by Merry Farmer
A sudden clash of feeling tightened Alex’s gut. He hadn’t just dismissed her, had he? No, he must be thinking of the risk involved in having assignations two nights in a row.
“I could skip out of work at the hospital early,” she said, dashing to her wardrobe to dress before he could leave. “I believe most if not all of the house party will be at the lake this afternoon for some activity. Not a soul would see us.”
“I will be at the lake this afternoon,” George answered. He hovered beside her vanity, toying with the edge of her mirror, not looking at her again.
Something so honest should not cause Alex’s throat to close up. “Oh. Perhaps tomorrow then.” She fastened her corset and tied her petticoat before shimmying into her blouse and skirt. Thank heavens her work clothes were uncomplicated.
“Yes.” George glanced up at her at last, his eyes hot with desire. “Tomorrow it shall be.”
Her own smile returned, and with it the heated sensations that made her aware of the sensitivity between her legs. That first time last night had shocked her. The pinch and burn were not what she had expected. George had kept going at full strength, though, making the most intriguing sounds, and she had willed herself to be carried away with him. It was better the second time, but by the third, just before daybreak, a part of her had wanted to beg him to stop so she could think of something to alleviate the soreness.
“You couldn’t hurry up, could you?” George prompted her, shifting his weight with a restless huff.
“Let me brush my hair,” she said. The temptation to be annoyed was there, but she dismissed it and pulled her brush through her tangled locks.
It was a blessing that her hair was so fine that a few swipes with a brush tamed it. She had a harder time dressing it into a serviceable chignon, made more trying by George’s increased restiveness. When at last she finished, he hopped right to the door.
“Thank God,” he murmured, but didn’t elaborate.
Alex rested a hand on his arm as she reached for the door. She wanted to spread her hand lower across his back to his bum. She wanted to tug his shirt out and feel the heat of his skin against hers once more. She wanted to go back to bed.
“Just one kiss?” she whispered with her hand on the doorknob.
George’s face pinched with impatience. He smoothed the expression as soon as it took over, then leaned into her to capture her mouth in a punishing kiss. Alex was ready to drown in the sensation, no matter how forceful, but he pulled away and grasped her hand and the doorknob together.
“Ouch,” Alex exclaimed as he crushed her hand in his haste.
“Sorry,” he mumbled and threw open the door.
They slipped out into the hall and started toward the staircase at the center of the house. George outpaced her by a few steps. A burr of confusion settled in Alex’s stomach. She was about to call George out about his sudden burst of coldness when a door snapped open as they passed it.
Alex’s mother and Anthony Fretwell, George’s father, stepped out into the hall laughing. They came from Alex’s mother’s boudoir. The moment her mother saw Alex, her laughter stopped abruptly on a gasp. Her cheeks flared pink. Alex was reasonably certain her own cheeks were bright as well.
“Thank you for showing me the miniature of your dear, departed James, Charlotte,” Mr. Fretwell said, loud and distinct. “It has been such a long time since I have set eyes on my old friend, eh George?”
No one was fooled.
“Years,” George answered, then followed that with a quick, “If you will excuse me, I’m famished.”
He rushed off, leaving Alex standing in a cloud of guilt in front of her mother. If she looked as shamefaced as her mother, she was in deep trouble. A second thought hit her. Was her mother engaging in illicit behavior? At her age? The thought was almost incomprehensible.
It would have spurred Alex to indignation if her mother wasn’t watching her with the same sense of the inconceivable.
“If you will excuse me,” Alex recovered first. “I’m already late for work.”
“Oh. Yes,” her mother said.
Alex didn’t wait to hear more. She marched down the hall and turned the corner, rushing down the stairs, across the main hall, and out the front door as fast as she could. She didn’t even stop for breakfast. At the rate she was going, she wouldn’t be able to face any of her fellow house guests and look them in the eye. She pressed her cool fingers to her face, willing the heat in her cheeks to go away. And where was George in this dust up?
There wasn’t time to think about it. He was likely as eager to forget the whole encounter with their parents as she was. She was truly late for work, which counted for something. The hospital was as reliable as the sunrise when it came to never-ending activity. The walk into Brynthwaite would be just the thing to clear her head.
“There you are at last,” Mrs. Garforth scolded her the second she walked through the hospital doors. “Where on earth have you been?”
“I’m terribly sorry, Mrs. Garforth,” Alex said without stopping on her way through the front hall to the dispensary to grab an apron. “It was an unavoidable delay.”
“You’re a doctor, young lady,” Mrs. Garforth scolded on. “There is no such thing as an unavoidable delay when there are sick and injured to treat. What if there had been a catastrophe and a doctor was needed immediately?”
Alex blinked at the force of the woman’s complaint as she tied her apron. “I’m certain Dr. Pycroft would have been able to take care of it.”
“Dr. Pycroft,” Mrs. Garforth went on as if his name was a curse, throwing her hands up. “And where the devil is he and all?”
“I’m right here, Mrs. Garforth,” Marshall’s voice came from the far end of the waiting room, followed by the sound of the hospital door shutting.
Alex’s brow flew up. Marshall was only just arriving? He was usually at the hospital hours before anyone else, frequently before dawn. It must have been past eleven by now.
“This is unacceptable, sir,” Mrs. Garforth went after him as he shot by in the hall on his way to the office. Alex followed out of curiosity, if nothing else. “Simply unacceptable. A hospital must have trained doctors on staff. Our nurses have been working themselves silly this morning. They haven’t had so much as a break for tea.”
“Why didn’t Dr. Dyson spell them?” Marshall asked, dropping his case on the desk. He turned to send a questioning glance to Alex.
“Dr. Dyson has only just arrived herself,” Mrs. Garforth revealed. Her eyes were narrowed and her color was high. “Do we run a hospital here or a circus?”
“A little bit of both, I would guess,” Marshall answered, unamused. “Where were you?” he asked Alex.
“I….” Every thought and every excuse flew right out of Alex’s head. She couldn’t very well announce that she was late because she’d been up all night losing her virginity to a longtime flirtation. “The house party….” The words failed to form themselves into an explanation.
Marshall stood straighter nonetheless. His eyes narrowed and his complexion took on an almost grey hue, a mixture of frustration and disappointment. It wouldn’t have born noticing were it not for the intensity of it.
“Well, where were you?” Alex fired back at him. If she couldn’t excuse herself, she could accuse him.
Marshall’s strange look morphed to tight anxiety. “Matty never showed up to help the girls this morning,” he said. “And Mary was already in a dither because we received another letter from the girls’ Aunt Eileen yesterday.”
The twin jolts of Matty and Eileen snapped Alex out of her guilt. “That’s not like Matty at all, is it?” she asked. In truth, she didn’t know the mysterious woman well.
“It most certainly is not,” Marshall said. “I called ’round to the forge to see if Lawrence had anything to say about it or if she’d simply forgotten, but neither of them were there. The forge was closed.”
“Closed?”
Marshall arched an eyebrow. That was
all the expression Alex needed to know he was deeply worried.
“And what did Eileen have to say?” she went on. She moved with Marshall when he marched away from his desk and headed into the hall and then up the stairs to check on patients in the wards.
“She says nothing new,” he reported. “The same old is enough to keep me worrying, though. She wants the girls, plain and simple.”
“I’m sorry,” Alex said. She touched his arm as they reached the top of the stairs.
Marshall flinched away from her. The move was so quick and so baffling that Alex’s lips parted, as though she should say something to apologize. Apologize for what, though? She’d only touched him.
There wasn’t time to dwell on it. Marshall peeled off to check on the patients in the men’s ward, and the moment Alex crossed into the woman’s and children’s ward, she had her hands full. A small outbreak of measles had a few very sick children holed up in a quarantined part of the ward. They were doing well enough, and they had managed to prevent those few cases from becoming an outbreak, but they took a great deal of time and attention to treat. Everything else was forgotten.
The waiting room was already full, and by the time Alex made it downstairs and was able to treat new cases, even more people had arrived. She had bones to set and cuts to stitch, not to mention a pair of curious illnesses that took all of her powers of diagnosis and a consultation with Marshall. Noon came and went in a flash, and before she could take a deep breath, it was after two o’clock.
The moment the madness settled down, Alex’s earlier worries came back to gnaw at her. The moment she sat to relax, she remembered how sore she was. That soreness turned her thoughts to George and made her smile. She sat in the dispensary, drinking tea, and closed her eyes to remember George’s touch, his kisses. Only, as she sorted through her memories, the things that stood out most vibrantly to her were George’s impatience, his eagerness to flee in the morning. That and the trickle of wetness on her thigh. She could do something about that, at least.
Taking in a deep breath, she opened her eyes, set her tea down, and pushed away from the table where she leaned. The hospital had an entire dispensary full of medications. One of them had to be suitable to work as a contraceptive. She flew open the cabinet containing rows of jars containing pills and decoctions, searching labels. Something had to work. She fully intended to enjoy George as much as she could, but she would be a fool to walk into that blindly.
Like she had last night.
That rogue thought snapped her straight. She pressed a hand to her stomach and took in a steadying breath.
“Something wrong?” Marshall asked from the doorway.
Alex whipped toward him with wide, guilty eyes. When had he come in? Had he seen what she was looking for?
But no, he held a clipboard and marched to the other cabinet of medicines, opening the door and searching until he found what he was looking for. Alex’s silence hooked him. Instead of leaving with his medicine bottle, he stayed right where he was and narrowed his eyes at her.
“What is it?” This question was far less casual than the first.
“I….” Again, Alex came up with absolutely nothing by way of an excuse.
Marshall turned to face her fully. “Dr. Dyson?”
He wasn’t fooled. She could see it in his eyes. He’d caught her and George in the storeroom just a few days ago. He knew that she was in the midst of a serious flirtation. Marshall was her friend. He was a fellow doctor. If anyone could help her find what she needed and avoid a greater problem, it was him.
She took a deep breath and blurted her concerns. “Do you know if we have anything that could serve as a contraceptive?”
Silence. Marshall was perfectly still. He didn’t even breathe. All he did was stare at her, eyes blazing.
Alex swallowed. Running into her mother in the hall with George was one thing, but the simple disapproval in Marshall’s eyes was a thousand times worse. Without a word, he made her feel as though she had done something unforgiveable. She shouldn’t have told him.
After long, painful seconds, Marshall blinked. “Has your association with Mr. Fretwell…changed?”
She could handle this. She was a grown woman who owed nothing to the man standing in front of her. Even if he was a friend. Perhaps the closest friend she had, outside of Elizabeth. She took a step closer to him.
“Yes,” she answered. He deserved honesty.
Marshall’s flush deepened. His moustache twitched. “Dr. Dyson, might I remind you of the dangers involved in such an affair,” he said, so quietly that he almost seemed calm.
She would not be cowed by a conversation as intimate as this. “I do not need you to remind me, Dr. Pycroft. I know the risks. That is why I am here, in the dispensary. I would ask that you respect my choices and that you assist me.”
His silence this time held a wealth more emotion than his initial hesitation. Alex could practically see his heart beating. The air between them was charged. The wild thought struck her that he might be jealous. It was preposterous, but she couldn’t shake it.
“The only assistance I can give you is to warn you to cease this affair as quickly as possible,” he said at length, saving her the struggle of figuring out how to react.
Her back went up. “It is not any of your business,” she said. “Help me.”
“I am trying to help you. Don’t you see what’s happening here?” He burst into an impassioned plea, taking a large step toward her. “That man is taking advantage of you.”
“I said it was none of your business and I meant it,” Alex fired back.
“But it is my business,” Marshall argued. “You are my colleague. You are my friend.”
Her anger shattered with the earnestness of his words. She tried her best to cling to it. “I am fully capable of conducting my life.” She turned away.
“Are you?” He sidestepped to stay in front of her. “You don’t have the experience to know what this affair could do to you.”
Like a child’s rubber ball, her anger bounced back to towering heights. “And you do? You have experience with affairs of the heart?”
“Yes,” he answered, a beat late. “I know what it’s like to love someone who could destroy you.”
Curiosity swirled through the maelstrom of her emotions. None of it was helpful. She had a purpose and she needed to fulfill it.
“I will not break things off with George,” she told him, crossing her arms. “I intend to pursue this affair until its natural conclusion.”
“And what do you suppose that to be?” Marshall mirrored her posture.
“Marriage,” she told him, surprised he would even ask.
Marshall’s shoulders slumped and he shook his head. For a moment, he seemed far older and more exhausted than he’d ever looked, even after Clara’s death.
“This won’t end in marriage,” he said. “It will end in the destruction of your reputation.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Oh, but I do. And I don’t want to see you hurt that way, Alexandra.”
She opened her mouth to continue the argument, but shut it just as quickly. Her name on his lips was like a slap in the face, intended to bring a hysterical person to their senses. Her heart pounded in her chest. The soreness between her legs was, strangely, more heightened. Marshall had no business speaking to her like this, and yet, somehow it felt….
She didn’t know.
She took a step back. “You may want to begin your search for another physician now, Dr. Pycroft,” she said. “I’m not certain I’ll want to continue practicing medicine after marriage. We may even move back to Hampshire, where George has been living.”
She turned to search through the cabinet of medicines. He stepped to her side.
“Don’t do this.” Marshall’s final plea was soft, intimate. “I can’t bear to watch you go through it.”
She lifted her chin to meet his eyes. He cared about her. Marshall Pycroft genuinely cared about h
er.
“If you do this, you will never forgive yourself,” he added, proving her conclusion.
His words stung. She would always forgive herself for chasing after love.
But not for making a fool of herself, another voice within her answered.
She swallowed. “Thank you for your concern, Dr. Pycroft.”
She focused on the cabinet of medicines. Something in their stock would do. She tried to think through the uses and side-effects of each medicine she studied, but her mind refused to hold onto thoughts. Marshall continued to stand where he was, words and feelings just on the other side of his lips. A blind man could see that he had more to say. Part of her longed to hear it. A bigger part of her was terrified of what it might be.
Matty
Robert Carson. The name had popped out at Matty the moment she had seen him lounging against the side of the building at the end of the Pycroft’s street. Bobbo, as her step-father always called him. She would know that pinched face and those beady eyes anywhere. He had been there in the worst of times, lurking. He’d always looked at her the way a starving man would look at a side of beef. Her step-father had found it funny. Her mother had turned a blind eye. The only thing that had kept Matty safe—if safe it could be called—was that her step-father had wanted to have her first. He joked about throwing the scraps to Bobbo once he’d had his fill.
“Through this way,” Lawrence said by her side, shaking her out of the dark spiral of her thoughts. “It’s not much farther.”
She nodded in reply, too caught up in old terror and new to form words. They had fled from Brynthwaite more than two hours ago and rushed back along the road to the forge. Lawrence had grabbed a few things, packed a satchel with Matty’s clothes, and then they’d headed straight into the woods.
The woods around Brynthwaite were thick and eerie with a feeling of age beyond recounting. If Lawrence was following a path, Matty had lost it long ago. The thick, leafy boughs above them blocked out enough of the sunlight that she could barely discern what time it was, let alone which direction they were heading. She trusted Lawrence to lead her on, to keep her safe. He was the only thing she could trust.
