Chapter 11 Threats and Choices #2
“You are offering James a false heir.”
Her face drains of color, then hardens into something almost ugly.
“Do not pretend you care about honor,” she says. “You care because you want him.”
I inhale slowly.
“Yes,” I say.
The admission lands between us like a dropped candle.
Victoria blinks.
I continue before courage can leak out of me. “I care because I want him. I also care because what you are doing is wrong. Both can be true.”
For one second, she looks less like an enemy and more like a trapped woman with a knife.
Then the moment is gone.
“You modern-thinking women,” she says softly. “You speak of truth as if it feeds anyone. My child needs a name. I need a title. My father needs an alliance. Ashbourne needs an heir society can pretend not to count too closely. Everyone receives what they need.”
“Except James.”
“His needs are irrelevant. He was born knowing that.”
I hate her.
I pity her.
The two feelings sit side by side and poison each other.
“End it,” I say. “Or I will tell him.”
Victoria steps close enough that I smell orange blossom and sickness beneath it.
“Tell him,” she whispers. “See what happens. My father will destroy you, and Ashbourne will still marry me because gentlemen do not abandon women on the word of jealous nobodies.”
Jealous nobody.
Accurate enough to hurt.
She rings the bell.
“Good day, Miss Hartford.”
* * *
By the time I return to Ashbourne House, Dr. Thornbury has made his move.
The pamphlet is waiting in the hall on a silver tray.
Another warning. Longer this time. More ornate. More venomous.
On the Danger of Female Charlatans, Foreign Physic, and the Corruption of English Households.
Subtle.
Mrs. Finch stands beside it with her lips pressed white.
“There are copies everywhere,” she says. “Molly’s cousin saw them outside St. George’s. Lady Markham’s footman brought one. Mrs. Davies sent regrets for tomorrow.”
I pick it up.
This one names no names, but it does not have to. It speaks of “a certain American adventuress,” “unnatural interference in childbirth and female complaints,” “men of rank misled by novelty,” and “the moral danger of women exposing themselves to intimate examination by unlicensed persons.”
By unlicensed persons, he means me.
By moral danger, he means women knowing their own bodies.
I want to burn it. I want to frame it. I want to send a corrected edition with notes in the margins and a diagram of a uterus labeled in large, unforgivable print.
Instead I fold it.
“Any messages?” I ask.
Mrs. Finch’s face answers before her mouth does.
Lady Markham delays. Mrs. Davies cancels. Lady Henderson’s husband forbids further visits. Even Lady Pemberton sends a note full of affection and caution, which is somehow worse than abandonment.
My little practice, built from whispers, begins to go quiet.
That should make me safer.
It feels like suffocation.
Beatrice finds me in the library that evening, sitting on the floor between shelves because chairs feel too civilized.
“James is at his club,” she says.
“Good.”
“It is not good.”
“It is easier.”
She sits beside me, skirts billowing. “You should tell him.”
I stare at Thornbury’s pamphlet in my lap. “Which disaster? Hartwick’s threat? Victoria’s lover? Victoria’s pregnancy? Thornbury’s campaign? Weston’s proposal? I need a filing system.”
“All of it.”
“And sound what? Helpful? Desperate? Vindictive?”
“Honest.”
I laugh, but it has no humor in it. “Honesty requires a listener who can afford the truth.”
Beatrice is quiet for a moment.
“You are not a nobody,” she says.
My eyes burn.
I look away.
“Hartwick called me something close enough.”
“Hartwick is a poisonous old tyrant.”
“Yes, but he has paperwork.”
That silences her because she is beginning to understand what I understood in his study: a woman without papers is a woman made of smoke.
A knock interrupts us.
Molly enters, eyes enormous, holding a sealed envelope with both hands.
“It has come by royal messenger,” she whispers.
Beatrice stands so quickly she nearly trips over her hem. “Royal?”
Mrs. Finch appears behind Molly, pale in a way I have never seen.
The seal is not one I recognize. Heavy wax. Formal script. The kind of paper that has never once been asked to justify itself.
My name sits on the front.
Miss Emma Hartford.
Not Hart. Not prisoner. Not witch. Not charlatan.
Hartford.
My borrowed name has been invited somewhere my real one could never have imagined.
I break the seal.
The message is brief.
Her Royal Highness Princess Charlotte requests the attendance of Miss Emma Hartford at Carlton House regarding matters of health and female care, particularly in anticipation of Her Royal Highness’s confinement.
Tomorrow.
No one speaks.
The room seems to tilt around the paper.
Thornbury’s pamphlet lies open on the floor, accusing me of danger. Hartwick’s threat still burns under my skin. Victoria’s secret sits in my reticule like a lit match.
And now royalty has opened a door.
Or a trap.
Beatrice whispers, “Emma.”
I look at the summons again.
Princess Charlotte.
Pregnant Princess Charlotte.
The one whose name sits in history beside a childbed tragedy I remember only because the future has an indecent talent for turning women’s deaths into footnotes.
Carlton House.
Tomorrow.
My life, apparently, has decided to stop offering stairs and start offering cliffs.