Ned was waiting for them, happy to drive the carriage two days in a row, his bright smile almost bringing an answering one to Grace’s face. Thornhollow produced a list of addresses once they were moving, the clattering of the horse’s hooves hiding their conversation from Ned.
“I made inquiry and came up with a little over twenty doctors in the city. We’ll try to visit them all today while your hair is twisted into this unnatural shape. Doesn’t that hurt?”
“Hasn’t anyone ever told you that beauty is pain?” Grace asked.
“I’m much more familiar with the latter.”
“Yes, it does hurt a little. By the end of the day there’ll be no farce involved as we try to procure headache medicine.”
Thornhollow shook his head. “I’ll never understand.”
Grace pulled a hand mirror from her purse and inspected her reflection. “Yet women do these things in order to appeal to men.”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t appealing. I said I don’t understand it.”
“Yes, well . . .” Grace put a hand to her unmoving hair, and the pins digging into her scalp. “Sometimes the actions of the sane make no sense.”
“Amen.”
They clattered to a stop on a busy side street, and Thornhollow handed her down from the carriage. “Our experiment today is twofold, Grace. As I explained before, I’ll go into each practice a few minutes before you, to judge the doctor’s social ability with his own sex.”
“And I come along after in the guise of your niece, to see if his demeanor changes around females.”
“Yes. And your free time is to be exactly that. Free. Go about town; you’ll find money in your purse. Shop. Buy things. Do whatever it is you want, but be Grace Mae, not the broken girl who lives on the hill.”
Grace’s face fell, her eyes carrying a shadow that had lifted during their conversation. “I don’t ever want to be Grace Mae again, Dr. Thornhollow. I don’t want pretty things in shopwindows, and I don’t want to playact at being carefree. I am that broken girl. She has a purpose, at least, and it’s hidden in the identity of the man whose address is somewhere on your slip of paper.”
He crumpled the paper in his fist. “Try. For my sake. Your whole life can’t be wrapped up in the endings of others.” He turned his back on her, and she went the opposite direction, assuming the false smile that he wanted to prove true.
Even though she’d tossed his words aside the moment he’d said them, the effect lasted. She caught the reflection of her pretended happiness in a window that she passed, looking every inch like a privileged girl enjoying a beautiful day. But she knew she had never been that, even before the scars on her temples had set her apart from others. Playacting was something she had perfected long before meeting Dr. Thornhollow, and at least the darkness that haunted her now was one she had the power to end.
She entered the doctor’s office to find Thornhollow in deep conversation with a bored-looking man who brightened up the moment she walked in. “Any luck, Uncle?” she asked.
“Not so much,” he said ruefully. “Doctor Maggill here was just saying how he’s about to close for lunch and doesn’t have a moment to help us.”
“Nonsense, nonsense,” Maggill said as he approached Grace. “I can certainly postpone something as pedestrian as lunch to help a lovely young creature such as yourself.” He beckoned for Grace to sit on a stool, but she shook her head.
“No, Doctor, I wouldn’t dream of interrupting your daily routine. We can return later, can’t we, Uncle?”
“Of course,” Thornhollow agreed, putting his hat back on and taking Grace by the arm. “Back in an hour, Doctor?”
“Lovely, and you can make it half an hour,” he said, smiling, showing too clearly that he’d already had lunch and some of it was still located in his teeth. “I hate to think of you suffering for one second longer than absolutely necessary.”
“That was certainly not our man,” Thornhollow declared, once they were back in the carriage. “Though I’d like to give him a sound drubbing anyway. Not interested in treating a girl he’s never seen until he likes the sight of her.” He shook his head, talking only to himself. “A disgrace to the Hippocratic oath.”
Grace rapped his knee with her knuckles as they slid to a halt once again. “Our next stop, Doctor.”
“I’m going to lose my faith in humanity before the