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

by Dana Schwartz

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.

Let him spend every night in the dirt if it meant getting his mornings with her.

He was a fool. No, worse than a fool. He was a romantic fool.

“Harsh? He’s a man, isn’t he? He has the entire world at his feet. I think he can handle my turning down a promenade.”

Jack couldn’t explain it. She wasn’t more beautiful than Isabella. 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.

“Dead bodies are never going to bite you. They’re never going to do anything to you. It’s living things that hurt you.”

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.

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.

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.

Hazel choked on her tea. “One book? One book? Now you’re being absurd. What if I finish it? Or what if I find it impossibly dull, what then? What am I supposed to read if I either complete the book I brought or I otherwise discover it to be unreadable? Or what if it no longer holds my attention? Someone could spill tea on it. There. Think of that. Someone could spill tea on my one book, and then I would be marooned. Honestly, Iona, you must use your head.” “Two books then, miss.”

When Jack looked at Hazel, the flame was alive and licking at the air around it. He felt its heat and power, heard its crackle. It was seeing fire in person for the first time.

“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.”

the thought of putting another mile between himself and Hazel felt impossible.

“My heart is yours, Hazel Sinnett,” Jack said. “Forever. Beating or still.” “Beating or still,” she said.