“Again, none of it is true, doctor.” Kenneth led them to the door and knocked twice. “Miss Benson? I have Dr. Fowler here for you.”
“Send him in.” her voice could be heard through the door.
“Off you go then.” Kenneth opened the door and shut it behind Dr. Fowler.
* * *
“You’re the doctor then?” Leah asked the squat man before her.
“I am.” the doctor said, setting down his medical bag on the marble-topped table. “Dr. Francis Fowler, at your service, madam.” He gave a polite bow. “I understand you are somewhat wary of physicians.”
“More the surgeons.” she admitted.
“Yes.” Dr. Fowler took a seat on the stool beside the bed. “Well, let us hope we need not call on one of them. A grim lot, they are, but men of science, all the same.”
“Men of science.” she echoed.
“My dear.” he leaned forward a bit and clasped his hands together. “If you so choose, I shall be your doctor. Should that be the case, anything said between us would remain under confidence. Such is the way of medicine. You could talk to me about anything you desired, and I would not have the right or the will to share it with anyone, including other men of science.”
“Is that so?”
“It is so.” he smiled roughly beneath his brutish nose, and she could tell that he had a good soul. She often judged people by their cheeks, for in the miniature movements of the skin around the mouth is where she learned their personalities.
“You may examine me, Dr. Fowler.” she said after a time of chewing on her lower lip. “But only because I am so injured that I require examination.”
“Well, of course.” Dr. Fowler nodded. “What other reason would there be?”
“Clever.” she smiled ironically. She was uncomfortable with any person coming too close to her, especially when she was as vulnerable as she was presently. Yet, she understood that this man had the ability to make the healing process easier, if not faster, and for those reasons she accepted the help.
“One must be, to at least a certain degree.” Dr. Fowler talked while he removed several instruments from his medical bag. “If they are to study medicine.”
Dr. Fowler proceeded to perform a thorough examination of all Leah's injuries, taking stock of their magnitude and repercussions. When all was finished, he assisted her in the changing of bandages across her cheek, at which point he noticed her dominating scar.
“It's an old one.” he remarked.
“From when I was a child.” she dismissed his curiosity.
“Well the good news, my dear, is that you will heal entirely.” he said, placing his tools and measuring devices back into his bag. “The bad news is that it will take some time. Your ribs will heal completely in a matter of a month or two, although you should be able to move about on your own within a week. It will be painful, you understand, but they will heal. This,” he selected a small dropper vial from his bag. “will help with the pain. One drop as needed, you understand, and never more than five in a day.”
“Thank you, Doctor.” she took the vial, giving it a once over.
What happens on the sixth drop?
“Your ankle, you must keep elevated and at ease for at least a week. After that, should you move around, be mindful of it, for it is thrice as easy now to injure. Watch your step, and you will be fine. All of the bruises will subside in due time, but I get the notion you knew that.” he smiled warmly, closing his bag.
“What is a bruise, Doctor?” Leah asked with big, blinking eyes.
“Oh, you are trouble.” Dr. Fowler laughed out. “I can see why the Duke has taken a liking to you.”
“What was that?” she asked, startled.
“Good afternoon, Miss Benson, I shall return in a week or so to ensure you are healing properly.” Dr. Fowler went out of the door, and left Leah alone in the bed.
She palmed the small vial over in her hand. She could handle whatever pain she had to live with. That was a small thing compared to being dead. But this tincture intrigued her immensely.
She had heard of opium and cocaine mixtures used as numbing agents, but she had never thought that so much could be administered from a doctor's bag.
Riphook is missing out on that one. The thought of his suffering, either known to him or not, brought her a little warmth.
* * *
Doctor Fowler left Leah's room and went down the stairs, at which point Daniel directed him to the east drawing room. There, not at all a surprise to the good doctor, he found the Duchess waiting with an elaborately-arranged tea.
It was one of the perks of making house calls to the Wilson's. The Duchess always made a great show of feeding Dr. Fowler, and he had no complaints with the practice. So that morning when a note had arrived from the Duke, he had not thought twice about making the four-hour coach ride out to the countryside.
“Dr. Fowler, so good to see you.” the Duchess said warmly, gesturing for him to sit at the table. “How have you been keeping? And your wife, how is she of late?”
“We are both well enough, Your Grace.” Dr. Fowler sat in the chair Daniel pulled out for him. “Will your son, His Grace, be joining us?”
“Oh, I am sure he will be along.” the Duchess made a show of how much fruit there was on the table. “Go on, take a bite, he is only writing a note to his uncle.”
“You mean Lord Wilson? How has he been faring? I have not seen him in many months, it seems.”
“He is as well as he can be, I suppose.” The Duchess seemed uninterested in the well-being of her brother-in-law. “He is always hard at work on something or another.”
“He has become a very successful business man.” Dr. Fowler commented.
“So, I am told.” the Duchess ended the discussion, and at that moment the Duke appeared.
“I am sorry to have kept you delayed.” he addressed the room. “Now let us take tea.” and he waved to Daniel to begin serving.
“Your Grace.” Dr. Fowler acknowledged his arrival to the room.
“So, tell us, Doctor.” the Duke said, fishing a bite of cheese into his plate unceremoniously. “How is our patient?”
“I am pleased to inform you that I expect her to make a full recovery.” Dr. Fowler began stirring sugar into his steaming tea cup. “All in due time, of course.”
“Well, that is excellent news!” The Duke sat up, energized. “Let us take a drink to celebrate! Daniel, fetch a brandy.”
“None for me.” the Duchess interjected, shooting her son a glare. “It is far too early in the day.”
“She will be in pain this next month from simple movement.” Dr. Fowler went on. “She will need support on a regular basis.”
“I shall care for her.” the Duke said.
“You shall not.” the Duchess countered. “You have a business to run, and you will be traveling to London to meet with your uncle in a matter of days, will you not?”
“I will, but–”
“Beatrice will care for her.” the Duchess concluded. “Lest we not raise any more rumor than you already have.”
“I care not for rumors.” the Duke took a glass from Daniel, and handed it to Dr. Fowler. Then he retrieved one for himself. “To the health of Miss Benson.”
“Well said, Your Grace.” Dr. Fowler toasted the Duke and drank the brandy down. It was of excellent quality, and he was reminded in one of the reasons he had come there. He began to attend the food piled before him.
When the extravagant tea time had concluded, Dr. Fowler made ready his departure. He bid his farewells, his well wishes, and climbed back aboard his coach for the journey back to London.
He would reach his home before the clock tower struck eight, and this satisfied him. He had a belly full of good food and drink and a head full of good information.
He took a pleasant nap on the ride back, waking only when they clattered onto the flagstone of the London streets.
Dr. Fowler then made a stop unexpected to the driver. He
pulled in front of an alley in St. James’s Square, and told the driver to hold a moment. Then he took a page from his pocket notebook, and with a small pencil scribbled a message.
He climbed down from the coach and walked into the alleyway. He followed it around a bend and into a small, forgotten courtyard between three large businesses.
In that courtyard there was an old Roman fountain that had long ceased operation. He shuffled quickly to the fountain but stopped still in his tracks as he reached it.
There was a boy watching him. The lad was perched atop a sloping roof, following his every move. He said nothing, just watching from his vantage point. Even from this distance, Dr. Fowler could tell the child did not get enough to eat and had likely had his growth stunted. Sometimes being a doctor in a city filled with the sickly took its toll.
Dr. Fowler held up one of his gloved hands and gave an open-palmed wave to the boy. The boy did nothing.
Likely just a lookout.
Then he leaned over the dried fountain basin and placed his note in the ancient mouth of a leaping fish, which at one point might have spat water.
His task complete, he turned and hurried back to the coach, glancing behind him to see that the lad on the roof had disappeared.
He could only hope that the thing he had just done would be enough to clear him with Nash, for he owed that low life more than he could pay.
Chapter 8
Cornelius Wilson was an aging man, but he was determined not to let his age get the better of him. There was much to be done in life, he reasoned, and the sooner one stopped doing the sooner one died of uselessness.
It was this attitude that found him, at the ripe age of two and sixty, running an extremely successful business. On that August morning he sat at his desk, if it could be called a desk. It was much more like an altar, positioned in front of his windows in such a way that it gave off a certain reverence.
Cornelius ran his hands over his neatly-combed grey hair. His appearance was something that he took very seriously. He knew the risks of being perceived as weak, and there was nothing weaker than a decrepit old man, at least in Cornelius' world.
That was the image he combated day and night, although some would say his efforts were unnecessary. He had a fair build for a man of his age, not too soft in the middle but not too thin either. Cornelius had broad shoulders, much like his nephew Kenneth, and his eyes were a piercing blue.
His always kept his clothes neatly pressed and organized. Cornelius would take great care ensuring the correct trinkets were arranged in just the right way so that any onlooker would assume him to be only the most proper of gentlemen.
The morning light came through his windows and fell over his shoulders in a way that brought him confidence each day, and so, he enjoyed being at the office before everyone else, even in his old age. He liked to watch as his employees trickled in, always between the hour of seven and eight. It gave him comfort to see them immersed in the routine he had created with all of his hard work and time spent.
And it was much time.
Cornelius had learned early that if he wanted anything in the world, he would have to take it. He was born to a wealthy family, one of the wealthiest in the country in fact, but none of it was ever to be his, for he had an older brother. There was a time when he thought his brother might die suddenly, and that all would be his. He did not think this maliciously; he did not have the capacity to hurt a member of his family, and he would never dream of doing so. It was more of a fantasy – a dream – that one day he would not be the second.
But as he grew older, so did his brother, and the clearer it became to Cornelius that he would never inherit his father's title.
So, he had begun to build his own world, one separate from the balls and festivities of the peerage. One in which he was not second, but first, and where his word carried more weight than anyone else.
It had not been an easy road, but it had been a rewarding one. After forty years of dedication, he had become the richest independent businessman in all of England. He held massive sway with peers of repute and could influence the global market for fine China at his whim, for it was in luxury goods that he found his niche.
It had started with a simple plan. As a younger man, Cornelius had realized the drastic difference in wealth that he lived among. He saw the enormous amount of money spent on things like tables and snuff boxes while people starved to death outside.
Out of this upbringing, Cornelius understood that people will pay whatever you ask of them, as long as they feel they need something, and the rich folk of London were the neediest.
So, Cornelius had used his charisma and intellect to build an empire of silk, china, tobacco, and other amenities that the richest of Englishmen could not live without, be it in Australia, Africa, India, or the far East.
Cornelius sat back in his great throne of a chair and methodically opened his drawer. He retrieved a cigar that he had been working on for a week now, clipped the char from the end, and lit it up.
Cornelius took several long, thoughtful puffs from the tobacco, and then extinguished it in an ashtray carved from the ivory of an Indian elephant.
Coughing once, he brushed the end of the cigar clean, placed it back in the drawer, and wiped his hands on a small rag he kept folded on the edge of his desk.
Like clockwork, as he finished refolding the cloth there was a knock at his office door.
“Thompson?”
“Yes, My Lord.”
“Come in, lad.” Cornelius delivered the same exchange with his assistant each morning, and the routine of it brought him to the official beginning of his work day.
“Morning, My Lord.” Thompson said. He entered through the grand, church-worthy doors with a pile of folded envelopes in one hand.
“This morning’s correspondence?” Cornelius gestured. He knew that it was.
“Yes, My Lord, here you are.” Thompson set the papers on the desk.
“All set for the day, Thompson?”
“Yes, My Lord.”
“Good lad, off with you then.” Cornelius dismissed him with a friendly wave and a smile. He cared for his employees, especially the ones that had been with him the longest.
“What have we here?” he pondered aloud, spreading the envelopes over his desk with separate fingers.
Among the assorted mail there were far too many messages from banks for his liking. The bank's letter would only reach him if there were a problem with money, either on his end or the buyer's. This many-folded letter was indicative of a problem on his end, and this troubled him. It was likely yesterday's deposit had been filed after the bank's closure, and thus delayed the filing. Someone would be reprimanded for this, if it were as he suspected.
One seal that caught his eye above all the rest was a personal piece of postage from the Worthington estate. The wax was sealed with the mark of his nephew, the Duke of Worthington.
“What have you to say for yourself, Kenneth?” Cornelius muttered, fishing up the envelope.
Cornelius was very fond of his nephew, for it seemed he was all that was left of his brother. His sister-in-law, that Juliet, her he could do without, but his nephew held a special place in his heart.
Cornelius sliced open the letter with his ivory implement; he had developed a taste for ivory ever since he had taken that voyage to India. In his mind, it was one of the most beautiful materials on God's green earth.
He plucked out the paper and unfolded it delicately. He read the words penned below.
10th of August, 1819
Dearest Uncle Cornelius,
I write to you with a variety of news, some of which you will be glad of at least. Firstly, I urge you to ignore the rumors regarding my latest action; I acted only with chivalry at heart and hold no ill relations with criminality. This, I can only hope to assume you already know, but alas, it seems I never learn to mind whomever is watching.
Regarding my business, I will travel to London in the coming days to arrange th
e details with your office. I should expect to see you come Wednesday, or Thursday at the latest, that is lest you join me for the Glorious Twelfth, and then we may make the journey together. I have already managed what we previously discussed regarding the licenses. I shall speak with you soon.
Your loving nephew,
Kenneth Wilson, His Grace, The Duke of Worthington
The handwriting was such that Cornelius could tell Kenneth had only written the meat of the message, and that it had been formatted by someone else, under supervision of course. His nephew had always hated any sort of formality, even in writing.
The Ambiguous Enigma of the Hunted Lady: A Historical Regency Romance Novel Page 8