Miraculously, at least to Mae, he was not bluffing. He took his time, coating each strand of her braid with his waxy, almond-scented pomade, and wove them into beautiful, even lines on either side of her head, wrapping them back around into a perfect crown, which he tucked into place with the two pins that were still clinging desperately to the tips of her curls after many hours of disregard and abuse.
When she turned and looked into the mirror over his chest of drawers, she did so with open disbelief, reaching up and touching the end of the braid.
He immediately slapped her hand away, catching it and kissing her knuckles. “Don’t mess it up,” he whispered. “Or I’ll have to do it all over again.”
“Oh, no,” she whispered back. “I would just hate that.
“Do you think anyone will notice?” she asked as she climbed back into her yellow dress. “That I’m wearing the same thing I was yesterday, I mean.”
“Yes,” he said, and sounded very damned pleased about it. “They will. They will also notice when we arrive together.”
She shot him a look over her shoulder but did not argue, nor suggest that they stagger their paths.
Let them see, she thought.
Let them know.
A romantic scandal was little to nothing after a full summer as the anti-darling ofThe Lancet.
She picked up the apron and draped it over her arm, knowing a clean one would be waiting for her at the clinic. However, a cursory reach into the front pockets made her both sigh and smile.
“Roland,” she said, attempting to be stern. “The key?”
He just flashed her his teeth, slipping it from his waistcoat pocket and tossing it to her from across the room. “I was only keeping it safe,” he lied.
“Mm-hm,” she answered, catching it cleanly. “And the thimble?”
“It’s in my pocket,” he answered. “Come and get it.”
And so, for the second time ever, Mae Casper was late to her day of work at the Clerkenwell Clinic.
But, she thought, she did not often begin the day with such a wide smile either.
Perhaps a good habit would balance out the beginnings of a bad one. And she wasn’t as late as she’d been the day before.
There was a mist in the air, a gentle cool gift that promised autumn was coming and broke around their shapes as Roland and Mae made their path through the city.
They arrived to the normal breakfast routine, the foyer still mostly empty save for her grandfather settling into his chair and the breakfast train being run up to the nursery and to the one patient in the infirmary: the poor malaria patient whose symptoms flared and ebbed, seemingly at random.
What was unexpected was a large parcel sitting on the triage bench, with her own name written in spiky ink across the paper tag on the top.
“We wanted to open it,” Dr. Bethel told her in a voice that suggested he still had his letter opener at the ready, “but it is addressed to you.”
“Yes, but go on,” Winston urged her. “What’s in there? Is it a snake?”
“Why would it be a snake?” Dinah Lazarus demanded, gripping him over the head with the tips of her fingers and turning him back toward the kitchenette. “Bowls! Spoons! Go!”
“But Miss Dinah!” he moaned. “At least let me see if it’s a snake.”
“Now I’m going to be upset when it isn’t a snake,” Ravi muttered.
Mae ignored them all, twisting the tag over in her hand and reading with widening eyes the inscription on the back:Compliments of the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries.
“A blade?” she said absently, only to have Dr. Bethel shove a pair of curved medical scissors under her nose before she could finish the syllable. “Oh. Many thanks.”
She snipped the string holding the box together and unwrapped the mystery, just as curious as everyone else, and certainly not imagining a cobra popping out and striking her at the throat.
Inside were what appeared to be two layers of gifts, separated by a thin plank of wood.
