To Harm and To Heal (Ladies’ Revenge Club #8)

Prologue

Mae Casper had some reservations about bringing her grandfather to a brothel. Unfortunately, they were superseded by the other obligations that had arisen today.

He, of course, had no such qualms.

“I can’t wait to tell your grandmother,” he said, more than once, scratching at his sparse white hair while chuckling to himself. “She’s going to be so cross with you, Mae! Dinner will be terribly awkward.”

Mae only sighed in response. Not because he was right, but because she was accustomed to his gleeful antagonizing. If she’d had any other choice of surgical theater, she would have taken it, of course.

She hadn’t.

The man with the foot that needed to be amputated was already living in the bawd house on Dyott Street, and, as luck would have it, the madam of that particular brothel was also trained as a midwife.

It might not be respectable, but it certainly was lucky.

They’d had a tent before it got cold, over on the border between Clerkenwell and St. Giles.

The dip in temperature had made that particular solution untenable, so while they waited for a more permanent clinic to be built, the patients had been dispersed throughout the city into any charitable rooms willing to have them.

It just so happened that the most willing charity had come from the city’s underbelly.

It had been a lesson in assumptions for Mae, she supposed, both that she had some incorrect ones and that she herself was guilty of prejudice and unwarranted judgement—that second one had been a surprise.

Given the color of her skin, she had always thought of herself as the recipient of those behaviors, never the instigator.

She glanced at her grandfather, who glowed alabaster white opposite her red brown, and chuckled to herself as he spun on his heels in admiration of the brothel’s red-draped and velvet-lined receiving foyer.

Perhaps everyone was capable of being surprised, at the end of the day.

“Mae!” called Sally, the brothel madam, who bustled over, already holding a stack of linens topped with two rolls of gauze and a look of anxiety on her plump face.

“Did you find any ether? I looked everywhere for strong spirits, but we’re down to nothing but wine here in the off season and I couldn’t find anyone to sell me something stronger on short notice. ”

“I’ve a friend with a gambling hell,” she said, reaching forward to take the top half of the stack from the other woman, ignoring the sound of protest she made.

“He’s promised to not only bring something disgustingly potent, but also one of his minions who apparently has a talent for knocking men unconscious without a blow to the head. It’s the best we’ve got, for now.”

“I’m curious to see that last part,” Dr. Casper said, turning from his close admiration of a particularly graphic tapestry hung on the near wall. “How do you think he does it? Bit of smothering?”

“I can’t imagine any other way,” Mae said with a shrug. “This is likely to be a rough man, given that he works as an enforcer, so we ought to be patient and understand completely what he plans before we allow him to lay hands on the patient.”

“That’s always been a rule here, anyhow,” Sally said with a raise of her brows. “Honest.”

They turned to trudge up the stairs, where the man was awaiting them in a room that Sally had prepared as best as she could for the procedure.

“I’ve put down a lot of old sheets. Got some from the neighboring establishments, rags and the like. The butcher even lent me a tarp,” she was chattering as they walked. “And the saw, of course.”

“Of course,” Mae said with a grimace. “I trust that you gave it a wash?”

“Oh, several,” Sally assured her grimly. “Several. Though I think the city’s pigs are cleaner than many of its men, to tell you true.”

“She’s not wrong,” Dr. Casper agreed, still seemingly fascinated with every detail of the hallway as they walked.

One of the brothel girls was pacing around outside of the room, bouncing a baby on her hip. She frowned as they approached.

“Are you sure you have to do it?” she said to Sally. “Are you certain?”

“I’m afraid so,” Sally replied, giving the baby’s leg a little pinch and a tiny smile. “He’ll be better for it.”

“It’s only a foot,” said Dr. Casper, grinning at the baby, who immediately grinned back. “We’re more than our feet, aren’t we, little one?”

Mae took a steadying breath and pushed forward into the room where the patient awaited, a shoreman who had lived in a tenement that collapsed at the end of the summer.

He would have been fine if he had not insisted on returning to work so soon. The injury on his foot had been reopened thrice since the original tenement disaster, and even so, Mae had been able to clean and re-stitch it over and over again.

The problem had happened when another doctor had doubted her work and slapped leeches— filthy, unsoaked leeches—over the sutures because he had spotted a little bit of pus and thought the leeches would clear it up.

It had made everything worse. So much worse that the foot was now necrotic. She couldn’t save it, and worse, if she didn’t take it from him, death was going to climb up the remainder of his leg as well.

Mae had thought it a godsend when the doctors from London’s prestigious institutions had deigned to finally acknowledge and assist in their plight, and in many ways, it still was one. Just not for this man. And not for his foot.

“Miss Casper,” said the shoreman, grimacing up at her over his black-streaked foot. He wiggled his toes a little and grimaced in pain at the effort. “Just doing it a few more times while I still can.”

She glanced a little helplessly in the mirror, noting how gaunt she looked, how tired. It had been a trying time riddled with guilt and sleeplessness after she had realized the mess those fine doctors had made, even with their engraved diplomas and superior educations.

She wrapped a cloth a few times around her hairline to keep the springy little curls at bay and tossed her apron onto a nearby chair, closing her eyes and drawing herself up, telling herself that this was just another procedure. It was just like setting a bone. It was setting a bone, in a way.

Wasn’t it?

Oh, God.

She took to rolling up the linens Sally had stacked and placing them in rows around the bed where the patient was lying. “Just so we can grab them easily,” she said to him, all the while wedging them under his torso so that he would not buck off the bed when they started to cut into him.

Her grandfather took out a tray to lay out the tools, praising the cleanliness of the instruments and the sharpness of the saw to a dazed-looking Sally.

He could not perform it himself, despite having a fully credentialed and storied medical background, due to the arthritis in his hands. His knuckles were the size of walnuts and limited his dexterity, even without the additional obstacle of the pain that came along with it.

“I’m still here, though,” he told Sally. “I’ll still help where I can.”

She only nodded and joined Mae with rolling up the towels and bolstering them on either side of their patient.

She could hear Mr. Beck and his thug approaching, their heavy, masculine footfalls sounding from the hall, and breathed a sigh of relief.

When she’d gone to him for help this morning, she hadn’t known how the man would react, but he’d forced her to eat something and assured her that she’d have any help at all he could give. He was a big, intimidating sort of chap, but he had an exceedingly good heart.

“This is my grandfather, Dr. Casper,” Mae said as soon as the door opened, gesturing over to where he was arranging the sharps and thread on the tray. She didn’t bother to look up from where she was currently wedging a towel into place. “And this is Mr. Beck and his associate.”

“Don’t worry,” her grandfather said with an obvious trace of amusement, flexing his arthritic hands with a series of faint snaps and pops. “I’m just here to advise.”

Mae sighed and braced herself, avoiding looking anywhere near the foot for just one more blessed second before the time came to take action. She gripped her hands against her hips and flexed the muscles in her arms, reminding herself to be present in her body.

“All right,” she said, letting her eyes open and focus on the patient’s face. “Do you want me to walk you through what’s going to happen, or would you rather just lie back and get it over with?”

“Over with,” the man immediately blurted out. “Please.”

She gave a brisk nod and glanced back at Mr. Beck.

“All right. Pour our friend here a few drinks first and we’ll get started.

And once you’re nice and warm, we’ll have this other gentlem…

” She trailed off as her gaze slid over to his enforcer, the man who was apparently here to choke the consciousness out of her patient.

She supposed she had expected someone quite a lot like Mr. Beck in form, truth be told. Someone large and hulking and scarred, but perhaps not quite as fashionably dressed as Mr. Beck often was in mixed company.

This man was not that.

In fact, he might have been the most beautiful person Mae had ever set eyes on. He was tall and lean, with pinkish-gold hair that was tied back from his face with a vibrant green ribbon. He had freckled skin and high cheekbones and the most perfect, gentle mouth.

She was, for likely quite a lot longer than was appropriate, stunned.

She swallowed and shook herself, tearing her eyes away as her cheeks heated.

“What is your name, sir?” she asked, as briskly as she could summon as she looked around for something to occupy her hands with and settled on snatching her apron up and dropping it over her head.

“Can you explain to me what you’re going to do? ”