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“Are you?” I pull off my gloves. “Did you think I put on gloves right after cleaning the chamber pot? My hands are clean—scrubbed half raw.”
A movement to the side startles me. I’d been so intent on distracting Gray that I forgot we weren’t alone. The young man steps forward as I peel back Gray’s bloodied shirt.
“Thank you for the warning,” I say.
“The gent’s crown bought you that much,” he says. “It wasn’t enough for me to throw myself into a knife fight.”
“I wasn’t being sarcastic. I appreciated the warning. How long have you been trailing us?”
“That’s what you paid for, isn’t it?”
I glance over at him. As I do, he moves through a patch of light, and I squint. He’s taller than me, thin and wiry, as I noted before, but something in his profile has me doing a second take, especially when paired with his voice, which is notably lower pitched than it had been when he shouted his warning. I’d presumed he was male; I’m no longer as sure. He’s presenting as male, certainly, so I shake it off. None of my business.
Gray answers. “I paid you to follow us until we met up with our patient, after which I sent you off.”
“Did you?” The young man rocks back on his heels. “Must not have caught that.”
“You followed because you were curious,” I say. “Wondering what we were up to.”
“Partly curious.” He smiles. “Partly bored. Can’t say I regret the decision.”
I examine Gray’s wound. It is not a “shallow cut.” He’s been slashed twice. The first was on his arm, where his jacket protected him. But he’d unbuttoned his jacket earlier to fight, and he’d left it open. The glass caught him above the V of his waistcoat and went deep enough to nick this breastbone.
“How long do I have to live, Doctor?” he says dryly.
I glare at him.
“Not fatal?” he says. “What a surprise.”
“Just because it isn’t fatal doesn’t mean it isn’t serious. It’s going to need stitches.”
“Which you base on how many years of medical education?”
“Which I base on having two working eyes.”
The young man snickers. “You make quite the pair. I’m afraid she’s right, Dr. Gray. The wound does require mending.”
“There,” I say. “A second opinion from someone who also possesses two working—” I peer at the kid. “What did you call him?”
He leans back against a closed storefront. “Dr. Gray. The undertaker. He is, isn’t he? That’s why I followed you. After he said he was a doctor, I remembered a friend talking about an undertaker doctor who looks like…”
The young man jerks his chin toward Gray. “No offense, sir, but there aren’t many toffs like you, and I don’t mean because you’re quick with your fists. You lent my friend a quid to buy his father’s body from the dead house. You were there on business, with a fellow who called you a doctor. That struck my friend as interesting, what with your…” He taps his cheek. “Again, no offense. He just found it interesting and mentioned it to me, mostly so if I saw you, I could find out where he can repay the quid, as you did not give him an address to send it to.”
As the young man chatters, I clean Gray’s wound as best I can. Gray tells him his friend’s debt is repaid, and they speak some more, but I don’t catch it. I’m busy taking off one of my petticoats. That part they notice, mostly because I’m sitting on the ground, struggling to get it off, my skirts hiked up.
“Turn away if you don’t want to see my drawers,” I mutter. “I need a tight bandage for the wound.”
“A what?” the young man says.
I wrestle off one of my petticoats. Then I slice it with my switchblade and tear off a strip, which I wrap around the wound.
“Finally,” I say, “a use for all those layers.”
The young man chuckles. “You’re an odd one, aren’t you?” He lifts his hands. “Which is no insult. I don’t mind people being different. It makes life interesting.”
I meet his gaze. “It does, doesn’t it?”
He grins and winks, as if he knows what I mean—that he’s presenting as male—and isn’t the least bit distressed that I figured it out.
