by C. S. Harris
Sebastian said, “I fail to understand how my simple inquiries could possibly threaten even such a delicate process.”
“You don’t know everything.”
“Oh? So enlighten me.”
But Jarvis simply tightened his jaw and signaled his coachman to drive on, the horses’ hooves clattering over the paving stones, the body of the carriage swaying with well-sprung delicacy as the team picked up speed.
Chapter 23
Later that afternoon, when none of the older women Gibson typically hired to sit with his most critically ill patients was available for the approaching night, he had Alexandrie Sauvage wrapped in a blanket and carried next door to the inner chamber of his own house.
“You don’t need to do this,” she whispered hoarsely as he tucked his worn quilt around her.
“Yes, I do.”
She was showing hopeful signs of improvement, but her eyes were still dull with fever, her cheeks hollow, her flesh like hot, dry parchment to the touch. She let her lids flutter closed, and he thought she slept. Then she said, “My woman, Karmele, is a good nurse. You could send for her.”
“I will.” He started to move away, then barely bit back a gasp when, without warning, a burning jolt of agony shot up his leg, as brutal and real as if someone had thrust a red-hot poker into the sole of his left foot.
The foot that was no longer there.
She opened her eyes and fixed her gaze on his face. “You’re in pain. Why?”
He shook his head. “I’m fine.” And when he knew from the incredulity of her expression that she didn’t believe him, he said, “I sometimes get pains from my missing foot and leg. It will pass.”
“There is a way—”
“Hush,” he said, smoothing the covers over her. “Go to sleep.”
He didn’t expect her to listen to him, because he was learning that she was not the most cooperative of patients. But to his surprise, she did.
He went to settle in the chair beside the fire and carefully removed his peg leg. It did no good; the pain persisted, so intense now that if his left foot had still been attached to his body, he’d have been tempted to whack it off himself, just to end the agony. But you can’t amputate a limb that isn’t there.
He felt the sweat start on his face, and a fine trembling made his hand shake as he brought up one crooked arm to swipe his sleeve across his forehead. The urge to set his mind free from the pain, to escape into the sweetly hued dreams of laudanum, was damned near overwhelming. He had to grit his teeth, his hands clutching the arms of the chair, his gaze fixed on the fever-racked woman who lay in his bed.
And he found himself wondering if this was why he had brought her here, why he resisted sending for her woman. If he were only fooling himself, convincing himself that he was fighting to save her life when the truth was that by her very presence, she was saving him.
Chapter 24
“The problem, my lady, is that your humors are out of balance.”
Richard Croft, the most distinguished and respected accoucheur in Britain, stood with his back to the fire, his chin sunk deep into the folds of his snowy white cravat. In his early fifties, he was a slight man with wisps of fading pale hair that fell from a slightly receding hairline. Like his face, his nose was long, his chin pronounced, his lips thin and drawn, as if he were constantly tightening and sucking them in disapproval.
Hero sat in a nearby chair, her hands in her lap, her maid standing behind her. “I feel fine,” she said.
“Ah.” Croft tsked and shook his head with a deprecating smile that filled Hero with an undignified urge to box his ears. “You may feel fine, but unfortunately that does not mean that all is as it should be. What did you eat yesterday?”
Hero told him.
Croft fluttered his soft white hands in horror. “But that is far too much! You must take only a cup of tea for breakfast, and not before ten. Then, at two, you may have a bite of cold meat or some fruit—but not both. Your dinner must be equally sparse—a thin soup, perhaps, or some fowl with a small serving of well-cooked vegetables. Bland, of course.”
“If I reduce myself to the regime you suggest, I shall soon be too weak to walk across the room.”
“But that is precisely the idea, my lady!”
“I was reading an article yesterday written by a Dr. Agostina DeFiore at the University of Padua—”
“A woman?” sputtered Croft. “An Italian woman?”
“—who argues that while a woman should take care not to gain too much weight, it is nevertheless important that she continue to consume a varied and adequate amount of healthy foods. To do otherwise not only debilitates the health of the mother, but also puts the child at risk.”
“Utter nonsense, I’m afraid.” He cleared his throat. “I trust you have been taking the purges I prescribed?”
“They don’t agree with me.”
“They are not supposed to agree with you! They are designed to bring your humors back into balance. My lady, I beg of you; you must trust me in this.” He brought up his hands, palms together, as if he were praying. “Your color is too robust, and you have far too much energy. At this point, patients who follow my strictures are pale and languid, as befits a woman about to give birth. I shall have to bleed you again.”
Hero watched in silence as he turned to remove a basin and lancet from his satchel.
“Most severely, I’m afraid,” he said. “Under the circumstances, I suspect that to take any less than two pints would be folly.”
“Two pints?”
“Yes, my lady,” he said, advancing on her with his lips cinched tight and his eyes weary with benign contempt for the weaker sex, with whose folly he struggled daily.
• • •
By the time Sebastian reached Brook Street, a light snow had begun to fall, big, soft, white flakes that fluttered down to stick to the pavement and the iron railing guarding the area steps.
“Bit wet out there, my lord?” asked his majordomo, Morey, as he took Sebastian’s hat, greatcoat, and gloves.
“I suspect we’re in for a good deal more of this before nightfall.” Sebastian’s gaze fell on the modest gentleman’s hat resting on a nearby chair. “I take it Richard Croft is here?”
“Yes, my lord. He—”
The majordomo broke off as a loud rattling clatter sounded from above.
A moment later, a small, slight man came charging down the stairs, the tails of his black coat billowing behind him, his satchel gripped before him in both hands. He had his head down, his lips clamped in an angry line, his prominent chin set mulishly. But at the sight of Sebastian, he drew up, nostrils flaring, his entire frame aquiver with his indignation.
“Lord Devlin,” he said, taking the last step down to the entrance hall and bowing stiffly. “I am pleased to see that you are here, for it affords me the opportunity to tell you that I refuse—yes, refuse!—to act as Lady Devlin’s accoucheur any longer. She is stubborn and opinionated, full of outlandish ideas gleaned from reading an assortment of ridiculous foreign publications. She ignores my advice, refuses my prescriptions, and just now she threw my basin at me when I attempted to insist that she allow me to bleed her.”
“And how, precisely, did you ‘insist’?”
Croft’s thin chest jerked with the agitation of his breathing. “Sometimes with expectant mothers, the emotions run high and a touch of male firmness is required.”
“You’re fortunate she didn’t take the lancet to you.”
Croft’s features darkened with a resurgence of fury. “Indeed, she threatened to do so.” He tugged at the lower hem of his waistcoat, which had become rucked up in his hasty descent of the stairs. “I cannot be held responsible for the outcome of a confinement when the patient refuses to submit herself to my Lowering System. Therefore, I resign my position. Nor can I in all good conscience recommend her as a patient to any of my colleagues. To be frank, under the circumstances, I can’t imagine how you will find anyone competent to agree to att
empt to deliver her.”
“Under what ‘circumstances’?” asked Sebastian with deceptive restraint.
The esteemed Richard Croft opened his mouth, then thought better of what he’d been about to say, and closed it.
Sebastian advanced on him. “What the devil are you saying?”
Croft took a step back, his heels clattering against the riser of the first stair.
“What circumstances, damn you?”
The accoucheur swallowed hard. “The child . . .”
“Yes?”
He swallowed again. “The child is in the wrong position. By now, it should have shifted, so that the head is down in preparation for entering the birth passage. It has not done so. Instead, it is lying . . . crossways.”
Sebastian felt as if someone had reached into his chest to twist his heart and elbow his gut, so that it was a moment before he was able to say, “What can be done?”
Croft shook his head. “Nothing.”
“What do you mean, nothing?”
“The child may turn itself.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
The accoucheur sidled toward the door. “Some babes which present in a breech position are born successfully.”
“And the mothers?”
“Some mothers survive,” said Croft. “But . . .”
“But?”
Croft straightened his spine and met Sebastian’s fierce gaze with a fortitude Sebastian couldn’t help but admire.
“But rarely both.”
Chapter 25
S ebastian found Hero standing at the window of her chamber, one hand on the panel of heavy drapes at her side, her gaze on the flurry of snow falling from the sky.
“I owe the poor man an apology,” she said as Sebastian came to stand behind her.
“Did you really throw his basin at him?”
“I did. Shameful, is it not?”
He slipped his arms around her and drew her back against him. She smelled of silk and lavender and herself, and for a moment the upswelling of emotions within him was so powerful that he had to squeeze his eyes shut. “Perhaps. But nevertheless understandable. The man is a pompous, pedantic ass.”
She shook her head. “Croft may be an idiot, but he means well. He truly believes in what he prescribes.”
When Sebastian remained silent, she said, “I take it he told you the child will in all likelihood be breech?”
“He said it might still turn.”
“It might.”
He brought his hands up to rest them on the swell of her belly. He hoped she didn’t notice that they weren’t quite steady. He said, “We need to find a new accoucheur—preferably one who is not an idiot.”
“They’re all idiots.” She tipped her head back against his shoulder, her lips curving into an odd smile. “If you ask me, the child’s position is the real reason Croft bowed out. He’s afraid.”
What accoucheur in his right mind wouldn’t be afraid of attending Lord Jarvis’s daughter in a difficult delivery? thought Sebastian. But he didn’t say it.
“What about Gibson?” she suggested.
“Gibson is a surgeon, not a physician or accoucheur,” he reminded her.
“You think I care for that? You know as well as I do that he’s delivered babies. Surely he could at least recommend someone.”
“Unfortunately, I believe he shares your opinion of the profession. But I can ask.”
He was silent for a moment, his thoughts crowded again with the memory of all the babes her mother had lost. Why had she lost them? he wondered. Were they breech? Or did they die for some other reason entirely? Some abnormality that had in the end come close to taking Lady Jarvis’s life, as well.
“I know what you’re thinking,” said Hero. “But I am not my mother.”
She turned in his arms, her hand coming up to cup his cheek as she kissed him on the mouth. “Everything will be fine.”
He speared his fingers through her hair, cradling the back of her head and holding her close as he let his gaze drift over the familiar line of her cheeks, the soft curve of her lips. He wanted to tell her that the thought of losing her terrified him, that he could no longer even imagine a life without her in it. Yet he’d never said these things to her, never even whispered those three simple words, “I love you.” To say them now would seem to suggest that he feared she might die. And so he kept silent.
She was braver than he. “I don’t intend to die, Devlin.”
He rested his forehead against hers. But he still said nothing, for she knew as well as he that the hour of our death is rarely of our own choosing.
• • •
By the time Sebastian reached Tower Hill, the snow was falling thick and fast, big flakes that stung his face and rapidly covered the city in a blanket of white.
“Good God, Devlin,” said Gibson as Sebastian came in stomping snow off his boots. “What in the name of all that’s holy are you doing out in this?”
Sebastian shrugged out of his wet greatcoat. “I need the name of a good accoucheur, Gibson.”
Gibson paused in the act of leading the way to his small parlor to look back at him in surprise. “I was under the impression the esteemed Richard Croft would be attending Lady Devlin.”
“He resigned. He would have me believe it is because Lady Devlin is not the most meek and cooperative patient—which I will be the first to admit she is not. But if truth be told, I think it’s because he’s afraid of Jarvis. The babe is lying breech, Gibson.”
“I wouldn’t worry too much at this point; it’s early days, yet. The babe’s not due until April. It will turn when it’s ready.”
Sebastian met his friend’s gaze. “I’m afraid that’s a polite fiction, told to still the tongues of Society’s gossips. The child is expected in a week or two.”
“Ah.” The expression on the Irishman’s face confirmed every one of Sebastian’s worse fears, and then some. “Mother Mary,” he said softly, and turned away to pour two glasses of burgundy.
“It’s bad, isn’t it?” said Sebastian, watching him.
Gibson held out one of the wineglasses. “Sometimes a babe will shift at the last minute.”
Sebastian took his glass and drank long and deep. “The name of a good accoucheur, Gibson; I need one. Quickly.”
Gibson pushed a tumbled lock of hair off his forehead. Sebastian noticed that his friend had not only shaved, but also put on a clean cravat and evidently bullied Mrs. Federico into ironing one of his shirts too. “Let me think on it a bit. I’ll ask around tomorrow.”
Sebastian went to sink into one of the cracked leather chairs beside the fire. It was then that he noticed someone had picked up the newspapers that normally littered the floor. He let his gaze drift over the recently dusted mantel, the fresh candles in the sconces flanking the fireplace. “How is your patient?”
“You can ask me yourself,” said Alexandrie Sauvage, coming to stand in the doorway.
She looked much the same as Sebastian remembered her from three years before, her hair still the same riotous cloud of sunset-shot fire, her eyes the same unexpectedly dark brown. But away from the hot sun of Spain, her skin was paler, and she was thinner, her cheekbones more pronounced in a way that gave her an air of fragility he knew was utterly deceptive.
“Good God; what are you doing out of bed?” Gibson demanded, going to steer her wobbly steps to a nearby chair.
She wore the same faded dress he’d seen that first night, and from the looks of things, she’d just pulled it on. “I heard you talking,” she said, settling with a soft, quickly suppressed sigh into the chair opposite his. He could see the tight lines bracketing her lips and knew how much it had cost her to leave her bed.
“You don’t look like you should be up.”
“She shouldn’t be,” said Gibson.
Her gaze met Sebastian’s. He saw the flare of smoldering animosity in her eyes, and something else, like the wariness of a cornered fox.
He said, “What can
you tell us about the night Damion Pelletan was killed?”
She put her hand to her forehead, as if the mere effort of thought brought a renewed surge of pain. “I’m afraid I don’t remember much.”
“Can you tell us the name of the man who went with you to the Gifford Arms?”
She frowned at him in confusion, her hand falling back to her side. “What man? What are you talking about? I went alone. That I do remember.”
Gibson and Sebastian exchanged looks. Sebastian said, “According to a certain Mitt Peeples, a veiled woman and an unknown man asked to see Pelletan at about nine o’clock the night he died. He went outside to speak to them. Then he came inside for his greatcoat, and left.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know anything about them. Damion never mentioned them to me. When I arrived at the inn, he was standing outside, staring up at the stars. I asked what he was doing—it was so cold that night. He said he was just . . . thinking.”
Sebastian studied her pale, tightly held face. But if she was lying, she was giving nothing away. “And then what?”
“I asked him to come with me to see Claire Bisette’s child. He went inside for his greatcoat; then we hailed a hackney carriage. We told the jarvey where we wanted to go, only when we reached the Tower, the man refused to enter St. Katharine’s and insisted on setting us down, so we had to walk the rest of the way to Hangman’s Court. After that . . .” She shrugged. “I know we saw Cécile, but I barely remember it. And nothing after that.”
She held Sebastian’s gaze, as if defying him to disbelieve her, and he thought, Why? Why would she be keeping back something that might lead them to the person or persons who had tried to kill her?
She said, “I heard what you said, about your wife.”
“What about my wife?”
“There is a way to turn a babe in the womb that involves manually applying pressure to the belly to externally manipulate the child. But it must be done soon. If you leave it too late, it becomes considerably more difficult.”
