The Anatomist's Wife Read Online Free Page B

was askin’ if
     you would assist Mr. Gage.” I watched his Adam’s apple bob, and I knew he was forcing
     out the next words. “Particularly with examining the body.”
    I stared at him silently, uncertain how I was going to, or whether I even should,
     honor his request. I had been finished with dissections and corpses the moment Sir
     Anthony died, and been grateful for it.
    “Forgive me,” Mr. Gage interjected with polite severity. “But I fail to comprehend
     this request.” He gestured to me. “Why on earth would you want your sister-in-law
     to help me with such a matter?”
    I studied him warily. Did he truly not know?
    Philip seemed just as taken aback, for it took him a moment to reply. “Gage, what
     do you know about Lady Darby?”
    Mr. Gage glanced at me, almost in puzzlement. “Not much. I inferred there was some
     sort of scandal following her husband’s death. Some of the guests seem quite mistrustful
     of her. I gather many of them actually believe she should be our prime suspect.”
    His gaze bored into mine, but I refused to be intimidated. He had told me nothing
     I didn’t already know, didn’t already suspect. I stared back at him and gave him nothing.
     Not anger or shock or fear. I understood inquiry agents and their games, and I was
     not interested in playing.
    Philip cleared his throat, and I finally broke eye contact to look at him. He was
     asking my permission to speak. I shrugged. Gage could hear the facts, but I doubted
     he would decide to believe me innocent unless it served him.
    “Lady Darby is the wife of the late Sir Anthony Darby, a great anatomist and surgeon
     in his day. He even attended to the health of the royal family.”
    Mr. Gage took in this information with a nod.
    “At the time of Sir Anthony’s death, he was working on a human anatomy textbook, a
     sort of . . . definitive reference for fellow surgeons and medical students. When
     he embarked upon the project some three years earlier, he realized he would need an
     illustrator, an artist to depict the images.” Philip glanced up at me nervously, but
     I did not move my eyes from the stone in the hearth I was staring at. “Sir Anthony
     was rather frugal with his money.”
    “He was a miser,” Alana stated angrily.
    “Yes, well, he decided he would rather not pay an illustrator for his work if he did
     not have to. So he married one.”
    I did not look up to see how Mr. Gage had taken this bit of information.
    “My sister and our father were not made aware of his plans prior to the wedding,”
     Alana told him. “I think if Papa had known what Sir Anthony was about, he would have
     shot him in a rather crucial part of
his
anatomy.”
    Philip coughed. “When Sir Anthony died, and one of his colleagues uncovered the finished
     pages of the book, the man raised an outcry against it. Apparently, many of Sir Anthony’s
     fellow surgeons and physicians knew he rather famously couldn’t sketch, especially
     not with the amount of skill the anatomical drawings showed. It didn’t take long for
     them to figure out who actually created them. Lady Darby is quite well-known for her
     portraits.”
    I could feel all of their eyes on me, and it took everything in me not to clutch my
     stomach where it roiled. I would never forget the looks of disgust on Sir Anthony’s
     friends’ and colleagues’ faces as they accused me of unnatural tendencies and dragged
     me before a magistrate. Or the horrible names and epithets hurled at me in public
     and in the papers. The butcher’s wife. The sawbones’ siren. The people were still
     frantic over the recent trial of Burke and Hare in Edinburgh, and terrified that grave
     robbers turned murderers were also working in London, smothering their prey and delivering
     them to local surgeons for dissection. I was all too easy a target for their pent-up
     fears. High society had been particularly vicious, revealing their own fright over
     the resurrectionists, as well as