Chapter 32
Aweek, Roland realized in short order, had been ambitious.
But, then again, he had always fancied himself an ambitious sort, and so he attempted to meet the constraint with aplomb.
First came the matter of their new student volunteers, namely one Cary Cecil, who showed up to the Clerkenwell Clinic two days after the meeting at Guy’s with all the swagger of a git who intended to make trouble.
Roland had enjoyed this.
“If you do encounter vandals,” he’d said, showing the younger man the perimeter, “I recommend disabling them with quick jabs to one of three anatomical locations. I trust you already know them?”
“Erm,” said the boy. “Jewels?”
Roland grinned at him. “You can try. I recommend the kidney,” he said, his hand flashing out flat and firm to jab the lad under the ribs, making him woosh out breath and double over.
Once bent, Roland suggested, “The kneecap also works,” giving a quick firm kick just below the squishy membrane that held said cap aloft.
He waited for the boy to stand and then gave him an encouraging flash of the teeth. “If that doesn’t work, there are always the eyes, the nose, and my personal favorite”—he reached out with just the pad of his thumb, jabbing lightly just above Cary’s clavicle—“the throat.”
He turned and walked away, whistling in harmony to the hacking behind him.
When the little toff finally caught up, he delighted in informing him that he would be away soon, and any further questions he might have about his new duties should be relayed to his associate, Mr. Beck, at which point Tod’s massive, hulking frame strode into view.
Tod, of course, was none the wiser of his use as a prop in this exercise, having only come to inspect the sturdiness of the new staircase, but it worked a treat anyhow, draining all color from Cary Cecil’s face and effectively amputating all swagger from his demeanor for the remainder of the week.
Next had been the matter of Winston’s schooling.
They had agreed, as a group, that it would be cruel and likely discouraging to throw the lad directly into the deep waters of an ongoing formal classroom with other boys his own age who had been given the benefit of formal instruction since they could hold a quill.
Instead, they had agreed to seek out a private tutor or two to bring the boy up to speed in his core subjects while also allowing him to continue to work at the clinic as he very clearly wished to do.
The trouble was that they did all of this discussing and deciding before ever speaking to Winston directly or to his mother, which, of course, needed to be done.
Mae and Roland had gone together to their home in St. Giles, where they discovered Winston was one of ten siblings, and his mother was an extremely busy laundress.
“You want to school him?” she said. “You couldn’t even give him the pox!”
But they did convince her in the end, much to Winston’s glee.
He did deflate just a little bit, however, when Mae observed that part of his mother’s workload was mending clothing and suggested that he take up clean stitching with her as part of his duties—a suggestion that might have been the only reason the mother agreed in the first place.
“I already know how to sew,” he had whined.
“Yes,” said Mae, “but you have to become a master.”
“That’s right, little master,” his mother had crowed. “Start with the stockings by the fire. And if you use my good needles, I’ll shave your head.”
Meanwhile, Ezra and Dr. Casper had handled matters with The Lancet.
When the issue emerged, just two days before they were set to depart for seas unknown, they got to witness Ezra’s abject joy that Wakley had printed the rebuttal with Ezra’s full name in the byline.
“Me!” he cried. “In The Lancet! My editor at the Chronicle is going to eat his hat! I have to buy another copy. I have to buy ten!”
“I already bought you one,” Dinah Lazarus had told him with a roll of her eyes. “Idiot.”
By the eve of departure, it was hard to believe that the major tasks were handled, that the referred patients had already started to report to Guy’s and St. Bart’s, and that Mae and Roland, for the first time in a very long time, had no crises at all with which to occupy themselves.
Well, no crises save one.
“The dinner,” she said with a sigh. “This is your fault.”
“Yes,” he had agreed, checking his cravat and smoothing his hair. “It certainly is.”
She might have been joking, some weeks back, when she’d suggested his father host a banquet for their friends and family to all become acquainted, but Roland had known the genius of that idea when he’d heard it.
And besides, introducing his two families to each other was what he’d agreed to in order to get that thimble.
He never went back on a dare.
Aristotle welcomed them with far too many candles, far too many courses, and far too much wine, his very best wig glinting in the candlelight as he embraced and admired each and every attendee as they came through the door.
“Oh, my beloved Sybil,” he said to her. “You bathed!”
“Well, now,” Sybil had said, straightening and patting her suspiciously glossy hair. “You can’t prove that.”
He was particularly taken with Vix. “My,” he said, his eyes gone big and shiny. “You are a goddess.”
“So are you, darling,” she’d replied, evidently already his lifelong friend, two seconds into meeting him. “You do not strike me as an Aristotle, you know.”
“Don’t I?” he’d replied, looking taken aback. “I chose it myself, you know.”
“You did?” Ambrose said, tilting his head to the side. “How did that come to happen?”
“Well,” said Aristotle, biting into a stuffed mushroom. “It used to be Diogenes. I couldn’t have that, could I? Can you imagine? Me in a barrel?”
Mae blinked and caught Roland’s eye, to which he gave her a quick, decisive shake of his head. He’d heard that nonsense story spun out many times in his life, and it had never failed to charm, but he was reasonably certain it was also complete nonsense.
“I could imagine it, actually,” Vix replied to him, grinning. “But it would require origin from a couture cooperage, naturally.”
Roland listened to the blossom of laughter and wondered several times during that meal why he had ever thought it so important to keep them apart. Why the partitions in his life had ever felt so damned necessary.
He watched Matthew do shadow puppets for Sybil and Violet Casper. He watched Aristotle actually make Tod laugh and Mae’s brother blush.
And he sat there, feeling like quite the silly little boy about all of it.
He turned to observe Mae, watching her dimples deepen in the shadows of the candlelight and feeling all the space that had opened around his heart, stretching like stiff legs, too long in a tiny boat.
She had done this.
She had torn down the walls he’d built between the rooms of his life. She had shown him how unnecessary the partitions were. Had put light on the things he’d thought were shameful so he could see them properly.
Finally.
He sighed and shook his head as she met his eye once more, knowing she was puzzled by the devotion in his gaze.
One day, he would make sure she understood, he decided. One day, she would know that she had somehow created the room needed in his chest to contain the love he felt for her.
“A toast!” Tod said, standing and clinking his crystal wineglass delicately, though one would think at his size, it would shatter just from being in his general vicinity. “To the couple, off to elope on the morrow.”
“Hear, hear!” Hannah cried, her cheeks pink and merry. “Did you decide your destination?”
“This is all very odd,” Aristotle said with a frown. “You aren’t supposed to announce an elopement. You’re supposed to elope!”
“Rules are for the weak,” Dinah Lazarus said through a mouthful of torte.
“Dinah!” her sister tutted, sending the toast into a chaotic murmur instead of a raising of glasses for a few moments.
“To healing,” Mae said, drawing their attention back. “And to the harm that makes it necessary. May we all love our beautiful scars.”
“Cheers,” said Matthew. “Spoken like a parable.”
“Like a poet,” Ezra commented.
“Like my wife,” Roland decided.
And they all drank to a future where safety from harm is never guaranteed, but willingness to heal would always be theirs for the taking.