“When I’ve a secure lease on the theater,” Kyle said. Then gliding around her desk in an unnervingly sharklike fashion, she thought, he said silkily, “But I had thought you’d be pleased at the news. Now that we’ve got Anderson in our pocket, these pockets are a bit fatter, and you’re to be supplanted by a real secretary next week. Is it that you’ve taken to your chores so well you dislike giving them up? You ought to have spoken up sooner, before I engaged Mr. Dobbs.”
“Lord, Kyle,” she said on a sigh, “I’m sorry, I was woolgathering. Monday mornings are so difficult.”
“Especially after Sunday nights with Gray Dylan,” Kyle commented, and though Hannah’s shoulders rose, she didn’t ask how he knew. He always knew. She braced herself.
“But just imagine a lifetime of Monday mornings,” Kyle said with such sympathy that she winced, because he was very good at sympathy, and his fatherliness always made her feel guilty, as though she were in fact, some errant little girl.
“He’s delightful company, sans doubt,” Kyle said gently, “and very good to look upon, though I prefer my matinee idols tall and dark,” he mused, his dark head held to the side. “But he is a millionaire, my child. And never forget, his brother was one in a million. Lightning seldom strikes twice,” he intoned in doleful accents. When she looked up, his eyes were dark with sorrow as he added, “See to your heart, Hannah, my dear. I beg you. For I couldn’t bear to see you suffer as so many others of our kind do, when they come up against the harsh realities of the harsh real world.”
She knew those realities, and knew he was right, and the only thing that kept her from ducking her head like a schoolgirl was the one new thing she knew. And so she murmured something about being careful and not to worry, as she picked up her handbag and pelisse.
“Have a good lunch, don’t hurry back, we haven’t another audition until two,” Kyle said with mournful consideration, taking one of her gloved hands and holding it tenderly, as though he was seeing her off to a funeral and not her luncheon.
But he frowned when he looked out his window to see her crossing the street. She walked with a quick, lively, determined step. Her heels tapped the cobbles smartly as she kept turning her head, scanning the doors for their numbered addresses. Because surely, 102 Second Avenue was not far. And so then the offices of Dr. Margaret Singer, as listed in her new book, “Women, Her Diseases And Their Cure,” was not distant. And so then, too, perhaps neither was some new possibility. Which was all she was after, after all, just the possibility of some new possibility.
Chapter Fourteen
The room smelled not so much clean as it did of the effort that had been made to purge it, as if of some great filth. The smell was literally blinding, because it was the first thing Hannah noted as she opened the door, and it made her close her eyes and want to close the door instantly again, with herself on the other side of it. For it was a reek of disinfectants: of camphor and sulfur, ammonia and turpentine, all overlaid with a hint of asafetida. But she walked in anyway. Because she had to. And at least it was not crowded.
Hannah sat gingerly at the edge of her chair in the waiting room, and tried to look unconcerned. She decided to pretend, to ease the moment for herself, that she was there to ask a question about her sister. That was it. Her poor married sister who was suffering from morning complaint and so was unable to come in herself. Just thinking that caused her hands to relax their death grip on the handle of her pocketbook, and she could feel the lines of tension at her mouth ease, too. Yes. She was there for poor Annabelle’s sake. If she could act it, she could in some way believe it, if only until her turn came to see the doctor. In that way the other two women waiting—the plump matron on the couch and the thin, anxious girl on another chair—would see that this casual looking stranger who had just come in was never there to seek a consultation for herself.
But the moment the inner door opened, and a white-smocked, white-hatted nurse stepped out and stared at her, Hannah’s imaginary sister perished, along with all her courage.
“Yes?” the nurse asked, frowning and gazing at a paper she had in her hand, and then back to Hannah again.
“I…I wish to arrange for a consultation with Dr. Singer,” Hannah blurted, and then nervously eyeing the two other women in the office, dropped her voice and added, “I have read her book, but require further consultation.”
She held herself stiffly and hoped the doctor wouldn’t be free for another year, and hoped she could be seen immediately, and prayed she looked correct enough to be seen anytime at all. She’d dressed with care, after bathing until her skinsqueaked. She’d taken off her military-styled winter pelisse to reveal a severe blue walking dress, in the latest style, with its material swagged high in back to compensate for the loss of the bustle. For effect—since she’d excellent eyesight— she’d added a lorgnette on a chain about her neck, had arranged her hair in a high pouf at the top of her head, and set a pert blue hat sailing atop it. Kyle had flattered her for looking dashing, but she’d hoped to look like nothing more than a fashionable, respectable young matron. But few respectable matrons had such a flair for dressing, or moving, as she did, nor such shining hair, nor such alabaster skin and speaking eyes. The nurse stared at her. Whomever the young woman was, she thought, she was clearly,someone.
“Indeed?” she said, for though she was impressed, she was still a nurse and so could never let a patient have the upper hand. “And the name, please?”
“Nora Coates,” Hannah said promptly, taking the name of the young consumptive inStolen Heartswithout blinking.
“If you would be so kind as to wait a moment,” the nurse said, and after beckoning the nervous young woman to her and handing her a packet of medicines that seemed to make her more nervous, before bidding her good day, she disappeared within the consultation room again.
“I haven’t very long today…” Hannah began to say when the nurse appeared again, but she was silenced by her saying, “Quite all right, Miss Coates, the doctor will see you now. Mrs. Gaynes,” she added over her shoulder as the plump woman shifted in her seat, “your appointment is not until the half hour, and the doctor will see you then.”
Hannah had chosen Dr. Margaret Singer because of her sex as well as her book. Surely, she’d thought last night, as she’d stared at the photograph of the stern, but clear-eyed older female that faced the title page, she’d be able to explain her problem to a woman far better than to a man. Especially since Dr. Singer’s preface was all to do with the problems of womankind that men just did not or would not understand. The book was dedicated to her own sister, with the lines: “Whose faith in the physical redemption of women by correct living has been an inspiration to me.” Hannah had never felt the least yearning to be a suffragette, if only because the problems of females in the real world had little to do with those of women in her theatrical world. But the preface had inspired her, and suffused with female-fellowfeeling for the first time, she’d put down the book, jotted down the address, and decided to arrange for a consultation as soon as she could.
Her first sight of Dr. Singer, looking exactly as she had in that photograph except for wearing a white smock rather than a black dress, reassured Hannah, and gilded the doctor with that aura that usually comes with fame or reknown.
The doctor’s office was spare, but a glance at the room beyond, with its examination table and glass cabinets full of awe-inspiring racks of bottles and syringes, caused Hannah to jerk her gaze back to the doctor again.
“Sit down Miss Coates,” the doctor said at once, “and please tell me your history and where your problem lies.”
Hannah relaxed. She was always very good with rehearsed material. She sat in the chair facing the doctor.
“My health seems excellent. I am a widow of some years standing, Doctor,” she said, as she smoothed her skirt, “but my husband abandoned me several years before that unhappy fact. He claimed he could not get me with child—or even successfully attempt to—because of a fault in me, which he did not specify. But as I am now contemplating matrimony again, you can understand I don’t wish to have my new husband suffer the same disappointment.”
There. She’d said it as discreetly as she could, but she’d said it. She waited for the doctor’s words.
“I see,” Dr. Singer said, pursing her lips and staring at Hannah with suddenly sharp, cold black eyes. “Did you consult a physician while you were married?”
“Ah, no, I was young,” Hannah said distractedly, biting her lip, “and too embarrassed, you see. But my husband saw his physician, and his physician made the diagnosis. And it must be so, because,” she said, lowering her eyes, “before he died, he’d fathered a child on another woman.”
“I see,” the doctor said, studying Hannah. “Your menses, are they regular?”
“Yes,” Hannah answered.
