Free Ripper by Amy Carol Reeves Page A

anymore.”
    She smiled warmly. Briefly, I wondered if she was making this up, joshing with me a bit. I could not believe that within minutes of knowing me, she would confide all this. But something in her eyes told me it was true.
    Chester had almost reached us.
    â€œWhy are you telling me all of this?” I whispered.
    Her reply came instantly. “Because you look like you would understand. And because you look like you won’t tell a soul,” she added as she gave me a quick peck on the cheek and departed. She left a faint scent of honeysuckle behind. Chester had just arrived at the punch bowl.
    As Chester rambled on, I watched Mariah walk back to the dinner table. She was correct. I would not tell a soul. Grandmother had called her a libertine; I found her intriguing compared to my monotonous Kensington life, and I saw the possibility of a new friendship.

    Two workdays passed quickly, and on Friday evening I arrived at Dr. Bartlett’s enormous white gabled home. William had been correct about the street seeming transitional. Though the outside of Dr. Bartlett’s house was quite well-kept, most of the houses on the street were much more worn and seemed abandoned. I also saw gutted workhouses and factory buildings. The street was mostly dark, as there were no working streetlamps.
    As I stepped out of his carriage, I felt curious and excited about the impending evening. I anticipated that this would be very different from my evening at Lady Catherine’s.
    â€œWelcome!” Dr. Bartlett exclaimed as he opened the door for me and took my coat.
    He led me to an enormous drawing room immediately to the left of the front entranceway. The room had dark green patterned wallpaper and long narrow windows heavily curtained in sage velvet drapes; it had a grand, earthy feel. Giant potted plants abounded along the walls and in every corner of the room. I saw at least three large fish bowls; one, under a gaslight in the center of the room, was huge, globelike. This globe aquarium absorbed and reflected prisms of light above it into every angle of the room. Unlike the two smaller aquariums, this aquarium contained jellyfish. They were tiny and silver—each a pulsating thimble with long tentacles floating behind like hair. Part of Dr. Buck’s collection, undoubtedly.
    Across the room, past the fish bowl, several young men, many of whom I recognized as physicians or medical students from the hospital, sat around smoking cigars, small glasses of gin or sherry in their hands. The conversation lulled a bit when they saw me, and I saw glimmers of disappointment in the gazes that flashed toward me. Undoubtedly they thought that a woman would cramp and exasperate their conversation. The only warm gaze came from Simon. He drank only wine.
    Several men, whom I took to be Dr. Bartlett’s housemates, sat beside the large bookcases near where we stood. Like Dr. Bartlett, the housemates appeared to be middle-aged or late middle-aged—except for one.
    I stifled a small gasp when I recognized the youngest man as the one I had slammed into when leaving the hospital. He stared at me now with his leopard green eyes and cast me a nod. My curiosity rose regarding his identity. I had thought he was possibly a physician at the hospital, but he lounged on an ottoman near the others in a manner that seemed far too familiar for a subordinate physician.
    He stayed where he was while the others rose to meet me.
    Dr. Bartlett began introducing them at once.
    â€œAbbie, this is Reverend John Perkins.”
    Reverend Perkins stepped forward and took my hand. Dressed all in black, he wore a clergyman’s collar; however, unlike many of the pleasant, powder-haired clergymen in England, he exuded shrewdness. More lion than lamb, I concluded. Tall, and sporting a long pepper-colored beard, Reverend Perkins—though polite—had an imposing and formal appearance.
    Dr. Marcus Brown, meanwhile, was of average height,