The Anatomist's Wife by Anna Lee Huber Read Free Book Online Page A

slowly backed toward me, kicking what looked to be a pewter candlestick with
     his heel. It clattered and rolled across the stone floor. All the while, his eyes
     remained trained on the perpetrator. “Lady Darby? Can you hear me?”
    “Yes,” I moaned. I pushed against the floor again, trying to sit up.
    Gage moved closer and knelt on one knee to assist me. “Perhaps you should lie down,”
     he suggested.
    I started to shake my head and then realized what a terrible idea that would be. “No,
     I’m fine,” I protested. “I’m not bleeding.” At least, I didn’t think I was. “I just
     need to sit against this wall for a moment.”
    Even through the haze of my injury, I sensed the worry and disapproval vibrating through
     his frame, but he couldn’t afford to take his attention off the man in the shadows
     across the hall long enough to express it. Once I was seated upright, blinking as
     I cradled my spinning head, Gage retrieved the lantern from where he had set it just
     inside the chapel door. The culprit recoiled from the light but did not try to move.
    “Lord Westlock?” I gasped in confusion. The silver-haired gentleman was normally so
     gentle and congenial; I couldn’t believe he’d just attacked me. His wife was the harridan.
    “Would you care to explain your presence here, and why you just assaulted Lady Darby?”
     Gage asked the baron in a firm voice. He set the lantern on the floor and kept his
     pistol trained on the gentleman.
    Lord Westlock instantly appeared contrite. Whether that was in truth or only a pretense,
     I could not tell. Not with my head still reeling from the blow, as well as the revelation
     of my attacker.
    “Lady Darby, I’m sorry for that. It’s just that . . . my wife and her friends were
     so certain you murdered Lady Godwin.” He glanced down at his lap, where he was cradling
     his arm. “I watched you descend the stairs and turn down the corridor toward the chapel
     where Lord Cromarty said they laid out her body, and I . . .” He swallowed. “Well,
     I worried my wife might be right. So I followed the light of your lantern.” He glanced
     at Gage sheepishly. “I didn’t know Mr. Gage was with you.”
    I felt a flush burn my cheeks.
    “And what did you expect to find, my lord?” Gage asked. Lord Westlock shifted uncomfortably.
     “Lady Darby further molesting the body?”
    “Well, I thought if I caught her at it . . . I mean, after the inquiries a year ago,”
     he stammered. He pressed his lips together and leaned toward Mr. Gage with a look
     of pleading. “She’s not natural,” he whispered.
    I’d heard the accusation so many times during the inquiries following Sir Anthony’s
     death, and again during the past few days of the house party, that perhaps I should
     have become inured to the insult, but I wasn’t. And I suspected I never would be.
     It pinched in my chest like a splinter.
    “Sir Anthony and I were close acquaintances,” Lord Westlock told Gage, something I
     did not know. “We were members of the same club, enjoyed the same port,” he explained,
     as if that was all it took for two men to be considered friends. “I happened upon
     him there one evening a few weeks before his death. He seemed rather smug about something,
     and when I asked him about it, he told me how pleased he was by how cold and detached
     his wife was.” I stiffened. “Bragged about it, he did.”
    Gage glanced back at me, but I couldn’t tell what he was thinking.
    “I asked him why he would be so proud of that fact.” The baron’s eyes flitted toward
     me uncomfortably. “Thought maybe he had a lovely bit o’ muslin on the side and his
     wife was indifferent to it. But then he said something about her being a scary good
     surgeon if only she’d been born a male. Said she had the keenest eye. And that either
     she had more steel in her spine than the average surgical student or she actually
     enjoyed the sight of death.”
    My stomach