Finally, Beecham raised one arm to silence the ecstatic crowd. “My anatomy lectures will begin again this term. Payment is due in full on the first day of class. I warn you, the course is extremely demanding, but I can tell you this: not a single pupil of mine has ever failed his Physician’s Exams.”
He smiled to more rapturous applause.
A class! There it was. The answer Hazel had been looking for without even knowing she was looking. The invisible string that had pulled her here from Hawthornden, to this very spot at this very moment. No more slipping into her father’s study to memorize an already obsolete edition of Dr. Beecham’s Treatise with the spine falling apart, or the tiny experiments she could cobble together with materials from the garden. She could spend an entire term learning from an actual surgeon, examining bodies, solving cases. She could be the one to cure the Roman fever! She would be the savior of Scotland—how could her mother possibly take issue with her then, when she was famous and celebrated?
Even on Saint Helena, her father would get word, letters and newspaper clippings. The prisoner Napoleon would drop dead with shock at the news of a brilliant female physician, and then her father’s posting would be over and he could come home again. If her mother thought Hazel would be going to London for the Season, she was sorely mistaken. There was no way. They would need to tie her to the horses to get her to leave Edinburgh at a time like this, when the nineteenth century was finally starting, and Hazel had a chance to be in the middle of it!
Hazel decided it would be safer to wait until the room was mostly empty before she made her way back through the passage to the outside world and exited to the street. Slowly, the crowd started to file out, with about a dozen men elbowing one another to get to the stage to try to shake hands with Dr. Beecham, in the hope that some of his genius and importance could be transferred palm to palm.
Finally, the air in the room shifted, and it seemed as though most of the gentlemen had left the theater. The assistants were finished wiping the table, and they, along with Dr. Beecham, had retreated to a back room. Hazel found the hidden door again, and she pressed through the narrow passage until she was once again on the street.
It was dusk already. Hazel had no idea how long the demonstration had lasted, but the city had become strange around her. The air smelled heavy with grease and fish. Hazel needed to get home. She would already have missed teatime, and her mother would probably be furious, but Hazel could feign having got lost in the woods or something. She would ride as fast as she could and—
“Miss Sinnett, was it?” A voice like knotted wood dipped in honey interrupted her thoughts.
Hazel turned, and found herself face-to-face with the one-eyed doctor she had met at her uncle’s house. “Dr. Straine.” Hazel’s heart pounded as she gave the closest approximation of a curtsy she could manage.
The doctor was shorter than she had first supposed. His bearing, the way he carried himself, and the long curtain of his black cape gave him the look of a vulture, but Hazel was astonished to discover that now, just a yard away, they were almost exactly the same height.
“I shudder to think what a young lady of your social stature is doing in the Old Town.” His lips pursed and his one visible eye narrowed. “Without a chaperone.”
Hazel’s hands became slick with sweat in their gloves. She forced her face into an imitation of a smile and willed herself not to look at the door to the Anatomists’ Society. “Just a walk to enjoy the weather,” she said.
The obviousness of the lie reflected back plainly on his face. Dr. Straine flexed his fingers. The leather of his gloves creaked. “A shame,” he said, “that women aren’t permitted in the Anatomists’ Society. I always found the fairer sex to be a—calming influence on the sanguineous urges of men.”
“Indeed,” Hazel replied dryly.
Straine’s eye seemed able to penetrate through Hazel’s clothes and skin, down to her bones. Finally he spoke again. “Give your uncle my best.” He turned on his heel, and before Hazel could respond, he was gone.
The streets were indeed changed. It was even darker now, with strangers leering from windows and doorways. Hazel gathered her skirts around her and walked quickly back to the main street, where at least the last glimmer of sunlight was still reflecting on the cobblestones.
By the time Hazel made it back to Hawthornden, the only fires still burning were in the kitchen. Hazel took a candle to slip up to her bedroom without anyone noticing her. Cook was playing cards with the scullery maid; Hazel could see their shadows stretched along the galley wall and hear Cook’s booming laughter. She made it up the staircase and saw that the door to Lady Sinnett’s bedroom was closed. Hazel’s maid, Iona, was dozing in the chair by the low smoldering embers. She roused herself to unlace Hazel’s gown and help her to bed. “Were you—？” she began. Hazel shook her head. She was suddenly so exhausted she could barely speak. The entire weight of the day seemed to hit her at once, leaving her limbs heavy, as if her blood were molten lead.