“I warned her,” Nora affirmed. “She won’t be dissuaded.”
“I’ll speak to her.” Daniel shot his cuffs and made his way to his aunt’s side. Nora thought he might have better luck changing Aunt Wilcox’s mind—but she wasn’t counting on it.
Time to begin. Tucking away her watch, Nora walked to the center of the theater floor. It felt a bit more like a gladiators’ arena this afternoon, ringed with a crowd of rowdy faces. She had to start her sentence three times before everyone settled enough to listen. “I believe I can trust everyone to behave decorously, with Mrs. Wilcox attending as a special guest and patron of the hospital.” She gestured to Aunt, and the men who’d complained shifted in their places, abashed. “I believe we are ready.”
The men leaned forward, eyes fastened on the sheet-draped cadaver. Behind it, Horace smiled benignly, laying out his tools. Only Nora caught the amused gleam in his eyes as he winked at her.
She swallowed a groan and exchanged a nervous glance with Daniel. She knew already they were in for a spectacle, but Horace was clearly indicating that he planned to show off for their unexpected guest.
He did just that, embellishing his dissection with stories that sent a chilled silence over the room. When Aunt finally left—she stayed to the bloody end—she fanned her pale face and stated baldly, “I don’t believe I will attend anymore,” with one hand fumbling at her poised throat. “But I will send the money this week.”
***
The library felt smaller when crowded with five, the low flames of the fireplace casting a pleasant glow over the eclectic assembly. Julia sat in her customary pose, elegant and upright in the corner of the sofa, with Harry’s sleeping head in her lap.
Nora occupied Horace’s favorite wing chair, a pile of forgotten papers and books tottering on the floor beside her. Even though the lecture had finished hours ago, she was too jittery to read. Mrs. Phipps filled another armchair, sewing spilling over her lap. Even the zebra wore a particularly satisfied expression. Only Daniel paced aimlessly, as usual, the same way a seabird spins in widening circles when searching for land.
“That was the largest lecture we’ve ever held,” Mrs. Phipps ventured into the silence. “Eighty-eight pounds in one day.”
Harry’s eyes opened as he gave a low whistle. “Eighty-eight attendees? Absolute mayhem. Were there really that many doctors?”
“Mostly students,” Nora corrected.Not doctors yet.“You saw the lecture hall. It looked like a crowd at a boxing match.”
“Heart dissection and a new cholera treatment both in one afternoon. They got their pound’s worth.” Daniel thumbed some of Nora’s Italian books as he passed the shelves. “That show with Aunt Wilcox was worth the entrance fee alone.”
The tired circle of friends smiled simultaneously—small, secret grins of relished memory.
Empty champagne glasses littered the library now, as they all drank in the memory of the day’s victories. The only one missing from their rare quiet evening together was Horace.He’d stayed in the lecture hall, refusing to join them until he’d prepared the half-dissected cadaver for day two of his demonstration. After word traveled in taverns and clubs tonight, they’d have to turn people away tomorrow.
Nora pictured the open, lifeless body on the table as Horace carefully unsealed the pages of the human tome, reading in the flesh the story of organs and arteries—of life. She wondered what he was saying to the corpse as he toiled on, now that she knew he spoke to them. Perhaps something about hollyhocks or poison ivy.
“They have to close the charity cemetery soon,” Daniel mentioned as he nursed his glass of wine. “It was supposed to last another decade, but the cholera filled it prematurely.”
“We’re still in the thick of it, with no signs of slowing. They’ll stack the bodies two deep and make it stretch a bit farther,” Harry said with forced indifference, but Nora knew that many of his own patients rested there, and the thought of bodies discarded unceremoniously on top of their resting places bothered him more than he’d ever admit.
“I’ve said for months we should relocate. You know Horace is itching to take that offer from Kew Botanical Gardens,” Mrs. Phipps grumbled. “Richmond has very little cholera.”
“Impossible,” Julia pronounced. “Horace would never leave London, or this hospital.” For a woman who’d been horrified by Horace when she first met him, she sounded relieved to keep him now.
“Thousands of botanical specimens from every jungle and mountaintop in the world?” Daniel rolled and stretched his shoulders. “If anything could tempt him, it’s that.”
“Not to mention every odd creature the Linnean Society drags in,” Nora added. “Good heavens, he’d try to get his hands on everything venomous and toxic. He’s still begging for electric eels.” No one in Richmond would practice enough restraint with Horace. The brilliant man still needed help not killing himself in his scientific excitement.
“Poison frogs or not, it would be slower paced than what he does here,” Mrs. Phipps argued. “And whatever he says, his heart is still weak.”
Nora bit her lip. She’d spotted Mrs. Phipps in the audience today, frowning anxiously as Horace chirped enthusiastically about malformed valves and weakened ventricles and enlarged organs. The cadaver had the same condition he did—angina.
“Why don’t we send him off for a season to get it out of his system?” Harry suggested. “We could spare him for a few months. Maybe the worst would have passed by then. You could even go with him, Mrs. Phipps, to ensure we get him back in one piece.”
Laughter broke the tension.
“And trust you children to run this house?” Mrs. Phipps’s raised eyebrows made them all laugh harder. “Julia is the only trustworthy one among the lot of you.”
“And Mrs. Trimble will be preoccupied.” A deep voice boomed from the doorway. They all jerked around to see Horace, his arms filled with a blanketed bundle. “Mrs. Phipps is right. You could no more spare us than the tides can spare the moon.”
“We thought you were still working,” Harry said, sitting up. “What are you doing with the baby?”
“Do you think it takes me hours to prepare for a lecture?”he huffed. “I’ve been examining this one in her cot. I took a good listen at her chest,” Horace announced. “It’s worse than we thought.”
