The girl huddled in the doorway of the apothecary’s shop, wrapped in an old wool cloak several sizes too large. Knitted mittens, thick stockings, and a tattered bonnet tied over her golden hair helped stave off the intense cold of a snowy winter’s night. She was too poor to own quilted petticoats; the one she wore was of serviceable linen better suited to a summer’s day. And because of her condition she had given up wearing her only pair of stays, so all that covered her linen shift was a threadbare and sweat-stained caraco jacket that had been worn by at least half a dozen other maids before her. The soles of her half-boots were paper-thin. The left one had a hole in it, which had allowed the slush and filth from the street to stain her stocking and soak her foot.

Slumped sideways, with her chin tucked into her shoulder and her face turned away from the pedestrians going about their morning business, the small, huddled figure could have been eighteen or eighty. In a metropolis where the beggarly poor were as ubiquitous as the horse, where sleeping rough was a fact of life that did not discriminate by age or gender, no one was curious enough to speculate about her reduced circumstances. She was just another scrounger amongst thousands. No one took any notice of her, or concerned themselves even to discover if she was alive or dead.

Having evaded the night watch, the girl had chosen to shelter on the steps of this particular business on St. James’s Street because it belonged to Mr. Thomas Fisher, apothecary to the great and titled. Martha had told her she must speak with Mr. Fisher, not his associate Mr. Clements. Martha had said Mr. Fisher had a good heart, while Mr. Clements had no heart at all. Mr. Fisher was a close friend of Lord Halsey and enjoyed his protection. Martha had said she must convince the apothecary to take her to a lying-in hospital. Martha had said that Thomas Fisher was her last remaining hope.

Hope had eluded Tilly for all of her short life. At dawn, it abandoned her entirely. She drew her last shallow breath as the sun came up on another miserable day. She was fourteen years old, and days away from giving birth.

Joseph Perkins, apothecary’s apprentice, was about to unbolt the front door from within when the corner of a piece of paper caught his eye. At first he thought it was rubbish, blown under the door off the pavement by the icy winds of winter. But when he tried to pull it through into the shop, he realized it was much thicker than a handbill or a scrap of waste. He took his time wiggling it to and fro, until it slithered in his hand. The paper was in remarkably good condition given the weather. It was in fact a packet, the paper folded tightly and tied closed with string to keep it neat.

He turned it over to see the direction. Scribbled in tiny letters in one corner were the initials T.F., but there was no name and no address.

Why he had not opened the door to retrieve this letter, instead of struggling to free it with the door still closed, he was to wonder at only much later. For now, he put it on the counter and got on with his morning tasks, the first of which was to sweep the front step, preparing for the influx of morning patients and customers.

No sooner had he unbolted and opened the door than something bulky fell against his leg, startling him. He kicked out, thinking it must be a sleeping beggar. The destitute and drunk often took shelter on the doorstep. If it was a particularly cold night, the Night Watch often turned a blind eye, moving the vagrants on at first light, but during the day Joseph’s masters paid a pretty penny to the beadles to keep the shop’s entrance clear.

Sometimes bare-faced beggars would accost Joseph at the doorway, grabbing the skirts of his frock coat or his stockinged ankle, pleading for coin, discarded clothing, scraps of food—anything he could spare. Joseph would shove them aside or ignore them, carrying on with his day as if they were not there. When Mr. Fisher wasn’t on the premises, he did as Mr. Clements ordered and beat them off with his broom or kicked them to the pavement.

But Joseph didn’t wallop the beggar with his broom this time, because the bundled figure dropped across the threshold with a thud and lay dormant. There was a clatter as something else hit the floorboards and bounced further into the shop. Joseph scrambled after it as it knocked against the kicking board of the counter. It was an empty caudle cup. Joseph put it on the counter next to the letter, not thinking much about it, just thankful that it was empty and hadn’t given him something else to clean up.

He went back with his broom to the front door, which was now wide open, and stared down at the inert shape, wondering if perhaps it wasn’t a beggar at all but a dead animal, frozen solid during the night and dumped here as part of a lark. It was too large for a scrawny cat or dog. He gave the bundle a tentative prod with his broom. When it didn’t budge, he was curious enough to drag it further into the shop by its cloth covering. He was so intent on discovery that he left the front door open wide, allowing a flurry of snowflakes to sweep across the floor and an icy breeze to whip about his stockinged shins.

He dropped to his haunches and warily pulled back a corner of the brown wool wrapping. It wasn’t a thing or an animal—it was a female. The bonnet under the hood told him so. She was curled in a ball, face turned to her shoulder, knees up to her chest, arms wrapped around her upper body.

Joseph peeled away the front of her cloak to take a closer look. He was kneeling now, peering around the bonnet’s peak. He wanted to know if she was alive or dead, and he was curious as to her age. A curtain of tangled, greasy, straw-blonde hair obscured her face. He could see that she had a pointy chin, the skin powder white. With one finger he gently lifted aside the greasy tangle.

Then he stiffened, with a sudden intake of breath. He knew her!

The horror of recognition made him scramble away, crab-like, on his buttocks and heels. He wanted to get as far from her as possible. But he only managed to bump hard up against the counter, where he hit his head on the paneling with such force that the weights and measures scale rattled, along with the tin caudle cup he’d just put there.

For what seemed like minutes but was only seconds, he stared unblinking at the inert bundle, not wanting it to be true. Yet he knew without the shadow of a doubt that it was Tilly. He prayed with his whole heart that she was not dead.

“Mr. Clements!” he screeched finally in a reed-thin voice, then coughed to clear his dry throat and shouted out again, this time more clearly and forcefully: “Mr. Clements! Mr. Clements, sir! Come quickly!”

“I’ll be there presently, lad,” came the reply from the darkened passageway. “I must find the…”

The words trailed off, and Joseph suspected that his master had walked away in the opposite direction, to the preparation room. He waited a few seconds, but when his master did not appear he clambered to his feet. Taking a hard swallow, he ran sweaty palms down the sides of his breeches to calm himself. Then he quickly closed the front door and locked it. He also pulled the blind down over on the window. Early morning customers could wait.

He must be certain that his eyes were not deceived—that the figure wrapped in the woolen cloak was indeed the girl who had only ever given him her Christian name.

He knew as surely as afternoon followed morning that no one who met Tilly could ever forget her. He had a vivid recollection of their first encounter. She had come straight up to the counter and boldly introduced herself, asking for his name in return. He told her, and when she repeated it with a shy smile, as if committing it to memory, he felt as if the warmth of a sunny day had brushed his cheeks. Tilly became a regular customer, visiting once a fortnight, alone. But a year had passed since her last visit, and he had begun to worry that he might never see her again. He had certainly never expected to see her like this!

Tears stung his eyes. He sniffed and quickly dried them on his sleeve, lest his master accuse him of mawkish behavior unbecoming in an apothecary. Then, kneeling beside her, he untied the bonnet and put it aside. His hands were shaking. In fact, all of him was shaking.

The girl’s eyes were closed, and her mouth was slack. She looked to be sleeping. Lightly he touched her cheek with the back of his fingers. She was warm! She must be alive!

Hope soared within him, and he turned and shouted again for his master. “Mr. Clements! Mr. Clements! She’s not dead! She’s not dead!”

“What’s got you a’horrent, Joseph?” Cecil Clements asked mildly, coming to stand in the doorway leading to the passageway. He was in waistcoat and shirt-sleeves, holding aloft a chamberstick. His mind preoccupied with the day’s tasks, he had not understood what his apprentice had said, only that he had shouted at him. “Why haven’t you put up the blind, lad? Why aren’t the candles lit? It’s as dark as the winter’s day—”

“Sir, it’s Tilly! I found her on the doorstep! I thought she was dead. But she’s warm and—”

The apothecary remained in the doorway, frowning. “Warm? What are you blathering about, boy?”

“Tilly, Mr. Clements! You can’t have forgot Tilly! She was a regular, but we ain’t seen her since before Michaelmas. You must remember, she had the face of an angel—”

The apothecary snorted. “Dear me, Joseph. Never thought you’d have your head turned by a scullery maid—”

“Tilly ain’t no scullery maid. She were a maid to a lady in South Audley Street—”

“What does she want here, after all this time?” Clements asked brusquely, shuffling forward.

“I don’t know what she wants because she’s not said a word. I found her up against the door. She’s frozen, and ain’t moved. But she’s warm to the touch, so she must be ill, not dead. What do you think, sir?”

The apothecary peered over Joseph’s shoulder, fingers lightly tapping his dimpled chin in the peculiar way that Joseph had come to know as a sign of worry in his master. Sticking out his chamberstick so that the flame illuminated the girl’s white face, he clicked his tongue. “Oh dear. Oh dear… Poor creature… Warm, you say? You may well be right. She could be ill, lad, but she may have joined the angels. We’d best find out which it is.” He looked down at his apprentice. “You know what to do, don’t you, lad?”

“Yes, sir. I do!”

Joseph scrambled up off his knees. He dashed past his master into the passageway and disappeared into the darkness. Moments later he returned with a wet cloth and a swan’s feather, and on his heels were the two young preparation assistants, wearing long leather aprons over their waistcoats and breeches. Eyes wide with curiosity, both boys took eager steps into the shop, only to be bellowed at by the apothecary.

“Begone, rats! Back to work, and shut that door!”

When the door slammed shut, the apothecary said to Joseph in an altogether different voice, “You didn’t mention the girl to them, did you, lad?”

“No, sir. I didn’t have time, and it ain’t their business.”

“Rightly so. Very good. Best to keep them out of this. Now get on with it, lad—we have no time to waste.”

Joseph knelt down again beside the inert girl. Mr. Clements hovered close at his back, silent, watchful, offering no help at all. Joseph rolled the girl onto her back, which freed the wool cloak. It fell open, revealing her silhouette in linen petticoats, her stockinged legs peeking out from under the frayed hems. Her caraco top was too tight across her breasts and too short in the torso, so that her dirty cream-coloured chemise was visible. But it was her round, taut belly that left the apprentice speechless.

Joseph looked up at his master. “She’s—she’s—”

“Yes, lad. She’s heavy with child,” his master said bleakly. “It seems your angel was no angel.”

“But—why—how—”

“Questions later. If she’s still breathing, there isn’t much time left to save either of them.”

Joseph woke from his amazement and went into action. He gently placed the wet cloth over the girl’s face, then waited. When the cloth remained still, he looked over his shoulder again. “She’s not breathing, sir.”

“Is there a pulse?”

Joseph put two fingers to the girl’s neck, and when he couldn’t feel a beat there, he found her arm amongst the folds of the cloak and tugged down the grimy mitten to take hold of her thin wrist. It was warm, like her face, but there was no beat there either. He dropped his chin and shook his head.

“Check behind her lids,” ordered the apothecary, and brought the chamberstick close to illuminate the girl’s face.

Joseph removed the wet cloth and lifted the girl’s right eyelid. Her gaze was fixed, the pupil dilated. There was no reaction to the light from the flame.

Master and servant looked at one another, without a word needing to be spoken. The final test was a matter of procedure. They expected no response now, not after everything else, but they did it anyway, so they could say it had been done. Joseph trailed the swan’s feather across the girl’s neck, then tickled her under the chin for good measure. There was no reaction to either gesture—to the first, which was a standard resuscitation technique, or to the second, which was only a sign of Joseph’s wishful thinking. Again, he shook his head.

“Try this.” Mr. Clements handed him a small looking glass from the countertop, used in consultations with patients. “Put it under her nose to see if her breath fogs the glass.”

Joseph did as he was told, but the glass remained clear. He sat back on his haunches, with dropped shoulders.

“Your angel is not ill but surely dead,” Mr. Clements stated with a heavy sigh. “May God rest her soul, and that of her unborn babe.”

“What about smelling salts, sir?”

“There’s no point, lad.” The apothecary squeezed Joseph’s bony shoulder. “There’s nothing more to be done for either of them.”

Joseph’s gaze swept the shop, one of the best-stocked apothecary’s businesses in London. Mr. Fisher had spared no expense. Gleaming polished cabinetry rose all the way to the ceiling, the shelves crammed with Delftware—white, tin-glazed jars with fabric-covered lids, the shape of the jar and a Latin inscription proclaiming the medicinal contents of each one. Below the shelves, cabinets and drawers contained all sorts of medicinal powders, salves and unguents, pills and lozenges—everything an apothecary could provide for an ailing patient. And beyond the shop, in the preparation room, medicines were dried, distilled, and compounded with any number of botanical and animal ingredients.

There had to be something here to revive this girl and save her unborn child. Joseph turned desperately to his master. “If she’s still warm, surely it means we can make her breathe again, Mr. Clements. What about that method you told me about recently, using bellows to inject air into the lungs?”

“It’s too late for that,” Mr. Clements replied. His gaze swept over the girl, from splayed legs to limp arms to the round hump of her belly. “Even if we were to pump her lungs full of air, she’ll never breathe on her own again.”

Again tears pricked Joseph’s eyelids. “We could try, though, couldn’t we, sir? She could’ve just fallen into a stupor. There are cases of murderers hung who’ve woken up under the knife. And last night was perishingly cold. Perhaps she’s frozen asleep? If we were to warm her up in a tub of hot water, she might rally…”

His voice trailed off as Mr. Clements disappeared behind the counter. He returned moments later with a long needle, which he held up for Joseph’s inspection before putting it between his teeth so that both hands were free. On bended knee he unlaced the girl’s left boot, pulled it off, and lifted her foot in its damp, dirty stocking. Her big toe poked through a hole, the nail bruised and ragged.

Joseph couldn’t imagine a lady at a fashionable address employing a girl like Tilly, in any capacity. Not even the scullery maids in wealthy houses wore dirty rags. They had to look presentable, even if it was just to other domestics. He wondered what had brought her to their doorstep, and on a winter’s night that chilled to the bone. But he didn’t have to think further than her pregnant belly to find the obvious reason: she’d been dismissed from service because she was with child. And then he hit upon the very reason for her being on this particular doorstep: Mr. Fisher was a renowned man-midwife, and something of a luminary amongst the nobility, having successfully delivered the heir to the Cleveley dukedom. Joseph reckoned Tilly had hoped to appeal to Mr. Fisher’s benevolence, imagining that he would have her admitted to a reputable lying-in hospital, or perhaps deliver her child himself…

Mr. Clements drove the long needle deep into the girl’s big toe, between nail and flesh. Tilly did not scream, but Joseph did.

With a lifelong academic interest in the eighteenth century, through my fiction I hope to engage readers in a fascinating era that garners little attention, sandwiched as it is between the immensely popular Tudor era of Wolf Hall and the Regency era of Georgette Heyer’s novels and the Bridgerton series.

DEADLY DESIRE was inspired by Wendy Moore’s wonderful biography of John Hunter, the father of modern surgery, and my research into the little-known and elusive medical artist Jan van Rymsdyk, Hunter’s contemporary, whose immensely detailed drawings of female anatomy and a pregnant uterus far surpass those made by Leonardo da Vinci. Van Rymsdyk’s drawings form the basis of the obstetrical atlases of both William Hunter and William Smellie, and were so “photographically” detailed that they were studied by medical students well into the 20th century.

This novel is the fifth book in the Alec Halsey Mystery series. A diplomat and amateur sleuth, Lord Halsey is called upon to retrieve a stolen notebook that implicates many of London society’s elites in the illegal use of abortifacients. While the notebook’s owner is said to be abroad, the truth of her whereabouts may be far more sinister, and the cause of a prominent peer being blackmailed. With its potential to bring down a government, recovering the notebook and unmasking the blackmailer is of paramount importance. But when Alec learns that the young pregnant maid who stole the notebook is dead, his investigations lead him deep into the murky underworld of body-snatching and ad hoc anatomy schools. Was the maid murdered, and why? Are the renowned Hunter brothers and their medical artist complicit? Does the greater scientific good justify ignominious means?