Outside, scattered snowflakes began a sidewise dance toward the cold, hard earth. “You are presuming to comment on my personal life?”
“I presume,” Douglas said, “because I owe you, and I can plainly see that you are lonely as hell. I know from experience that lonely men do stupid things. Becoming intimate with Mrs. Banks would not be stupid.”
“Lonely and lecherous are not the same,” David retorted, purposely using crude language with a friend who was himself never vulgar, because this snow would likely keep up the entire distance to Kent.
Douglas did not so much as twitch an eyebrow. “Indeed, they are not. Loneliness can kill a man; lechery is easily managed by any fellow over the age of twenty-five.”
The scold was all the more effective for being delicate. “You think I should simply bed Letty Banks?”
“No, again.” Douglas’s calm should have been a warning. “Bed her if the two of you are so inclined, but my opinion is that you should marry her.”
Long moments of silence ticked by, while David stared incredulously at a man he considered a friend, someone he respected as eminently rational, shrewd, and observant to a fault.
But also kind. Douglas was reserved and much concerned with propriety, but he was also painfully kindhearted.
“Damn you, Douglas Allen. I’ll bite: Why should I marry Letty Banks?”
“I’m not going to tell you that your title means you have to marry someone,” Douglas began as patiently as if he were teaching a catechism. “You will pressure yourself to marry and produce an heir and a spare—you’re an English peer, after all—so one could say that you should marry, not that you must.”
“One could.” Though Douglas, in his orderly, rational, goddamned reasonable way, was apparently not.
“Mrs. Banks would be a scandalous choice, of course. But your sisters both married amid scandal, and they’ve been happy for it nonetheless.”
“My sisters’ husbands would not appreciate my choice, were I to take Mrs. Banks to wife.” Because a rake reformed was a hypocritical bastard, and a pair of rakes reformed was a heavenly chorus of how-could-you’s and I-told-you-so’s.
Douglas waved a hand. “The only true reason for you to avoid scandal is to ensure your marital options remain flexible. Heathgate and Greymoor were a couple of scapegraces before they married; they can hardly point fingers at you. And as far as that goes, my impression was that Herbert was the first man to offer Mrs. Banks his protection. Other than whatever missteps she took out in the shires, she is not known intimately to any living man.”
“You are saying she is only slightly used goods, and if I want her, I should have her.”
Douglas leveled a stare at David, as if willing insight into the brain of a lout. “My wife,” he said softly, “thought herself slightly used goods. She hid with the shame of it, because her family’s wealth allowed her to do so.”
David had the grace to look away, to acknowledge the punch in the gut Douglas had just delivered to his conscience. Douglas—proper, stodgy, reserved Douglas—had schemed and planned and moved heaven and earth to marry his slightly—badly—used Guinevere.
“Letty isn’t Gwen.” Though even a moment’s reflection pointed out similarities between them.
“And you are not me,” Douglas agreed, oh, so very pleasantly. “You are wealthy, you have the devotion of your sisters, you have properties from here to Halifax to which you can repair, and you have wit, charm, and influence in abundance. No.” Douglas took David’s half-empty glass from him. “You are certainly not me.”
“I’ll consider your counsel.” The very next time he became too drunk to ignore it.
Or all the way to damned, freezing Kent.
“See that you do. Now, you are due to spoil my daughter, who is at this moment stuffing treats into that market hog thrust upon us by her ducal grandfather, though it’s hard to fault Sir George, when he takes such good care of Rose while hacking out.”
“She hasn’t come a cropper yet?”
“No, thank the gods.” Douglas’s expression was the epitome of a papa who regarded his daughter’s pony as his first rival. “I’m not sure my heart could take that, and Moreland would be on the premises, demanding explanations of the pony at gunpoint. With Guinevere in an interesting condition, such mayhem and riot must be avoided.”
“Are you worried for Gwen?” Douglas seemed so composed—at all times, under all circumstances.
“Not worried, terrified. She delivered Rose without complications, but that was years ago.”
In the dead of winter, Surrey was producing an excellent crop of anxious prospective fathers.
“No matter how concerned you are, your job is to be the soul of patient good cheer, to shower your wife with affection, and to exude confidence and optimism. Consult Heathgate and Greymoor if you need further pointers. They’ve both become proficient at dealing with gravid wives.”
Douglas raised a thoughtful eyebrow, which from him qualified as an indication of burning curiosity. “Shower her with affection?”
Oh, for God’s sake. “In abundance. She’s not concerned about getting pregnant, so you might as well enjoy the resulting lack of inhibition.”
Douglas straightened up the already tidy set of glasses remaining on the sideboard. “My wife has assured me of the same, but one feels hesitant nonetheless.”
“Listen to your wife,” David admonished. “Once the baby arrives, Gwen will need weeks to recover from the birthing. Then it will be weeks more, if not months, before the child sleeps for more than a few hours at a time. You’re newly wed, Douglas, don’t deprive yourself or Gwen of the pleasures to be had now.”
“Pity,” Douglas said, shifting the decanter half an inch to the left.
“What’s a pity?”
“Pity you don’t practice medicine any longer,” Douglas murmured, absolutely straight-faced. “One could certainly use your sage and comforting counsel if you did.”
***
“David?” Guinevere, Lady Amery, found him packing his belongings after a noisy midday meal en famille with young Rose. “There’s a fellow in the kitchen who’s been sent for you from Town. He says his news is urgent, and asked that you attend him at once.”
David slung his saddlebags over his shoulder, his first thought that Letty might have found other employment. “Let’s see what he’s about.”
The man in the kitchen was Watkins, not the messenger David had left with Letty, but the head footman and a trusted retainer.
Watkins bobbed a bow. “It’s sorry I am to be botherin’ ye, yer lordship, but Mrs. Banks said it were urgent.”
Which meant—thank ye gods—Letty was still at her post and capable of giving orders. “What’s urgent, Watkins? You can speak freely here.”
Watkins darted an anxious glance at Gwen, who rolled her eyes at David and withdrew from the kitchen without further comment.
“It’s young Portia, my lord,” Watkins said. “She’s in a bad way, and the quack won’t come, even when Mrs. Banks went to fetch him personally.”
“Is it flu?”
Watkins colored to his ears. “I don’t think so, your lordship. I think it be a female complaint. Mrs. Banks didn’t want to bother you, but it’s been since Thursday, and Portia’s faring very poorly.”
“So I’m to come to Town, is that it?” David asked, mentally rearranging his travels to detour through London, because Letty would not have sent for him unless the matter were serious.
“If’n you please. Mrs. Banks is worn fair to a nubbin worryin’ for Portia, and Desdemona is fit to be tied. Portia’s at Mrs. Banks’s house, where she’ll at least have peace and quiet.”
Only the very ill needed peace and quiet that badly. Watkins was worried too, as was David.
“Let your horse rest, Watkins, and I’m sure there’s a toddy to be had and some v
ictuals in the meanwhile. I’ll see you back in Town.”
“Best bundle up, my lord. It looks to start snowing again, you ask me.”
***
“Letty? It’s David, and my hands are full with the tea tray, so open the damned door.”
He’d come. All Letty could think as she opened the door was that he’d come, and his presence would mean a lot to the woman dying in the bed.
“What in the hell is wrong?” His lordship put the tea tray down on a bureau and took a step toward her, but Letty nodded toward the bed, lest she collapse into her employer’s arms.
“Portia’s bleeding to death.” Letty kept her voice down, though the stench in the room likely proclaimed the truth loudly enough. “She went to Old Meg, at least that’s what the women told me. Portia wouldn’t say a thing to me, and apparently timed her visit such that most everyone was getting their courses—her bleeding wouldn’t have been unusual, then.”
“Old Meg?” Fairly added a short, filthy oath as he sat on the bed. “You know who she is?”
“I gather from your expression she’s not a midwife.”
“She’s a damned butcher,” Fairly shot back. “She’s an abortionist, a whore whose protector slashed her face rather than let her leave him. She took to her trade when her looks were ruined, but she’s as jealous of the young women who come to her as she is likely to help them. Many do not survive her assistance.”
Something else to hate about this new occupation Letty had taken on. “I sent word to Ridgely that Portia’s health was gravely endangered, and he didn’t bother to send a reply.”
“Ridgely is probably the reason Portia went to Meg in the first place. We’ll need hot water, towels, lye soap, and some laudanum if you have it.”
Letty returned with the hot water—thank heavens Fanny was at least keeping the well full in the oven—and found her employer in his shirtsleeves with his cuffs turned back to the elbow.
“Have you ever assisted at a birth?” he asked as he used the soap on his hands, wrists, and forearms.
“I’ve been present. What are you going to do to her?”
“I will try to save her life. You are going to have to fold back the covers, Letty, and clean Portia up as best you can before I touch her. Can you do that?”
She passed him a clean towel, one of the last ones in the house. “I can, but I’ve changed the linens enough to know she’s literally a bloody mess.”
“Then we’ll change them again, and sooner is better than later.”
Portia was not only a bloody mess, she was a bloody, stinking mess, and yet, his lordship was undaunted.
“Change the towels and ease her legs up so her knees are bent.”
Letty complied, though how one woman could lose so much blood and yet draw breath she didn’t know. “I ought to send for a parson, but I doubt one would come.”
As Letty swapped clean towels out for the soiled ones, fresh blood seeped from between Portia’s thighs.
“Bend her knees, and if I send for a damned priest, the man will come posthaste.”
Letty turned her head rather than watch what came next. Portia remained inert on the bed, but Fairly was soon swearing softly.
“That damned old bitch. I need bandages. Linen if you have it, and fast, and we’re going to bank the pillows under her hips to help slow the bleeding.”
He tossed a length of bloody, curved wire onto the brick before the hearth, and Letty wanted to be sick as she passed David a wad of cloth.
“Infection is almost a foregone conclusion,” he said, “but Portia’s young and otherwise healthy. She might pull through and surprise us all.” He worked in silence for a few minutes, then stepped back, his hands bloody, and motioned for Letty to replace the covers.
“How do you know all this?” she asked, for not every physician concerned himself with matters of midwifery.
He recommenced scrubbing his hands, turning the remaining water pink and soiling the last clean cloth. “Once, long ago, in a land far away, I thought I might have had it in me to become a healer. I was wrong.”
And yet, Portia might live. “So what do we do now?”
“We keep her comfortable and watch for infection. She should eat as much organ meat or beef as we can get into her, and drink beef tea to help her replace the fluids she’s lost. White willow-bark tea and feverfew if she spikes a fever, and various other infusions for pain and inflammation.”
His gaze as he regarded the still figure in the bed was far more that of an aggrieved friend than a treating physician. “In any case, she will be a long time getting back on her feet, and her previous profession may no longer be available to her.”
Because she’d be too damaged, which meant she’d also never have children. Any woman would feel that as a loss, and not a small loss.
Letty smoothed a hand over Portia’s brow, which was not—yet—fevered. “I could shoot Ridgely.” Shoot him in an unmentionable location.
“My poor Letty. You’ve been dealing with this for four days, and you are exhausted. Portia won’t be stirring for a while. How long has it been since you’ve had something to eat?”
Portia might not ever stir. “Mrs. Newcombe tried to get me to eat something yesterday, I think—maybe the day before.” Tried. Probably mentioned in passing that food might be a good idea.
“Mrs. Newcombe needs to be taken firmly in hand,” Fairly said, draping the damp, streaked towel over the back of a chair. “She should have kept up with the wash, at least.”
Letty moved around the room, collecting soiled towels and sheets. “Don’t fuss. It’s too late for that, and I’m too tired to defend anybody.”
Also, too heartsick.
***
“I’ll watch over her,” Desdemona said, “and plan a bad end for Lord Ridgely while I do.”
David might have smiled, but the woman was not joking. He pushed to his feet, every joint and muscle protesting movement away from the chair by the hearth. “If Portia stirs, get some willow-bark tea into her. It’s bitter, nasty stuff, but it can help with fever and inflammation.”
Des took a seat near Portia’s head and smoothed her friend’s hair back. “We should cut her hair.”
Portia was vain about her long, dark hair, and with good reason. “Cutting her hair won’t help, despite what the herb woman told you growing up. Your prayers just might. Call me if she worsens.” David never importuned or took liberties with the women who worked for him, but before he left Desdemona to take up the sickroom vigil, he kissed her forehead. “We’ll all be praying for her.”
“God does not listen to the prayers of such as I, your lordship, else I would not have ended up where I did.”
David was too tired to debate theological conclusions, particularly when they were supported by both logic and grief. He closed the door to the sickroom, realizing the hour had grown late while he had tended his patient, but at least Letty’s house was no longer frigid.
Thinking that Letty would want to know how Portia fared, David tapped on her door. He pushed the door ajar and slipped into her room when he heard no response.
“Merciful saints.” He hadn’t meant to say the words aloud, but he’d caught Letty at her evening ablutions.
“My lord.”
By the rosy light of the fire, she did not blush. She reached for her dressing gown and slipped into it, but not hurriedly—perhaps she was too exhausted to hurry, for David did not think she was capable of coyness.
“I’m sorry. I did knock.”
He was not sorry. He was a man, also a former physician. He appreciated the wonder that was the human body, and he appreciated the specific wonder that was Letty Banks too. In the few instants it took Letty to gather her wits and cover her nudity, he studied feminine proportions designed to hold a man’s interest—she was slender through her pale belly, but curved through th
e hips. Her breasts were generous, the breasts of a woman, not a girl, full and slightly heavy.
David noted details—a dark thatch of curls, an asymmetry of the knees, ribs still a bit too much in evidence—and he absorbed the whole of her. As a younger man, he would have treasured the womanliness of her unclothed frame, but in those few instants, he lingered on the imperfections, the details that made her different from what he’d expected, and different from—and more precious than—any other woman.
She tied the belt snugly around her waist, but the gesture was too little too late. David had seen the lovely abundance of her breasts, seen how the pale column of her neck turned to join her shoulders, noted the flare of her hips and the flat plane of her belly. By the light of a generous and well-stoked fire, he’d seen her.
Her unexpected nudity hit him low and hard, a blow to his self-restraint all the more stunning for being unforeseen.
“I did not hear you. I was preoccupied,” Letty said. “How is Portia?”
Letty’s feet were bare. David wanted to slip out of his boots and give her his wool stockings, or scoop her up and tuck her into the bed.
“Portia is faring better than she should. Desdemona kicked me out of the sickroom and told me get some rest. If you don’t put on some slippers soon, you will come down with lung fever yourself, Letty Banks.”
She sat on the bed, his words having no more impact than the wind moaning outside the windows. “I cannot recall being this tired ever, but if you think I’ll allow you to navigate the streets alone at this hour, sir, you are sadly in want of sense. You might as well sleep here.”
Her hair hung over one shoulder in a thick, glossy braid. David had seen Letty’s hair done up in a braid before, but he was seized with a desire to see it freed of all constraints.
And she was nattering on about… “Sleep here?”
“The bed is large enough. The fire in the front parlor is not lit, and the sofa is the only other possible place to put you. I trust you’ve shared a bed at some point in the past?”
Not for years, if passing afternoon recreation was discounted. “Of course I have. May I make use of the wash water?” Because, apparently, he was going to subject himself to the sublime torture of sharing a bed with Letty Banks. He was tired enough, and the weather more than nasty enough, that the alternatives bore not even a moment’s consideration.
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