by Julie Daines
“I need to get Miss Ashcroft home,” he told the doctor.
“How long will you be in Bath?” Barry asked with no preamble.
“I haven’t decided.”
“We can use your help, I won’t lie to you. I’m here on Wednesday morning and Saturday all day,” he said. “I have other patients the rest of the week. I have to support my family,” he added apologetically.
Or he would be here every day, Edmund had no doubt.
Barry went on sardonically, “Not that I charge fees, of course. God forbid people should think that I’m in trade!”
Edmund knew the method. Clients left a discreet stipend, sometimes specified by the physician’s friend or assistant, with his hat and cane. All involved avoided the taint of trade.
“You’re able to support a family like that?” He hoped the doctor didn’t take offense at the question he blurted.
Barry stared at him long and hard. “Well enough, if the lady doesn’t require a Season in London and silk gowns.” The lady, not his lady. He had answered the underlying question. A man could support a wife if he lived modestly and worked hard. Edmund could do both.
Edmund left the clinic with much to consider.
Chapter Seven
The walk home from Barry’s clinic confused Lucy. Lord Edmund didn’t speak for several blocks, and she could think of nothing to interrupt his preoccupation. She almost thought he had forgotten her, except that he took her hand in his and held it all the way home. The warmth that flowed between them reached her heart and left her breathless.
He spoke without warning when they approached Corn Street, startling her after his long silence. “You are accustomed to living modestly, aren’t you, Lucy?”
She wasn’t sure what shocked her the most, his use of her given name or the odd question. “Of course,” she answered. “But you already knew that.” He seemed to have nothing else to say. Embarrassed, she blurted out, “There’s no shame in it.”
“Of course not!” he responded hotly. They stopped under a low-hanging linden tree, and he turned her to face him. “It’s just that—”
He never finished what he meant to say. He just stared into her eyes for so long that Lucy lost track of time. When he swayed toward her, she thought he meant to kiss her, and the anticipation sent the most peculiar feelings through her to heat her insides and pool in her lower belly.
Just as abruptly, he stepped back and offered his arm properly. “We’d best get you home, Miss Ashcroft,” he said as if he hadn’t just made free with her given name.
The next morning brought gray skies and little prospect of pleasurable activity. Sundays with Aunt Imogene tended toward rest and quiet. Mrs. Moffat came to dinner after church as she often did, although she protested vociferously that she would return the invitation “as soon as I am able.”
Lucy and her aunt knew that day was unlikely to arrive and expected no such return. They were in total agreement that those with more had an obligation to share with those with less. They convinced Lady Hardy to come occasionally, but only when the entire Circle assembled at Aunt Imogene’s table. This Sunday they did not.
Cook presented a simple but satisfying dinner, the sort of meal that enabled her to make twice as much as needed, enough so that Aunt Imogene could press the remaining mutton and potatoes on her friend, assuring her, “We’ll never eat all this. You do me a favor, truly.”
After a few hours of pleasant conversation during which Lucy read to the older ladies from Shakespeare, Mrs. Moffat took her leave. Lucy would have preferred to read from the novel she kept at her bedside, but Aunt Imogene deemed novels inappropriate for Sunday. Lucy privately thought some passages of Shakespeare were no more appropriate, but she didn’t argue.
Aunt Imogene applied herself to her needlework while their maid of all work lit the candles in the sitting room. Lucy took one in her hand and begged to be excused.
She went to her room, intending to read from the lovely romance on her bedside before sleep, but an hour later the book lay unread on her lap. Instead of reading, she replayed every moment of the previous day—or at least every moment she spent with Lord Edmund Parker. His mercurial mood changes continued to puzzle her.
Memories of that moment in the shelter of the linden tree left her restless and overheated; sleep eluded her. When Aunt Imogene sent the maid to wake her early in the morning, she prepared to face the day wondering if she might see him again or if she would come to any clarity if she did.
Dreary weather that matched her mood made their routine walk to the Pump Room uncomfortable. When they arrived, she saw no sign of Edmund or the marchioness and chided herself for letting her night fantasies drive her to search for him. He had never promised her he would be there—had promised her nothing at all, she had to admit. He’s bound to leave Bath sooner rather than later. His mother will see to that much, if nothing else.
The rest of the Circle arrived shortly after. They gathered at the same time they always did and sat in the same corner as they did every day. This particular Monday morning, Lucy had none of her customary cheerfulness. She found herself out of sorts and resentful, imagining how her life would stretch out, one day exactly like the other, caring for these ladies—sweet though they may be—until she herself sank into dreary spinsterhood.
“Do you need help, dear?” Mrs. Wellbridge asked when Lucy rose to fetch the second set of glasses. “You look peaked.”
“No. I don’t need help. I do this every morning,” Lucy snapped. She trudged off toward the counter, unhappy with herself and remorseful.
Her mood took an abrupt turn halfway there when Edmund rushed up to her smelling of rain. “I’m sorry I’m late!” he said.
Her treacherous heart soared, in spite of her efforts to keep it anchored to solid ground. She needed no flights of fancy. “I wasn’t expecting you,” she lied.
“The ladies always expect their waters at this time. I can’t leave their angel of mercy unprotected,” he replied with a grin.
Lucy couldn’t control her expanding smile.
He sobered abruptly and reached into a pocket. “Do you think the ladies would object if I gave them these subscription chits I found?”
“Found?” Lucy asked with a raised brow.
His bland expression didn’t change. “They can’t object if they don’t know.”
He insisted she take the extra chits, and she couldn’t resist his kindness any more than she could help admiring how he charmed the workers who served them.
“I thought you weren’t coming,” she told him while they made their way back to the Circle. “I see that your mother isn’t here again.”
“My mother hasn’t recovered from the sight of me when I arrived home from Dr. Barry’s clinic on Saturday. The dirt on my jacket gave her palpitations, and the blood on my waistcoat made her faint—or so she claimed.” His eyes danced with amusement.
Lucy gasped and turned to him. She ought to have known his family wouldn’t approve of her taking him to such a place. “I’m so sorry, Lord Edmund. I didn’t intend to trouble the marchioness. If I had known you had skills, I could have warned you that Dr. Barry would coerce you into helping. Is that what you tried to tell me? About the way you spent your days in London that would upset your father?”
His mood shifted, as it so easily did, from cheeky to sober. “I’m afraid so. I spent days observing at Cartwright’s clinic. It began after my brother Nathaniel died of his wounds in spite of good care. I began to wonder how the ordinary soldiers fared and then how poor families managed. That led me to Cartwright. I’m afraid it isn’t how my father expects his son to spend his time.”
Or his mother either, she thought. “Was your clothing quite ruined?”
“My valet reacted in horror, but he managed to remove the stains, as well he should have. For what my father pays him, he ought to be able to work miracles.”
Lucy scolded herself silently. Of course he had a personal servant. What man of his class did not?
And yet, he spends his time in clinics for the poor. No wonder he confuses me. He’s full of contradictions.
“Will you stay away in the future?” She didn’t ask her real questions: Will you leave Bath soon? Will I see you again?
“Goodness no! You can’t keep me away now that I’ve met Barry. Next time, though, I’ll bring a change of clothing.” The cheeky grin had returned.
* * *
The change of clothing soothed his valet but did nothing to calm his mother. The second time he visited Barry’s clinic she flew into a rage.
“We will not coddle this foolish start of yours, Edmund. People of your rank may direct their man of business to support such concerns out of charity, but we do not visit the filthy places.”
“I don’t ‘visit,’ Mother, like some sort of tourist. I assist Barry in his—”
“Assist?” she shrieked. “Never say you lay hands on those creatures!”
Edmund stood his ground. “I do and I will. I tried to tell you I have no future in the clergy. My path lies in medicine. I’m certain of that.” He realized the truth of it deep in his heart. He had crossed a bridge and wouldn’t go back.
The marchioness ordered, cajoled, insisted, and finally, turning puce, declared, “No son of mine will stoop so far beneath him!”
“It isn’t beneath me to do good with my life,” he retorted.
“We will see what your father has to say to the matter,” she concluded. She raised her chin and refused to speak to him further.
Lucy and Edmund settled into a comfortable pattern for the next two weeks. He joined her with the ladies every morning save Sunday, and he accompanied her to the clinic each Wednesday and Saturday.
Other days, he walked her home. When he began reaching for her hand while they walked, she kept her gaze straight ahead but didn’t pull her hand away. The feel of her delicate fingers in his gave him hope.
Sundays, he accompanied his mother, fuming even on the Lord’s Day, to Bath Abbey for services. Lucy and her aunt, he discovered, worshiped elsewhere.
When Lucy inquired about his mother’s conspicuous absence at the Pump Room, he changed the subject. He didn’t want to lie.
At no time did he mention Lucy to the marchioness either, in spite of his growing conviction that she would play a role in his future. He feared his mother would thunder down on Lucy and the ladies before he had a chance to discern his path forward.
The Circle, as Lucy called them, had come to expect his participation in their morning ritual, and he rather enjoyed the way the entire group beamed up at him when he arrived. When the day came that Lucy greeted him blushing a fiery red, he realized the ladies had not only developed expectations of their match, but also bedeviled Lucy about it.
He trudged home in misery that day. He knew two things for certain: he loved Lucy Ashcroft, and he ought to declare himself. Yet how could he speak to her until he was certain he could support her? He could think of only one way out of the morass that gripped him: he had to speak to Dr. Barry more directly about his hopes and fears. He plucked up his courage and approached the man, offering dinner at one of the finer hotels.
“Well, Parker,” Barry said when their plates were cleared and their glasses refilled, “I don’t think you brought me here to discuss beefsteak, as good as that one was. What is troubling you, my young friend?”
Edmund peered into the ruby liquid swirling in his glass and tried to gather his thoughts.
“Well?” Amusement gave a lift to Barry’s voice.
“Can Bath support another physician?” Edmund blurted out. “That is, if it were possible and didn’t take ten years and—”
“Slowly, slowly. One question at a time. The first is easy. Bath is a haven of the invalid and elderly. Physicians are always in short supply—particularly honest and able ones.”
Edmund breathed in slowly to calm himself, relieved that Barry didn’t take his ambition as a threat or competition. “What would it take to develop a practice?”
“You’re getting ahead of yourself. You have to study first. Have you completed your university courses?”
“Certainly. Oxford.”
“Greek and Latin, of course. What about lectures on medical science, few and far between though they may be?”
“For the past year, yes.” Edmund felt embarrassed. “My parents intended me for the clergy, and so my studies primarily focused on theology, but after observing with Cartwright, I couldn’t stay away from the lectures.”
“You already have rather more clinical experience than many of the sprigs who come out of the lecture hall to be licensed without ever seeing a patient,” Barry mused. “Can anyone there serve as a reference for you in this matter?”
Edmund pondered the question. “Stallings,” he said at last. “I certainly pestered him with questions.” He grinned ruefully. “I took to following him to his premises after lecture.”
“Cartwright also, I presume, and myself, of course. If you wish to practice in Bath, you could avoid the Royal College of Physicians and those London hospitals. The bishop here can license you for local practice. Your charity work will weigh in your favor.”
Edmund sat up straighter. Could it be that simple? “I’ll write to Stallings and Cartwright immediately!”
“One other thing. It would help if you observed for a period at the General Hospital here; it may, in fact, be necessary.”
“For how long?” He slumped back in his seat.
“Months. A year. You can get yourself set up during that time. I gather there is some pressing desire to move quickly.” When Edmund didn’t respond, Barry went on, “I presume this has something to do with Miss Ashcroft.”
“The medicine, no. I will pursue that in any case, but the urgency, yes. It has everything to do with Lucy Ashcroft.” The marchioness always insisted any talk of money reflected on the speaker’s poor taste and bad manners; however, something in Barry’s manner encouraged trust.
“They don’t approve—my parents, that is—and if Father doesn’t approve . . .”
“He won’t support you,” Barry concluded.
“I’m dependent on him for my income, at least until I make a start.”
“Families like yours generally provide their sons with other sources of income. Does your father control them all?”
“I own a small estate in Devon from my maternal grandfather.”
“You could set up a family there,” Barry pointed out.
“The house is small and needs repair before I could live in it. It would take what little income comes from the land and rents to make it habitable. There would be insufficient funds to feed them.”
“But your father might help, in that case,” Barry said.
“Not if I defy him about the archbishop,” Edmund replied. “What would I do with myself marooned in the country? I would have to give up medicine.”
“Villages need physicians as well, though the income, I fear, is meager.” Pity gave Barry’s words a somber tone.
“How can I ask Lucy to be content as the wife of an impoverished country doctor? I might not even afford more than a single servant to help her in that crumbling country house,” Edmund went on miserably.
“That brings us back to Bath and establishing a practice. You don’t think your father will assist you at the beginning?”
“Then least of all. He’ll want to vent his disapproval.” The marchioness had already dispatched at least two heated letters to London, but no reply had come to Bath. He still had no idea where he stood with the marquess.
“From what you say, you aren’t without assets, but you’ll have to live frugally.”
“I can’t ask the lady to accept deprivation for my sake.”
Barry bit his lower lip. Edmund suspected he hid amusement. “A noble thought,” the doctor said, “but perhaps you ought to ask the lady what she thinks first.”
He pondered Barry’s advice well into the night. He should ask her, he concluded, only when he knew for cert
ain how bad it would be. He had to put it to his father first. He had to be absolutely certain how he stood.
Chapter Eight
The Circle began to linger longer every morning after they had taken the waters. Edmund had a way of spreading joy, and Lucy suspected they had all fallen in love with him. They teased her mercilessly about her Lord Edmund, but she thought they had each taken him as one of their own. Mary Wellbridge openly flirted, Anna Moffat simpered, and even Aunt Imogene played coy. Lady Brookfield sat up straighter and acted more vivacious than she had in all the time Lucy had known her. She topped many of Edmund’s amusing anecdotes about the haut ton with ones of her own. Only Lady Hardy held back.
The morning after Edmund’s dinner with Barry, he leaned over Lucy’s chair to whisper in her ear that he had something to tell her later. Then he put the Circle in stitches with a story involving the archbishop’s terrier and the Countess of Ambler’s drawing room. Mrs. Moffat laughed until tears rolled down her cheeks. Lady Brookfield made a ribald remark about the countess’s butler. Aunt Imogene and Mrs. Wellbridge giggled. The ladies’ laughter warmed Lucy’s heart until Lady Hardy slumped back in her chair.
Edmund’s cheerful manner disappeared, and he leaned toward the stricken lady. “Are you well?” he asked.
Lucy, alerted, reached for the lady’s hand. It felt cold as ice. The woman’s unfocused eyes frightened Lucy, and the incoherent sounds she made alarmed her more.
“Loosen her clothing, Lucy,” Edmund ordered. He laid two fingers on Lady Hardy’s wrist and pulled his watch from its pocket.
The familiarity hardly registered. Lucy hurried to do as he bade, unbuttoning the top of the stricken woman’s gown and pulling it away from her neck. The worn fabric tore slightly when she did.
“Her pulse is faint,” Edmund said. “We need to get her to a more private place,” he said looking frantically around the Pump Room. “Oh, hell! Let’s take her to Barry.” He scooped the elderly lady up without apologizing for his language and strode toward the door.