Chapter 10 Jealousy and Pride
Heartbreak, I am learning, is excellent for productivity.
It is terrible for sleep, appetite, patience, and basic human decency, but if one needs to avoid thinking about a duke marrying a woman with perfect cheekbones and the emotional warmth of a silver fish knife, heartbreak will absolutely get one through a morning of medical consultations.
I spend the next week working.
Not thinking. Not feeling. Working.
Lady Markham’s daughter sits in my borrowed parlor with a hot brick wrapped in flannel pressed to her abdomen and looks at me as if I have personally invented mercy.
“You mean I need not simply endure it?” she asks.
“Endurance is not a treatment,” I say.
Lady Markham makes a satisfied sound. “I knew it.”
Mrs. Davies arrives next, still pink with embarrassment, and informs me that the “unpleasantness in the passing of water” has improved since she stopped replacing water with port. This announcement is delivered in the tone of a woman confessing treason.
“Excellent,” I say. “Continue drinking clean water.”
“But not too much?”
“Your body is not a houseplant. You may have more than a sprinkle.”
Beatrice, sitting in the corner with embroidery she never embroiders, makes a strangled noise and bends over her hoop.
By noon, I have explained handwashing to three ladies, clean linens to two maids, and basic anatomy to a viscountess who looks so horrified by the existence of her own bladder that I briefly worry she may disown it.
“Surely,” Lady Henderson whispers, “one need not speak of these parts directly.”
“One may speak in riddles,” I say, “but the kidneys will not solve them.”
Beatrice gives up pretending to embroider and presses a hand over her mouth.
It should be funny.
It is funny.
It is also the only thing keeping me from walking to the library, finding the wedding announcement, and setting it on fire with one of Mrs. Finch’s good tapers.
I have not seen James since the day I returned from Kent.
That is not an accident.
He dines at his club. He calls on his steward. He attends meetings in rooms where I am not. When we pass in the corridor, we are perfectly polite, which is to say we are both behaving like idiots with excellent posture.
Weston calls twice.
The first time, he brings a book on anatomy printed in Paris and pretends it is not courtship. The second, he brings oranges from his conservatory and pretends that is also not courtship. He does not press for an answer. He is charming, thoughtful, and careful with my silence.
Naturally, London decides we are all but engaged.
The rumor arrives at Lady Sefton’s musicale before I do.
I attend because Beatrice insists hiding looks guilty, and Mrs. Finch insists refusing looks rude, and I insist all of society could benefit from a quarantine period. No one listens to the woman with medical training. A theme.
The room is hot with candles and smugness. Music tinkles from a pianoforte. Ladies murmur behind fans. Gentlemen stand in clusters and pretend not to listen.
Then James enters with Lady Victoria on his arm.
My lungs forget their profession.
Victoria is radiant in white silk, which feels aggressive. James is immaculate and distant, every inch the duke who has announced his wedding and expects the world to behave accordingly.
His gaze finds me across the room.
For a heartbeat, the musicale disappears.
Then Lady Victoria touches his sleeve, and he looks away.
Wonderful. Excellent. Very healthy for my recovery.
Weston appears beside me as if summoned by my spike in blood pressure.
“Miss Hartford,” he says. “You look as though you are considering violence.”
“Only socially acceptable violence.”
“Poisoned ratafia?”
“Too slow.”
His smile flickers, but his eyes are kind. “Dance with me.”
“There is no dancing.”
“Then stand near me and allow them to think what they already think.”
I look at him. “That is not helping.”
“It is helping me,” he says mildly. “I am selfish.”
I almost smile. Almost.
Across the room, James watches us.
The next hour is an exercise in civilized torture. Lady Victoria passes close enough to exchange greetings, her curtsy flawless, her smile sharpened for private use.
“Miss Hartford,” she says. “How pleased we are to see you recovered. Kent must have agreed with you.”
There is no mistaking the insinuation.
“The patient survived,” I say. “I consider that agreeable.”
“And Lord Weston?” she asks, sweetly. “Has he survived your care as well?”
Weston bows. “Barely. Miss Hartford is merciless.”
Victoria’s eyes cool. “How fortunate you admire that quality.”
James says nothing.
His silence is worse than anything she could say.
Later, I find myself cornered near a table of untouched cakes while James approaches with the grim purpose of a man heading to the gallows.
“Miss Hartford.”
“Your Grace.”
We could cut glass with the formality.
His gaze flicks toward Weston, who is speaking with Lady Markham. “I understand congratulations may soon be in order.”
The words hit harder than I expect.
Of course he thinks that. Of course London thinks that. Weston offered me a life, and James offered me six weeks until he belongs to someone else.
“Do you?” I ask.
His jaw tightens. “Is the rumor false?”
“Is your wedding announcement false?”
His eyes flash.
“That is different,” he says.
I laugh once, quietly. “Yes. Yours came on better paper.”
Pain crosses his face so quickly I almost miss it.
Then Lady Victoria calls his name, and duty pulls him like a chain.
He bows. “Miss Hartford.”
“Your Grace.”
He walks away.
My chest feels like someone has taken a scalpel to it and neglected to sew me closed.
* * *
Kitty finds me two days later behind Ashbourne House, where deliveries enter and respectable people pretend food appears by magic.
I am returning from a consultation with Lady Pemberton’s maid, accompanied by Molly and carrying a basket full of clean cloths. The alley smells of wet straw and cabbage and horse dung.
“Didn’t think you’d remember me,” a voice says.
I turn.
Kitty leans against the wall in a brown dress too thin for the weather, cap pulled low, eyes as sharp as the day she handed me bread in a watch-house. She looks smaller in daylight. Younger. More breakable.
My heart gives a painful little twist. “Kitty.”
Her mouth curves, but it is not a smile. “You did remember.”
“Of course I did.”
Her gaze drops to my gloves, my cloak, the basket. “Done well for yourself.”
Shame prickles under my skin. “Not as well as it looks.”
“Never is.” She pushes off the wall, and I see the panic beneath the swagger. “My brother’s sick.”
Everything in me narrows. “What symptoms?”
Kitty blinks. She expected questions, maybe, but not that one first.
“Cough. Fever. Can’t breathe proper. Says his chest hurts.” Her voice cracks on the last word. She swallows it down immediately. “Doctor won’t come. Says we owe.”
Molly shifts nervously beside me. “Miss Hartford?”
I hand her the basket. “Take this inside.”
Molly’s eyes widen. “Mrs. Finch said you were to come straight in.”
“Mrs. Finch says many wise things.”
“Miss.”
I soften my voice. “Molly, please.”
She looks from me to Kitty and back again. Then, bless her, she takes the basket. “I’ll tell her you were delayed.”
“Tell her anything but the truth.”
“I am improving at that,” Molly mutters, and hurries inside.
Kitty watches her go. “You’ll come?”
“Yes.”
She looks away quickly, but not before I see relief hit her like a blow.
We walk fast.
Kitty leads me through streets that seem to fold in on themselves: narrow passages, courts that smell of smoke and standing water, stairs slick with things I choose not to identify. The city changes block by block. Mayfair’s polished cruelty becomes something rawer, hungrier.
“What’s his name?” I ask.
“Ned.”
“How old?”
“Fourteen.”
Fourteen. A child, then. A boy who should be complaining about chores, not fighting for air in a room no physician will enter.
Ned lies on a mattress beneath a sloping roof, cheeks flushed, lips pale, breath coming in shallow pulls that rattle wetly at the edges. The room is freezing. A cracked cup sits beside him. Someone has hung a charm of red thread over the bed.
I kneel and press my fingers to his wrist.
Fast pulse. Hot skin. Cough, chest pain, shortness of breath.
Pneumonia, most likely. Could be pleurisy. Could be consumption, though the onset sounds too sudden. In my world, I would order a chest X-ray, oxygen, antibiotics.
In this world, I have steam, positioning, fluids, warmth, and the audacity to hope.
“Ned,” I say. “I’m Emma.”
His eyes open a slit. “The fancy one?”
Kitty snorts despite herself. “That’s her.”
“Rude,” I say. “Accurate, but rude.”
I get him propped upright with folded blankets. I send Kitty for hot water and whatever clean cloth exists in the building. I make Ned sip slowly. I listen to his chest by pressing my ear to his back through his shirt and try not to think about stethoscopes.
The left lower lung is worse. Crackles. Reduced breath. Fever burning through him.
“Can you cure him?” Kitty asks.
No.
Maybe.
Not enough.
“I can help him breathe,” I say. “And I can tell you what to watch for.”
Kitty’s face closes. She knows the shape of an answer that is not an answer.
I work until the room steams and Ned’s breathing eases by degrees. Not fixed. Better. Sometimes better is the only bridge between now and morning.
That is when James arrives.
He fills the doorway like a verdict.
No coat. Hat in hand. Face set in a fury so controlled it is almost quiet.
Kitty goes still. Ned coughs. I close my eyes.
“How did you find me?” I ask.
“Molly is a poor liar,” he says.
“I asked her to improve.”
“Emma.”
There is too much in my name. Fear. Anger. The echo of a kiss neither of us has earned the right to remember.
I stand, wiping my hands on a cloth. “Not here.”
James looks at Ned. His fury shifts. Not vanishes. Shifts into something with edges.
“What does he need?”
That disarms me more than shouting would have.
“Coal,” I say. “Blankets. Broth. Clean water. Someone to sit with him through the night.”