Beside him, Horace shifted in a way that sent warnings along Daniel’s spine. Surely she hadn’t—
“Nora is more concerned about knowledge than her pocketbook,” Horace spoke up. “She shares her skills—unlike you,trying to guard secrets.”
Adams barked a mirthless laugh. “And every dressmaker should publish her most desirable patterns for anyone to use, though she worked her entire life to develop her skills?”
“A dress is hardly the same.” Horace fastened his cuffs. “We’re in the business of treatments and cures, not silks and pearl buttons.” He glanced pointedly at Adams’s fine coat. “Or haberdashery.”
This conversation wasn’t headed anywhere productive. Daniel exhaled. Adams and Howe had influence. Horace might not mind quarrels, but it would be better for all of them to avoid one. Better still if he could convince Adams not to criticize Nora’s lectures.
“My wife is always curious. If she was intrigued by something this midwife said, she would have wanted to know more. What’s the harm in listening? A doctor should be able to hear and judge claims.”
“A doctor should know better than to give ear to every quack and chatterbox,” Howe retorted.
“I’ll ask her for the full story tonight.” Daniel calibrated his voice. Better to beat them in calm than in temper, though far less satisfactory. “She has enthusiasms, I know. But that’s what makes her so brilliant. None of us have managed a cesarean section.”
“Yet,” Howe said.
“If you don’t wish to hear her teach, I’m sure there are other doctors who will enthusiastically take your vacancies,” Horace said.
Adams raised his eyebrows into incredulous arches. “Youcan’t forever provoke everyone, Horace,” he warned. “Your days of stunning everyone in the surgical theater are already over. You will not always be untouchable, you know.”
Horace surprised Daniel by settling his weight onto one hip, his mouth falling into a relaxed grin. “And with good luck, you will not always be an ass, Adams.”
Daniel bit his lip and looked away.
Adams sputtered. “How dare—”
“Oh, come off it.” Horace waved a hand. “There’s very little in your medical repository I didn’t teach you. Stop putting on airs, and come look at this leg. I’m particularly proud of it, and you couldn’t have had a good look back there.”
“I’ll do no such thing,” Adams announced and stalked from the room. Howe lingered only a moment longer, casting one look at the man who, thanks to Horace, would keep his leg.
At least for a few more days. It was dangerous, sometimes, to hope.
Daniel shook his head. “I don’t blame you,” he said to Horace. “Adams is insufferable. But you’ve never had an ounce of tact.”
“With luck,” Horace said, “I’ll never need it.”
Daniel closed his eyes. “You’re going to teach my students to be as impossible as you are.”
“You know what Nora says,” Horace countered. “Impossible doctors are the best ones.”
Daniel inhaled. A bit of conventionality might do his life good now and then.
Chapter 6
The balance of Nora’s lecture finished without any brawls, for which she could only be thankful. Mrs. Franklin managed a clear-enough explanation—she’d persuaded her patient into a lateral fetal position (curled onto her side with one bent leg held in the air) and coaxed the child slowly between the pubic and tail bones without incident.
There were few questions after Nora returned to her original subject, and none of the doctors took the opportunity to come forward and inspect her meticulously prepared cadaver more closely. One left shaking his head as if dazed by a heavy punch.
The experience hadn’t been much different from a bout of fisticuffs for Nora, either. She peered, tight-lipped, over her tools, which lay beside the waxy, pale body.
“Your doctor students might not come back,” Mrs. Franklin noted with a worried frown as she brushed off the model baby and laid him gingerly beside the open cadaver. Her two friends hovered uncertainly several feet behind her. “They didn’t much like us being here.”
Nora stopped arranging her instruments on the table. She was as particular about the order of her scalpels and retractors as ladies-in-waiting vying for position behind a queen. “It’s a foolish prejudice. We shouldn’t be at such odds.”
“But we are,” Mrs. Howell said with a sniff. “There’s some doctors I don’t want anywhere near my women.” She stopped abruptly and her eyes darted away. “I wouldn’t mind you, of course,” she corrected.
“No offense,” Nora reassured her. “But there are as many good doctors as there are midwives. We need to find some way to work together.”
