by Carrie Lomax
“I danced at the Christmas ball. Twice.”
“It’s June. That was six months ago.” Never one for prolonged contact, the doctor gave her shoulder a final pat and went to his desk. He gathered a sheaf of newspapers together and held them out to her. Harper took them silently.
“Might I think it over awhile?” she asked.
“Read them and make an informed decision.” He opened a black journal, palmed the pages flat, dipped his quill and began to write.
Harper barely registered the little squeak emitted by the catatonic woman on the couch as she closed the door softly behind her.
She deposited the papers on her desk and locked her room behind her. Out on the manicured grounds of the estate, Harper picked up her skirts and ran for the enormous willow tree that marked the presence of a shallow fishpond. The rustling leaves hung nearly to the ground in a sheltering canopy.
She couldn’t leave the asylum. It was her whole world.
Harper picked up a stone and tossed it into the pond. A family of startled ducks quacked indignantly away. If she went to Briarcliff, she would have to assert herself alone, with only distant support from her mentor. Although she understood that she couldn't go through life dependent upon Dr. Patton to make a place for her, the prospect of striking out on her own made her feel about as capable and brave as those ducklings paddling after their mother.
“Coward,” she muttered.
And yet…the thought tingled in her imagination, a diamond-bright spark of possibility. Here was a chance to do something important. If she was successful, she could make a real difference for other women who practiced medicine.
If there were any. She sighed. Maybe Dr. Patton was right. Perhaps it was past time for her to attempt life outside the beautiful confines of her home.
Harper had worked hard to become the ideal protégé. How could she know if she was truly any good unless she tried?
Just imagine if she succeeded.
It would be even easier to make the case that she ought to be named director of the asylum. Triumph or fail, she could always come back here.
“Heard you were up in the big office about half an hour ago.”
Harper’s booted foot jerked as she turned. It landed in the edge of the water, leaving a dark spot on the worn leather.
“Miller. This is my spot.”
“You don’t own it any more than I do.” A gangly man folded himself onto the river bank a few feet away. “What’s the doctor want with you?”
“You’ve already invaded my willow tree. Keep your nose out of my business.” Harper rose, her drab skirts falling around her legs in a protective curtain. Parting the hanging willow leaves with two hands, she enjoyed no little satisfaction at hearing them deliver a slap that she didn’t dare attempt.
Though she’d won a measure of grudging respect from her colleagues, Miller and Skitchum, Harper was by no means friendly with them. Both men held university degrees that she would never be permitted to obtain, yet she had years of experience and close apprenticeship with a master. Only the thinnest veneer of civility masked the toxic mutual jealousy and competitiveness of their working relationship.
Miller stomped after her, his long legs easily keeping pace.
Harper glared over her shoulder. “Can’t take a hint, can you?”
“Can but won’t until I find out what the doctor wanted with you.”
The walled yard was not large. She headed toward the stables, situated downwind of the house. Two men shoveled horse manure into a wheelbarrow, the pungent scent mixed with the sweetness of early summer air. Her glare deepened. Miller choose the most humiliating work for the patients he liked least. One of Patton’s convictions was the healing power of meaningful work. Miller took that notion and twisted it.
“The wrongheads aren’t too good to shovel horse shit.” Miller caught her disapproval and turned defensive. Fair enough, but it didn’t always have to be the same patients doing the hardest, smelliest work.
In two long strides, Miller got ahead of her and planted his bean-pole body in her path. Harper stopped short.
Too bad she wasn’t big enough to run him over. The crown of her bonnet barely topped Miller’s shoulder.
Harper inhaled a steadying, manure-scented breath before meeting his eyes. She wished they were beady and birdlike. Instead, they exuded warmth and authority. The rest of his face just missed the mark of handsomeness. Bland skin, indifferent nose, thin lips, a jutting chin.
Yet Miller was a man with good prospects. As a woman with poor prospects, she would be smart to make an ally of him.
“With all respect, you are deluded if you think our patients are unable to discern how you parcel out the best chores to your favorites.” Harper hardly attempted to conceal her contempt for a man who entertained himself with petty games aimed at humiliating the infirm. Maybe it was harmless, but it spoke volumes about his character.
“Have a care for your place, Miss Forsythe.”
“My place here is not in doubt.” Harper’s eyebrows arched gracefully upward.
Miller took one step closer. He was so quick that she didn’t understand what was happening until his tongue was slithering around in her mouth. His hand was hard on her chin, holding her in place.
“Gah!” Harper wrenched away. Across the rickyard, one of the patients pointed, muttering to his companion.
“You’d make a fine wife for an asylum director if you were more biddable. You’re beddable enough, for a know-it-all shrew.” Miller watched her scrub away the unwanted kiss with the back of her hand, his lips a sneer of bewildered contempt.
Harper leaned down and picked up a glob of mud and manure in her bare hand. She chucked it at his face, only to miss when he sidestepped the missile.
She reached for another handful. This time she hit him square in the back as he turned away.
“You’re hopeless, Harper,” he shot over his shoulder.
Harper returned directly to Dr. Patton's office, panting a little from the exertion of dashing up the stairs as she burst through the door. Let him mistake her agreement for enthusiasm.
"I'll do it," she declared. "I'll go."
The doctor beamed his approval. “I shall write the earl directly.”
She turned toward the door. The doctor’s voice stopped her.
“Harper.”
“Yes?”
“Have you read the papers?”
She felt her shoulders droop fractionally. “Not yet.”
“See that you do. Praemonitus praemunitus.”
Forewarned is forearmed.
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Becoming Lady Dalton: London Scandals Book 2
Mrs. Viola Cartwright traced a length of roller-printed linen and sighed. The fine fabric slipped beneath her gloved hand as smoothly as silk. If only the dressmaker hadn’t asked her to keep her gloves in place, Viola would have removed one—discreetly—to enjoy the texture of material that had been out of reach until a few months ago. Before then, had she tried touching delicate, expensive cloth, the dressmaker would likely have slapped her hand away instead of gently reminding her not to smudge the wares.
Absorbed in making her selections, Viola sensed a presence at her back before a whisper-light touch brushed the scant inch of exposed skin between her sleeve and the edge of her thin cotton gloves. Viola jolted.
“Oh, it’s you,” she breathed, glancing up over her shoulder. The room suddenly grew heated. Viola’s corset laces mysteriously tightened, threatening to constrict the breath right out of her.
Lord Dalton had that effect on her. Likely, he had this effect on many women. Viola greedily wished she could keep this man’s blood-stirring regard all for herself. She supposed half the women in London felt the same way. Late last summer, she’d arrived on her grandmother’s doorstep with little more than the clothes on her back, and her eight-year-old-son and lovelorn younger sister in tow. Within a few short w
eeks, Harper had married Edward Northcote, the heir to the earl of Briarcliff, to the surprise of just about everyone. The couple’s first wedding had been an overwrought fiasco, followed promptly by a fire that had burned the Briarcliff town residence to its foundation. It was whispered that Richard, Edward’s younger brother, had caused the fire in which the previous earl had collapsed and died, leaving Edward the new earl.
Harper and Edward remained in the country, adapting to their new lives. But Viola had decided to return to London for most of December. After spending fifteen years on a farm near Upper Cotwold, a hamlet in the north of England, she’d taken to city life with an enthusiasm her sister and new brother-in-law lacked.
“I didn’t mean to startle you,” Dalton murmured, his hand hovering near hers. It had been months since their last meeting. What was he doing here, in a dressmaker’s shop?
The answer stood behind him, a tiny girl in a blue wool dress. A heap of outerwear overflowed the child’s arms as she struggled to contain a velvet cloak and wool cap. She must be Dalton’s daughter, four-year-old Emily.
“Here, Papa.”
She dumped the pile at her father. Dalton accepted the bundle of damp fabric. Emily scampered off, led by a seamstress, to look at pictures of children’s clothes.
“She’s grown a full two inches since her birthday. Nothing fits her anymore,” Dalton complained with affectionate pride.
“I know the feeling. Matthew’s outgrown two pairs of shoes since last summer.” Never mind that the first pair had been woefully too tight to begin with. Five months ago, Viola had lost her home in Upper Cotwarren in the northern parts of England. Too-tight shoes had not been her primary concern. Penniless and homeless, Viola and Matthew had been forced to travel to London with her sister, Harper, to find their long-lost grandmother, Baroness Landor. The whirlwind of her sister’s marriage to the Earl of Briarcliff’s heir still made Viola’s head spin when she tried to think of all the changes her family had weathered in such a short time.
“Has he now?” A slow grin spread across Dalton’s sensual lips. Oh, the man was handsome. Her heart fluttered at the thought that she, lowly Viola Cartwright, nee Forsythe, appealed to a young buck like Dalton. The four-year age gap between them was not in her favor, either.
“Yes. He’s off to school in January.” Which would leave her all alone. Viola brushed away the thought like a cobweb. “I’m here to order his school wardrobe.”
“Eton?” Dalton asked idly as he shifted the bundle of his daughter’s clothing from one arm to the other. A second seamstress appeared to relieve him of the burden. Viola mused that the shop was well-staffed—a luxury she had never experienced before a few months ago. It was all for the best the dressmaker wanted her to leave her gloves on. Viola’s chapped and scarred hands were as unfit for fine company as they were for fine fabric.
“Bainbridge,” Viola replied. It was the nearest competitor to Eton. Only her new brother-in-law’s notoriety had secured Matthew a place. Her sister’s newfound status as a countess had brought with it unimaginable advantages. Viola was determined to enjoy every single one.
Dalton’s dark gaze, like brown sugar caramelized over a flame, cut to her with an intensity that made Viola’s blood pound. If she could bottle that look and sell it, she’d be a rich woman in her own right, instead of a poor dependent. Sadly, however, Dalton was one luxury Viola could not afford for herself.
There was nothing to prevent her from looking, though. With his dark locks curling about his ears and temple, and the severity of his cheekbones offset by the hint of a sardonic smile perpetually playing at the corners of his sensual mouth, she often caught herself staring at Dalton. Indeed, that had been how they’d initially met last fall. Her forward ogling had led to his impertinent introduction, and now…what?
She was staring again. Dalton let her, with humor playing over his lips as his gaze met hers and slid away. Embarrassed heat flooded through Viola.
“A worthy institution,” was all he said, meaning the school. “I’d best see to Emily.”
“She looks enthralled.” Viola glanced across the room to where the seamstress had given her a doll with miniature clothing to dress. A wistful sadness ghosted through her. “My firstborn was a girl. She would have been twelve now.”
Had she lived.
Immediately, Viola froze in place. She never spoke of the child she’d borne at seventeen, who had died before her first birthday. It was a confession Viola could make without thinking only to Dalton, and precisely what made him so dangerous to her peace of mind. With his priest-like austerity and wicked, teasing gaze, the man tempted Viola to speak openly when she ought to mind her tongue.
“Do you ever think of her as if she’d lived?” Dalton asked.
“Of course. Don’t you think of them?” Viola asked softly as her embarrassment subsided slowly. She wished the man didn’t have this loosening effect on her lips. Her trust was hard-won. Though Dalton had proved himself worthy of her confidence last fall, she didn’t know him well enough to blurt out personal details about her life as she’d just done. Her cheeks flamed. She ought to conclude her business and flee into the cold December air of London’s streets before she embarrassed herself any further.
But he’d lost his entire family as a boy. Then his first wife, Emily’s mother, had died before their daughter was a year old. Dalton knew loss. Worse, most of London regarded Dalton with a degree of superstition, because nearly everyone he loved died. No one wanted to be next.
“Never,” Dalton replied evenly, unfazed by her breach of etiquette in the midst of a bustling shop. Perhaps the man enjoyed her company because Viola had never developed the habit of dancing around delicate matters, Viola mused. Dalton appeared to find her company refreshing.
“I think of them as frozen in time. Forever six, eight, eleven, and seventeen. My parents never age. My late wife, however…” He trailed off as he contemplated his daughter. “It’s not quite the same. I can imagine moments when she’s alive beside me, because Emily is very like her.”
Viola’s heart wrung like a dripping rag.
“Emily is a lovely little girl. Very spirited and winning,” Viola offered hastily, glancing at the little girl who was charming the seamstress into giving her a tea cake. “I’ll bet she’s enjoying the day out with you. Does she ordinarily come here with her governess?”
“Of course. But Miss Templeton is feeling unwell, so today I took a personal interest.”
Dalton turned to her with a penetrating look. Viola felt his gaze rake up and down her body, admiring, just as she had done to him a moment before. The urge to flee, which always came hard on the heels of a private conversation with Dalton, no matter how innocuous, raced through her veins.
Piers Ranleigh, sixth Viscount Dalton, was one luxury she could never afford to indulge.
Despite this, he tempted her above all other delights. Viola would forego silk and satin by the bolt, fine linen sheets, dancing to exquisite music, evenings at the opera, even the pleasure of raiding her grandmother’s extensive book collection.
She caught herself. Maybe not the library. One must have some standards, after all. Especially as regarded the male sex. Having naïve expectations was how she’d become Mrs. Cartwright, after all.
“Are you, by chance, attending the Townsend ball tomorrow evening?” Dalton asked, pulling Viola out of her reverie.
“I may. I may not.” Viola flashed a smile. She needn’t avoid all flirtatious interaction with the man, only the kind that tempted her to kisses…and more. “It depends upon whether my gowns can be made ready in time. Which is my second purpose in coming here today.”
As if she’d conjured her, the dressmaker appeared to beckon her into the back room.
Dalton gave her a devastating half-grin. A dimple flashed in the smooth expanse of his cheek below the sharp cheekbone and above the strong line of his jaw. Viola blinked at the ephemeral appearance of the divot. If she’d seen him smile fully before, it ha
d been too brief and shallow for the whimsical mark to make an appearance.
“Then, I may or may not see you there,” he responded with a slight bow. “But if I should be so fortunate…”
He paused.
“Yes, my lord?” she prompted.
“Wear the crimson velvet.”
Dalton turned on his heel and moved to attend to his daughter.
Viola gaped after him, her mind awhirl with longing. Not for you, she reminded herself, grateful to return her attention to more accessible pleasures.
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Copyright © 2019 by Carrie Lomax
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