“That” referring to her marriage that had ended the year before, and the dreadful circumstances that had taken her to that point.
“Mr. Brimley was good enough to accompany me to Stepney. I met with Ethan and his mother.”
There, I thought,compromise.
“When you explained that you learned Dr. Bennett had treated the boy’s injuries, I thought there might be… something else that could be important.”
I was not usually at a loss for words. But the visit with Ethan had deeply affected me, far more than I had anticipated. I went to the stove to warm my hands.
I had seen injured children before in the course of our inquiries, some quite seriously. But Ethan had been so very brave, and to think the boy might have been permanently maimed and scarred.
“To see him… the wounds were obviously quite severe. If not for Dr. Bennett…” I was rattling on as Brodie would have called it, quite out of character for me.
I heard the scrape of his chair across the floor then felt those strong hands, gentle on my shoulders. I turned and he pulled me into his arms.
“It would seem that Dr. Bennett very well may have discovered new ways to help those injured like Ethan,” I went on, soaking the shoulder of his shirt as the tears came, and I never cried.
“Why would someone want to harm the doctor…?” The rest of it caught in my throat, and then in that way that he knew what I was thinking.
“Fear perhaps, professional jealousy,” Brodie suggested.
The cold knot that I’d carried back from Stepney slowly eased.
When had I come to need that? How had I convinced myself that I didn’t need such things?
“Ye’re shaking,” he said then. “Have ye eaten anythin’ today? Ye know how ye are when ye dinnae eat.”
I shook my head. He handed me his handkerchief, then went to the door and called down to Mr. Cavendish with a request to have food sent over from the Public House.
The food and another dram of my aunt’s whisky helped considerably as I told Brodie of my visit to the museum that morning and the hope that Sir Reginald might be able to tell us something important once he translated Dr. Bennett’s notes and that manuscript.
“Aye, it could be useful.”
I held out my glass for another dram.
“He’s quite certain now that the writings in the papyrus are Coptic. It’s a very old Egyptian dialect, but he seemed confident that he could translate it.”
Somewhere along the way, Brodie took the empty glass from my hand and mentioned that it was quite late.
I rose from my chair with the intention of making my way to the adjacent room. However, at last count, there had been at least two drams of my aunt’s whisky. Or was it three?
I wobbled slightly and Brodie was there to unwobble me. One arm went about my waist, the other under my legs and he carried me into the bedroom.
He set me on the edge of the bed, then began to unlace my boots. He removed one, then the other.
“Ethan was so very brave,” I said then, and it occurred to me that I might be slightly intoxicated. “He reminds me of you.”
Was that the reason the visit to Stepney had affected me so?
Brodie looked up. “Is that so?”
I nodded as he pushed my hands aside and then unbuttoned my skirt and shirtwaist, then told me to stand.
I did, for the most part, with a hand on his shoulder to steady myself and stepped out of my clothes.
“I thought of Edinburgh and what it must have been like for you as a boy…”
He eased me down onto the bed, then tucked the bedcovers about me. I felt his hand against my cheek.
