Carla Kelly – The Surgeon's Lady (страница 4)

She burst into tears, great gulping sobs that tore at Laura’s heart. Laura cradled her sister, thinking about her own husband’s welcome death; how she had closed his eyes without a tear.

The surgeon let Nana have her cry, offering his handkerchief so she could blow her nose. He appeared to have all the time in the world. He took the note from Nana’s hand.

“You’ll see here he wants me to stay the night. He doesn’t know that your sister is here, but I’m still inclined to stay. The sofa in your book room will do.”

Nana shook her head. “I won’t hear of that. Laura, could you make up the bed in the room across the hall from you? I’m afraid this is Mrs. Trelease’s night out.”

“Of course I can, dearest,” she said.

On Nana’s instructions, Laura found the linen, happy to have something to do. Even though it was July, there was a chill on the room which she remedied with a small fire in the grate that the surgeon could extinguish, if he felt too warm. She shook out a bottom sheet.

When she lowered it onto the bed, Lt. Brittle was standing on the other side to straighten it. “I thought I’d leave her alone for a few minutes,” he said, as he tucked in his side of the bed, with even more razor-sharp corners than hers.

He noticed her glance and gestured for her to hand him the other sheet. “I’m a surgeon, Lady Taunton,” he said. “Nothing exalted like a physician. I’ve been known to give a good shave and haircut and empty slops. The air isn’t too rarefied around me.”

There was no mistaking his common touch. True, he was in uniform, but there wasn’t anything crisp about him. His hair was short, as short as men who wore wigs usually wore their own hair, but she doubted he owned a wig.

She found a light blanket while he pulled a case onto the pillow and fluffed it at the head of the bed. She held out the blanket and they settled it on the sheets together. When it was smoothed out, she looked at him and chose to say more.

“The air may not be rarefied, but you are a good surgeon.”

“Thank you,” he said simply.

“In fact, I wish you had been at my late husband’s bedside. I …” She stopped, her face warm.

He didn’t say anything, but the look of sympathy in his eyes made her brave enough to continue. “He suffered a stroke four years ago, and I nursed him through three years of …”

“Thirty-six-hour days?” he asked quietly.

“Precisely,” she said, relieved that he understood. “I listened to all manner of wisdom from his physicians, and …”

She couldn’t find the words to continue, but he seemed to know. “… and you wanted someone to give you concrete advice?”

“Precisely so again,” she said, and sat down. “I wanted to know how long he would live, but hadn’t the courage to ask so callous a question.”

“It’s not callous. I’d have answered it,” he told her. “Typical expectation might be eighteen months. Apparently you are a superior nurse, if he lasted three years.”

“He was my husband,” was all she said. “Why aren’t there more doctors like you?”

He sat down, too. “I don’t know what Nana has told you about us, but we Brittles are as common as marsh grass. I always knew I would be a healer of some sort. For a time, when I sailed as a loblolly boy, I pined for proper medical schooling. After that first battle at sea, I knew I could be more useful.”

She nodded. There was no denying he looked like the most capable man on the planet. He also was built like a road mender. She had never met anyone like him.

“Did all your education come at sea?”

“No. Surgeons require degrees. Captain Worthy paid tuition, room and board for three years at the University of Edinburgh.”

“He strikes again. Nana has been telling me all about her captain this afternoon.”

“Contrary to what she has said, he doesn’t really walk on water. After Scotland, I spent nearly two years as a ward-walker in London Hospital. I should have been another year there, but man proposes and Boney disposes, apparently. I passed my viva voce, got a license—two, in fact—and found myself back at sea, this time with Lord Nelson at Trafalgar. We all know how that came out.”

She shouldn’t have been sitting on a bed with him. He must have had the same thought, because they both got up at the same time. She wanted him to tell her more about his life at sea, but surely he had better things to do.

Laura looked around the room, then drew the draperies. “Is there anything else you might need?”

“No, you’ve thought of everything. I’m going to go next door and finish packing, but I’ll be back.”

“You mentioned Stonehouse.” Heavens, Laura, she told herself, let the man be. He’s trying to go home.

He seemed in no particular hurry. “I started my duties there last week after returning from Jamaica.”

He must have noticed the question on her face. “Stonehouse is a Royal Naval Hospital between Plymouth and Devonport. By the dockyards. I am one of the two staff surgeons to some eight hundred patients, depending on Boney.”

She couldn’t have heard him right. “So many! How can you possibly get away?”

“Not often,” he said as she walked him to the door. “I did insist on seeing me mum, however. After Jamaica, she was pining after my careworn visage.”

“Is there no Mrs. Brittle?”

“Not besides me mum,” he said cheerfully, as he walked down the stairs with her. “Any woman I’m to court will have to come to Stonehouse and empty slops.”

Laura laughed. “And probably wash smelly bandages.”

“Certainly.” He nodded to her. “Just leave the side door open. I’ll lock it when I come in, if you and Nana have already gone to bed.”

When she returned to the sitting room, Nana was awake and knitting by the window. She held up her work. “Soakers. Mrs. Brittle says I can never knit too many. Do you knit, sister?”

She did. They spent the evening knitting. Under Nana’s gentle questions, she was even able to talk about her marriage and Sir James Taunton.

“He wanted an heir, and reckoned his first wife had been at fault,” Laura said, her eyes on her knitting. “After a year of trying, he had a stroke and left me in peace.” She knew that was enough to tell Nana. “I … I do have a lovely estate in Taunton.”

Nana didn’t look convinced.

“It’s lovely,” Laura repeated. “If I never see it again, it wouldn’t be any loss to me. Life is amazingly dull when you want for nothing.”

Nana did smile at that. She leaned back and rested her hand on her abdomen. “Please don’t tell Oliver, but life moved faster at the Mulberry, when I was hauling water up and down stairs, placating our few lodgers, and sweeping hearths.”

“You’ll be busy soon enough.”

“So I will.” Nana leaned forward and took Laura’s hands in hers. “Oliver’s all right, isn’t he?”

If she hadn’t felt so confident in Lt. Brittle’s comments, Laura knew she could not have spoken. “I do believe he is, this captain of yours. You’re a goose, Nana! No wonder everyone loves you.”

Laura shared Nana’s bed that night, because Nana insisted she did not want to be alone. She saw that Nana was comfortable, touched by the way she matter-of-factly pulled the boat cloak over her side of the bed and tucked what would be Oliver’s pillow lengthwise to her. Laura smiled at that and got her own pillow from the other bedchamber.

She knew her sister was tired, but Nana had another question. “Laura, who raised you before you came to Miss Pym’s? I had Gran.”

I had no one, she thought. My mother, whoever she was, had no interest in me. “When I tell you, you’ll understand a little more about our dear father.”

Nana gave an unladylike snort. She giggled then. “Laura, I almost said something I’ve heard Oliver say when he didn’t know I was listening, but I would probably lose all credit with you.”

You could never do that, Laura thought. “As I was saying, when you so rudely interrupted—there you go again!—our dear father’s problems with money began with the fourth Viscount Ratliffe, who was as dissolute and spendthrift as our loving parent. Nana! Your manners!”

“Sorry,” came Nana’s meek reply in the dark, followed by a barely suppressed laugh, probably smothered in the folds of her darling’s boat cloak.

“Lord Ratliffe Number Four was hell-bent on a flaming career as London’s greatest ne’er-do-well when one of the Wesley brothers—John, I believe—took him on as a project, after John’s return from Georgia. Nana, are you awake?”

“Of course I am,” came the sleepy reply.

“I’ll move along. Dear Grandpapa renounced his evil ways, turned to Methodism, and set up his own illegitimate daughter—our beloved Pym—as the headmistress of a female academy. I spent my earliest years in a Wesley orphanage.”

Nana reached under Oliver’s pillow and took her sister’s hand. “Laura,” was all she said.

“If you don’t know any better, what is the harm?” Laura said. “You know the rest as well as I do. After Grandpa died, our father was forced by some curious honor we scarcely knew he possessed, to maintain Pym’s school and keep us in it. Of course, he found a way to make us pay, didn’t he? Nana, I’m so ashamed I did not have your courage.”

Nana pushed aside Oliver’s pillow and her voice was fierce. “Laura! Listen to me! You had no one to help you and nowhere to go.” She held Laura by the shoulders. “You have us now. You always will.” Her grip relaxed. “Heavens, you’ll think I’m ferocious.”