The Heart's Appeal

by Jennifer Delamere

  “We’ve had this discussion before, remember?” Despite his chiding words, he spoke in a gentler tone. “Miss Bernay saved my life, and I am rendering her a very small service in return. That is all.”

  “I’m grateful to her, of course, but that doesn’t stop me from worrying. After all, what do we know about this woman? Where does she come from? What is her family?”

  He had to admit Corinna was right about that. He blew out a breath. “I don’t honestly know.” He had taken Julia’s statements about herself at face value and not asked for details. “I will ask her the next time we meet. In the meantime, you needn’t worry. Easter is just a few weeks away. After that, when the Season is truly under way, I expect things with Miss Maynard will move swiftly.”

  By the time Michael left, Corinna was mollified, but now it was Michael who was unsettled.

  It was true that he knew virtually nothing of Julia’s background. That was something he would rectify. Interestingly, she’d had no qualms at all about asking Michael all manner of personal questions.

  Corinna had intimated that Julia had designs on him, but Michael found this hard to believe. To be sure, there was a growing camaraderie between them—so long as she wasn’t needling him about God or the libel suit. Now he could add prodding about his marriage plans to that list. But she insisted she was going to Africa and had every intention of remaining single. Michael was pretty sure she was fanatic enough to be telling the truth. He couldn’t help thinking it was a shame that a woman like that should dedicate herself to spinsterhood. A woman that beautiful and clever would be a good catch for the right sort of man. Someone who wasn’t intimidated by her candor and independent streak. Someone like—

  Michael pulled up short, as though the physical stop could help him rein in his thoughts. Despite Corinna’s warnings, he couldn’t believe the distraction Julia caused him was intentional. But whether intentional or not, he could not allow her to interfere with his life. Julia seemed to be an open book, but he would do well to delve a little deeper.

  “I can hardly believe we are here,” Lisette said to Julia, as they arrived at Dr. Anderson’s home on the night of the conversazione. “It seems like our unofficial start to medical school, doesn’t it?”

  Julia agreed. As a manservant led her and Lisette upstairs, Julia was filled with anticipation for the night ahead.

  Dr. Anderson met them at the parlor door. “Welcome to you both.”

  “This is truly an honor,” Julia said.

  “Yes!” Lisette exclaimed. “To be invited here, when we are not yet students of the school, is such a privilege.”

  “Perhaps this will motivate you to study hard and ensure you pass that entrance exam,” Dr. Anderson replied with a smile. “I hope you will find the evening profitable.”

  A half-dozen ladies were already in the parlor, including Edith Morton. She introduced Julia and Lisette to the others while Dr. Anderson went to greet a few more guests who’d just arrived.

  After a while, Dr. Anderson called for everyone to be seated. Julia noticed there were still a few empty chairs.

  “I believe you will find tonight’s discussion very illuminating,” Dr. Anderson began.

  That was as far as she got, however, before a little boy rushed into the room, accompanied by a tall redheaded man wearing a bemused expression.

  “Mama!” the boy cried, launching himself into Dr. Anderson’s arms.

  She laughed as she received the boy into her lap, although she said with gentle disapproval, “Alan, what are you still doing up?”

  The man lingered at the door. “Apologies, my love, but he wanted to say good-night to you before going to bed. He has absolutely made up his mind on it. I can’t think where he gets his stubbornness from.”

  He spoke with a Scottish brogue. Julia had heard a lot about Jamie Anderson, all of it good. Co-owner of a large and prosperous shipping line, as well as a board member of several important organizations in London, he was a successful man in his own right. Yet he never resented his wife’s notoriety, which gave her a far more prominent position in the public eye. He supported and encouraged her efforts. Julia thought it must be a rare man who would do that. And now here he was, being a doting father as well.

  Dr. Anderson sent a look over her son’s head, her smile returning the playful accusation of her husband. “I think he gets his stubbornness from the same place he inherited his red hair.”

  Her husband laughed.

  Lisette sprang from her chair and took Mr. Anderson by the arm. “You will be joining us tonight, won’t you?”

  It seemed a very forward gesture, but Julia knew by now that this was simply Lisette’s nature. She did not have the English reticence about physical contact.

  Mr. Anderson took it in stride. “I’m not staying if you plan to discuss vivisections or other horrors,” he countered, although it was clear he was only teasing. He allowed Lisette to bring him into the center of their circle.

  The boy squirmed in his mother’s arms. “What’s vivee . . . vibee . . .”

  Dr. Anderson stroked his hair. “Never you mind. It’s bedtime. Here’s your hug and kiss.” She gave him both with a mother’s effusive tenderness. “My sweet baby,” she murmured, almost in a whisper, giving him a tight squeeze before releasing him. “Now, you must run along with Papa and go to bed.”

  The boy threw his arms around his mother’s neck and planted a last kiss on her cheek before wriggling out of her lap and running to take his father’s hand.

  “We won’t be discussing vivisection,” Dr. Anderson called out to her husband as he led the child toward the door. “In fact, I’ve asked Millie and Henry to join us tonight.”

  “Have you? Sounds intriguing. I’ll be back in ten minutes.”

  “How astonishing,” murmured one of the other students as she watched father and son leave the room.

  “What’s astonishing?” Dr. Anderson asked with a smile. “That our son obeys his parents?”

  “No, that you have such a kind husband who allows you to continue in your career.”

  “There are a few out there.”

  “Very few,” Lisette declared stoutly. “Most men want to keep women ‘in their place’ and suppress the good they could do in the world. I plan to remain single so I can control my own destiny.”

  It wasn’t the first time Lisette had voiced this opinion. Julia could sympathize with it. At times, it did seem as though the odds were stacked against women. Several other students echoed Lisette’s sentiments.

  Dr. Anderson raised a hand to quiet them. “There were plenty of people—women, mostly—who were surprised or even angry when I got engaged. I had only just qualified to practice medicine, and the naysayers told me my career was over before it had even begun. And yet in the ten years I’ve been married, I’ve been able to grow my practice, open new clinics, and help establish the first school of medicine for women in England.”

  “But it was a hard fight, wasn’t it?” Lisette pointed out.

  “I’m not denying that I had many obstacles to overcome. It was supremely frustrating at times. I needed a great deal of patience as well as persistence. Others tried to force their way into this profession through sheer belligerence, but over the years I have found that tempering my dogged determination with professional courtesy and congeniality has yielded far better results. There are now more medical men who perceive me as a colleague than as an enemy. I encourage you all to take the same approach I did.”

  “You are such an inspiring example to us,” one of the other students gushed. “I’m working hard to become a doctor, but I would also like to have a family someday.”

  “I still say good luck finding a man who will allow you to do that,” Lisette scoffed. “By the laws of England, you and everything you own will be his property to do with as he likes.”

  From the parlor door, a cheerful voice said, “I hope we are not late.”

  Julia turned to see that this comment came from a petite woman w
ho had her arm wrapped through that of a man wearing dark glasses.

  Dr. Anderson went over to give her a warm hug. “You are right on time, Millie. Miss Blanco has just brought up the question of married women and property. Something you are both eminently qualified to discuss.”

  Since Julia and a few other students did not know these newcomers, Dr. Anderson introduced Millicent and Henry Fawcett, her sister and brother-in-law. Despite being blind, Mr. Fawcett seemed to have a good sense of where the people around him were located. As he was being introduced, he insisted on shaking everyone’s hand.

  Jamie Anderson returned to the room while the introductions were being made, and gave his in-laws a warm greeting.

  “Mr. Fawcett is a member of Parliament and a champion for women’s causes,” Lisette whispered to Julia.

  As the Fawcetts were being seated, Dr. Anderson told the students, “Mr. Fawcett is a proponent of the Married Women’s Property Act. If passed, it will allow women to retain control of their own property and earnings.”

  “I’d vote for the Act if I were a member of Parliament,” Edith declared.

  “I’d be happy just for the privilege to vote at all,” another student chimed in.

  “Women’s suffrage—something else this country sadly lacks!” Lisette spoke with such fervor she nearly rose from her chair. “But how can it change? So long as men run the government, they will never be persuaded to share that power with women.”

  “I don’t like the idea that men and women must always be at enmity,” Millicent Fawcett said. “Why is it so hard to picture us all working together?”

  “Like you and Mr. Fawcett?” Julia asked. She was growing in admiration for this couple.

  “That’s one way,” Mrs. Fawcett answered. “We must allow that in some marriages, men and women may have entirely separate careers.” She indicated the Andersons. “Or their work may be intertwined, as with me and my husband. Other women may decide to remain unmarried to pursue a career, and others will marry and prefer to focus on home and family. Can we truly fault any of these choices? What we should be advocating is simply for the right of women to be able to decide for themselves what is best for their lives.”

  “Well spoken, my dear,” Mr. Fawcett said, giving his wife’s hand an appreciative pat. “You can see why she is my chief speech writer.”

  Mr. Anderson scratched his chin in an exaggerated gesture of thought. “So the topic for this evening is women and the law?”

  Dr. Anderson said, “In fact, I asked Henry to come tonight so he could explain to us the details of the new sanitation bills that were presented last week. I thought we could discuss their timing and possible impact on public health.” With a smile she added, “But this has certainly turned out to be a much livelier discussion.”

  The conversation did eventually turn to the sanitation laws, but later that evening as Julia and Lisette were walking home, it was the topic of marriage that dominated Julia’s thoughts.

  Not that she had any plans to get married. But that was because she didn’t think her missionary work would be compatible with being a wife, not because she thought there were no men who would be supportive of their wives having a career. After all, hadn’t her sister Rosalyn married such a man? Rosalyn and Nate were even now touring northern England in a production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta H.M.S. Pinafore. Rosalyn was performing in the chorus and Nate worked backstage. Together they were happy and living the life they loved. Before now, Julia had supposed their arrangement was an aberration from the norm, but she was beginning to see that there were others forging new paths as well.

  As she contemplated these things, she thought about Michael’s possible marriage to Laura Maynard. What type of wife would she be? Probably a society matron like Corinna. Julia didn’t think Michael would be content in such a marriage, even though it seemed to be his objective. He needed someone who would be a match for him in intellectual pursuits as well.

  Unfortunately, questioning him on the subject had only caused consternation to both brother and sister. Did Corinna think Julia wanted to interfere with Michael’s marriage plans? That wasn’t her intention. She was simply curious to know what was motivating him to make that choice, but they had seen it as prying into their affairs.

  Perhaps Dr. Anderson’s advice for success was something Julia could apply in her dealings with Michael and Corinna. Maybe she’d come up against their brick walls because she’d been too blunt with her questions. Patience is a virtue—this was something she’d heard over and over again growing up in the orphanage. As a child she’d disliked that saying, thinking that to have patience meant waiting around and doing nothing. But as an adult she’d learned that it often meant to trust God’s timing, not her own. She would not stop pressing to achieve her goals, but when it came to her dealings with people, she might do better to tread more lightly.

  CHAPTER

  12

  I THOUGHT WE WOULD TRY something different today,” Michael said. After several weeks of lessons, he could see she was ready for a new challenge.

  Julia faced him with eager attention. “Do you mean we shall do something other than noun declensions, verb conjugations, and vocabulary drills?”

  “Precisely. You have a quick mind and are adept at memorizing many things.”

  She preened at this compliment. Until he’d met Julia, Michael had never seen a woman whose pride in knowledge outweighed her vanity about her personal appearance. There was nothing at all artful in her dress or in the way her hair was done up in a simple bun at the back of her neck. And yet she was alluring without benefit of decoration. Too often during these lessons, those freckles on her slender nose had distracted him so much that he’d lost a train of thought and had to stop midsentence.

  As they were threatening to do now.

  Michael determined to bring the one thing she was vain about down just a notch—if only to bring his own thudding heart back to normal. He said in his best schoolmaster voice, “You cannot expect rote memory to get you successfully through the exam, and certainly not when it comes to actually using Latin later. The important question is how well you can apply your knowledge to actual sentence construction.”

  She straightened a little, her slender shoulders squaring at the challenge. “How do we work on that?”

  That was something else he’d noticed about their time together. She often used the term we, as though these lessons were something they were pursuing together, like a team, rather than the more obvious case of student and teacher.

  Michael took out a piece of paper. “We know you will be asked to translate from Latin into English for the examination. You have done this tolerably well with the texts I’ve given you. However, I believe the best way to build fluency in the language is to translate from English into Latin.” He set the paper before her. It had three paragraphs printed on it. “Tell me how you would translate this.”

  She looked down at the paper, absently reaching for the Latin dictionary as she began reading.

  He reached to stop her. “Without the dictionary.”

  His hand—now free from the splint and bandages—rested on hers briefly. Her skin felt cool beneath his, soft and delicate, and yet he knew from experience that they were sensible and strong hands. Even this light contact brought back vivid memories of her practiced touch when she’d examined him. He was unprepared for the burst of pleasure it gave him.

  Julia’s eyelids fluttered opened a little wider, as if she, too, had felt some unexpected sensation.

  Fighting the urge to trace a finger along her skin, Michael withdrew his hand. “This is something my teacher at Harrow gave us for practice. The sentences are structured to challenge the translator in the use of verb tense and rhetoric, as well as vocabulary.”

  “And you’ve kept it all this time?”

  “I found it as I was going through a few dusty old books from my school days that I never got around to parting with.”

  He spoke casually, no
t wanting to admit that he’d purposefully kept those books. They were like tangible memories from a happier time. Back when his life was a lot simpler.

  It was a pleasant little story, too, briefly describing two small groups of travelers who meet as they are going in opposite directions along a country road in spring. They stop, greet one another, and have a brief conversation before traveling on their respective journeys. Intended as a didactic device, the syntax of the piece was a little tortured, but there was a line that Michael had always found intriguing, whether in Latin or English.

  Julia, apparently arrested by the same sentence, read it softly aloud: “‘They now continued on their way, and yet the young man in the wagon looked back, once more, at the westbound travelers. As they rode into the valley, their wagon was framed by the wildflowers in the field, a hint of color that was to be their lives, and the young man wondered whether he ought not to have taken the other route after all.’” She looked up at him. “That’s quite a nice image, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.” He grappled with his thoughts. He had perhaps been foolish to bring in this paper. He’d forgotten just how profoundly this little passage had affected him when he’d first read it in school. He’d fancied that the young man in the story had seen a beautiful maiden sitting in that wagon, and that was what made him wish to turn back. It was a typical daydream for a lad of fourteen, but as he recalled it, Michael remembered he had always pictured the girl as a brunette with laughing eyes and a determined lift to her chin. And perhaps a few freckles, too.

  He cast around for something to get his mind off that old daydream. “Are you hungry?”

  “Famished,” Julia replied with gusto. Seeing his look, she said, “I seem to be too busy to stop and eat these days.”

  He stood up. “I’ll see if there is some tea at hand. In the meantime, why don’t you have a go at translating that?” He paused at the door. “Remember, no dictionary.”