“How is your wife, Harris?” someone asked. The voice was familiar.
Daniel looked up. Charles Harris must have come in during his meeting with the secretary—he had not noticed him there before. Harris was seated with a group of men, speaking with Lester Dawes, a physician who had been a year ahead of Daniel at university and with whom he had a passing acquaintance.
“Katherine is ... well, how are we putting it delicately these days? Great with child.”
“Let’s see, you two have been married, what—eight months? Nine?” Dawes said. “Someone did not waste any time.”
Harris, perhaps hoping to direct attention away from himself, caught Daniel’s eye across the narrow room. “And you, Taylor, how is that lovely French wife I’ve been hearing about?”
Daniel was dismayed when all those dark and silvery heads turned his direction. He swallowed. “Fine, I thank you.”
“I am beginning to believe Mrs. Taylor is just a creation of our dear friend’s imagination.” Dawes grinned indulgently. “I have not laid eyes on her this half year at least.”
Daniel felt compelled to speak. “Mrs. Taylor is also expecting a child.”
“Well, well,” Harris said.
“Lot of that going ’round these days,” a portly man muttered meaningfully.
Then a clearly inebriated dapper gentleman, a Lord Killen, Daniel believed, spoke up. “I say, Taylor, my wife tells me she saw you, em, consulting with that vicar’s daughter, Miss Lamb. Is it true?”
“Is what true?” Daniel realized this must be the husband of the ladies-aid volunteer who had seen him talking with Charlotte at the Manor.
“You know, what they are saying about her. Laid up, you know, ruined and all that.”
Daniel brought his empty teacup to his lips to buy himself a moment. When he spoke, he feigned a casual tone. “I am not personal physician to the Lambs, but I have, as you say, consulted with Miss Lamb on a few occasions about a simple malady. And when I saw her, she appeared quite the same as ever.”
“What?” the portly man asked in disbelief. “When was this?”
“I’d say the occasion in question was about two months ago.” He turned to Lord Killen, whose wife had reported the meeting.
“Does that seem right to you?”
“About so long ago, yes.”
Harris was looking at him closely. “This malady you saw her for. Is she quite recovered?”
Daniel stared at him, no doubt severely, then forced himself to take a deep breath. “Yes. When last I saw her, she was recovered quite nicely. The picture of health.”
“And when was that?”
He looked at the man meaningfully. “Six days ago now.”
“She is ... back to her old self?”
“As much as one can be, yes.”
“Well, I for one am glad to hear those rumors put abed,” Harris pronounced. “I was always so fond of Miss Lamb.”
“As am I,” Daniel agreed quietly.
“I still say there is something afoot,” Killen said. “I have not seen her these many months. And when I asked her father, he was quite rude in not answering me.”
“Her father is always rude when not making sermons,” Daniel said.
“Even then on occasion,” Harris added.
The gentlemen began talking of other things, and Daniel soon left them.
