by Baird Wells
‘Had a very long dream about a garden in Provence. I was alone, all by myself in the most delicious silence and the day was fine, hot so that I could smell the lavender. Very sad on waking; it had seemed real, and melancholy followed me till lunchtime.’
He had read that passage the night before, closer to the beginning of the small book, but the entries he read today were equally if not more earnest.
‘I have to go down now. Am dressed and have tarried for almost an hour, but breakfast is waiting. Margaret will be, too. She has been cross two days for my going to the opera with Millicent, and without her. She has a season ticket, of course; it wasn’t that she could not go, but that her little dog ventured into the town off her leash. I hope she will punish me with silence today.’
There were notes about what she ate and how long she slept, and how much physical exertion she experienced; details he should have been reading, but had skimmed. He had even turned back to the autograph page twice, to make certain that the name read correctly. The woman in the thin vellum pages was soft; not exactly frightened, but wearied from being slowly crushed under the weight of stones heaped by London’s social court.
She was a liar, just as much as he was. Her capable and even bossy façade was plastered up so smooth that it had been picked away only by her own hand, revealing chinks in the mortar that he wouldn’t have found on his own.
‘Today has been so much worse than the rest of the week. Usually I try not to go out, unless there’s hope of making someone or some group miserable by it. Now I want to go out at all hours. I would sit on a bench in the snow and wait, or hop between ten different dinners and the same number of dances for the slightest chance. Had more coffee than I ought to this morning, and toast with eggs and ham. Walked up to the confectioner’s off Bond and after…’
From there it devolved into a recounting of her routine, but James had already stopped reading. He raked his disheveled hair further out of place. What had she been about to say? Why would she sit on the bench? Why would she make breakneck rounds around town? “Why?”
“To find you.”
James flailed in his chair, jarred his desk and bounced her journal onto the floor. He didn’t trust the voice, certain it was a byproduct of Hannah’s journal and her effect on him. He raked the book up with one hand and gripped his chest with the other, winded. “Lady Hannah.”
She filled the door, with her expression if not her body. She looked the way he remembered her at Meadowcroft, a black silk specter with a pretty white face stark behind her veil. “Mrs. Fitzgerald is out,” he protested.
Hannah inspected her fingernails. “And yet, I still got in.”
“When a door goes unanswered, that is usually understood to have one rather clear meaning.”
She trespassed two steps inside the study, turning left and right without concern to take in the room. “Like a man who makes an appointment he doesn’t keep?”
He got up, rested a hip against his desk and crossed his arms in rejection. “I thought my meaning was perfectly clear on Tuesday. You need another doctor.”
Her drift into his armchair was obscene, a slow descent that disregarded his information. “I told you I didn’t want one.”
“I have dismissed you as a patient,” he fibbed, because that hadn’t precisely occurred.
“But I haven’t agreed to be dismissed.” She held out her arms. “And so, here I am.”
“That’s –” James threw his arms wide and shook his head. “That is not how this is done!”
She got up with the eager grace of a predator. “That’s how it is done now. I don’t have patience for your sputtering lack of confidence.”
Her hard words were a contrast to the softer woman hidden within her journal, but if she was trying to encourage him, James had trouble feeling it. Blood beat behind his eyes. “What you don’t seem to grasp –”
“Let me tell you what I do grasp!” Her shout closed his mouth like a slap. “I built trust with you, as a patient. As family. And you allowed me! It’s cruel and irresponsible to snatch that away because you can’t be bothered to do your job!”
He jarred the desk with his fist, the last of the wall around his self-loathing crumbling away. “You should have left me as you found me at Meadowcroft.”
“Oh, what a lot of horse apples!” She came around the desk and he had no choice but to look at her. “Because no good has come from any of the time since, not for you or anybody else?”
It probably hadn’t. He couldn’t recall having done anything since Meadowcroft to better the lives of himself or others. “No.”
“My niece Elizabeth would disagree.”
He ignored her proof, pressing on. “Even if it has, that doesn’t change what happened.”
Hannah grabbed a fistful of her skirts, yanked over her bustle, dropped and fell onto her back on the floor.
He froze, nearly speechless. “What in the hell are you doing?”
She exhaled. “Lying here, waiting for the end.”
He leaned over and peered down at her past the desk, too afraid of whatever was happening to speak.
“It’s what we should all be doing,” she sighed, and stretched out her arms so that she was a limp cross. “Anyone who’s ever suffered, lost anything, done something they regret. We should all just lie down and wait for the end to come.” She rolled her head to him, so her veil pulled away and her face was exposed. “Because really, what’s the point of getting up each day and going on?” She looked away again. “Don’t bother sending food up; it’ll just prolong the agony.”
He laughed, and he hated her for it in the same way he’d hated her for taking the pistol at Meadowcroft. He also appreciated, in a bright flash, how ridiculous he must seem, how childish. He came around the desk and held out his hand. “All right; you’ve made your point. Up with you.”
She wriggled against the floorboards, collapsing her poor bustle, and crossed her arms. “Will you continue as my physician?”
For her benefit, but not for Simon’s. He couldn’t conceive of how to admit the truth, but he wouldn’t betray her to Simon, either. “I will…”
She gripped his hand.
“For now.”
Her arm went slack and her shoulders rolled against the rug. Her frown clouded up the sun.
“Indefinitely! Into the foreseeable future, and all of that.” He had the wolf by the ears where Hannah was concerned.
But when she smiled, a genuine smile and not the cool reflex she offered in public, he didn’t mind so much. She let him haul her up and bounced to her feet.
“I came all this way unescorted,” she complained, dusting out the wrinkles from her dress. “You’ll need to see me home.”
He glanced around them. “You came into my house uninvited!”
“You’re allowed to be in your house alone,” she said, a smirk hinting that she’d missed his point on purpose, “but I am not permitted to go about by myself. Come on,” she swept a hand toward the door. “I’ve spent enough time today waiting on you.”
.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
It had snowed through the night, dusting London’s ledges and rooftops with powdered sugar, but that had been reduced by midday sun into a smattering of clumps that trickled down walls and gutters, pooling in low spots among the cobblestones. James regretted his forethought in grabbing his greatcoat, having anticipated more snow. Its presence had been welcomed against a slight breeze, but he’d walked several streets and exerted himself, and now the heavy wool stifled. In a rare moment of philosophy, he mused that just as the biting snow made the world seem clean and new, Hannah’s sharp criticism days before had forced him into a new season. It most certainly wasn’t spring inside, but perhaps a somber kind of autumn that mellowed the ache in his breast. He hadn’t believed it possible; that part was a surprise. That Hannah had been the one to do it wasn’t surprising at all.
Why? What power did she possess, that no one else could wield?
He
was just crossing Goring Street, still pondering the question, when he spied a familiar figure in the afternoon crowd. He dashed between the wagons, ignoring slush that filled his shoes, in order to catch her at the alleyway. “Lady Hannah!” he panted, snatching a fistful of fringe on her black cashmere shawl.
Hannah spun around, catching him in the groin with a hefty wicker basket hooked over her arm.
“Oof!” He winced, doubled over, and rested hands on his knees to keep from putting them where he felt they’d do more good but cause more humiliation.
“Oh! Oh, my goodness. Are you all right?” She bent to examine his face, kneading his shoulder. “Oh, I feel awful.”
“I probably deserved it,” he groaned, straightening at a gingerly pace and wincing.
“You probably did,” she agreed, nodding, and then her pained expression softened to allow a wink.
“A metaphor for our acquaintance.”
“Brave words, spoken to a woman with a hefty basket. What are you about this afternoon?”
He shifted foot to foot, testing his injury. “On my way to the Fitzes.”
Hannah started. “George and Eleanor Fitz?”
Now it was his turn to draw up. “The very same. How do you know them?”
Hannah swept slender, black-gloved fingers around them. “They are tenants in my parish. I visit their family and at least ten others nearly every week.” She rocked her offending charity-basket. “Today, I also am paying a call on the Fitzes.” She frowned. “How do you know of them?”
“Tad came by to see me this morning. Apparently, Mister Fitz works in his machinery. Said they have need of a doctor and couldn’t get anyone else.”
“Because they can’t pay,” Hannah snapped. “Because London physicians have made a life of catering to the rich while straining every last drop from the poor.”
He stiffened, wondering if she included him in her condemnation. “I don’t mean to ask them to pay.”
“You have to!” Her hand pressed his sleeve, all that steadied him a moment in the spin of her mood. “It would humiliate Mrs. Fitz if you refused entirely, and she’s going to offer, even though they’re struggling.”
He snapped off his hat and raked at his hair, cold biting his scalp. “Then what do I do, Hannah?”
She shrugged. “Same as in the country: Trade. That’s how your patients paid you in the village, wasn’t it? Only you must be more circumspect. Everything in town is money; bartering is for the vulgar classes.”
“So tell me what I ought to say,” he teased, still frustrated. “You’ve been very good at it so far.”
She laughed and pulled at his arm, and they began back down the street. “Ask for something before she offers to pay. Make it known that you have a need before Mrs. Fitz speaks to you about the money. Mending, wash, darning. And then, again, before she tries to pay you, take her aside. Apologize for being provincial, and explain that you have a want of some aid and that you hope she won’t be offended if you ask her for a trade.”
He clucked at her. “I’d be in awe if I weren’t a little terrified of you.”
She pinked and avoided his eyes. “Thank you, I think.”
He nodded to their surroundings, muddy bricks and splintered shutters, smog like sick clouds hanging at the roof peaks. “Does Simon know about your forays out into the common wasteland?”
A gasp. Hannah pressed a hand at her heart. “Simon knows everything, remember?”
He stared down at her, studied her profile and a twitch to her lips, liking the way his eyes moved over the easy curves of her nose and lips. “Not one very important thing. Not the thing he wants most to know.”
Hannah drew him to a halt at the milliner’s halfway down the block, peering and craning at something through the red-framed shop window, cupping her face in an unladylike way to see inside. “I count that as quite a victory,” she muttered.
“You haven’t answered my question,” he said, dragging her away.
“Oh, he knows. Subscription balls for the mother and baby homes, pie auctions, quilting bees. Sock drives and coat drives. The Greater London Concerned Women’s Hygiene Initiative. Simon is more worried for the recipients of such charity having to bear me, than for any danger to my person or reputation. I’m the real disease.”
“Isn’t it common practice for ladies to take an interest in public concerns?” In Meadowcroft women formed all sorts of committees to see to the village’s needs. It seemed London would mobilize on a grander scale, for show if not strictly out of compassion.
“Take an interest, even take a hand in them, yes. But not to organize, not to foment rebellion among the delicate sex.”
A stoop-shouldered clerical sort beside them coughed at the word and hurried his pace to get ahead in the crowd.
James watched the man’s hasty retreat and elbowed her. “How have you wandered so far beyond the bounds of moral decency?”
She pretended to think about the question, pursing her lips and screwing up her expression. “To everyone else, Simon blames my involvement with the Women’s League. They’ve corrupted me. But he knows perfectly well that I’m one of their chief agitators.”
“Oh, my word.” He drew on each syllable, biting his cheek to hide a grin. “A suffragist. A harbinger of anarchy.”
Hannah stopped walking and threw him a coy, heavy-lidded smile off her shoulder. “Look around you, Doctor Grimshaw. Hysteria, hysteria at every turn. This is the asylum. Moon-mad lunatics with uteruses wandering the streets, demanding shocking things.” This pronouncement turned the heads of two slack-jawed women passing by, obliging James to raise his hat in apology while Hannah ranted on. “Inciting disruption of the domestic machine with our handbills and pickets.” She gripped his arm tighter and pressed into his side. She lowered her voice two octaves. “Babies will starve, and men will be naked by month’s end! Any sane man would lock himself inside the madhouse until it passes!”
“Hah. And what if it doesn’t? What if the lot of you start abandoning your posts? Food burning on the stove, socks half finished. What if you start,” he shuddered for effect, “voting?”
She slowed their pace and gazed up at him, a world of meaning in her blue eyes. “We raise your children. I think we’ve been voting for some time now.”
He gaped, and managed the barest nod.
How would Emily have raised their children? He had no idea of her thoughts on a woman’s place, not beyond her general rebelliousness against heavy-handed parents. Would she have followed in her sister’s radical footsteps or assumed the place that society had molded for her? Would he have thought to encourage more? All of this darted through his thoughts in the short space of a half-block to Pendley Street. It left him with no answers, just turmoil in his chest that was a frequent side-effect of Hannah’s company.
Thoughts of Emily faded back beyond his tattered edges. Then melded with now until he was once more in the present, frozen feet and sweat-damp coat and broken heart. He felt Hannah’s eyes on him and found the nerve to meet them. They painted his face with a soft squint, perceiving all his secrets. She kept silent, while her fingers at the crook of his elbow rubbed gentle reassurance into his sleeve, which, of course, was just what he needed her to do.
The Fitz house was made like any other on the street, dirty white foundations and shallow steps tipping down to a crumbling walk, and bricks in a homogeneous, ugly shade James could only identify as ‘mushroom’. Unlike the rest of their row, however, the Fitzes’ step was swept clean. A miniature corn-husk wreath decorated the door, and at least the ground floor windows were kept free of the clinging filth produced by London traffic. He raised a fist at their chipped brown door and then pulled back, tipping his head and inviting Hannah to announce their arrival, since she was expected. Her stare was long and saucy, and then she turned her face to the ground. “Gentleman first, always.”
James snorted and kept his eyes on her while he knocked. He wasn’t certain how many people intended to open the door;
a brigade, judging by hoof-like commotion inside.
Mrs. Eleanor Fitz was younger than he’d expected, but to his physician’s eye, aged beyond her actual years. Her brown bun had been tidy that morning, if her blue dress and apron were any indication. A handful of children in a variety of sizes, playing an aggressive ring-around-the-rosy with her petite frame while she plastered on a smile for her visitors, might have been partly responsible for a thin and frazzled quality to her face and posture.
“Mrs. Fitz,” said Hannah over the ruckus, and when she did, James snapped to look at her. Her greeting was rich, warm, and honeyed, and it took him a moment to recognize that it was a quantity of kindness usually absent in her voice, responsible for the change.
“Lady Hannah.” Eleanor smoothed her apron and curtsied, eyes on him now, as Hannah made the introduction.
James raised his hat. “Mister Hamilton paid a call this morning, and I understand from him that you have need of a doctor?”
Eleanor pressed one hand to her face and waved them in while shooing the children away with the other. “I’m right embarrassed he’s troubled himself. And you! Oh, my.”
He gentled her with a quick hand. “He didn’t ask. His mentioning it at all was a favor to me, if anything; two patients have begged off and my day was empty. Your needing aid couldn’t have been more timely.” He saw her silent exchange with Hannah, the worry that Hannah had warned him about, money and dignity. “My choices were to visit here, or set about for someone to do my mending, and I’ve no idea where to begin with that.”
Eleanor brightened, pausing to let them pass into a humble parlor that only sported enough threadbare furnishings for half the bottoms in the Fitz house to be seated at once. Paintings rather than photographs lined the mantle, and James guessed the green linen curtains predated the family’s occupancy by some time, but the room was clean and showed care in its arrangement. It was also chilled; despite the time of year, only a few teaspoons of coal glowed in the grate. “I do mending for several families on our street,” said Eleanor. “I’m not much in the kitchen, but I’ve always done right with a needle.”