“None of us are at our best just now. Especially since the lecture.”
“She said she came to tell me about Miss Vaughn,” Nora said, wincing at the thought of the young woman’s burns.
“She’s improving,” Daniel asked. “Adams said he saw her three days ago.”
“And?”
“Still in a great deal of pain. Sleeping mostly, from the laudanum, but her skin is starting to granulate.” As she turned away from the basin, he took her hand. “None of the scars will show. Her clothes will cover them.”
Nora bit her lip. Was she supposed to consider that a mercy? Julia’s scars, both inside and out, gave her untold distress, no matter how cleverly she concealed them.
“It shouldn’t have happened,” she said quietly. Mr. Brandon, if he survived the months with his leg in traction, would have to learn to walk all over again. No easy task for a man aged seventy-seven.
“No,” Daniel agreed, pulling her close and sliding his arms around her.
She drew back, though not because she didn’t want the embrace. “Are you angry?”
His mouth twitched. “I am, some. But that doesn’t seem particularly helpful just now.”
“At me or at her?” Nora placed each word carefully, as ifbuilding a house of cards.
He loosened his hold, studying her with concern. “It’s not really a case of—”
“Daniel.” She wanted an honest response, not sidestepping.
“Neither.” He blew out a resigned breath. “At life in general, I suppose. Every time we try to do some good, it burns down in front of us. And now you’re…” Daniel blinked twice, his eyes glossing. At once, Nora understood why.
“Now you’re worried I’m sick,” she whispered.
Daniel swallowed, then gave a barely visible nod.
“I’m not,” she promised.
“You can’t be sure.” He tipped out the words like coins he couldn’t spare.
“If I was, you shouldn’t be this close.”
He shook his head, pulling her nearer, resting his chin on her forehead. Nora’s eyes stung.
“You know perfectly well how smells bother me since the pregnancy.”
“Yes.” The word was unsteady. “Will you rest awhile?”
It didn’t hurt, on a day like today, to be persuadable. “Yes.”
He nodded, satisfied. “I don’t know what we’re in for,” he murmured. “I keep thinking things can’t get any worse, but the way Horace speaks about the last cholera epidemic… He doesn’t think we’ve even neared the peak of this one.”
She shook her head. “You could have been a barrister, you know. Never dealt with any of this.”
“No, I couldn’t.” His hands tightened again. “And you couldn’t, either.” He might not celebrate her compulsion formedicine right now, but he understood it.
Maybe he was right and Aunt Wilcox would relent, once sufficient time had passed and their wards weren’t full of cholera. But this rupture might just as easily have arisen from something else. She and Aunt Wilcox were like two reactive liquids that should never be combined unless you wanted an explosion. Whether it was this year or next, Daniel would have to choose.
Somehow, she’d have to make this up to him.
***
So many of their carefully tended patients died that whenever one recovered, everyone looked on in numb surprise, bewildered by the slow transformation from husk back to health. The relentless and unpredictable losses took a toll on all of them, but Daniel was especially irritable, with the date of Aunt Wilcox’s Christmas party fast approaching. They were not invited, and Nora knew the sting of it had burrowed into his chest.
