Jane looked at the sitting room doorway, mouth gone dry. “Let me get him,” she said. “You should be telling this to him, not me.”
“I have already spoken to him,” Dr. Nizamiev said. “He refused my aid.”
Jane frowned. “Refused?”
“Something has convinced him that he deserves whatever punishment finds him inside these walls.” Dr. Nizamiev shrugged. “If that is his choice, so be it. But if you have also seen things, you deserve the choice to arm yourself.”
“To work magic, you mean.” Impossible. Impossible.
“Yes, or to convince him to do it himself.”
Was that it? Genuine concern for her safety? Jane scanned the other woman’s face and found only that unsettling stillness. No; there was more here than wanting to rescue Jane and Augustine. There was more that she was not saying.
Jane would be a fool to believe Dr. Nizamiev, when her explanations were so thoroughly tempting and wrapped with approval that had not been there the day Mr. Renton died.
“You’ll forgive me,” she said, gathering up her skirts and standing, “if all of this sounds ridiculous. How am I to believe you? To believe this?”
“My colleagues are skilled at diagnosing abscesses and fractured bones, but I am skilled at locating fear. You’re terrified, Mrs. Lawrence.”
Jane could not argue that.
But it didn’t matter. “I am returning to the surgery tonight. I will never come to this house again. I was never meant to come here—this is not meant to concern me.”
“Is that so?” Dr. Nizamiev said. But before she could press her argument, Augustine’s raised voice broke through the seductive murmur of the next room. She heard the scraping of furniture against wood, and saw again the blackened windows of full night.
The spirits had arrived.
Jane rushed into the sitting room, sure that she would see red-eyed Elodie in the window. But instead, she found Augustine red-faced, unable to find his words, and Hunt at his side, grinning.
“It’s only a little spell,” Hunt said. “Can’t we go back to the way things used to be?”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“THIS HAS GONE on more than long enough,” Augustine snapped, jerking away from Hunt as if her touch at his shoulder burned. He was panicking. “I—we—have enjoyed your company, but it is time to be reasonable, Georgiana.”
Hunt’s delighted expression fractured, and she raised her chin a hair. “Do not treat me like a child, Augustine.”
“You come to my home despite my objections, you impose upon my wife and my staff, you refuse to listen to our polite suggestions that you return to Larrenton—”
Jane stepped fully into the room, and Augustine stopped, looking at her, eyes wide.
“I must,” he said, mastering himself with visible effort, “return to the surgery, at any rate. My patients may have need of me.”
He was running away.
From her? From his guests? It hardly mattered. He was a man beset, a man who rejected aid. If Dr. Nizamiev was telling the truth, he had chosen to suffer and so leave them both vulnerable, when he could have fixed this all. Could have acted so she would never have encountered the spirits of the previous night.
Selfish, foolish man.
“My husband tells the truth,” she said, and watched his shoulders fall in limp relief. “One of us must always be in attendance at the surgery, if possible.” Soft murmurings rose from the back of the room, wagers of if she’d go and leave the doctor to them. Flight called to her, the simplest answer she had. But she did not want to leave. She felt as if she stood balanced upon a precipice. Answers on one side, ignorant bliss on the other.
And her heart burned too hot for bliss.
She stepped closer to Hunt and held out both her hands, palms up. They did not tremble, because she clenched her calves and pressed her feet into her shoes to root herself to the ground.
“If Augustine will not take part, may I join in his stead?”
“Jane! Jane, you can’t.”
“Why not?” she asked, looking to Augustine with as much need, as much honesty as she could summon in front of an audience. Tell me I can trust you. Tell me this can be fixed. “Dr. Nizamiev has told me of your games.”
Behind her, Dr. Nizamiev’s skirts brushed over the flooring. Hunt tore her gaze from Jane and looked to the Ruzkan woman, brow arched. “You preempted me.”
Augustine struggled to pick his words. To her left, she heard one of the men murmur, “She has not been initiated.” But Vingh patted the man’s shoulder and came to stand beside Hunt.