“Is that so?” she said, watching the progress of his tongue. “You know those things go under my clothes. I could be wearing them just now and you would never know.”
“Mae,” he replied darkly. “I would know.”
“Hm,” she said, a little thinly. “I suppose we will see if that is true someday soon.”
“Oh? Do not issue challenges you are not prepared to meet,” he warned. “Iwillknow.”
“And then you will confess anything I wish to know?” she clarified, bouncing a little on the balls of her feet. “Is that the agreement?”
“I did say that, didn’t I?” he replied, scratching at his chin. “You know I meant seeing you in only those things, of course, no matter how you try to wriggle around it. But I will agree to your terms if you consider, even privately, the inevitability of mine. And Mae, I will know.”
She smiled, backing two steps away from the table, her arms laden with plates, silver, and empty glasses. “Roland,” she said before turning on her heel to run away. “I hope that you do.”
CHAPTER 20
For the first time in many, many years—and certainly the first time in the history of the Clerkenwell Clinic—Mae Casper overslept.
Such was her dreamy complacency in the indulgence of sleep that it took a full five minutes of idle drifting in the beam of warm sunlight that fell across her bed before she realized that it indicated the time and she sprung out of the blankets in a panic.
There had been no time to consider breakfast or golden underthings or even to quip back at her grandmother, who made a comment about lovely evenings often keeping us awake very late as Mae sped past her on her way out the door.
She completely expected for the entire clinic to be in expectant disarray waiting for her, and for every solitary soul to have noticed her absence.
She was not certain if she was relieved or offended that, upon arrival, she found that this was not at all the case.
First, she encountered the workmen who were erecting the staircase, lined up below the looming frame of Thaddeus Beckas he shouted instructions down at them through the nails in his teeth, waving a hammer like a conductor’s baton.
She had to step around several neatly piled beams that would become steps by the end of the day to access the entrance, where Hannah Beck was leaning against the door, watching her husband with a sort of dazed fascination.
“Hannah!” Mae said, immediately flushing hot that extra attendees would bear witness to her tardiness. “I didn’t expect you today.”
“Oh, Mae,” said Hannah, blinking at her in an unfocused and casual manner. “I ought to go back to the Fox and continue my work, but I do so love watching him swing a hammer.”
“Right,” said Mae, and sidled around her, feeling lucky to have avoided notice.
“You,” she said, after passing the threshold, jabbing a finger in her grandfather’s direction as he lounged in his chair by the door. “You left me.”
“You were so peaceful,” he replied with a chortle, offering her a starched apron that he’d been keeping across his lap, presumably in wait for when she did eventually walk through the door. “It would’ve been a travesty to disturb such perfect slumber.”
“I’ll remember that,” she promised, snatching up the apron and dropping it on over her head. “Now where is—”
“Who’s done this to my forceps?!” Sally’s voice boomed from the back room. “Did someone birth a baby made of bloody granite?”
Mae sighed, looking over her shoulder. The forceps did have a little dent after that incident with the inspector, but she hadn’t thought …
“Next kid I catch is going to have a wobbly head, and whose fault will that be?!” Sally demanded to no one in particular.
“You could have asked me at any given time, Dinah!” Ezra’s frayed voice shouted, just as soon as Sally’s faded. “I don’t think you wanted it moved. I think you wanted to watch the workers flex their muscles a little more.”
“Oh, Ezra, we could fill a whole thimble with what you’ve thought,” Dinah snapped back, acerbic as can be.
It was Roland’s chuckle that brought her attention around to the other side of the room, where he was lingering against the staircase, watching her fumble with her apron ties. He stepped forward without saying a word and took the strings from her, jerking them tightly around her waist and flipping them into a perfect little bow, which he drew tight, smiling down into her face while she stared up at him.
“What on earth is going on?” she managed, once he’d let the strings slide out of his fingers and had taken a step back. “Dr. Ravi should be on the floor.”
“Chalkboards arrived some time ago,” he explained, glancing upward to the classroom above the stairs. “Little Dinah Lazarus thought it would be a good idea to get the deliverymen to move the nursery supply closet, since they were here anyway, and dear Ezra took exception to that.”
On cue, two men in coveralls hurried down the stairs, exchanging wide-eyed glances as they looked for the door.
