Immortality: A Love Story (The Anatomy Duology #2)

by Dana Schwartz

She had been in love, real love that gave her goose pimples and made her grin for no reason. She had gotten love, and that was more than plenty of people got on this planet.

“How does a woman go about becoming a surgeon?” “She doesn’t,” Hazel replied. “She dresses up in her brother’s clothing, gives a false name at the anatomy school, and pays the entrance fee. And then when she’s found out, and she’s thrown out of class, she hires a resurrection man to sell her bodies to study from.”

“You’re in London, my dear Miss Sinnett. Perhaps in Edinburgh, the tartan and simple shifts are considered charming, but you’ll see. I’m protecting you. These people will eat you alive if they get the chance.”

He fell in love with her half-coated in mud, exhausted and blood splattered. In another universe, they would have been able to go hand in hand to a dinner party, with nothing to worry about and no nightmares chasing them. Just the two of them,

Time passing felt like a betrayal of him, of his memory; that she should live to see more days without him, that she should go on when he was gone.

For a breath, Hazel hesitated. But only for a breath. She had disguised herself as a man and dissected corpses, dug graves and stolen bodies, faced an immortal doctor who had threatened to cut the heart out of the boy she loved. She had been in love, and she lost him and learned how to be alone again. Hazel could handle a dark flight of stairs.

Hope was a dangerous thing. Most of the pain in the world, Jack had learned, was because of hope.

“I can survive a hanging and a stabbing and shipwreck and starvation,” he said. “And I still wouldn’t ever dare to do anything as foolish as standing up Hazel Sinnett.”

If only, Hazel thought, she could spend the rest of her life trying to make Jack Currer smile.

turns out true stupidity is believing you’re secretly brilliant.”

until then, every time I look at you, it feels like the rip in my heart is getting bigger. Give me up, Hazel. Turn me into a good memory. It’s what I did with you a long time ago.”

“It could be worse,” Eliza continued. “He’s actually very nice if you give him a chance. Not a terrible dresser.” “Wonderful,” Charlotte replied. “How delightful it will be to spend the rest of my life and become mother to the heirs of a man who is not a terrible dresser.”

There are always women behind the scenes, pulling the strings, Hazel. We are invisible to history, but we also survive.”

She looked at the two of them, limbs intertwined as easily as if they shared their bodies as one, so comfortable with each other and so obviously in love,

My very existence is contained within the prison of my privilege.

I wake, walk, sit, sleep, at the discretion of the country. The less of a person I am, the better monarch. I am a clockwork doll told to smile and wave and wear expensive clothing that someone else picks out for me. I shall marry whom they tell me to marry, and I shall have children for the Regent and for Parliament to raise on my behalf. Every decision made for me, every act of my existence dictated by Parliament or my husband and his country’s parliament. And I shall become smaller and smaller, more invisible even as I wear larger gowns and more expensive jewels. And then one day, I shall cease to be Charlotte altogether.

“Will you still love me even if all of England despises me?” Hazel said. “We’re Scots, Hazel,” Jack said, a smile extending across his face. “If England hates you, we can hate them right back.”