Chapter 18
This time, after an entire day and night spent in bed, Rosalind did not feel lazy or otherwise unproductive.
Quite the opposite, in fact. It had been a time of exertion and discovery.
“You are glowing,” Matthew told her shortly after the sun rose, his fingers trailing over the curve of her face. “Do you know that?”
She was sprawled on his chest, her hair tangled and loose. She smiled, turning her face into the warmth of his skin, and shook her head. “How do you know?” she mumbled against the softness of his chest hair. “You cannot see me.”
“Oh, I can see you,” he assured her, a grin in his voice. “I can see all of you.”
She giggled, burrowing further. “Do not say that,” she begged. “It will make me bashful.”
“And you think I wouldn’t enjoy that?” he teased, his fingers trailing down the line of her neck and over her bare shoulders. “I’d love to think I could make you blush, Rosalind.”
She gasped, her head popping up with a bounce of her hair to peep at him over her crisscrossed arms. “You want to make me all squirmy and pink?” she accused. “You like when I am beside myself with awkwardness, you wicked man?”
He nodded, still smiling widely, and leaned forward to capture her lips with his. “I do,” he confessed. “Very, very much.”
“Hm,” she said, feigning a pout as he drew back onto the pillow to watch her, propping an arm behind his head. “You are only lucky I am currently hobbled, else I would flee in outrage at this admission.”
“You are, aren’t you?” he said, raising one dark brow. “It does make one wonder how you might move about when you are fully healed, someday soon.”
She sniffed. “I will be harder to catch.”
“Oh? That suggests you will require a chase. How very intriguing.”
She did blush then, nuzzling her face back into the crook of her arms until only her eyes remained above them, watching her husband as he chuckled at her from his backrest of pillows. She wondered if he truly would chase her about the house like a randy pursuant.
She thought she might enjoy it if he did.
And what might he do when he caught her? Because of course, Rosalind would not try very hard to win such a race.
That thought burned its way from her cheeks into her scalp and made her duck the remainder of her face behind her arms, leading to his chest shaking with the force of his increased laughter and demands to know what was going on in her sweet little mind while she shook her head and refused to leave the sanctuary of her elbow fortress.
She wondered at how she could still feel shy around him after how they had passed the last many hours together. She wondered, in fact, if it had actually made her a sight more bashful in some ways, now that he’d drawn out of her a side she herself had never even encountered before.
The thought occurred to her over and over again as they dressed, plucking at one another’s garments, assisting in lacing and buttoning, giggling and kissing and getting distracted.
One moment, she’d have no reservations at all about showing him the whole of herself, and the next she’d remember who he was outside of this room and feel like she could never look him in the eye again.
Though, of course, remembering who he was outside this room arose visions of him at the lectern and in those robes and speaking in that deep, authoritative vicar voice, and … well, that just looped things right back to the beginning of the confusion, didn’t it?
“Do you want to come with me to the church today?” he asked her as he tightened the laces at the back of her bodice. “I can show you where the old Sunday-school things are.”
“Oh, I do want to do that,” she said, turning her head and blinking, “but I was hoping to visit the clinic today, now that I can walk a little better. Would you mind?”
“Mind?” he exclaimed, dropping the laces and spinning her around to face him. “Rosalind, that is wonderful news! Do you want me to come with you? I could put off my business downstairs for a day.”
“No, no, of course you shouldn’t,” she said, a little breathless, a little dizzy with how close he was, even still. “But we can pick a day once I’ve settled back into my tally classes and I can show you my classroom, if you’d enjoy that.”
He gazed at her, a gentle smile on his face that almost ached to behold, and opened his mouth to say something in response that was interrupted by a rap at the door downstairs.
He immediately sighed in annoyance. “Now, who could that be?” he tutted, squeezing her arm as he stepped around her to peer out the bedroom window down onto the garden. “If it’s finally the bishop after all this time, I shall be very cross.”
“Oh,” she said, eyes wide as she reached up to clutch at the fabric over her heart. “Is it? Is it the bishop?”
He shook his head. “No. Looks like a ginger lad. Are you expecting someone?”
She giggled, pressing a hand to her lips. “It’s Mr. Barnett,” she said. “The journalist. No, do not be vexed; we told him to come back. Let me speak with him.”
He turned and frowned at her, his curls gone into glowing relief as he was haloed by the sunlight in the window. “Are you certain that is wise?”
“Well, no,” she said, returning his frown. “I’m afraid wisdom is not one of my particular virtues, but I do not think it is dangerous. He literally had his hat in his hand when last I spoke to him.”
Matthew drew a breath in through his nose and gave a curt nod. “All right,” he said. “I trust you to handle him, but if you need me, do not hesitate to call out. I shall boot him back out without hesitation if necessary.”
She pressed her lips together and nodded. “I will, Matthew.”
“And Rosalind?” he said as she turned toward the door.
She paused, glancing back at him. “Yes?”
He grinned at her. “I hope you’re distracted all day thinking about what we did all night.”
“Oh!” she said, half squeaking as she blinked and stumbled the rest of the way out of the room, certain she was glowing like a pink beacon all the way down the stairs. “Oh,” she said again, just to herself, on the way.
Mr. Barnett was waiting by the door very patiently, as though he had anticipated the people behind it having a lengthy conversation between knocking and answering. When Rosalind pulled it open, he brightened immediately, straightening his posture and taking a step forward.
“Mrs. Everly!” he said. “I had hoped it would be you that answered.”
“And not my friend?” she guessed, giving him a little smile. “Do not worry, Lady Aster is not here today. I, however, am on my way out. If you wish to chat, you will need to walk with me. Is that amenable?”
She blinked a little harder than usual as she stepped onto the lawn, pleased and more than a little surprised with how smoothly and assertively all those words had just left her mouth.
If it surprised Mr. Barnett as well, he did not show it, instead scrambling to fall into step with her as though she were speedy even with her slight limp.
“I didn’t bring a gift per se,” he said quickly, cramming his hat back onto his auburn head.
“I don’t really have the means to buy one in the traditional sense, but I thought perhaps a gesture would do?
I don’t know how to apologize, really, other than to offer to write something better.
Nothing I’ve written has ever mattered before, and I didn’t think it would this time either. ”
She stopped, letting him unlatch the gate and open it for her so she could step through, nodding in gratitude for the gentlemanly gesture. “Even if it had not mattered,” she said thoughtfully, “it still would have been a little unkind.”
He flushed. “Yes. That is fair. But I was sent to cover the picnic, and madam, I am trying to be a journalist, you know. If I had witnessed the whole affair and not mentioned the part everyone left talking about, what sort of newspaperman would that make me?”
She glanced at him and shrugged. “I couldn’t say,” she answered.
He heaved a big breath and nodded. “It wasn’t me that wrote about that business with the ice pack, though,” he told her.
“Miss Manners was me. The fig pun was me. I even did the sketch. All that was me, and I take responsibility, but I didn’t write the other bit.
That was published the next day after a gentleman came to the Chronicle and reported it at the desk.
I don’t know who it was, just that he was someone fancy. ”
“That would have been Lord Keaton,” she said mildly, “the gentleman who donated the statue. He was the one who walked in on the scene and took umbrage with it. I am not surprised. He was the one who made that rude comment about you at the service on Sunday.”
“Oh,” said Mr. Barnett. “Him.”
She nodded. “I am having his statue repaired. I can only hope it will soothe his temper, but I do not think he will ever be fond of me, either way. We are turning here.”
“Perhaps you are risking further trouble by being seen with me,” the young man said, hesitating at the corner of the block with a frown. “He is right. I am a Jew.”
“Mr. Barnett, several of my dearest friends share your faith and heritage. You witnessed that yourself at the picnic in question,” Rosalind said shrilly, color rising in her cheeks at the implication of such a thing. “Now do keep up.”
“Oh,” he said, scuttling after her. “Right.”
“I myself am not Anglican,” she continued, frowning. “Which is another reason for Lord Keaton to disapprove of me, and another reason why you drawing so much attention to who and what I am might cause my husband trouble with his bishop and the powers of the Anglican church.”
“You aren’t?” he balked. “What are you?”
She shot him a look that made him immediately color and stammer out an apology, which then followed the next handful of blocks in silence.
It wasn’t until they had crossed into the poorer part of Clerkenwell that the lad seemed to develop a curiosity about their destination, his head whipping this way and that in bafflement of their changing surroundings.
“We’re going to the clinic,” she told him. “Have you not visited? I was under the impression you knew quite a bit about it.”
“I only read the registry papers before the picnic,” he admitted, weaving out of the way as a young girl chased a cat directly into his path, followed by an unamused cry from her father. “It’s here?”
“Yes,” said Rosalind. “It’s built on the site where a tenement collapsed some years ago, originally for the express purpose of treating those who were injured in the event. Perhaps it will do you good to see it.”
“Oh, I wondered why it was surrounded by flats,” he said, sounding as though he’d just found the cheese in a mousetrap. “That makes sense!”
She smiled despite herself and guided him across the street.
“Miss Manners!” called a man standing in front of the clinic. “She returns! How’s the limp, love?”
Rosalind grimaced, glancing at Mr. Barnett, who looked very much like he wanted to dive under a rock.
“Did you walk all the way here?” the man cried. “Who’s that gent with you? Couldn’t spring for a hackney, lad?”
She tapped him on the arm and nodded to the side of the building where a second entrance would allow them to avoid the man, and they quickly ducked in, chased by calls bidding her not to run away and to come have a chat.
“Oh, God,” said Mr. Barnett. “Oh, God.”
“Just in here, please,” she said to him, ushering him inside.
He grimaced, turning back to her and wringing his hands. “He’s right, you know. I ought to have offered to get us a coach. You must be awfully sore.”
Rosalind blinked, a bit of color rising to her cheeks as she shifted her weight from her bad leg to her good one. She was, in fact, a little sore. But not from her bruise.
She cleared her throat and averted her eyes.
“Rosalind!” called a raspy old voice from the main door. “It is you! I thought they were chasing another lookalike!”
Rosalind sighed and shook her head, approaching the elderly man who was chuckling at her predicament from a chair by the main entrance with her hands on her hips. “That isn’t funny, Dr. Casper.”
“It is a little funny,” he returned, grinning at her. “Good to see you back, girl.”
“Oh, I hope so,” she said with a little smile. “I hope I haven’t caused too much trouble in my absence.”
“You caused a lot of trouble,” he immediately countered. “But I wouldn’t say it was too much. Who’s your friend?”
She blinked, turning to find Mr. Barnett gazing with fascinated disgust at a woman with a broken wrist waiting to be seen. She seemed to be past the point of pain and was holding her arm up with the broken bit dangling down in front of her while her mind wandered.
Rosalind cleared her throat to get him to snap back around to attention. “This is Ezra Barnett, of the Morning Chronicle,” she said. “He has come to observe our good works.”
“I see he’s already gotten started on the observing,” Dr. Casper said with a chortle. “Do you need a bucket, lad?”
“A bucket?” he repeated uneasily.
“For your breakfast,” Dr. Casper said.
“I already had brea—” Mr. Barnett began, then, looking a bit green, he paused and said, “Oh. You mean its return.”
Dr. Casper laughed heartily.
Mr. Barnett did not.
“This is the Dr. Casper you inquired about that day at the picnic,” Rosalind said, gesturing at the old man, who smiled widely, showing his several missing teeth and running an arthritic hand over his sparse white hair. “Mae, our healer, is his granddaughter.”
“Oh, right,” he said, blinking. “Yes, she mentioned you. I didn’t expect … erm …”
“A white chap?” Dr. Casper guessed. “Neither did her grandmother, eh, lad? Ho ho.”
“All right, that’s enough,” said Rosalind with a little smile. “Mr. Barnett is trying, much like I often am. He is here to make it right. Do you wish to see my classroom, Mr. Barnett?”
“Oh, you mustn’t go up there while Lady Aster is lashing the locals,” the doctor said, raising his bushy eyebrows. “Wait for the bell. In the meantime, maybe show him the nursery or the cots. Little Miss Lazarus is upstairs with the little ones, and Mae will be out to see her next patient soon.”
Rosalind blinked. “Oh. I didn’t realize Vix would be taking a class so early in the day. All right. Which would you prefer, Mr. Barnett? The infirmary or the nursery?”
“Nursery?” he said, blinking. “Babies?”
“Not infants, no,” said Rosalind. “Just too young to be trusted on the main floor. Have you had the little pox, Mr. Barnett?”
“The … the what?”
Dr. Casper was chuckling. “Maybe start him with Mae.”
Rosalind turned to Ezra Barnett and gave him what she hoped was a reassuring look. “Now would be the time to turn back if you do not wish to continue, Mr. Barnett. But if you stay, I think getting a full accounting of our clinic and perhaps writing on it might be very good penance indeed.”
“Penance,” he said, looking a little green around the gills. “That is what I agreed to. Isn’t it?”