Duke of Luhst, Chapter 1
As Lady Chastity Perrin dipped a hook needle into a bowl of spirits, she knew with a great certainty three things:
One, a lady did not come unchaperoned to the rookeries of London.
Two, an unmarried lady did not stay alone with a man.
Three, a lady most definitely did not carry clean needles across a modest but spotless surgery to an unlicensed doctor to help him with a surgical operation that involved so, so—oh, goodness!—so much blood.
“Here you go, Dr. Sterling,” she said as she presented him the needle, threaded with catgut, on a plate she had also wiped with alcohol.
“Thank you, Lady Chastity,” said Brace Sterling as he picked up the needle and glanced at his patient—a little girl of not more than three years old, with blond curls under a grimy, ragged bonnet. “Stella, this is going to hurt. I am very sorry indeed.”
The girl’s grandmother, who stood by the examination table, clenched her bony hands around the edges of a threadbare and hole-ridden gray shawl. “It’s her own fault,” said the woman in a thick accent, scowling. “Trippin’ everywhere. Such a clumsy one. Breaks plates, mugs. Who’s gonna pay for the new ones?”
Stella’s big eyes filled with tears and darted to the floor, her small shoulders hunching forward as if she were trying to make herself look smaller. Dirty, thin fingers fidgeted with the hem of her dress.
Chastity’s heart ached for her. A three-year-old should not wear such a hurt expression.
And yet, in it, Chastity recognized herself.
Though she’d been a little older than Stella—five, perhaps—when it first began, she could hear her father’s voice belittling her for unladylike behavior: hunching over a microscope, playing chess, looking through biological illustrations.
Brace Sterling, a tall and broad-shouldered man with rugged, handsome features and turquoise eyes, his blond hair tied back in a tail, exchanged a glance with Chastity. The worry in his eyes mirrored her own. The child was severely neglected.
“Mrs. Murray,” he said as he pinched the skin on both sides of a nasty gash on Stella’s ankle. “You did right to bring the child here. I know you do your best to care for her, but be kinder to her if you can find it in yourself. The tripping could be because the girl is half starved. Or simply because she is just three years old.”
The woman scowled at him, her mouth twisting in a bitter expression. “My daughter was a serving maid at Rose & Crown and died givin’ birth. No one knows who the father is. He gave her a gold ring as payment and filled her belly with a child. If I could, I’d leave and go to my sister’s farm and live with her. But here at least I can earn a coin doin’ the washin’. It’s a wonder I kept the girl alive this long.”
“You’re doing your best,” Dr. Sterling repeated, though Chastity wasn’t convinced he believed it, as his voice rang with an underlying anger. “No one has an easy life here in Whitechapel. Stella, dear, I’m going to start sewing, and I want you to be strong. If it helps, you might like to hold your grandmother’s hand.”
Stella blinked at him with her big eyes, still glistening with tears, and took Mrs. Murray’s hand, which had raw, cracked skin and thick joints, no doubt from years of scrubbing laundry.
Dr. Sterling leaned over Stella’s dirty, skinny leg which showed from under the hem of her too-short, tattered dress. The wound had been cleaned meticulously using alcohol, which must have been painful enough for the poor child. Chastity wished they could have given her a warm bath and a clean dress, as well.
With light but precise movements, the doctor began sewing the gash together.
Stella—very ladylike—screamed.
Chastity—very unladylike—didn’t. Nor did she faint. No matter how much she wanted to.
The girl’s ankle could, in truth, be a feast for a vampire. Or a wolf. The poor thing’s blood was oozing onto the hard brown leather of the examination table on which she lay.
Chastity shuddered, remembering another doctor sewing cuts on her brother’s wrists and arms as a child, just as Dr. Sterling was doing now. Her chest felt too tight, as always, at the memory, her breath ragged.
To distract herself, she looked around the room.
Sunlight streamed through the window. White plaster walls were decorated with anatomical illustrations on heavy cream-colored paper. An oak writing desk, stained a deep brown, stood against the opposite wall with a matching chair. Next to it stood a tall cabinet with glass-fronted doors revealing shelves stocked with neatly arranged glass bottles containing medicines and dried herbs. A similar cabinet stood next to it holding ledger books bound in leather or hard-wearing cloth. These held patient records.
From outside the window, came the sounds of Whitechapel’s Petticoat Street and the market: merchants calling their wares, dogs barking, men swearing, children yelling, and drunken laughter...
