by Merry Farmer
She threw aside the bedcovers, swinging her legs out to plant her feet on the floor. Her body felt ten times heavier than usual, her head pounded from all the tears she’d shed, but shoots of purpose were poking up through the fog, like new growth in a jungle of despair.
“I need to get dressed,” she said, her voice still dull and distant.
“Yes, my lady.” Polly curtsied and flew to work. She’d already laid out clothes for Alex, something simple and subdued. The girl had a knack for suiting a woman’s clothes to her mood.
Alex crossed to the washstand and splashed her face, wetting the washcloth on the table. She stripped out of her nightgown and bathed as quickly as she could, her fog clearing somewhat. The hospital had supplies to treat influenza, but if they experienced an epidemic, they might not have the space. Wards would need to be quarantined. Inventory would need to be taken to determine if an emergency order should be placed.
“Here you are, my lady.” Polly approached with her skirt and blouse once Alex had donned her underthings.
“Thank you.”
A third knock sounded on the door. Alex caught her breath and turned to it, expectant. It was about time her mother showed up to sympathize with her. Not that Alex had the time now.
But when Polly answered the door, it was only Iris again. Alex’s hopes sunk.
“If you please, Miss Polly,” Iris said, handing Polly another note. “Simon downstairs is awful upset. He wanted to come up here and rouse Lady Alexandra himself. She’s needed at the hospital now.”
“Please tell him I’m coming,” Alex called from across the room.
“Yes, my lady.” Iris curtsied and rushed off.
Polly brought the second note to Alex. As Polly brought out a brush to fix Alex’s hair, Alex read the second note. This one was in Marshall’s handwriting, but written very poorly indeed. She hoped it contained an answer as to why he wasn’t at the hospital.
As soon as she read its opening lines, she gasped. “Oh no.”
“What, my lady?” Polly asked, leaning over her shoulder to scan the note.
A new wave of tears hit Alex, though how she had the energy left for sorrow was beyond her. “His children,” she sobbed. “They’ve taken Marshall’s daughters.”
“That’s awful,” Polly exclaimed. Alex could forgive her for not addressing her properly due to the genuine horror in her voice.
Polly finished with Alex’s hair, fixing it in a simple braided bun, as Alex reread Marshall’s note several more times. What must he be feeling? He was heading to London to win them back, but what could he possibly do there? How could he fight this? How could any of them fight the cruelty that life flung at them?
Polly managed to convince her to rinse her face with the rose and cucumber mixture before Alex jumped up and rushed to her door. She should probably take a bite to eat with her, but the hospital would have something, soup at least. Simon was waiting in the front hall, dancing with agitation.
“It’s bad, Dr. Dyson,” he said without greeting as Alex flew down the stairs. “Mrs. Garforth is quiet it’s so bad. Nurse Stephens says we’re in for the worst. We need you.”
Alex nodded. “Hugo, is there a carriage ready?” she called to the butler as he strode into the hall from the front door.
“As it happens, Lady Alexandra, there is. Several carriages were sent out to take guests to the train station, and when young Simon arrived, I held one back for your conveyance.”
“You’re a godsend, Hugo,” Alex told him.
“Alex, it’s about time you rose.” At last, after so much anticipation, Lady Charlotte waltzed into the hall. “You missed breakfast entirely. I had to make excuses for you.”
A burst of rage boiled up in place of the grief and worry that had propelled Alex through the day so far. All her mother had to give to her was antagonism?
“Not now, Mother,” she said, hardly breaking stride as she marched for the front door. “I’m needed at the hospital.”
Her mother blew out an irritated breath and rushed to follow her. “That blasted hospital! If you hadn’t wasted so much time in that horrid place, maybe George Fretwell would have engaged himself to you instead of Lady Arabella.”
Fury beyond anything Alex had ever know exploded through her. She whipped toward her mother, anger so hot that her mother flinched and jumped back.
“Dr. Pycroft has had his children stolen from him,” she shouted. “There is an outbreak of influenza in Brynthwaite and too few qualified hands to cope with it. I am needed at the hospital. People’s lives are at stake, but all you can think to do is rub salt in my wounds?”
She was too furious to say more, and her mother was too taken aback to respond. Alex pivoted and quickened her pace to flee the house. True to his word, Hugo had one of the lighter, faster carriages waiting right by the front steps. Simon helped her up, then jumped in beside her. They zipped on, out through the driveway and in to town, likely before Alex’s mother had recovered the power of speech.
The hospital was in a state of chaos by the time Alex arrived. The waiting room was filled with young and old, rich and poor, with chills, muscle aches, sore throats, and fever. Mrs. Garforth didn’t bother to scold her when she came in, and before Alex could even don an apron and assess the situation, she was helping to arrange those who were suffering into rooms, administering initial medications, and ordering the staff to be sure there were ample fluids available to all who needed them.
“Those who are otherwise healthy should go home to rest,” she said to Nurse Callow as they marched down the halls between the upstairs wards. “It’s so unusual to have an outbreak of influenza in the summer that I’m concerned. We’ll likely need the ward space for those who develop pneumonia as a result of the infection.”
“Yes, Dr. Dyson.” Nurse Callow nodded as she and Alex turned the corner to head downstairs and into the waiting room.
A deep anxiety filled Alex’s gut as she did a quick scan of the new and waiting patients. A few cases of a virus such as this one could be handled quickly and effectively. If it became a pandemic, she wasn’t sure the hospital could meet the needs of the ill.
“When did his symptoms appear,” she jumped right to work, approaching a mother who cradled a small boy in her arms. The mother was pale with fever herself.
“He felt poorly when he woke up, but it’s gotten worse,” the mother replied.
Alex nodded and felt the boy’s forehead. Influenza struck children, the infirm, and the elderly harder than others, but a healthy person could still succumb to the disease. She felt the mother’s face as well.
“Let’s bring you back to the—”
Alex’s words died on her lips as the front door opened and George strolled through. He wore a bright smile as he scanned the room full of sick, coughing, wretched people. His smile brightened when he spotted Alex.
“Ah. Alex.” He headed towards her, bumping past an elderly woman, hunched with illness.
Alex’s heart twisted and burned and dropped to her stomach. The old, toothless man sitting beside the mother and her child—one of the few patients waiting to be treated for something other than influenza—let out a low whistle and shook his head. Alex’s glance snapped to him. Did everyone know her misfortune?
“I thought I’d find you here,” George said as though they were at garden party instead of in a room full of the sick waiting to be treated.
Cold steel filled Alex’s heart and she stood. “We’ll take you back to the examination room so that I can examine you properly.” She put a hand on the mother’s shoulder.
“Could I speak to you for a moment?” George asked, coming close and lowering his voice. He wore his most rakish grin, eyes dancing with mischief.
“No,” Alex replied. “In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m needed elsewhere.”
The old man beside her snorted, enjoying the show.
George sidled closer. “You’re needed here as well,” he purred.
Alex gaped at him
. “What is that supposed to mean?”
George glanced quickly at the patients who watched them with undisguised interest. “Is there somewhere else we could talk?”
“No, there is not.” Alex moved to the side, intending to make room for the mother to stand with her child.
George filled the gap she created, blocking the mother and child. “Arabella is gone,” he said. “I was hoping this would mean we could spend some time together.”
Either he had no concept of the indiscretion he was committing by speaking so openly to her in a room full of people, or he felt those people couldn’t possibly matter because of their lowly positions.
“Time together?” Alex laughed, incredulous. He wasn’t going to leave her to her work until he’s spoken his fill. She crossed her arms and glared at her. “The time we could have spent together is long gone.”
Blast him, but George had the nerve to glance down, a boyish grin lighting his handsome face. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. Arabella is gone for a fortnight at least.”
“What do I care whether your fiancé is gone for a fortnight or a millennia?” Alex snapped.
“Well.” He gazed up at her with a coy sparkle in his eyes. “Just because I am to be married doesn’t mean we can’t be friends.”
Disbelief warred with fury in Alex’s chest, paralyzing her. “Yes, I believe it does mean we cannot be friends.”
George sniffed and brushed her objection away with a wave of his hand. He rocked back, knocking into a weak, coughing man, barely noticing him. “Nonsense,” George said. “A friendship like ours can easily outlast a marriage. Besides that, we shall very likely soon be siblings, of a sort.”
Alex clenched and unclenched her fists at her sides. Could the man truly be serious?
When she didn’t reply, he went on with, “Our parents will shortly marry, and of course there is little chance my father will want to stay in Cumbria. He’ll whisk your mother, my new step-mother, back to Hampshire, and we can all go on as things were, one happy family.”
A jolt of ice shot down Alex’s back at the thought. Hampshire. But of course.
“Once we’re all comfortably ensconced in the Fretwell family home,” George continued, stepping even closer, even as Alex fumed, “I see no reason why we all can’t be one intimate, keenly satisfied family.” He brushed his fingers across the back of her hand, his eyes flashing with seduction.
Bile stung the back of Alex’s throat. “How dare you?” she seethed. She jerked her hand away, but held her ground, glaring at him with enough force to blow the hospital down. “How dare you proposition me like that?”
“I dare because I long for you,” George cooed, attempting to mutter the offending words in her ear, whether patients were around or not.
Alex stepped back, raising a hand to warn him to keep his distance. Where had this intense affection been for the last two weeks? Where had it been when she’d all but begged him to reconsider his feelings for her?
“I have never been so audaciously insulted in my life,” she hissed. “Who, may I as, do you think you are?”
“A man who adores you,” George replied, but his expression was no longer so certain.
“You do not.” Alex checked quickly on the patients watching around her. She had nothing to hide from them, and if George was so indiscreet as to attempt to carry on an affair in full view of the entire waiting room, then he did not deserve a shred of discretion in his favor. “The only person you care for, George Fretwell, is yourself.”
“Alex.” He blinked rapidly, suddenly seeming to notice his audience, and attempted to inch closer.
Alex held him off with a raised hand and a scowl. “You care only for yourself,” she repeated, dying inside as the truth burned through her, “and your cock.” Half a dozen of the patients around her gasped or hummed in spite of their wretched state. The reaction invigorated her, as did the dark flush that splashed George’s face. How could she have been such a fool to be seduced by a blackguard like George? “If you are so depraved that you cannot bear to let your precious member go unattended for more than a day, then might I suggest that you avail yourself of professional services.”
George clenched his jaw as the awed and amused murmurs from the patients continued.
“Oy, you look clean enough,” the old man sitting by Alex’s side laughed. “I’ll swallow it for two bob.” He cackled and slapped his knee. A few men sitting near snorted and coughed with laughter as well, while more than a few of the other patients clucked or shook their heads in disapproval.
Alex would have been shocked if she hadn’t been so vindicated by the look of repugnance on George’s splotchy face. “Well?” she hounded him. “Should I be sure to treat Mr. Caldwell here next so that he can service you in the back alley? Do you think you can wait that long?”
George narrowed his eyes at Alex. “Really,” he scoffed. “I should have known better than to expect a genteel answer to a gentleman’s request from a woman like you. You disgust me.” He turned on his heel and fled, several of the patients either laughing or shaking their heads at him as he left.
She disgusted him?
“He’s no gentleman,” the sick mother murmured by Alex’s side.
As much as it hurt, Alex admitted, “No, he is not.”
It was one thing to know it, to speak it aloud, but her rebellious heart still ached to the point of devastation that it was true.
“Come back to the examination room now,” she said, sliding a hand under the woman’s arm and helping her to stand. “Let’s see to you and your boy.”
Flossie
Running out on responsibility was as foreign to Flossie’s mindset as Chinese, but when she fled the hotel to rush to the post office to send Jason’s telegram to London, she took her time. Instead of marching straight to the post office, she had gone on a long walk away from Brynthwaite, along the road that led toward the forest, past the forge. She told herself she needed the air, needed the space, but with every step she took, tears of frustration pushed closer and closer to the surface.
Jason hadn’t returned from his evening at Huntingdon Hall until dawn that morning. It was the third time that week that he had been out late with Lady E. Not a day had gone by for several weeks when Lady E. hadn’t appeared at the hotel to flaunt herself at Jason or when she hadn’t caught him going about his business in town. Every day, she was there—smiling, simpering, and flattering. The peacock had arrived in style, so it was only natural that the wren should be brushed aside.
She reached the forge with those thoughts. Her heart burned in anguish and her stomach twisted with indignation. After all she had done for Jason, after the partnership they had formed that had produced wonders for the hotel and left the two of them immensely personally satisfied, he was shoving her aside. The writing was on the wall in Lady E.’s delicate hand. Jason’s attendance on Lady E. and virtual dismissal of Flossie was becoming more the norm than the exception.
She swallowed, trying to tamp down her thoughts. With a blink, she noticed that the forge was empty, the furnace radiating warmth, but not enough to work with. Jason’s solicitor evidently hadn’t succeeded in untying the knots around Mr. Smith. Or if he had, the man hadn’t made it back to his forge yet. Just the other day Mr. Smith was at the hotel, installing a grate over one of the kitchen windows, and fretting to Jason about the amount of work he had piling up on him.
There wasn’t room in her overtaxed mind to worry for Mr. Smith. Flossie turned and marched back along the road into town. She could avoid the truth for a few hours, but it would still be there when she reached home.
No, not home. The hotel was not a home. It was a place of business, a cold, harsh reality. One that was being tugged out of her hands like a silk ribbon being slowly pulled away through her fingers. Would she grab hold and yank it back or would she let it slip away?
As the buildings of Brynthwaite came into sight around the final curve of the forest, reluctance coiled its way through Flossie’s gut.
Yes, she had to return to the hotel, but not just yet. She stopped in at the post office to send the telegram and collect the hotel’s mail. There was quite a bit of mail—bills, correspondence for Jason and for the staff, and even a few letters addressed to long-term guests by room. One of the letters was for her, but as she turned over the envelope, trying to determine who had sent it, she ran headlong into another pedestrian.
“Sorry,” the man mumbled.
Flossie got her bearings and glanced up into the flushed and frowning face of George Fretwell.
“Please excuse me, sir,” she clipped with a half curtsy.
Fretwell scowled deeper, then rushed on. Flossie turned to watch him go. Something had upset him. Had Lady Arabella turned him down? Polly had let slip to Flossie the day before that an engagement was imminent between those two and would be announced at the final ball of the house party.
Flossie’s thoughts came full circle, and she too scowled and marched on past the crowded entrance to the hospital. The final ball of the house party. The ball Jason had attended on Lady E.’s beautiful, lace-clad arm. When he’d returned at dawn, she had awaken to greet him, but all Jason had done was remove his clothes, dumping them on the floor, and reach for her. As if she was some object that he could use to satisfy himself after a night with another woman. It was a wonder he hadn’t spent half the night in Lady E.’s bed. But of course he hadn’t. The state of his erection was proof of that. It was as constant now as it had been when they’d first made their agreement. And he had encroached on her as though it was her job to take care of it.
She missed a step as she crossed the street to the path leading to the hotel’s front gate. It was her job to take care of it. That had been the arrangement. That was the substance of their deal so many months ago. She had offered herself to him as a balm for his troubled body and mind, and she had accepted financial compensation in return so that she could assist her family. It had all seemed so simple then. Give and take. Everyone’s needs satisfied. They had never set a time limit to their agreement. They had never discussed what would happen should Jason fulfill his designs on Lady Elizabeth Dyson.
