Chapter Eight
Of all the nerve! That arrogant man had sauntered into her kitchen as if she couldn’t tell it was him.
As if he deserved free medicine when he judged her at every turn.
Playacting at being a doctor! Did he not understand the amount of quackery that assaulted every person in England?
Cures for warts, putrid throats, or scabrous lumps.
Almost none of them worked and many harmed the patient.
She could think of no better use of her time and energy than to sort through the idiocy and serve her people with medicine that helped.
But to figure out what worked and what didn’t took careful study and testing.
It required intelligence and discretion.
That Major Vance could believe she was playacting like a child with dolls was infuriating!
And that didn’t even include the skills she’d gained in Devon.
She was a trusted midwife there. Indeed, if only she could get some training at a lying-in hospital, then he wouldn’t dare say such things about her.
But such a thing would never be allowed by her father and likely not by Lord Benedict either.
It was maddening! Sometimes she dreamed about abandoning everything except the thirty-five pounds required to become a student at any of the lying-in hospitals.
But if she did that, where would she live?
How would she survive while she trained?
And how ashamed would her family be if she threw away the benefits of her name to become someone significantly less exalted?
She might not mind, but her aunt would suffer socially from the shame.
And her father would be beyond furious. He put great store in his status as a baron.
His daughter could not stoop so low as to work in a hospital.
So she learned as best she could. She kept scrupulous notes while testing every unguent and posset that offered a glimmer of hope. And now that idiot major wanted to ruin everything.
She locked up her stillroom and stormed upstairs.
As usual, the servants had prepared a bath for her.
It was part of her ritual as she changed from Betty into Janelle.
One was a witch woman’s apprentice. The other was the daughter of a baron and future wife to Lord Benedict.
Back in Devon, she used a nearby stream as she made the switch.
She washed away whatever she’d done in the freezing water.
In London, the servants helped her. It was a terrible strain on them, but the dirt in this city got everywhere and she needed to be free of it as she became Janelle.
Unfortunately, bathing didn’t clear the major from her thoughts.
It wasn’t just his attitude. She’d encountered plenty of men who thought women had nothing in their brains except sweets and hair ribbons.
But none of them had power over her. None of them worked as her fiancé’s right-hand man.
And none of them had a body like a Greek statue that had been brutalized by God-only-knew what kind of battle.
She was a living, breathing woman, after all.
She wasn’t immune to a handsome man. And though she’d seen all sorts of injuries over the years, many on laboring men, none of them caught her fancy the way Major Vance had.
Broad shoulders, powerful muscles, and a wicked smile as he threatened everything she valued in her life.
Too bad God had seen fit to give such a body to an idiot.
Enough! she commanded herself as she finished her toilette.
She needed to decide how to handle the bastard tonight.
She had to keep him from exposing her activities to her father and aunt.
But how? Lying would not work. Not this time.
Her aunt was prone to believe anything told to her by a man, whether it was that the sky was green or that flowers bloomed in winter.
That was one way Janelle had gotten away with her activities for so long.
She’d simply had her brother claim that whatever her aunt thought Janelle was doing was incorrect.
Damn Alex for being away at school right now and not here to help her. He was the only other soul to discover her activities on his own, but once he was over the shock, he’d joined in her conspiracy. After all, he loved duping their father even more than she did.
She spent the rest of her short dressing time mentally testing and discarding possible deceptions.
None of them would work without her brother.
In the end, she decided the best course would be to laugh off the major’s ideas as a joke.
How could she possibly run a hospital out of their kitchen?
The very idea was ludicrous. Especially since she paid their servants very well to deny her activities.
If anyone ratted her out, they would be dismissed without reference and (this was the real threat) none would get the benefit of her medical expertise.
Every servant in London got hurt at some point.
And those who didn’t, knew someone who had.
That made every one of their staff loyal to her.
It was the best plan she could think of, though it wasn’t very good. But she’d survived for years living a double life. With luck, she could find a way through now. Meanwhile, she made her way downstairs and prayed the major got wretchedly ill and couldn’t make it tonight.
“My goodness! Look who is here on time,” her aunt exclaimed as Janelle walked into the front parlor. “And looking quite well, I should say. There’s color in your cheeks that hasn’t been there all week.”
“Aunt!” Janelle exclaimed. “I didn’t hear you come in. And look who else is here,” she said with a sinking hole in her stomach. Major Vance stood up at her entrance. Good God, had he been sitting with her aunt this whole time? “Why didn’t anyone tell me the major had arrived?” she asked her aunt.
“I told Parry not to bother you,” her aunt said. “I knew you’d come down when you were ready. Besides,” she said with a smile at the interloper, “I was having such a lovely time talking with the major. I vow I wanted to keep him all to myself.”
Of course, she did. Aunt Esmee was a terrible flirt. Probably because Uncle Jonathan was a terrible bore.
“That sounds exciting.” Or terrifying. “What are you two talking about?”
Major Vance caught her hand. “Nothing much,” he said as he bent at the waist. He moved excruciatingly slow, his eyes steady upon hers as he lifted her hand. “She asked me what I’d done today.”
His eyes were blue, but a changeable kind that could be dark or light or even gray. They seemed to change as he bowed, and she stood mesmerized by the color of them. Or perhaps it was the laughter in his gaze that matched the teasing note in his voice.
“You are making a game of it then,” she said. “Hiding your conversation from me.”
“Hiding!” her aunt cried. “What a thing to say!”
The major straightened to his full height. “But she is correct,” he said, his lips curving in a devilish smile. “Can she guess what you and I discussed?”
“I wager I can,” she said as she forced her gaze to focus on her aunt.
The woman appeared slightly flushed, not with fury but the normal joy of talking to someone who wasn’t a complete bore.
That meant the topic had nothing to do with her illicit activities, but something much more mundane.
“He must have asked you about your day,” Janelle said as she walked the few steps to her aunt’s side.
“I bet you regaled him with a tale about how difficult it was to recover after last night’s wonderful ball.
” She leaned down and bussed her aunt’s cheek.
“And that you are excited to watch tonight’s plays from Lord Benedict’s box. ”
Her aunt pursed her lips in a pretty pout. “You are too clever, my girl. You always have been.”
“Me? Never!” she said as her breath eased out. He hadn’t told on her yet.
“Oh,” he said with a throaty drawl. “I bet your aunt can remember dozens of times you were mischievous. I’ll bet Miss Caddick was prone to wandering off, wasn’t she? Maybe to do something she wasn’t supposed to?”
Janelle turned to glare at him, making sure her back was to her aunt. “What are you suggesting? I was a very obedient child.”
“I suppose you became such after your mother died,” her aunt mused.
“But when you were little, your nanny had a terrible time keeping track of you. You were always off in the garden or the woods. Always wanted to play with the animals, even the disgusting ones.” She laughed.
“Your mother used to write me whole letters about how you wanted to touch the pigs or run about with the lambs.”
“Really?” Janelle said. “I didn’t know.”
“Didn’t you? Well, I suppose that’s not something your father would remember.
There was a great deal more important things for him to take care of than watching a little girl run after rabbits.
” Her aunt patted her hand. “Your mother used to run everywhere, too, but she especially liked disappearing into the woods. Our nanny had a terrible time keeping track of her, too.”
Janelle dropped into the chair the major had vacated. The one right next to her aunt. “I have never heard this before,” she said. “What did she do? In the woods, I mean.”
“Well, I don’t really know. Looked at insects. She had a great interest in mushrooms, probably from a fairy tale we once heard about magical ones.”
The major appeared interested, too. “Did she eat any?”
“I don’t think so. We learned from cook that most were deadly poisonous. She liked to make up stories though about bears and rabbits having tea parties in the woods. All nonsense, you realize, but we had such fun.”
There was a wistfulness in her tone that echoed inside Janelle.
She didn’t remember her mother and there were no portraits to recall her face.
“Do I look like her?” she asked. Pathetic that she pressed her aunt for even the smallest detail.
Her father had never said anything and indeed had been annoyed whenever she asked, so she’d learned young to hide her curiosity.
What did it matter anyway? And yet she hung on her aunt’s answer as the woman frowned and inspected her from every side.
“Not much,” she said, much to Janelle’s disappointment. “She had lighter hair than you, and a longish nose. Her skin was fairer than yours.” She wrinkled her nose. “I fear you’ve spent too much time in the sun without your bonnet. You should do something to cover your freckles.”
Janelle put her hand up to her nose. It was true. She spent very little time caring about freckles when she went about Devon as Betty.
“But you have her intelligence,” her aunt continued, her expression warm. “When she looked at something, she seemed to really look. She read everything Nanny allowed and a great many things that weren’t.”
The major chuckled. “Curiosity can be a dangerous thing for a girl.”
“For boys, too,” Janelle retorted. “But without it, we would never learn anything, never discover new ways to do things.”
“Exactly right,” her aunt said. “Indeed, I think your mother must have said something similar.”
Janelle flushed, ashamed of how much she wished it was so. “You’re just teasing me,” she said. “Telling me what I want to hear. You cannot possibly remember my mother saying such things.”
“Indeed, I can! But now I shall tell you how you most resemble your mother.”
“Yes?” She leaned forward.
“It is in your smile.” The lady tapped Janelle’s lips. “You mother always smiled as if she knew things that no one else did and it made her confident. I vow it drew all the gentlemen to her. They wanted to know her secrets.”
“Now that,” said the major, “is something I can readily believe.”
Janelle shot the man a dark look, but she was more interested in what her aunt was saying than in shooting daggers at the awful man. “What was her secret?”
“Your father, I think.”
“What?” She couldn’t imagine her dour, social-climbing father being anyone’s secret. When he wasn’t grilling her brother on who he knew and what favors could be had, he was at his club smoking cigars with rich and powerful men, all with the idea of becoming one of them.
“You didn’t know your father back then. He was as smart as your mother, but she was his light.
The only one who could make him laugh.” Her eyes grew cloudy as she looked down at her lap.
“Sometimes,” she said softly, “I think it’s awful of God to make the most glorious part of being a woman—the bringing of new life into the world—also the most dangerous.
I have never cried harder than the day your mother died. ”
Janelle gripped her aunt’s hand, squeezing it as she did whenever the topic of her mother came up.
It was shared love between two women who knew the risks of getting pregnant.
After all, her aunt had lost her sister at the same moment Janelle had lost her mother.
And once again, as she did most days, Janelle vowed again to find a way to make childbirth safer.
That was, after all, why she studied unguents and possets.
There had to be one that held off childbed fever.
Some secret elixir had to exist that would make it safe for a woman to bring a child into the world.
And nothing—including an arrogant major in a handsome coat—would keep her from that one mighty goal.