‘Er...no,’ he said.
He had never subscribed to a scientific journal in his life. He nodded towards the open book on her lap. ‘I take it yours were? Hence your interest in Lord Entwhistle’s library?’
‘Yes—you see, I would like—’ She stopped abruptly.
‘What would you like?’
‘I believe my aspirations might be considered odd. You will not laugh?’
‘I have managed thus far in our conversation.’
‘To provide medical care.’
The remark was so unexpected and unusual that he could not contain his reaction, which was a mix of both shock and amusement.
‘You mean like a—a—’ He had been about to say midwife, but realised this was hardly appropriate. ‘Like someone who gives out herbs and...and poultices,’ he concluded lamely.
‘Or a doctor, surgeon or even an apothecary.’
‘Good gracious, why on earth would you want to do so?’
She shrugged, the dreadful green ruffles rustling. ‘I’ve always wanted to do so. I cannot explain it. It is somewhat like questioning why one would want to walk or do any number of things which are instinctual to us.’
He was about to say that walking did not involve the removal of body parts with a handsaw, but there was again something in the green intensity of her eyes that made him stop. It was ludicrous, of course, for a lady to wish to be a doctor. It was ludicrous for a gentleman to do so, too, for that matter.
‘I imagine your mother doesn’t endorse that ambition?’
‘My mother’s sole desire is for me to marry someone of a higher social status. She keeps introducing me to titled gentlemen. Anyway, it is not possible. I mean for me to become a doctor. A female cannot enrol in medical college or even apothecary school.’
He laughed at her disgruntled expression. ‘I am certain you will find something more pleasurable to do.’
‘And is that our purpose? To find pleasure?’
‘Generally. At least it is the principle I adhere to—except on those occasions when I must march around a square.’
‘You are in the military?’ she questioned.
‘The lot of the younger son. Although my brother also joined in an excess of patriotism. For me, it was either that or the clergy. I did not find myself well suited to the latter occupation. So, I take it you are currently hiding from your mother?’
‘And the latest gentleman she has procured for me.’
‘She might have found someone young and pleasant.’
The young woman glanced down so that her long lashes lay like fans against her cheeks. Her skin was pale, but touched with just the hint of pink along her cheekbones. ‘Except I will not marry. I am quite decided on it.’
He was struck by the room’s silence. For a moment, time and space seemed distorted, stilling and narrowing so that everything seemed focused on this one moment in this one room.
‘That almost seems a shame,’ he said.
Then she shifted again, her smile widening and transforming her serious demeanour into one of wry humour. Her amusement was contagious and her smile engaging, the more so because it seemed a rare thing. ‘Not at all. Indeed, I believe it would be a goal quite destined for disappointment, given that I resemble a cabbage.’
He looked at her and, while she was quite strikingly different from other young ladies, he would not put her in the category of leafy vegetables. Indeed, she was almost beautiful in a strange, unconventional way. Her eyes widened as hot colour flushed into her cheeks at his scrutiny. He saw her inhalation. Her lips parted.
‘I apologise.’ He stood abruptly. ‘I was rude again. I seem to be making a habit of it. And really, I should return to the dance and doubtless your mother is looking for you.’
‘Indeed. Her brows drew together as she looked to the mantel clock. ‘And I am not even done the article.’
With renewed urgency, her gaze returned to her book, and he had the odd and unusual feeling that he had been dismissed in favour of the more fascinating topic of cowpox.
He strode to the door, but paused, his hand on the handle. ‘What is your name?’
‘Lettuce Barton,’ she said.
Chapter One
August 2nd, 1815
His head hurt. The pain thudded, pounding and stabbing into his temples with every beat of his heart. Tony pulled himself to an upright position, squinting at the obnoxiously bright daylight flickering through the narrow gap of the drawn curtains.
‘Good day, my lord,’ Mason said, crossing the floor and pulling open the curtains with a raucous rattle. Bright sunlight spilled through the glass, filling the bedchamber.
‘Must you make it so infernally bright this early in the morning?’
‘It is past noon, my lord.’
‘Fantastic, time for another drink,’ he muttered. ‘Why are you here anyway? Didn’t ring for you. Sleeping.’
‘Lady Beauchamp is downstairs, my lord.’
‘Actually, not so much “downstairs” any more,’ his sister announced, laughing from the doorway.
‘Elsie!’ he said, keeping his injured hand hidden under the bedclothes. ‘You can’t come barging into a gentleman’s bedchamber, even if I am your brother.’
‘I have visited for three days and I am tired of waiting. You are either out or sleeping or in your cups. Besides, you do not return one’s calls.’
‘And you insist on visiting in the middle of the night. Anyway, what is so damned urgent?’ He spoke too loudly so that he winced at the noise of his own voice.
‘I need to go to the country.’
‘Then go. You do not need my permission.’
‘I wanted to talk to you first. Provided I could catch you in a moment of sobriety.’
He glared. ‘Fine. We will chat, but for goodness sake, wait outside while I make myself decent.’
‘Very well, I will see you in the breakfast room, but do not think you can lope off again.’
With those words, his younger sister gave a decisive nod and, thankfully, left the room, the door shutting firmly behind her.
He again flinched, glaring irritably at the closed door. Truthfully, he had been avoiding her. Her presence reminded him too much of the gaping holes within their family.
As well, there was this peculiar, detached feeling. He knew her to be his sister and knew that he loved her, yet could not seem to find the emotion.
He lay back on the bed, staring between half-closed eyes at a crack in the ceiling. Even the concept of rising felt exhausting.
And his bloody head hurt.
‘My lord?’ Mason said, clearing his throat.
Tony groaned.
‘She will be back.’
He nodded, pulling himself upright. His sister had always been persistent. ‘Stubborn and obstinate as a mule,’ their brother had said.
While George, her husband, had called her ‘steadfast’ and ‘resolute’.
But she was his family. Even though he couldn’t find the emotion, he knew he loved her, or had loved her. He knew he had been best man at her wedding. He could see himself. He could see George. He could see Elsie.
But everything felt distant. As though recalling something he had observed—a wedding that was pretty, charming, happy, but in no way closely connected to himself.
Perhaps that was it. Everything felt distant. Both the wedding and that which had come next: the cannons, the corpses, the smell, the blood...
And Elsie and George and Edgar and his father, the happy and the sad, all seemed intertwined, so that he wanted only to shove them from his mind and lie within the dark, oblivion of this room.
* * *
Shaved and dressed, Tony exited his bedchamber. He still had a headache. As always, movement hurt. It was not excruciating any more, but rather a raw tautening, as his skin and
muscles moved where the bullet had lodged within his ribcage.
He was already looking forward to his next drink.
Elsie glanced up as he entered the drawing room. As always, she wore the latest fashion. Of course, she was in deep mourning but even this suited her. George, Edgar, their father. Gone.
He hated black.
Sitting opposite, he stretched his feet towards the hearth, wincing slightly with the movement. ‘So why are you going to the country?’ he asked without preamble. ‘It seems a departure from your usual habits.’
Elsie had a low tolerance for boredom. In their youth, he’d tended to egg her on while Edgar, always responsible, had bailed her out of numerous scrapes until she married George, who had then assumed the role.
Until Waterloo.
‘I have been feeling unwell.’
He glanced up sharply. She looked pale, he realised, although her appetite must be fine. She had gained weight. ‘Too many late nights, I suppose.’ While grief and injury had made him a hermit, she had become a social butterfly.
‘You are one to talk—well, at least about the late nights. No, it is not that.’ Elsie paused, glancing downwards, her fair ringlets falling across her forehead. She rubbed the black silk of her dress between her fingers. ‘You see, I am having a child.’
He heard the words. They hung in the space between them, almost visible within the room. He felt nothing. He knew he should feel something: joy, worry, sorrow that George would never see his child...
‘Right,’ he said.
Elsie frowned, scrunching up her face almost as she done when younger. ‘I am announcing that you may soon have a nephew, that George, who was your best friend, might have sired an heir prior to his death and all you can say is “right”?’
‘I am happy for you.’
It was not entirely a lie. It was not that he was unhappy. Rather he was nothing. He felt an odd remoteness as though everything was miles from him—distant and inconsequential.
And then it happened. One moment he sat within the pleasant decor of the sunny salon opposite his sister and, within the next second, the salon had somehow turned into a mire of muck, churned and muddy from cannon balls.
He could even smell the war, a mix of blood, smoke, sweat, manure and urine.
His body felt different. His feet were heavy and his boots sank deep into the mire with a sickly sucking squelch. All around he heard the groans of dying men, their whispered prayers and anguished calls.
‘Tony?’
His sister’s tentative voice came as from a great distance.
‘Tony, you’re white as a ghost. Should I get Mason? Are you in pain?’
‘No,’ he ground out. His hand tightened over the chair arm, the pain intensifying about his ribs. ‘Do—not—I—do—not—need help.’ He pushed the words out.
And then that other landscape disappeared, as quickly as it had come, and he was back in the neatly appointed room with its pleasant floral curtaining and sunshine-yellow walls.
‘Sit down, Elsie,’ he said as she stood, reaching for the bell pull. ‘No need to raise the alarm. I am fine.’
‘You’re certain? You still look pale.’ She glanced at him and then away. People tended to do that as though embarrassed to see the scar snaking down his cheek to his collar.
‘I am fine. Happy to hear your news and to know I will be an uncle.’ He pulled out the trite words, relaxing as her worry eased and she sat back in the chair.
‘Oh, Tony, I didn’t even realise, at first. It was my maid who suspected. I am six months along and usually a person would know before that, but I didn’t. When I felt ill, I thought it was the grief. And now I am so very happy and sad all at once. It was so—so terrible losing George, but having his child—that will make it easier. It will make life worth living again.’
‘Yes,’ he said, again feeling inadequate.
He should feel something. George had been his closest friend. He’d watched the man die. And held him as he did.
‘And Father. This would have been his first grandchild. He would have been happy.’
‘Yes,’ Tony said.
He had been recovering from his own wounds in the hospital when their father died. He’d dropped dead like a stone to the floor when he’d heard about Edgar’s death.
That hurt. Even through the numbness, that hurt.
‘He cared a lot for George. He was happy when you married,’ he said, again because he felt that he ought to do so, that something was expected.
‘Anyway, I have decided to go to Beauchamp and I wanted to talk to you prior to my departure. Since Waterloo, you know, and after losing Father and George and Edgar, I stayed here to keep busy and to keep Mother company. I was afraid to be alone, afraid of my thoughts.’
He looked down. He had been so overwhelmed with his own pain, he had failed to see hers. She’d lost her husband, brother and father. Again, it seemed that he ought to feel more and that his emotional response was inadequate. Since when had feelings ceased to be spontaneous, but become ‘shoulds’? Like one should wash one’s hands before tea.
‘Tony?’
He looked up. ‘I’m sorry, I was miles away.’
‘Anyway, these days I am feeling so tired. My head aches and everything is so noisy here. And even near my house, London does not smell pleasant and vehicles pass day and night. Besides, I am not so afraid of the quiet.’ Her hand touched her belly. ‘I think I will almost like it.’
‘Is there a good doctor there?’
‘I—Yes. I think so.’
‘And Mother?’
‘She is doing well. She socialises much as she always did. She thinks the country will be good for me and will visit after the child is born.’
‘I will go with you.’ He spoke suddenly and felt a jolt of surprise at his own words.
‘You will? Why?’
He didn’t exactly know, except that he was failing his remaining sibling and must make it right. ‘I might like the quiet, too.’
Besides London was too filled with people and empty chairs.
He and Elsie had never been particularly close as children. He’d been closer to Edgar. He remembered fishing with him at Oddsmore, learning to ride that bad-tempered, stout little pony, sharing a tutor, Mr Colden—except Tony had insisted on calling him Coldfish.
He’d viewed Elsie rather as an irritant as she tried to chase after them. Indeed, it had taken a month at least to adjust to the fact that his best friend had suddenly, and without any warning, fallen in love with her.
Still, Elsie was his only living sibling and his best friend’s widow. He should feel something... He frowned, trying to find evidence of sentiment mired within this odd, cold, numbness.
‘You are not going to Oddsmore?’ she asked.
‘No.’
‘It is your estate.’
‘Oddsmore is fine. Mr Sykes does an admirable job and doesn’t need me interfering.’
He had not been there since his father’s death. George... Edgar... Father... Like dominoes.
‘Very well,’ Elsie said. ‘I will enjoy the company and you might be able to help run the estate. I have been feeling I should do more, particularly now.’ She patted her stomach again with a mixture of pride and protection.
‘I would imagine you should do less, particularly now.’
‘Perhaps. Anyway, Oddsmore is not far—’
‘No,’ he said.
‘Well, at least the country will be healthier for you than drinking your days away here,’ she said with some asperity.
He smiled grimly. ‘I doubt the countryside will preclude me from pursuing that endeavour.’
* * *
The delivery of Mrs Jamison’s third child was not as easy as Letty had hoped. She’d had to reposition the baby and the labour progressed slowly so that the ni
ght seemed long within the stuffy, airless room. She’d tried to convince the family that fresh air would not cause any harm on such a warm summer night, but country folk were not ready for revolutionary thought. The fear of bad spirits still lingered.
Letty scratched her head. The ancient, old-fashioned, powdered wig always made her scalp itch and prickle with sweat. Of course, by now she had largely got used to her ‘disguise’. She quite enjoyed the freedom of men’s trousers, loved the ability to wear her spectacles whenever she wanted, but still resented the wig.
At least she no longer had to wear it daily as she had during her training, or rather Dr Hatfield’s training.
The fifth Jamison arrived with a lusty cry as her mother collapsed against the birthing stool, her face wet with sweat and tears. The maid wiped her mistress’s face while Letty cut the cord. Taking the damp cloth, Letty wiped the blood from the red, wizened, angry little face. Then she swaddled the infant in the blanket, handing her to her mother’s waiting arms.
‘Thank you,’ Mrs Jamison whispered. There was a sanctity in the moment, Letty thought, a joy that was also pain.
She turned away, rubbing away the sweat from her own forehead. What would it be like to bring life into the world, to be responsible for, to protect and love this fragile, new human being? She hadn’t attended many births during her training at Guy’s Hospital. Most people that came there were incurable, clinging to life by the merest thread. There had been more death than birth.
Helping Mrs Jamison to rise from the birthing stool, she settled her more comfortably on the accouchement bed and tidied the bloodied cloths needed for the birth.
‘A girl. I’m that glad—Lil, my eldest, will be wanting to get wed herself and it will be nice to have someone to help out around the house, mind,’ Mrs Jamison said, bending over the child cradled within her arms.
‘Lil can’t be ready to marry yet?’
‘Well, no, she’s only eleven, but they grow up so quickly, mind. It seemed like only yesterday she was this size.’
‘A few years to wait yet, then. Anyway, perhaps your lads could help.’
A Debutante in Disguise Page 2