Page 32 of A Sight to Behold
Nick pushed himself off the wall and put some distance between their bodies as if he sought the exact number of inches required to break the magnetic pull he had on her. Time to change the subject lest Pippa combust from the heat that his closeness spread through her. It didn’t take long for her to come up with a new subject to discuss, as Chromius continued to bark.
“How did you get Chromius, Dr. Folsham?”
“I didn’t get Chromius as much as he got me,” Nick started. He stared at nothing in particular. “It’s a long story.”
“I’d love to hear it,” Pippa said, crossing her arms and pretending to lean leisurely against the wall. In reality, her knees were wobbly from his gaze. Had she just imagined that he was about to kiss her before he pushed himself away?
“We were in our last year at Edinburgh University, and we had to perform a surgery to pass the final licensing exam.”
“What does this have to do with Chromius?”
“Well, I needed credit for another cataract surgery and didn’t have a patient. Fox terriers are known to suffer both glaucoma and cataracts, so I tried to find one with the issue.”
“You specifically looked for a dog who needed an eye surgery to pass your exam?” She didn’t know how she felt about that. Experiments on animals were cruel, yet the training a doctor received could often be on an animal rather than a human. And if the animal benefitted from the experiment, then was it wrong?
“It was nearly impossible to find one until I went to a breeder known to drown the runt of the litter. When I got there, Pippa, I have to tell you,” he rubbed his thighs with the heels of hispalms, “it was such a terrible place. No living creature should ever have the misfortune to be caught in such an environment.”
“What happened?”
“Well, it was the day the breeder had caged the litter and sold their mother. Chromius was one of them, limping and holding his paw up.”
“What did you do?”
“I paid the man off and took them all with me.”
“How many dogs were there?”
“Twenty-eight.”
“You bought twenty-eight dogs?”
Nick nodded.
Pippa bit her lower lip. She hadn’t misjudged him. He was generous and kind beyond measure. He had a much bigger heart than most aristocrats, even the ones who invested in breeding dogs. They did it for vain reasons, not out of love for the animals.
“Where are they now?”
“I took them with me to university. It was our last week, you know. Most of the other students were married or had jobs in sight. I was able to find homes for them with the students, all future doctors. All of them willing to give a dog a happy, safe home and care.”
“What about Chromius?”
“Like I said, he had a limp. He’d been hurt and it didn’t take me long to see that he was nearly blind. His cataracts were so bad, his lenses were completely fogged. So, I brought him to the head of the department and requested special leave to conduct my final exam surgery on him.”
“You mean, you replaced both of his lenses with glass ones?”
Nick nodded. “As part of the exam, we had to do the calculations of the lenses and it was different for a dog’s eye. The head of the faculty of medicine came to personally check my math and watch the surgery.”
“How did you get Chromius to hold still?”
“Beer.”
“What?” Pippa sputtered a laugh. “You’re joking.”
They resumed a leisurely pace along the story-high stone wall. Judging from the overgrown grass and weeds, not many people came here.Good, they were alone.
Nick shrugged. “You won’t believe how still a dog is when you give them beer with some laudanum. He was a bit drunk and fell asleep. By the time I finished, he’d woken up and was thirsty. Besides that, he seemed fine. I took him home for observation. I didn’t officially pass the exam until the committee was convinced that the surgery had been a success.”
“How could they tell?” Pippa didn’t even try to hide the fascination in her voice. Nick was easily the most interesting man she’d ever met, and she knew almost all the members of the Ton who resided in London and a great number of her father’s peers.
