written notes all in order, and the same name on top as a few of the closest note pages. He was transcribing the important notes into a neater system, she realized.

Quite clever, and helpful for her.

Before she could begin reading, however, some organization was called for. She set about tidying the piles and retrieving sheets that had fallen to the floor. She was reconsidering Mr. Lowell’s offer of tea when Dr. Lawrence cleared his throat from the office doorway.

“Dr. Lawrence.” She stood up from his desk, guilty as if she’d been caught peeping in his washroom. He didn’t look annoyed, however, as he entered the office and surveyed the stacks she’d made. He didn’t even look embarrassed.

“As you can see,” he said, “your skills would be much appreciated. Hypothetically speaking. If you are not too frightened by what you’ve found?”

“Hardly.” She squared her shoulders. “Where is your logbook? Of patient transactions?”

“I don’t have one,” he said.

She frowned at him.

He lifted his hands in defense. “I intend to have one. But as I only bill at the end of the year, I intend to reconstruct based on my notes.”

“That’s a great way to miss out on money that may already be difficult to collect,” she said. “Not only that, but you must need to replenish your supplies regularly—Mr. Cunningham has far fewer expenses, and he bills once every two months. I require that he keep a daily log of his work to make it simpler and more accurate. He balked at doing it by the minute, but a list of documents he creates, or procedures, in your case, is easy enough.”

He looked at her a moment, stunned into silence, then shook his head in wonder. “You really are skilled at this, aren’t you?”

“I have a lot of practice. I’m sure you understand that they’re different things.”

“Different, but often related.”

She flushed with pride, and began to pace to disguise it. “Do you at least keep a list of what medications you’ve prescribed?”

“In patient notes.”

“No, I mean an ordering list. How do you track inventory?”

He tapped his brow. “The age-old skill of eyeballing.”

“That won’t do at all.”

“Without somebody like you assisting, while all that work would be very helpful, it’s not particularly time-effective for me. I aim to survive and help others survive, Miss Shoringfield. That’s the extent of it.”

“Well, and now you have me.”

The words were out of her mouth before she could think better of them, and she firmed up her lips and straightened her shoulders to mask the sudden frisson of embarrassment that went through her. Too much.

Dr. Lawrence turned away, briefly tugging at his collar. “You’ve certainly convinced me to employ you,” he said. “But marrying—”

“Is essentially the same thing.”

“It certainly is not,” he said. “I’m not sure what kind of man you take me for, but I wouldn’t—a nurse in my employ—suchintimacy—it’s insulting, Miss Shoringfield.” But he didn’t sound insulted. He sounded—

Flustered.

Frustrated.

He’d clearly been thinking about the implications of a marriage since last night’s talk. She should have been relieved that he’d come to the same conclusion—that intimacy was not appropriate or desirous—but instead she felt her own cheeks burning. Best to get this out of the way formally, though. She removed her glasses, rubbing them clean on her dress. “I suppose a marriage would need to be consummated, legally,” she conceded.

Dr. Lawrence choked, then turned back to stare at her incredulously. “You suppose,” he echoed.

“I am sure, though, that we can find a way to balance the statutory requirements with how we wish to conduct the marriage. But if you feel I misrepresented anything last night—”

She was interrupted by a sharp, loud banging on the front door, followed by the harried ringing of the bell and Mr. Lowell’s footsteps, fast and heavy, in the hallway. A muffled cry of pain from outside. The doctor’s troubled expression disappeared, his features blank and still save for the focused light in his eyes. He rolled up his sleeves.

“Miss Shoringfield,” he said, voice wholly transformed. “Please go into the operating room; leave both doors wide open. There are aprons and gowns in there. Have one ready for me.”

“I—”

The front door opened, and Jane could hear screaming.

“Now, Miss Shoringfield.”

Jane sprang into action, dashing across the hall to the operating theater. Mr. Lowell had left one door open, and she pulled the other one out of the way. She could hear a woman talking, fast, voice high-pitched in panic, as Jane looked around for the aprons. She found them on a coat stand out of the way, and pulled down one of them, then turned as the cacophony reached the doorway.

Mr. Lowell and another man were carrying the screaming patient, a heavy-boned, broad-shouldered laborer who was clutching his belly. “Get it out!” he cried. “Get it out, I didn’t mean it!” Blood pulsed from between his fingers, through the soaked fabric of his shirt, spattering on the floor.

Jane swayed on her feet, then clenched her jaw, determined to stay upright.

Behind the man an older woman clasped bloody hands around Dr. Lawrence’s forearm. “I heard him screaming from the woodshop,” she said. “He had the knife, he was cutting, I don’t know—”

“Get it out!” the man bellowed again, thrashing. Mr. Lowell nearly lost his grip.

Dr. Lawrence turned to the woman and murmured something with a nod of his head toward the door. He pried her fingers up so slowly Jane wanted to scream along with the patient, but when he was free, the woman disappeared back into the hallway.

He crossed the floor to where she stood, as behind him Mr. Lowell and the volunteer assistant hoisted the bleeding man onto the table.

Trembling, Jane draped the apron over Dr. Lawrence’s head, and he turned so she could fasten it down the sides. Then he took her by the hand and pulled her over to a filled basin.

“Antiseptic. Wash your hands, Miss Shoringfield. Thoroughly. Rub under your nails, too.”

She did as she was told, then tuned back to the table. Mr. Lowell had strapped the patient down at the chest, wrists, and legs. The volunteer who’d helped carry the patient stared as the man thrashed and howled. Mr. Lowell pulled a protective cover off an array of tools.

“Mr. Rivers,” the doctor said, and the volunteer dragged his gaze away from the patient. “Please step outside. Miss Shoringfield, with me.” Dimly, she realized she hadn’t thought to grab an apron for herself, but one look at the patient told her why the doctor hadn’t reminded her.

They didn’t have time.

Through the sodden, gaping fabric of the man’s shirt, Jane could see that his belly was split open. A makeshift bandage had been wrapped around it, but he had torn at it, pressing the ragged edges inside the flesh. Dr. Lawrence surveyed it in barely two seconds.

“Miss Shoringfield, I need your hands,” he said. Before she could question him, he took one of her hands in his, clamping it over one side of the slit in the patient’s belly, fingers around the separated flesh. She held on even as the man gave another bellow and the slippery skin heaved in her grip. Dr. Lawrence guided her other hand to the other side. “Hold the wound open. Mr. Lowell, wash your hands, then get me a flushing bulb.”

He grabbed up a pair of shears and made quick work of the patient’s shirt, then cleared the rest of the bandage away from the wound. Jane’s fingers trembled. Blood covered her hands, seeping beneath her nails, and it stank. Spirits take her, but it stank. She’d never seen this much blood in her life, and it was slippery, and hot, and more of it forced against her hands and pooled in the too-large gap in the patient’s skin with every rapid, desperate pulse of his heart. He was still conscious beneath her hands, still screaming, still moving, and every heaving breath he took made the inside of his wound rise and fall with it.

Mr. Lowell returned to the table and passed Dr. Lawrence a glass tube with a rubber balloon set above it. Dr. Lawrence squeezed the balloon and water surged into the wound, diluting the blood and forcing it from its pool.

Beneath it, she saw gleaming multihued ropes. Ropes, like sausage casings. Bile rose in her throat.

She hadn’t known what a man looked like on the inside, before. He looked like meat. Brutal, horrible meat.

“He’s cut all the way through.” Dr. Lawrence did not curse, and did not stop with horror. He spoke with what could have been cold detachment in another man, but in him it was an attentive declaration, a statement of truth that helped orient and ground Jane in the moment.

He could fix this.

He had to fix this.

The doctor left her side, moving to the patient’s head and pressing a cloth soaked with ether to his nose and mouth, the fumes burning her nostrils even where she stood. The thrashing lessened, and the howls that had become an unending, unchanging background noise turned to low, vague moans. Dr. Lawrence lifted the cloth and looked directly at her.

He is going to ask if I can handle this, Jane thought. Please, do not ask that of me. If he did, the answer would be no. As long as he kept silent, as long as he presumed she was capable, she would follow where he led.

He gave her a little nod, then returned to her side.

“Mr. Lowell, retractors,” Dr. Lawrence said, his voice quiet, but the room was quiet now, too, all their breaths held. Mr. Lowell passed him two gleaming pieces of metal bent back upon themselves at one end. The doctor slid them each under the skin Jane clung to, then eased her fingers over them instead. Her hands slipped at first, and the metal was shockingly cold after the burning heat of the patient’s flesh, but not feeling fresh blood on her hands was a relief. She held them firm and at the doctor’s direction, spread the wound open a little further.

“What in the world—?” he murmured.

Jane, despite herself, leaned in.

His way cleared, Dr. Lawrence reached inside the man’s belly, gently pushing the pearlescent ropes of the man’s bowels aside. He eased forward a thicker section, tangled up in much same way as everything else around it. No—no, she was mistaken. It looked as convoluted, but where it folded back onto itself, it seemed to go inside itself, though there was no perforation she could see. The flesh simply melded together, and a faint shape moved beneath the surface, a form beneath a shroud. She could not keep it oriented in her mind’s eye; it seemed to slide and twist.

“What did you do to yourself?” Dr. Lawrence whispered.

For the first time, she heard uncertainty.

But his hands did not falter as he grimly set about cutting the mess of twisted flesh away from the surrounding tissues, exposing more of the larger organ until it ran even and smooth. “It’s a miracle, perhaps, that he was driven to cut himself open—had this gone unnoticed, he would have died of septicemia within the week.” He lifted the tangled mass from the patient and set it aside carefully, almost tenderly. Jane stared at it as Dr. Lawrence took up needle and thread. It still looked vital. Alive. Blood coated it, and she thought she saw it move.

“Miss Shoringfield, please keep tension on the retractors,” Dr. Lawrence said.

She forced herself to look down again, to watch as he stitched up a lower reach of disrupted gut, then fed the freshly cut section of bowel through the gash the patient had carved in himself. She removed the retractors when he indicated and watched, transfixed, as Dr. Lawrence miraculously closed membranes up, and then the man’s skin, his stitches precise. He worked like a master craftsman, like an artist, and the confidence in every line of him bewitched her.

The patient moaned and the spell was broken. Her body threatened revolt.

“Grab a cloth and soak it in antiseptic, then wipe down his skin. Get him as clean as you can. It will speed recovery,” the doctor said, calmly redirecting her.

Tasks. Tasks helped. She got her cloth and began with the bottom of the man’s rib cage, then gently blotted the margins of the wound. When it was clean, she moved to the man’s hands, pulling the scraps of fiber from under his blunted nails. He was sleeping now, face drawn from pain and exhaustion, but otherwise peaceful.

Wiping a bit of grime from his brow, she looked up at the doctor. He was bent over the man’s torso, quickly cleaning and stitching up other small lacerations. He spared one glance up at her, as if he could feel her eyes on him.

“We have done good work here,” he said, smiling. “You have helped save his life.”

Golden warmth bloomed in her chest, and she realized she’d begun to shake, for the first time since he’d placed her hands on the man’s bleeding gut. “Oh,” she said.

Dr. Lawrence soaked a sponge in fresh antiseptic, then set it over the opening still left in the man’s stomach, where the hole of the bowel protruded. A few more minutes, and he was done, stepping away from the table and going to the sink. She trailed after him, unsure of what else to do.

“You did well,” he said, turning on the faucet with an elbow and rinsing blood from his hands in the sputter of water. “Come here, clean yourself up. I should have told you to don a gown, but I suppose I didn’t think you’d—well. Many wouldn’t have been able to stay standing the whole time. It’s a grisly business, as I warned you.”

Jane glanced back at the table. The patient looked whole and slumbering, as if Dr. Lawrence’s surgery had been some form of magic.

“That was incredible,” she said, then looked at him, at the lines of his face, his steady hands. “I didn’t know such surgery was possible.”

“It isn’t, in most cases. I was taught by the greatest instructors in Great Breltain.” He said it without pride or boasting.

“What happened to him? That thing you removed, what was it?”

“The large bowel, malformed from… something. I will send for a specialist.”

“But he’ll live? Now that it’s removed, now that you’ve…” She trailed off, left without the right words or understanding, but she nodded back to the man’s abdomen, the covered hole.

“The sponge will catch the output of the digestive tract, and as long as the site is kept clean and he is lucky, the tissue will callous and he may live many more years. But this is no amputation, where we understand everything that we do, and our patients survive more often than they do not. I hope he will live.” His gaze dropped, his hands tightening on the edge of the sink.

Jane approached him and resisted the strong, surprising urge she had to lay a hand upon his shoulder. “We have done good work here,” she echoed back to him instead.

He glanced up at her with a small, thankful smile.

Her heart sprang into an erratic, unfamiliar rhythm.

They were alone in the room. Mr. Lowell had left, unnoticed, some time before. She tried to focus on the stink of blood and bowel, the astringency of the antiseptic, the faint whiff of ether on the air. Anything besides him, because his smile felt intimate and intoxicating in the wake of that horror.

“How are you feeling? If you feel at all faint, I’ll get you to a chair.” He searched her face, no doubt seeing her confusion, reading it as weakness. Waiting for her to say she’d changed her mind about being a doctor’s wife.

“I feel…”Inappropriate. It was inappropriate to fixate on him like this, now. But there were other emotions below that. She felt elated, as though she were soaring, but also bone-tired and worn out, and she knew, somewhere below it all, she was still horrified. Her skin still burned where it was coated in blood.

“You feel alive,” the doctor supplied. “And it’s sometimes a very overwhelming feeling. You should wash up, then sit for a while in my office. I’ll send Mr. Lowell out for a change of clothing as soon as the patient is settled in the recovery room.”

She looked down at herself, at the blood soaking through her gown in dark, spreading stains. Her nails were caked black, the lines of her palms filled with drying gore. She shook her head, then joined him at the faucet, mechanically rubbing the blood away in the ice-cold water.

“Here,” he said, taking one of her hands. His fingers were lightly calloused, and he worked quickly, methodically, getting soap up under her nails and leaving her skin more or less what it had been when she arrived. Her breath caught in her chest, and she wanted, desperately, confusingly, for him to cradle her hands in his, to stroke his thumb along her knuckles.

But he didn’t. He simply took her other hand and repeated the work, then shut the tap off and handed her a clean towel. And then he left her, shedding his apron and tossing it onto a pile of stinking laundry, ready for Mr. Lowell to pick up as soon as his other tasks were done.

Jane looked after him, unmoving. His office seemed miles away, her world contracted to the four walls of the operating theater and the rasping breath of the patient. His chest rose and fell, the rhythm gently off-kilter. Slowly, she walked around the table.

She froze when the tangled length of bowel came into view.

She’d half expected it to be gone, swept away into a bucket of bloody rags and torn clothing to be discarded, but it sat, the blood on it congealing but otherwise just the same as when Dr. Lawrence had removed it. It had not deflated in any way, and even now it gave no sign of death. She leaned forward, frowning, refusing to blink. If she didn’t blink, she was certain she would see it pulse with the same slow beating of his heart.

“Miss Shoringfield,” Mr. Lowell said from the doorway.

She tore her gaze away. “Yes?”

“I’m about to move Mr. Renton here to the recovery room,” he said.

“Can I help?”

“No, no. But before I move him, do you need anything? Tea? Brandy?”

“Oh, no,” she said, clasping her trembling hands together and lacing her fingers to still the shaking. “I, ah, I’ll just move to the office, then. Oh—our maid, Ekaterina, she might be by soon. You can send her for my clothing. I expect you’re more needed here than running errands.”

“It’s no trouble, but I’ll look for her. Maybe take an apron to sit on, though,” he said, and with a nod of his head, stepped past her and over to the table. She colored, took one of the aprons she should have donned earlier, and hurried out, down the hall and into the office. Dr. Lawrence was nowhere to be seen, though she could hear his voice, far off, too far to make out the words. Closing the door behind her, she looked around.

Could she really live here? Work here? Could she handle another Mr. Renton, whether she was in the bloody theater with him, or across the hall, listening to his screams and speaking with his relatives?

And the way she had felt when Dr. Lawrence had taken her hand—thinking of it now left her adrift. Confused.

She laid the apron out on the chair by the window, but stopped just short of sitting when she heard footsteps. Sound traveled in the surgery, including voices, even those hushed so that she had to strain to hear them.

It was Mr. Lowell and Dr. Lawrence.

“She said she found him in a circle of chalk and salt,” Mr. Lowell said. “Should we call the magistrate?”

Chalk and salt? All thoughts of touches and blood were pushed away. She took a few steps toward the door, the better to hear. Surely chalk and salt weren’t sufficient signs of a crime to send for the local judiciary.

But Dr. Lawrence did not immediately respond, and Jane’s certainty wavered. It rocked entirely when he said, so quietly she could barely hear him, “Superstitions do not cause medical malformations, Mr. Lowell. But they do cause madness, occasionally. Accidental poisonings, certainly.”

“And mutilations?” Mr. Lowell pressed. “Could it be some kind of—ritual?”

Jane frowned. Great Breltain had cast off its church over a decade ago, though of course not everybody had stopped believing. Some of Mr. Cunningham’s clients even clung to practices older than religion, small offerings left to ensure a better harvest, love potions, and the like. But ritual mutilations? She had never heard of such a thing.

No. No, it had to be the fruit of madness only. If anybody were to know the reality of such dangers, it would be the magistrate.

“He cut his own stomach open, sir,” Mr. Lowell pressed.

Dr. Lawrence’s response came quicker this time, his voice firm and growing louder. “There is no way the larger insult to his descending colon was done by his hand. I may not be able to explain what caused it, but such a malformation would have been excruciating enough to drive any man into questionable decisions. I know that is uncomfortable, Mr. Lowell, but you must believe me. He was simply unlucky.”

It was Mr. Lowell’s turn to fall silent. Dr. Lawrence’s words must have wrapped around him in much the same way they had around Jane, the certainty in them bolstering her and dispelling her unease. Superstitions could cut both ways, after all; they could cause people to do irrational things, or to assign irrational meaning where there was none.

“Aye, Doctor,” Mr. Lowell said at last. “Hot or cold, for Mr. Renton?”

“Hot. Build up the fire until he sweats, then bank it.”

Their voices receded, and she sat at last.

He was a good doctor. She had not known it for sure when she proposed to him, had never imagined him the luminary she had seen in the operating theater, but it soothed her soul to know it now.

No; that was a lie. It didn’t soothe her, it sparked something in her that refused to die down or be contained.

If Mr. Renton had lived in any other town, or if Dr. Lawrence had never come to Larrenton, she suspected he would have died. But in Dr. Lawrence’s care, he had survived. She couldn’t forget his screaming, but she also couldn’t forget how deftly Dr. Lawrence’s hands had moved, how his directions had steadied her, how they had worked in concert to set the body to order. She had never before seen the appeal of a physician’s task, but now it made sense to her. They shared the same goals, the same lens through which they viewed the world. She sorted numbers; he sorted humors.

And yet where she analyzed impartial numbers, he cared for the most human of concerns. He was likely with Mrs. Renton even now, and Jane pictured him holding the woman’s hands lightly, telling her all that would need to be done to care for her suddenly incapacitated husband.

Husband.

She had thought of Mr. Renton as a body just now, so easily, and as meat in the heat of the surgery.

What sort of monstrous woman was she? Perhaps she was not as like Dr. Lawrence as she thought, or as she would need to be to remain here. That remove had kept her on her feet through the surgery, had helped save him, but guilt rocked her. He wasn’t a body. He was a man. He was a living, breathing, thinking man.

She heard footsteps again, and the creak of the office door, but didn’t look away from the window where she gazed unseeing onto the street. It was the clink of a saucer and cup that made her, at last, turn.

Dr. Lawrence had placed a cup of tea on the small side table by her elbow.

“When I said there might be blood, I didn’t expect for today to be quite this exciting,” he said, after a minute.

“But it is part of a doctor’s life.” She made herself pick up the cup. The porcelain rattled against the saucer.

“Sometimes. Not all the time. Is that too much?”

Too much? Yes, of course. And the match was hardly settled. All she had to do was say, Yes, it was too much. I have reconsidered. Or perhaps she should echo his words from the night before: It would not be appropriate for me to marry you.

But she found she couldn’t say either. She didn’t know what to say, but she didn’t want him to stop talking.

“I just need time to think,” she managed at last.

When he had looked upon her in fear the night before, yet still yielded to her demands, what had he felt? She had run roughshod over his logic and desires with her own. She should have accepted the first no, for both of their sakes.

He was still looking at her, though, and when she glanced up, she found his expression had gentled. There was no impatience there, no judgment at her weakness, no relief in finding her unable, perhaps, to meet his requirements.

“And what exactly are you thinking of?” he asked.

You. She turned away, searching for a better answer. She’d never been talented at talking past an issue. “The patient,” she settled on. It was closest to the truth, not really a lie at all. “Who else?”

“Who else, indeed,” he said, and crossed the remaining space between them, settling down on the footrest. The apron had spared the majority of his clothing, but there was drying blood spattered across his sleeves. It was nothing compared to what she must look like.

She was just about to beg off, to send him back to his patient where he belonged, when he said, “You were incredible in there.” It stopped her cold. He flushed, rubbed at the back of his neck. “For somebody with no experience, no training, you were able to keep your wits about you. To do what had to be done.”

What could she say to that? She fumbled for some matching compliment. “And you were a virtuoso with a needle,” she said, thinking of how he had handled the flesh. And there it was again, the immediate jump to meat instead of man. She winced.

“Miss Shoringfield?”

“I… that is, I think I was only able to help because I stopped seeing him as a person.”

She watched him for horror. It didn’t come.

“Is that not monstrous?” she pressed.

He offered a gentle, almost patronizing smile. “Hardly. I was the same, in my first year of medical school. It made bearing their pain easier, made inflicting the pain that was needed to save them easier. Many doctors never get past that, but many more grow beyond it. It becomes a tool, rather than a retreat. You recognize what happened—that is a good first step.”

He was being too kind to her. They were not made of the same stuff. She frowned down at her tea.

“I’ve sent for that specialist,” he said. “She may be able to help Mr. Renton’s recovery. No matter what, her work will benefit from our efforts. You should be proud of yourself, Miss Shoringfield.”

His words touched her with a surgeon’s precision, and she did feel pride. She shivered with momentary relief, and in that breath of weakness, she said, “I believe you can call me Jane, now. If you like.”

“I would like to.”

Her heartbeat syncopated. “His recovery,” she said, hurriedly returning to sobering ground, away from the strange intimacy that the heat of the surgery seemed to have created between them. “What will it entail?”

“He will be out of work for several weeks. Months, perhaps.”

Her mind went reflexively to the numbers. Months of not working, of not earning a wage. His house would founder. His bills would go unpaid. Dr. Lawrence’s would be one of them.

“He will not be able to repay you.”

Perhaps she could learn to be better in the surgery, but what of her numbers? They were her constants, her rules. Their logic flowed through her like blood, but they led now to horrible conclusions. Life was worth more than a sum on a page, and yet it was only worth a sum on a page.

“Mrs. Renton will pay as she can,” Dr. Lawrence said, oblivious to the nausea rising up in her. “Currently, that is not much. I don’t lose anything by not charging her more.”

Her fingers tightened around her teacup. “But sums don’t lie. I agree with you, I do, on moral grounds. But you will need to pay for equipment. Rent. Food and clothing. If you don’t, you cannot remain a doctor, can’t continue to save lives.”

The numbers had no room for kindness and humanity.