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“Yes, but how to dislodge her from her position, that’s the question.”

“We must discredit her.”

“How do you propose to do that?”

“Vice, Mr. Stryde. We must discover the hidden vice in her. She has low connections, I’m sure of it. The servants say she goes out alone.”

Footsteps returned, and Lark heard the butler Haxton invite the visitors up. So, Miss Bradish had enemies among her employer’s relations. Her trip to Babylon Street seemed doubly foolhardy in light of the Strydes’ undeclared campaign to have her sacked.

The hall grew quiet except for the clock. After an interval, another knock sounded at the front door, and someone was admitted.

“Doctor!” There was surprise in the butler’s voice. “I was unaware that my lady sent for you.”

“She didn’t. Apparently, you’ve got some fellow on the premises with a gunshot wound.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“Don’t worry, Haxton. I’ll find him.”

Lark moved away from the dining room door an instant before it opened. The man who entered was like no sawbones Lark knew, young and smooth-cheeked, with a head of thick brown curls over a wide brow and a pair of sharp hazel eyes. The doctor appeared equally surprised to discover Lark as his patient.

“Hah,” the man said. He set a leather bag on the dining table. “I suppose you tried to make violent love to our Viv and she was having none of it.”

Lark did not miss the man’s casual proprietary claim to Miss Bradish. “Actually, I stepped between her, and her intended victim, a common pickpocket.” He thought he’d managed that smoothly enough in the voice he’d first learned to use as a boy at Dav’s mother’s house.

“Best let me see then.” The doctor snapped into a professional manner, lighting the candles on the table and pulling from his bag a leather strap with a single magnifying lens suspended from it. This he placed around his brow, positioned so that he could look through the glass. He directed Lark to stand within the candles’ light and lift his shirt to reveal the wound.

For a few moments the doctor peered at it through his glass. “Not many gunshot wounds in this neighborhood,” he said.

Lark recognized the probe. The man was wondering where Lark had encountered Miss Bradish. “How does it look?”

The doctor straightened and lifted the examining lens away from his eye. “Like raw meat in a Smithfield butcher’s stall. It’s about two inches long. The skin at the edges is flayed and powder-singed. The bullet isn’t in you, apparently, and no ribs show. You’re lucky.”

“Can you treat it?”

“Handily, but let’s move to where I can have more light. I need you lying down. I’ll clean it, cut away the powder, and stitch you up. Infection’s the biggest risk. Wait here. Jenny will fetch you when I’m ready.” The doctor opened the door and stepped back into the hall.

Lark eased his shirt down over the wound. The doctor considered him a rival, which meant Lark had been accepted as a gentleman. Rook would laugh when Lark told the tale later. Lark should have no objection to the doctor’s proprietary claim to Miss Bradish. Lark knew the rules. In the country, one didn’t fish in another man’s stream. In town, one didn’t run a lay on another man’s street. This was the doctor’s street. It was plain that as Lady Melforth’s physician, Newberry knew both the house and its inhabitants well. But Lark found that he disliked the clean, young sawbones, and particularly disliked the man’s use of the phrase—Our Viv.

Jenny showed up with the tea, and he drank it down. Then a footman came and led him to a much larger ground floor apartment with tall windows overlooking the street. In a pinch, he supposed he could escape through a window if he needed to, especially if the matter of paying the doctor’s fee should prove awkward. He had no idea how such fees were handled by a doctor like Newberry. At the dispensary where Lark had taken Rook to treat a cough one winter, a patient paid his sixpence for two minutes of treatment and a preparation of rhubarb powder.

The room was a far cry from any place Lark had met a doctor before. Its walls were a rich dark green, divided by panels of red and gold fabric up to the tall ceiling. There was a white stone hearth in which a fire burned with little regard for the price of coal. In the center of the room, a sheet had been draped over a bench. Next to it stood a low table with the doctor’s instruments, a basin and ewer, and another branch of candles. When the doctor returned, Lark submitted to orders, lying on his side and letting the doctor position his limbs and his garments, exposing the wound and surrounding it with a layer of towels. Once again, Newberry fixed the leather strap and viewing lens around his head.

“This won’t take long, but it will sting. Do you require some laudanum?”

“No.” Lark gritted his teeth.

“Suit yourself. Try to relax your limbs if you can.”

Lark doubted that was possible. A sharp scent hit his nostrils. He felt the press of a warm wet cloth against the wound. Then the stinging started, and the doctor began to chat.

“You know you’re likely to end up in one of her tales.”

“Her tales?” Lark remembered. She’d said something about every street having a story, but he couldn’t hold onto the thought while something with sharp teeth nibbled at his side.

“The stories she tells Lady Melforth to amuse her. They’re scribblers, the pair of them.”

“Oh.” Lark sucked in a breath and held it.

“She’ll give you a fictional name. You’ll be a Mr. Wickersham or a Mr. Windle.”

Newberry was stitching him up and dismissing him at the same time, telling Lark that he was an episode in the girl’s life, an anecdote told to amuse her employer and then forgotten. It shouldn’t matter. It shouldn’t bother him, but it did, more than the probing and scraping at his side. It was the thing he’d been fighting his whole life, the opinion of the world that he, Lark, was nobody, a man without a family or a proper name, a face in the crowd.

“You’ll do,” the doctor said. He pulled the towels away, and turned to the basin. “Too bad about that waistcoat, though.”

Lark righted himself. He couldn’t see it, but he felt the plaster bandage stuck to his side. He stood cautiously and began to put his clothes to rights, thinking about the fee. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it. Anything to help Viv out of a scrape.” The doctor washed his hands and wrapped his implements in one of the towels. “Get your valet to change the dressing tomorrow. Keep the thing clean. In about a fortnight, the sutures will dissolve. They’ll itch some. Here’s the bullet, by the way. It lodged in your coat.” The doctor held the spent ball between his thumb and forefinger.

Lark extended a hand, and the doctor dropped the bullet into his palm.