by Merry Farmer
That was far from a given but Alex had lost her patience for the discussion. “Why are you here telling me this anyhow? What have I to do with your party plans?”
Her mother smiled and turned a look on her that was so sly, nothing she could say next would be good.
“I was thinking that I would invite Anthony Fretwell,” she said. Alex caught her breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop. “And his son, George Fretwell.”
It was like a blow to her stomach that knocked all the air from her. She felt her cheeks go red and her pulse soar. Her mother couldn’t possibly know about her and George. She couldn’t possibly know about the disaster she’d made of things and the utter fool she’d made of herself last year.
“Oh?” she said, feigning indifference. “It will be nice to see them again. You and the late Mrs. Fretwell were good friends, weren’t you?”
“We were,” her mother crowed. “It will be a treat to see her husband and son again.”
As large as the office was, it suddenly felt too small. Alex had to get back to work. She had to get away from her mother.
“Talk to Elizabeth then,” she said, then cleared her throat to bring her voice back down to its usual timbre. “If she’s as enthusiastic as you think she’ll be, she will welcome the idea. Now if you will excuse me, I need to get back to work.”
She crossed into the hall, and her mother followed her. Lady Charlotte started down the hallway to the waiting room, but paused halfway, turning back as smoothly as an actress.
“Of course, if Elizabeth does agree to this idea, it will mean you will be needed at the house more than you will be needed here.”
Alex felt the strength of the blow for what it was. “Why don’t you discuss it with Elizabeth first?”
“Oh, I will,” Lady Charlotte said, then turned and continued down the hall and out to the waiting room.
Alex stepped to lean against the wall, closing her eyes and rubbing her temples. As if having George back in her life, if only for a flash, wasn’t bad enough, her mother was once again bribing her to stay away from the hospital. And if George did come, forbidding her to work would cut off her only route of escape. Well, she had to hand it to her mother, she was brilliant at setting traps.
“What’s that look for?”
Alex opened her eyes with a start to find Marshall walking up the hall toward her.
“Dr. Pycroft. What are you doing here?” she asked.
“It’s my hospital,” he said. “Can’t I come to work when I choose to?”
He was still dressed in formal black, his bowler hat in hand, his face pale and drawn. Alex understood the need to work when suffering from a restless mind, but Marshall didn’t look good at all.
“And the girls?” Alex asked, hesitant.
“Their Aunt Eileen is caring for them,” he said, too much of an edge to his voice. “I’m sure they’re just delighted with that. They’ll be so pleased that their papa left them with that woman.”
Warning bells sounded in Alex’s mind at the thick sarcasm. She followed Marshall down the hall to his office. He stopped at the door to examination room one.
“What happened in here?” he demanded.
“Boy, ten years old, gastroenteritis,” Alex told him.
“What was your recommended course of treatment?”
Alex shrugged. “There’s not much you can do with an upset stomach. I told his mother rest and fluids, and to come back if it gets worse, but I’m certain it won’t.”
Marshall nodded and strode on. “What else do we have?” he said, shrugging out of his coat and throwing it on the rack beside the door. He plunked his bowler on top, then loosened the buttons of his sleeves and began to roll them up.
“All’s well on the wards,” she said, following him back into the hall and down to the dispensary. “Mr. Jones was being salty earlier, but I’m not surprised. Oh, there’s a man in the waiting room, a Mr. Fletcher, that refuses to see me.”
Of all things, Marshall’s face filled with fury. “We can’t go having any patient that chooses spurn a perfectly good doctor when they’re available.”
“He seems to be in distress, but I keep checking on him to see if he changes mind.”
“Stupid bloody fool,” Marshall muttered.
They turned into the dispensary, but as he reached for an apron, he stopped. His eyes went wide at the sight of Nurse Stephens putting away the newly delivered supplies.
“What’s all this?” his voice rose in volume and tone.
“I-it’s an order, doctor,” Nurse Stephens answered, turning her wide eyes to Alex.
Alex held her breath.
“I didn’t order anything.” Marshall marched into the room and took the bill of lading from the top of the counter where it rested. “I didn’t order any of this.”
“I did,” Alex came clean. It was better to confess now, since she wasn’t going to be able to get away with secrecy, than to let it go on. “I placed the order.”
His eyes snapped up to meet hers, far more anger than her gesture of charity warranted.
“I did not authorize for you to place any order, Dr. Dyson,” he snapped. “The hospital cannot afford these supplies.” He scanned the list, brow flying up. “Fifteen bottles of carbolic acid? That costs a small fortune. You’ve overstepped yourself.” He slapped the bill back on the counter.
“The hospital needn’t worry about the expense,” she assured him. “I…I paid for these supplies.”
“You?” Marshall’s face and neck turned red. He slipped the apron on over his head, and his hands shook as he tied it in back. “You, Dr. Dyson?”
“Yes,” she answered, as plain as she could be. “I used my own funds. I couldn’t bear to think of the hospital as being so undersupplied. Consider it my personal donation.”
“And do you intend to shell out your own money every time we need carbolic acid and….” He glanced around at the half-unpacked order, “and thermometers?”
“No.” Alex held her head high. “But I can afford it this time, so I took the initiative. Under the circumstances, I thought that it would be appropriate?”
“Appropriate?” Marshall thundered. “What circumstances?”
He shouted so loud that Alex caught Nurse Stephens’s eye and nodded for her to flee while she could. Nurse Stephens didn’t need to be told twice. She put down the bottles she was storing and fled as though Lucifer himself were pursuing her.
“Dr. Pycroft,” Alex began, lowering her voice and taking a daring step closer to Marshall. “You are under duress. Your wife has just died. You can’t be expected to tend to the needs of the hospital when—”
“It’s my bloody hospital,” he shouted.
Alex flinched. “Yes, I know.” She spoke even more gently. “But it is also perfectly understandable if you feel you are not up to the stress of—”
“What is wrong with you people?” Marshall blasted her, eyes bright with fury and something much sharper. “Why won’t you just let me work?”
“Of course, if that is what you wish to do.”
“Of course it’s what I wish to do,” he shouted. “It’s all I want to do. I don’t want to loiter around a home that is silent but still heavy with the ghost of her. I don’t want to sit and accept pity from people who barely knew Clara and who know me even less. I can’t stand the sight of her sister, putting on the same airs that Clara wore like a mantle of martyrdom. I want to work.”
“I understand,” Alex said, barely above a whisper, desperate for some way to calm the fury that she seemed to have unleashed.
But then, she had the feeling it was on the edge of being released regardless.
“Like hell you understand! Don’t you people see that I can’t stand to sit idle, to do nothing but think?” he went on. “Can’t you see that it is killing me to listen to the silence where her complaints and her nagging and her scolding once where?”
“I’m sure that—”
“Can you imagine how deep tha
t silence is? How pervasive it has become?” He cut off her attempt at sympathy as he had cut off her attempt to question. He raised his hands to run through his hair and to scrub his face, pacing suddenly where he had been still before. “Mary has taken over cooking, as she’s always wanted to, and now my meals are palatable. I’ve slept better these last six nights than I’ve slept in the last six years. The weight that has pressed down on my shoulders for half a decade is gone, obliterated.”
“That’s….” Alex didn’t know what it was.
Marshall took a step toward her. “I have caught myself lifting my face to the sunlight and breathing a sigh of relief, like a man released from prison, Dr. Dyson, and all because my wife is dead.”
He paused, the agony of his emotions etched in every line and hollow of his face. Alex’s chest squeezed so tight she couldn’t breathe.
“What kind of a man does that make me?” he breathed out in desperation. His face crumpled, his eyes red, as though another harsher wave of emotion was about to crash on him and bring him to tears.
The silence between them crackled. There was nothing Alex could say, nothing that had prepared her for the strength of the revelation in front of her. She could only imagine the torment lying in wait behind that simple question.
“When a cancer is cut out of a body,” she whispered, “it can feel as though a part of the patient has been lost with the tumor. But time heals those wounds, and if the cancer was caught before it had time to spread, even the loss of a limb can be accorded a good thing.”
Another intense silence electrified the air between them as Marshall stared at her. And stared.
At last, he blinked and drew in a sharp breath. His chest rose and fell as he recovered himself. He combed his fingers through his hair and straightened his apron, then scrubbed his face. His hands rested for a long time over his eyes, and Alex was sure she saw the fleeting pinch of a man about to weep.
A moment later, it was gone. Marshall took in another breath, lowered his hands, and met her eyes.
“Thank you, Dr. Dyson,” he said, calmer by far. “Now please let me work.”
Alex nodded. “Mr. Fletcher is in the waiting room, eager to see you.”
He nodded in return. For another long moment they stared at each other. As sharp and as foreign as his pain was, she felt as though she recognized it on some level. And as hard to hear as his confessions had been, she knew that Marshall was a good man. A conflicted one, but good.
At last, he broke eye contact with her and marched on, out the dispensary door and around the corner to the waiting room. Alex put a hand over her stomach and leaned against the nearest counter. Her mother could threaten and cajole her all she wanted, but Alex knew where she belonged.
Lawrence
It was a comfort to be home, the forge hot in front of him, his work in his hands, sending the familiar thrill of accomplishment coursing through his blood. Some men defined pleasure only in terms of the enjoyment of wine, women, and song, but for Lawrence, his own hedonistic code included the pleasure of work he was suited for and the creation of things of beauty from base elements. He loved every part of his toil at the forge, from the heat to the sweat to the satisfied ache of his muscles at the end of the day.
If only things could have been so simple for Jason.
It was inconceivable to Lawrence that a man’s body could work against him. He had become good friends with his own body when he was still a boy, testing it by running, climbing, and riding, enjoying good food, sunshine, nature, and yes, women. It had never dawned on him that a man could live in anything but perfect accord with his desires and capabilities. What sort of hell must Jason live through on a daily basis?
“Are you concerned about your friend?” Matty asked.
Lawrence blinked and looked up from his work. He was so used to being alone with his own thoughts while his only company, Oliver, stayed trapped in a world of his own that it was like a splash of cold water to realize someone was beside him, watching him, seeing him.
“I am,” he confessed. “I can’t imagine what he’s going through.”
“Yes, it must be difficult to lose your wife.”
He was halfway through opening his mouth to correct her when it struck him that he should be feeling equally as sorry for Marshall as he was for Jason. When had it happened that all of his friends were in dire straits but him? He would thank his lucky stars, if he didn’t think it would put him in danger of courting his own bad luck.
“I’m sure it is,” he replied with a smile for Matty. “Although to be honest, it wasn’t the happiest of marriages.”
Matty frowned. She wandered toward the forge from where she had been sitting on the stairs leading to his room, sewing a new dress for herself from the fabric he’d purchased for her. “His daughters seem older than their years,” she said.
“They are,” he admitted with a sigh for them. “Mary, the eldest, especially. She’s been Marshall’s rock for these many years.”
“She confided in me that she doesn’t trust their aunt,” Matty went on. She wandered so close to the forge that it seemed to Lawrence as if she was impervious to the heat, and if she might lean against it like one might lean against a table.
Her words sank in, and his brow rose. “You spoke to Mary?”
“Yes,” she said. “I went off to help them with the refreshments. You were talking to your friend, Mr. Throckmorton.”
“Is that where you were?” he asked. It pleased him somehow that she’d taken the initiative to help someone, that she’d acted independently of him. For all of the past week she’d kept so close. Not that he minded that, per se.
“I helped Mary to clean up the cake, along with the vicar’s wife, then we sat in the shade of a yew tree and talked about her mother,” she went on. “Mary loved her mother, and she tells me she will miss her sorely, but she is worried that her aunt will try to take them all back to London.”
A flash of anger hit Lawrence’s chest. How dare the woman even think to take children away from their grieving father?
“Did she say anything else about it? Has Eileen made any sort of firm plans?” he asked.
Matty shook her head. “Not that Mary knows, but the worry is there. She thinks that her aunt will argue that Dr. Pycroft can’t care for his children if he is working at the hospital, but Mary insists that she can take care of her sisters.”
Lawrence set his work aside and removed his thick work gloves. He ran a hand through his sweat-soaked hair and stepped away from the forge.
“Mary is certainly capable, but she’s just a girl,” he said. “I’m loathe to admit it, but Eileen might have something of a point, especially if Marshall insists on working just as long and hard as before. He has Alexandra Dyson there with him now, but that still might not be enough.”
“That’s what I was thinking.” Matty’s eyes lit up. Possibly more than he’d ever seen before. Something about her had come alive, something pretty and fresh. “I was thinking that, if you’ll allow me, I might offer to help them somehow.”
“Of course I would allow it,” Lawrence laughed. “I don’t own you. You belong to no one but yourself.”
She tilted her head to the side, her face pinched, as though his words had sparked something in her.
“Are you remembering something?” he asked.
At first, she didn’t answer. “No,” she said. “It’s more of a feeling. Something about those words itches.”
“Itches.” He arched an eyebrow, moving to stand closer to her. “Let me know if I can scratch.”
She grinned at his joke, looking into his eyes as though she could see something there that made everything else come together. It was only a fleeting feeling, though. A moment later and she shook her head, crossing her arms.
“I thought maybe I could offer to spend afternoons, or mornings if it’s more convenient, at the Pycroft house. I could help Mary with the washing and cleaning, and even with the cooking and mending. Or just minding the y
ounger girls.”
“I think Marshall would be incredibly grateful,” Lawrence agreed. He shifted and studied her more fully. “Do you think you have experience with children…before?”
She frowned as of trying her best to stare through the wall that blocked her. “I’m not sure. I only have a feeling that I will be able to do this.”
“Then by all means, do it,” he said.
“Smith!”
Lawrence turned, annoyed at having such a meaningful conversation with Matty interrupted, to find Mayor Crimpley marching toward the forge from the town road. “What does he want?” he muttered.
“Smith!” Mayor Crimpley called again.
Matty retreated back to the stairs and picked up her sewing. Her whole countenance had changed from easy and relaxed to as tense as a rabbit.
“I told you I would discuss the matter with you later, and I meant it,” Crimpley continued to talk far louder than he needed to.
Lawrence strode to the front of the roof that hung over the open area of his forge. Oliver—who had been hard at work melting the charge for the next of the hotel’s grates—stepped back as though he too was threatened. Crimpley ignored him, attempting to march right into the forge, eyes set on Matty. Lawrence stepped to the side to block him, keeping him outside of the roof.
“What can I do for you, Mayor Crimpley?” he asked, crossing his arms and pulling himself to his full height. He didn’t need words to tell Crimpley he wouldn’t get anywhere near Matty.
“It’s this business of the missing person’s reports you were after.” Crimpley attempted to step to the side, but when Lawrence moved to block him, he gave up and stood his ground. “I want to know what you’re looking for,” he finished with a glare meant to challenge.
“I’m attempting to find out if any young women matching Matty’s description have been reported missing,” he said. It was an up-front answer, but it was also as much detail as he was willing to give.
“What mischief are you up to, Smith?” Crimpley demanded. “What sordid secret are you hiding?”