Page 29 of Prescription for Sin

Hesitantly, she began describing a particularly challenging surgery she’d observed. But he stopped her with a quirk of his brow.

“Not your professional voice,” he said. “The one you used when you sang to me. When you thought I couldn’t hear.” Heat flooded her cheeks. “I remember the way you hummed when you thought I was sleeping, Emma. How your voice softened when you called my name.”

“I was merely…monitoring your responses.”

“Were you?” His eyes crinkled in the corner as he opened them. “Then it’s your turn. Monitor your responses to this.”

Her eyes fluttered closed, then he began to recite poetry, his voice bypassing her ears entirely and vibrating through her bones. Words about moonlight and desire, about skin and silk and secrets. Emma found herself swaying toward him, drawn by the hypnotic cadence of his voice.

“Your breathing has changed,” he observed, still in that mesmerising tone. “Shallower. Quicker. Tell me why.”

“You know why,” she whispered.

“Say it. Let me hear the truth in your voice.”

“Because…” She wet her lips. “Because your voice makes me feel things I shouldn’t.”

“Shouldn’t?” He stepped closer. She could almost feel his warm breath on her cheek, though he carefully didn’t touch her. “Or couldn’t with Dr Kincaid?”

The question should have offended her. Instead, she found herself answering with raw honesty. “He never affected me like this. No one has.”

“Show me.” His voice rumbled low. “Let me hear what I do to you.”

Emma’s mind went blank. She was a woman of science, not poetry. As she listened to his breathing, however, words began to flow.

“Your voice haunts me,” she confessed softly. “Like smoke curling through my dreams. When you speak, I feel it here.” She pressed her hand to her chest. “Like a physical touch. It makes me wonder…”

“Wonder what?” His voice had grown hoarse.

“If this is how my patients feel when laudanum takes hold. This floating sensation, this heightened awareness of every sensation.”

A hint of smile touched his voice. “Why am I not surprised by your medical analogy?”.”

“I don’t know how else to be.”

She opened her eyes to find him looking at her with a burning gaze that made her breath catch. “Don’t ever change. Your commitment to reducing suffering, your precise mind; they’re part of what makes you…extraordinary.”

The word was far too intimate for their arrangement. Emma took a step back, needing distance from the emotion he was stirring.

“I should check on Mrs Norris,” she said quickly. “And you should rest.”

She fled then, her heart pounding with the knowledge that their lessons had become far riskier than she’d intended. In her study, she pressed trembling fingers to her lips, still feeling the vibration of his voice in her bones.

What had she gotten herself into?

Hours later, as afternoon faded toward evening, Everett had just settled in the parlour with a book when hurried footsteps in the hall caught his attention. Michael Kincaid’s voice, pitched low but urgent, made him stiffen.

“I finally got the visitor data. We need to review it tonight.”

“Come to my study.” Emma’s answer held barely contained excitement. “Mrs Norris? We’ll need coffee.”

The firm click of Emma’s study door made his chest constrict. Everett tried to focus on his book but found himself reading the same paragraph repeatedly. Finally, he gave up and put his ear against the study door. As he strained to hear their muffled voices, only fragments reached him. “…cases in Gravesend” and something about water that he couldn’t quite catch.

Visitor data? That was brilliant. It wouldn’t take long for him to smoke out the traitor at Royal College, if he could be called that. If his father was hiding anything, God forbid… Everett didn’t dare finish the thought.

After several minutes of frustrating half-sentences, their voices dropped even lower. The occasional rustle of papers was the only indication they were still at work. Everett found himself imagining them bent over documents together, their heads close as they shared observations in whispers too intimate for colleagues.

He shouldn’t care. It wasn’t part of his mission to know what Emma did with other men in the privacy of her study. His departure was imminent. Given Emma’s research and her precarious position, it must be soon. A low laugh drifted through the door—Michael’s—followed by Emma’s softer response. Something twisted painfully in his chest.