“More often than not,” said Sybil with a shrug as the door was pulled open. “Thought you of all people would know that!”
Mae startled, gaping at the man standing in the doorway. For half a second, she thought she was looking at Roland himself, but then she blinked and saw that indeed this was a different man. Older. And certainly better turned out.
His hair was a wig, she realized, powdered and preciously curled, and the freckles on his cheeks were hidden under a delicate layer of rouge.
“Artie,” said Sybil, throwing her arms open. “You look beautiful!”
“Sybil,” said the man, flicking his eyes over her. “You need a bath. Come in, I shall clean you.”
“You shan’t,” she returned with a sniff. “Is Roland here?”
Aristotle frowned. “Why don’t you ever come just to visit me?” he whined, leaning against the door. “If I say he isn’t, are you going to run off again?”
“Yes,” she said, blinking. “Of course. But you could always invite me ’round for tea sometime. You could always do that too.”
He sighed heavily. “I suppose that’s true. Come in. I shall fetch him.”
It was at this point, as he pulled the door further open, that Roland’s father caught sight of Mae, his waxed eyebrows rising by well over an inch. “Well, hello there!” he said, batting his lashes. “And who might this pretty young miss be? Are you here to steal my beaux?”
Mae took another labored breath, shaking her head. “I … sorry … I am …”
“Miss Casper,” came Roland’s voice, sounding deeply displeased.
She lifted her head to see him at the top of a polished staircase, frowning down at her on the porch of the house like the sun had chosen this moment to spotlight her for good measure. He was in his shirtsleeves, his collar open and his cuffs rolled to his elbows. His hair was loose and glowing around his shoulders.
Her heart gave a rolling thud.
“And Sybil,” he added, ticking his head to the side to sigh at the other interloper. “I told you early evening.”
“You told me no such thing, Roland Reed,” Sybil replied airily, pushing past the door and into the foyer and trailing in all the fluids of London’s back alleys with her. “You weren’t coming. I’m sick of it.”
He sighed, shaking his head and taking the stairs with measured, disapproving steps as his father ushered Mae in as well and pulled the door shut behind her, closing out the glare of the outside world and allowing the light to settle into the appropriate sheen of the indoors.
Mae touched her brow, suddenly extremely aware of how haggard she likely looked.
“Casper,” repeated Aristotle Reed. “Ah, you are the doctress! I was just reading about you inThe Lancet.”
“I am not a doctor,” she said, more out of reflex than anything else, followed immediately by, “oh, God. What does it say?”
“Oh, Artie, is that one of mine?” Sybil cut in, bustling forward with her dirty hands on her cheeks, smearing some of the sooty powder onto her jaw as she regarded a charcoal nude drawing on the foyer wall, contained in a heavy gilt frame. “It’s just the reference, you know. Not art of its own accord.”
Mae blinked at it, realizing she was looking at the elder Mr. Reed’s nude form in all its charcoal glory.
“Nonsense, my dear. Nonsense,” he said, walking up behind her and putting his hands on her shoulders. “It is me, therefore it is art.”
“Enough,” said Roland, crossing the landing to take his jacket from the coat tree. “We will go to the damned coroner, since it is so important to you, Sybil. I can’t finish my work here with you milling about, anyway.”
“Oh, will we?” Sybil said, batting her dark blue eyes at Roland. “I do believe that’s why I came.”
“Leaving me alone?” Aristotle said, frowning. “May I keep Miss Casper, at least?”
“No,” said Roland. “I’ve things to say to her too.”
Mae cleared her throat, suddenly feeling rather hot in the face that she’d come here at all.
“Well, at least let her look at your maiming before you go out into the dirty air,” his father insisted. “She is a doctor, after all.”
“I’m not a doctor,” she mumbled, unsure why she was speaking.
