Anatomy: A Love Story (The Anatomy Duology, #1)

by Dana Schwartz

What were miracles, but science that man didn’t yet understand? And didn’t that make

it all the more miraculous that the secrets of the universe were out there, codes one might decipher if smart enough, tenacious enough?

But surgery—Hazel, surgery is the field for men with no money. No status. They’re butchers, really!”

And then, in the blink of an eye, she was joined by a man. No, not a man. A boy. A tall boy, all vertical lines and sharp edges.

The boy in the shadows looked up, and for a moment Hazel locked eyes with him, the hairs on the back of her neck standing at attention. His eyes were bright and clear and gray. With his long nose, he looked like a bird of prey, Hazel thought. He gave something that might have been a smile or a smirk or maybe just a trick of the light, because an instant later he was gone, trotting up toward the main road,

He didn’t know whether it was a god giving him mercy he certainly didn’t deserve or blind luck, but he was inclined to believe the latter.

When their bodies were pressed to each other by the narrow walls, he averted his eyes.

IT’S THE LESSON YOUNG GIRLS EVERYWHERE were taught their entire lives—don’t be seduced by the men you meet, protect your virtue—until, of course, their entire lives depended on seduction by the right man. It was an impossible situation, a trick of society as a whole: force women to live at the mercy of whichever man wants them but shame them for anything they might do to get a man to want them.

Be patient, be silent, be beautiful and untouched as an orchid, and then and only then will your reward come: a bell jar to keep you safe.

It would just mean another night at the kirkyard, and he would steal and sell a thousand bodies if it meant buying Isabella the things that would show her how much he adored her. Let him spend every night in the dirt if it meant getting his mornings with her.

jack currer the man that you are

“Do not attempt to stifle your tears on my account,” Straine said. “Women have such trouble controlling their emotions. You’re dismissed, Miss Sinnett.”

actually a crusty man ewwww

Her heart pounded. It felt good to destroy something. She did it again, with another case, this time containing an Egyptian beetle her father had brought back for her. It shattered against the floor in shards, with bits of glass glistening like gemstones in the carpet. Hazel brought her arm across a pile of books and threw them all to the ground. She tore pages from her notebooks in fistfuls. The broken glass was everywhere now, pricking her feet, and while she could see blood spots emerging on her legs, she barely felt any pain at all. Her ears rang with an echoing sound of laughter that she realized with a shock was her own.

literally female rage

Being a woman had closed many doors to Hazel Sinnett, but it had also revealed to her a valuable tool in her arsenal: women were almost entirely overlooked as people, which gave her the power of invisibility. People saw women, they saw the dresses women wore on public walks through the park, and the gloved hands they rested on their suitors’ elbows at the theater, but women were never threats. They were never challenges worthy of meaningful consideration.

The moment their skin touched, the champagne bubbles in Hazel’s stomach foamed with frenetic energy. It was Galvanism, Galvini’s electric shocks—there was no other way to describe it—a current of lightning that flowed from his hand through hers and directly into her pounding heart.

He leaned in. “I prefer ‘resurrection man.’ Makes it sound a bit more romantic, don’t you think?”

so i am in fact in love with this man

Before she could finish her sentence, Bernard pressed his mouth to hers. The wet worm of his tongue slithered along her closed lips until it found purchase and pried her mouth open.

INCEST INCEST INCEST

“Heaven knows she won’t get much rest once it’s her wedding bed!”

i can only asume a man said this. why do people feel the need to comment on women so inappropriately even now

Before she could think better of it, Hazel strode forward and lifted Jack’s face in her hands. Jack’s hair was particularly lank and dull, and his eyes were flat.

RAHHHH

“I’m not a fool, Jack Currer, no matter what you might think of me.” “Oh, I assure you, Miss Sinnett, I’ve taken you for a lot of things, but a fool was never one of them.”

GUYS THEY'RE IN LOVE

She was small, and arrogant, and wealthy. Her nose was sharp, her features were boyish, and her lashes and eyebrows were too pale for her dark hair. And yet. And yet.

Since Jack had met Hazel Sinnett outside the Anatomists’ Society, he had found himself tracing her jawline in his mind before he went to sleep. He could see the thin arc of her pale lips, the freckles almost invisible on her cheeks. Her face was burned into his memory, and it remained there: an echo but undiminished. A haunting. From the moment he had first looked into her wide brown eyes, the warm brown of burnished wood or polished amber reflecting the sunset, Jack had trusted her, and he would keep trusting her for far longer than his survivor’s instinct warned him was prudent.

Hazel could feel Jack’s warmth against her back. With the gentle bouncing of the horse, and his arms around her waist, Jack couldn’t help but admit it felt nice, being pressed up against Hazel, smelling her hair and the subtle musk of her sweat.

i'm giggling and kicking my feet

“Is that…?” Hazel asked without looking backward, trepidation in her voice. “Oh. Oh!” Jack pulled away the handle of one of his trowels from where it had pressed into her back. He blushed and cursed himself under his breath, and they rode the rest of the way in silence.

she fr thought the shovel was his dick

“After you, m’lady.”

slay

Jack’s hands had been around Hazel’s waist the entire ride, warm and comfortable. It was as if the curve of her back had been designed to press up against his chest, and she felt something like regret when she realized they needed to dismount and head toward the graveyard with their spades.

Standing so close to Hazel in a grave again, Jack felt the magnetic charge of her skin, could smell the salt of her sweat. He wanted to kiss her, but before he could figure out how, the crack of metal on wood came.

The glow of the candle transformed Jack Currer’s face into something beautiful and strange, angles so sharp Hazel felt the urge to run her finger along the edges of his skin, to print his profile on a coin.

“It’s fine,” Jack whispered. “Whatever it is, it’s all right.” Without thinking, he lifted an arm and placed it across Hazel’s shoulder.

Hazel pressed her shoulders up against Jack’s, partly to avoid the chill leaching from the moist earth through her jacket, but partly because his warmth—the solidity of his presence—made her less dizzy with fear. It anchored her. They were there, together. Whatever—whoever—was out there, neither of them would have to face it alone.

Hazel leaned in and kissed him. She hadn’t anticipated the moment, hadn’t even imagined what it would be like, but when he turned to her, just inches away, she felt pulled toward him like gravity. It was like magnetism, the cold of her lips seeking the warmth of his. Jack’s eyes were open in surprise, but then he swallowed the rest of the sentence and kissed her back, hard and urgent. Jack wrapped his arms around Hazel and kissed her as if she were his only source of oxygen. His hands were in her hair, running up her neck, along her jawline. His fingertips traced the velvet lobes of her perfect ears. Neither had known it could feel like this, that it was supposed to feel like this: effortless. It was as if the other’s lips were the only place they’d ever belonged, and fate itself had brought them to this very moment, terrified and aching in a half-dug grave, just so the two of them could come together. When Hazel pulled away, her face was flushed. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Don’t be,” Jack said. Hazel curled up against him, the curve of her spine fitting perfectly against his chest. Jack lowered an arm over her, and they watched the moon and listened to the sounds of the night.

OH MY GOSH NEED THIS IN MY LIFE FR

In a brief flash of ecstatic hope, he imagined that maybe the knocking was Hazel, that she had come to find him, to run away with him. The memory of their kiss still lingered on his lips, the joy of it, the hidden thrill, and also the terror. That kiss was the night of the nightmarish body, the man with the sewn-open eyes, whom they had left on the grass for the priest. It was easier for Jack just to pretend the entire excursion had been a dream, that none of it had happened.

“Easy there,” Jack said, catching Hazel as she swayed standing up one morning.

i adore this man

Jack pulled something from behind his back. It was a square music box, with bright painted sides. “I wanted to be the first one to give your baby a present.”

he fixed it awwww

“Hazel,” he said softly. “You are the most brilliant person I’ve ever met in my life. You’re incredible.” “I’m scared,” Hazel said. “Good,” Jack said. “That’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with being scared.” Hazel lowered her head onto Jack’s chest, and he extended his arm around her. It began to rain then, a mist that started so softly it almost felt like pinpricks. “Let’s get in out of the rain,” Jack said, and helped Hazel to her feet. He started guiding her up the path toward the castle, but Hazel pulled away.

Jack leaned in to kiss her then, planting his lips so tenderly on hers that they felt more shadow than flesh. And then she kissed him back, and soon they were kissing so deeply that for a moment it didn’t feel as though they were two separate people at all. It had begun to rain harder outside the stable’s rickety wooden frame, but neither of them cared. Jack pressed Hazel against a beam and pulled the pins from her hair until her curls fell past her shoulders. He pressed his face into her hair and breathed in deeply, and then he ran a finger along the curve of her cheek. “Dear Lord in heaven,” he whispered. “You’re so beautiful, Hazel Sinnett.”

Jack stood with his hands on either side of her face and stared at her for a few heartbeats. Then he leaned in and softly kissed both her eyelids. “Someone should tell you that you’re beautiful every time the sun comes up. Someone should tell you you’re beautiful on Wednesdays. And at teatime. Someone should tell you you’re beautiful on Christmas Day and Christmas Eve and the evening before Christmas Eve, and on Easter. He should tell you on Guy Fawkes Night and on New Year’s, and on the eighth of August, just because.” He kissed her lips once more, gently, and then pulled away and gazed into her eyes. “Hazel Sinnett, you are the most miraculous creature I have ever come across, and I am going to be thinking about how beautiful you are until the day I die.”

WHERE'S MY VICTORIAN LOVE CONFESSION?!?

“Not this one, love,” Jack replied quietly.

HE CALLS HER LOVE

He laced his boots, kissed Hazel on the forehead, and left Hawthornden on foot.

gotta love a forehead kiss

“Some women,” Lord Almont said to his son, “have yet to learn that we enjoy looking at them more than listening to them.”

UMM PARDON?!?

When he saw her, Jack stood and walked to the bars, and he reached through so he could hold her hands in his. “Hazel,” he said. “Hazel, my love.” He tucked a strand of her auburn hair behind her ears. He was so close that Hazel could make out the freckles across the bridge of his nose and feel the warmth of his breath.

nah i'm gonna cry

Through the gaps of the rusting bars, Jack pressed his lips against hers, and they both tasted the salt of their tears. “No. No, no, no, no, no. Hazel, if I do—decide to take this, I will be a man on the run for my entire life. Or at least for a good long while. My first lifetime and part of my second. You”—he kissed her again—“you”—and again—“beautiful”—and again—“perfect, you”—and again—“deserve a real life. You’re going to become a brilliant physician. You’re going to help so many people and change so many lives. You’re going to light the world on fire, and you can’t do that from the shadows. You can’t create medicines and cures on the run. None of our greatest minds had to toil for their day’s meals before their studying. No, Hazel. No. I can’t do that to you.”

“Hazel, there’s no hell worse than a world in which I would see you grow old and lose you and then be forced to live another day.” The tears continued silently down Hazel’s cheeks. “You will always be seventeen to me, Hazel Sinnett. You will always be beautiful and headstrong and brilliant. You will be the last face I see when I close my eyes and the first one I imagine when I wake up.”

Hazel leaned forward to kiss Jack again. “I will spend my entire life loving you, Jack Currer,” she said. Hazel stuck her hand through the bars to rest her palm on his heart, feeling the stitches she had sewn at the center of his chest. “My heart is yours, Hazel Sinnett,” Jack said. “Forever. Beating or still.” “Beating or still,” she said.

Jack came to her in her dreams sometimes, his eyes warm and wanting. For the first few months, her pillows would be wet with tears in the morning, but even when the tears stopped, the ache was still there in her heart, heavy as a stone, the sinking feeling that came in the moment before she opened her eyes and had to remember that she lived in a world without him. She sometimes imagined him sailing for France, or the Americas, standing proud on the rigging of a ship somewhere while the sea crashed around him, the boy who would remain young and beautiful forever, the boy she had taught how to ride and whom she’d kissed in a grave. He sometimes spoke to her in her dreams, leaning in close to tell her quiet, tender things she could never recall upon waking. Hazel tried to stay there for as long as she could, in the dim half sleep where the shadows made themselves into Jack’s proud profile, the contours of his face. She could see it: the slope of his cheekbones, his long, dark eyelashes, his stern brow—the hundred small places she had touched her lips to his skin.

SCREAMING CRYING THROWING UP

My beating heart is still yours, the letter said, and I’ll be waiting for you.

HE'S ALIVE