“Do you think we would come here in the thick of a cholera epidemic for trifles?” Aunt Wilcox asked, her eyes sparking dangerously. “You must get a handle on your wife. I championed you, proud you wanted to pursue a scientific career and marry a woman with intellectual pursuits. But there are limits. Don’t make a fool of me, Daniel.”
He sighed, the weight of the conversation too heavy for his loaded shoulders. “Surgery is not a mere hobby or intellectual pursuit. She’s not bird-watching or collecting seashells, Aunt. And I have spoken to her about the petition. I’m sure she doesn’t even know about this criminal midwife. I didn’t. And she’s not alone in abstaining; Dr. Croft refuses to sign as well. Disagreements are mother’s milk to scientists.” Daniel spread his hands, hoping to cover his nervousness with an appealing smile.
His father swallowed. Aunt Wilcox stared at him for an agonizingly long moment, then pushed from her chair. “You might choose to ignore me, but I’ll keep saying this until one of you listens. Working as a surgeon is dangerous—”
“And your charitable work isn’t?” Daniel challenged, talking over her reflexive sputtering. “You inspect disease-ridden prisons, after all. Do your dresses always stay clean?”
“My work is never unseemly,” she warned in a hiss.
“You house convicted criminals,” Daniel countered.
“I give unfortunate girls another chance by offering employment and sponsoring a house of reform.” Aunt’s face heated to an ominous red.
“You and Nora are both working for good ends,” he insisted more gently. “Surely you’ve had detractors in your time, Aunt. Detractors you’ve proved wrong. Nora must have a chance to do the same.”
His aunt leaned forward, pressing her thin hands to the desk. “I have no husband. No children. If I die in the course of my work, there is no one—no, don’t contradict me—who will really suffer. What will happen when children come, Daniel? Will their claims on you and Nora matter as little as mine?”
A curtain dropped over his eyes. He couldn’t afford to give any sign, not when he was troubled by the same questions.
“Consider your future family. Are they to have two parents constantly in danger? I monitor the Soho death rolls, so I know how many doctors die treating patients in this hospital.”
Daniel’s father raised his eyes from the floor. “Death rolls in Soho?”
Aunt lowered her lids smugly. “I subscribe to the same journals he does. I know every doctor that succumbs to consumption or pneumonia or infection, and now—cholera.”
Of course she does.
“I suggest you begin making more intentional decisions about your family—not just because those decisions reflect on ours,” she snapped.
“I’m fit as an ox and I’ve never seen Nora sick a day,” Daniel said flatly.
“Don’t be dismissive,” his father warned. “Your aunt has always been good to us. You, in particular.”
Daniel kept in a sigh. True. She’d never denied him a favor, however extravagant—anatomy tomes with beautiful color plates, visits to London to attend botanical lectures. She’d bought his first set of surgical instruments and paid for his room in Paris when he attended the Sorbonne. Since Harry had stayed with him for free, he, too, owed a great debt to Aunt Wilcox.
So he modulated his voice to something gentler. “I’m grateful you care about Nora. Surgery is a fraction of her work. Her days are filled with caring for the sick and injured. You of all people cannot possibly condemn that.”
“I condemn nothing. I simply have sense, Daniel.”
Daniel let out the sigh this time and looked into her milky-blue irises. Naturally, her gaze didn’t waver. He couldn’t remember when it ever had. “She will never give up medicine. Whether you wish it, or I.” He dropped his eyes at the sudden falling sensation in his stomach. “I’m sure the news of this poor woman dying from an untrained midwife will move her. But I suspect it will move her to act in a different direction than Dr. Adams.”
“She goes against the grain, and I can’t have anyone saying I support anything unseemly.”
Daniel half smiled. “No one would ever accuse you of being improper, Aunt.”
“Don’t laugh!” Aunt Wilcox clenched her teeth and her cheeks shook. “My causes are not trivial and cannot be endangered! We help women who have no one. Without our aid, they are victimized, oppressed, neglected. Many die, and so do their children.”
He was as much taken aback by her emotion as by the truth in her words. He’d given little thought to her work—or how much it mattered. But her work wasn’t Nora’s, and the more he pushed his wife, the more she’d resist. She and his aunt would never see eye to eye. They were simply too different—Nora an adopted orphan of working-class origins; his aunt, a committed philanthropist but resolutely genteel.
Her loyalty to Daniel had put her at a disadvantage in many ways his family couldn’t comprehend. They would never understand that she could have stayed in Italy, been a university professor, and worked in a large public hospital instead of struggling to establish a small one of her own here in London. She’d been made love to, pursued, and pressed to stay by Salvio Perra, one of her professors, and a man of wealth and influence.
Daniel’s nostrils flared.
But Nora had chosen England, and him, for love, so Daniel wouldn’t—couldn’t—whittle away at her. They might be at odds at the moment, but when he thought of that other man propositioning her…
“I am quite aware of all I owe you,” Daniel said quietly. “But my first allegiance must be to my wife. She cannot abandon her life’s work to be your secretary.”
“Daniel…” The rebuke in his father’s voice stung.
