“Couldn’t sleep,” he replied, leaning against the arch that separated the two rooms and crossing his arms loosely in front of him. “I’ve always been an early riser.”
“That’s surprising,” she replied, wrapping the apron strings twice around her waist and starting the process of knotting it in the front. “Your vocation goes into the wee hours most nights, doesn’t it?”
He flashed a smile. “It does. It always has, since I carried a link torch as a lad. I still like the mornings just fine.”
“Hm,” she said, drawing the long scrap of white fabric that would hide all those lovely little curls from him out of the pocket of her apron. “I suppose I do too.”
“Now, the evenings,” he said, tilting his head to the side as he fished the little golden duck out of his pocket and flipped it over his knuckles. “Those are for more demanding things, like family dinners.”
She narrowed her eyes as she wove the cloth around her hair, watching the glint of the duck as it danced over his fingers. “Yes,” she agreed. “I suspect Aristotle serves an impressive banquet spread of an evening.”
He hesitated, surprise flickering over his face, and then allowed himself to laugh, snatching the duck up before it could fall to the floor. “He does, in fact,” he said, grinning at her in earnest now. “Are you suggesting he host your father and brother when I take them up on their offer?”
“Whenis such an aggressive word,” she returned, knotting the band at the nape of her neck. “Shouldn’t it beif?”
“No,” he said. “It shouldn’t.”
“It seems odd to me,” she replied, unable to stifle a smile even while disagreeing, “to facilitate a dinner between our two families when we’ve never so much as shared a meal between ourselves, Mr. Reed.”
“Do not call me Mr. Reed,” he reminded her. “Are you asking me to dinner?”
“I am not,” she said. “Roland. Would you mind collecting the empty bottles from the kitchenette? They should be dry from their washing last night, and we need to re-supply the witch hazel.”
He grinned, watching the way she spun on her heel, tossing him one more look over the shoulder as she sauntered away, hips swinging.
Empty bottles indeed.
He wondered how the quality of the dinners at the public house across the road were. Should he take her there or bring the food here?
He pondered this as he executed her little task, stopping only once to hide the little golden duckling amongst her supplies, to surprise her later. He wedged it into the center of a spool of stitching thread so it would emerge when she picked it up.
Stitches were the one guaranteed treatment on any given day.
As he walked a crate of bottles out of the kitchen, he saw Winston being walked back in, arms laden with witch hazel twigs, steered by the Quakers again.
“But I don’twantto cook witch water,” he was whining. “I want to make sunshine drink or run errands or help the doctress put bones back together.”
“Desire doth not plough the field,” the woman chided.
“What doesthatmean?” Winston cried, wobbling and stomping as he was led to his task. “I wish I did have the pox after all.”
“Another field,” the woman intoned with a chuckle. “Unploughed.”
Waiting for the boiling and decocting of the witch hazel gave him time to relabel the empty bottles in the storeroom and rinse out the funnels, which had grown rather dusty since their last use. He found himself whistling while he worked, and reflected that it wasn’t entirely unlike setting up and breaking down the Vixen outside operating hours as he listened to the hum of patients and students entering and exiting outside.
When Ezra’s voice joined the thrum, he made a mental note to pull him aside later and go over that folio of information thatAbraham Murphy had given to the ladies at the church picnic. There were a fair few names and particulars in there that would be of great interest to the journalist, as they had been to Roland himself.
He had a mind to go through it with Dr. Casper as well. He might have some insight into the establishment dynasts within.
When he poked his head out an hour or two later to check on that witch hazel, he was surprised to see the coroner, Mr. Richards, standing in the entryway with a trio of men, two young and one old, who looked a little disoriented to be standing there.
“Mr. Richards?” he said, pushing his hair behind his ears and striding forward. “I didn’t expect to see you this side of the city. Are you looking for me?”
“Oh, Mr. Reed!” said the neat little man, looking relieved. “I was looking for Miss Casper, actually. Is she here?”
He nodded, but before he could offer to retrieve her, she emerged of her own accord and shouted a greeting across the room, parting from a man who appeared to have three fingers on his left hand tightly bound together, who winced at her back as she went.
“Ah, Miss Casper,” he said, turning from Roland entirely and brightening. “I’m sorry to interrupt your work, but I thought in this instance you’d consider it worthwhile. I wanted to introduce you to the family Rutherford, of Seven Dials. It was their mother whose cause of death you diagnosed the other day. The lady with the bruised leg.”
