“What?” James snapped finally, as he finished washing himself.
Graham shook his head.
“You seem out of sorts, Hall. What’s the matter?”
“Nothing’s the matter, and I wish to God everyone would stop asking me what’s wrong.”
One of Graham’s brows lifted.
“Forgive me, but that’s the exact response someone who is in a foul mood would say and being as you’re, one, never in poor spirits, and two, always fairly even tempered even when you’re three sheets to the wind, you must excuse everyone for trying to learn why you’re in such a contrary way.”
“If it is my prerogative to be contrary, that I shall be,” he said, flinging the cloth into the bucket. “I’m damn tired of trying to please everyone around me.”
Graham nodded.
“Fair. But this wouldn’t have anything to do with Lady Belle, would it?”
James paused as his gaze snapped to Graham’s.
“What would make you say that?”
He shrugged.
“Belle’s always been a thorn in my side, and more recently to the people she’s convinced to do her bidding.”
“I’ve not consented to any bidding.”
“Oh no? Haven’t you allowed Grace to shadow you these past few weeks since she’s left Glencoe?” Something must have shone on his face, or perhaps he took too long to respond, because as he pulled his shirtsleeves over his head, he saw a telling expression form on Graham’s face. “Ah. So, this has to do with Grace.”
James undid the ties of his pantaloons as he turned away. There would be no use denying it to someone like Graham, who had been a close personal friend and somewhat an enemy of Lady Belle and therefore knew all the Sharpe sisters fairly well, having married the eldest, Hope.
“First, Dr. Barkley asks that I let the woman shadow me,” James began as he took up the washcloth again and beganwiping the sweat from his legs and buttocks. As a physician, and someone who grew up swimming in the nude in the lochs of the Highlands, James hadn’t any reservations about his body. “Which, I refuse, considering what it would look like to my colleagues. Then, Lady Belle requests that I allow it, as a personal favor. Again, I refuse, only to have my own aunt threaten to come to Glasgow and shadow me herself if I do not consent to Miss Sharpe’s apprenticeship. So, I oblige them, all of them, and do you know what I found?”
Graham shook his head as James dropped the cloth and grabbed his pants.
“No. What?”
“A capable, clever apprentice. She’s smart and hardworking. She doesn’t react to open wounds or broken bones in the way that so many believe women would. She’s determined.”
“She is that,” Graham said, having lived with her for a period. “She knows a great deal about the human body and the maladies that affect it. For as long as she lived in Lismore Hall, she had her head buried in a book.”
“Yes. And she knows she’s clever, which unfortunately is construed as arrogance, particularly to these men who don’t believe a woman can become a doctor.”
“That’s good, though, isn’t it? She’s a perfect demonstration of what women are capable of.”
James shook his head as he pulled on one pant leg, then the other.
“It wouldn’t matter if she was Asclepius himself. They don’t care if she’s capable; they only care that she is a woman. And thus, I’m in the very position I knew I was going to be in.”
“Which is?”
“Arguing with nearly everyone in my profession on her behalf, and not because she’s lacking, but the very opposite. I did not want to be some sort of champion, Graham. I have apractice, patients, not to mention these stints at university and the police with their ever-growing list of victims. They want to give every bloody person who dies in this city an autopsy.”
“It sounds like you have a lot on your plate.”
“I do. And through all of it, there’s Grace. Just steadfast in her work and by my side through all of it and…”
He closed his eyes, his body stilling as he dressed. He would not betray her confidence about her experiment, but from the moment she had explained her intent in his office, he hadn’t been able to think of anything else. And when he had refused her and she had told him that she would simply ask Mr. Milton to replace him, well, he had thought of little else since.
