Courtney Milan (26 page)

“Ha.” Henry stared down at the floor. “You haven’t met the old—” He looked up at Jonas, and then looked away, remembering that his employer held a special position in Jonas’s life. “You don’t see it. I’m not clever, but Peter and Billy are. If I have no wages, my brothers will have to get work. And if they give up their places in the boys’ school…” Henry poked morosely at the cast on his leg. “How long, do you think, before I can risk it? A week and a half, maybe?”

“I said you weren’t allowed to move,” Jonas told him. “I never said you couldn’t work. As it happens, it’s lucky for you that your injury is tricky. I’m writing a paper on recovery of the use of a limb after a difficult fracture, and I find myself in need of a subject. Someone who will do exactly as I say and nothing more. If you agree to allow me to write you up, I’ll pay you for your time.”

“I don’t need your charity.”

Jonas had found him the job with his father. He’d been the one who let matters slide, dithering about what needed to be done simply because it was his father. It wasn’t
charity,
not in the slightest. It was blood money.

“You think I’m doing this for your benefit?” he snapped back. “You’d have to remain still all day—no running, no playing with the other boys until I tell you you’re able. Any man can stand about on his feet all day. But it takes real talent to remain sitting.”

Henry frowned. “It does?”

“Yes. In fact, I’m not sure you can manage it. Sitting all day with nothing to do but twiddle your thumbs. And don’t think I’ll pay you if you can’t comply with the stringent requirements I have.”

Beside him Lydia twitched, leaning down to open her basket.

“Almost nothing to do,” she said. “I’ve brought a bandalore. Shall I show you how to use it?”

“Y
OU’RE NOT EVEN TRYING TO WIN THIS WAGER,
” Lydia said, as they left the small house behind. “You can’t very well bring me along on your house calls on the assurance that there is no bright side to be found, when you are planning to sweep in and hire the poor boy yourself.”

He looked over at her and smiled, and that expression made her feel…

No, it didn’t make her feel anything. She looked away.

“I don’t even have to look for the bright side! I was prepared to talk about the way he cares for his brothers—anyone can see he loves them—but then you went and ruined things for yourself. You have already counteracted any repressive, morbid things you might say. Henry suffered a terrible accident, but by an act of generosity, he will do very well. Your actions make no sense.”

He simply smiled. “On the contrary. I am doing precisely what I planned.”

“Do you not want to win?”

“I want to win. I want to win very much.” He’d offered her his arm again on the way back and she’d taken it. Some men folded a hand over a woman’s when they walked with her. He set two fingers against her wrist, yet that lesser contact seemed intimate in a way that she couldn’t explain.

She glanced down.

Or maybe she could explain why it seemed so different. He’d insinuated his hand in that small gap between her gloves and her cuff, and his fingers were bare. She could feel the warmth of his skin directly on hers.

“You are not wearing gloves,” Lydia said in shock.

He simply tapped his fingers against her wrist and kept walking. “Very observant, Miss Charingford.”

Little flakes of snow drifted down.

“Why are you not wearing gloves? Your hands must be almost frozen. It’s extremely cold out.”

But his fingers were warm, exceedingly warm.

“I never wear gloves when I pay house calls.” His forefinger drew a little line down her wrist as he spoke. “In fact, I almost never wear gloves anymore.”

He stared straight ahead of him as he spoke.

“I hesitate to ask…but is there some reason for this? You are not wealthy enough to be that eccentric.”

A faint smile touched his lips. “Perhaps you may have noticed this, Miss Charingford,” he said, “but I have a small number of defects in my character. This one stems from scientific ignorance.”

“Now you have piqued my curiosity.”

“There is a study by Doctor Semmelweis in Austria,” he said. “He has been much maligned for it, but I see no fault with the methodology. Semmelweis worked in a hospital in Vienna, and he decided to make one tiny little change in his practice. After he performed an autopsy—and before he delivered a child—he washed his hands in a solution of chlorinated lime.” He looked over at her. “He found that when he did so, the incidence of childbed fever was reduced by an astonishing ninety percent.”

“Good heavens.”

There was a sparkle to his eye, a liveliness in his step. His speech grew faster, more confident. “Think of that, in connection with John Snow’s discovery. In the midst of a cholera epidemic, Snow removed one pump handle—and with that single action, stopped the spread of disease. Every few years brings a new medical discovery, a new way of looking at the world. There is more happening that we do not understand and cannot see. But those two things, taken together… If Semmelweis is right, doctors are conveying sickness. That makes us pump handles, bringing illness from patient to patient. I started washing my hands after seeing any patient who had a contagious disease.”

“What a terrible thought.”

“And then I would put my hands in my gloves, and I would start to wonder. What if I hadn’t completely scrubbed the contagion away? If I had not, my gloves would be contaminated. I’d be walking around with my hands in mitts that were positively squirming with whatever it is that transmits disease.” He looked away. “One mistake, and I might contaminate my gloves forever. Needless to say, I stopped wearing gloves.”

He pursed his lips as he spoke.

“That is…”

He gave her a rueful look. “Odd? I’ve engaged in the most amazing screaming matches with other physicians over the practice. Doctors are gentlemen. Gentlemen have clean hands.” He set his jaw. “Most of the young men my age agree, but the older ones… They’ve been going from autopsy to childbirth for years, and refuse to admit that they might be the source of contagion themselves. To be honest, I think that the medical profession will only fully institute the practice of hand-washing once our elders stop practicing.”

“I wasn’t going to say it was odd,” said Lydia. “I actually think that is rather an extraordinary thing to do. I’m impressed.”

He let out a laugh. “Trust you, Miss Charingford, to turn my world upside down. You take my most admirable characteristics and twist them into faults. But when I admit something that I am sure exposes me for the strange man that I am, I receive the first compliment that I have ever received from you.”

“Surely not the first!”

“The absolute first. I’ve counted.”

She swallowed. The way he was looking at her… She felt like a teapot set on the hob, warming to a slow boil under his gaze.

“There is something you said earlier that I don’t understand,” Lydia said.

“Miss Charingford.” He folded his arms and looked at her forbiddingly. “I’m sure I said a great deal that you found unfamiliar.” His mouth set in a straight line. “I suppose it’s too much to hope that you have a question about gonorrhea. Those questions are so much easier to answer.”

She paused and tilted her head. “I think,” she said, “that you may have the most dreadful sense of humor of any man that I have ever encountered.”

He didn’t protest. “I’m fairly certain I do.” He glanced down at her. “And yet you have not run screaming. I count that as progress; I have become positively acceptable. Now what was it you were going to ask?”

“I was going to ask about what you said earlier. That you’d…that you’d…not used a French letter in eighteen months.” She swallowed. “I know I shouldn’t talk about this, but…but you actually answer my questions. Tell me if this is too impertinent—”

“No such thing.” But his voice had become even more forbidding.

Still, Lydia felt heartened. “It’s acceptable for men to…to visit women without being married. Like with Mrs. Hall, the other day. Are you telling me you don’t?”

“It has nothing to do with what is acceptable and what isn’t. I don’t wear gloves because I’m afraid that they might carry contagion. I’m not about to sheathe myself in a woman who could give me a disease. When I established myself here in Leicester, I determined that I wouldn’t have intercourse at all until I married.” There was a little smile on his face. “I didn’t think it would take quite so long, or I’m not sure I would have made such a hasty vow.”

“So you are looking for a wife? Good, God, Doctor Grantham. Sixteen months ago you reached girl number eleven in Leicester. What woman are you on now, number forty?”

“It…it hasn’t been like that.” He grimaced.

Lydia gave him her best wide-eyed innocent’s look. “I realize the search will be difficult, but surely somewhere in the entirety of Leicester, there must be at least one female who is so undiscriminating that she is willing to accept even you.”

“At least one?” He grinned broadly at her, understanding her teasing for what it was. “My. Praise like that will go straight to my head.”

“Do take it to heart. Even someone like you should be able to find a wife.”

“Thank you,” he said. “Even someone like me appreciates the sentiment.”

“Perhaps if you were a little less circumspect at displaying your income, you could convince number fifty.”

He laughed out loud. “You viper,” he said, but the words had no real heat to them. “It’s those defects in my character again. If you must know, I’d make a devil of a husband—always being woken at half two in the morning to go see someone who’s taken ill, telling my wife the truth no matter how inconvenient or unflattering it might be.” He shook his head and smiled at her. “Caring more about neatness than my personal wellbeing. Making terrible jokes.”

“You’re not all that terrible.”

“Thank you. I shall have that engraved on a plaque and presented to future candidates with your recommendation. The real problem is that I’m unfortunately constant in my affections. I’ve had my eye on one particular woman for more than a year. It wouldn’t be fair to marry anyone else with my attention thus engaged.”

“Oh, too bad,” Lydia said, shaking her head. “And she is not undiscriminating?”

“Alas,” he said, looking straight at her. “She is damnably clever, and I wouldn’t wish her any other way.”

The way he looked at her made her heart thump, her breath catch. For a second, those dark eyes seemed to have no end to them, as if she were looking into a hall of mirrors and seeing reflection upon reflection echoing into infinity.

For just one second, she felt a tug of yearning.

“I think,” Lydia said slowly, “you might have to lower your sights.”

“I’ve tried.” He gave her a rueful grin. “God knows I have. But the view to the heights is so inspiring that every time I convince myself I must move on, I’m charmed anew.”

It was almost impossible to conceive. For all his black humor, Doctor Grantham was attractive. Those velvety black eyes seemed to catch her in and pull her to him. He looked at her with a dangerous, wicked intensity. His lips were full and curled up in a smile. If he hadn’t been so set on another woman, she might have found herself dangerously taken with him.

“What of you?” he said. “What’s your excuse? Yes, yes, I know; you just threw Stevens over last month. But I would have thought that for the eleventh prettiest unmarried woman in all of Leicester, there would be a rush of men to take his place.”

“Do be serious, Doctor Grantham, and think of what you know of me.” Her voice lowered. “I did not become pregnant through immaculate conception. I had sexual intercourse. I am the farthest thing from a virgin.”

He raised his eyebrow at her. “I’m a doctor, Miss Charingford, and even
I
can’t always tell on close examination whether a woman is a virgin. Besides, the hymen is just a membrano-carneous structure situated at the entrance of the vagina. It is of substantially less physiological relevance to a man in the throes of passion than the vagina itself.”

“Yes, but…” She sputtered. “It’s not about the hymen itself, it’s about—”

“As it is,
I’ve
had sexual intercourse. And even though it has been too damned long since the last time, I don’t go about trumpeting the fact. You don’t, either. This is an irrelevancy, Miss Charingford.”

She simply sniffed in response to that. “You’re being difficult. I’m fickle, and I have a temper. I not only cried off from my last fiancé, I threw him over by tossing two glasses of wine punch in his face at a dinner party.”

“I wish I had been there to see it. Agreeing to marry Stevens, by the way, doesn’t speak highly of your taste. He was a regular ass.” He shrugged. “But that only confuses me further. Possessing poor taste in men doesn’t hinder a woman in the getting of husbands. It generally helps.”

“My God, you are obtuse.” Lydia shook her head. “For a man as outspoken as you are, you are remarkably obtuse. I’m not so much of a catch.”

“That is how you see yourself?”

“Oh, I forgot. I’m the eleventh prettiest girl in all of Leicester.” Her chin raised a notch. “I suppose with that, I ought to be able to catch at least the twenty-second most desirable man—accounting for my perfidy and my tainted past.”