Page 7 of A Devilish Element
“It’s still disgusting, and I remain unconvinced as to the efficacy,” Jem said.
“Are you a physician?” Bell placed the remaining leeches. Four… five of them in total, which seemed unduly excessive considering Linfield wasn’t especially well endowed, and he was currently as limp as a wet stocking.
“I prefer to stick to the mechanics of iron and steel to that of flesh,” Jem retorted. Numbers were a deal less messy and rarely drew blood.
“Then I’ll thank you not to persist in offering your opinions.”
Bell could be a soulless killjoy.
While Jem might not care for flesh-tailoring, that didn’t mean he wasn’t intrigued by the mechanics of it. That said, he wasn’t desperate for a lesson on leeches. Actually, he was rather surprised to find them in Bell’s repository, given his reputation as a proponent of modernised medicine. Leeches were the province of quacks, along with old theories of imbalanced humours and cupping.
“I suppose the theory is that the little devils draw out the bad blood, allowing the good to flow and produce a rise, or is it just a matter of sucking fluid into his cock? If it’s the latter, I have to say there are more pleasant ways—”
“No,” Linfield released his grip on Jem’s hand in order to hold up his own, thus stopping Bell before he replied and got into the guts of the theory, and Jem from expanding on alternative means of creating inflation. “I don’t care to know. It doesn’t matter how it works, as long as it does. The pair of you are dull enough with your constant scientific blathering without it involving my cock.” He flicked a glance up at Bell. “I don’t feel it doing anything.”
“They’ve not been on you a minute.”
Linfield huffed, then settled himself more comfortably. He closed his eyes.
Jem used the moment of quiet to rub the residual ache from his fingers. They’d been crushed almost to numbness by Linfield’s grip. “I’ve one question,” he said to Bell.
Go on, the doctor nodded.
“I can’t help wondering… Assuming this here treatment works, surely… Well, is it a temporary fix?”
“Erections are by their nature temporary. The aim isn’t to give him permanent priapism.”
“No, no… of course. But… if it’s temporary, then how does it help him to get it up for his wife?”
It seemed Bell didn’t have a straight answer for that, given he found a sudden interest in rearranging the shelves of pills and potions he’d accumulated since they’d set up at Cedarton. “It’ll… um, well, it’ll unblock the mechanism.”
“Assuming it was blocked?”
“It was blocked,” Bell said, and Linfield waggled his noggin in agreement.
“Couldn’t get it to half-mast, never mind full tilt. Bloody disaster of a wedding night. Had hoped I could be done with the whole thing by now, duty done and all that.”
“I feel that was a tad optimistic,” Jem said. “I think it’s more usual for it to take a couple of attempts, or in some cases, many.”
“And what would you know of such matters?” Linfield’s jade-green gaze pinned him with an inquisitor’s zeal. “Proper studious little saint weren’t you before we got our hands on you? Where would your knowledge of such carnal matter come from?”
Jem surrendered, offering no explanation and no resistance. It was a topic fraught with peril, and he had no desire to quarrel or linger on the matter. The fact that he knew he was right, helped immensely. He might not have spent his Oxford days roistering and frequenting whore-houses, but he wasn’t wholly unacquainted with womenkind. The same could not be said of his lordship.
~?~
Jem had been tottering on the edge of a doze when a knock on the door brought him to. Watching leeches suck blood had turned out to be as dreary dull as watching paint dry. Bell turned to answer, but Jem leapt up. “I’ll get it.” He hobbled across the room, thighs stiffly protesting having been tensed for so long. Usually, he’d have thrown the door wide as was his fashion, but with Linfield prone upon the couch with his tallywhacker out, he strove for a less boisterous approach.
“Lady Linfield,” he enunciated, throwing a glance back into the room, before slipping out and pulling the door too, so that only the presence of his fingers kept it from shutting. “Are you looking for Linfield? He’s a tad indisposed right now.”
“Oh!” Her ladyship, a demure, strawberry-blonde with a thousand freckles, clasped her hands together and blinked at him owlishly for a moment. “No, we weren’t looking for anyone, but the door was closed, and I know Doctor Bell is so particular, so it seemed prudent to knock. Eliza wanted some things, you see. For a remedy. Mrs Honeyfield has the most awful toothache, and—”
“Eliza?”
Jem’s attention slid past Lady Linfield to the turn of the corridor. He had not seen the other figure initially, her form concealed by the thickness of the shadows in this part of the house. Bell’s suite occupied a stretch of the lower floor accessed only via a servant’s tunnel beneath the wreckage of the old drawing room. The physician had chosen the location precisely because of its separation from the main body of the house. Servants, he’d observed, did not fare well with the notion of corpses being stored and dissected in the places of their employment, and given Cedarton’s whispered-about history, not alarming the few servants they’d managed to secure was rather a priority. On that basis alone, he had not thought to look for another figure. It was surprising enough to find Lady Linfield before him. He’d especially not imagined he’d find this particular woman blinking at him in reciprocal wonder.
“Eliza Wakefield. What are you—? This is quite the last place I expected to see you.”
“Mr Whistler.” She came forward to him, holding out her hands so that he might take hold of them, while they both looked one another over. The contact sent a frisson of heat straight to his groin, and with it an entanglement of memories and daydreams. She smiled impishly, “You know, that rather implies that you were expecting to see me someplace else.”
