Page 47 of More or Less a Countess
Not even Lord Derrick?
She came to a halt next to a row of glass tubes displaying anatomical sections of human ears, a surprised frown forming on her lips. How odd she should be so madly in love with Lord Derrick, but never imagine what it might be like to kiss him.
But then Lord Derrick had never taken her to the Hunterian Museum.
Whereas Lord Dare, well…after only a week of knowing her, he’d somehow understood nothing could give her more pleasure than this visit today. A tiny shiver of awareness slid down Violet’s spine as she watched him lean over a wooden case to study a collection of human finger bones.
She’d meant to keep her promise to Iris and refuse any future calls from him, but every one of her good intentions fled the moment she’d entered the drawing room and found him waiting for her there, his lovely gray eyes alight, tempting her with tickets to the Hunterian.
But she could just as easily refuse his call tomorrow, couldn’t she? It was only asingleday, after all. What possible difference could asingleday make?
He stopped beside her as she paused next to another glass jar, this one holding a dissected frog. “Good Lord, he looks like he’s grinning at us.” A large flap of skin had been cut from the frog’s stomach and pinned neatly back for display purposes. He leaned closer to study the creature’s circulatory and reproductive systems. “Though I can’t think what he has to grin about, considering his present circumstances.”
Violet peered at the frog, her brow furrowed. “I think this one’s a female frog.”
Lord Dare abandoned his study and turned to her with a raised eyebrow. “How in the world would you know that?”
“Oh, um…” Violet bit her lip. It didn’t seem quite the thing to discuss frog ovaries with his lordship. Perhaps she shouldn’t have said anything at all, but he was waiting for a response, his gray eyes alert with interest, and she didn’t like to withhold knowledge from an inquisitive mind. “Well, you see, this one has…she’s…ah, the reproductive organs…”
“Never mind, Miss Somerset.” Lord Dare grinned at her flushed cheeks, then took her arm and guided her past the frogs to the next display. “I can see by your blush there’s no delicate way to explain it.”
“Yes, well…I’ve never seen so many skeletons in one place in my life!” she blurted out to hide her confusion. They approached a case with three skulls displayed side by side on a set of wooden platforms. “Or skulls. Dr. Hunter seems to have been rather enamored of skulls.”
“Especially those ravaged by disease.” Lord Dare leaned over the display to get a closer look at the skulls and shuddered. “See those cavities where the bone has been eaten away? To be fair to Dr. Hunter, though, he wasn’t simply interested in grisly curiosities. The collection taken together shows his fascination was with anatomy, surgery, and medicine.”
“Yes, of course you’re right.” Violet was rather impressed with this observation, and relieved to be back on familiar footing. She turned away from her study of the case to smile at him. “A great deal is made of Charles Byrne’s skeleton, and while it’s undeniably fascinating, the rest of the collection has greater medical significance. It’s not as fantastical, though, and Londoners do like their curiosities, I suppose.”
“Did you take a sketch of Charles Byrne’s skeleton?” Lord Dare held out his hand for her sketchbook. “May I see it?”
“It’s nothing so impressive, I assure you—just a rough sketch. Once we arrived I became distracted with the other displays, but I did take a close look at his joints, and I fancy I do see some deterioration at the knees and ankles.”
He took the sketchbook and turned the pages until he found the sketch. “Yes, I see just what you mean.” He tapped a finger on the page. “You’ve put in the tiny fissures here, just at the knee bone. It’s very good.”
Lord Dare paused to study her drawing, while Violet walked on further, her footsteps echoing across the wooden floor. A flat case containing a small, rectangular box was beside the display of the syphilitic skulls, and Violet stopped to peer inside.
The small box contained what looked to be several long, translucent pouches. A few had been removed from the box and laid out lengthwise beside it, and she could see each little pouch had a red ribbon fixed to one end.
She’d seen something like these pouches before, in a rather vulgar black and white drawing she’d come across in one of her readings. It was a caricature of the infamous rake Casanova, and it depicted him blowing into an object of a similar shape to these pouches—the caption had referred to them as English riding coats—apparently to test its efficacy.2
Violet had gathered from the drawing the pouch didn’t function properly if there was a hole in it, but she hadn’t been able to make much more sense of it than that, so she leaned over the case to read the brief description on the card at the corner of the display, hoping it would offer more details.
Barrier device, of the dried gut of the sheep, worn by men in the act of coition, to prevent venereal infection, d. 1776.
Well, that didn’t properly explain the thing, did it? The caricature of Casanova hadn’t made much sense to her at the time, and a closer view of the pouches did nothing to dispel the mystery. She knew what coition was, of course, and she had some vague ideas regarding a gentleman’s anatomy, but how did the pouches come into the business? How was a gentleman meant to wear them, and how, precisely, could they prevent disease? She’d like to know the answer—it seemed rather an important detail, medically speaking—but there was only one person she could ask, and he…
“What have you got there, Miss Somerset?”
He was striding toward her now, an engaging smile on his face. “You look a bit pale. I almost shudder to ask, but what is it this time?”
Oh, dear. Whatever the mystery regarding the pouches, Violet was sure she wasn’t meant to discuss it with Lord Dare. She may not be a conventional sort of lady, but she’d have to be dim indeed to question a gentleman on anything related to the act of coition.
“It’s not the canine tooth embedded in the cockerel’s skull, is it? I read about that. Dr. Hunter maintained that the tooth grew its own blood supply once it was implanted, and…oh.” Lord Dare came to an abrupt halt when he saw what she was looking at. “Oh.”
They stood shoulder to shoulder and peered down into the case, neither of them saying a word, until at last Lord Dare cleared his throat. “That’s not…those aren’t canine teeth.”
“No. They’re…” Violet glanced back down at the card. “They’re barrier devices.” She hesitated, then, “I’ve also heard them referred to as English riding coats.”
Lord Dare didn’t reply, but he made a strangled noise, and Violet wondered if perhaps she should have kept that last part to herself.
