Chapter 12 The Princess and the Physician
Mrs. Finch dresses me for royalty like a lamb for sacrifice.
Her hands are too precise, her mouth too flat, and she makes Molly redo my hair until every dark curl is pinned into something like elegance.
“You will not speak unless addressed,” Mrs. Finch says, adjusting the lace at my cuff. “You will curtsy deeply. You will not contradict anyone of rank.”
I look at her.
She looks at me.
Molly, behind my shoulder, makes a sound suspiciously like a strangled cough.
Mrs. Finch exhales through her nose. “You will endeavor not to contradict anyone of rank unless absolutely necessary.”
“That feels more realistic.”
Beatrice sweeps into the room in pale blue silk, cheeks flushed with excitement and dread. “The carriage is ready.”
Carlton House.
Princess Charlotte.
Royal physicians.
Confinement.
I have been awake since dawn, which implies I slept at some point. Mostly I lay staring at the canopy while my brain produced a rotating exhibit titled: Women Who Died Because Men Were Confident.
Beatrice takes my gloved hands. Her fingers are cold. “You look very well.”
“I look like a borrowed chandelier.”
“A fashionable borrowed chandelier.”
“That helps.”
Her smile wavers. “Emma. This is not Lady Markham’s drawing room. It is not even Lord Weston’s estate.”
“It is the heir presumptive to the throne asking a woman with no credentials, no family, and one increasingly dramatic collection of enemies to advise her about childbirth.”
Beatrice blinks. “I was going to say ‘an honor.’”
“Both things can be true.”
Downstairs, James is not there. Beatrice says he was called out early on urgent estate business, which is either the truth or a socially acceptable way of saying he is avoiding me.
The footman hands me into the carriage. Beatrice follows, her skirts rustling around us like anxious birds. The door closes, the wheels jolt, and Ashbourne House begins to slide away.
London passes in damp gray fragments: coal smoke, wet cobbles, crossing sweepers, men in dark coats pausing to stare. I wonder how many have seen Thornbury’s pamphlet. How many have read charlatan and felt satisfied.
“Do not think of them,” Beatrice says.
“I’m not.”
“You are glaring at pedestrians.”
“Maybe they started it.”
She huffs a laugh, then adjusts my glove. “Remember: Her Royal Highness is said to be frank. Spirited. Not easily cowed. And Dr. Thornbury may be present.”
“Catastrophic.”
Beatrice’s mouth tightens. “He cannot touch you there.”
Sweet. Also adorably wrong. Men like Dr. Thornbury touch without using hands. Reputation. Ridicule. Authority.
“No,” I say. “But he can talk.”
Carlton House rises out of Pall Mall like architecture having an argument with humility and winning. Columns. Gates. Guards. Windows upon windows.
At the entrance, liveried servants receive us with choreography so smooth it feels like being absorbed by a machine.
We are led through halls blazing with gilt and mirrors, the air warm with wax, perfume, and the stale breath of too many fires.
A gentleman with a face like folded paper instructs us in protocol, which is less etiquette lesson and more hostage briefing.
Then doors open.
The room beyond is smaller than I expected, though “small” here means merely “not suitable for housing three minor nations.”
Princess Charlotte stands near the window.
For one suspended second, history collapses into a person.
She is younger than the weight around her. Round-faced, fair, unmistakably pregnant beneath the careful drape of her gown, one hand resting over the curve of her belly.
Beside her stands Prince Leopold, tall and composed, his attention fixed not on the room but on her.
And near the fireplace, arranged like a panel of disapproval, are the physicians.
Three men in sober coats. One narrow, silver-haired gentleman I do not know. One heavier man with a florid complexion and a physician’s bag. And Dr. Thornbury, whose expression upon seeing me suggests someone has delivered a dead rat on a silver tray.
Royal summons with a side of nemesis.
Beatrice curtsies. I follow half a beat late, sinking as low as my knees and borrowed dignity allow.
“Miss Hartford,” Princess Charlotte says.
Her voice is clear, direct, younger than court ceremony wants it to be.
“Your Royal Highness.” My own voice behaves. Small miracles do occur.
“Lady Beatrice, you may remain near the door. Miss Hartford, come closer.”
Beatrice gives me one quick look. It contains encouragement, terror, and a very clear message not to ruin both our lives.
I step forward.
Thornbury clears his throat. “Your Royal Highness, before any consultation proceeds, I must again register my objection to the presence of this young woman in a medical capacity.”
Princess Charlotte does not look at him. “You have registered it, Dr. Thornbury. Repeatedly.”
I like her immediately.
This is dangerous, because liking people makes it harder when history has already written terrible endings for them.
Thornbury flushes. “Her methods are unlicensed, untested, and alarming.”
“So I have heard.” The princess finally turns her head. “I have also heard of a child saved at Lady Pemberton’s ball, a fever ward in the East End made cleaner and less deadly under Miss Hartford’s direction, and Lady Weston walking in her garden after physicians expected her to be buried.”
The room stills.
My pulse punches once, hard.
“Exaggerations travel quickly in London,” Thornbury says.
“As do pamphlets,” Charlotte replies.
Oh. She has read it.
Thornbury’s mouth closes.
Prince Leopold’s eyes flick toward me with quiet interest.
Princess Charlotte studies me. There is nothing ornamental in her gaze. “Are the stories exaggerated, Miss Hartford?”
“All stories are altered by travel, ma’am,” I say carefully. “But the patients are alive.”
Then Charlotte smiles.
It is not a court smile. It is quick and real and almost mischievous.
“A useful distinction.”
The princess gestures to a chair. “Sit.”
I sit because royalty has spoken and my knees are planning rebellion.
“You know why I sent for you,” she says.
“Your note mentioned matters of female care.”
“My confinement approaches.” Her hand tightens briefly over her abdomen. “I am surrounded by men who assure me everything shall be done as it ought. Yet when I ask what ought means, they become very Latin.”
“Latin can be useful,” I say.
“It can also be a curtain,” Charlotte says. “I dislike curtains.”
This woman should not die. She should not become a paragraph, a succession crisis, a cautionary tale told by people who were not in the room.
I do not know if I can change that. I only know she is standing in front of me, alive.
“What do you wish to know?” I ask.
“Whether childbirth is as dangerous as everyone refuses to say.”
The silence that follows is exquisite and awful.
One of the physicians steps forward. “Your Royal Highness, such anxieties are natural in ladies of delicate condition, but unnecessary. Proper management and submission to medical guidance—”
Charlotte raises a hand. He stops.
She looks at me. “I asked Miss Hartford.”
My heart climbs into my throat.
Tell the truth. Do not terrify her. Do not commit treason against an entire profession in a palace drawing room. A simple Tuesday, then.
“Childbirth can be dangerous,” I say. “Especially when labor is long, when the mother is exhausted, when there is fever, when bleeding is not noticed quickly enough, or when attendants move from patient to patient without sufficient cleanliness.”
The silver-haired physician makes a strangled sound. “Cleanliness?”
I keep my eyes on Charlotte. “Yes.”
“You believe soap saves lives,” Thornbury says, every word sharpened.
“I believe clean hands are less likely to carry sickness from one person to another.”
“Invisible sickness,” he says.
“Invisible does not mean imaginary.” I almost add, see also: male ego, but by the grace of all that is holy, I do not.
Charlotte’s eyes narrow in interest. “What should be done?”
I fold my hands in my lap so no one can see them shaking.
“Fresh linens. Boiled if possible. Clean water. Hands washed thoroughly before any examination, and again after. Instruments cleaned in boiling water. No one who has attended a fever patient should attend Your Royal Highness without washing and changing first.”
“This is absurd,” Thornbury snaps. “A confinement is not a kitchen.”
My temper sparks. “No, Doctor. Kitchens are often cleaner.”
Beatrice makes a tiny sound by the door.
The florid physician goes purple.
Princess Charlotte presses her lips together. Prince Leopold looks down, which does not quite hide his smile.
Thornbury steps toward me. “Your Royal Highness, this is precisely the impertinence I warned against. This person has neither training nor humility.”
“I have buried neither patient nor humility today,” I say before I can stop myself. “Which puts me ahead of some practices.”
The room freezes. My mouth has once again attempted murder-suicide.
Charlotte laughs.
It breaks out of her like sunlight through a shutter. For a moment she is not the heir to anything. She is a frightened young woman surrounded by solemn men, laughing because someone finally said the unsayable.
Then she sobers, but her eyes remain bright. “Continue, Miss Hartford.”
Thornbury looks murderous.
I continue.
“Movement can help. Walking in early labor, changing position, not forcing a woman to lie flat for hours if another position eases pain or assists the child’s descent. Upright positions can be useful. Rest when needed, but not confinement to bed simply because it is more convenient for attendants.”
The silver-haired physician frowns. “Laboring women are often irrational. It is best to keep them contained.”
I turn to him slowly.
Contained. A civilized word for a cage wearing perfume.
“A laboring woman is in pain, not absent from herself,” I say. “She should be heard.”
Charlotte’s hand stills on her belly.
The room changes, shifting from curiosity to something more fragile.
Hope, perhaps. Dangerous substance.
“And bleeding?” she asks quietly.
The question I have been waiting for.