Do No Harm (eBook)

Do No Harm Duology, 1

Sarah M. Kinsch (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024 | 1. Auflage
444 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
979-8-3509-6407-3 (ISBN)

Infos

We all know choices aren't easy-but what about when they're impossible? When choosing between being an upper-class lady or the first female surgeon. When choosing between two men who want different things. And what about when choosing between saving lives and taking them.

Dr. Sarah M. Kinsch has a doctorate of Psychology, a master's degree in Sex Therapy, and a bachelor's degree in biopsychology with a specialty in evolutionary psychology. All that to say, she has a lot of student loans. She is a licensed clinical therapist with a smut-writing hobby. She lives outside of Philadelphia with her husband Ryan and dog-in-spirit Koda (We miss you, buddy. Best co-author ever). She prefers sitting on a couch to long walks on the beach and inappropriate jokes to small talk. TikTok: Velaris Book Club Instagram: SarahMKinschAuthor Email: [e-mail]

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A 24-year-old female surgeon. A kidnapping. And the RMS Titanic. Get ready to flip every trope you thought you knew about fantasy romance upside down. Evelyn Waldron knows a surgeon should be saving lives. She also knows she has to do it in a corset and upper-class fashion. What she doesn't know, is why she survived a train crash that killed everyone else onboard. Enter a new surgical professor and the mysterious owner of a brothel who start whispering morally grey magic into her ears, making her promises of a future she doesn't understand. But it's not until she wakes up in an unknown place, with people she thought she knew, and sees magic for the first time, that she realizes her life will never be the same. A sexual awakening, learning to use power, and a decision on the RMS Titanic is starting to convince Evie that she might be the morally grey character in the end.

Textauszug

Chapter Two

JUNE 1911

NEW YORK CITY

It could have been the clap of thunder, the sound of breaking glass, or the dog licking her face that woke her up. Regardless, Evelyn groaned at her newly discovered consciousness.

“For goodness sake, Fay,” she rued at the nine-year-old collie, lifting her arm to guard against her onslaught of welcoming slobber. In response to being pushed away, Fay gave a bark of insistence.

“You’re awake!” came a soft but excited voice from somewhere in the room.

“And drowning,” Evelyn complained, wiping away drool and trying to sit up.

“No, no!” the familiar voice fussed. “You’re supposed to stay lying down.”

“Says who?”

Tilly shooed away the overprotective dog. She clicked her tongue. “Says your father. How do you feel?”

Evelyn furrowed her brow. “Fine. Why?” Then she frowned. “Did something break?”

Tilly clicked again and threw her hands on her hips. “Really? The one time you’re unconscious and you catch me breaking glassware?”

Evelyn chuckled, still searching herself through the loose nightshift to get her bearings. “Are you alright?”

“Fine, my lady, it was just the thunder.”

Evelyn looked outside in time to catch a flash of lightning. “Wait a minute. Did you say ‘unconscious?’”

As Tilly moved back to the broken glass on the floor and opened her mouth to respond, the door to the bedroom flew open.

She recognized her brother immediately. “You’re awake?!” he both announced and questioned from the doorway.

“It would appear so. Is this cause for celebration for some reason?” Evelyn lifted her arms and then let them fall back on the bed.

Sam made his way forward, draped in his favorite striped robe, and dropped onto her bedside. Fay, now annoyed she’d been ignored, joined them.

Sam looked at her with wonder, his eyes scanning her body. “How do you feel?”

“Why does everyone keep asking me that?”

Sam tilted his head, bringing the back of his hand to her forehead. “You don’t know?”

She swatted his hand away. “Why is everyone fussing? I was just woken up; I’m not feverish.”

“You really don’t remember,” Sam said in a whisper.

Evelyn found herself lowering her voice as well. “Remember what?”

Sam opened his mouth, but there were heavy footfalls in the hallway outside the bedroom door.

“Has she woken?” came her father’s authoritative tone.

“She has, sir,” followed Tilly’s lilt.

He appeared in the doorway, dressed in his pajamas, holding a lantern, her mother on his heels. “There she is,” came his reassuring voice.

Dr. Waldron shooed Sam away and took his place at her bedside, setting the lantern on the small table. And, like Evelyn’s brother, he immediately placed the back of his hand to her forehead. “Any pain?”

She pushed his hand away, annoyance reaching its peak. “What is everyone so worried about? The storm? The broken glass? Don’t misunderstand, I love seeing all of you at…whatever hour this is, but I really don’t understand the fuss.”

The room got quiet. Much, much too quiet. Evelyn watched as Tilly made an even quieter work of dusting up the glass. Another rumble of thunder echoed through New York City.

Father took Evelyn’s hand. “You were in an accident.”

Evelyn’s brows smashed down on her forehead in confusion.

“I’m beginning to think,” he went on, “that you don’t remember that.”

She shook her head in surprise. “When?”

Her mother sat on the other side of her bed, doing her best to keep Fay at bay. “Three days ago.”

Sam was now standing with his hands in his robe. “You were on a train, remember?”

“A train…” Evelyn said out loud, as if saying the words would jog something. She simply shook her head.

Her father gently turned her chin back to him. “Do you hurt anywhere?”

Evelyn blinked a couple times. Then she started at her feet: wiggling toes, bendable knees, movable hips, ten fingers and flexible elbows. And finally, rotating shoulders with a head that seemed to be attached. So far so good. “I suppose I have a bit of a headache,” she shrugged.

“Good Lord,” her mother said under her breath.

Her father eyed Sam. Evelyn sighed in exasperation. “I feel like there is some secret, like it turns out Fay is a French spy, and I’ve been left out of the know.”

Father sighed back. “My busy bee, lay back and rest. This is quite enough for one night. You must be exhausted.”

Evelyn made to protest but Sam was quicker. “Just be still, Evie. I’ll watch over her, father. No getting out of bed, just resting.”

Their father nodded. “Thank you, Samuel.” And he leaned forward and kissed his daughter on the forehead. Evelyn relented, lying back and letting her brother bring the covers up around her shoulders. She settled into his gentle rubs on her hairline. Her mother did the same and, after picking up their lantern, they gently shut the door behind them.

The pair counted to five before Evie bolted right up. “Sam, what in the name of God is going on here?”

Sam turned, touching her face and her neck and looking at her arms. “How in the name of God are you not completely broken?”

“What?!”

“Evie, you were in a train crash. As in a train, on tracks, is going fast, then boom! Accident! The train went off the rails completely. It was on fire!”

Her mouth dropped open. “No! You can’t be serious!”

“Evie, no one survived.”

Her eyes doubled in size and she scooted back somewhat on the bed as if she had misheard. Maybe this train crash had messed with her hearing.

The dancing flame from the electric lamp on the side table and the lightning from her window played on her brother’s face. “I swear it to you, Evie: they say you were the only survivor.”

Her blue eyes just stared right back at her brother’s matching ones. She then looked down, throwing off her blankets, and peering down through her nightgown. Skin, unscathed. She pulled up the hem to her bare, light legs. Unmarked. Sam reached up and, behind her, tugged free her waist-length blonde hair. She watched as he flipped up the ends in front of them and they both stared, mouths agape, at the singed ends. Frayed by fire.

“Impossible,” Evie breathed.

Evie and Sam sat in silence, seeming to be asking similar questions in their heads.

“Do you remember anything?” he asked, eyeing her like he’d never seen her before. “Anything at all?”

Evie closed her eyes and really thought, really tried to imagine what he was saying. “I know I was coming back from the Harkness’ house in the Hamptons. I took the Long Island Railroad and we were headed into…” She opened her eyes and looked at her brother. “That’s it. That’s all I know. I was on a train, headed for home. And then I woke up, just now.”

“That’s all?”

She shook her head slowly. “That’s all, Sam. There’s nothing in between. It’s…blank.”

“I need you to think really, really hard Evie. Did you see anyone on the train? Anyone that you knew?”

Evie scrunched her face. “Why would I have seen anyone I knew? I just told you it’s blank.”

“Right, yes, but what about anyone that you felt was following you?”

“Following me? No, no one was following me, Sam. Why would they be? And what would that have had to do with the crash?”

“I could be nothing. I just didn’t know if—”

“I don’t know!” she found herself shouting.

“Okay, alright,” Sam soothed. “It’s fine. It doesn’t...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 23.8.2024
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Fantasy / Science Fiction ► Fantasy
• ISBN-13: 979-8-3509-6407-3 / 9798350964073