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A vision of him on all fours barking up the chimney resurfaced in her mind’s eye. She cleared her throat. “Well, I caught you doing something similar in the parlour in Paradise Row, so you must forgive me for jumping to conclusions.”

“I was trying to scare away the jackdaws that had nested in the chimney,” he replied gravely. “We have the same problem here in Hungersford Hall. I discovered barking does the trick, though of course the more effective remedy would be to hire chimney sweeps to remove the nest.”

“Jackdaws.” She shook her head. “And what about Miss Thomas?” A delicate pink crawled across her cheeks. He’d apparently kissed her neck.

“Miss Thomas had a nasty bee sting on her clavicle that she didn’t notice because she was too terrified of standing in the presence of the mad earl. It was swelling badly, and the sting had to be removed. So I removed the sting and sucked the poison out.”

She set down her fork carefully. “She appears to have grossly misunderstood the situation.”

“So I gathered. I suppose I ought to have given her warning, first.” He grimaced. He was never good at that kind of thing.

Silence fell as she sat in her chair, pondering the implications of what they’d been discussing.

“Is your room to your liking?” he asked, abruptly changing the topic.

“Yes, indeed.” She picked up a roll of bread and picked at it. “The room is very beautiful. There are many roses.”

“Which is why, coincidentally, it is called the ‘Rose Room’. What’s more important, however, is that the room is warm and that the fireplace doesn’t smoke. It is the only room in the entire house that doesn’t have a draught.”

She looked at him with wide eyes. “You gave me the best room in the manor.”

He played with the rim of his wineglass. “It used to be my mother’s room.”

“Yes, so Marks told me.”

“These old walls here were built in the thirteenth century. The stone walls are cold and thick, and I don’t want anyone falling ill while they are residing here. Because of its age, there is an abundance of history surrounding this place. Add some superstition, and you inevitably have all sorts of stories circulating. I grew up here, but to my own disappointment I have never encountered a single ghost or phantom.” After a pause of thought, he added, “Not even after I spent the entire night in the dungeons when I was ten years old.” He grinned suddenly.

She exhaled audibly. “I feel as though I owe you an apology,” she finally said in a quiet, but clear voice, looking up at him as though she saw him in an entirely new light. “I feel I may have misunderstood…many things.”

He didn’t want her apology.

What he really wanted was to kiss those wonderful lips, but that, he knew, was far from wise. She’d likely run screaming in the other direction if he so much as touched her. Like that Miss Thomas.

He sighed.

The truth was that he had little experience with women. He’d never been in love, never been betrothed, though he’d considered it fleetingly, once or twice. There had never been the opportunity, nor the time. He wouldn’t have been able to offer a woman the life she deserved. He’d spent years with the army on the Peninsula, stitching the soldiers back together, but more often doing the opposite by amputating their limbs, his sole preoccupation being how to make the procedure less excruciating for his patients. It had become almost an obsession, and he’d spent all his free time studying analgesia and the prevention of pain during surgical procedures. The life of a wife of a military surgeon following the drum wasn’t a fit life for a genteel woman.

He sat there now, in the company of such a woman, feeling oddly helpless as her large blue eyes watched him. His mind fumbled for words.

He could heal people, most of the time, but he wasn’t good with words, and other people, women in particular, seemed to fear him. Though she seemed somewhat more at ease after the revelation that he was neither a werewolf, a vampire, nor a mass murderer, she appeared unconvinced about his sanity. What could he do to ease her fears? What could he say to make her lose that apprehension in her eyes and make her smile?

He was no poet. He had no experience at all in courting a woman. Flowers, chocolates, sweet nothings; they were the language of romance, or so he’d heard. It wasn’t quite in his line. Whenever he tried to speak to a woman, his tongue turned to lead. What did he know of courtship? Absolutely nothing.

Then, an idea dawned on him. It was the closest thing to romance he could offer.

He cleared his throat and leaned forward slightly. “Miss Hilversham.” His voice was tentative. “Would you care to have a proper look at my anatomical collection?”

* * *

Anna looked around the room, her voice utterly failing her. Earlier, she’d only caught a fleeting glimpse by the light of the candle, which she had dropped, casting the room in darkness. But now, with every lamp lit, the room revealed itself in ghastly detail. Every organ imaginable was suspended in jars, preserved in liquid, meticulously labelled and shelved. It was the most macabre sight she had ever encountered, and she hailed from a country known for something truly macabre, namely the fondness for beheading its citizens.

“Mon Dieu,” she whispered.

“I assume you’ve heard of Madame Tussaud’s waxworks? Have you seen them?” St John asked. When she shook her head, he continued, “Well, the heads of Marie Antoinette and Louis the Sixteenth that she displays are merely made of wax. But what you see here,” he tapped a glass jar containing a floating organ, “is very real.” He smiled faintly. “And this is but a small collection. There are bigger ones in Edinburgh and London, but Vienna boasts the largest pathological exhibit, with several thousand specimens, many from the previous century. Imagine that! I have always wanted to travel to Vienna to see it personally but was unable to do so due to the wars.”

Anna glanced nervously at the brownish object submerged in one of the jars. “And what…exactly is that?”

“A liver. From a fifty-two-year-old man who died from excessive alcohol consumption.” He launched into a detailed explanation of its properties, and how a healthy liver would have looked different from a diseased one.