She glared at him. “How dare you.”
A look of complete confusion came over him. “But, Miss Barchester, I only wish to help you—”
“Help yourself, more like. Is this what you do, Dr. Darke? You experiment on devastated patients for your own gratification? Am I just another of your human menagerie, like Figgs and Mrs. Tibbet and your legless soldier? Well, you can think again. I won’t be a part of your sick endeavours.” She stared at her dismembered hand, and all the anguish she’d been suppressing welled up in a bitter tide. “I wish to God you’d never rescued me. I wish you’d left me to die instead,” she muttered, before she whirled around and fled the building.
Chapter Four
Julian spurred his horse on down the muddy road, eager to put distance between himself and Monksbane. Or rather, between himself and Nellie. The stinging words she’d flung at him reverberated in his head. Had he done her a grievous disservice in saving her life? He’d been so puffed up with his deeds that he hadn’t properly taken into consideration her sensibilities. And now she thought he viewed her as nothing more than a sideshow freak, a submissive patient with whom he could experiment. Intolerable!
He’d become too distracted with Nellie Barchester. He’d allowed his blossoming feelings for her cloud his judgement. Yes, he admired her instinct for survival, her deep well of inner strength, her grace that transcended her ravaged face and hand, but he knew very little about her. She was connected to Sir Thaddeus Ormond, yet she refused to tell him what that relationship was, and until she did could not be trusted. He had to remember that. And, too, he had other fish to fry, not to mention numerous patients he’d neglected in the past week.
The road soon reached the built-up areas that marked the creeping tide line of the encroaching city. Fields and woodland gave way to rows of terraced housing, quiet receded before rumbling trains and raucous traffic, and the grey sky faded to a dirty smudge. He had a few patients here, some humble factory workers, other more well- to-do folk who commuted on the train to the city—shop clerks, articled clerks, government workers. He did his rounds, and then was on his way again.
The city burgeoned like a great, grimy pudding smothered in a thick sauce of smog. Hunched across the landscape, hordes of factories belched out smoke like so many fire-breathing dragons. Fine specks of ash sifted through the air to settle on everything in a sooty film. Julian’s pace slowed as the roads became choked with all manner of carts, wagons, omnibuses and carriages. He’d enjoyed his years of study up north in Edinburgh, but London was like no other city, and the place did not agree with him. It was too dense, too avid, too clamouring, too vast. The day was half-gone, and he still had a way to travel, but he pushed on. His ears ached with the din of clattering wheels and angry drivers. Pungent odours assaulted his nose as he neared Mr. Cazalet’s street. Here were row upon row of narrow houses, many of their front rooms serving as shopfronts. Tailors, watchmakers, milliners and shoemakers plied their trade, while match girls, organ grinders and costermongers tramped up and down the road, hawking their wares.
The retired jeweller seemed pleased to see him again—perhaps he didn’t have many visitors—and ushered him into his modest house. An enormous fire roared in the fireplace, filling the small sitting room with a stifling heat. Mr. Cazalet, apparently immune to the heat, made coffee for his visitor before taking the armchair closest to the fire. While the old man chatted about the comings and goings of his neighbours, Julian sipped the strong, black coffee from a seat furthest away from the fire and surreptitiously loosened his necktie. After a while, he was able to steer the conversation back to the subject of his brooch. This time, he did not have specific questions for the jeweller. On his previous visit, Mr. Cazalet had already pulled out one of the many ledgers that lined the shelves of the room and showed him the entry meticulously recorded—one ruby-and-diamond bee brooch repaired for Miss Ophelia Ormond—that had finally pointed Julian towards Sir Thaddeus Ormond. This time, he merely wanted to know anything about the Ormonds that the jeweller might be willing to tell him.
Mr. Cazalet was surprisingly forthcoming. He’d sold several pieces of jewellery to the Ormond family, and they’d sent many of their repairs to him. That was some years ago. And then suddenly they’d started selling jewellery through him too.
“Not only jewellery, but silver plate too,” Mr. Cazalet said. “Rumour had it Sir Thaddeus’s father had lost the family’s country estate! Gambled away, they said, just before he died. The Ormonds were hard put to meet their debts.”
This was news to Julian. He’d been inside the Ormond’s West End townhouse, had seen all its showy grandeur. How had the family fortunes been restored?
But Mr. Cazalet had gone on to a much more important subject. “That was about the time Miss Ormond came to me with her bee brooch. She came into my shop herself, you see. Didn’t send in her maid or footman like she usually did, just her and a companion, her old governess, I believe. No doubt she wanted to keep her visit a secret.”
Julian had brought the bee brooch with him. He drew it from his pocket and fingered it, the refracted light glowing into his eyes. It was a neat little piece, finely crafted even if the jewels were of no great value. Ophelia Ormond had personally brought in this brooch to be repaired because she didn’t want anyone to know of it.
“Ah, ’tis a pretty thing.” Mr. Cazalet nodded his gnomish head towards the jewel winking in Julian’s hands. “Just the sort of thing a young beau would give to the woman he was wooing. Miss Ormond paid me in cash for the job. Didn’t want the account going to her brother. She was very afraid of her brother finding out, and I’m not surprised. Always a hard man, he was.”
“Do you know who gave her the brooch?” Julian sat tensed on his hard stool, barely able to breathe as the old man packed a long pipe with baccy.
Mr. Cazalet wrinkled his brow. “I don’t recall any name.”
Disappointment crushed his lungs. He shouldn’t have hoped; there was no reason why a genteel young woman like Ophelia Ormond would tell a mere jeweller something so personal.
“But that brooch was very precious to her,” Mr. Cazalet continued. “She begged me to take good care of it. Not that it’s worth that much, mind, but it must of meant something to her.”
“And the woman who accompanied her?”
Mr. Cazalet sucked on his lit pipe. “Nay, she were a plain old bird, anxious about Miss Ormond, is all I remember.”
“Did you see Miss Ormond again after you’d mended the brooch?”
“Never again, no.”
“You seem very sure.”
“After you left the last time, I checked my ledger, but there weren’t no more entries for Miss Ormond after that.”
Julian gripped his knee in some frustration. The date in the jeweller’s ledger was less than a year before he, a newborn babe, had been left at the door of Monksbane. Who had given Ophelia Ormond that brooch? A man she cared about deeply. Someone she’d kept a secret from her domineering brother. Someone not suitable to associate with the Ormonds, let alone sue for her hand.
Julian’s imagination roamed down a well-worn path. Disaster had struck Ophelia. She’d fallen pregnant, and either she was abandoned by her lover, or Sir Thaddeus had forbidden her to marry him. Julian preferred to believe the latter. So poor Ophelia had been bundled off somewhere to hide her disgrace, perhaps with only her old governess for support. It was a common, sordid story. Unwanted babies born out of wedlock could be handed off to so-called “baby farms”, to be used or abused as luck would have it. But somehow Fate had intervened on his behalf, and he’d been deposited on Elijah Darke’s doorstep. Ophelia Ormond might not have been able to keep him, but she had done her best for him, and the brooch she’d left with him confirmed that.
Moisture prickled unfamiliarly behind his eyes. He gritted his teeth until the weakness passed. On the street outside, a muffin man tramped by, his raucous bell jangling Julian’s nerves. Using his coat sleeve, he wiped away a rivulet of perspiration from his temple.
Still smoking, Mr. Cazalet, unaware of his turmoil, was rambling on. “That were the last I saw of the Ormonds. Shortly after, I heard tell Sir Thaddeus married a brewer’s daughter with fifty thousand pounds to her name. No doubt he didn’t want to do business with me again, not when he’d used me to sell off the family silver. Eh, I weren’t sorry to lose the business. Sir Thaddeus is a hard sort of gentleman, very hard.” Removing his pipe
