I couldn’t help it. My eyes flashed to David’s. His face was unreadable, but his chest was as still as if he’d stopped breathing. I thought he would glance away as he had earlier, but his eyes held mine until I looked back to Dr. Clarke. “We haven’t even been married two weeks.”
Dr. Clarke raised a shoulder. “For some, that is enough. And ...” Now it was his turn to glance at David. “Forgive me, David, and evenmore so, Mrs. Tate. I am asking this only as your doctor. But your marriagewasquite rushed.”
David was stone. I shook my head vigorously, remembering too late the extent of my headache. “We had other reasons. Not ... I’m not ...”
“James.” David’s voice was icy and hard.
Dr. Clarke most definitely felt David’s rising indignation, but he shrugged it away. “I’m a doctor, not a priest,” he said, unrepentant. “I don’t make judgments, but I need information in order to care for your wife. If she was with child, we would want to take extra care with this sickness.”
David’s dark-blue eyes shifted to a steely gray. “You are a friend who should know me well enough not to feel the need to ask that question.”
“I was asking Mrs. Tate,” Dr. Clarke said, his voice adopting the icy tone of David’s. “Now it might be best if you go downstairs and order some tea for us before you think too hard aboutthatstatement, because once you do, I have no doubt I’ll end up with a broken nose.”
David went pale. His eyes found mine, and there was fury behind them. He gripped the doorknob as if it were the only thing stopping him from rushing his friend and laying him flat. “Are you insulting the virtue of my wife?”
“No.” Dr. Clarke was motionless. “I’m asking pertinent medical questions of a patient. And I know you well enough to know Idoneed to ask that question. If a woman came to you in trouble, you are just the type of man who would help her, no matter the cost.”
David grimaced. “My marriage with Anna hasonlygiven me joy and hascostme nothing. Thus far, it has been the happiest time of my life.”
If David were closer, I would reach out and try to calm him, but he was too far from me. If he’d said that a day ago, I wouldn’t havebelieved him. But his past had been a painful one, even if he’d hidden his pain well.
“You do know my husband,” I said softly. Dr. Clarke had taken one look at me and our hasty marriage and had known David was hiding something. I’d warned him people wouldn’t believe he was in love with me, and my prediction had quickly come true. We’d needed only a true friend to see it. “He is exactly the type of man who would help a woman in need.” I caught David’s eye and braced myself for the words that were about to leave my lips. They were true, but he wouldn’t believe them, which made me braver than I could have ever been otherwise. “It is one of the many reasons I fell in love with him.” Some of David’s bluster faded at my words, and his eyes slid from Dr. Clarke to me. “But I am as certain as a woman who has only been married a short while can be that I’m not with child. My sickness is only from the fever.”
Dr. Clarke nodded as if I’d answered a question as simple as when I’d had my last meal and not one that had caused turmoil in both my and David’s hearts. He made a quick note in his journal.
The muscles in David’s hand twitched over the doorknob, neither opening the door to leave nor stepping deeper inside the room. His eyes were still stormy. I’d never seen him angry before, but I didn’t think the emotion in them was anger. It was something else—something I couldn’t understand. I wasn’t certain he understood it either. It was a strange thing to be married to a person to whom you were not a true spouse. We both seemed to be feeling that strangeness at the moment.
I curled my lips up in a quick and, I hoped, unaffected smile. “Tea?” I asked, reminding him of Dr. Clarke’s suggestion.
David took a deep breath, gave me a curt nod, and left the room.
Dr. Clarke asked me a few more questions about my health, without referencing anything that had just passed, before he closedhis journal and placed it back in his bag. “I think you will be feeling much better by tomorrow, Mrs. Tate.”
I nodded, still not used to the name. “Thank you, Doctor. May I ask you one question?”
Dr. Clarke stilled. He’d been unflappable while David had been in the room, asking me every sort of question without fear, but I saw the slightest bit of concern edge his eyes now. He would keep my questions secret from David if I asked it of him—I could feel that—but he wouldn’t like it. “It is not about my health but about David’s.”
He visibly relaxed. “I’ll answer anything I don’t feel would betray his confidence.”
“He said you knew about his ...” I paused. I didn’t even know for certain what the marks were. “The circles on his skin.”
Dr. Clarke’s eye’s narrowed, focusing his strong gaze on me. “Yes,” he said carefully.
He didn’t elaborate, and suddenly, I was at a loss as to what exactly I had the right to ask. David had told me little, other than the fact that they were an affliction he had suffered from as a child. What right did I have to any more information than he’d given me? A wife had a right to know some things, didn’t she? I scrambled to come up with a reason, and the most obvious was one Dr. Clarke had already mentioned. My stomach turned at the thought of using my position as wife to glean more information about David, but I also didn’t want to bring up the subject with him again if it would cause him pain. “Is his condition hereditary? Will our ... ?” I struggled not to stumble on the word. “... children suffer as he did?”
The stiffness in Dr. Clarke’s spine softened, and his eyes grew tender, even as a question seemed to form in his mind. “No. They will not.”
“Are you certain?”
“I’m very certain.”
“What are they? Those marks?” I asked quietly. It was a question I shouldn’t be asking.
“He hasn’t told you?”
“No.”
Dr. Clarke took my hand in his. “Then I cannot tell you either. I’m sorry.”
