Chapter Seven
Emily
“You grabbed Jo’s bosom?”
Emily threw a gambling chip at her brother across the table in his tiny but lushly decorated parlor. He happily added it to his own substantial stack of winnings. According to his complicated house rules, all chips thrown in rages became the property of the assaulted party.
“I didn’t grab anyone’s bosom!” She snatched the deck out of David’s hands so she could take her turn to deal. “It just protruded farther than anticipated.” She shuffled the cards furiously as Noah and David laughed. “Would you stop it! I only brought it up so you can give the button back and pass my apology along.”
Her explanation didn’t change their minds. David in particular was pursing his lips over a smile as Emily dealt.
“What’s that look for?” she snapped.
“Well, it’s just—” He shrugged and looked over his cards, arranging them into a new order. “Apologizing. It’s not known to be your favorite activity.”
Emily stared at her own cards, hardly seeing them. Even if she’d been able to pay attention, she couldn’t remember which cards were set as the wild braggarts this evening anyway, and would have lost the hand in any case.
When she’d been deservedly decimated and Noah pulled the chips to his side of the table, she glanced at David. While their friendship had been spotty, they’d known each other long enough that his observation about her character felt stickier than it might have, had it come from someone else.
“What did you mean by that?” she asked him. “I don’t have anything against apologizing.”
Noah snorted with laughter before David could answer, the lace on the cuffs of his shirt fluttering in a way Emily thought looked very uncomfortable as he arranged his chips.
“What?” She tugged at the edge of her own blessedly simple sleeve. “I apologize when I’ve done something wrong. Humility and amends-making are essential virtues.”
“Sure. You humbly make amends when you believe you’ve done something wrong,” Noah half-agreed with a matching one-sided smile. “But considering how rarely you admit your own fallibility, I’m suspicious of your sudden contrition regarding a...what shall we call it?”
“An accidental brush,” said David without missing a beat.
“Nice, Davy. Very tasteful,” said Noah. “An accidental brush with a woman who had publicly humiliated you not ten minutes earlier. I can think of at least a dozen worse things you’ve done without the slightest interest in apologizing.”
“Is that so?” Emily huffed. “Go on, then. What dozen things come to mind?”
Noah drew breath to back up his claim, but David cleared his throat.
“Instead of ruining our evening with that,” he said firmly, “why don’t we brighten it by getting her to admit why she wants to apologize to Miss Jo.”
“This again?” said Noah, scolding and a bit mysterious.
“What again?” Emily asked.
David shrugged shamelessly. “Nothing. I just think that under the right circumstances—that is to say, without a patient between you or a chapel’s worth of busybodies looking on—the two of you might be able to have a nice conversation. That’s all. I wonder if your desire to apologize for nothing is really just an excuse to explore that possibility.”
They looked her over like the answer was scribbled somewhere in the red flush that swept across her cheeks. The last thing she wanted was for these two to think they had a point, but she feared there was no way out. They’d spot this flush if she stayed. They’d notice her retreat if she excused herself from the table with some trite excuse. It was hopeless. She waved the notion off as they played another hand she barely noticed, too aware of all the little looks moving around the table like card trade-ins.
“So,” said David at last. It was a big, meaningful so, stretching out over the table as he stood up. “Are you interested in exploring a conversation with her?”
Emily wished she could clutch her feelings as close to her chest as she did her cards, but it was no good.
David nodded toward the nook of a kitchen. “Let’s put the tea back on, shall we?”
Taking the hint, she followed him. At first, it seemed like a silly excuse. It didn’t take two to light a stove and fix a pot. But as she noticed how he hesitated with the matches, she changed her mind about the assumption.
“Davy, are you doing alright?” She took the book from him and lit the burner herself, waving at him to handle the tea leaves instead. “You seem very on-edge lately.”
“Much going on,” he said, a bit over-bright. “Nothing to worry about. I have it handled.”
“I’m still appalled at how Parliament handled the Criminal Act Amendment,” she said carefully, knowing that it was the looming changes to Britain’s laws that had exacerbated his nerves. “It was supposed to be such a reasonable thing, a move to protect women and girls. I still don’t understand how this ‘gross indecency between men’ got to be part of it at all.”
“No one does,” David said, unconvincingly casual. “Because it became part of it at about three in the morning on the night it passed.”
Horrible. Emily shook her head, trying not to let her frustration dig in too deep. “Do remember, Davy, that if you need a break from the stress of the city, there’s always a place for you back home. I know it did your nerves a lot of good last time you came to visit. Perhaps it’s time for another reprieve from your city concerns.”
David shook his head and forced a chuckle. He dropped his voice low, still casual, but now with a hint of the conspiratorial. “Much as I’d love that, it’s a tough sell for some. It’s a balm to my nerves, maybe, but not as much to his.”
“Noah won’t?” Emily lowered her voice too. “I know things haven’t always been easy, but I was under the impression we’d put a lot of that behind us. Did Papa or I do something to put him off during that last visit?”
“Don’t think so. It’s just...there’s a lot of memories out there in the village, aren’t there?”
She got the sense he was softening Noah’s words again, as he tended to do. “David, would you be clear with me, please? What did he say?”
David ran a hand down his face and sighed. “I believe his exact words were I swear to God,if I have to look at that sodding sewing kit under the end table for one more day of my precious life, I’m going to claw my own bloody eyes out.” David winced. “I’m sorry. You asked.”
Emily could only maintain a satisfying level of annoyance with her brother for so long before she grew too tired to do anything but agree with him. Not that she could admit it; it seemed cold for the two of them to bond over their exhaustion with Papa’s peculiar method of grieving. But quietly, very quietly, she couldn’t blame him for anything except how he’d abandoned her to it.
“You could come on your own, you know, Davy,” she said. “If he won’t, and you want to, you’re still welcome—”
“I didn’t drag you over here to talk about me, Emily.” He leaned against the counter, fixing his face into a very meddlesome expression that meant the other line of conversation was over. “We’re here to talk about you. Do you want to see her again? To apologize?”
“Well, what if I did?” she said, giving into his deflection, but tucking the other subject away for later. “What difference would that make? She despises me.”
David’s grin implied it made all the difference in the world. Made his whole day too, if she wasn’t mistaken.
“Well,” he said. “You could apologize for what she despises you over, to start. Rather than apologizing for, you know. An accidental brush.”
“As I’m sure Noah has told you in more colorful terms than I can imagine, she despises me for turning her friend away.” Emily took the strainer from the pot and shook the soggy leaves into the bin. “And while I could apologize, I don’t know that she would care much. The deed has been done.”
“So undo it.” David took up the pot and started back to the table with it.
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I encouraged speculation that it was because of their circumstances, but it wasn’t,” she admitted, lowering herself back into her seat. “Though I obviously can’t remember our mother, I live surrounded by the repercussions of such a tragedy, and do not happen to have a nice little place in the city where I can escape them.” She glanced at Noah, who opted to become very busy with his cards. “The training was bad enough, only taken on because the hospital wouldn’t employ me if I didn’t acquire it. I fear that my constitution is not suited to the work.”
“You don’t have time to be so picky about your specialty anymore, though,” said Noah, his voice pitying and maybe—just maybe—a tiny bit guilty. “You need to build your own patient list with whoever will have you. And quickly, don’t you? Before. You know.”
He waved his lacey hand like he was being obvious, but Emily had no idea what he was talking about.
“Before what?” She was struck by a memory of Papa’s recent caginess, all his implications that he felt the end might be nigh. A spark of panic lit in the bottom of her belly. “Noah? What are you talking about?”
Noah and David shared a shocked look.
“He hasn’t told you?” Noah said carefully, like he couldn’t believe it.
“Told me what?” Emily snapped, clutching her teacup.
Noah touched his fingertips to his thumbs a few times before squeezing his hands tight. It didn’t look like any of his usual flourishes or Italian-inspired emphatics. It was a quiet and fearful movement that Emily didn’t like one bit.
“That stiffness he’s had in his fingers,” Noah said quietly. “It’s been worsening. He’s fairly certain it’s, you know, rheumatic gout. Which, for a surgeon, will mean his retirement. Not quite yet. But sooner than he’d have liked. He really didn’t tell you?”
Emily sat back in her chair, thinking back. Sensitivity to the cold. New concerns over money and stability. Opting to stay in Farncombe for this latest London talk.
“He didn’t tell me,” she whispered. “But he told you?” She paused, hoping she’d jumped to the wrong conclusion. “No. No, you figured it out, didn’t you? He wouldn’t tell you without telling me.”
Noah, usually oscillating from playful to fiery, had become dreadfully quiet. “He told me,” he admitted, that previous note of guilt becoming a full and obvious chord. “He said since they don’t know if it’s hereditary, I needed to know about it now, so I could save money or take on some apprentices in case I also hit a point of needing to retire. A rheumatic tailor isn’t much better off than a surgeon, and since I’ll have no children to take care of me, he wanted to make sure I was preparing for the future.”
The unfairness was incredible. Here she was, fielding criticisms for sending off Miss Garcia, when her own father—the one who’d always preached complete equality between the sexes—had so obviously valued the fate of her brother’s career over Emily’s.
“I’m sorry,” Noah said, still in that terrible, solemn voice that meant this whole thing really was just as awful as it felt. “It didn’t occur to me that he hadn’t told you.”
“How did it not come up between you and me before now?”
Noah smiled rather uncomfortably. “I can’t say it’s a topic I’m keen to bring up very often.”
Once again, it was infuriatingly difficult to blame him; nearly every decision in both their lives had been made to further their professions. Hard work and a meaningful place in society were values they shared, even if they went about the particulars differently. It was what they had in common, aside from the gloomy sense that their father would happily have traded both of them back for another day with his wife.
“Well,” she said quietly, clacking a couple of her gambling chips together. “Let’s not...let’s not panic about either of us inheriting it. The cause may be atmospheric or dietary or any number of things. We’ll look to our health and the rest will be up to God.”
Noah lifted his teacup with a half-smile. “You always conjure up the most thrilling toasts, sorella.” She hadn’t meant it as one, but she clinked his mug anyway as he went on. “And what of your work? Leaving that up to God as well?”
“Better him than Papa, apparently,” she said, unable to keep the bitterness from her voice. “Why would he tell you to prepare for something that could be decades off, but not inform me that my entire life will be upended in the next few years? They might not let me continue at the hospital without him, you know. Sometimes I get the sense they are only tolerating me so that they can keep him on call for surgeries. In spite of my best efforts, I am nothing on my own.”
Papa and Noah were right. Emily needed to be able to support herself, and at thirty, starting fresh in a new occupation or else trying to find some financially stable husband who would take an old maid like her was a waste of time she didn’t have. She needed to build her own patient list, the sooner the better. And the soonest possible involved returning to the only people who had ever approached her as their first-choice.
Miss Garcia. Her scandal of a paramour.
And Mrs. Smith.
“David,” she said. “I need to contact Miss Garcia. This is no accidental brush. I need to make this right, for all our sakes. Do you know where I can reach her directly?”
“No,” he said. “All the correspondence has gone through Miss Jo.”
“Miss...” Emily faltered. “You mean Mrs. Smith?”
“Mrs. Smith?” David chuckled. “I’d forgotten that was how you knew her.”
“Can you put me in touch with her again, then? I have apologies to issue.”
David grinned. “I think that would be lovely!” he exclaimed. “And I could certainly arrange a cordial meeting for the two of you before you leave town.”
Cordial meeting.Something about those particular words out of the mouth of a notorious matchmaker was decidedly suspicious.
Still. As Emily thought back to those dark eyes and a refusal to conform that pushed even other nonconformists to their limits, she couldn’t bear the thought of letting this one chance to see more of her slip by.
“An extra day in London would pose no problem for me,” she mused. “Will you send off a note, if I write one up? If she agrees, we’ll meet. But!” She put up one finger in warning. “For the love of all that is good, David Forester, you will plan nothing too cordial, do you understand me?”
“Oh,” said David, grinning again. “I understand perfectly.”
To the most esteemed Mrs. Jo Smith (should she be generous enough to open this parcel rather than tossing it straight into the fire as would be more than reasonable given the circumstances),
It has been brought to my attention by our mutual companion Mr. F—(as well as the stirrings of my own conscience) that I owe you and your friend Miss G—a considerable apology for my lack of reasonable human feeling and compassion. I regret the shameful behavior I have displayed, and would like to make things right with all of you.
I can stay in London for up to two extra days before my responsibilities call me elsewhere. If you would pass this message along to Miss G—I am more than willing to see her for a proper exam. In addition, I would like to apologize to you personally, for the events of this afternoon. I was the unkind one.
If either of these meetings is possible and desirable, please inform Mr. F—as soon as possible so that he might make appropriate arrangements. I offer the coffee house as a possible meeting place, but please suggest another if you have something in mind.
Most sincerely, and with the greatest regret and hope for reconciliation,
Dr. E. Clarke