Page 1 of A Sight to Behold
Chapter One
London, 1820.
On to anotherMonday morning at 87 Harley Street, Nick thought as he picked up the patient cards from the kitchen table and set his teacup in the sink. The waiting room had already filled with Monday morning emergencies and the doctors rose from their breakfasts eager to prepare for another week of hard work.
“Dislocated shoulder, possibly broken elbow.” Nick held the card out with the patient’s name, age, and chief complaint—another pro bono case they’d take on without pay.
“Got it,” Andre took the card and scanned it. There wasn’t a joint the orthopedist couldn’t soothe or a bone he couldn’t set. If there was one principle the doctors all agreed on, it was that helping patients didn’t require aquid pro quobecause it wasn’t about the money. Helping people was what medicine was all about for them—and yet the supplies and medicines were expensive, and they needed some patients who could afford their fees.
Nicholas Folsham, or just “Nick,” had golden hands and a perfect track record of surgeries. That’s what most people believed. Probably. He picked his cases and only performed surgeries when he knew he’d succeed.
“Do you have the Earl of Langley’s cataract today?” Alfie asked about their most prominent case and for whom he’dmixed various tinctures, emulsions, and teas. He was as talented an apothecary as he was a rake.
“Yes, later this morning.” Nick didn’t look up from the patient cards. If Nick could fix the cataract on the earl’s left eye and restore his vision, he could ensure his continued recommendations among his aristocratic clients and, thus, a steady influx of patients for the practice. It was their privilege to treat patients and heal them, but it was also their livelihood.
Next card. “Grace nine, Dorothy eleven, and Kenneth fourteen—”
“Ah, Lord Carvill’s children. I’ll take these,” Felix said, with his signature sad eyes, despite a smile. He wasn’t merely the resident dentist at 87 Harley Street but one of Nick’s most trusted friends. “Just a few fillings. Everything’s ready upstairs.”
Felix headed out to the waiting room to welcome his three young patients. Children didn’t even mind him. There was no higher praise for a dentist.
“A rash, some warts, and… oh, please read this yourself, I just ate,” Nick said, handing Alfie, the apothecary, the cards for his morning clients. He pushed the bowl of green grapes to the center of the oak table. Even though he’d studied the general ailments of the human body, physiology and pathology were two completely kettle of fish, the latter of which he’d rather leave for Alfie if it was a matter outside the eye.
“Not again!” Alfie groaned. “There’s no way he’s already used up all the tincture.”
“Please mind her,” Nick said with a severe glance in Wendy’s direction, his nineteen-year-old sister who he’d trained as a nurse. She was the only female who lived with him and his friends, some of the most highly specialized doctors in England. Nick joined his sister and Alfie as they left the kitchen, and walked toward the front of the building. His treatment room wason the left of the waiting room, and Alfie’s apothecary was on the right.
“Who do you think told His Grace that Alfie has a cure for the inability to complete the marriage act to ensure his wife’s pleasure?” Wendy asked with a proud smile that melted away when she saw Nick’s eyes growing wide in shock.
“It’s more like a cure for the inability to even start.” Alfie winked and raised his brows giving Wendy one of his rakishyou-know-I-know-how-pretty-you-arelooks before Nick could punch him—lightly, as between friends. But still.
“She’s my little sister!” Nick shook his head. Alfie was far too handsome for an apothecary, but it was probably good for business. After the ladies saw him, they sent their husbands for tinctures. What Alfie charged on the first Monday of the month nearly paid for their rent.
“Not-so-little sister!” Alfie winked again and gave Wendy a look over his shoulder as he disappeared into his pharmacy across from Nick’s treatment room. He’d say she blushed if it weren’t the light on this particularly dreadful London morning. No, he assured himself, it was impossible that she blushed.It must be the fog, softening the gas light.
“You know he’s jesting, right?” she said with that smitten smile still pasted on, the kind Nick knew would be trouble someday.
“He’d never lay a hand on you, I know that. But I wish he wouldn’t flirt with you.”
“He flirts with everyone. Alfie’s so handsome, he can get away with it.” It bothered Nick that his sister wasn’t immune to Alfie’s charms. She should be since he’d known the apothecary and all the others for almost a decade.Well, nine years? No.He counted again.Just eight.When he started to study medicine with them, Miss Gewndolyn Folsham had been but ten years old and she’d still not lived down the nickname she gave herself atage two: “Wendy.” She was a darling sister and they had endured a lot together a long time ago.
“What about me?” Nick asked, bending down to pick up Chromius’s water bowl and rinse it off in the sink. “Come on, old boy, time to wake up. The room needs to be prepared for surgery.”
“You’re handsome, but you don’t know it.” Wendy had begun to care about him during the time between growing up too fast and speaking to uncountable patients about far too much that affected matters of the heart. She was his confidante, and even though he wouldn’t admit it to her, he often felt as though she could see the world more clearly than he did. Nick trusted her judgment, however, unwillingly.
“I beg your pardon?” Nick wiped the bowl with an old towel and filled it with fresh water for the dog.
“You don’t notice when women notice you, so you can’t flirt,” Wendy added.
That was astute.
Irritatingly so, in fact. Especially coming from his little sister.
But that was neither here nor there. As usual, there was no time to think about women for Nick. “We have three surgeries today.”
Wendy nodded and opened the cabinet to retrieve some clean linens. She was the best nurse and the smartest little sister in the world. Or the other way around. It didn’t matter. He loved her dearly. The thing was, she was right about him not knowing how to flirt. And that inability to flirt bothered him immensely.
He needed a distraction to channel his focus for the surgery later this morning. Thus, Nick decided it was time to get something sweet from the cornerpatisserie. He tied Chromius’s lead on and listened to the sleepy dog following with the pitter-patter of his little feet on short legs. When he closed the door to the practice, he admired the new sign on their door.
