Chapter 6
Chapter
The knock came just after dawn. Julianna had not even made it out of doors yet to feed the chickens nor collect the eggs. Should any be left. The fox was at it again, no matter how many stones she hurled in its direction.
Last night had been a restless one for Thomas.
She’d passed it dozing upright in the chair by his bedside, too afraid to leave him even for a moment, in case his fever spiked.
So she was practically in a stupor now. She’d nearly dozed off in the act of setting the kettle on, when the knock came at the front door.
And then it came again. Firmer this time, and with it a breath of cold wind that raised the gooseflesh on her arms. Would this infernal cold spell ever end? Thomas would never recover when the icy air froze his lungs with every breath he managed to take.
She wrapped her shawl more tightly around her and answered the knock, surprised to find a man in a long coat, bag in hand, on her doorstep. He was an older gentleman, with an iron-gray beard and spectacles. Dust covered his boots.
He inclined his head politely. “Miss Farrow? I am Dr. Whitcombe. I’ve come about your brother.”
She blinked. “I’ve not called for a doctor, sir.”
“Nonetheless, may I come in? I was nearby on other business when I was told that Mister Farrow was in great need of a physician.”
“That is kind of you, sir, but I’m afraid I can’t let you see him.” She looked at the floor instead of into his eyes. “We’ve not the funds to pay your fee. I’m sorry for your trouble.”
She began to shut the door when he wedged his dusty boot into it. “As I’m already here, how about I take a few of the eggs I saw outside in payment. Will that suit?”
She hesitated, unease prickling her spine. She wasn’t sure there were any eggs. And she’d never heard of a doctor taking them as payment if there were. “I have yarrow, dried from last season. Perhaps that would do? For bleeding or fevers or—”
“Yes, alright.” He didn’t even let her finish, just stepped inside.
She paused, still uncertain, but Thomas’s ragged coughing had kept her up all night and she was too tired to argue. “He’s upstairs,” she said, finally.
The doctor wasted no time. He climbed the steps and settled himself into the chair by Thomas’s bed where Julianna had passed the night.
He took out a small pad and began to ask Thomas a series of questions:
When had the symptoms first appeared? How long had they lasted?
Were they worsening or did they show any fleeting regressions?
Was it worse in the cold, or at particular hours? Morning or evening?
Had he been eating?
Dr. Whitcombe then listened to Thomas’s chest, before he turned to Julianna, his expression grave. “I’d like a word alone with the patient, Miss. If you’ll give us a moment.”
She looked to Thomas who nodded toward the door.
Julianna excused herself to the hallway where she waited, her breath held tightly in her chest and her fingers twisting the fringe of her shawl.
She resisted the urge to place her ear against the closed door to listen in.
Thomas was a grown man; he didn’t need her eavesdropping on his private conversations with his physician.
“Well?” she asked, almost breathless, when Dr. Whitcombe finally emerged from Thomas’s sickroom.
The doctor folded his hands in front of him. “Your brother is suffering from phthisis pulmonalis. Consumption, Miss. Or, as we now call it, tuberculosis.”
The hallway tilted slightly beneath her feet.
“No,” she whispered, although she knew it was true. She’d always known it was true.
“He is dying, Miss Farrow.” The words were blunt, but softly spoken, as though he had no wish to hurt her more than truth required.
“When?”
“Soon.”
She shook her head. “No. There must be something you can do. Laudanum, surgery…”
“There is nothing, I’m afraid. The best you can do now is ease his suffering. Keep him warm and ease any burdens of the heart he may still carry. Let him know he’s not alone.”
“He’s not alone.” And then her eyes narrowed.
Ease any burdens of the heart he may still carry was perhaps what he said to the family of every dying patient. But perhaps it wasn’t.
“You were nearby on business, you said. If I might ask, whose?”
The doctor turned away from her for the first time during this entire, terrible conversation. “I’m afraid I cannot say.”
“Cannot or will not?”
He did not answer her, of course. Only turned back for his bag before making his way down the stairs. But his silence was answer enough, and Julianna’s stomach turned with a hot, prickling anger. Of course Fred had sent him.
Of course he’d decided—without bothering to ask either her or her brother—that Thomas should see the physician and then just sent the man over. She had thrown stones at foxes all winter but the worst of them all had simply purchased his way into the hen house.
“Wait,” she said, trailing behind the physician. “The yarrow.”
He turned and nodded his head to her before he stepped out into the cold morning air. “See to your brother, Miss Farrow. I’ll gather my fee at a later date.”
Julianna stood in the kitchen for a long moment after the door shut, one hand braced against the table as if the wood might keep her upright.
The kettle began to scream on the hob. She let it keep on with its racket.
She rather liked the sound that filled the cottage—thin and furious—because it matched her own feelings.
“Julie-bug?” Thomas called from upstairs. “Is everything all right?”
“Yes. I’ll be up in a moment.”
She crossed the room and yanked the kettle off the heat hard enough that water sloshed onto her fingers and burned her. But she barely felt the sting.
Tuberculosis.
The word reverberated in her ears, ringing and ringing like the cow’s bell.
Tuberculosis.
She moved without thinking then, doing what she could to comfort herself.
She was not a woman who usually found solace in household duties—she much preferred time with her plants—but she nonetheless scrubbed the counter.
Then the table. Then dropped to the floor and washed it too.
Finally, she brought her own hands to the lye soap and cleaned them again and again until her knuckles went pink and raw.
As if she could scour the sickness out of the air.
As if she could scrub the last ten years away and get back the life, the family, the optimism that had been stolen from her.
On the mantel above the hearth sat a small carved music box, its lid worn smooth by her mother’s hands. Julianna picked it up and held it in her raw palms. She stared at it until her vision blurred.
She wanted to throw it. She wanted to hear something splinter for once that was not her.
Instead she opened the lid and let the little mechanism wheeze out its faint, tinny tune.
She could remember her mother’s humming, the way her father’s fingers had played the same tune on the pianoforte, and she nearly dropped to her knees.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered to them. “For how your lives ended. I’m sorry I ever let him back into this house. I’m so sorry.”
And then she stood, placing the music box back on the mantel where it belonged. She pressed the heel of her hand to her mouth, swallowed hard to force all that grief back down into her insides where she could keep it contained, and forced herself to go make the tea.
She climbed the stairs slowly with their repast, eyeing the banister that was worn smooth by so many years of their touches. The door to Thomas’s room creaked when she opened it, and he turned his head on the pillow.
“The doctor told you?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“So that’s settled then. We know.”
Julianna sat beside him and reached for his hand, which felt dry and rough to her, empty of the vibrancy he’d had all her life.
“I’m still not ready,” she admitted, tears rising.
“That makes two of us. Yet here we are.” A rattling cough tore through him. “Julianna, I’m going to sign the marriage contracts as soon as Fred sends them. Promise me you won’t do anything rash.”
“Like what?” She forced a smile. “Run off to Gretna Green with the gardener? We don’t have a gardener, Tom. I am the gardener and I can hardly elope with myself.”
“Please don’t make a joke of this. It’s my dying request.”
She squinted her eyes at him. “Really? You would play the ‘it’s my dying wish card’ upon me now?”
The old grin sprang onto his features for a moment as he nodded. “I do mean it, Julianna. Tell me you’ll marry him.”
She looked away, staring out the frost-covered window. And then back at their clasped hands. “I’ll do it,” she said finally, her fingers tightening around his. “I’ll marry him.”
She closed herself against the howl of her heart at the thought.
Thomas sighed, his whole body softening with those words. “Good. Thank you.”
She leaned down and kissed his brow. He smelled of blood and fever-sweat and sickness, and it made her want to crumble to pieces. But she wouldn’t. She swallowed that pain instead and said, “Dr. Whitcombe doesn’t think you have much time left.”
He closed his eyes. “I know.”
She stayed beside him, his hand clasped in hers, until he drifted off into a restless sleep. She could do this, she told herself. She could marry the one man she hated most in the world, if it would ease Thomas’s suffering.
She would do it, no matter how much she didn’t want to.
Fred did not return that evening. Julianna had half expected him to appear again before nightfall, contracts in hand and that damnedably smug expression fixed upon his face.
She didn’t care how handsome he was, no one ought to have an expression like that who had done what he’d done.
He should be forced to wear the mark of his actions on his face like a cattle brand.
“C” for coward, just as she’d often imagined Robert might wear an “L” for liar. She hated liars after Robert.