by Carla Kelly
“Lady Taunton?”
She looked up from her contemplation of the roses. There was Polly Brandon, her other half sister, standing at the top of the steps. She smiled at her, returning her curtsy.
“Would you walk with me to the square?”
In another moment they were seated on one of the stone benches. “I believe you know who I am. Nana told you.”
Polly nodded. “She did, Lady Taunton.”
Laura put her hand on the girl’s arm, and was gratified when Polly took her hand and held it. “It’s just Laura. Polly, I know Oliver is paying your tuition now and making things comfortable for you, but you don’t have to stay here.”
“He and Nana told me that, too.” She hesitated. “Sister, I like it here well enough, and you can tell by looking that our father never troubled to have a miniature made of me. I was quite safe.”
All Laura saw was a pretty girl, one wearing spectacles, to be sure, but still a pretty girl with auburn hair like her own and Nana’s, and an air of real intelligence. She was taller than Nana, and plump in the way of young girls about to turn into young ladies. She could see no reason why Polly Brandon wouldn’t break hearts someday. She also had an idea.
“Polly, I would like to send a miniaturist to you,” she said. “I can think of nothing nicer than to have your likeness to sit on my desk, and I know Nana would think it a wonderful Christmas gift, too. Would you mind?”
Then their arms were around each other, Laura not holding back her tears, and Polly patting her on the back, soothing her with that same generosity of heart Nana possessed. Maybe we are more alike than anyone could have imagined, and from such a father, Laura thought.
“I’d like that above anything,” Polly assured her, when she could speak. “I will also petition such a present from my sisters.” She had mischief in her eyes. “In Nana’s case, I think I will have her defer until our niece or nephew is in the picture, too. Maybe even Oliver, if he will stay in port long enough. Theirs will be more than a miniature!” Her face turned serious again and she tightened her grip on Laura. “We came so close to never knowing.”
“Don’t think about that,” Laura murmured. “Nana is my heroine.”
“Mine, too. Will you write me?”
“Once a week, without fail.”
Arm in arm, they walked back across the street, hugged each other again, then Polly went up the steps to the Female Academy. “Time for Latin,” she said, with a wave of her hand, and then a kiss into the air with it.
Laura took another deep breath as more of the weight of the years fell off her shoulders.
Laura arrived at Stonehouse after dark, debated briefly whether to go to Block Four or Philemon’s house first. The surgeon’s house won with surprising ease, but she justified her choice by reminding herself that Aunt Walters had promised to have those dresses ready for her. Besides, it was only eight o’clock; Philemon was probably just getting his second wind. She wouldn’t know where to find him.
To her surprise, he opened the door just as she raised her hand to knock. From the looks of him, he had been on a rapid walk from the back of the house and was ready to hurtle himself down the steps. Instead of knocking her down, he grabbed her around the waist and pulled her inside.
She gasped, then laughed as he picked her up, whirled her around, then set her down, as if suddenly reminding himself that sometimes an ordinary “how de do” would suffice.
Somehow, her bonnet had been tipped sideways by his exuberance, so she set it straight on her head. “I was only gone four days, and not two weeks.”
She must not have had her bonnet set precisely, because he adjusted it, standing close enough for her to notice the stains on his shirtsleeves.
“You need to wash that shirt,” she scolded.
“You sound like Aunt Walters,” he replied cheerfully. “No time. Two amputations this afternoon, and then I had to deliver a baby in the laundry.”
“The laundry?” she asked. He still stood so close, which bothered her not at all.
He wrapped his finger around one of the ribbons that tied her bonnet. “Those poor women work up to the last moment. Still, it was a welcome change from the usual butcher’s bill.”
“Is there anything you don’t do?”
“I leave pulling teeth to my mates. I hate using that dental key.” He shuddered elaborately, then pulled her close into his arms, as if he wanted to put an end to a silly conversation as much as she did.
He didn’t try to kiss her. He just held her, and it was precisely what she craved. It made her brave enough to say into his questionable shirt, “I went to Bath to ask Miss Pym who my mother was.”
“What did you find out?”
Safe in his arms, she told him. “She was just a foolish girl and a willing mark to be preyed upon by someone like my father.”
Since they were much the same height, it was so easy to put her arms under his and hold him tight across his back. She knew he was a muscular man because she had seen him lift patients with comparative ease, but he was holding her so gently. “How is it you know what I need?” she asked quietly, not meaning to say that out loud, but suddenly wanting to know.
“Call it practice,” he said. “Only loobies think doctors just tend the body.”
He was taking prodigious good care of her body, one hand rubbing the back of her neck and the other slightly south of her waist. He pushed her closer to him and she didn’t mind.
She turned her face toward him then, looking him right in the eyes. She knew he would have kissed her, but the clock in the sitting room started to chime and he stepped back, his face red now and his hands on her shoulders.
“I’m late,” he said, and it sounded like an apology. As if to make up for it, he kissed her cheek. “Come with me. You have to see what’s happening on Block Four.”
She let him take her by the hand and hurry her across the quadrangle and up the front steps. “I have to take a quick look on C Ward, then we’ll check out the miracle downstairs. Laura, you are a nonpareil. Will you take notes?”
“What, on my nonpareilness?” she teased, taking the pad and pencil he handed her.
He introduced her as Mrs. Taunton, the new matron of Block Four. His statement elicited a hooray from two of the men who appeared to be rapidly on the mend. Philemon gave them a long stare and the noise stopped.
True to his nature, he softened his discipline quickly. “If ye salty dogs will treat her kinder than your own mums, she might find the time to read to you and overlook your general nastiness.”
The men in the beds laughed.
“She’s going to ward walk with me mornings,” he told them. “Mrs. Taunton has already seen it all, so none of you can possibly surprise her. She’s also only slightly less brave than Lord Nelson himself, so ye need have no fears.”
Laura felt her eyes begin to well up, but she willed the tears away. She marveled again at Philemon Brittle’s innate ability to gently nudge out the best in her. I am not that brave, she thought, but now I want to be.
They went from bed to bed, Philemon observing patients, chatting with those who were up to it, taking his time with pulses, putting his ear to chests to listen to the message inside, checking bandages, and sitting silently with one sailor with bandaged eyes, holding his hands for a long time.
“He was too close to an exploding cannon and he can’t hear, either,” he told her when he stood up, still holding the man’s hand. “I want you to do this as often as you can.” He looked down at his patient. “They don’t teach this in medical school. More’s the pity.”
Still he stood there, then gestured her closer, and handed his patient off to her. She held his hand gently; as she watched him, he smiled.
“Trust the Navy to know a good thing,” Philemon said, his voice low. “Laura, when you came to Nana’s house and she hugged you, I had the feeling that was the first friendly touch in a long time.”
His lips were close to her ear because she knew he didn’t w
ant the other patients to hear him. She leaned closer. “Is twenty-six years long enough? No one had ever hugged me before. I supposed it’s not recommended in orphanages, and heaven knows Miss Pym would never consider it.”
He winced as though she had sworn at him. “Dear God, what a waste,” he murmured. “You have some catching up to do.”
At the foot of each bed, he wrote on the chart hanging there, then gave her whispered instructions. They both quickly realized another advantage to her height. It was an easy matter to speak right into her ear, without seeming obvious in a roomful of patients.
They walked the ward, then continued to B, where she looked immediately for Matthew. He was sitting on a seaman’s bed, playing backgammon. He must have sensed her presence, because he turned around before she spoke, his face all smiles, and held up his bandaged arm. “Getting better, mum.”
Thinking of what Philemon had just said, she put her hands on his shoulders and kissed the top of his head. “That’s from Nana,” she said. “You know she would do that if she were here.”
Delighted at Matthew’s appearance, she looked at Philemon.
“He’s fast becoming my star patient. He’s also discovering how much he can do with one hand.”
“The doctor’s going to have a hook made for me,” Matthew said.
“Only if you promise to be a force for good,” Philemon warned. He looked over his shoulder. “Here’s my other star pupil.”
She turned around to see Davey Dabney smiling at her. He was still propped halfway into a sitting position, but the wan look had been replaced by what she could only describe as a hopeful expression. Startled, she looked at the other men. That was what was different about the ward. She looked back at Philemon, a question in her eyes.
“Pierre Gagon has only been here two days, but, gentlemen, can we safely say that he has already raised the dead? Who would have thought a soufflé could have come out of that kitchen?”
Laura clapped her hands in delight. “He has wasted not a moment!”
“I wouldn’t have believed it myself, if I hadn’t seen it. You’re right, Mrs. Taunton. He’s a treasure.”
He said something else, but Laura wasn’t listening. She was looking at the cot beyond Davey, where the man with the amputated leg used to lie. Someone else was there now. She turned back to Philemon and saw the sadness in his eyes. She waited by Matthew until the surgeon finished talking to the orderly at the desk, leaving his instructions for the night.
He went to the door then. She said good-night to Matthew, promised them all she would return in the morning, and left the room. Philemon stood on the landing, looking at his notes, almost as if he was ashamed to see her.
“What happened?” she asked, as gently as she could.
“His leg was septic, with great red welts shooting into his groin. I…I just couldn’t help him enough.”
She could almost reach out and take hold of his sorrow. Instead, she applied his own remedy and put her arm around his waist. He put his arm across her shoulder and they walked slowly down the stairs together.
By the time they reached the ground floor, he was in control again. “Now you need to see the miracles in that dungeon of a kitchen I tried to foist on you.”
She smelled what was going on even before he opened the door. “Pierre is making profiteroles,” she said with a sigh.
“We call it manna. I’ve been prescribing it for everything from glaucoma to hemorrhoids.”
She laughed out loud and walked into the kitchen. All was neat, scrubbed, swept and tidy, with food on the shelves. There were even curtains at the windows. She looked closer. They were remarkably like the curtains from the kitchen at Taunton.
Pierre bowed and whisked out a platter of the delicacies in question. Philemon took two.
“I feel a slight tickle in the back of my throat,” the surgeon said. “Here, Laura, you look a little jaundiced. Oh, wait, no. That is the lantern reflecting off your cheekbones.”
“Wretch.”
She took a profiterole as Mrs. Ormes came out of the scullery. “It appears that you have all been making yourselves completely indispensable,” Laura said.
“I believe we have, Lady Taunton,” the housekeeper replied. “Lt. Brittle has already said that he will throw himself under a brewer’s wagon if we ever leave.”
“I will, too,” Philemon said cheerfully. “Laura, I even offered to marry her, but she said her tastes don’t run to youngsters, and she prefers to remember Mr. Ormes.”
The housekeeper pinked up nicely at his teasing. “Lady Taunton, I should warn you about the navy.”
“My sister already did, I assure you.”
Her eyes practically twinkling, Mrs. Ormes leaned closer. “Is she the one in the family way?”
“Yes, alas, she did not take her own advice.”
While Philemon talked to the chef and made some notations on a chart listing all the patients, Laura followed her housekeeper into the rooms, exclaiming over the brimming pantry, inspecting the pots and pans in the scullery, and admiring the table and chairs in the small servants’ hall. She smiled to herself; the rug in there looked familiar, too. She could have sworn it was last seen in her butler’s parlor. Poor Taylor; how he had wanted to come along, too.
“Here is Monsieur Gagon’s room, then mine. The pots and pans girl had a little alcove off the scullery.” Mrs. Ormes lowered her voice. “After the maids finished cleaning, I sent them back to Taunton. Too tempting for the patients, I vow.”
“Mrs. Ormes, these are sick or wounded men.”
The housekeeper just clucked her tongue. “They’re still the navy, Lady Taunton, begging your pardon.”
They stopped before the last door. “Is this my room?” Laura asked.
Mrs. Ormes opened the door. Laura saw scrubbed walls, her desk from her personal sitting room, a rug from her bedchamber, and her favorite chair and ottoman. The bed had no mattress.
“Lt. Brittle said he has a feather bed in his quarters he will have sent over tomorrow for you,” she said.
“I’m sure that isn’t…”
“He insisted, and I don’t really think he likes to be contradicted, Lady Taunton.”
“We will humor him, then,” Laura replied, amused. “And Mrs. Ormes, I am to be addressed as Mrs. Taunton here. I don’t want to give even the appearance of putting on airs, because believe me, I am here on sufferance. The administrator is not looking on this venture with a kindly eye.”
“Perhaps that is best,” Mrs. Ormes said doubtfully.
“It is,” Laura assured her. “I will move in tomorrow.” She thought a moment. “Did Peters return to Taunton with the housemaids?”
Mrs. Ormes shook her head, her eyes lively again. “Not her, Lady…Mrs. Taunton. True as Lt. Brittle said, she’s assisting the head matron now, and had slapped even more fear into the orderlies than the surgeons!”
“Amazing,” Laura murmured. “She always frightened me. Now it’s for a useful purpose.” Good for you, Amanda Peters, she thought. Your nephew, dead in the snow on the retreat to Corunna, is not the family’s only patriot.
She protested when Lt. Brittle insisted on walking her back to his quarters before continuing with his rounds. “It’s only across the quadrangle, and I know how busy you are.”
He made no reply, but offered her his arm, which she took, after making a face at him that made him smile. He seemed to read her mind then. “I can spare a feather bed for you, make no mistake. There’ll be nights when you’ll be so tired you won’t even bother to remove your shoes, but at least you can sprawl in comfort. It’s one concession I make for myself, too.”
“You’re such a sybarite.”
“Indeed I am. Three years’ duty in Jamaica ruined me from ever wanting to be a cold bath, porridge kind of Englishman again. Ah, Jamaica.”
“I believe it was a fever hospital,” she reminded him. “Lots of death and drudgery and probably an administrator as obstructive as Sir David.”
&
nbsp; He opened the door and ushered her in. “Wrong there. He died while I was recuperating. You would like Jamaica. If we can ever eliminate yellow fever from the island, I’ll book you passage on the next ship out. Until then, never. As for now, all I can offer is my bed.”
He must have realized what he said, because he chuckled. “You know what I mean! Good night, Mrs. Taunton.”
He left, hurrying back across the quadrangle. She knew she was tired, and she tried to sleep, but her eyes didn’t close until he was home again, three hours later, and in his own room. Dear man, she thought, dear man.
Chapter Eleven
Laura slept long and well, aghast with the lateness of the hour when she woke. She dressed quickly in one of the new dresses Mrs. Walters had left in her room, then noticed the surgeon’s apron hanging on the doorknob. There was a note in the front pocket.
Laura, have some of these made, too. We may be the same height, but your patients, bless their navy hearts, must yearn to see you in something conforming more to your figure than mine. Aunt Walters can measure you and one of my aprons as a pattern. Good tidings to you from the man who has turned you into a working woman. Shame on him. P.
P.S. Don’t you rush off without breakfast. You never know when you’ll get to eat again. P2.
She had obviously missed ward walking, so Laura went to the kitchen first, amused to see all the surgeon’s mates eating porridge and drinking the fragrant orange-flavored tea she remembered from her own breakfast room at Taunton. She smiled inwardly at their guilty looks in her direction, but no one abandoned breakfast.
She went from ward to ward. Philemon had left notes for her, asking her to check on one patient or another, detailing what to look for. Remembering yesterday’s lesson, she sat with another powder monkey in far worse shape than Matthew, digging into her reserve of nonsensical chatter to distract him from pain. She doubted her success, but made a mental note to send Matthew to sit with him.
