He hesitated and frowned. “I suppose, if we are being literal.”
“Is there any other way to be?” Roland asked, taking the needle back from Mae and dropping it into the basin. “Shall we call you a hansom to get you home? I suspect you do not wish to walk on that leg.”
Once Roland had walked away with the basin and Winston in tow, Mae turned back to the inspector, who was watching her with a pained expression on his face, his fingers fidgeting in the torn fabric of his trousers.
“The boys in the files you saw,” she said. “They have been vandalizing the clinic, usually on the nights before you show up for yet another inspection. Today they went to Holy Comfort Church in Covent Garden and threw animal feces at the vicar for the sin of raising funds for us to continue to practice. Your nephew is among them.”
His eyebrows shot up, pink spots rising on his cheeks, though Mae could not guess whether it was shame or outrage at the accusation.
“We are not going to retaliate,” she said with a shrug. “After all, what could we realistically do? You and yours have all the actual power here, Irving. I hope you sleep well, knowing that. I can’t imagine how well I would rest, if I had any power at all.”
She turned then and walked away before he had a chance to respond, passing by the sweeping efforts and the righting of the medicine cabinet in her procedure room and Winston being deployed out into London to secure a hansom cab for the incapacitated inspector.
She kept walking until she had gone right out the front door of the clinic and onto the lawn and walked a little farther still until there was nothing around her but low, sharp shards of dried-out summer grass and the expanse of humid air to embrace her.
And then she sat. She sat right on the dirt.
She hugged her knees to her chest and she sat for a while.
Because she was not certain there was anything else at all she could do.
PART V
BRACING
CHAPTER 23
For a few, paralyzing moments, he couldn’t find her at all.
Somewhere in the background of murmuring noise, Vix was midway through her intimidation speech with the inspector, her voice trilling over the muddle.
“I am Lady Aster, and this is my husband, Sir Ambrose, of theCanterburyAsters, you know. We are benefactors of this establishment. Tell me, who isyourbenefactor, sir?”
Brooms and rags and hammers and nails seemed to be flurrying around him in all directions as he scanned the corners and peered up the stairs.
If she hadn’t been wearing that yellow dress today, he wouldn’t have spotted her through the window at all, tiny and bundled up as she was against the sky. Mercifully, she was, and he did.
“I’m taking her home,” he told Dr. Casper in passing, who only nodded in agreement from his chair by the door, having not moved at all while the various scenes of chaos had unfoldedaround him this afternoon, his knobby hands clutching the arms of said chair and his eyes still wide with shock.
He wove around the building and into the beating sunlight, taking long, quick strides toward where she dotted the lawn, huddled against herself on the grass. His heart thundered in his ears, fearing that he’d find her tear-stained or shaking or red with fury.
When he reached her, however, when he reached her and touched her shoulder, she turned and looked up at him with a face so utterly blank that it was worse than every prospect he had considered before.
“Come with me,” he said, kneeling down to wrap his hands around her waist and help her up. “I’m taking you home.”
“Home?” she murmured. “But the glass and the patients …”
“There are more than enough people in there to handle it all,” he said firmly. “Come with me.”
She obeyed, a slackness in her body and her movements that implied she no longer had any fight left to give, one way or another.
It disturbed him, but it could be addressed once they were beyond the view of prying eyes, somewhere safe and cool and soft. He wrapped his arms around her as they walked and he felt her lean into that support, felt her rely on his direction and strength to keep her upright and moving.
And when they reached the end of the second block and turned left instead of right, she only hesitated for a moment, glancing up at him briefly.
The fact that she did not comment upon it only concerned him more, but he could not increase their pace without taxing her in a way he was unwilling to do, and so they finished the walk to his little flat on the border of Soho at an easy strolling pace, clinging together like lovers when in reality they were crutch and casualty, at least for this tiny slice of time.
When he fished the key out of his pocket and led her up the steps to the little two-level house where he rented the upper-level flat, she finally seemed to come back to herself a little.
