Emma slipped from the bed, determined not to wake him. He’d held her the rest of the night, and she’d pressed her face against his shoulder, burying herself in his skin, his scent, his body, letting the temporary peace fill her.

It wouldn’t last. Nothing lasted, neither the good nor the bad, and she would survive this, the loss of him, as she survived everything else. It didn’t matter that this loss would be the hardest.

He didn’t want to let her go. In sleep, his body relaxed, but he still held her, and she moved by small increments until she finally slipped from his protective grasp. She stood in the early morning light, not reaching for anything to cover herself, and looked down at him. The unscarred side of his face was against the pillow, and she looked down at the war’s devastation and wanted nothing more than to climb back into the bed, to stay there, to stop fighting, stop trying.

She couldn’t do that. Not to him. Not to herself. He would marry quiet Miss Bonham and learn to love her, he would live a good life without the shame Emma would bring him, even as his whore. And she would have been his whore, gladly, sold herself on the streets for him, die for him.

But she would only bring him disaster. She loved him, had loved him, probably from the first night she’d seen him, and she would love him until the day she died. Loving wasn’t about selfishness and pleasure, it was about wanting the best for someone. It was about letting them go.

They had ended up in his old bedroom, though she couldn’t remember how. Her clothes were hanging in the clothes press—she moved swiftly, gathering them in an armful and then slipping back through the adjoining door. No one had brought fresh water or tea—they probably had strict orders not to disturb either of them. Mrs. Patrick was a wise woman who saw more than most people, and no one would bother them until they were called. At least there was an ewer of cool water in the basin, and she washed herself quickly, doing her best to ignore the tenderness in her breasts, her hips, between her legs, sensitivity that squeezed her heart and brought back a shocking arousal. It would pass, she told herself, pulling on her clothes with shaking hands. It had to.

She almost escaped the house without notice. She’d stayed there often enough to know that the servants would be down in the basement having tea at that hour, and she was almost at the door when a familiar voice startled her.

“Where do you think you’re going, young lady?”

She turned to face Noonan’s disapproving glower, keeping her own expression blank. “I doubt it’s any business of yours, Mr. Noonan,”

“Anything that affects the boy is my business,” he growled.

“He’s hardly a child,” she said briskly. “He doesn’t need your protection.”

“He’s got the heart of a boy, true and good, even though he hides it. I won’t have you troubling him.”

“Trust me, I won’t have the slightest effect on his heart.”

“Trust me,” he mocked her, “you already have. We do just fine up in Scotland without a bunch of women running around. You’re no’ good for him.”

“I know that.”

Noonan looked startled. Despite the hard night of drinking Brandon had mentioned, he looked no more ill-tempered and craggy than usual. “So what are you planning to do, then, miss?”

“I’m planning to let him be.”

She expected satisfaction in his faded blue eyes. Instead his frown deepened. “And if he doesn’t want that?”

“It’s not his choice. Goodbye, Mr. Noonan.” She hesitated. “Look after him.”

“I’m thinking he won’t want you leaving without a word.”

“Then tell him I said goodbye.”

The old man was already racing up the front stairs by the time she closed the massive front door, and she knew she had to hurry. Within a matter of moments she’d blended with the crowds, gone before Noonan could wake his precious “boy.”

Her precious boy. Her angry man, her broken soldier, her salvation and destruction. Let him go, she thought fiercely. Let him go.

She had never taken a hackney cab in her life, and this wasn’t the day to start. She could walk for miles, in both city and country, and she knew the way to Temple Hospital well enough to cut through neighborhoods and alleyways and shortcuts, reaching there in half the time a vehicle might take, well before Brandon might arrive, if he even wanted to. She paused in the shadows of the old hospital, built by one of the Stuarts hundreds of years ago, and stared up at its imposing stone walls. She’d been happy there, fulfilled, infuriated, heartbroken. If it hadn’t been for Mr. Fenrush and his underlings, her life would have been perfect.

But that time was gone as well. Taking over from Fenrush would mean a battle she was no longer willing to wage—and if she didn’t care, then she would never win, even with Benedick’s power and money behind her.

It was time to find a new place, a new way to bring her gifts, such as they were, to people. Melisande would be hurt and furious if she disappeared, but perhaps, after a few years, Emma would be able to contact her, beg her forgiveness. By then Brandon would be settled in his new life, her existence forgotten once more.

She pushed herself forward. She needed her book on anatomy, the most important one, and some of her instruments, but most of all she needed the change of clothes and the cache of money she kept hidden in her private changing room. Leaving anything of value in her rooms by the dock had never been an option—here, everyone had kept their distance as if she’d carried a plague. They would avoid her today as well as she retrieved her necessary possessions.

But in this, at least, she was mistaken. Emma had no sooner set foot inside the door that had been allotted for her use when she ran into Mr. Grimley, the young surgeon she’d stabbed with a scalpel when he’d tried to interfere with her. Not the best luck in the world, she thought, but she had given up any hope of luck long ago.

He was a plump young man with a red face, soft hands, and watery blue eyes that always seemed filled with petulance or lust or occasionally both, and he’d been wanting revenge for a long time.

“What are you doing here?” He also had a nasal, high-pitched voice and a tendency to lisp his r’s, and she honored him with the haughty expression that had always infuriated him.

“I believe I work here. I assume the hospital still has the misfortune to employ you?”

He was rubbing his hand, the spot where she’d pricked him that time, and she felt a moment’s regret. Her own pain didn’t give her the right to hurt other people, even someone like Grimley, and she was about to apologize when his eyes narrowed in triumph.

“You’d best not let Mr. Fenrush see you,” he said. “The trustees told him you were going to be in charge of the students, and he was . . . displeased.”

Emma could imagine it. “I have no interest in meeting with him. I’m simply here on an errand. I don’t believe I’m scheduled to work for. . .”

“You won’t be working here again,” Grimley said triumphantly.

Emma had concluded the same thing, but irritation managed to sneak through her misery. “Is that so?” she said coolly. “According to whom?”

“You’ll see.” He turned away from her, addressing an approaching figure. “Here’s Mrs. Cadbury, Collins. She just showed up without warning.”

“I hardly think I have to give notice. . .” she began as Mr. Fenrush’s huge manservant loomed in front of her, and she took an involuntary step back before she could stop herself.

He put one heavy hand on her arm, and she looked down at the bruised knuckles, the scratched skin, before searching his face. That was bruised as well, as if he’d suffered at the fists of someone in a fury, and a strange sense of familiarity washed over her. Of course he looked familiar—she’d seen him skulking around the hospital building for the last two years she’d been training there. But it was something else, the dark eyes like currants in a pasty face, the. . .

“No,” she said, frozen in shock. Those eyes had been staring into hers as those hands tried to choke the life from her. But it was impossible, it made no sense. . .

“She’s going to faint, Collins,” Grimley said.

The hell I am, Emma thought, but she felt her knees dip slightly as if she were about to collapse, and immediately those huge, vicious hands yanked at her.

Clearly, not a man who learned his lesson. Even hampered by her skirts her kick hit her target, and Collins doubled over with the same girlish scream she’d heard a few short days ago. Grimley stumbled back in gratifying panic, and she thought she might have a chance to escape when Collins rose up in a roar, launching himself at her and then she was falling, falling and everything went dark.

It was the smell. Horse dung, urine, unwashed bodies and something else that she couldn’t quite recognize, pushing into her mouth, her nostrils, her lungs. It was the motion—she was cramped, restrained, unable to catch herself as she rolled back and forth in what had to be some kind of conveyance. It was the darkness—everything was an unbreathable blackness. Her arms were clamped to her body with heavy rope, her wrists tied even tighter.

Someone had thrust a gag in her mouth, and if she thought about where that rag might have come from she would vomit, and then she could very easily choke and die. She’d seen it happen in patients who hadn’t been carefully tended. Her stomach was roiling with an onslaught of revulsion, but she willed herself to think of cold, cool things as she was tossed back and forth in the blackness and filth.

Her first sense that she wasn’t alone in whatever instrument of torture they’d placed her was when someone kicked her, hard, in her already bruised ribs. “Can’t you keep her away from me?” came Amasa Fenrush’s fretful voice.

“Could have finished her back in London,” the slow voice of his manservant answered. “Then when I dumped her in the river this time there’d be no one around to fish her back out again.”

“And when is the riverside ever deserted?” Fenrush’s tone was waspish. “She’s the one who created this debacle, and you’ve failed time and time again. We can’t risk another mistake.”

“Your mistake in the first place, telling a whore about your side business,” Collins said. “Anyone knows you can’t tell a whore anything, but no, you had to go and talk about our side business while you were having at her. What did you think, she was some holy nun and you were making your last confession?”

“She was a whore,” Fenrush said stiffly. “She shouldn’t have known what I was talking about, and besides, most trollops are dead by the time they reach twenty-five. I never thought I’d see her again.”

Collins made a disgusted noise. “Life doesn’t work out so nice, gov’nor. It’s a good thing that toff sent her to your hospital to learn her trade—else who knows who she might have told. You’re boneheaded, is all I can say.”

“May I remind you that you are my servant?” Fenrush said frostily.

“And may I remind yer bleedin’ worship that I’ve killed for you, time and again, and if those Rohans find out you have something to do with this bitch’s problems then you may as well kiss your comfortable life goodbye.”

“I’m dying of syphilis. My comfortable life is over anyway.”

Collins expressed no sympathy or regret. “At least you’re taking Mrs. Cadbury with you. Should have kept to cleaner whores, but you like a bit of the mud, don’t you?”

“It was her fault. After that young girl died she wouldn’t allow me into her tawdry establishment, and I had to make do with the filthiest of streetwalkers. If her life wasn’t about to end I’d rape her myself to make sure she died of the same disease.”

“I thought all whores had it.” Collins sounded no more than mildly curious.

“Not the delicate flowers of Mrs. Howard’s establishment. That’s why they could demand the highest prices. They were very particular about their clientele, as if the sluts had any right to be.” He cleared his throat and spat. “And she was a worthless lay.”

All right, now she truly was going to throw up, Emma thought, thinking of frozen lakes and snow-covered hills. She had never looked at the men who’d been led into her room, never noticed who she’d been servicing in her drugged stupor. The very thought that Butcher Fenrush had once touched her was enough to make her gag.

“I might take a poke at her before I finish her off,” Collins said in a thoughtful voice. “Dunno whether I have the French disease or not, but if she dies being afraid of it then so much better. She owes me for the beating I got.”

“You should have finished her off before Rohan’s brother rescued her.”

“I likes to take me time.”

She felt the boot again. “Think she’s still knocked out?” Fenrush said.

“Hard to say. Might be dead already—she hit the marble floor hard.”

“She’s not dead,” Fenrush said grimly. “You said yourself, life’s doesn’t work out so conveniently. Haul her up and take a look.”

Oh, Christ, Emma thought, letting her body go completely limp. If she had to look at the man she might really throw up.

It took what little fortitude remained her to keep from reacting as Collins wrapped his big, cruel hands around her arms and hauled her up, but she managed to remain limp, eyes closed, as she was dumped onto a seat and the covering was ripped from her head.

She wanted to suck in the fresh air, to blink as murky light penetrated her eyelids, but she did nothing, simply lolled on the seat like a rag doll.

Someone kicked her leg but she didn’t react. At least it was an improvement over her ribs. If those splintered she’d have a hard time running, and she was going to need to be able to, sooner or later.

She felt a hand on her breast, tweaking it cruelly, but she still remained passive, and she heard Fenrush’s snort of disgust. “How hard did you hit her? She’s still out cold.”

“I didn’t hit her—I told you, she smashed her head on the marble floor. T’aint my fault if it scrambled her brain. She’s going to be dead in a short time—what does it matter to you?”

To her disgust she felt the seat shift as Fenrush moved closer. He stank of body odor and formaldehyde, and she couldn’t react, mustn’t react, when he put his doubtless filthy fingers on her face and pried up an eyelid.

That was one thing she couldn’t fake. “I thought so,” he said with a little crow of triumph. “She’s faking. She’s been awake all this time.”

But Mr. Fenrush’s knowledge of human anatomy had always been imperfect, and he wouldn’t know a sign of life if it bit him on the arse. She let her eyelids drop to half-mast, staring at him blearily and making a mumbling sound from behind the revolting gag, then sank back and closed them again, seemingly succumbing to unconsciousness once more.

“I dunno,” Collins said. “Looks kinda half dead to me.”

She heard Fenrush’s snarl. “You are hardly a respected medical professional.”

Neither are you, Emma thought, allowing her body to sway a bit. Since total insensibility was denied to her, she could instead appear dazed, non compos mentis, and an idiot like Fenrush wouldn’t know the difference. Collins said nothing, and Emma didn’t dare let her eyes do more than flutter open. He was picking his teeth. She closed them again.

They were in a carriage, or what passed for one, though it couldn’t be the fancy conveyance Fenrush travelled to work in each day. This one had no springs, the seats were torn and stained, and the smell was appalling. It must have . . . oh, god.

She knew that smell. Fenrush had risen to the top of his profession on the strength of his ability to procure one of the most needed of medical commodities. He’d been able to deliver hundreds of cadavers to the surgeons’ academy, some dead not more than a couple of hours, and no one had asked where they came from. They’d come from this carriage—the unmistakable smell of putrefying flesh was everywhere.

She gagged, unable to help herself, and no matter how hard she tried, visions of mountain streams and snow couldn’t stop her. If she vomited she would die, and Fenrush and Collins would watch her, unmoved. She gagged again, trying to swallow her bile, trying to think.

The mountain stream came again, and the snows, but the vision was clearer, and she knew where she was, even if she’d never set foot there in her life. She was in the Highlands of Scotland, by a deep, icy mountain burn, and Brandon was in the water, naked, long hair flowing behind him, swimming, impervious to the cold, impervious to everything as his eyes met hers across the distance, blue and calming, and she felt tendrils of comfort seep into her bones, cool, clean, washing away the horror.

The slap across her face jarred her back, but the crisis had passed, and she was tired of not fighting back. Her eyes flashed open, her hatred piercing through Fenrush’s smug face.

“I told you she was awake,” he crowed.

He was an unexpected-looking man, bluff, seemingly cheerful, full of bonhomie for his staff and the world at large. No one would look at him and think he was a monster.

“Of course you were lying,” he went on. “Women always lie and whores are women.”

She could have come up with an argument for that if she hadn’t been gagged, but instead she simply put all her fury into her eyes.

“I knew you remembered me,” he went on, his voice hurried, anxious, so at odds with his cheerful face. “I was just waiting for you to make your move, to try to take me down. You knew I wasn’t going to let you, didn’t you? I could see you watching me, see you planning your attack, but you should have known you could never hurt me. Good always triumphs.”

He was mad, Emma realized without a trace of sympathy. This wasn’t rational—she still didn’t recognize him or remember anything of a past encounter, and the man actually thought he was on the side of the angels. If Collins recognized his employer’s delusions he didn’t pay any attention, still picking at his blackened teeth.

Fenrush’s eyes were bulging slightly. “Why aren’t you saying something? Haven’t you got more lies, more excuses, aren’t you going to say you love me, that you never wanted. . .”

“She can’t talk,” Collins weighed in. “You told me to gag her. If you want her to speak then you have to take off the gag. In fact, this’d be a good time to get rid of her.”

Fenrush’s look of disgust was laughably patrician. “I am not going to ‘get rid of her’ as you put it. I couldn’t expect a man of your limitations to understand, but I have a plan. Dumping her on the side of the road is not part of it. Fire, Collins. Only fire washes away all sins.”

Fire and washing were pretty much opposites, Emma thought, letting her contempt distract her from her current disastrous position. She had to content herself with giving him a look of withering disdain, then leaning back and closing her eyes as if he bored her.

It worked. He yanked her forward and tore the gag away, spittle flying from his mouth as he screamed at her. “You will not ignore me! You are worthless, a travesty, a mockery of all that is sacred and noble in the medical profession! You filthy, disease-ridden trollop!”

“I gather you’re the one who’s disease-ridden,” she said calmly, surprised her voice sounded so normal. “I myself am quite healthy, and signs of the illness would have been noticeable by now if I had it. You kill more patients than you save, I save more than die, and as for all that is sacred and noble, you provided a never-ending supply of freshly-killed bodies for research, enriching your pockets and leading to your appalling appointment as head of the surgeons’ hospital, when there should have been little doubt you were murdering people for their corpses.” It was a wild shot across the bow, but it hit its mark, and there was no way she could hide her horror.

“Fact is, he didn’t kill ‘em,” Collins pointed out. “I did, me and me mates. Though occasionally he’d have to finish ‘em off if we got sloppy and delivered some still twitching, but I thinks he enjoyed that.”

“Shut up!” Fenrush screamed. “They were worthless, the dregs of society. They gave their lives for science, they. . .”

“They gave their lives for your pockets,” Collins said. “Admit it. And they weren’t all low-lives—you sent me after some of the gentry when someone paid you enough. There was that young man—son of a duke, he was, and those two old ladies. What’d ya want them for?”

Fenrush no longer looked like a cheerful shopkeeper—he was pasty, pale, and sweaty. “I admit there is no use for female cadavers in science,” he said loftily. “But I have benefactors, and small favors must be dispensed to keep them happy.”

Emma opened her eyes. “Small favors like killing their wives?”.

“Shut up, bitch,” Fenrush snarled.

“More like their mothers—both of them were too old to fuck before I did ‘em,” Collins said. “You’re a different matter.”

She didn’t even blink, looking at him like he was a slug. “I’d be surprised if your bollocks are still up to the task.”

He lunged off the opposite seat, but suddenly there was a blade between them—and not a small one. Fenrush held the saw used for cutting through bone, and it would slice through Collins quite easily. “Sit down,” Fenrush said icily. “I told you I had plans for her. She’ll go with the others. That is, if this time you did your job right.”

Collins sat back, disgruntled. “It’s taken care of. One spark and it’ll go up, with all them dollymops inside. But not this one. I deserve my go at her.”

“Especially this one,” Fenrush said. “She must burn the brightest.”

Emma promptly vomited.