It had been a question without an answer, at least not for now, but the very fact that he had asked it made her heart race.
He did not wish to live in the hours when she slept. It sounded like he did not wish to go back to his old life at all, even if he had loved it well enough for many years before.
“You won’t need me here as security,” he had continued. “I hope. Perhaps Winston isn’t the only one who could benefit from a bit of medical education, hm? I know where the kidneys are, but only because I’m good at striking them.”
“Mae,” came Hannah’s voice, bright and clear, startling Mae back to the present, to the morning of the meeting, to her bedroom in Soho and the clothes laid out on her bed. “You’re miles away. We need you alert today.”
“I am alert,” she assured her friend. “I am.”
“I think you should wear the gold,” Hannah said, frowning at the selection of dresses. “I know it is a bit much for daytime, but it does present an air of authority.”
“She will be wearing gold,” Vix said from a horizontal lounge over all of Mae’s pillows. “Just not up top. We want respectable, not ostentatious.”
“Oh, is that what we want?” Rosalind said doubtfully, her eyes scanning over Vix’s own sumptuous attire.
Vix flashed her a smile. “Rosalind, have I ever told you how adorable it is when you take out your little kitten claws and try to swipe? I love you so.”
“What about the satin paisley?” Hannah suggested. “Where is that one, Mae? Cream with yellow patterns?”
“Oh,” said Mae, blinking. “In my wardrobe. I thought that one looked a bit girlish.”
“Girlish is good,” Vix said without moving from her pillows. “We want them to see you as innocent as well as capable. Guilt is a powerful motivator.”
“Here it is,” said Rosalind, pulling it out and knocking free a stack of books from the base of the wardrobe in the process. “Oh, goodness. I’m sorry, Mae. Ooh! What is this?”
Hannah came forward to take the dress, peering down at the books that had fallen. “We’ve read those,” she observed. “Vathek. Zofloya, The Monk.”
“Not this one, though,” said Rosalind, kicking them aside daintily with her toe. “Who is Fanny Hill?”
“Oh, God!” Mae exclaimed, lurching forward. “One even I shouldn’t have.”
“Excellent,” said Vix. “Who gets it first?”
Mae laughed with a bit of nervousness as Rosalind bent down to pick it up, turning it curiously in her hands. “Won’t someone help me into my chemise and corset? They were gifts from Vix.”
“Ah, a distraction,” Vix observed. “I shall read it first if it’sthatembarrassing.”
In the end, Mae would have to leave them behind to enter Guy’s. Only her grandfather would be with her, looking very fine himself in a crisp gray tweed and starched cravat. Even his wispy, wild white hair had been combed and pomaded into order, for perhaps the first time in Mae’s living memory.
“We’ll be waiting for you at the clinic,” Hannah told her when they parted ways. “We’ll all be waiting for you there.”
“But only because we know you’ll be victorious,” Vix said to her. “And wish to hear it relayed in glorious detail. Take care of Dr. Casper. He is the only man I can ever love if anything happens to Ambrose.”
And her grandfather had turned red again, and whispered as they walked away, “Do not tell your grandmother.”
She thought perhaps the unforgiving steel of the whalebone was the perfect choice to keep her heart from hammering free of her chest this day. Two sets of ribs, she thought. Just what every woman needs in moments of uncertainty.
They turned the corner to the hospital, its big brick walls looming in the sky, and her heart did its level best to escape, staying constrained only on merit of well-crafted lingerie. She took a shallow, shivering breath and felt her grandfather squeeze her hand as they neared the entryway.
She told herself to breathe and be steady.
But she wasn’t.
And she didn’t.
Until she saw him.
Roland was not making a spectacle of himself. He was leaning against the railing by the doors, wind winding through his pink-gold curls, which had been tied back today, giving him the look of a gentleman.
