“You saw how well that worked for me,” Daniel said.
“You and Nora will find a way to work through it. You always do,” Harry said, a shade bitterly. “Disagreements aren’t immutable.”
Daniel raised an eyebrow, tempted to ask how well Harry thought he knew Nora. Her stance on this issue was harder than he’d ever seen—and they’d sparred plenty of times before.
“You have Nora and a baby on the way. Even if you can’t see eye to eye now, that will pull you back togeth—” Harry stopped. Swallowed.
Daniel was trying to navigate a bog. One false step and he’d be swallowed in the muddy swamp. But Harry was his oldest friend, so Daniel ventured, “Is there something troubling you and Julia?”
A small bead of water slid from Harry’s eye. His first words were an indecipherable mumble. “What it’s like to never have a child.”
Daniel swept his eyes over the distant walkers, grateful no one had strayed within earshot. “Have you and Julia—”
“It’s been over two years, Daniel. Nothing. And when Nora revealed her pregnancy, something happened to Julia. I lost her.”
Daniel reviewed the past week, searching his memory for Julia. He’d hardly seen her.
“But…” Daniel closed his mouth. He couldn’t bring up that Julia had once been pregnant. Reminding a husband of his wife’s rape, even in the most elliptical terms, was no way to offer comfort.
Harry read his thoughts anyway. “I know. She could carry a child once, before I mutilated her. Why did I ever let her father convince me to do it?” Harry’s voice rose and broke, and he buried his head in his hands.
Daniel scanned the street and the windows behind them. Confessions like this could get Harry hauled to prison. This wasn’t the place for this conversation. But he wasn’t sure he could convince Harry to move. “She was your friend’s daughter. She’d tried to kill herself. Her parents were begging for your help. You did it to save her life. You don’t know it was what you did—”
Harry’s blazing eyes cut off Daniel’s sentence.
“She was healthy until my surgery. I’ve never told you, but my God, how she screamed. She woke in the middle of it, but I kept on.” Harry’s already ruddy face turned crimson as he choked on the memory. “I deserve whatever I get, but she doesn’t.”
He needed sleep. A bath. Food. Nothing would help, remaining here. “We’re going home,” Daniel insisted. “We’ve got to tell the others about Sam.”
Harry’s face shuttered, almost as blank as their sedated patient’s. The sight turned Daniel cold.
“You’re right.” Harry stood. “Don’t let Nora stay here in the city, Daniel. I know she has ideas about immunity, but if your baby is lost…” He licked his lips. “She won’t want to live with being wrong on this one.”
Chapter 22
Nora waited until she heard the front door close and counted several beats, until certain Mrs. Phipps was down the steps and around the corner. Then, safe, she swung her feet off the ottoman and got up. Horace, reading a letter about lacewing butterflies from an Austrian entomologist, didn’t notice, but even if he did, she doubted he’d tell Mrs. Phipps that Nora wasn’t, in fact, obeying her stern command to rest.
At the doorway, Nora twisted her head, listening for sounds from the floor above, even though she knew Julia was still away at her parents’ home, and Daniel and Harry were both out on calls. She hadn’t had a chance like this for days.
“I’m making calls on Broad Street.” She smoothed her wrinkled skirts. “Care to join me?”
Horace looked up, his eyes sliding into focus on the world outside of poppy fields bursting with flying insects. “Are you supposed to?”
Nora wrinkled her nose. She’d counted on him to be oblivious. He was the only one who never fussed. “Would you rather I embroider you a flower?”
If anyone could sympathize, it was Horace. His weakened left hand had stripped away his ability to do his most delicate surgical work. Rarely did the two invalids find themselves alone.
Horace grunted. “These calls of yours. Anything good?”
Nora hid a grin. They weren’t her cases. The requests had come while Daniel and Harry were away. She usually didn’t make blind calls to strangers; it was too much of a battle to convince them to let her in. But accompanied by Horace…
“Your guess is as good as mine. But we’re sure to see something exotic and inexplicable at some point.” She’d meant it sarcastically, but he nodded and straightened in his chair.
“One can only hope.”
She rolled her eyes as he went to collect his coat. His insistence on daily walks in every weather had strengthened his recovery. While his hand still trembled, his legs stood straight and strong as ever. If he clipped along with his cane at a less brisk pace than before, at least he still clipped.
Nora adjusted her grip on her kit bag handle and tried to judge from Mrs. Phipps’s meticulous written notes which home to attend first. “A stomach ailment. Sounds severe. One child sick and one already dead in the same family.”
