Sarah rolled to her side in her tiny bed, neither asleep nor awake, but somewhere in between. The room was cold. She lay beneath her sheets, two thin blankets, and her cloak, which she had spread over top for extra warmth. Her lids fluttered open. She had dreamed of sunshine and a picnic with her father, but she saw only darkness now.

Restless, she rolled again, tired, so tired. A hand, warm and gentle, settled on her brow and stroked her hair back from her face.

“Sleep,” a man’s voice said. “Sleep now, Sarah. Dream sweet dreams.”

A man’s voice, here in her room. A man’s hand on her brow. That couldn’t be right. She knew that voice. It was…

Sleep reached for her and pulled her deep.

* * *

Early the following morning, Sarah made her way along the corridor of King’s College, shadows and moonlight creeping across the floor in an alternating pattern of light and dark stripes. Her steps quick and sure, she went directly to the surgical ward, anxious to check on Mr. Scully. He had clung to life throughout the previous day, crying out, moaning, growing increasingly ill. He had been feverish and lost in a world of his own making. Each time Sarah had looked in on him he had not recognized her, mistaking her for his dead wife.

Now, she wondered if he had lived through the night.

She paused in the doorway of the ward, her gaze sliding to Mr. Scully’s bed. There came a rushing sound, like wings beating, or a cloak flapping in the wind. She took a single step forward, then froze and made a startled gasp.

Outlined on the far wall was a looming shadow in the shape of a man, his height and breadth exaggerated and magnified.

A shadow with no source.

She was the only upright person in the ward. Everyone else lay supine on their beds. There was no man to cast such a shadow. Her blood chilled and her gaze skittered about the room to make certain she was not mistaken.

When she looked once more at the wall, the shadow was gone, disappeared.

But the fine hairs that rose at her nape and the clammy fingers oozing across her skin made her certain that she had not imagined it, and that whoever—whatever—had cast the dark silhouette yet hovered, unseen, in the gloom.

Pressing her palm flat against her breastbone, she tried to will both her racing pulse and her galloping imagination under control. Either there was someone here or there wasn’t, and she meant to determine which it was. Squaring her shoulders, she went and lifted the mop from the bucket that stood in the corner. The handle would do as a weapon if needs must. Then she walked the perimeter of the room and found no one there.

Still, she could not discount what she had seen. Someone had been in the ward and gone to great lengths to remain anonymous.

After returning the mop to its place, she went to Mr. Scully’s bed.

“Mr. Scully,” she whispered. “Mr. Scully, how do you this morn?”

He lay quiet and still.

But there was something about the way he was arranged in repose...something both macabre and familiar. His head lolled to one side, his arms hanging over the edges of the bed.

Breathing too fast, she took a step closer.

A patient called out to her, but she did not so much as turn her head, for her entire focus was on the sight of Mr. Scully’s form, a lump beneath stained and frayed sheets. Not moving. Not breathing.

The smell hit her, a heavy slap of urine and excrement.

Dead. He was dead. Released from his pain.

His eyes were closed. Sarah reached down and lifted his arm. His wrist was torn open, a jagged, gaping wound, the edges of skin and muscle shredded to reveal the whitish tendons of the long flexor muscles that stretched to his fingers.

There was no blood.

Despite the torn edges of the hole at his wrist and the depth of the wound, there was not a single crimson drop upon the sheet or the floor beneath.

For a moment, she could not breathe, could not think, and then she forced herself to lower his arm to the bed, to sharpen her attention, to determine exactly what it was that whispered to her to look closer.

Slowly, she walked all the way around the bed, aware that the patients on the ward were stirring, asking for water, for food, for a moment of comfort. Soon, someone else would hear the commotion, and they would come, they would see...

What? They would see what?

The body of a man who had been destined to die?

Yes. But the manner of said death was both bizarre and disturbing.

The fourth such death here at King’s College.

She shivered.

“Miss Lowell? Is aught amiss?”

She heard the voice as though it came to her through a long, narrow tunnel.

Turning, she faced him, Killian Thayne, tall and broad and unsmiling. He stood close enough to touch, dressed all in black, like a shadow, his eyes hidden behind the dark glass of his spectacles.

“He is dead,” she said, her tongue like leather in her mouth. “Mr. Scully is dead.”

“An expected outcome.” He paused “Yet you are distressed by his passing.”

“By the mode of his passing,” she said in a rush, then wondered that she could be so foolish.

Someone, a man, had been here earlier. She had seen his shadow. A large shadow cast by a tall man.

And here was Killian Thayne standing before her, broad and tall. Had he sat by Mr. Scully’s bed this morn just as he had sat by another patient’s bedside on a morning weeks past, another patient who had died with the same strange and inexplicable wounds?

“Let me see.” Mr. Thayne stepped around her and then around the bed to the far side. He stared at Mr. Scully’s sprawled form for a long moment.

Wrapping her arms around her waist, Sarah watched him. His expression was unperturbed, his posture relaxed, but something felt off. Then she realized his lips had drawn taut. That was the only sign of his displeasure.

He turned to face her once more and after a long moment said, “You are pale. Have you eaten today?”

“I—” She hadn’t. Usually, she bought a bowl of salop from a street vendor near the lodging house, but this morning she had taken a different route to King’s College, one that did not carry her past the old woman and her still. She had hoped that by varying her route she might evade the one who stalked her. A foolish hope. He had been behind her, clinging to the darkness, his footsteps keeping time with her own.

Mr. Thayne made a sound of frustration. “Have you brought food with you? Or do you intend to work the day through with nothing in your belly?”

It would be neither the first time nor the last. But that was none of his affair. She lifted her chin. “A man is dead.”

Silence hung between them. “Fetch a stretcher,” Mr. Thayne instructed, his voice soft. “I shall wrap him in a sheet.”

“I can summon one of the other nurses to help me.” She wondered why he offered to do this chore himself. Surgeons were not responsible for wrapping the dead.

Only for killing them.

She shuddered at the thought. What was it about Mr. Thayne that made her mind travel such a path? She knew that the physicians and surgeons at King’s College did the best they could. That more than half the surgical patients died was a fact indisputably assigned to every hospital in the city.

But as she watched Mr. Thayne where he stood looming over Mr. Scully’s corpse, she wondered how it was that he had been present at two such similar deaths. No...not two. Four. He had been nearby when each of the four patients had been found with their wrists torn open, and the bloody pool that ought to have accompanied such injury inexplicably absent.

He looked at her in the dim light, his eyes hidden behind his spectacles. She had the fanciful thought that he could see as deep as her soul, while she could see only the mask he chose to don.

Who—what—did he hide behind that mask?

Sarah took a small step back. She stopped herself from taking another, disturbed by her own wariness.

What was she thinking? Mr. Thayne was a healer. He spent an inordinate amount of time at the hospital. More than any of the other surgeons. He was dedicated to his patients. She had witnessed his care and kindness in the months she had worked these wards. Was she now to imagine that he had killed four people by tearing open their wrists? To what purpose? What end?

Confusion buffeted her, and she was appalled by her own thoughts, disdainful of them. She could not think why she allowed her mind to travel such a path.

“There is no blood,” she said, challenge in her tone. Explain that if you can, Mr. Thayne.

“So I see,” he replied, too savvy to take the bait.

“What do you know of this?”

His expression did not change. “I know that a man is dead. All else would be mere supposition or conjecture.”

“Is it some sort of experiment? A study of the congealing properties of blood or…” She could think of nothing to add.

“A question or an accusation?” His tone was as calm as it had been a moment past, and there was nothing to suggest that her answer mattered in any special way. But it did. It mattered to her and she thought it mattered to him.

She categorized the facts in her mind, weighing truths and suppositions. She did not believe he had done these vile deeds. Not because she was foolishly blinded by her infatuation, but because logic decried that such an intelligent, thoughtful man would carry out such heinous crimes in a manner that could easily link them to him. “It was a question,” she said at last.

Before he could respond there came a shocked cry. “Oh, my word. Another one with his wrist looking like he’s been chewed by a beast,” Elinor exclaimed, her palm pressed to the base of her throat. She reared back and looked about, her gaze pausing first on Sarah, then on Mr. Thayne. She paled as she looked at him, and blurted, “You were here. When the others died...”

“I was, yes.” He made no effort to disagree, his tone calm and even. “I am a surgeon in this hospital—” he made a small, sardonic smile “—and am expected to attend on occasion.”

He appeared to take no umbrage at Elinor’s accusations.

“But you were there every time. No one else. Only you,” Elinor whispered in horror, and the patients in the neighboring beds began to pick up the words and repeat them anew.

For an instant, Sarah felt a dizzying disconnection at the oddity of the situation. Here they stood among beds that held people whose limbs had been sawed off, whose skulls had been trephined, who suffered all manner of terrible wounds, yet the sight of a torn wrist elicited such horror and dismay.

Because there was something sinister about Mr. Scully’s wound. It was not clean. It was not a slash or a cut made with a precise instrument. As Elinor had said, it did look as though an animal had chewed it open. One would think that a pool of blood would be cause for horror, yet the absence made the wound so much worse. She could not think of any injury or disease that left one drained of blood.

The murmurs in the ward grew and swelled.

Sarah turned to Mr. Thayne, and said, “Please do not let us delay you, sir. Mrs. Bayley and I can see to Mr. Scully. I am certain you have other things to occupy your attention.”

His brows rose and again his lips curved in a hard, sardonic smile. She thought he might answer her, might argue, might chastise. But he only asked, “I have been dismissed, have I?” He made a shallow bow. “Then I bid you good morning.”

He strode away, his long limbs eating the distance to the door. Sarah could not stop herself turning her head to watch him go.

And all around her, the whispers continued.

Elinor squeezed Sarah’s shoulder.

“He didn’t do this,” Sarah said.

“How do you know?”

Sarah positioned Mr. Scully’s arms so they lay crossed on his chest. “I know.”

Elinor sighed. “I’ll wrap him. You fetch a stretcher.”

When Sarah returned, she found that Elinor had been shooed off to the side. Both Mr. Simon and Mr. Franks stood by the edge of the bed, along with the matron. The three were involved in an intense whispered discussion with much gesticulation and wary glances cast about. Mr. Simon rounded the bed, lifted Mr. Scully’s savaged arm and spoke in a low, fervent tone. The content of his comments was lost to Sarah’s ears, obscured by the general hubbub of the ward.

Her movements made awkward by the stretcher, she inched closer to the small group.

“It is Thayne’s doing,” Mr. Simon insisted, the words resonating with tension. “We all know it. He attended each of the four deaths, and we had words over the care of each of the four victims. Does no one else wonder at the strange coincidence?”

“What do you suggest, sir?” asked Mr. Franks. “That he bled the man dry? To what end?” His voice lowered still more. “Do you accuse him of murder?”

Sarah stifled a gasp, the sound faint in comparison to Elinor’s huffing exclamation of dismay.

“I make no accusation.” Mr. Simon offered a sneering, ugly smile. “I state only facts. Thayne disagreed with the treatment of each patient. He insisted that there was no hope for recovery and that death was the definitive outcome.” He paused dramatically and looked about at the neighboring beds as though attempting to be circumspect. A carefully structured ploy, for had that been his genuine intent, he would have taken this discourse to a more private venue. “Thayne was the last to see this man alive. It is well past time for us to summon the authorities.”

Sarah could not say what possessed her in that moment, but she stepped forward as though in a trance, and spoke in Mr. Thayne’s defense.

“Sir,” she said. “I was here when Mr. Scully died. Mr. Thayne arrived only later.” Not precisely the truth, but not exactly a lie, either. Mr. Thayne had arrived later...at least, she thought he had, for she could not say whose shadow she had seen; it could have been his. And as to her assertion that she had been here when Mr. Scully expired, well, she had likely been on the premises somewhere, though not at his bedside. Gently bending the truth was a far cry from breaking it. “And perhaps his wound might be explained by the bugs.”

They all stared at her.

“He was...That is...” She wet her lips.

“What place have you in this discussion, Miss Lowell?” Mr. Simon demanded with enough force and fury that Sarah almost silenced herself.

Drawing her courage about her like a cloak, she forced herself to continue in a calm and even manner. “Mr. Scully was complaining yesterday that his skin itched. He said it was bedbugs, and perhaps the added distress of the fever and the infection spreading through his body made him scratch. Could the injuries to his wrist be excoriation? Self-inflicted as he sought to ease the itch?”

There was urgency in her defense; she was driven to offer an alibi for Mr. Thayne. Something inside her would not let them mark him as a murderer.

“You suggest that each of the four patients who died in this exact manner tore at their own skin, driven mad by the itch?” Mr. Franks scoffed.

“Matron said we ought to hire a man to see to the bugs, the way they have at St. Thomas and other hospitals.” Sarah cut a glance at the other woman, who hesitated for an instant and then nodded her agreement.

“But to tear the skin clean through? And the blood vessels, as well?” Mr. Franks folded his hands across his ample belly and peered down his nose at her.

Sarah bit her lip. The possibility was ludicrous, but she had set herself on this path and now saw no clear way to change course. Her thoughts skittered this way and that as she tried to summon an appropriate reply.

“Let us examine his body for signs of excoriation,” came Mr. Thayne’s voice from close behind her. She spun so quickly that she nearly unbalanced herself.

He had arrived just in time to save her from her attempt to save him.

Calm and steady, his gaze met hers for an instant, his green tinted spectacles nowhere to be seen. She almost wished that he was wearing them, for they offered some protection from his piercing, too-knowing gaze. She had defended him, bent the truth for him. It was a dangerous path she had chosen.

“Yes, let us examine for such signs,” snarled Mr. Simon, and with little care for propriety or respect, he reached down and yanked aside the neck of the nightshirt that covered Mr. Scully’s pale torso. Deep runnels were gouged in his chest from where he had, indeed, scratched himself raw.

His face a mask of shock, Mr. Simon jerked back and let go his hold on the cloth. “It means nothing.”

Mr. Franks shook his head and hooked his thumbs in his lapels. “It means a great deal.”

“It does not explain the lack of blood.”

“The poison from his wound would explain it,” Mr. Franks said.

It would not, but Sarah had no intention of saying so. In this moment, she was immensely glad of Mr. Franks’ contrary nature. If Mr. Simon claimed the sky was blue, then Mr. Franks would argue that it was green, simply because he could not help himself. A boon, under the circumstances, for it offered her an unexpected ally.

With everyone’s attention locked on this new evidence, Mr. Thayne leaned in and spoke for her ears alone.

“My champion, Miss Lowell?” He sounded amused.

“Only the voice of reason,” she whispered in return. “They were ready to name you a ravening beast that chewed flesh and drank blood.”

When no reply was immediately forthcoming, she glanced back at him over her shoulder and found him far too close for either propriety or comfort. Too tall. Too broad. Too male.

Golden stubble dusted his jaw and his sun-bright hair had come free of its tie to fall in loose, thick waves.

“A ravening beast,” he mused, and his lips curved in a dark smile. “Perhaps the descriptor is fitting.” There was no sarcasm in his tone.

“Why would you say that?” she demanded.

“People are often not what they appear.”

His eyes glittered, gray and brooding as a storm-chased sky, myriad emotions reflected in their silvered depths. Dark emotions. Loneliness. Regret. Sadness. Attraction. Or perhaps she only saw the things that dwelled in the shadowed corners of her own heart and soul.

She turned forward once more to stare straight ahead at Mr. Simon and Mr. Franks who bickered back and forth like two boys in short pants.

Buffeted by both confusion and dismay, she heard not a word of their discourse.

Mr. Thayne leaned in again and whispered, “Thank you,” his breath fanning her cheek.

People are often not what they appear. With the heat and leashed threat of Killian Thayne so close at her back, she had the strange thought that he was not at all as he appeared, that the calm and controlled face he presented the world was not his true nature. That there was something inside of him, something dangerous and barely restrained.

That perhaps the label of beast was most apt.

But not ravening.

No, Killian Thayne would be more of a patient predator, one that watched and waited.