A Lady's Perfect Match: A Historical Regency Romance Book

by Bridget Barton

  That's when Emelia saw the spots of dark red blood on the girl's apron and dripping between her fingers. She stepped forward quickly and, before the girl could pull away, held her fingers lightly. What she saw was quite unexpected: there was a long, thin, arched fish hook running through a significant portion of the girl's forefinger.

  "How did this happen?"

  "I'm so clumsy, miss."

  Emelia softened her voice. "We're all clumsy sometimes," she said as gently as she could. "But why are you out here with this wound? You should come inside so I can tend to it. We may even need to do a bit of stitching or send you over to the doctor."

  "No, miss!" Lily's eyes widened in her already pinched little face. "I have a terrible fear of doctors, ever since I was a little girl. I came out here to the shed to fetch some fish from the cooling room, but when I was in there I reached too quickly into the darkness and snagged myself instead of the fish. I've been trying to pull it out…"

  Emelia could see as much. The wound had probably been clean enough when it first occurred, but the girl had tried to jerk the fish hook with all its backwards prongs out the way it had gone in, and now there were jagged pieces of skin and a long gash where only a pinprick had been before. It was bleeding so steadily Emelia could hardly see the wound.

  "You shouldn’t try to pull it out anymore," she said. "We have to go into the big house and tend to it. I know you don't want to see a doctor, so I'll take care of it myself."

  "I can't go back." The girl blanched white again. "I'm new here, and I lost my old job because I dropped something on my leg and wounded myself at work. I can't lose this job, too."

  "Well, I'm your boss, and Aggie is your immediate superior. I know you don't know us very well yet," Emelia said with a smile, "but we aren't the kind of women to punish a girl for whatever pain she brings upon herself by accident on the job. No more scolding, come now."

  She looked to the table and, seeing the two fish lying there, picked them nonchalantly up as she followed the girl out of the kitchen shed and across the lawn to the downstairs kitchen entrance at the house.

  Aggie was baking in the kitchen when they walked in, finally looking a little stronger after her bout with illness, and she looked up with alarm at the sight of Emelia and the serving girl. "There you are, Lily," she said, bustling over and taking the fish from Emelia. "I was wondering what took you so—"

  Then she caught sight of the nasty wound and her face wrinkled in disgust. "Whoie, there's a gruesome mess if I've ever seen it, lassie." She looked a little green, and Emelia thought quickly.

  "Go to the sink, Aggie, and boil me some fresh water. Sterilize a needle from your kit with a flame, and boil a bit of dark thread. I'll need it when I'm done with all this."

  Aggie nodded and Emelia walked quickly to the side table, wracking her brain to remember what Montgomery had said was a good antibacterial herb to use in situations like these. Ah, yes. Garlic and honey. She snatched a mortar and pestle from the side table and ground up a bit of the mixture, carrying it over the table where Lily had already taken a seat.

  Aggie was already boiling the water and had readied the needle and thread. She stood nearby, but at a distance from the wound that had so filled her with nausea.

  "Are you surely alright, miss?" she asked weakly. "I think that doctor's still in town. We can ask him to come over." Emelia thought of her recent parting with "that doctor," and suddenly had a reason other than Lily's mortal fear to keep Montgomery out of this particular bit of business.

  "I'm confident I can do it," she said calmly. "I read about it in a book once."

  "If that were a credential," Aggie mumbled under her breath, "than I'm equipped to slay dragons and woo princes."

  Emelia pretended she didn't hear this vote of confidence and instead laid out a strip of linen on the corner of the table between her and Lily. She took the girl's hand, feeling the tremble of fear there, and turned it carefully around to examine the hook.

  It was evident to her that any further attempt to pull the hook out the way it had come in would just result in more mutilation of the affected digit. She couldn't pull it out the other way, because there was a large, round anchor hole upon which the fisherman had likely attached his line.

  Then, quite suddenly, a thought came to her. She looked up at Aggie. "Do you have those clippers the gamekeeper uses to cut the wire fencing?"

  "I do." Aggie bustled to the other side of the room and reappeared quickly with the tool. Emelia saw Lily's eyes widen and shook her head.

  "These aren't for your finger, love." She carefully brought the clippers down upon the head of the hook, severing it in a single move from the rest of the hook, and thereby freeing her to pull the hook out with the grain of the prongs instead of against the grain. "This will only hurt a bit, and then it will be all over. Be very brave for me, Lily."

  The girl, white-faced and horrified, nodded. Emelia took hold of the hook and twisted it as smoothly as possible through the finger and out the other side. The blood was coming fast and fierce now. She took one of the newly boiled clothes and held it to the wound. "There," she said. "The first bit is done. Please hold that as tightly as you can and we will set about the cleaning of the wound."

  Up until this point she understood how everything could have been accomplished without any study in the medical field, but now, faced with this next hurdle of cleaning at stitching the wound, she felt Montgomery's loss sorely. "Now we will open it up and try to clean away the blood as best as possible."

  The girl had large, fat tears sliding down her pale cheeks, but she nodded and exposed the battered finger yet again. Emelia cleaned it as best she could, trying to finish the task quickly so the girl could be spared further annoyance, and then applied a smear of the garlic and honey before taking hold of the sterilized needle.

  "Have you ever quilted before?" she asked the girl.

  Lily nodded. "Yes, ma'am. The coverlets upstairs."

  "Then you've likely felt the prick of a stray needle. This will be little worse than that. Try not to look at what I'm doing; just imagine that you are working on some new patch of embroidery on a coverlet." Emelia pushed aside the voice in her head that was mocking her and telling her that any attempts at actually sewing up a patient were far beyond her abilities. Montgomery wasn't here, was he? She needed to learn to fend for herself.

  The kitchen maid turned aside and fixed her eyes on Aggie, who held her free hand and looked away as well. Emelia had noticed that the cook seemed every bit as squeamish as the girl, although Emelia herself felt oddly cool and calm, as though she were sitting outside the situation and giving herself mental instructions. There now; easy. Take the first flap of skin and bind it to the other. Lily winced. Talk to her while you work. Can't you see how scared she is?

  "How long have you been with us, Lily?" Emelia asked, tying off the first knot. It was a little lopsided, but seemed to hold well enough. She prepared for the next stitch.

  "Only a few day's ma'am."

  "And where were you before that?"

  "I was originally in Northampton working a house job in the city quarter. It was a dangerous time, I'll tell you—horrid banging of carts and cries of children all night long, and I hardly felt safe to go out and gather the milk from the doorstep every morning."

  Emelia tied off another knot. Two more to go. "Well," she said with a note of irony in her voice, "aren't you glad you're out here in the country where it's so very much safer?"

  The kitchen maid laughed then, a forced and still frightened laugh, but a relief nonetheless. "Well, I confess I never faced this particular issue before. We don't get the fish on the hooks very often—more often than not they come already wrapped in paper to our doorstep."

  "Well, perhaps you can ask some of the staff to show you how we catch them in the lake behind the estate." One last knot. Steady hands, lass.

  "No, I don't think so." Lily was looking a little less green in the complexion, and her eyes sparkled. "I t
hink I've had my fill of fishhooks—and fish too for that matter—for some time, at the very least."

  "There." Emelia set aside the needle and thread and surveyed her work. "I'm going to clean it once more, apply ointment, and bandage it up. We shall send you into the clinic tomorrow so the doctor can make certain the job was done correctly, but to my eye it looks just as it should."

  "Thank you, miss." Lily leapt up and gave a bobbing curtsy, sweeping up the other items on the table at once and bustling off to the kitchen to be rid of them. Emelia rose to leave as well, but Aggie's voice bid her stay.

  "My lady, that was a fine piece of doctoring you just did."

  Emelia turned and looked at the sweet face of the cook. "Thank you for keeping your head about you, Aggie. I know the sight of blood like that gives you a queer illness in your stomach."

  "Even talk of blood like that will do the same thing," Aggie said, waving her hand in front of her face as though to dispel the awful memory. "But you, my lady, hardly seemed perturbed. You've got a fine way about you—and a clear head. I can't help but think about that kind doctor that stayed with me all through the night when I was so very ill. He would be proud to see how far his student has come."

  "I'm not Dr. Shaw's student." Emelia walked to a basin of water by the door and washed her hands, scrubbing under the fingernails to be free of the crusted blood.

  "Please, don't take offense." Aggie came and laid a hand on Emelia's back in a rare show of tenderness. "I only meant to tell you that you have the stomach for helping people in trouble, and a good knack for healing what's on the inside too. You didn't shirk from what needed to be done, and you kept the girl and I well distracted so we didn't dwell too long on the nasty particulars."

  "Thank you, Aggie, your kindness means so much to me."

  Emelia turned and made her way upstairs, the cook's words ringing in her mind. But that was just it—she didn't think of the details of the healing as "nasty particulars" at all. She'd found it enlightening; interesting, and exciting.

  It made her want to go upstairs and open up every book on medicine her father had in his library. And for a moment, just a small moment, she'd forgotten about Montgomery.

  Chapter 33

  Another aching day passed in silence and separation until at last Emelia could stand it no longer. She walked downstairs to the breakfast room and, seeing only her father at the table, took a seat and looked towards the empty doorway.

  "Is Hannah not coming down again?" she asked.

  "How should I know? You two are the ones joined at the hip," he answered. Then, after a moment's pause, he added somewhat more kindly, "What happened between the two of you after all?"

  "You were there at the Shaw party," she said quietly, choosing a small brown egg from the basket and placing it in the soft-boiled stand. "You heard everything she said. What about the whole affair could possibly be confusing to you?"

  Her father was quiet for a moment, and when he spoke his tone had that parental grit that she'd rarely heard since her mother's death. "It's no use taking your confusions out on me, Emelia. I only want to help."

  She shrugged wearily. "She's angry at me about Brody. I can't tell you much more than that; and I think if I were to tell you the reason behind her anger it would only uncover her."

  "Some in the county would say that it is impossible for my daughters to be uncovered more than they already are." He spread butter on a piece of toast. "Emelia, don't fret your heart too much over Brody. I know that the engagement didn't work out as you planned, but perhaps it is for the best. I know it seems silly, but I always saw you with someone a bit more serious than that lad."

  "Father, I'm not fretting my heart."

  "Denying it will only make the pain endure," he went on blithely. What was it with this infernal county and their refusal to hear the truth about the romantic situation of those around them? Emelia frowned fiercely and turned her attention to her breakfast, eating the rest of the meal in silence.

  When she stood to go, her father looked up again. "Well, have a good day dear."

  Emelia curtsied in response, trying not to let the patronising tone get to her. What would it take for the world to know that her heart didn't lie with Brody at all, but with his—no. Now was not the time to dwell on the past. Now was the time to fix the wounds that had afflicted her sister. She climbed the stairs to her sister's room and knocked on the door with the little pattern they'd used as code since they were children.

  After a pause, footsteps approached and the door opened, revealing the maid with a pillowcase in one hand and the extinguished candle in another.

  "My lady?" the maid curtsied.

  "Is my sister in there?"

  "No, my lady. She left early this morning to ride into town. I don't know when she'll be back."

  Emelia was determined now. She wasn't going to wait around all day waiting for Hannah to show back up for a fight. She walked downstairs with a quick, sure step and tied a thick cloak around her neck and a bonnet around her chin before walking to the livery and saddling up a horse for the ride into town. She didn't take the roundabout way by the lookout, instead opting to traverse the more direct route into town.

  She passed only the parson and two sisters from the lower side on her way into town, but she could see Hannah's mount tied up in front of the bookstore as soon as she arrived. She tied up her own horse after climbing off, and walked inside. Hannah was just inside the door, sitting on the very same stool where she had been curled up when the Wells sisters and the Shaw brothers had made a visit to the bookstore all those years ago.

  She had a book in her hand, and only looked up when the tinkling of the bell told her she wasn't alone. Her face rested passively on Emelia's face, and then she looked back at the pages beneath her fingertips. The bookkeeper was nowhere in sight. Emelia came further into the room and closed the door behind her.

  "Hannah."

  "Let me guess." Hannah snapped the book closed and stood, holding the volume at her side. "You're not here for a book of any sorts—you're following me."

  Emelia shrugged, resentful of that same harsh tone in her sister's voice. "Why is it a problem if I'm following you, Hannah? I want recompense and healing between us—is that such a bad thing, after all? You should be ashamed that you aren't seeking some sort of reconciliation."

  "How unimaginative of you, sister," Hannah retorted drily. "If you're looking for something I should be ashamed of, perhaps you should skip over the whole matter of reconciliation and focus instead on the recent dinner party where I aired our dirty laundry for the entire county to witness and laugh at."

  "You didn't air our real dirty secrets," Emelia said through stiff lips. "You fueled an untrue rumor. Now everyone thinks I'm distressed over 'losing Brody' when I never really had him in the first place."

  "You never had him?" Hannah's voice rose ever so slightly. "What do you call a secret wedding contract, then? I think that's pretty close to 'having' someone, if you ask me."

  "See, this is just how rumors spread." Emelia stepped forward imploring me. "There was never any contract, or anything so official as that. It was a childish, immature thing to say, but it was nothing serious enough to warrant this kind of icy behaviour from you."

  "Don't you understand?" Hannah stepped forward, the book slipping from her grasp and tumbling to the floor. "It was never about the actual pact, Emelia. Because if you loved Brody, you should have just told me about it when I bared my soul to you. I would have stepped back, you know I would have. I wouldn't have pursued him at all—heaven knows when I first noticed my crush I pushed it aside because I believed, along with the rest of the county, that you were singled out in his affections. Then I told you of my crush and you said nothing about this marriage pact. Aside from the usual remonstrations I would expect from anyone encouraging a young lady in a moment of romance, you hardly even discouraged me. You let me sit before you talking about my foolish infatuation."