Jane Read Online Free PDF Page B

questionable heart. It was a family thing, he liked to say, much like the Hapsburg lip. His father, two uncles, and a brother had died young from what Father referred to as “a bum ticker.” But he insisted—quite rightly, I thought—that his kin had been wholly unfit individuals, carrying before them massive bellies and jowls hanging heavily from their chins that shook like beef aspic on a platter. Father was an altogether different sort—a bona fide outdoorsman. He fished, he rode, he bicycled. He took miles-long striding constitutionals every single day that weather permitted. And I, the only one of his and Mother’s children who had survived infancy, had taken very much after my father.
    Samantha cringed when anyone called her daughter a tomboy, but that was a perfectly reasonable description of me. Much as I loved reading and the study of science, I honestly preferred the out-of-doors. Never was I happier than on the back of a galloping horse, my yapping hounds running alongside. Not to brag, but I was a crack shot, too. I could outshoot Father at skeet, and my begrudging nickname on the college archery range was “Robin Hood.” Long ago, Mother had given up seeing me descend the staircase slowly and decorously, my hand pressed lightly on the rail. I had proved myself to be little more than a female ruffian.
    “So were they horrible to you today, the young men in the class?” Father shouted over the wind.
    “Only one true dolt!” I shouted back in answer to his question, thinking of Mr. Cartwright.
    I noticed that Father’s wavy brown hair, blown backward, was growing rather longer than Mother liked, and it was always an unruly mess by the time we returned from the college. He had refused to grow the full beard that was all the rage now, especially among English academic men, choosing instead the clean-shaven American style. His wife approved of the beardless look but strenuously objected to the too-long hair. “You look like the Wild Man of Borneo,” she would complain every time he came in from a drive. And when it attained a dangerous length—as it had now—Samantha would have the barber make a special house call.
    “But it makes me so angry, Cambridge segregating the men and the women!” I said. “Why haven’t they come into the new century? Look at Marie Stopes at University College London. Not only are females training side by side with male physicians, but Marie, a girl my age, is already a lecturer there!”
    “You could have gone to University College!”
    “I know I could. But then I would have had to leave you!” I looked over at my father, affection threatening to spill over as tears. “And your laboratory!”
    “ Our laboratory!” He smiled, never taking his eyes off the road. Archie Porter was nothing if not a careful man.
    I was warmed to be reminded that he trusted me as his assistant in his private work at home. Depended on me more and more all the time. It was why I relished every weekend I could steal away from the university. To work at his side.
    “If you test well in human dissection—you’re already top of the class in lecture—you just might open some doors for young ladies in the future!”
    The Packard turned into the long manor drive and pulled up to our stately home—the Edlington-Porter manor house with its fine stonework and high arched windows. Now Father spoke in normal tones, filled with the warmth and familiar affection I so loved.
    “Meanwhile, you’d best sneak upstairs and stick your head in a bucket of lemon juice before coming down to dinner. I’m afraid I’ll never hear the end of ‘our reeking daughter smelling of the dead.’”
    The doorman came to my side and opened the Packard’s door. “Welcome back, Miss Jane.”
    Then the hounds were there to greet me, setting up a fine racket, sniffing wildly at my new and enticing fragrance.
    “Come on, boys,” I said, eager to get to the stables, “let’s go see if Leicester wants to have a