An Unspeakable Anguish

by Baird Wells

  Jeremiah extended a bony hand, not helped a bit by the thickness of his glove, and pressed James's fingers between his palms. “So good of you to come, Doctor Grimshaw! So very good of you. A man of such heroism does our gathering infinite credit.”

  Heroism? Obviously, Sir Jeremiah was not well acquainted with his history.

  Already chafing at being Simon Webster’s puppet, James sighed. His new employer must have laid some groundwork, must have sold his friend mightily on including a country doctor in his soiree. “Sir Jeremiah, I think we both know that is not why I’m here.”

  Jeremiah snapped up and bent back, a reed in a sudden breeze. “Oh! Oh, no?” His wide eyes were genuine.

  The exchange stirred at his confusion, his trying to align both Simon’s and Hannah’s halves of the puzzle. If Simon had not asked Sir Jeremiah to make an exception, then his invitation must be as genuine as his host’s expression. That made it more confounding, in his book, and Simon not so easy to read as he had first thought. He smiled and straightened, recovering. “I have heard there is a want of physicians in town. I think you’ve only brought me here to dazzle me into helping with the problem.”

  Jeremiah creased and smiled. “That may be a motive, now you mention it. But for tonight, we are simply glad of your society.”

  “And I am glad of yours,” he fibbed and glanced around. All of their houses were the same. Red paper and gold tassels, Persian wool runners and endless surfaces crowded with objects that were never appreciated by their owner, only dusted and left to hint at wealth so excessive that it could be spent on gold-gilt nothings. “Where should we start?”

  Sir Jeremiah’s bushy smile opposed the relieved creases around his downturned eyes. “We should get you a partner,” he declared, and swept an arm toward the staircase. “And I have just the lady.”

  One dance, or two. He could tolerate that much to fulfill his obligation. How much small talk would he have to make? A few bland remarks on insubstantial topics, at most. Women were proscribed from much talking, let alone thinking. He would welcome a conversational challenge just on principle.

  He enjoyed the song as they crossed the ballroom, a lively highland tune for sets of couples dancing a quadrille. Ladies moved nimbly despite ruffled trains, and their men managed graceful steps between. There was a pleasure in their precision as much as in their art. Emily had loved to dance. Though he was made of more arms and legs than was good for anybody, he’d still given in time and again. Pleasure at her smile had made up for shame at his awkwardness.

  When they reached a bank of high windows at the room’s far end beside the fireplace, Sir Jeremiah stopped, pivoted and then sighed. “Forgive me. I thought the lady had agreed to wait here. I must have been mistaken. But a moment, doctor.”

  Jeremiah started back along the room, and not seeing anyone else he recognized, James trailed behind until he reached an open door. He passed between plumed white columns, from the blaze of mirrors and crystal and into the cool shadow of an unlit drawing room. He wove between indistinct shapes of furniture toward a lighted rectangle at the far end, squinting and minding his footing. When he reached the high archway, he looked up, and stopped.

  Hannah stood in the amber lamp light, hands cradled at her back, studying a painting hung high above. Its wood frame was stark against the green damask paper, a viridian cast which spanned out on both sides like leaves and gave her gown of white and purples the appearance of a flower, though he would never tell her so. Even limited experience had taught him that she would laugh over it in her frank, rough way. His compliments were too rusty to guard his ego if she poked fun.

  He had never seen her in anything but black. She was so soft tonight, swaged and draped in pastel silk. Taking her in from her sweeping train to the line of her bare shoulders teased by curls, he looked again for a hint of Emily and was rebuffed.

  He came to her, drawn across the gallery’s space by a thread of curiosity. She must have heard him, but she didn’t startle and she didn’t meet his eyes while he studied her profile. Her chin, which had seemed so prominent in contrast with a heart shaped mouth, was delicate from the side, a pale curve that extended her throat. Her upturned nose was bold in profile, but small and short, which kept it from being anything but distinct and feminine. Like her personality and reputation, Hannah’s looks seemed to change depending on the angle from which she was observed.

  “I love this.” She exhaled and pointed up at the painting, four women at different attitudes in a tumbling, sunlit garden. He recognized it as a newer style, the sitters and their surroundings made up of streaks and blotches which lent themselves perfectly to capturing the hazy warmth of a summer day. “The shadows on her dress,” she gestured to a seated lady in white, “and her green stripes, and the leaves. It’s all almost too real, more stark than a photograph. But it catches and holds your eye in a pleasing manner.” She raised a gloved finger and traced the frame’s lower edge. “The women look so easy, so carefree. I envy them.”

  He was mesmerized by the way her lips shaped the words. “You can’t join them?” he asked when he was able, daring closer. “It seems a lady like you could have whatever she wishes.”

  She turned and faced him, smile over-bright. “No. I just hang in my cage, gilded though it is.” Then her expression settled into something more genuine. “I’m glad you’ve come.”

  She forced him to smile, too. Words filled his mouth, and he opened it to let them out, but they tangled up and he choked. Before he could unravel his thoughts, heavy footfalls approached from behind them.

  “Hannah. There you are.” Simon spoke to her, but James was the subject of his pointed look while he crossed the gallery. “Sir Jeremiah is looking for you.”

  “Understood.” Hannah kept her back to Simon, and James held her eyes, which clouded and betrayed nothing.

  “What are you wearing?” Simon demanded, and scraped her with narrowed eyes. “I would think you’d don something more…appropriate.”

  “My sister passed more than a year ago, sir.”

  James watched the ripple of rage twist Simon’s features at what must be an intentional misunderstanding on her part. “Something more appropriate to your widowhood.”

  “I don’t have anything more appropriate, not after two years. It’s bad luck, keeping mourning crape in the house.” She said it, but it was clear she didn’t feel it.

  Simon crossed his arms. “Bad luck when mourning is over. Crape and bombazine ought to be kept in the house and worn until such time.”

  Now Hannah faced Simon. “Two years; it’s been two years!” she repeated. “Who is the arbiter of the heart’s suffering? Who should decide when it begins and ends?”

  A sidelong dart of her eyes revealed but didn’t decipher a hint of the occult in her words. When she spoke, it was to Simon, but her question pierced James to the quick with double-meaning, and he wondered if he was out of his depth with her. She held her gaze on him a moment, he was certain to weigh if she’d had an effect. Maybe Simon wasn’t who he should be concerned about, after all.

  “Sir Jeremiah is waiting,” repeated Simon, his words like a stone wall.

  A standoff ensued, and James ground teeth into his tongue while the pair stared one another down.

  Simon cleared his throat and crossed his arms tighter, and Hannah folded first. “Doctor Grimshaw, I will see you in the ballroom.” She turned and stormed out in a whisper of flounced satin.

  James stared at Simon, glimpsing an ugliness beneath the man’s silk exterior, malice twisting the man’s face.

  “Hannah is a beautiful woman,” Simon followed her progress to the door with his pinched eyes, “and that has afforded her protection, even indulgence.” James bristled at a glare that Simon turned on him. “Have a care with her, while you undertake my task. You’re a bright young man with a great measure of promise. I would hate to see you succumb to Hannah’s black magic.”

  He shrugged, tossing away Simon’s threat. “Since my wi
fe’s death I am susceptible to very little. Lady Hannah will find no fertile ground for her schemes here.”

  “Just be certain to approach her with both eyes open. And do not turn your back,” cautioned Simon.

  James wasn’t sure they were talking about Hannah anymore. He answered with a single nod that wasn’t an answer at all and followed Hannah’s path back to the ballroom.

  * * *

  Hannah perched on a round-backed ivory chair, fanning away the general derision. Some days it was worthwhile to be a thorn in Simon’s side. Other times, like tonight, she was reminded how high the price. She took air in long, slow drags, lungs still hungry. Glittering excess swirled in on itself all around her, pressing until suffocation was certain.

  Cotton fingertips brushed her bare shoulder, transferred heat through the fabric at her arm, and she claimed a full breath at last.

  “Lady Hannah.” James reached down a hand for her, and she stared at it while the quartet tuned up. She craned her neck to examine an abandoned dance card on the chair beside her, and confirmed that the next dance was a waltz.

  He smiled and claimed her limp fingers from her lap with a perfect lack of decorum. “Surprised?”

  She had expected him to know a reel or two, a quadrille or a polka. There was more sophistication than she’d realized blended in with his rustic charm. “I am,” she admitted.

  “Good.” He clasped her fingers and pulled her from her chair.

  Arm in arm, they flowed with the other couples and took up their spot at a corner of the floor. She caught their glances, curious or sympathetic on James's behalf, and then his hand cradled her waist and she forgot them all.

  Something in the way he touched her, in the way he rocked back onto a heel or side stepped with a light bounce, was different from other partners. Perhaps it was being a doctor, his intimate knowledge of the body and how it moved, or perhaps he wasn’t consumed as other men were by the opinions of those around him. He didn’t push and pull and dominate her through each turn; his arm beckoned her close, his easy gait urged her back. She fixed her gaze on the starched white folds of his neck cloth and tried to make her mind be quiet, to ignore the temptation of a storm he threatened inside her.

  “Not enjoying yourself?” he murmured under the violin’s lilt.

  “It’s not prudent to show too much feeling, with so many people watching us. Feelings cause scandals, you know.”

  “They’re watching you,” he corrected.

  A hollow laugh rattled in her chest. “Not for the reasons you imagine.”

  “Then why?”

  “They’re not enchanted. They’re appalled.”

  “Is that so?” He tsk’d. “Unfortunate then, that your mother and father rendered me immune to such opinions, and robbed me of appreciating them.”

  She met his eyes, laughing in earnest this time. “That makes both of us.” They were discussing it, but for a change she didn’t feel it. James had the ability to dispel the room’s open censure. “You’ve spoken to my brother-in-law. I know you’ve heard something of my scandal by now.”

  “I hear all sorts of things,” he said, and entreated her back a step. “People enjoy the sound of their own voices.”

  She didn’t want to talk about those people. She wanted to enjoy his conversation and the willing nearness of another human soul. “You’re a skilled dancer,” she offered lamely.

  “I came to it late in life. Until Emily, I’d heard music but I’d never listened. Moved but never really danced.”

  Her heart clenched and she nearly wished the waltz were over. She ached for his loss of Emily, and for her own.

  Then the last strains faded, and their dance did end, and she regretted it mightily. James took his hand from her waist and her skin chilled in the absence of its heat. He twined their arms, but it wasn’t the same. He brought them to a table beneath the windows, ruffled and tasseled enough to be a borrowed skirt. Hannah compared it to blue drapes which were similarly treated with gathers, and thought a woman’s odds of success in camouflaging herself against the upholstery were rather high. Everything was one long yardage shaped into different items, an endless parade of empty glamour.

  That thought occupied her until James claimed a ladle in one hand and a tiny cut-crystal cup in the other. She watched his wide palm cradle the cup, his fingers wrap the silver handle, and was mesmerized. His hands were broad but not thick or clumsy, with the long fingers of an artist, a sculptor, or a pianist. Medicine was an art, she supposed, and hands a doctor’s instrument. She tried undressing his hands, recalling how they’d looked at dinner, and flushed at her efforts to make them nude inside her thoughts.

  Emily’s husband. Emily, her sister, who had only been gone for little more than a year. Perhaps she was as lacking in morals as society had accused. She sighed. It had been so long since anything had ignited any passion inside her, and she loathed to give up even an ember.

  “You look stifled,” said James, having caught her flush. “Would you like to step onto the balcony?”

  She nodded and reached for the punch, but he pressed her shoulder. “I’ll manage this. Come.” His hand at her back guided her past the fire place and to the balcony doors, and Hannah wondered how much gossip he’d ignited with the brief contact.

  A bite to the air threatened frost, but she didn’t mind. It was welcome after the ballroom’s pressure cooker, and the view alone was worth a chill.

  “I adore London at night,” she said, her breath rolling out in a cloud. “Just the lights, the silhouettes. It seems so warm and peaceful, and you can’t see the decay.” Amber gas lamps created tidy rows along the narrow streets to the horizon, and ran wild like clusters of fireflies over houses and buildings, twinkling from the sway of near-bare branches in an unfaithful breeze.

  “You take a great pleasure in the visual,” said James, hidden behind her.

  “I must.” She leaned her arms atop the frigid stone balustrade, its cold stinging through her gloves. “A woman’s lot is to look and not speak. Ornamental, and incapable of prettiness if she has a thought in her head. I take great pleasure in what I am allowed, rather than agony at what I am denied.”

  He laughed, close enough now that she felt his warmth at her back. “I’ve experienced your…persuasiveness? I can’t imagine anyone denying you.”

  Now it was her turn to laugh. “You have met Simon.”

  “He has an inherent disagreeability. Or maybe he’s perfectly tolerable for what he is, and it’s I who am disagreeable over it.”

  It was a curious observation and one she half mulled over while she spoke. “It isn’t just you. He detests new money. He greatly detests his need of it. That’s where the railroads come from, the faster ships. He must suffer the uncouth and poorly tailored, with only a few points-per-cent deference to lord over them.”

  He came beside her and mimicked her posture, leaning on the rail. “It must be rather terrifying at his age, not being able to tell with whom one should associate. Middle class always lying in ambush.”

  “It breeds a hefty prejudice.” She dared a glance at him, still gazing out over the city at places she wished she could go, and nodded. “You understand my position perfectly.”

  He held out her cup, still cradled in his hand. “Would you like your punch?”

  “No. I’d like to go home. Will you see me out?” Usually she stayed longer, made more of an inconvenience of her attendance. Tonight, the wind had left her sails unusually early, and she knew why.

  James stood and offered his arm. “A happy coincidence.” With his back to the door’s light, she couldn’t read his face any better than she could read his words. “I was just hoping you’d let me walk you down.”

  .

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  James called the next day in the late afternoon, because he hadn’t arranged a proper time and because that was when the previous evening’s gin wore to a dull throb so that he could conduct himself like a sane human being. It helped him sleep
, made him sleep, a black dreamless stretch so that he could rest and face the day to follow. James decided, massaging his forehead against the carriage’s jerk and jostle, that the cure might be worse than the ailment.

  He stepped into the hall and handed off his things under a weight that pressed upon the house. Hannah’s home was quiet, but not peaceful. Today, as on his first visit, there was a tension in the air which constricted, the same sensation as entering a room hard on the heels of a man and woman fighting.

  The butler showed him to a different room today, up the stairs and on the first floor, a more formal area, judging by its being at the front of the house. Doors were opened, and he passed through and was shut inside without a word. Hannah sat reading on a cherry velvet sofa, its carved fountain sides and back scrolled like an elaborate little cage around her. Margaret occupied a matching chair near the clean white fireplace, and by the ladies’ unexpected proximity, he saw that the room was not much bigger than Hannah’s parlor, though it was more lavish.

  “Doctor Grimshaw.” Hannah abandoned her book to a marble-topped coffee table, jostling a vase of peacock feathers, and gestured to a chair across from her, a mate to Margaret’s green one.

  He crossed the room, weighing both women. Margaret, whose auburn sweep was flattered by navy blue watermark taffeta, hunted him with glances off of her needlework, full lips pursed below piercing green eyes.

  By contrast, Hannah sat straight-backed and waiting with hands folded, wrapped once more in black crepe and bombazine from chin to toe, despite her protest to Simon.

  “Miss Maddox.” He offered a bow to Margaret, who nodded and openly skimmed him from head to toe. Putting his back to her brazen inspection, he bowed to Hannah and took his seat. “How are you today?”