Chapter 20
For the first time in many, many years—and certainly the first time in the history of the Clerkenwell Clinic—Mae Casper overslept.
Such was her dreamy complacency in the indulgence of sleep that it took a full five minutes of idle drifting in the beam of warm sunlight that fell across her bed before she realized that it indicated the time and she sprung out of the blankets in a panic.
There had been no time to consider breakfast or golden underthings or even to quip back at her grandmother, who made a comment about lovely evenings often keeping us awake very late as Mae sped past her on her way out the door.
She completely expected for the entire clinic to be in expectant disarray waiting for her, and for every solitary soul to have noticed her absence.
She was not certain if she was relieved or offended that, upon arrival, she found that this was not at all the case.
First, she encountered the workmen who were erecting the staircase, lined up below the looming frame of Thaddeus Beck as he shouted instructions down at them through the nails in his teeth, waving a hammer like a conductor’s baton.
She had to step around several neatly piled beams that would become steps by the end of the day to access the entrance, where Hannah Beck was leaning against the door, watching her husband with a sort of dazed fascination.
“Hannah!” Mae said, immediately flushing hot that extra attendees would bear witness to her tardiness. “I didn’t expect you today.”
“Oh, Mae,” said Hannah, blinking at her in an unfocused and casual manner. “I ought to go back to the Fox and continue my work, but I do so love watching him swing a hammer.”
“Right,” said Mae, and sidled around her, feeling lucky to have avoided notice.
“You,” she said, after passing the threshold, jabbing a finger in her grandfather’s direction as he lounged in his chair by the door. “You left me.”
“You were so peaceful,” he replied with a chortle, offering her a starched apron that he’d been keeping across his lap, presumably in wait for when she did eventually walk through the door. “It would’ve been a travesty to disturb such perfect slumber.”
“I’ll remember that,” she promised, snatching up the apron and dropping it on over her head. “Now where is—”
“Who’s done this to my forceps?!” Sally’s voice boomed from the back room. “Did someone birth a baby made of bloody granite?”
Mae sighed, looking over her shoulder. The forceps did have a little dent after that incident with the inspector, but she hadn’t thought …
“Next kid I catch is going to have a wobbly head, and whose fault will that be?!” Sally demanded to no one in particular.
“You could have asked me at any given time, Dinah!” Ezra’s frayed voice shouted, just as soon as Sally’s faded. “I don’t think you wanted it moved. I think you wanted to watch the workers flex their muscles a little more.”
“Oh, Ezra, we could fill a whole thimble with what you’ve thought,” Dinah snapped back, acerbic as can be.
It was Roland’s chuckle that brought her attention around to the other side of the room, where he was lingering against the staircase, watching her fumble with her apron ties.
He stepped forward without saying a word and took the strings from her, jerking them tightly around her waist and flipping them into a perfect little bow, which he drew tight, smiling down into her face while she stared up at him.
“What on earth is going on?” she managed, once he’d let the strings slide out of his fingers and had taken a step back. “Dr. Ravi should be on the floor.”
“Chalkboards arrived some time ago,” he explained, glancing upward to the classroom above the stairs. “Little Dinah Lazarus thought it would be a good idea to get the deliverymen to move the nursery supply closet, since they were here anyway, and dear Ezra took exception to that.”
On cue, two men in coveralls hurried down the stairs, exchanging wide-eyed glances as they looked for the door.
“You are the most inconsiderate, vain little girl,” Ezra was sputtering. “You think everyone around you is your plaything. Just a puppet to amuse yourself with.”
“If that were true,” she shot back, “I’d certainly make you far more amusing.”
Roland grinned. “Dr. Ravishing went up a moment ago to separate them but has thus far been unsuccessful.”
“This will need to be cleaned right away,” Ravi’s voice cut in, followed by his footfalls as he emerged back into the hallway. “Lot of dust and grime behind where it was in the first place.”
“Oh, Daniel, get your hands out of that!” Dinah squealed.
Mae sighed, leaning her head back, and moved to go up the stairs and deal with the matter directly.
Roland caught her wrist at the first step, just lightly, to make her turn back.
“You didn’t wear it,” he observed, his eyes scanning her form.
She gave him a quirk of her lips, pulling her wrist free with a slide of her fingers against his own. “Is that what you think?” she returned, and turned to bustle up the stairs.
She reached the top just as Dinah pushed past her in a fluster. “Morning, Mae!” she cried. “Brooms are in the kitchenette? We need brooms!”
Mae nodded, stepping aside, and rounded the corner to find a little boy of toddling age blinking up at her, covered in caked oatmeal paste over his chicken pox and streaked with grime. He extended his hand and opened it, revealing a tiny white object in the palm.
“Oh, Daniel, what have you got there, friend?!” Ravi called, bustling over with Ezra in tow.
“Oh, heavens,” said Ezra, looking a little green as he bent and plucked the little white bead from the boy’s hand and presented it to Ravi. “I think it’s a frog.”
Mae blinked, leaning closer.
Indeed. Apparently they had missed a frog’s head during that particular act of vandalism, and now all that remained with this tiny, shiny white skull.
Ravi took it from Ezra and held it on the tip of his finger, his lips twitching. “Alas, poor Yorick,” he said softly. “I knew him well.”
Ezra snorted, evidently despite himself, slapping a hand up over his mouth and shaking his head. He glanced in apology at Mae and took little Daniel by the shoulders. “Let’s get you to the washroom, hm?” he said to the boy, guiding him away.
Ravi was still considering the little skull. “Honestly, I might keep it,” he said.
It was at that moment that Mae realized that not a single person there, aside from perhaps her grandfather and Roland Reed, knew she had been late.
She blinked at Ravi and in a moment of petty pique, she blurted out, “Roland just called you Dr. Ravishing.”
Ravi paused, almost dropping the little frog skull. “Did he really? Are we adopting it?”
“We are not,” she told him, and turned to return to the patients downstairs.
She got through the remainder of the morning on the sheer necessity of proving to herself that she was required here.
She iced a goose egg on a man’s forehead.
She lanced a boil. She stitched a short but deep stab wound in a woman’s knee from a very unlucky incident with a dropped kitchen knife.
She assisted Sally in a massage meant to encourage a late baby to flip around already.
It was busy, exhausting work, and it kept her mind occupied.
At least until she went into the storeroom to get a new bottle of witch hazel. She didn’t even hear the door open behind her, much less the sound of him slipping through it.
She almost startled out of her skin when his hands gathered up the fabric at her waist, bunching up her skirt to get a peek at the slip underneath, his breath warm and amused in her ear.
He tutted as she turned her head in annoyance, pressing her firmly into the storage table where the witch hazel bottles lived so she could not wriggle away. “And here you had me doubting myself,” he chided. “A charming white linen chemise, to be sure, but not the gold.”
She squirmed a bit for the sake of it but could not hide her smile as he leaned forward and pressed a kiss into the curve of her neck, his arm wrapping around her waist to hold her steady against him.
“You know you are acting a little mad today,” he whispered. “Is that because of me?”
“Audacious,” she observed. “No. It is because I overslept and it’s thrown me off-kilter. Much like yourself, I do not enjoy the sensation.”
“Ah,” he said, nodding sympathetically, continuing to bunch up fabric in his fist, “but why did you oversleep, hm? I wonder.”
“Because I was up late,” she lied, feeling the curve of his lips and the glint of his teeth against the nape of her neck. “Because my routine was disrupted.”
“Oh, I think you like a good disruption, Miss Casper,” he whispered. “Shall I keep you up late again some night soon?”
“Roland!” she hissed, the word losing all edge as it dissolved into a little sigh as he nibbled and tasted his way down to her shoulder. She sagged against him, ceding defeat, and dropped her head back into his shoulder, flicking her eyes up to meet his. “I suppose you slept just fine.”
“You’ll never know,” he said. “Because you didn’t wear the key to my secrets.”
“Oho, and now I’m not entitled to any at all?” She chuckled, looping an arm up around his head and pulling him down to drop a kiss on her lips. “That seems a step backward from last night.”
“Hm,” he said, considering, dropping his fisted fabric in favor of stroking her now exposed throat. “Perhaps we trade. One for one.”
“I have no secrets,” she told him, laughing. “I am an open book.”
“Are you talking me out of giving you a bargain?” he returned, amused. “How about this? Why do you live with your grandparents when your parents and brother are right down the road?”
She gave a short, bemused little smile. “Because they are old and needed help and because my grandfather proposed it once I became old enough to become his apprentice. Now me? Is Sybil your actual sister?”
“No,” he replied, looking thoughtful. “At least, I do not think so. It seems unlikely to me that Aristotle fathered more than one accidental offspring. Plus, she has dark hair and her mother’s is fair, but all brothel-born children consider each other siblings, just to be safe.”
“Seems sensible,” she agreed, nodding.
“Now me?” he asked needlessly, his fingers stroking down the column of her throat and over the hum of her heartbeat. “If I had not come to my senses, would you be letting Dr. Ravi corner you in this storeroom?”
“Roland!” she said, her eyes flying open from a brief moment of sensual indulgence. “Really?!”
“You have no secrets,” he reminded her with a grin. “You are an open book.”
She narrowed her eyes at him, not moving from his shoulder. “I do not know,” she answered honestly. “He is very handsome.”
“Ravishing,” he agreed, making them both break into stifled giggles.
She opened her mouth, her next question forming on the tip of her tongue, when she was interrupted by a bang from the main foyer and a loud, pompous male voice announcing, “Inspection!”
She groaned immediately, shutting her eyes again and letting her body go completely slack in protest against Roland’s. “Not again,” she moaned. “Not today.”
He was silent but his body had tensed, his arms going a bit stiff against her skin.
She straightened, leaning down to grip her new bottle of witch hazel around the neck and kick the cabinet shut, sighing. When she turned to face him, she was surprised at how stormy his expression had gotten.
“Roland, it’s been happening for months,” she reminded him. “It’s just another stanza of the same old song.”
“Is it?” he said, moving to push the door open. “I suppose we shall see.”