Matthew grinned. “So it has. What were the terms?”
Vix looked up at him and gave a slow, curling smile. “My dare? I accepted the thimble on one simple condition: Mae Casper dared me to give the thimble to Roland Reed.”
Roland himself was startled enough by this announcement that he was brought quickly and starkly out of his unpleasant reveries about the absence of the very same Mae Casper. “What?!” he barked. “She didwhat?!”
“Yes,” said Vix, tapping the top of the thimble and sliding it toward him. “It is yours. If you accept my dare.”
“I need a drink,” Tod muttered, already setting glasses out for the four of them.
“And what might that be?” Roland asked, wary as a feral kitten as his drink was poured. “What would you dare me to do?”
Vix’s grin widened as she tapped the domed top of the little silver thimble. “Well,” she said. “Here is what I’m thinking …”
CHAPTER 28
It was luck, pure luck, that the man with the shoulder growth had not yet left the clinic when Mae emerged from her parlay with Vix.
It was not exactly that Mae enjoyed enmity or otherwise found rudeness and sniping a necessary part of friendship, but something about her dynamic with Vix made her feel whole. A woman like that, poised and polished and utterly posh, meeting Mae on a level playing field, had always made her feel not only energized butseen.
And she suspected, in some strange way, that Victoria Beck Aster felt the same way about her, too.
In any event, that’s why she’d given her the thimble. And the golden duck. And Roland, for the evening.
She wanted to begin her plan before she shared it with him. She was always better at explaining an idea when she had the beginning threads of it in hand as a demonstration.
The man with the mole that might have been a cyst was perfectly amenable, even enthusiastic about her suggestion. The malaria patient was wary but not opposed. Two was not a bad beginning.
From there, after closing, Mae spent yet another night in the classroom, working on one of the student desks as she compiled a letter, a list, and a scrap of old wax paper from the nursery to jot and scratch on for her ideas and rejections. She left the nursery door and the classroom door both fully open so that she could observe the children coming out to play the ghost dare game at the top of the stairs.
She knew she ought to scold them and send them back to bed, but she had been going through such a tense and difficult time that, around midnight, she simply emerged, squatted amongst the ones who were still awake, and asked to join them.
When it was her turn to dart down into the dark, she enlisted the malaria patient to make a few frightening moans and rattle some beakers around.
That, if nothing else, sent every last child scrambling back under the covers for the night and cheered Mae enough that she locked up to head for home with a smile on her face and one of Reed’s kits with a link torch in his hand at her side.
The following couple of days were uneventful, outside of the standard chaos of the clinic. What she was waiting for—hoping for—was that Irving the inspector would indeed return to them to have his stitches removed, despite being brother-in-law to the head of surgery at Guy’s.
It was perhaps a silly thing to expect. Reckless, even.
But she did have a suspicion that he would want to confirm that his gift had arrived, if nothing else. And she had been makingvery good use of her new mortar and pestle. It was a very fine tool indeed, and even if she hadn’t had ulterior motives, she would have wished to thank him in person for it.
The quinine, as well, had saved their poor malaria patient unnecessary suffering during his stay.
If he did not arrive, she told herself, she would write the thanks and mail it.
If he did not arrive, she would pivot.
But after a week, he did arrive. This time, he was not wearing his wig. This time, he did not shout “Inspection!”
He looked around the room, his eyes passing right over Mae until they settled on Winston and brightened.
“Ah, my young doctor!” he called to the boy. “I’ve come for my follow-up!”
Winston, who had been on his hands and knees, separating bent needles from straight ones on an unfurled towel, snapped to his feet so abruptly that he sent his neat rows back into a scattered hay pile of silver. “Is that me?!” he cried, his eyes watering with enthusiasm.
“Of course it is,” Mae said, stepping forward and giving a little jerk of her head to Sally to grab the needles before they vanished between the floorboards. “Come along, the procedure room is empty just now. We can perhaps remove those stitches, hm?”
“It’s my favorite part,” Winston whispered to the inspector. “I bet it feels very fine, the threads swishing through the new skin. You will tell me, if it tickles?”
