“No, there’s nothing good about it! It doesn’t even have tumblers. You might as well not have a lock.” Appalled, Ethan continued to examine the ancient contraption. “Why hasn’t your father done anything about this? He should know better.”

“We’ve had no problem with it.”

“Only by the grace of God.” Ethan became more agitated by the second as he realized she went to sleep every night with nothing but a crude rattletrap lock between her and the entire criminal population of London. His heart began to beat fast with anxiety. He’d seen what could happen to women who didn’t have sufficient protection from the predators of the world. And Garrett was a public figure who attracted both admiration and controversy. Someone could enter the house so damned easily, and do whatever they wished with her. He couldn’t bear to think about it.

Garrett stood there with a skeptical smile, seeming to think he was overreacting.

In his agony of worry, Ethan couldn’t find the words to make her understand. Still crouching in front of the door, he gestured toward Garrett’s tiny hat, which was little more than a flattened velvet circle decorated with a twist of ribbon and a knot of small feathers. “Give me that.”

Her eyebrows lifted. “My hat?”

“Your hatpin.” He waited with his hand extended upward.

Looking mystified, Garrett extracted the long pin that attached the hat to her coiffure. It was topped with a small brass medallion.

Taking the pin, Ethan bent the blunted needle tip into a forty-five-degree angle. He inserted it into the lock and twisted deftly. Five seconds later, the warded lock clicked open. After withdrawing the makeshift pick, he rose to his feet and gave it back to her.

“I believe you unlocked that door more quickly with a hatpin than I could with my key,” Garrett exclaimed, regarding the bent hatpin with a slight frown. “How skilled you are.”

“That’s not the point. Any clumsy halfwit of a burglar could do what I just did.”

“Oh.” Her lips pursed thoughtfully. “Perhaps I should invest in a new lock?”

“Aye. One that was made this century!”

To his exasperation, Garrett didn’t appear alarmed in the least. Her eyes crinkled at the corners. “You’re very kind to be concerned for my safety. But my father is a former constable.”

“He’s too old to leap a gate,” Ethan said indignantly.

“And I can defend myself quite—”

“Don’t,” he warned in an ominous tone, certain he would explode if she gave him another of her confident little speeches about how well she could look after herself and how indestructible she was, and how she had nothing to fear from anyone because she knew how to twirl a cane. “You need to change the lock right away, and take down that brass plate on the door.”

“Why?”

“Your name is on it.”

“But all doctors have these,” she protested. “If I removed it, my patients couldn’t find me.”

“Why don’t you just paste an advertisement on your door saying ‘Defenseless Woman with Free Pharmaceutical Supplies’?” Before she could reply, he continued, “Why aren’t there iron window guards on the basement and ground-floor levels?”

“Because I’m trying to attract patients,” she said, “not scare them away.”

Ethan rubbed the lower part of his jaw, brooding. “Strangers coming and going,” he muttered, “with nothing to stop them from doing as they please. What if you let a lunatic in here?”

“Lunatics need health care too,” Garrett said reasonably.

He gave her a speaking glance. “Do the windows have sash locks, at least?”

“I think some of them do . . .” she said vaguely. At his quiet curse, she said in a soothing tone, “You really mustn’t worry: it’s not as if we’re keeping the crown jewels in here.”

“You’re the jewel,” he said gruffly.

Garrett stared at him with wide, unblinking eyes, while the moment turned awkwardly intimate.

No one in Ethan’s adult life had ever truly known him, not even Jenkyn. But as he stood there on Garrett Gibson’s doorstep, caught in her searching gaze, he realized he could hide nothing from her. Everything he felt was there for her to read.

Hell and damnation.

“Come inside,” Garrett said gently.

Ethan followed her, worried about what else he might do or say. After closing the door, he stood in the entranceway with his cap in hand and watched, fascinated, as she removed her gloves with little tugs at the fingertips. Her beautiful hands emerged from the dyed kid leather, her fingers slender and elegantly precise, like a watchmaker’s tools.

The sound of footsteps heralded the approach of someone from the basement level. A mob-capped and white-aproned woman appeared, plump and buxom, with ruddy cheeks and lively brown eyes. “Evenin’, Dr. Gibson,” she said, taking Garrett’s gloves and hat. “You’re home late tonight.” She glanced in Ethan’s direction, and her eyes widened. “Sir,” she said breathlessly, and bobbed a curtsy. “May I take your cap?”

Ethan responded with a shake of his head. “I’ll be leaving soon.”

“This man is a patient,” Garrett told the cookmaid, removing the posy of violets from the buttonhole of her walking jacket before handing the garment to her. “I’ve brought him here for a consultation—please see that we’re not disturbed.”

“Consultation for what?” the maid asked slyly, her gaze traveling from Ethan’s head to his toes, and back up again. “’E don’t look all that peaked to me.”

Garrett’s brows lowered. “You know better than to comment on a patient’s appearance.”

Leaning toward her, the cookmaid said in a stage whisper, “I meant to say I ’opes you can do something for this poor, sickly wreck of a man.”

“That will be all, Eliza,” Garrett said firmly. “You may go.”

Amused by the cookmaid’s impudence, Ethan studied the floor and fought to suppress a smile.

After Eliza had gone back downstairs, Garrett said with chagrin, “She’s not usually so impertinent. No, never mind: she is.” She led him to the open room at the right of the entranceway. “This is the waiting area for patients and their families.”

As she busied herself with closing the raised-panel shutters, Ethan wandered through the spacious room, which was furnished with a long, low settee, a pair of deep upholstered armchairs, and a pair of small tables. There was a fireplace with a white painted mantel, an escritoire desk, and a cheerful painting of a country scene. Everything was immaculate, the woodwork polished and gleaming, the glass windows sparkling. To Ethan, most houses were stifling and uncomfortable, the floors crowded with furniture, the walls lined with fussy wallpaper. But this place was serene and soothing. He went to look closely at the painting, which portrayed a parade of fat white geese strolling past the doorway of a cottage.

“Someday I’ll be able to afford real art,” Garrett said, coming to stand beside him. “In the meantime, we’ll have to make do with this.”

Ethan’s attention was drawn to the tiny initials in the corner of the work: G.G. A slow smile broke over his face. “You painted it?”

“Art class, at boarding school,” she admitted. “I wasn’t bad at sketching, but the only subject I could manage to paint adequately was geese. At one point I tried to expand my repertoire to ducks, but those earned lower marks, so it was back to geese after that.”

Ethan smiled, imagining her as a studious schoolgirl with long braids. The light of a glass-globe parlor lamp slid across the tidy pinned-up weight of her hair, bringing out gleams of red and gold. He’d never seen anything like her skin, fine and poreless, with a faint glow like a blush-colored garden rose.

“What gave you the idea to paint geese in the first place?” he asked.

“There was a goose pond across from the school,” Garrett said, staring absently at the picture. “Sometimes I saw Miss Primrose at the front windows, watching with binoculars. One day I dared to ask her what she found so interesting about geese, and she told me they had a capacity for attachment and grief that rivaled humans. They mated for life, she said. If a goose was injured, the gander would stay with her even if the rest of the flock was flying south. When one of a mated pair died, the other would lose its appetite and go off to mourn in solitude.” Her slim shoulders hitched in a shrug. “I’ve liked geese ever since then.”

“So do I,” Ethan said. “Especially roasted with chestnut stuffing.”

Garrett laughed. “In this household,” she warned, “poultry is not a subject to be treated lightly.” Her eyes crinkled as she crooked her finger at him. “I’ll show you the surgery.”

They went to the operating room at the back of the house. Astringent smells laced the air: carbolic acid, alcohol, benzene, and other chemicals he couldn’t identify. Garrett lit a series of oxyhydrogen lamps, until a brilliant glow chased shadows from the tiled floors and glass-paneled walls, and bounced from reflectors overhead. An operating table built on a cabinet base occupied the center of the room. In the corner, a metal stand sprouted arms with reflective mirrors affixed to rack movements and ball pivots, the whole of it resembling a mechanical octopus.

“I use the methods developed by Sir Joseph Lister,” Garrett said, glancing around the room with pride. “I attended a class he taught at the Sorbonne, and assisted in some of his operations. His work is based on Pasteur’s theory that wounds suppurate because of germs that enter the body and multiply. My surgical equipment and supplies are always sterilized, and I dress wounds with antiseptic fluids and gauze. All of it gives my patients a far greater chance of survival.”

Ethan wondered at her willingness to take on the responsibility of life or death, even knowing the outcome would sometimes be tragic. “How do you manage the pressure?” he asked quietly.

“One becomes used to it. And there are times when the risk and the nerves help me to perform at a level I didn’t know I could reach.”

“I understand,” he murmured.

“Yes . . . I’m sure you do.”

Their gazes met, and a flush of warmth swept over him. She was so beautiful, with those upward-slanting cheekbones balancing the strength of her jawline. And the softly erotic curves of her mouth. “Doctor,” he said with difficulty, “I should probably—”

“The laboratory is over here,” Garrett interrupted, walking to another part of the room to push back a folding partition. She lit another of those scientific lamps, illuminating a space that included a stoneware sink with a hot- and cold-water supply, a heavy copper drying oven with burner plates, metal tables, and marble surfaces, and meticulously organized shelves containing bins, dishes, flasks, and intricate appliances.