An Independent Miss

by Becca St. John

  At least, that was her plan. So well thought out this evening.

  She looked back down at the balcony, further away than she remembered. She looked over at the stones framing the outside of her window. Far narrower than she pictured.

  Still, she had to go. She’d sent a message. Lady Andover would be expecting her.

  Hoisting her satchel over her shoulders, she pulled the back hem of her old work skirt between her legs and up, fixing it under a belt at her waist. She dared one more look down. Better not to focus in that direction. No room for fear. She faced the narrow treacherous edge of the window’s surround, lodged her foot sideways as deeply onto the edge of the stone as she could without going through it, grasped the stone above and refused to think.

  Nerves and touch would get her through this.

  Clinging to the stone, arms stretched above, feet down below, she couldn’t figure out how to move down. She risked another look, grabbed the edge of the windowsill and swung back into her room.

  No hope for it. She leaned over the sill feet first, wiggled herself out backward. The belt buckle dug into her belly. She’d be bruised. Her arms scraped the rough stone until she’d reached the point of no return, hanging by her hands, her feet dangling down.

  There was a balcony below her. Calculating her height, the drop, she figured it would be a good six feet. She let go and landed in a heap on the stone, winded, but not hurt.

  The things one must do in the name of healing.

  Felicity brushed her hands against each other, ignoring the sting. As she moved through the house, she planned her route to Andover’s, only two blocks away. She’d have to stick to the alleyways.

  The easy part done, she now faced the risk of Andover returning home early. This would be the dangerous part of the night, and well she knew it.

  CHAPTER 20 ~ DOUBTS

  Jack’s bed stood empty, stripped of sheets and covers, the bedside table bare. Felicity grabbed the divider frame, a meager separation of bed space in the convalescent home. She held it, afraid she might faint. She, the stout hearted girl who had developed the habit of sneaking into homes in the middle of the night had come to this, weak at the knees over sadly ordinary consequences of a hospital.

  “No,” the soldier with a head wound whispered from the other side of the screen. “He’s not gone. Though he isn’t doing well.”

  Felicity looked over. “Where is he?”

  “They’ve moved him to another room, with three others who’ve lost limbs, like him. Quieter, down the hall. His family is here.”

  That’s when she heard the silence, noted the empty bed the screams had come from.

  “Oh.” They’d listened to what happened once gangrene set in. She searched for him, praying the lack of screams meant the infection had lessened. For if it hadn’t, Jack would be gone from them, soon.

  She found him down the hall, in a smaller chamber with only four beds. No more screaming, but low groans from the other beds. One man rolled over, waking himself with a shout of pain.

  Robbie sat beside a silent Jack, both looking up as Felicity approached.

  “Your parents are in town?” she whispered.

  Robbie nodded. “They traveled all day yesterday, stayed the night with Jack. I told them to get some sleep.”

  “Hello, Cissy,” Jack said. “Good of you to come.”

  “Of course I will come to see you.” She kissed his cheek, as she took his wrist, finding the same uneven pulse of the day before. “Let’s see that tongue.”

  Matt, the soldier Robbie hired to tend Jack, leaned in, a questioning look for Felicity. She smiled back, but didn’t offer any comments. She would explain everything to him later.

  She did ask him, “Have you started the treatment?”

  Robbie upended his chair in his rush to stand. “I need to get some exercise.” He mumbled, backing out of the room.

  “Oh, Robbie,” She followed him out into the hall. “He’s not worsened.”

  “He’s not better, either.” Robbie grated, so clearly uncomfortable.

  “No,” She agreed and returned to the soldier, who waited by the side of the bed, as eager as Robbie was reluctant.

  “He’s got the pouch on now, m’lady but it’s due for a change. Waited for you.”

  “Ah.” Awake, more alert than expected, Jack watched them. “Do you want more of your medicine?” she asked, though they both knew she couldn’t free him of the pain, only dull it.

  He didn’t answer, though he took the laudanum Matt poured, without complaint.

  They waited for it to dull his gaze, ease his breathing, which had grown far too rapid, before she bent to the task of studying the efficacy of the treatment.

  Matt as intent as Felicity, both leaned in close, ignoring the stench made worse when uncovered.

  “You counted them?” she asked.

  “Yes, m’lady.”

  “Good. Let’s count them as we remove them. Then wash the limb as we have been doing,” she worked as she spoke, “and cover it with another pouch and some fresh little buggers.” And smiled, as she remembered the nurse, to find Matt staring at her.

  “Is it going to work?” he whispered.

  “I don’t know.” She kept at her job, pulling maggots, keeping track of how many they had, wishing she knew enough to tell him for sure this unconventional treatment was a certain thing. “But I believe his pain seems better.” She looked to her patient, “Is it better, Jack?” she asked, but he had gone somewhere else, away from the stench and the pain and this place of wounded soldiers.

  “The others—” Matt nodded to the other three beds beyond the screen they worked within, “—want you to try it on them.”

  “Let’s see how this goes first.” It was all she could say, thinking of the notes she’d written in her book just that morning. She’d not put in her conclusions.

  Leaving Matt to tend to the wound, Felicity found Robbie having a cheroot on the front stoop. The smell of coal dust and horse dung proved surprisingly refreshing after the odor of Jack’s ward.

  “We know he isn’t likely to survive. A part of me just wishes it would end, so he can be free of this suffering.” Robbie flicked the end of his cheroot away.

  Felicity hugged herself. “Don’t lose hope yet, Robbie.”

  He kicked the column’s base, a mess of wound-up energy and nowhere to take it. He looked to the sky before turning to Felicity. “Hope? You think maggots will save my brother?”

  “It’s worth a try.”

  Robbie snorted. “And he’s determined to do anything you want. Anything. Even the ignominy of having maggots crawling around his leg like he’s already a carcass!”

  She looked away from his glitter of tears.

  “Last night, when I asked if you would do me a favor, you said anything.”

  “I did, and I meant it.”

  He studied the street, as though far horizons drew him rather than a dismal little thoroughfare and rows of houses slipping far from their genteel beginnings. “I wonder…I know it sounds daft, half-baked, but I’m not so removed I haven’t heard the rumors, of the way society is treating you.”

  “Oh, Robbie, that’s not your worry.”

  “We’re friends, so it is my worry and I’ve a thought. If you were to…” He dropped off, slapped at that poor abused column.

  “To what, Robbie?” She encouraged.

  “Promise to marry Jack before he dies.”

  She stared then, despite the drying tears on his cheeks. A twisted idea born of torment and she knew him to be tormented, having sat there day after day with screams and shouts ringing around them. An awful place to watch a loved one sink further and further away.

  So she softened her response, gentling her tone. “To what purpose, Robbie? What good could come of it?”

  He whirled on her, took her shoulders in a hard grip, spilling a frantic rush of words. “Jack has been in love with you his whole life. Have you not seen it? How he was over at your house whene
ver he could be? Discussing plants and earth? Your love of plants and all.” Yes, he would visit Ansley Park and ask for Felicity.

  A ruse to see Caro, for Caro was too young for a suitor.

  A ruse Robbie believed.

  “He always returned in a lovesick haze, immune to my teasing. To be promised to you would give him a taste of joy. Joy! When he is so full of pain.”

  Felicity could barely think. Of all the promises imagined, this she would never have anticipated.

  “It is not me Jack loves, Robbie, not in that way.” Not me, but Caro. A secret until Caro’s come-out, next year. But Felicity dared not tell him, lest he send for her sister in his harebrained scheme.

  “He does, he has, he always will, for whatever is left of his life. I believe he would have courted you before he joined the army, but didn’t want you held to him if something like this should happen.”

  “No, not me, Robbie.” If only life were that simple. Caro would be the one to truly mourn a love lost.

  Robbie waited, but she had no words.

  “He deserves to feel loved before he dies.”

  She placed a calming hand on his arm. “He does feel loved, by you, your family, all of us.”

  “That is not enough.”

  She thought of the tear-stained letter she’d read to Jack the day before. Caro saying good-bye, even as she wished him to live.

  Caro’s memories free of Jack as a man wasted by pain, so thin a child could lift him. Free of the stench, the awful smell of a gangrenous wound.

  No, she did not want Robbie riding through the night to steal Caro from her school, creating a whole new scandal and forcing her sister to remember Jack like this. Robbie would, in his desperation, he would.

  Thank God he didn’t realize which sister Jack loved.

  “I never expected you to be so hardhearted to refuse this, when he will be dead soon.” His eyes glittered with angry tears.

  “Robbie, this is no small promise you ask. I’m betrothed,” she argued, even as the image of Andover with Lady Jane’s hands upon his chest snapped into her mind’s eye. She shook it off.

  “Betrothed to a man who left you to face ruin on your own? A man who is repulsed by what you do?” Hatred narrowed his eyes. “He doesn’t deserve to kiss your feet.”

  “You don’t understand,” she pleaded.

  “You said anything,” he prodded, so full of anger at his helplessness he punished even as he appealed. “What do you say, Felicity? Once the screaming starts, it will only be a few days before he’s gone.” Bitterness rode on his words. “No one need know. I will explain to my parents. It would be a gift for them, as well, you know, to see some small measure of joy in his eyes. Please, Felicity.”

  Finally, he turned his attention from the street below them, tears in his eyes. “It would only be for a few days. And then you would be free of him, of all those shallow people who could never appreciate you. Let them think you were meant to marry Jack and go home, to your stillroom. Be a woman who saves lives. Free from a man who can only hate you for who you are.”

  “You know nothing about it,” she fought back, but he did. In his rantings, he’d touched the quick.

  He snorted. “The whole of the county knows of it. He thinks you’re a witch of some sort. Devil take him! He doesn’t deserve you!” And he stormed back up to watch his brother die.

  ****

  The first time Andover surprised the Redmond household with a visit, Lady Westhaven informed him Felicity had joined Bea in a trip to the park, to paint. Lord Westhaven rather thought the cousins went to the lending library. Andover saw Upton and Bea riding toward the park on his way over.

  He would not challenge the Westhavens, but rather worried they didn’t know where their daughter got off to in the mornings. Still, the visit proved fruitful. All agreed, as special license freed them from the church’s mandate for morning nuptials, an evening wedding would suit.

  He would put the idea to Felicity.

  Their wedding.

  Early tomorrow evening.

  A small affair. Family only, with the exception of Upton. Any more guests would be too much for his mother. He’d not do anything to confuse her further.

  Lady Westhaven set straight into planning the event, speaking of menus and rooms for Lady Andover, for surely the newly married couple would want the house to themselves for a day or two. Andover was not to fret, for his mother would do very nicely with the Westhavens. They would take the knocker off the door and keep the household to a quiet level.

  All planned, yet not a foregone conclusion. Everything hinged on Felicity’s agreement.

  And so, once again, he stood in the vestibule of the Westhaven house, unexpected this time as well, for he’d made arrangements to ride with Felicity much later in the day. Two purposes drew him this time. His mother and curiosity. Would Felicity’s parents need to make excuses all over again?

  Would she be off to a destination so secret, not even her parents knew its whereabouts?

  Prepared to hear she was out and about again, the butler surprised him by saying. “Lady Felicity is on the lawn, with her siblings, my Lord.”

  “Is she? Ah, good.” Here amongst her siblings, no doubt in lovely disarray. Intelligent active scamps, the absolutely delightful Redmond children thrived on chaos.

  “I can find my own way,” he decided, not wanting to give Felicity the time to change the tangle of her hair, the smudges of grass on an older dress. He rather liked that about her, her uninhibited play with children. Any other lady would be quite putout discovered in anything less than her best, but Felicity was not any other lady.

  He headed through the blue salon, oblivious to the various seating arrangements and tables, all done in the latest of styles with spindly legs and clawed feet. He often doubted the reliability of those delicately framed chairs to hold a full grown man, but that was not one of his concerns now. He had a goal.

  Yet, even as he breezed through the room, intent on reaching his prospective bride, his attention snagged on the round library table and its burden. An old, leather bound book with thick vellum pages, still opened wide.

  Inviting, like a wicked siren’s call.

  He had every intention of passing it by. Fisted his hand when he hesitated, yet morbid interest won. Sidetracked from common sense, he stood over the open page, to find something far more ominous than comfrey.

  Gangrenous gas, pus-burdened wounds.

  He recoiled. The illustrations more horrifying than any nightmare, yet a macabre fascination drew him back. He forced his eyes away from the sickening drawings to the neat, tidy script. Felicity’s script, so practical and clear, next to such gothically hideous drawings. She wrote of herbs and washes, which was better, a poultice versus a rinse. Things he knew nothing of, but now understood a physician, herbalist had choices at hand. Terrible decisions of life and death.

  Squeamish, horrific alternatives, unfit for a lady’s mind.

  Yet his Felicity filled hers with such things.

  And remained calm, unflappable, gentle.

  How many choices had his family’s attending physicians discarded? Were his brothers, his father, lost to him by a fluke of options? How many errors need be made for one path to become the standard? How many poor decisions had Felicity made in the quest for knowledge? Could he make room in his life for such risks?

  A bark of laughter escaped. He looked up, relieved to see he remained alone, with his fanciful memories. A younger, inebriated self, ranting to any who would listen, the foolishness of marrying a bluestocking. A pact made among lads, never to do such a terrible thing. They wrote a ditty, to the joys of a simple maid, the evil of a sharp-edged literate.

  Felicity ranged far beyond a blue stocking.

  The depths of her.

  And now Thomas thought they would suit?

  Dazed, Andover abandoned the infamous tome, stepping out into a garden full of delightful squeals and laughter. He stood alone, oblivious to the warm sun, willin
g the gleeful abandon of children to seep through the shock of this revelation.

  She’d learned it all at her grandmother’s knee. As her father revealed, a heritage going back generations.

  A wedding was being planned for the morrow.

  Concentration shattered, he crossed the terrace, took the stairs to the gardens, to follow the sounds of mirth. He wondered at his own determination to move forward after viewing that horrific book, even as he knew, deep in his marrow, through his own heritage. In good conscience, a gentleman never withdraws a marriage proposal.

  However, a lady could retract an acceptance.

  She said they would not suit.

  They would have to, somehow. Despite Lady Jane’s foolish claims, there were no options. Scandal precluded any reversal. He was duty bound to see this through, to convince Lady Felicity to join him in marriage, and to do so soon.

  God help them.

  “It’s Lord Anower!” little Beth lisped, shouting and racing toward him, her braids flying behind her, the twins, Annabel and Charles in her wake. He braced for the tackling blow, as Beth barreled into him, wrapping her arms around his leg. The other two managed a touch of dignity, scrambling to stop a foot away, hastily placing hands behind their backs, smiles turned up expectantly.

  He picked Beth up, tamping down any doubt about joining in this family. “How are you, little miss?”

  “Did you bring me candy?” she asked, without preamble.

  “You remembered!” On Easter, Andover made a point to have candy for the children when he arrived at Ansley Park for the house party. In the hustle and bustle of guests, he doubted they’d remember that he was the one with the sweet gift, but they had.

  He studied all three children, brows lowered in a frown. “Is this the only reason you greet me?”

  The twins looked to their feet, while Beth nodded vigorously. “Well, then,” he lowered her to the ground, “I’d best check my pockets.” And made a production out of patting every pocket, real or merely design. “Ah!” he crowed, pulling a waxed paper bundle from a hidden pocket. “Here are some peppermint sticks and…is this a butterscotch?”