“You needn’t say anything,” he whispered. “Just stay near the door.”
She nodded in feigned understanding. She was dumbfounded when he extracted a key from his breast pocket and, after but a slight knock on the door, unlocked and opened it. He stepped in and indicated that she ought to follow and stand in the small cramped entry.
“That you, Taylor?” a husky female voice called.
“It is,” he answered, setting his hat on a cluttered bench.
“Mrs. Krebs with you?” the voice called again.
“A nurse tonight.”
“Pity, that.”
With a nod to Charlotte, Dr. Taylor disappeared into a room a few feet away.
“Let’s check those stitches, then,” she heard him say.
“Let me get a look at her you brought first,” the woman said.
After a pause, Daniel called, “Miss Smith, would you mind stepping in here a moment? Miss Marsden would like to meet you.”
Charlotte stepped forward and paused in the doorway. An attractive though fleshy woman of thirty or so years lay in bed, propped up with pillows and a mobcap over her blond curls. An infant suckled each breast and a toddler lay asleep, curled up peacefully at her side. The woman somehow managed a free hand, from which she was feeding herself a biscuit.
Mouth full, the woman said, “Hoy ... a pretty one. And young.”
“That will be all, Miss Smith.”
Charlotte took a step back, but the woman’s voice stopped her. “Wait on. What’s your hurry.” She turned a calculated gaze on him. “Does she know?”
He began to form what must certainly be the word “no,” for what other answer could he utter, but instead he closed his mouth, then tried again. “Miss Smith has... She knows my father, yes.”
Charlotte felt a smile touch her face at the thought of Daniel’s gentle father. “Yes, he delivered my own babe.”
But instead of the answering smile and empathetic chat she expected, the woman’s face fell into a coarse scowl.
“Oh, did he? And just when was that?”
Before Charlotte could reply, Daniel cut her off. “Only because Miss Smith is a family friend. I have known her since she was a girl. Is that not so, Miss Smith?”
“Oh yes!” she said, grasping the plea in his voice, though not entirely sure how to answer. “Since I was quite young. Dr. Taylor has long been a friend of the family.”
“Just so,” he said, clearly relieved. “His sole patient. Now, then, please let us proceed. I want to make sure all is healing nicely.”
“’Course you do.” the woman said superciliously. And Charlotte wondered at the sarcasm in her tone.
Back in the carriage a quarter of an hour later, Charlotte could not keep herself from asking, “Has that woman some sort of hold on you?”
Daniel stared straight ahead, his face bleak. “Yes.”
This was all he said, but his grim expression, and what she had seen this night, told her much more.
She nodded, and the two fell into silence.
Several minutes later, Charlotte realized they were taking a different route on the return trip. Suddenly Dr. Taylor pulled the reins up sharply.
“Dear me,” he said. “I turned on the very street I meant to avoid. Or my horse took the way she knows best without consulting me.”
“What is the matter?”
