Page 72 of A Sight to Behold
Lance nodded. His head was turned his way, but when he blinked, an instinct the eye maintained despite being able to see, he looked past Nick. He couldn’t see him.
“Felix!” Nick shouted, his mind made up. “Wendy!”
Lance’s face brightened.
“Andre.”
Now, Lance beamed. The door opened, and Wendy soon appeared; Felix came just that moment and stood behind her. Andre peeked out from his apothecary door and wiped his hands on a clean white towel.
“What is it?” Felix asked.
Wendy gave a wide-eyed look when she saw Lance. “Oh, Nick!” She clasped her hands over her chest.
“He convinced me,” Nick said. “But I need all of your help, please.” Nick looked at Felix, who clenched his jaws.
“You can’t operate on a friend,” Felix said warningly.
“Why not? You’ve done it.”
Andre came across the hall and had a serious mien. “What do you mean?”
“I did it once and never again. It almost ended my career,” Felix said without looking at Andre, who was now standing in the room with them.
No worries, none of them would betray Felix’s secret, yet they’d all learned from the mistake.
“I have some calculations to do. We just took the measurements,” Nick said as he walked to his desk and pulled open the drawer of lenses. “Could you all prep him for surgery?”
“Both eyes today?” Wendy asked.
“Both today,” Lance said sternly. He had the doctor’s tone mastered even though he hadn’t graduated from university. Some just had the clinical touch in their voice.
Nick heard footsteps coming from the staircase as Felix told Lance to come with him to rinse his face. Wendy began to lay linens on the operating table.
“Lance?” Isabel said from the bottom of the steps when she saw Lance walking upstairs with his hand on Felix’s arm. “Why are you going with Felix?”
“I’m prepping him for surgery,” Felix said, but Lance had already entered his office.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Pippa thought ofeverything she’d left behind. The servants had cleaned up the mess, but the void of Sir Hoppington’s absence left the orangery feeling strange. Luckily, he’d found a safe little basket and had recovered well enough in the course of the following day to chase Chromius. If Pippa weren’t so tense these days, she’d appreciate the humor of the small three-legged bunny chasing a dog four times its size.
Lance was almost ready for surgery when Pippa and Alfie returned from their mission to obtain ipecac root and pastries. Alfie took the ipecac root to his apothecary across from Nick’s treatment room and started to do whatever he needed to prepare it for her father.
But it was the first time she’d harvested the root of a plant and not merely a flower or a fruit like her pineapple. She’d started to harvest from the orangery rather than care for the tropical flowers. It was a shift in how she treated her mother’s beloved plants. It was time to forge her own luck.
Pippa stood in the waiting room at 87 Harley Street between Alfie’s glass door to the apothecary and Nick’s room, where Lance had taken a position on the operating table. She didn’t particularly want to go into either of those rooms, nor was she inclined to go back home again. Everything was different.
Wife Six had taken such a strong stance against Pippa that she didn’t feel safe at home, nor did she expect her father to be sober enough from the mushroom poison to think rationally and defend her. No, home wasn’t an option. Neither were theauthorities, lest they spread rumors worse than the truth and ruin not only Pippa’s family’s name, but also Nick’s practice. So many people’s lives could be ruined. Even Bea’s prospect may suffer because she lived at Cloverdale House. No, reporting Wife Six and her father wasn’t an option.
Pippa wanted to distance herself from the mess but couldn’t. Silvercrest Manor was too far from Harley Street, and Nick couldn’t join her there if he had to care for Lance after the surgery.
Then she heard a deep sigh and some footsteps. Wendy led the way, and Isabel followed her.
“Have they gone in yet?” Wendy asked with an enterprising voice as she opened Nick’s door. Pippa peeked in, as did Isabel.
Pippa saw Isabel’s face fall like an anchor from a ship, splashing into the ocean and sinking lower than the eye could follow. Lance was on Nick’s long table covered in white cloths with only the top of his head exposed, safely resting on the special upholstered headrest.
“Pippa, could you take Isabel for a walk or tea?” Wendy asked over her shoulder.
