Chapter Twenty-Five
Roger suppressed a yawn. Rebecca did not return from her first call for almost thirty-six hours, after which she slept like the dead for another five, only to be called out yet again, for practically the entire day.
How one person could accommodate such a schedule without succumbing to exhaustion or starvation, he had no idea.
While he certainly admired her dedication to her patients, she still had responsibilities to herself and her person. She was going to become ill if she continued to work like this. Hopefully this was an aberration due to circumstances, not a regular occurrence.
Or her mother and servants were more persuasive than he had been regarding her physical well-being.
According to Marguarite, she’d barely eaten any of the trays she’d been brought.
Further, she’d been so sleepy that the housekeeper had taken to sitting in the room while Rebecca bathed, forcing her to converse, for fear the woman might fall asleep and drown herself.
A disturbing image, one that left him scowling Thursday morning, even though he had been assured the woman was safely in bed and in no danger of imminent death.
“Why is it blue here, Papa?” Michael asked, pointing first at Roger’s face between bites of sponge cake, then touching the area beneath his own eyes with his rather sticky fingers.
The small boy rocked back and force in his seat, staring at him before taking a sip of what was allegedly tea but was mostly sugar and milk.
“Those mean he needs more sleep,” Fannie explained to her brother with the sort of authority only a nine-year-old speaking to a five-year-old could possess.
“I’m all right,” he said, stifling a yawn. “I’m just tired of the snow.”
“It has been a while since we’ve left the house for anything but to visit Uncle David and Aunt Nina.” There was longing in Michael’s voice. He took another bite. “Why does Miss Adler get to leave, and we don’t?” he asked, as if the concept had just occurred to him.
“Because she’s helping people,” Fannie explained. She turned toward Roger. “The lady last night almost died,” she reported.
Roger glanced at this daughter. “How do you know that?”
“I asked,” Fannie said with a shrug. “I waited up for her to return.” She picked at the chiffon ruffles that fell from the neckline of her gown.
“You fell asleep,” she practically accused, then turned to Michael, excitement now in her voice.
“There was a lot of blood, especially because she had to cut the mother open to get the baby out.”
“Cut her open?” his son asked, his mouth hanging impolitely wide as he stared at his sister. Roger cleared his throat. The boy thankfully swallowed before leaning closer to Fannie.
“Only from here until here.” She demonstrated with a finger on her own body. “She said it still requires a great deal of stitches. She places them inside and out.” Her face flushed with excitement. “She said she’d show me with embroidery thread. Do you know that’s how she practices?”
“I did not,” Roger said, taking a sip of his chocolate, the gentle burn of the slightly bitter, rich liquid sliding down his throat.
He glanced back at Fannie, who was now tugging at one of her neatly crafted curls, a frown turning down her lips.
But instead of her usual expression of displeasure, this one suggested disquietude.
Roger scooted forward in his chair. “What is it? What’s wrong? ”
“Nothing,” his daughter said, but she sighed again, clear worry on her small face.
Roger’s heart began to beat a touch faster. “Fannie?” he asked, bending closer to the child, working to keep his own voice calm so as not to frighten her.
His daughter fidgeted for a moment in her chair, glancing at her lap then lifting her gaze to him once more. “Miss Adler just seemed a touch… sad, I suppose,” she said finally.
Roger settled back in his chair, contemplating the girl. “How did you deduce that?”
“She still spoke with me as usual and answered all my questions, but her eyes were far away,” Fannie explained.
“And when Rose jumped into her lap, she hugged him. She never does that. She scratches his ears instead.” His daughter chewed her lip.
“Rose didn’t mind, which was odd, as he minds when I squeeze him, but I think he could tell…
” She leaned back in her seat. “I hope she feels better. I don’t want her to be sad. ”
“I hope she feels better as well,” Roger murmured, taking another sip.
It wasn’t his business, not truly. Yes, they were more than mere acquaintances and had shared some intimacies, but he certainly didn’t expect her to come to him with her troubles.
She was private, like him, preferring to resolve things alone instead of wasting the time of others.
Except his time couldn’t be wasted. After all, with her home nearly completed, other than teaching the children, his schedule was rather open. Even if it wasn’t, the idea of her coming to him, of all people…
“You shouldn’t just hope. You should fix her,” his daughter all but demanded.
“You should,” Michael said, bouncing in his seat. “She likes you.”
“She likes you both too,” he told his children.
“I know,” Fannie said, her lips turning up a touch. “And I like her. Even if she isn’t afraid of me.” She turned to him, a knowing gaze coming into her light brown eyes, which reminded him a touch of his late mother. “But she likes you in a different way.”
“How?” Michael asked before sticking his thumb into his mouth.
“You’ll understand when you’re older,” Fannie said, taking a sip from her own cup, a perfect mimic of his gesture. Roger was so amused by it that he didn’t realize he’d neither probed nor corrected his daughter’s misguided assumption until hours later.
Rebecca lay in bed, staring at the fabric of the canopy above her, counting embroidered leaves on a branch.
She’d already done the flowers. She should be sleeping.
She had to sleep. If she didn’t sleep, she’d not be at her best for the next call.
She needed to be at her best. Her patients deserved her best.
The door creaked opened. With a sigh, she rotated onto her side to see what Marguarite needed.
Or more, to find a way to make the woman stop fretting over her.
It was too much and made her feel guilty, and—Rebecca could only blink as not the maid but Roger himself stepped over the threshold, dressed formally in his usual austere jacket and vest, dark cravat tied flawlessly around his neck, a tray of food in his hands.
He crossed the room and set it down next to one of the chairs by the fire, then clasped his hands in front of him.
“I didn’t know you were delivering trays now,” she said, pushing herself up against the pillows and pulling the coverlet over her body.
“Important tasks are sometimes performed better oneself.” He gazed at her. “You missed breakfast and luncheon.”
She shrugged, unable able to make her arms, let alone her feet, move enough to stand.
With a small nod, he strode across the room, sitting on the edge of the bed. “I heard you performed a surgery last night.”
“I did.” Her throat tightened for some inexplicable reason.
“That’s a great deal of work,” he said, still gazing at her. “You must be very tired.”
“I am.” She stared back at him for a long moment, the lump expanding as well as the weariness and the clawing guilt that wouldn’t stop plaguing her mind, not just for the mistakes she’d made the prior night, which thankfully did not result in any damage, but for all the ones in the past that had.
Before she quite understood what was happening, she was pressed against Roger’s chest, sobbing into his absurdly perfect cravat, probably ruining the thing.
She should stop. She needed to stop. Crying was a ridiculous reaction, especially in the presence of someone who would never understand.
Worse, would give her all sorts of advice, including telling her to stop or work less.
Advice that she most certainly could not bear to hear, as there was a part of her that was afraid it was the correct solution.
But instead, the man said nothing. He didn’t even shush her.
No, he merely allowed her cry, permitting her to soak through his garments, making no movement whatsoever, except to keep her securely in his grip.
Not until all her tears were spent and she pulled away from him to wipe her eyes did he let go.
As she watched him remove his jacket and unbutton his wet vest, shrugging it off, her limbs grew heavy once more.
She barely had the time to lie on her side, facing the window, before her eyes closed of their own accord.
She expected him to leave and permit her to sleep, but instead he lay down beside her, wrapping his arms around her body, holding her to his.
This was… She should tell him to leave, that she didn’t require whatever he thought he was trying to do. She was an adult. A competent, professional adult, something she hadn’t been permitted to be in four weeks, and—but she could not seem to make herself speak the words.
“Do you want to discuss it?” he whispered as she nestled against him.
“No.” She shook her head, pushing herself up a little. She didn’t need this. She didn’t. He had other matters to which to attend. “I—” She swallowed, unable to form the correct words. “You don’t—”
“It’s all right,” he told her, wrapping his arms around her tightly and placing his chin on her shoulder. “I don’t mind.”
To her disdain, she burst into tears yet again. She was almost certainly even more unattractive, her face hot and itchy, while she struggled to once again regain control. It was humiliating.
But the man didn’t flinch. He barely even moved.
“I apologize,” she said when she managed to take hold of herself once again.
“Why?” He sounded genuinely confused. “I told you, I didn’t mind.
” He tightened his grasp. “In fact, I rather like holding you in this position. It gives me a good deal of access to some of my favorite things,” he added, a teasing note in his voice.
He planted a soft kiss on her shoulder, through her chemise.
She lay with him for another moment, the thoughts swirling again in her head.
Taking a deep breath, she swallowed once more.
“Sometimes, even when everything turns out right in the end, recollections of times when they didn’t seem to rise to the surface,” she explained.
“I’ve lost three patients because of my own poor judgment in this area,” she admitted, her eyes stinging.
Even though it had been years, the memories were alive once more.
“I’m sorry,” he said after a beat.
“One I hesitated too long, one became so ill with fever after that she didn’t last until the bris, and one, I didn’t properly stop the bleeding inside.
” Her body shuddered as she spoke, and it was then that she realized she was crying once more, which was somehow worse, as she was still alive and they were not and…
She ground her back teeth, trying with all her might to hold everything in.
“I see her face most often,” she said, swiping her eye. “I see all their faces when…”
He didn’t say anything but tugged her closer.
“Aren’t you going to tell me that three out of hundreds is nothing?
Or that I’m not god?” she asked, her voice quavering as she recalled each of the usual statements of comfort she’d get from her well-meaning staff or even her own mother.
“Or that, perhaps, if I’m worried in such situations, I should call in a physician? ”
That was an increasingly popular suggestion, one that frustrated and infuriated her, especially since there was a case to be made for it, as physicians had access to training and even, occasionally, knowledge in scientific advances that she did not.
Knowledge and skills they hoarded, while denigrating the years of techniques and learning she and her fellow midwives had amassed on their own.
“No,” he said after a pause, kissing her shoulder once more. “Why?”
“I don’t know.” She sighed again. Perhaps because it would be somehow easier if he did. After all, the comments were all logical and not wrong, per se, but that he didn’t say any of them and was instead comforting her… It just left her all muddled.
“Everything in life has a cost. Some people are just able to see it more clearly,” he told her after a long pause. “Being able to act when you understand that requires quite a bit of bravery.”
“You believe it might be better if I could simply not know?” she asked, turning over the idea in her mind. “Or make myself forget?”
“No, I think you’re most likely better for it,” he said, rubbing her arm a little. “I think you bear your burden with honor.”
“You make me sound like a soldier.” She sniffed and felt his shrug against her back as the two fell into silence once more.
“Might you hold me a little longer?” she whispered after a few moments.
“I’ll hold you as long as you need,” he told her. “Provided you promise to eat a little after. And drink.”
“All right,” she agreed, yawning, “I will.” Except she still could not move. And not because she was tired—though she was still exhausted—but because where she was felt, for once, actually just right.
“Just a little longer,” she whispered. “Please?”
“Of course,” he said, his voice now thick as well. He kissed the top of her head. “I’m yours for as long as you need.”
No, you’re mine for less than two weeks, at most, she thought. Though perhaps that was all she needed. Or could be.
Because it had to be.
Closing her eyes, she leaned back against him, vowing to make it so.