That was the difficulty, wasn't it? She just took for granted that she lived in a fine part of the county and didn't even think that there were poor people all around who didn't have what she did.
Suddenly the list of worries that had been following her around seemed to fade. The drive to throw the perfect party; the frustration at Michelle's frippery; even the confusion surrounding Montgomery's influence on her life, seemed to have lost their importance.
She needed to find some way to do as Montgomery had done; she needed to find some way to touch the people who were hurting in her own backyard.
Chapter 24
Montgomery found a sober, thoughtful Emelia waiting at her house when he arrived later that evening to check on the Wells' cook. She was sitting just inside the door, where the butler usually waited, only she was alone and had changed out of her fine morning gown into a plain grey shift with an apron over the top. She'd braided her hair back from behind her face, and when Montgomery walked in she leapt up.
"May I take your coat?" she asked quickly. "I sent the butler home early. He seemed a little tired, and I don't want to run the risk of him coming down with whatever plagues Aggie." She bit her lip and gave a quick little self-mocking curtsy. "My talent for housework is sorely lacking, but I'd really appreciate the chance to help you with Aggie."
"Aggie. That’s the name of your cook?" He remembered it now from the day of the tea disaster. In truth, his interaction with the cook had faded away from his memory, but he tried to pull it back up for Emelia's sake.
"Yes." She took his coat and hat and hung them up a bit clumsily before waving towards the servant staircase. "Now, follow me."
As they walked downstairs, she turned and spoke over one shoulder. "How was the rest of your day?"
There was something different about her; something almost eager. Montgomery looked at the back of her neck as he followed her down the stairs and remembered the way she'd bent over the poor boy in the clinic, singing him that little tune and holding his hand with no care for her own health. "It was rough, but the other doctor returned to provide aid, and I think we should get a good start on the other patients tomorrow. A nurse is watching over our current charges, so I should be able to go home and rest before the day's work."
"I'm sorry that your vacation has been infringed upon by such a prominent illness—you must feel as though you're walking from one place of business into another." She paused at the bottom of the stairs and looked at him in that odd way she had of cocking her head to the side and staring as though she could see right through him. "But perhaps you didn't mind so much after all. I think you were missing your work, perhaps?"
He nodded wordlessly, unsure how to answer such intuitive questioning. Emelia, for her part, seemed to not need a response. She led him back past the kitchen, where he'd last seen the cook on the day of the disastrous tea party, and down the hall to a bedroom situated near one of the back doors.
An older woman in a stiff black uniform and pinafore was sitting outside the door on a bench, doing a bit of mending. She stood up when Emelia approached and curtsied.
"She's been fast asleep, my lady, since you last checked. I am happy to apply another poultice—"
"There's no need," Emelia said quickly, and Montgomery wondered if he sensed embarrassment in her tone. "I'm sure the good doctor will have a new and more effective method of treatment after he sees Aggie for himself. You are relieved from your duties. I will stay by her side nursing tonight. You've done far more than your fair share of the work."
There was a moment of stunned silence, and Montgomery had to work to keep the surprise off his own face. It was not normal for a woman of Emelia's standing to offer to sit vigil for someone as lowly as the family cook.
"Go on," Emelia prodded at last, smiling broadly and then pushing past the housekeeper as though the matter was, with those simple words, settled at last.
Montgomery walked over to the bed, already smelling the herbs in the poultice. Emelia need not have worried; it seemed she'd only put together a basic sleep poultice, the kind people in the country used often enough to relax their breathing, and while he doubted it was particularly helpful in the case of the woman lying in the bed, he also didn't think it would have done much harm. He walked over and laid a hand on the round woman's sweating face; she opened her eyes, a bit startled.
"It's alright, Aggie," Emelia said, there in a moment, kneeling by the bed with her hand on the woman's. "I brought the doctor, and he's going to help you as best as he can."
Montgomery nodded. "Are you alright if I check your lungs, Aggie?"
"Yes," the woman croaked, wheezing a bit as she did so.
Montgomery leaned over and listened with his tools to the woman's chest before tapping gently against her abdomen and then checking her tongue.
"There's none of the brown fuzz," he said after this last test. "I worry with a fever this pronounced about Typhoid, but it rarely presents the same way twice. Sometimes it can look like any number of other diseases." He put a hand to the woman's head, surprised to sense Emelia listening to his every word as though she were in a medical class. "The fever is bad, though. I'm glad you were putting cool cloths on her earlier, but we need to change them. They've long ago lost their temperature, and I wouldn't like her to sit with warm, damp cloth for any period of time. Please put them on her wrists as well as her head and chest."
He leaned forward and listened to the chest again, wincing at the rattle he heard there. "My closest diagnosis is actually an infection of the lungs," he said, "although it doesn't usually come on so quickly. We will apply some medicine and monitor her fever closely during the night. If it breaks in the morning, we can hope the matter is not so serious as it looks now."
"Good." Emelia nodded her head eagerly, standing and pouring fresh, cool water into the basin by the bed. She worked slowly, methodically, so that while it was clear she hadn't nursed often before, she also managed to give off an air of confidence and qualification as she worked. "You give the directions necessary, and I will stay here tonight."
Montgomery blinked. "You? Alone? All night?"
She smiled a little weakly. "That's a lot of questions, Dr. Shaw." She shrugged. "Who else? I don't want to risk anybody else's health, and what else do I have to do? I'm not going to go upstairs and embroidery or plan parties as though such things were my priority."
Montgomery looked down at his hands, surprised despite himself that the woman before him had managed to take him off guard yet again. She spoke as though the idea of her not staying all night downstairs with an ailing cook was the preposterous thing, not the alternative as many other women in her situation would have felt.
"I can't allow that," he said slowly, gathering his wits about him. "I don't know that it would be good for your own health, Emelia, and I don't know how much good you can do. I will stay here and tend to her as is necessary. You go upstairs and rest; you can check on her in the morning."
Emelia rung out the clothes and then walked over to Aggie's side and laid them on the cook's head and wrists with surprising adeptness. When she finished she turned and wiped her hands on her apron, looking at Montgomery with her calm, dark eyes.
"I think it is amusing how you think you can tell me what you will or will not allow in my house. Dr. Shaw, as much as I sincerely regret doing anything you don't expressly recommend, I must also assure you that I will be here all night with Aggie regardless of your presence."
Montgomery hid a smile that threatened to burst forth at the young woman's unexpected spunk. He shook his head. "I don't recommend it, as you say, but I can see that you are determined. Bring another chair from the kitchen and we will tend to her together. Perhaps you will allow at least that having two of us will allow some time for resting between wakefulness."
Emelia seemed to seriously be considering putting him out of the house and insisting he rest back at his own mansion, but in the end she nodded slowly. "I would like you here in case things turn fo
r the worse during the night," she acknowledged. "I'll fetch a chair. Should we make up a fire in the kitchen? I don't want to overwarm Aggie, or else I would build it here in the room."
"Perhaps that would be best," Montgomery said, surprised he hadn't thought of it himself. "We may need to sterilise instruments later."
And just like that, Emelia was gone. Montgomery set up his medical bag on the table and sat down in the chair by Aggie's side, listening to her labored breathing. It felt warm in the room, and the exhaustion of a day of doctoring was weighing heavy in the back of his head, like an ache that was lurking, waiting to creep up into a full blown headache behind his eyes.
As much as it pained him to admit it, Montgomery was glad that Emelia had offered her services. A long, lonely night of work would have taken everything out of his energies in the end.
She was back quickly, a chair in hand and a bit of soot on her cheek.
"That was fast," Montgomery said, taking the chair and setting it up against the wall so she would have a place to lean her head when she inevitably dozed off. "Did you really get a fire started so fast?"
She smiled weakly. "Actually, the footman found me trying and lent aid. I'll get it next time."
"Of course you will." He couldn’t hide his smile, and she noticed.
"What's the matter?"
"Oh, nothing much," he said, laughing a bit and turning back to his medical bag. He whispered the rest so she could only just hear, "Cinderella."
He heard rather than saw her turn and inspect herself in the looking glass behind the bed, then she giggled quietly and wiped at her cheek. "Perhaps it got the better of me after all."
***
Montgomery had sat vigils like this before, and so he knew enough to understand that Aggie's case, though serious, was not as bad as it could have been under the circumstances. Still, it made for a long night. Emelia seemed relentlessly energetic, insisting upon taking as many tasks as she could under the circumstances, as though by refilling water buckets and boiling clothes she could somehow prove her place in the sickroom.
Montgomery didn't tell her, but her presence alone was reprieve enough. He found it so comforting to look up during the wee hours of the morning and see her bending over Aggie or stoking the fire. It was good to be with someone, and not facing down the angel of death by himself.
One time, late at night, she shook him awake from sleep because Aggie's fever had spiked badly. They picked her up and carried her to a tub they filled with cool water, bathing her and watching her closely until the fever had subsided somewhat. When it was all over, Montgomery looked up and saw, for the first time, that edge of exhaustion in Emelia's eyes that he felt in his own self.
She pulled a quilt up over Aggie and patted the woman gently.
"I think she's asleep again." She turned and brushed a tendril of curling hair from her face.
"You should go up and rest. Hannah came down hours ago to ask you to rest," Montgomery said.
"Nonsense." But she sat down nonetheless and leaned her head back to close her eyes. In a few short minutes she was breathing softly and steadily. Montgomery felt a surprising tug of tenderness looking at her sleeping there against the wall, her tired hands folded so properly in her lap.
He covered her in a blanket and she rested like that for a full hour before coming awake again to help.
When the morning finally broke, so had Aggie's fever. Though exhausted and weak, the cook looked for the first time like she had a real fighting chance. There was a bit of color in her cheeks and she struggled up on one elbow to request, "a good English egg," before falling back into the first good run of sleep she'd had all night, without any panicked attempts to breathe. Montgomery could still hear the rattle in her lungs, but it was fainter.
He left after daybreak, giving a list of instructions to the housekeeper when she came in for work and giving Emelia strict instructions to go upstairs and rest. She obeyed at last, seemingly satisfied to lay aside her stubbornness now that Aggie seemed to be in a stable place, and she walked upstairs wearily without even a proper goodbye.
Montgomery turned his sights towards home. As he crossed the wide expanse between the Wells and Shaw residences he felt a bone-tired weariness settling into his bones. He could only think of getting home and lying down upon his pillow; when he finally did so, he fell asleep with the image of Emelia's tired head drifting back against the wall as she slept in the chair by Aggie's side.
Chapter 25
Emelia watched Aggie carefully over the next few days, ready to ride for Montgomery again at the slightest sign that the woman was relapsing, but every day her voice sounded clearer and her lungs more strong. She regained her strength, and was soon giving the housekeeper and staff infuriatingly detailed instructions as to everything they were doing wrong in the kitchen.
Emelia wrote two different notes to Montgomery over the next few days to assure him of Aggie's status, but he never responded. She assumed the work had been too exhausting for him, and perhaps a little frustrating as well on the heels of an already full day at the clinic.
She decided, after three days of silence, to take over a basket with some of the rolls cook had helped her to make. They were sweet rolls, and had taken an understanding of yeast, which Emelia thought Montgomery would find amusing considering their earlier conversation on the subject.
She'd slaved through the morning with cook perched in a chair by the fire recovering, and had to admit that the process had been more pleasant than she'd imagined. She'd used the starter Aggie kept in her cool room and worked the soft dough with her hands, listening to the cook's restless instructions all the while.
"It's a softer dough, so we'll add more of fat to keep it so; and you don't want too much salt to stunt the yeast, mistress."
When Emelia had pulled a cloth off the top and witnessed the balloon of risen dough, she'd been absolutely delighted.
"It's a little over-proved," the cook had said, biting her lip. Then, as though seeing the disappointment in Emelia's face, she'd added, "but 'tis no matter. You'll just have them a bit more fallen after the bake."
Then it was into small buns with nuts and sticky syrup, and Emelia was now carrying the whole aromatic lot across the fields between her estate and the Shaws’. She'd put on that simple grey dress again that she'd worn to nurse Aggie, although now there was no pinafore and her hair was in a loose braid tucked up at the base to stay off her neck. She wasn't sure she was ready to admit, even to herself, why she wanted to dress in the same thing she'd last worn while working side by side with Montgomery. It was a memory she wanted to preserve, and that was enough for now.
At the Shaws’ door, the butler took some time to answer. When he did, Emelia saw that the house behind him was still dark, even though it was midday. The shades were drawn and there were few lights that she could see.
"Is Dr. Shaw home?"
The butler shook his head, and then nodded it again in the next moment as though confused. "Yes, my lady, but he's indisposed at present."
"Whatever can you mean?" She peered behind him into the gloom. "What about his mother? Brody?"
"The younger Mr. Shaw has been gone for days on business to the city, and is not yet expected to return for at least another few days. Mrs. Shaw is upstairs at present with her son. The doctor left only a short while ago." The butler shifted, clearly unsure what his place was in this entire affair. Ordinarily he would only say that his employers were unemployed; there was no reason to add additional information; but the old man had seen Emelia and Hannah moving back and forth between the Shaw and Wells estates ever since they were children, and to lie to her must have seemed like lying to one of the boys' sisters. "He's not…well."
Emelia felt the first real touch of concern. "Please," she said softly. "I'm sure you have information otherwise, but I'd appreciate it if you'd let me come in and see him."
A Lady's Perfect Match: A Historical Regency Romance Book Page 18