“I’m not worried about that,” Nora lied. “I’m thinking of the good it will do. You were so eager to learn to use forceps. I’m sure your colleagues—”
Ruth shook her head, and Nora exhaled away the mounting pressure in her chest. Some, at any rate. “You don’t think they’d be interested? Even in a class of just women? No doctors?”
After the challenges of her last lecture, Nora was convinced a separate class was the answer, and better than what she’d originally envisaged. Ruth and the other midwives wouldn’t be sneered at for their lack of Latin, and their years of practical experience wouldn’t be dismissed. Men like Adams would be more receptive to their ideas if they were filtered through her. Or even Daniel. Grating as that was, Nora was used to adjusting to practical realities. The result was what mattered.
But judging from Ruth’s uneasy frown, it might not be possible to coax other midwives to come back. “Mrs. Bailey says it’ll anger the doctors. When she needs to call one, she sends for Frederick Brown, and he apprenticed to Dr. Adams. She doesn’t want to tread on any toes.”
Nora chewed the inside of her lip. Maybe that was her problem; she never meant to, but she’d flattened a few feet already. “How would Dr. Brown—or Adams, for that matter—ever know? I’m not inviting them to your class. It would be exclusively for women, all experienced midwives.”
“You know I’ll learn whatever you’re willing to teach me. But…” Ruth sighed. “I’ll ask the others. They might be keener if the class were held at night. They could come without being seen.”
“Of course.” She’d done her share of hiding, but it rankled that these women felt they must, too. Most were at least a decade older than her, and Ruth had begun apprenticing to her mother when she was twelve. “If the fees are a problem…” Nora had decided to keep them low, only a quarter of Horace’s one-pound fee. Even the reduced amount would be helpful. But it wasn’t her motivation.
With trained women beside her, she wouldn’t be alone. An aberration. She longed for the day she’d turn her head and see an encouraging smile from a female colleague.
“It’s not the fees,” Ruth assured her.
Nora sighed in relief. She hoped to at least reimburse Horace for the expensive supplies she’d ordered.
In her enthusiasm to defend the use of midwives through formal training, she’d already written to Italy, asking Magdalena to arrange the purchase of teaching models like those she’d trained with in Bologna. The local craftsmen were experts at anatomical replicas, largely because of tighter restrictions on cadaver dissections.
These were necessary aids, especially if she wanted to run parallel lectures for men and women, and over time, they’d save her plenty of hours in the dissection laboratory, but the expense was considerable. Even Horace had blanched a little.
The cost was even more staggering if she was teaching only a class of one.
But given enough time and students, she could make a name for herself and her hospital.
“Nora?”
She turned. It was Harry, sticking his head through the laboratory doorway. He had his hat and overcoat on, so either coming or going.
“You’ve a fancy visitor on her way down. Julia offered to entertain her in the drawing room, but the visitor insisted she wasn’t going to stand on ceremony. Or something to that effect.”
Nora glanced behind her, but the bones she’d been wiring together were safely concealed beneath a sheet. If any bodies had arrived in the night, they’d been stowed safely in the ice room.
“Who is it?” Nora asked.
“She said to tell you Ben Bee’s mother is here. Bye the nou.” He touched his hat, grinned, and vanished, hurrying out the side door.
Nora rubbed her forehead. She couldn’t remember Ben Bee. And the surname didn’t sound “drawing room.”
“Do you want me to go?” Ruth asked, but Nora had no time to do more than shake her head. She had plenty of persuasive arguments left and intended to use them.
“Dr. Gibson, how good to see you.”
Nora started at the sight of the lady in the doorframe. She was beautifully attired, her bonnet a masterwork of asymmetric japonais motifs, with a parasol slung over her arm.
“Lady Woodbine?” Nora hadn’t seen her aristocratic patient in several weeks—not since determining that she wasconclusively recovered from her surgery, the cesarean section that had brought Nora so much attention and acclaim.
“I thought you were in the country.”
“Came to visit my cousin. Little Benby is still at home, but you’ll be glad to hear your namesake is thriving.”
Ah. Lady Woodbine’s slightly different inflections explained the mysterious name. The child Nora had delivered safely via cesarean, Charles Benedict Beady Rawlston, owed theBeadyin his name to her, though naturally Nora had traded her last name for Daniel’s after her marriage. She’d not expected Beady to figure in his everyday moniker, however, and flushed at the unexpected tribute.
“Of course I am. That’s wonderful news. You look very fit yourself, if I may say so.”
Lady Woodbine smiled. “Thanks to you. Motherhood agrees with me.”
