Instead, she places the spittoon under Maria’s chin and whips off her bedsheet, which is covered in sick. “Take this downstairs to the kitchen,” she says to the man, who seems startled to have been ordered to do anything, “and fetch me some water and rags.”
Once he is gone, she examines Maria. Her skin is coated in a fine layer of white dust, and Sally wonders what the man, whom she presumes is her husband, has been doing upstairs this whole time, if not cleaning her up.
“I need to lie down,” says the girl. Her request echoes off the bottom of the spittoon.
“You don’t feel too sick for that?”
“It’s the sitting that’s making me sick,” she whispers, so Sally quickly removes the spittoon and helps lower her head back onto the pillow behind her.
“Is that better?”
“Much.”
The girl has a nasty goose egg that sits high on her forehead, and Sally leans in to get a better look. Already, it has turned the color of nutmeg.
When the man returns with the supplies, Sally dips a rag into the bowl of water and begins to wipe down Maria’s face, revealing a pronounced cleft chin. “Your wife needs to be bathed.”
“He’s my blother,” Maria says, and Sally tries to recall whether her words had sounded slurred before.
“She’s trying to say I’m her brother,” says the man.
“I see,” says Sally, although this new information does nothing to excuse the fact that the girl is still covered in soot.
“I’m Elliott Price, but please call me Elliott.”
She gives him her name but does not offer to let him call her Sally.
While she works, she appraises him. He does, in fact, bear a strong resemblance to his sister. Both of them are tall, with square jaws and long necks, dark hair and nut-brown eyes, but on Elliott those features lookregal, whereas on Maria they look a little horsey. He has to be at least five years younger than Sally, but if she had met him at a ball when she was eighteen, he’d have turned her head. Now he just makes her feel old.
She rewets the rag and asks, “The other man who was with you? Is he your father?”
“Yes, he went home to fetch my mother. And a carriage. But I’m not sure how we’re going to get Maria home if she can’t so much as sit up without being sick.”
“Mrs. Cowley says that with blows to the head the senses can become disordered.” She holds three fingers in front of Maria’s face. “How many fingers am I holding up, dear?”
“Four.”
“She’s also complaining of a ringing in her ears,” he volunteers.
“I wouldn’t move her,” says Sally. “Not now.”
This is clearly not the advice Elliott wants to hear. “She needs a doctor.”
“We’ve summoned one,” says Sally. “But in the meantime, you have Mrs. Cowley, who’s very knowledgeable.”
“Right,” says Elliott, who seems doubtful of her credentials but also smart enough to realize that he has perhaps pushed too far. “Thank you.”
Sally washes Maria’s face, neck, and shoulders. Like Margaret, her dress has already been cut from her body, so when Sally unties her shift to wash around her collar, Elliott turns away from the bed and walks over to the window.
“Cecily?” says Maria, her words now as clear as a bell.
Sally looks at Elliott, who has done an about-face. “Who’s Cecily?”
“Nobody,” he says.
Maria is clearly agitated. “Where’s Cecily?” She is trying to sit up again.
Sally squeezes the girl’s hand, trying to soothe her. “It’s just us, Maria. You’ve been through a terrible ordeal.”
