Read Eve Silver for Free Online Page B

journal and slid it back into place, noticing as she did so that it was a publication of the Royal Society of London, dated 1665. Micrographia, or some physiological descriptions of minute bodies made by magnifying glasses, with observations and inquiries thereupon. Darcie shook her head. The doctor's books and journals had interesting names, but more often than not she had no idea what the titles actually meant.
    “Hurry, Darcie! Poole's in a foul mood again.”
    Darcie jerked her hand back as if burned and whirled to find Mary Fitzgerald standing in the doorway, her unruly red hair escaping from her cap, her sparkling green eyes wide with concern.
    “Oh! Mary!” Darcie exclaimed. “You gave me a fright.”
    Mary nodded her head in the direction of the doctor's shelves. “Those books are what give me a fright. You ever looked in them? Horrible things.”
    Running her index finger over the spine of the closest volume, Darcie frowned. William Harvey. 1628. On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals. She read the unfamiliar title out loud.
    “Oh! You can read! I just look at the pictures.”
    “What is it about the pictures that gives you a fright?”
    Mary glanced around to make sure that there was no one else about. She quickly crossed the room and approached Darcie's side. “You really never looked at them? I'd 'ave thought that you'd 'ave poked your nose in one of them by now. You've been here a month. And I told you the doctor's a strange one.”
    “And I told you that it's plain as the nose on your face that he's a good man. He has a kind heart.” Darcie decided not to mention that she had, in fact, opened one or two of the doctor's books, and had found the writings therein both fascinating and confounding, perhaps even frightening.
    “A good heart? You think so, do you? Just 'cause he took you in. Well, you work hard for your pay, Darcie Finch. Harder than the rest of us.” Mary narrowed her eyes as she glared at Darcie, then leaned close and spoke just above a whisper. “I think he has no heart. I've seen people come and go at odd hours of the night when no honest person ought to be out. I think he's doing something...I don't know, something evil, I think.”
    Darcie recalled the corpse that had shared her coach the night she arrived. Pushing aside the thought, she rolled her eyes and scolded Mary. “Dr. Cole is not evil, Mary. You have such an imagination. People have no control over when they take sick. If they need a doctor at a late hour, then that is when they need him!”
    “Sick? Ha!” Mary pushed her face close to Darcie's, her words low and hard. “I never said they were sick. I remember a time when I first started in the doctor's service, five years ago, or thereabouts. Dr. Cole had a good practice then. Lots of society matrons and their snooty daughters. Then he started to restrict his hours, to spend more time at his surgery in the East End, or in that place”—she jerked her head towards the window where the shadow of the carriage house darkened the back of the large yard—”in his laboratory on the upper floor, and suddenly it seemed as though the people who passed his door were more likely dead than not. There's something wicked in there, mind my words, Darcie Finch. Something wicked.”
    As Mary stepped forward, Darcie moved aside, allowing the other maid easier access to the shelves.
    “There was Janie, the maid who was here before you.” Mary lowered her voice even further, and sent a quick, furtive glance over her shoulder. “One day she was just up and gone, like she'd never been, and no one ever heard from her again.” She paused dramatically, waiting for the meaning of her words to sink in.
    Darcie held her silence, but a recollection tickled the edge of her thoughts. Yes, she remembered now. Dr. Cole had made reference to a missing maid on the night he had first hired her.
    “And once,” Mary continued, “I found his handkerchief tossed on the floor. It was soaked