Hazel rolled her eyes and straightened the edges of her ivory gloves. Her father had bought them for her before he left for Saint Helena. “Students, Bernard. That’s who attends these things. Anyway, I’ve worked it all out: I will tell my mother that I am going for a picnic with you at the Princes Street Gardens, and not to expect me back before nightfall. We can walk down the hill and be back at yours by teatime.”
A stately carriage passed, and Bernard delayed his response until he had politely greeted the gentleman inside with a dignified nod. When he turned back to Hazel, his face resumed its exasperation. “Studying medicine is one thing. It’s useful, even. My friend from Eton, John Lawrence, is off in Paris now and he’s going to make a fine physician and he’ll marry well and be welcome at all our dinner parties. If you wanted to pretend that you were going to become a physician—or a nurse—I suppose that would be one thing. But surgery—Hazel, surgery is the field for men with no money. No status. They’re butchers, really!”
He walked forward a few paces before he realized that Hazel wasn’t walking alongside him. “Hazel?”
“What did you mean, ‘pretend’？”
“What did I—？”
“You said, ‘pretend that’ I was ‘going to become a physician.’”
“All I meant was that—Hazel. I mean. You never really expected—” He stopped and then started again. “You’ll be quite useful when we’re married, knowing how to mend scratches and treat fevers!”
“You’ve always known I want to be a surgeon,” Hazel said. “We’ve talked about it for ages. You’ve always supported me in that.”
“Well, yes,” Bernard said to his shoes. “When we were children.”
Hazel’s mouth suddenly tasted like copper. Her tongue went heavy. They were just a block away from Almont House, its gleaming white columns visible in the afternoon sunlight.
“Look,” Bernard said, already shifting his weight to begin walking again. “Let’s just get back to the parlor. Have tea.” Hazel had been holding the broadsheet slack in her hands, and Bernard reached out to grab it. He ripped it in half, and then in fourths, and then crumpled the pieces. He threw them behind him into the wetness of the gutter, where Hazel watched the slips of paper disappear into pulp. “There. Let’s forget that nonsense. There’s a new show going up at Le Grand Leon, we’ll go together soon, one evening. And take your mother. Doesn’t that sound lovely?”
Hazel gave a small nod. “I think, if you don’t mind, I’m going to walk a bit more. Just down the promenade. Before I take the carriage home for supper.”
Bernard looked around nervously. “Without a chaperone? I don’t think—”
“Just a few moments more. We’re a block from your home. Look, it’s just there. I’ll be in sight of it the entire time.”
“If you’re sure,” Bernard said uncertainly.
“I insist.”
“Well, all right then.” It was that easy. Bernard nodded, satisfied, his face affable again. He was the son of a viscount, and nothing in the world was wrong. He was steps away from his home, where there would be a roast waiting for supper. “I’ll come to Hawthornden next week. Tell Percy I insist on playing him again in whist.”
Hazel responded with the closest thing to a smile she could manage. She kept it on her face as she watched Bernard’s long legs amble down the street, until they disappeared in the shadows of Almont House.
Only then did she allow herself to look down at the crumpled remains of the broadsheet she had kept hidden in her wardrobe, safe from the prying eyes of her mother and Mrs. Herberts, so that she could share it with Bernard. Only a few words on the page hadn’t yet dissolved in the muck that ran in the gutter along the edge of the road, fragments like puzzle pieces.
LIVE SUBJECT
BEECHAM
EDIN—ANAT—
EDUCAT—
—EW TECHNIQUE
She sighed and walked toward the carriage waiting for her. Someone was outside Almont House, at the side gate, where the road curved away from Charlotte Square and toward Queensferry Street Lane, the spire of Saint Mary’s Cathedral stabbing the needle of its iron cross into the blue sky beyond.
It was a woman with reddish hair—which might have looked redder if it weren’t so dirty—tucked beneath a maid’s cap. One of the Almonts’ maids? Hazel didn’t recognize her, but that in itself wasn’t surprising. A household like theirs would certainly have a dozen or so maids, and they would try to stay invisible when guests were present. Maybe she was new. She looked young—very young. Younger than Hazel. She looked as though she was waiting for someone, from the way she glanced over her shoulder and down the street, but she didn’t seem nervous.