Chapter 8 Reputation and Ruin #2
Lady Markham’s eyes sharpen. “I suspected as much.”
Beatrice, sitting as chaperone with a book upside down in her lap, looks thrilled.
I ask careful questions. Bleeding, pain, fever, fainting. I avoid words that will get me burned as a witch or married off to a dictionary. I suggest heat, rest, willow bark in careful amounts, and that her daughter not be laced so tightly during the worst days.
Lady Markham stares. “Her stays?”
“If someone tied a rope around your waist while your insides were staging a rebellion, you would object too.”
Beatrice makes a strangled sound and pretends to cough.
Lady Markham’s mouth twitches. “How…sensible.”
Mrs. Davies comes the next afternoon, cheeks pink with embarrassment.
She does not say pregnancy. She says “a delicate expectation.”
She does not say sex. She says “my husband’s attentions.”
She does not say urination. She says “the passing of water,” then looks as if she may faint from vulgarity.
I keep my face neutral with heroic effort.
“And you have pain when you pass water?” I ask.
Mrs. Davies goes scarlet. “Must we be so direct?”
“Only if you wish me to understand the problem.”
Beatrice has taken to embroidery during these visits. Her needle has not once touched fabric.
“Drink more water,” I tell Mrs. Davies. “Clean water. Not wine in place of water. And if there is burning, fever, or pain in the back, you must send for me at once.”
“But Dr. Thornbury says too much water weakens the constitution.”
“Dr. Thornbury also thinks bleeding is a hobby,” I mutter.
Beatrice’s needle finally pierces the cloth, possibly from shock.
By the end of the week, there are five women on my secret list.
Lady Markham’s daughter with monthly agony.
Mrs. Davies with burning that is almost certainly infection.
Lady Henderson with “low spirits” that sound like exhaustion and a husband who believes pregnancy is a woman’s natural occupation.
A young widow with questions about whether grief can make the body stop bleeding.
Lady Pemberton’s maid, brought quietly through the servants’ entrance, who has a cough that has been ignored because servants are expected to be useful until they collapse.
I am creating a practice out of whispers.
Beatrice creates the cover.
“Embroidery circle,” she says brightly when Mrs. Finch catches us with three ladies, two maids, and absolutely no embroidery. “American patterns.”
Mrs. Finch looks at the empty hoops, then at me. “American patterns,” she repeats.
“Very advanced,” I say.
Mrs. Finch closes her eyes for a moment. “I shall require more tea.”
For a while, the absurdity almost makes it manageable.
Then the pamphlet arrives.
It is not long. It does not need to be. A single folded sheet, printed cheaply and passed through drawing rooms with the speed of disease.
A Warning Against Female Empirics and Foreign Nostrums.
I read it once.
Then again, because pain has become a hobby.
It does not name me. It does not have to.
It speaks of “young women of uncertain origin,” “improper influence upon noble households,” and “dangerous interference in the established practice of physic.” It suggests that so-called natural healing leads innocent ladies away from qualified men and toward ruin, superstition, and death.
Dr. Thornbury’s signature sits at the bottom like a stain.
“He is campaigning,” James says from the doorway.
I fold the paper carefully because tearing it would be satisfying for exactly one second and useful for none.
“He is afraid.”
“He is connected,” James replies. “That matters more.”
We are alone in the library, which is a mistake. Being alone with James has become a category of weather: pressure rising, storm likely.
He looks tired. Not physically. The deeper kind. The kind duty carves into bone.
“You must stop the consultations,” he says.
I look up. “No.”
The word is small. It still changes the room.
He steps closer. “You are giving Thornbury ammunition.”
“He was never short of it.”
“Emma.”
There is my name again. It should not still make my heart turn over. I resent that it does.
“Lady Henderson thought it was normal to bleed for weeks after childbirth because no one told her otherwise,” I say. “Mrs. Davies has an infection that could climb into her kidneys. Lady Markham’s daughter thinks pain is a moral failing because a man told her she is delicate. I cannot unknow that.”
James’s eyes close briefly. When he opens them, the anger is still there, but so is something worse.
Fear.
“You will make enemies,” he says.
“I already have.”
“Powerful enemies.”
“Then I will need powerful friends.”
His gaze sharpens. “Weston.”
The name lands between us with all the subtlety of a dropped knife.
“He offered help,” I say.
“He offered a bargain.”
“So does everyone here.”
James steps closer, then stops himself. I see the restraint. I see the memory of his mouth on mine flicker through him because it flickers through me too.
“Victoria has not withdrawn,” he says quietly.
I absorb that like a bruise. “Congratulations.”
His face tightens. “Do not.”
“Then do not tell me about your engagement as if it is a medical update.”
Silence.
For a moment neither of us moves.
Then a knock at the door saves us, or ruins us further.
Molly enters, pale and breathless, holding a letter on a silver tray.
“For Miss Hartford,” she says. “From Lord Weston. The messenger says it is urgent.”
James’s entire body stills.
I take the letter. The seal is broken already at one corner, as if Weston closed it in haste.
My hands are steady until I read the first line.
Then they are not.
Miss Hartford,
My mother is gravely ill. Sudden pain in the right side, fever, vomiting, and worsening by the hour. The physicians disagree, bleed her, and accomplish nothing. She asks for no one, which is how I know she is dying.
Come at once. I beg you.
Weston.
The room narrows.
James reads my face. “What is it?”
I hand him the letter because if I speak too soon my voice will shake.
His eyes move over the page. His jaw hardens.
“No,” he says.
I almost laugh. Of course. We are back here again.
“James.”
“No,” he repeats, quieter this time, which is worse. “You have barely recovered.”
“His mother may be dying.”
“And you may not be able to save her.”
“I know.”
But pain in the right side. Fever. Vomiting. Worsening quickly.
Appendix, my mind whispers. Gallbladder. Kidney. Bowel obstruction. Infection. A dozen possibilities. All dangerous. All worse by the hour.
I stand.
The room tilts, but only slightly. Progress.
James sees it and steps toward me before he can stop himself.
I lift a hand. “Do not.”
He freezes.
I look at the letter again, at Weston’s usually elegant hand gone jagged with fear.
I think of Lady Victoria’s ultimatum. Thornbury’s pamphlet. The women in the drawing room who lower their voices as if their own bodies are scandals.
I think of Whitechapel.
I think of a little girl breathing.
“I am going,” I say.
James’s face goes pale with anger and something that is not anger at all.
“Then I am coming with you.”
“No,” I say, and the word hurts more than I expect. “You are not.”
His eyes flash. “Emma—”
“Lady Victoria is right about one thing,” I say, and force myself not to look away. “I cannot keep spending your name.”
For once, he has no answer.
The silence is brutal.
Molly hovers in the doorway, wide-eyed and pretending with heroic dedication that she is deaf.
I fold Weston’s letter and press it to my palm.
“Tell Lord Weston’s messenger I will be ready in ten minutes,” I say.
Molly bobs a curtsy and flees.
James stands between me and the door, every line of him carved from duty and fury and fear.
For one heartbeat, I think he will forbid me.
For one heartbeat, I almost wish he would.
Then he steps aside.
I walk past him with Weston’s plea in my hand, my reputation in ashes behind me, and another woman’s life waiting somewhere in Kent.