Chapter 13
Two days later, she and Stephen stood in the bedroom of one Mrs. Edgar. The woman had been ill for a week, and her husband had called that morning, stating she wasn’t feeling any better.
“Step back, Vera,” Stephen murmured from the other side of the room.
Vera laid a damp cloth over Mrs. Edgar’s forehead and pulled the blanket up to her chin. The poor woman was burning up, but still she shivered.
“Get back, Vera!”
Her gaze snapped to Stephen’s, her face twisted in fury.
She thought they’d gotten past this point, with the apology he’d given the night of her birthday.
They’d both been exceedingly, cautiously polite to each other ever since.
Vera was just getting to the point where she no longer tensed when he entered a room.
But now this. How dare he yell at her in such a way—especially in front of other people? She might be his assistant, but she was still—
Vomit splattered the front of her apron and her shoes. Vera stared down with wide eyes, even as Stephen gently gripped her and firmly pulled her out of range of the second wave of Mrs. Edgar’s retching.
“Go and get yourself cleaned up,” he said, already stooping to throw rags over the dampness on the floor. He set a wide basin on top of the towels. “I’ll take care of this. Ask Hortense to bring tea and some weak broth once she’s finished helping you.”
Dumbly, she did as Stephen said, holding the edges of her apron so the mess didn’t drip onto the floor as she walked.
It was all Vera could do not to be sick. She kept her round eyes straight ahead, praying that Hortense wasn’t the kind to be squeamish. Vera’s own stomach roiled within her. She kept swallowing hard, all the way down the hall, where she backed through the swinging door into the kitchen.
Hortense glanced at her over her shoulder, then looked again. “Oh dear.”
She hurried to pluck at the bows holding Vera’s apron in place.
“My shoes,” Vera lamented in a small voice.
“Follow me.” Hortense stripped the apron and bundled it so all of the mess was contained, then led the way out the back door.
Vera waited in a daze while the maid cranked the squeaky handle on the well.
A full bucket appeared, and Hortense tossed it over the apron that she’d hung on the empty clothesline.
“It’s not perfect, but it’s a start,” she said. Then she released the bucket down the well once more and went inside to grab a rag and soap.
It took no time at all for Vera to be set to rights. She was exceedingly lucky—none of the mess had sullied her dress or her hands. Hortense sent her walking through the tall grass at the edge of the garden to clean her boots, then wiped the remainder of the mess with a damp rag.
“Occupational hazard, I suppose,” Hortense finally said when she was finished.
Vera could do little more than offer a weak smile and an insufficient thank you. She didn’t know what she would have done without Hortense’s help—most likely stayed frozen in her ruined state. At least she hadn’t compounded the matter by being sick, too.
Hortense went to deliver the requested broth, leaving Vera in the kitchen with a strong cup of tea and her own self-berating thoughts.
She should be the nurse, not me. She deals with this sort of thing so much better than I do.
How on earth was she going to earn a reference if she couldn’t stay in the room long enough to do her job?
The only thing she seemed naturally good at was tending the herbs in the greenhouse, but those were herbs.
She could probably neglect them altogether and they’d do just as well.
They grew under almost any conditions—they were very nearly weeds.
Vera sipped her tea and straightened her shoulders. She shouldn’t expect to be good at assisting Stephen just yet. It was probably like everything else—it took time, patience, and practice.
At the thought, Vera gulped the last of her strong tea and retrieved a fresh apron from the basket. She would learn to deal with sickness with the kind of strength and calm that Stephen showed.
Even if she had to be thrown up on a hundred times.
In the end, she was able to avoid being hit again. Mrs. Edgar’s stomach calmed enough to sip the broth, and when they left, she was sipping peppermint tea and looking a bit less pale.
“Idiot man,” Stephen groused, steering the cart over a bridge. “Feeding her peppered mutton stew while she’s ill.”
Vera shook her head. “He probably didn’t know any better.”
He made a derisive sound in his throat. “Hopefully, we won’t have to return. If he follows instructions, that is.”
“I’m sure he will. He certainly looked sheepish when you told him the reason she hadn’t gotten any better.”
“Sheepish.” He huffed a laugh. “It’s a clever pun, considering.”
“I’m…I’m sorry for before. For getting in the way.”
He lifted a shoulder and smiled. “You’ll learn. Hopefully you’ll learn faster than I did—I think I got in the way of a sick patient a dozen times before I learned the telltale signs.”
Vera nodded and watched the greenery go past.
“Do you enjoy it, though? The work, I mean.”
“I think it’s too soon to tell.”
“Perhaps I shouldn’t have asked you on a day when someone was ill upon your shoes.”
She grimaced. “Please don’t remind me. They’re going to need to be polished.”
“Leave them outside your door and I’ll see that it’s done.”
“Thank you,” she said stiffly.
Vera didn’t know how to handle his kindness—it flew in the face of who she’d convinced herself he was.
After a few moments of silence, she asked, “Why did you become a physician?”
He lifted a shoulder. “I wanted to be useful. I know that some gentlemen find the same kind of satisfaction in the management of their estates, but I prefer to be closer to someone when I help. I wanted to make a tangible difference—not just a general, nebulous kind.”
Vera twisted her lips, remembering the harsh words she’d delivered about how he’d neglected his duties as a lord.
Apparently, his own thoughts had wandered down the same lane, as he cleared his throat and said, “I’ve taken over the financials of the estate. You were right—my mother shouldn’t have borne that burden alone all these years.”
“I shouldn’t have—”
“None of that.” He frowned. “I hope that you won’t start withholding truth from me just because we’ve come to a tentative politeness.”
“Pardon?”
“We can be both—honest and polite. I shouldn’t want a polite, dishonest relationship. You said things that I needed to hear. Though you said them harshly, I’m still glad you said them.”
She blinked. “You are?”
He peered down at her. Whatever he saw on her face had him lifting his eyebrows, even as he returned his attention to the road.
“My mother and I are very similar in some ways. Neither of us care for society as a whole, but for completely different reasons. She avoids them because she thinks the lot of them are judgemental nitwits. I avoid them because I detest maintaining the dozens of shallow or false relationships being part of society requires.”
Vera thought about this for several moments as she watched the fields pass.
The landscape was changing rapidly—the leaves were turning in earnest now, as if overnight, all the greenery had received a silent signal.
Mornings had the sharp edge of a chill concealed within their misty cloaks. Fall was here.
Stephen quirked a smile and added, “I’d much rather us be true friends who are honest with each other than false friends who never move past shallow politeness.”
Later that afternoon, Vera roamed the gardens with Benjamin, listening to him chatter about his day.
“…and Hamish is going to take me fishing tomorrow, can you believe it?”
“How lovely. You should ask your brother to go along with you.”
She aimed her footsteps toward the greenhouse. She wanted to see if any of the plants had that special line of green at the edges of their leaves yet that spoke of growth. She knew it was probably too early to expect anything of the sort, but she still hoped.
Her thoughts were so consumed with the herbs that it took her a moment to realize that Benjamin was silent, that he hadn’t offered an answer.
Vera came to a stop on the garden path and arched an eyebrow. “Benjamin?”
There was a stubborn jut to his lower lip. “I just don’t think he likes me.”
“Whyever not?”
“He’s always snapping at me.”
“Always?” She lifted the other eyebrow to join the first. “When did he last snap at you?”
“At your birthday party, and it was in front of everyone.”
“You set a hedgehog loose on the dinner table in front of guests.”
“It didn’t bother you.” His words were rebellion, but he jabbed the toe of his boot into the divot between two cobblestones and wouldn’t meet her eyes.
“I’m used to Sheldon, but the other ladies aren’t, and you know better than to do that. So why did you?”
His frown grew; he stared at the earth. Vera had two brothers—one older, one younger. She knew when to wait.
“Fine,” he relented, kicking the earth once more. “I wanted to ruin his dinner party, all right? I did it on purpose.”
“His dinner party?”
“It was his idea. To have all those people over.”
This was information worth inspecting. Vera tucked it away for the future, when she was alone.
“Why would you want to ruin his party?”
His party for you, a small voice within reminded her. She shushed it and focused her attention on Benjamin.
“Because. Because I’m angry at him.” His face grew red; his eyes screwed up at the admission.
Vera put a hand on his shoulder and rubbed it. “Why?”
“He left us. And we were all right. But now he wants to come back and pretend that he was never gone in the first place, that he’s been here the whole time. And he wasn’t.”
“You missed him.”
“No.” But the answer came too swiftly to be anything but a lie.
“It’s all right to miss people, Benjamin. It means you care for them.”
“He didn’t care for us, or he would have come home.”
“That isn’t true, Benjamin,” a deep voice said as Stephen emerged from behind a hedge.
Stephen found Vera later. She sat on one of the sofas that faced each other in the library, reading a book.
At his approach, she hurriedly closed the novel and tucked it against her side, flipping her skirt to cover it.
It was one of Candace’s gothic romances—all sweeping misty moor and brooding hero.
This one was highly irritating—Vera didn’t know why she kept reading it. She wanted to shake both of the main characters and plead with them to have a single, honest conversation before she had an apoplexy.
There was a hint of suspicion—there and gone—on Stephen’s face as he slumped onto the facing sofa. Vera dearly wanted to know how the conversation between him and Benjamin had gone, but she didn’t feel it was her place to ask.
She’d left them in the gardens immediately, only daring a single glance over her shoulder as she turned the corner. Stephen had his hand on the boy’s shoulder, speaking intently. Benjamin had swiped at his cheeks angrily.
“How long were you lurking behind the hedge?” she finally asked when it became clear that Stephen wasn’t going to start.
“It wasn’t my fault—I was checking on the mint. I heard what Benjamin was saying. I couldn’t help but intervene.”
“Was I not doing a good enough job?” she asked tartly.
“His grievance was against me. You can hardly blame me for wanting to address it.”
“And?” It was all the curiosity she dared express.
He lifted an eyebrow. “I’ll be joining Hamish and Benjamin on their fishing trip tomorrow.”
“It’s a start, I suppose.”
“A start,” he agreed.
Stephen crossed his arms over his chest and stretched out his legs, crossing them at the ankle. Vera noted the little lines at the corners of his eyes. He looked exhausted. She was tired, too, and she hadn’t done nearly as much at the Edgar residence.
“We should go and visit Mr. Douglas the day after tomorrow,” he said lowly.
“All right.”
After a few moments, Stephen’s eyes slid closed.
With no one else in the room, Vera was able to study him as closely as she desired for the first time since they’d met.
She’d dared not do so before—those eyes of his were sharper than any hawk’s.
They seemed to note every flicker of expression, every slight frown she tried to hide.
Stephen was tall, she’d known that, of course, but his current posture—long legs out before him—only accentuated the fact. His arms weren’t as large as some men’s, but they were in proportion to the rest of him and well muscled, with a dusting of dark hair along the forearm.
His face eased into sleep, and she was struck by how much younger he looked when he was relaxed. Thank goodness for that calamity of a beard, or the effect might have been overwhelming against her determination to keep the man at a distance.
Suddenly she was irritated at him for wandering in and falling asleep on the sofa across from her own. Didn’t he have anywhere else to nap? It was distracting.
“Are you watching me sleep?” he murmured without opening his eyes.
Vera jerked. “What? No.”
He cracked one eye. “Are you certain?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” he said, closing his eyes once more. “Because that would be strange.”