“It certainly can be.”
“I wouldn’t want to keep you.”
“It’s a special occasion, Dr. Lawrence. I don’t mind.” She curtsied to Jane then, saying, “A pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Lawrence.”
Jane had opened her mouth to respond to the greeting, but Mrs. Purl had already turned away and headed deeper into the building. “Well,” she said after a moment. “She seems—”
“Nice and professional,” Augustine suggested.
“Yes.”
He turned toward her, and finally took both her hands in his, looking into her eyes. The contact was electrifying, lightning coursing through her bones and making her heart seize. She leaned in reflexively.
“Are you happy?” he asked.
“Happy?” Her thoughts were lagging behind, caught up in the sensation of his skin on hers.
“You’re not regretting today, are you?”
“No. No, I’m not regretting it. And yes, I’m happy.”
He smiled. “I’m glad. Well, I would give you a tour, but there’s not much to see, and I think Mrs. Luthbright will want some input on dinner. I could show you to my study here, if you like?”
He let go, began to walk away.
She hurried after him, as if on a lead.
“What about the conservatory?”
“The conservatory?”
“The room on the third floor, with the glass roof.”
Augustine laughed. “Oh, that. It’s a library, not a conservatory. It’s also entirely empty, I’m afraid. Books moved to the seaside house.”
“Perhaps I’ll just wander, then.” At his pained look, she reached out a hand, then let it drop, unsure, to her side. “You don’t have to be embarrassed by this, Augustine. If I’d had a requirement that my husband have a fine, well-kept house, I would have checked that,” she said, hoping it would get a laugh out of him. It didn’t. “Is it unsafe, to wander?”
“It…” He trailed off, thoughtful, then said, “No, Mrs. Purl hasn’t told me of anything like that. But I would feel much better if you didn’t.”
She was pushing too much, she realized, on too many fronts. She schooled herself back to propriety. “I understand. Your study is…?”
“Upstairs,” he said. “Come with me.”
He turned and led her up a staircase, its carpet worn but clean, its banister polished to a serviceable soft finish. The entry hall was two stories tall, with an arched dome of a ceiling. The stairs curled up along its sides, then out into the wings of the house. They turned down the eastern corridor, into a long, wide hallway with bay windows made of the same murky green glass of the library’s roof. The windows let in little light, and Jane could see that the iron girding was in a different pattern in each window. She wanted to slow for a closer look, but Augustine kept moving.
They reached the first corner, where he indicated a door but did not move to open it. “My room, the same as when I was a boy. Extremely boring, I assure you. The study’s just around here, though.”
It was just a few more doors down the hall, and he let her in with a small smile. The room was large, larger than his study at the surgery, and every single wall was covered in bookshelves or cabinets. Many of the bookshelves held not books but more of his collected curiosities: jars of unknown substances, wax models of sores and growths, and more than a few skulls, glowering down at them with empty sockets. Some were human, some were not. The rest of the room was arranged around two long, low couches and a great armchair in front of a cold hearth. A gasolier hung on the opposite side of the room, providing the only illumination.
“It was piped for gas?”
“Yes, about ten years ago, while I was off at university. It’s quite handy in such a large house.” Augustine crossed to the hearth and reached for the wood stacked nearby.
“I can imagine.” She stepped into the center of the room and turned slowly. There was one bank of windows, but they were covered in heavy curtains, the better not to let in a draft. A writing desk was tucked into the far corner and looked largely unused. “You have quite the collection. Have you traveled much?”
“Some,” he said. “But many are either from Great Breltain originally, or I purchased them from travelers.”
“The skulls?” she asked.
He straightened for a moment, looking around at them as if he’d forgotten they existed. “Do they bother you?”
“I’m not sure,” she said. “I … I’ve never seen them. I mean, I’ve seen drawings, and I’ve seen our cook defleshing a few animal heads, but it’s a little different, looking at a skull and knowing it was once inside a person.” And yet her own curiosity was stirred again, the way it had been when she looked at Mr. Renton’s twisted bowel.
“Medical training attracts odd people, and makes us even odder.” He offered a self-conscious smile, then crouched back down at the hearth.
Jane watched for a moment, reflecting that in a normal house, the fire would be lit from its own coals, or with coals from another fire—but Lindridge Hall wasn’t a normal house. She hesitated to even call it a home. It was … a building. Only that.
No wonder he wanted her to leave before sundown. She only wished he would come with her.
“Should I call for Mrs. Purl?”
“I’m entirely capable of lighting my own fire,” he said, and so saying began working steel against flint.
She found herself appreciating the flex of his coat across his shoulders, and returned her attention to the skulls. “Where did these skulls come from?”
“The animal skulls are largely from my friends who hunt for sport. The human skulls … several were specimens my primary instructor kept. They were from his own patients. They all have malformations or unusual injuries of some kind. The others are actually fakes, some made of plaster, but I find them amusing. Like the one on the shelf to the left of the windows, with the horns? Peddled as proof of demons walking among us. That’s a child’s skull, with two goat horns glued on with pitch. If you look closely, they tried to carve the skull itself in a few places, then abandoned it.”
Satisfied that the fire was growing steadily, Augustine dusted off his hands and stood up. “They’re bothering you,” he said, coming to stand close to her, close enough that she could hear his breathing. Her thoughts grew muddy once more, and she fought to keep her wits.
“I enjoy learning the connections,” she said, fighting the urge to move closer still. She kept her gaze fixed firmly on his eyes and away from his lips. “You have a brilliant mind, Augustine.”
He laughed at that. “I have a suspicion you’re the quicker-witted of us. You’re certainly the more determined and adaptable.”
“Am I?”
“I don’t think, in your place, that I would be nearly so accepting, and yet also still curious,” he said. “I wish…”
Jane waited, but he didn’t finish the thought, staring off somewhere over her shoulder. He had gone somewhere else again, like he had in the carriage. It did not look like a happy place. Her resolve fractured, and she reached up and lightly touched his jaw, bringing him back to her. Her fingers trembled slightly. She did not know this dance, did not know what he would welcome, or what she could offer.