Chapter 20
W
“We keep our misery to ourselves. We keep our misery to ourselves. We keep our misery to ourselves. No one with loved ones ever suffers alone.”
The day passed in a haze. True to his word, David kept Julia away from my room and saw to Mama’s care, telling me she looked better than I did because he knew I wasn’t the kind of wife or daughter who would want to hear anything else.
Despite telling me he’d have Mrs. Ward or Maren care for me, he tended to all but my most private needs himself.
I was no longer chilled or feverish, but the illness had taken a toll, and my body was weak.
I slept on and off throughout the morning, and sometime in the afternoon, David knocked on the door and brought Dr. Clarke into my room.
The doctor’s dark-brown eyes assessed me from the moment he walked in.
He strode to the chair David had set next to my bed and sat down.
He gave me a stern look that wasn’t meant to be threatening, and his eyebrows lay low on his forehead.
“I was hoping our next visit would happen because David invited me to dine.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
He shook his head and placed a hand on my head. “You don’t have to apologize to me. I do, however, hope you will use your influence over your husband and force him to entertain company every once in a while. It would do you and his sister good.”
I could see why he was a close friend of the family.
Julia and David were naturally closed off—Julia, perhaps, more than David.
It would take this kind of gruff assertiveness to break through some of their walls.
“We would love to have you come, wouldn’t we, David?
” I ended David’s name with a cough, which shook my body, but it was over quickly enough.
“It isn’t company she needs now,” David said, his voice heavier than Dr. Clarke’s. “She needs a doctor.”
Dr. Clarke turned in the chair to send back a retort, but the look on David’s face must have stopped him.
Even cleaned up as he was, dark circles ringed his eyes, and lines creased his forehead.
Had David slept at all the night before?
My lips pulled up in a tired smile. Perhaps if I were sick often enough, he would age faster, and my lack of youth wouldn’t feel like such a stark contrast between us.
Although being sick often would age me as well.
Dr. Clarke leaned forward and placed a hand on my head. With a nod, he pulled his stethoscope from his bag. “May I?” he asked, pointing to the quilt that covered me up to my neck. I nodded without glancing up at David. He pulled back the quilt and the linen underneath it.
Maren had helped me put a nightdress over my chemise earlier, so my collarbones and shoulders were no longer exposed.
Dr. Clarke placed the cold metal of his stethoscope over the thin material on my chest. “Will you take a deep breath?”
I’d seen him do the same with Mama only the day before, and his mannerisms were no different with me than they had been with her, but my cheeks warmed knowing David watched the exchange.
I hoped there was nothing in my heartbeat or rise and fall of my chest that would alert the kind doctor to my embarrassment, as it had nothing to do with him.
After several breaths, he straightened, pulled my covering back over me, and put his stethoscope back in his bag.
“I believe the worst of this sickness has already passed. I was fairly certain of that fact the moment I set eyes on you. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been quite so casual in my remarks. ” He sent those last words to David.
I let my gaze go to my husband. His face was tight, and if he was at all affected by the sight of me in my nightclothes, he didn’t show it. Not like he had when I’d surprised him by removing my blankets in the dark.
David nodded at Dr. Clarke, and it seemed that would be his only acknowledgment of the doctor’s apology.
Dr. Clarke leaned back in the chair. “You look well, and your color is good. How are you feeling?”
“Much better than yesterday. However, I’m fatigued. I spent the morning sleeping, and now when I try to stand, I feel faint.”
Dr. Clarke nodded. “That is most likely an aftereffect of the fever, but if you had any of those troubles before falling ill, it could be a sign of being with child. Have you had any other signs? Have your courses remained normal?”
I shifted uncomfortably in the bed. If I’d thought having David in the room when Dr. Clarke listened to my heart was embarrassing, this was much worse. “Yes.”
“Yes, your courses are normal? Or yes, you’ve had other signs of being with child?”
I couldn’t help it. My eyes flashed to David’s. His face was unreadable, but his chest was as still as if he’d stopped breathing. I thought he would glance away as he had earlier, but his eyes held mine until I looked back to Dr. Clarke. “We haven’t even been married two weeks.”
Dr. Clarke raised a shoulder. “For some, that is enough. And . . .” Now it was his turn to glance at David. “Forgive me, David, and even more so, Mrs. Tate. I am asking this only as your doctor. But your marriage was quite rushed.”
David was stone. I shook my head vigorously, remembering too late the extent of my headache. “We had other reasons. Not . . . I’m not . . .”
“James.” David’s voice was icy and hard.
Dr. Clarke most definitely felt David’s rising indignation, but he shrugged it away. “I’m a doctor, not a priest,” he said, unrepentant. “I don’t make judgments, but I need information in order to care for your wife. If she was with child, we would want to take extra care with this sickness.”
David’s dark-blue eyes shifted to a steely gray. “You are a friend who should know me well enough not to feel the need to ask that question.”
“I was asking Mrs. Tate,” Dr. Clarke said, his voice adopting the icy tone of David’s. “Now it might be best if you go downstairs and order some tea for us before you think too hard about that statement, because once you do, I have no doubt I’ll end up with a broken nose.”
David went pale. His eyes found mine, and there was fury behind them. He gripped the doorknob as if it were the only thing stopping him from rushing his friend and laying him flat. “Are you insulting the virtue of my wife?”
“No.” Dr. Clarke was motionless. “I’m asking pertinent medical questions of a patient. And I know you well enough to know I do need to ask that question. If a woman came to you in trouble, you are just the type of man who would help her, no matter the cost.”
David grimaced. “My marriage with Anna has only given me joy and has cost me nothing. Thus far, it has been the happiest time of my life.”
If David were closer, I would reach out and try to calm him, but he was too far from me. If he’d said that a day ago, I wouldn’t have believed him. But his past had been a painful one, even if he’d hidden his pain well.
“You do know my husband,” I said softly.
Dr. Clarke had taken one look at me and our hasty marriage and had known David was hiding something.
I’d warned him people wouldn’t believe he was in love with me, and my prediction had quickly come true.
We’d needed only a true friend to see it.
“He is exactly the type of man who would help a woman in need.” I caught David’s eye and braced myself for the words that were about to leave my lips.
They were true, but he wouldn’t believe them, which made me braver than I could have ever been otherwise.
“It is one of the many reasons I fell in love with him.” Some of David’s bluster faded at my words, and his eyes slid from Dr. Clarke to me.
“But I am as certain as a woman who has only been married a short while can be that I’m not with child. My sickness is only from the fever.”
Dr. Clarke nodded as if I’d answered a question as simple as when I’d had my last meal and not one that had caused turmoil in both my and David’s hearts. He made a quick note in his journal.
The muscles in David’s hand twitched over the doorknob, neither opening the door to leave nor stepping deeper inside the room.
His eyes were still stormy. I’d never seen him angry before, but I didn’t think the emotion in them was anger.
It was something else—something I couldn’t understand.
I wasn’t certain he understood it either.
It was a strange thing to be married to a person to whom you were not a true spouse.
We both seemed to be feeling that strangeness at the moment.
I curled my lips up in a quick and, I hoped, unaffected smile. “Tea?” I asked, reminding him of Dr. Clarke’s suggestion.
David took a deep breath, gave me a curt nod, and left the room.
Dr. Clarke asked me a few more questions about my health, without referencing anything that had just passed, before he closed his journal and placed it back in his bag. “I think you will be feeling much better by tomorrow, Mrs. Tate.”
I nodded, still not used to the name. “Thank you, Doctor. May I ask you one question?”
Dr. Clarke stilled. He’d been unflappable while David had been in the room, asking me every sort of question without fear, but I saw the slightest bit of concern edge his eyes now.
He would keep my questions secret from David if I asked it of him—I could feel that—but he wouldn’t like it.
“It is not about my health but about David’s. ”
He visibly relaxed. “I’ll answer anything I don’t feel would betray his confidence.”
“He said you knew about his . . .” I paused. I didn’t even know for certain what the marks were. “The circles on his skin.”
Dr. Clarke’s eye’s narrowed, focusing his strong gaze on me. “Yes,” he said carefully.
He didn’t elaborate, and suddenly, I was at a loss as to what exactly I had the right to ask.
David had told me little, other than the fact that they were an affliction he had suffered from as a child.
What right did I have to any more information than he’d given me?
A wife had a right to know some things, didn’t she?
I scrambled to come up with a reason, and the most obvious was one Dr. Clarke had already mentioned.
My stomach turned at the thought of using my position as wife to glean more information about David, but I also didn’t want to bring up the subject with him again if it would cause him pain.
“Is his condition hereditary? Will our . . . ?” I struggled not to stumble on the word. “. . . children suffer as he did?”
The stiffness in Dr. Clarke’s spine softened, and his eyes grew tender, even as a question seemed to form in his mind. “No. They will not.”
“Are you certain?”
“I’m very certain.”
“What are they? Those marks?” I asked quietly. It was a question I shouldn’t be asking.
“He hasn’t told you?”
“No.”
Dr. Clarke took my hand in his. “Then I cannot tell you either. I’m sorry.”
“Was he very sick?” My voice shook. I couldn’t get the image of all those marks on his chest out of my mind.
“Your husband was often in pain as a child. My father helped him as much as he could, but he wished he could do more. Be patient with him. Even a man as kind as David has his pride.”
I furrowed my eyebrows, not sure why David’s pride was once again being mentioned, nor could I understand how it could have anything to do with a sickness in his youth.
I could see from the sharp edge of Dr. Clarke’s jaw that he would rather not continue speaking on the subject, and marriage notwithstanding, I didn’t have a real claim to know David’s most personal history.
It was only by chance I knew of it at all.
Until David was ready to tell me himself, I needed to put it out of my mind. That sickness I’d felt in my stomach before asking Dr. Clarke had been a warning. Mentioning those marks to anyone else would be a betrayal. I was fortunate Dr. Clarke was a more loyal friend to David than I had been.