my father’s wrath.”
“I should say. For you to enter the asylum healthy and with child and walk out a drooling idiot would hardly be to Heedson’s credit.”
“Precisely.” Grace wrapped her hands around Falsteed’s cell bars, wishing her friend would come into the light before she left him forever. “He’d go to any lengths to cover the enormity of such an error. Bruises and cuts for his own sadistic pleasures will heal, but if I’m permanently damaged he’ll have no choice but to aid in my escape.”
Falsteed sighed heavily, the warmth of his exhalation reaching her but not the sight of him. “And what am I to do after you’re gone? Wait for a new prisoner and hope they’re interesting?”
The second smile of the day spread across Grace’s face, her stomach now alight with the possibility of a future. “They could only be so lucky, to have you with them here in the dark.”
Fingers closed around hers, but she couldn’t see past his wrist. “Write to Reed here at the asylum under the name of a Miss Madeleine Baxter. He’ll get the letters to me. I would know how you fare.”
“Good-bye, my friend,” Grace said, her throat tight once again. His fingers gripped hers, stopping her from moving away at the last second.
“Be wary of Thornhollow, Grace. He’s a good man, by all measures. You have nothing to fear from him that you would from other men. But that is precisely why you must guard yourself. He does not understand human nature, our emotions and attachments. He’s made a place for himself among the insane because it’s easier for him than moving among society. People are a mystery to him.”
“They are to me as well,” Grace said, squeezing his hand before she followed Thornhollow into the dark.
“You’ve said your good-byes?” Thornhollow’s back was turned to her when she entered the surgery, his hands busy sharpening a scalpel.
“I have,” Grace said. “Shall I sit or . . .” Her voice trembled as she motioned to the bed.
“Sit,” Thornhollow said. “Obviously, I won’t be coring your brain. Triangular cuts at your temple should be enough to convince that witless Heedson that you’ve been damaged. You do realize you’ll be scarred?”
“Yes,” Grace said as she settled into the chair.
Thornhollow nodded. “Very good. As to the cutting itself, I’ll be dosing you with ether, so there will be no pain.”
Grace’s hands grasped the seat of the chair. “No, Doctor.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I’ll take no ether, sir.”
“Grace, you must understand—”
“No, you must understand. I’ll not be witless for a moment.”
Thornhollow frowned, his brows drawing together. “Do you not trust me?”
“I trust you with my life. Nothing more.”
The blade hovered in the air, the slightest tremor betraying him. “I’ll need you to be utterly still through the pain. You’re no use to me if you twitch and I accidentally put your eye out.”
Grace sat straight in the chair. “I’ve been still through worse.”
Thornhollow nodded his assent and moved behind her. “All right then, look up at the ceiling, if you please.”
The first cut brought a slice of heat near her eye; a second slice came close to her hairline, followed by pressure as the doctor pressed a clean rag against the wound. “Hold this,” he said, drawing her hand up to the wad of cloth. “Tightly as you can stand,” he added when she gripped it.
Grace concentrated, all sense of self lost as he moved to her other side, and the pain, bearable in its familiarity, flashed again. Thornhollow pushed against the wound with one hand, the other reaching for a ball of lint on the table.
“I’ll soak this in the oil,” he said, “and dress the wounds with gauze. I doubt Heedson would go so far as to flap back the skin to see if I truly punctured your skull, but I wouldn’t put it past my bad luck to have him decide to suddenly take interest in his patients when I need him at his most incompetent.”
Grace nodded her understanding but said nothing. Black spots had started to float in her vision as a stream of warm blood trickled down both cheeks. “Is it . . .” Her voice floated off, lost in the darkness of the room beyond their lanterns.
“Is it . . . ? Whoops-a-daisy,” Thornhollow said, righting Grace as she slumped in the chair. “Steady now, girl. Almost done.”
With his hands flashing about the work and oil of roses following in the wake of blood, Grace felt the warmth returning to her hands, now