“I’m sorry. I can’t discuss this any longer. My patient iswaiting, and this surgery is a serious one.” The air crackled, ready to break. “And please, it would ease my mind if you left London. You may say no one needs you, Aunt, but I cannot agree.”
Aunt Wilcox searched him as if studying a stranger, threads of pain knotting her temples. She’d looked at him many ways over the years—most of them stern and daunting—but never with such disappointment.
Chapter 26
Nora rinsed her mouth with cold water, then patted her face with a cold towel. She didn’t like vomiting in the mornings, especially since it was hard to hide the occasional sickness from Daniel. The more she looked and acted like her usual self, the better she could argue her case to continue her usual work. But this morning she’d been in such a hurry she’d barely managed to wait until Daniel left their bedroom, headed to the hospital.
“Nora?” His voice on the other side of the door wrenched her upright.
“I thought you left for Bart’s,” she called back, trying to sound cheery.
“I heard you.” His grim words slid through the door. “Are you unwell?”
She pulled a deep breath into her lungs, then expelled it as she opened the door of the water closet. “It’s nothing. I’m perfectly fine.”
Daniel looked unconvinced. “Any fever? Chills?” He reached for her hand and checked the temperature of her skin. Only after he’d rolled her fingers over in his own did she realize it had been days since they’d touched. The chills were not from illness.
“You look pale.”
“I’m not sick—notthatkind of sick,” she reassured him. “Just a wave of queasiness. Nothing, really.”
“No diarrhea?” When he lowered his eyebrows like that, he looked nearly as stern as Horace.
“I don’t have cholera, Daniel.” She stepped around him, but he followed her back to their bedroom, close on her heels.
“Effects of the pregnancy, then?” He crossed his arms.
Nora sighed. “Of course it is. You’ve seen a hundred pregnant women.”
“Not in the mornings in the water closet,” he reminded her.
How could she want to flee the room and be taken in his tightest hold at the same moment? “Then you know this is no cause for concern. It passes in moments,” she said, with more reassurance than truth.
“I’ll do your rounds. You should be in bed if you’re sick.”
“I’m not diseased, Daniel.”
He sat down heavily on the chest at the end of the bed, full of books and sketches and the dried flowers from her bridal bouquet. “There was a miscarriage at Bart’s yesterday. A woman sick with cholera. I didn’t even realize she was pregnant until the blood came.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t spotting from—”
“She lost the baby. A boy. I suppose I’ll find out if we lost her when I arrive there this morning.”
She wished he’d look at her. Maybe he couldn’t. The distance between them was much more than the scant couple of yards permitted by the arrangement of their furniture. “She could have lost the child even without the sickness. It’s a common occurrence.” Many women didn’t even count a pregnancy untilthe child quickened and announced itself with timid kicks.
“I don’t dislike Mrs. Phipps’s plan to take you to Suffolk. Surely it would be better than an awful autumn in London.”
She swallowed and told herself he was referring only to the disease and the wet, icy weather, and not their marriage.
She sat in the chair beside the low coals in the fireplace. “I know you’re frightened. If you don’t want cholera patients here, I won’t admit them,” she conceded. She knew which point was vital to her, and they hadn’t broached it yet.
Daniel narrowed his eyes. She never let him win so easily. “Truly?”
She gave a curt nod, hoping her chin didn’t waver. It always gave her away when she was nervous. “I spoke to Ruth, and I think I may have a solution that makes us both happy.”
His arms loosened fractionally at her unexpected smile. If she maneuvered skillfully enough… It was like weaving her way through torn ligaments and severed veins to find a healthy bone. “Ruth pointed out something to me that I’ve been so blind not to realize.” She tapped the words out gently, sounding for hesitation, doubt. His face remained impassive, almost curious. “The midwives do have a requirement before they practice.”
A slight closing of his expression. Most likely he suspected she was pivoting to the petition. She had to steer clear of it. “No one will hire a midwife who hasn’t had a child herself. It’s a necessary qualification.”
