It’s as if no one outside of my family truly knows me.
I thought perhapssomeonehad begun to…
She glanced out at the vacant street, and her loneliness sharpened.
I’m just tormenting myself, standing here. I oughtn’t think that Mr Alwyn will return, no matter how he gazed at me and kissed my wrist.Remembering his warm exhalation there, she was tempted to trace the spot with her fingertips.
He was roused, that is all, finding himself alone with me — touching my hand.
A few years earlier, her brother, Charles, was seen kissing Bessie Bromwell down by the riverside. Their mother had chided him harshly for it at dinner that evening. Not knowing until that moment that his tryst had been observed, Charles sputtered, “She smiled at me and I—I just found myself following her.” He added quietly, “There’s something about the way she moves her shoulders.”
Though she was baffled at the peculiar comment, Belinda had seen her father cast his son a look of perceiving empathy.
How is it that men rule the world, she had tutted inwardly,if a frizzy-haired butcher’s daughter need only shrug to bewitch them?
Yet now she had seen that even a man as sensible as Mr Alwyn could be similarly affected by her own plain little hand! She flexed the potent part as it hung by her side.
In that moment, he may have loved me, but time and distance have cleared his mind.
As her good sense continued to wage war on her heart, the shop door opened, and the milliner’s wife poked her head out.
“Miss Everson, you loiter outside often these days. Do come in. Surely seeing our wares up close will help you to know your mind better.”
But Belinda had no desire to run her fingers through the yards of ribbon dangling in the window.
“I thank you, Mrs Powell, but I’ve just remembered that I left some scones baking in the oven.” The lie felt gritty on Belinda’s tongue as she dipped her head and turned to go. “Oh!”
She had nearly collided with the village wheelwright who was standing behind her.
How long has he been standing there?
“Ah, Miss Everson! How are you today?” Mr Turner asked, his hat in his hands. Though he was no stranger — Belinda’s brother, John, was apprenticed to him — she found his proximity and toothy grin unnerving. Behind her, the sound of Mrs Powell shutting the shop door felt like abandonment.
“Erm…very well, I thank you, Mr Turner. And you?”
“Very well. Very well, yes indeed,” he said in his oddly bright manner. His hair looked as if he had just wettened and combed it, and he wore a piece of cloth at his neck that was not quite a cravat, but looked finer than a common kerchief.
“I’ve come to get some ribbons to surprise my Susie and Kate, though I know nothin’ of such matters.” He emitted a throaty chuckle, then his eyes lit up. “But surely you do! Could you be bothered to come inside and show me which would suit them best?”
He motioned towards the door, his eyes never leaving her face.
“Oh…Mr Turner, Mrs Powell’s expertise in such matters far exceeds my own, and my mother expects me home soon, so I must wish you a good day.” She moved to step past him.
“Same to you, Miss Everson.”
She hurried away, up the high street, but when she reached its curve, she glanced back reflexively to see where Mr Alwyn would ride into the village, if he were to do so.
The street was empty.
Benevolence, Barbaric and Otherwise
IT WAS mid-afternoon when Alwyn squeezed his way into the operating theatre. Even there by the door, the collective heat of the bodies crowded into the attic space was stifling. Medical students stood shoulder to shoulder on the tiered platforms, ready to watch the removal of a man’s shoulder tumour that they might someday perform similar surgeries.
Below, in the room’s center, a patient lay on the table, sweating and champing on a leather strap though he had been dosed with spirits already. Four orderlies stood by, positioned to pin down his flailing limbs once his agony began in earnest. The white-aproned surgeon sorted through his scalpels while the scent of cauterization tools heating in the brazier foreshadowed the lesson’s gruesome finale.
Each time Alwyn entered this amphitheatre, he had to remind himself that what happened there was meant for good, even if it had every hallmark of torture. He himself was not overly squeamish at witnessing the separation of flesh and bone, but many were. Two years earlier, during a leg amputation, a student standing near him had grown more and more pallid as the ferrous smell of blood filled the air. Quite suddenly, the fellow had fled, pausing at the exit to vomit into the concavity of his hat. After walking out of the operating theatre on trembling legs, he had never been seen there again.
Keeping his position by the door, Alwyn hoped this procedure would be quick, primarily for the patient’s sake, but also because he wanted to ride out to Trippingham, then return to London before nightfall. He had been meaning to call upon Miss Everson for the previous two weeks, but lectures, the observance of surgeries, and now, tending to Felix’s patients, had precluded all opportunities for courtship.
