HUGH
A gentleman who asks the woman he loves to marry him should be devastated when circumstances prevent the lady from speaking her vows. Circumstances, in the person of a wife I had thought long dead, showed up at precisely the moment when Lady Violet Belmaine had agreed to become Madame Hugh St. Sevier.
Le Bon Dieu has a unique sense of humor, non? And in my humble person, the Almighty has been provided with endless entertainment. Nonetheless, divine providence has also smiled upon me in my blackest hours. A gentleman does not complain.
My wife Ann and I were the victims of complementary vagaries of war. While I was serving as a medical volunteer during Wellington’s campaign on the Iberian Peninsula, Ann’s first husband—a young Scotsman—died in battle. She was not on the official rolls as an officer’s wife, and thus she was stranded in a foreign land, her options limited to holy matrimony with my humble self or unholy prostitution with half the regiment.
Ann is pragmatic by nature.
After we married, she watched me practice battlefield medicine for less than a year. She then took her chances trailing a band of deserters heading for the coast in hopes of finding passage home. I was told her party had come to a bad end at the hands of a French patrol—no survivors.
That erroneous information was spread by English officers in an effort to stem the never-ending tide of disloyal soldiers. Ann, a few months later, read of my supposed death on the casualty rolls, and thus our paths diverged. Chance alone had me traveling to Perth, Scotland, in the company of Lady Violet Belmaine, my former intended. On the streets of Perth, not a year past, Ann had caught a glimpse of me, and I of her.
At the time, I had resorted to the usual widower’s defenses—my eyes had played tricks on me. Scotland, the land of Ann’s birth, had played tricks on me. My increasing regard for Lady Violet had inspired my conscience to see what had not been before me.
Those chance sightings might have been the end of matters—many an ill-suited couple has parted ways to start afresh—except that Ann and I had been married long enough and passionately enough that, unbeknownst to me, a child had resulted.
Do not judge us, not unless you have been young, lonely, and far from home in wartime.
Fiona has her mother’s flaming red hair, my brown eyes, and a spirit that delights me every time I behold my daughter.
Fiona’s mother has a temper, a complicated code of honor, and an unwavering devotion to our child. I admire all three attributes, truly I do. Ann confronted me with the fact of her existence—and Fiona’s—as much to prevent Lady Violet from undertaking a bigamous union as to ensure Fiona enjoyed my support and protection.
What I wanted was of no particular moment to Ann, nor should it have been. Were she to ask me about my wishes, I’m not sure I could fashion a coherent reply in French or English, even now.
In her defense, Ann had no notion when she interrupted my wedding plans that Violet already carried my child—and neither had I. Violet herself had yet to come to that realization. If all goes well, her ladyship should become a mother in less than six months’ time. If all goes perfectly, she will become a Scotsman’s marchioness before that happy occasion.
What a muddle, as the English would say.
The only honorable course open to me was to set aside my ambitions where Lady Violet was concerned—or to allow her to graciously set me aside. I turned my energies to being Fiona’s papa and Ann’s…
I believe the English term is housemate.
We dwell at Belle Terre in rural Kent, a property I inherited. I had been considering selling Belle Terre, but when Ann and I needed a place to sort ourselves out, I reasoned that an estate to which I was not attached, one where I had little loyalty from the staff, was the better choice.
We have been here nearly three months. We are settling in. Protracted silences are relieved by short conversations relating mostly to Fiona’s activities.
I am not to buy our daughter a pony for at least two years.
I am to speak French to her in the forenoon. I may speak English to her thereafter.
I am to read to her at bedtime, though Fiona is old enough to grasp simple texts herself in English, French, and Gaelic.
Thus do the lord and lady of the manor settle in at Belle Terre.
I am permitted to ride out, and because the acreage associated with the property is considerable, I use my time in the saddle to acquaint myself with the land and tenants. The work is uphill there—there too—owing in some part to my lamentable Frenchness.
I have grown heartily weary of speaking to my tenants in slow, loud words of few syllables, but the average Kentish farmer is apparently prone to poor hearing.
My horse’s hearing is excellent, and when Charlemagne pricked his ears and stared intently at the path leading up to the manor house, I came alert as well. I was alone in the stable, the lads having gone for their nooning. I was happy to busy myself with removing Charlemagne’s saddle and bridle after a morning of loudly admiring Mrs. Deever’s new baby—despite the infant’s slight case of convergent strabismus—and loudly hoping Mr. Deever’s harvest was as impressive as he predicted.
The steps on the path were soft and quick, also light—not a grown man. I had time to both hope and dread that my wife sought me out before Fiona scampered into view.
“Papa, you must come. Mama says. Vite! Vite!”
Ann never summoned me, and I never summoned her. Vite! Vite! was both encouraging and mildly alarming. “I must first put Charlemagne away, child, then I will come.”
“Put him away quickly, Papa. Mr. Grant has need of you. He came to the kitchen to fetch Mrs. Trebish, and she came to fetch Mama in the sewing room, and Mama sent me to fetch you.”
Mrs. Trebish, our new housekeeper, had taken her post with fear and trembling at the prospect of working in the home of a murdering Frenchie. Only Ann’s repeated reassurances that the owner of the household was also a physician who had served under Wellington induced Mrs. T to grace us with her presence.
She was civil to me, but much preferred to deal with Ann, whose Scottish origins were also less than ideal in Mrs. T’s eyes, but by no means as dubious as my own.
“You should tell Jules to put Charlemagne away, Papa.”
“Jules is taking his luncheon.”
“Jules!” Fiona enjoyed prodigiously healthy lungs. “S’il vous plaît, venez now! Come, please!”
When excited, Fiona mixed up her languages. When absolutely beside herself, which I had observed on only one occasion, she lapsed into her mother’s native Gaelic. Charlemagne looked as if he too was about to start babbling in several languages, so great was his dismay at Fiona’s agitation.
“Jules is in the servants’ hall, Fiona. He cannot hear you.”
“Then I will fetch him!” She dashed off, leaving me to remove Charlemagne’s saddle and lead him to his loose box. I did not put away the saddle or bridle, nor did I give the horse the grooming he deserved. The beast seemed happy enough to be reunited with the pile of hay waiting for him in the corner of his stall, and I had cooled him out properly.
I adopted as rapid a pace as dignity would allow when I made my way to the house. My wife had sent for me, albeit at the behest of a neighbor. Considering that Ann generally had no use whatsoever for her husband, I was pleased to heed her summons.
I came into the house using the back entrance intended for servants and tradesmen. This habit horrified all and sundry. Because Belle Terre was a sizable replica of the Parthenon, my abandonment of decorum saved me many pointless steps circling around to a more genteel approach.
I came to my wife in all my dirt and found her in the company of an agitated Dervid Grant. They occupied Ann’s private parlor, an elegant space full of light, soft upholstery, and the scent of roses.
Grant was a tenant farmer, using the term loosely. More significantly, he was the father of a bewilderingly large brood, considering that he was still a young man. His presence in Ann’s parlor signified dire trouble afoot.
In addition to being newcomers and foreigners, Ann and I were also well set up. Thus, to the likes of Grant, my wife and I were of an alien species from several perspectives.
“Could be twins again,” he was saying as he ran a hand through disheveled wheat-blond hair. “The twins were awful. Cassia nearly died, they took so long to be born.”
He noted my arrival and nodded at me, then began circling a battered cap in his hands.
“Your wife is in childbed?” I asked.
“She’s in agony, sir. Miss Marigold said I was to fetch you.”
But of course. Fetch me now that the situation had become dire, when saving mother and child was a much less likely proposition than it might have been a day ago. If all my skill and all my experience yielded only tragedy, the fault would lie with me and not with the midwife who’d so humbly—and belatedly—had me summoned.
“Give me a moment to fetch my husband’s medical bags,” Ann said, “and I will need to change into an older dress.”
“Please hurry,” Mr. Grant said, “and I’ll just be going.”
Ann had made the sensible decision for me, the only possible decision. “Nonsense, Grant,” I said. “My gig will be out front in ten minutes, and you will arrive home much more quickly by traveling with us. Have you eaten yet today?”
He looked bewildered, and as if the slightest breeze would send him into a sound nap on Ann’s Savonnerie carpet. I knew what that felt like, when exhaustion and worry stole every last wit.
“Go down to the kitchen, Mr. Grant,” Ann said, heading for the door. “You must keep up your strength. Please tell Cook to prepare a basket to send along with us, because your children must eat as well.”
Grant looked to me for either a second to that motion or a translation into some dialect a tired, terrified male could understand.
“Food,” I said. “A sandwich for yourself, a basket for the children. Off you go to the kitchen, and send one of the grooms for the gig.”
I did not clap my hands and snap, Vite! Vite! as Fiona had done, for that would have been French of me—also uncharacteristically forward. Grant already lacked confidence in my medical skill, and I did not want to add to his fears.
I caught up with Ann on the landing, though she was moving at her usual forced march.
“You will have to see to my hooks,” she said, “and do not think of remonstrating with me, Hugh.”
“Why would I remonstrate with you?”
I earned myself an inspection at the top of the steps for that perfectly innocent question. “These people cannot pay you,” Ann said, “and what they do not pay for, they do not respect. I know that, but a mother’s life and the life of her baby are in peril.”
“I do not need their money,” I said as we traversed the family wing corridor.
“But you deserve their respect.”
What I truly longed for was Ann’s respect. In a distant way, I’d once had it. The surgeons who supported the military were all too useful after a battle, and even between battles, and our work was challenging. We often toiled for days with little rest and did so in the midst of horrendous suffering. In that sense, we’d been respected, also feared, resented, and egregiously under-supported.
“Respect is earned,” I said, holding open the door to our suite. “And that will take time. Who is this Miss Marigold?” An older unmarried woman might well be a midwife if her mother or aunt had been a midwife, but I had come across no Miss Marigolds in the local churchyard.
“Miss Marigold Fletcher,” Ann said. “Daughter of the late vicar. She and her mother bide in the little stone cottage just down the green from the smithy. The one with the blue salvia in the window boxes and flower beds. You should change out of that waistcoat.”
“Right.” I was wearing a blue waistcoat embroidered with red and gold lilies, one of my favorites. Pretty and a bit Continental, but not gaudy. A practicing doctor kept a supply of plain black waistcoats, the better to hide the inevitable stains.
We reached the bedroom, and Ann swept the hair off her nape and presented me with her back. As far as the servants knew, we enjoyed the usual pleasures and familiarities of marital partners.
The day we’d arrived at Belle Terre, our trunks had been taken up to the largest bedroom suite. Neither Ann nor I had been willing to announce that husband and wife did not share a bed. I had offered to sleep on the cot in the dressing room, and onto that lumpy, short rack I had consigned myself every night since.
On this occasion, perhaps because I knew time was of the essence, I permitted myself the barest hint of awareness of my wife’s person. Ann’s looks were too bold to be considered pretty by the English, but I was not English.
Her hair had first drawn my notice, a lush, incendiary red that reached to her hips when unbound. She had the legendary temper of a redhead, and more than once, her first husband had bedded down with the horses rather than face her wrath.
I had admired Ann’s spirit then. Now, I was consigned to spending my nights on the lit de tourment infernale. In defense of my sanity, I ignored her abundant feminine charms as best I could.
My wife was beyond pretty. She was attractive, full of vitality and passion. Her mood was often broody, but she also had a quick, earthy sense of humor that charmed and surprised me. She had the most lovely skin, petal-smooth and pale, and for a moment, I allowed myself to imagine brushing my thumb over her nape.
“You should eat something too,” she said. “You haven’t had lunch, and babies are no respecters of schedules.”
“We’ll raid the hamper,” I replied, pulling myself from reveries that replaced the brush of my thumb with the brush of my lips. “You haven’t had your lunch yet either.”
She walked away from me, her dress gaping open. I should not have found the sight fetching, but on a purely animal level, I did. My emotions—and Ann’s—were more complicated. Not three months past, I had been all but engaged to Lady Violet, a woman I had taken to my bed, loved sincerely, and would always hold in highest esteem.
But when I’d been a young man trying to find his feet in the military world, I had also loved Ann. I had admired her from a discreet distance since the day she’d shown up in my infirmary to ask if her husband was among the injured.
She had been married at the time. My admiration had thus been of the purely theoretical sort. I aspired to all the honor a gentleman should claim, of course, but more to the point, I was a Frenchman practicing medicine in an English military camp.
I watched my step.
When the officers’ wives had proposed that I solve the problem created by the death of Ann’s first husband, I had immediately agreed. After a hasty wedding, I simply had not known how to nurture the seedlings of loneliness, genuine respect, and desire into the blossoms of affection and abiding regard. In time, I might have puzzled it out, but Ann’s patience had reached its limit after less than a year of marriage.
I could not determine if my desire for Ann was a betrayal of Lady Violet—now engaged to another—or a betrayal of the Ann who’d deserved to be wooed and charmed. Perhaps admitting desire was a betrayal of my amour propre, because I deserved a wife who desired and respect me as well, didn’t I?
I ruminated on these imponderables while I tidied myself and changed into a black waistcoat. Ann donned a dress of a plain, lightweight brown wool. I did up her hooks, and then we were off down the steps to await the gig.
“I never asked if you wanted me to come along,” Ann said, gaze on the sweeping curve of the front drive.
We had fallen into the habit of tucking our questions under casual observations. I despaired to see Ann, once so bold and saucy, all trussed up in manners and caution. I was none too happy in such attire myself.
“Of course I want you with me,” I said. “A woman’s presence at a lying-in is always a comfort, and any fellow but the husband is a decided awkwardness.” For high society, that was changing, as the profession of accoucheur found a foothold with families of rank. Here in the shires, neither physicians nor surgeon-apothecaries typically attended births, though they might consult on difficult cases.
“You like bringing babies into the world,” Ann said. “You always have.”
She and I had attended a few birthings together, there being midwives among Ann’s older female relatives.
“I also like keeping babies in the world,” I said. “I know of no greater heartache than to watch a tiny life expire. What sort of God does that? Puts a woman through months of physical hardship, raises a couple’s hopes, and then replaces joy with tragedy?”
Ann squeezed my hand, the gesture startling me half out of my boots. “We will manage, Hugh. The Grants are sturdy stock, and Miss Fletcher is sensible. She might well be sending for you in an abundance of caution, or just to get Dervid out from underfoot for an hour.”
The gig pulled up, and Ann slipped her hand from mine before I could kiss her knuckles or muster any husbandly gallantry. Grant was perched on the boot, along with a pair of hampers, and thus we were chaperoned for the entirety of the journey.
We took turns driving and eating—a skill we’d perfected in Spain—and were soon at the humble establishment that passed for the Grant abode. The cottage was set into a swell of land, gray native stone with a thatched roof. My guess was, an abandoned cow byre had been converted into a dwelling, so low was its ceiling. The chimney was yielding to the onslaught of time, or perhaps a want of proper mortar was at fault.
A drystone wall ringed the yard, and a pair of identical little girls—equally dirty, equally skinny—looked up as we arrived. Scrawny chickens pecked about, and neither child wore shoes.
“Mama’s still alive,” one girl shouted. “Miss Fletcher said we were to tell ye that. I know you. You’re the doctor!”
I liked children, liked their honesty and innocence, and liked very much that they were less prone to judgment than their elders. I did not like that these girls were underfed, under-clothed, and tasked with reporting on the progress in the birthing room.
“I am the physician,” I said, hefting the hampers from the back of the vehicle, “and this lady with my medical bag is my wife, Madame St. Sevier.”
“Mrs. St. Sevier,” Ann said when both children seemed puzzled. “Wash your hands, and you may have some luncheon.”
The children pelted around to the back of the dwelling, where I hoped a rain barrel or some source of soap and clean water was to be found.
Grant looked at his home as if he both dreaded and longed to cross its threshold. “It doesn’t get any easier,” he said. “This will be our sixth, God willing, and I’m flat terrified, same as I was with the first.”
Ann sent me a look. Save the lecture on self-restraint for later.
“If you would tend to the hampers,” I said, passing both to Grant, “I will look in on your wife.”
A young woman appeared in the doorway. Her brown hair was in a neat bun, her apron was spotless, her hands were clean. Her boots were sturdy, such as sensible ladies wore when tramping country lanes, she exuded a brisk manner without coming across as rude.
I liked her on sight and had the odd thought that Ann probably liked her as well.
“Come in, Doctor, madame,” she said, making a shooing motion with her hand. “All your great learning and brilliance won’t do us any good standing about in the yard with the chickens, will it? I am Marigold Fletcher, and this birth is not going well.”
“Has Mrs. Grant’s water broken?” I asked as Ann and I ducked to enter the dwelling. We were hit with the combined stink of boiled cabbage, onions, and sweat.
“Her waters finally broke just as I sent Dervid off to fetch you, but I fear it’s too late. Mrs. Grant’s strength is ebbing, and labor is not progressing.”
“It’s never too late,” I said, passing Ann my coat and rolling up my cuffs. “As long as there’s breath, there’s hope.” And sometimes, even if the mother’s life was forfeit, the child could be saved. I kept that thought to myself. Grant likely feared the challenge of feeding eight mouths instead of seven, but the loss of his wife would be a tragedy too great to contemplate.
On the other side of the only interior door, a woman yelled that Dervid Grant was a dead man, and this time, she meant it.
“There’s breath,” Ann said, preceding me into the other room. “And plenty of it.”
“And thus,” I said, following after, “there’s hope, and plenty of that too.”
Miss Fletcher looked dubious, but adopted the cheerful manner considered a tonic to all in medical difficulties. She attempted pleasantries, but Mrs. Grant was soon in the midst of another contraction. Polite rituals gave way to the more compelling business of bringing a new life squalling into the world.
Four hours later, that life—Sixtus Dervid Grant—was swaddled in a beautifully embroidered blanket and rooting greedily at his mama’s breast, though of course her milk hadn’t come in yet. The situation had wanted mostly a change of position for Mrs. Grant, from bed to birthing stool, so that the sizable infant could better navigate the birth canal. I had made shift with an overturned half barrel and the cushion from the gig’s bench.
I handed Ann back up into the gig, the cushion having been restored to its intended use, and felt the usual combination of fatigue and joy that followed a successful birthing.
“You still swear in French,” Ann said. “I believe Mrs. Grant thought you were muttering incantations.”
“Miss Fletcher knew better.” She’d mostly busied herself with keeping the older children occupied, but she’d sent for help when help had been needed, and thank God she had. “Is she the local midwife?” I would have to foster her acquaintance if so.
“Not officially. She’s unmarried, but she attended a lot of births with her mother when the late vicar was alive. Why am I so tired?”
“Births are like battles, but with the hope of a much better outcome. The nerves grow exhausted even if the body does not.”
The horse was only too happy to head for home, and thus we sped along lanes that ran between verdant summer hedges. The livestock was fattening in deep pastures, and a breeze riffled across ripening fields of grain. We might have been any couple out paying calls for the sheer pleasure of socializing with our neighbors.
Except we weren’t. We were interlopers enduring an awkward marital rapprochement, tied together by legalities, duty, and a daughter. As we passed a meadow full of fluffy sheep, I realized that if I was to salvage my marriage, then I would have to look for opportunities to create a wider foundation.
The afternoon’s activities were such an opportunity, and I had just mentally rehearsed a recitation of my appreciation for Ann’s company in the birthing room when she sat up straighter on the bench beside me.
“How will Miss Fletcher get home?” she asked. “Grant has no vehicle worth the name, and it’s some distance to the village even as the crow flies. The lady has been on her feet for two days.”
I was tired, but far from physically exhausted. “I will drop you off at Belle Terre and retrieve Miss Fletcher from the Grant domicile. That will also allow me to take another hamper to the Grants.” The children were not starving, but neither were they thriving. I had prescribed cod liver oil for two of the younger girls in hopes of treating inchoate rickets.
The baby needed blankets and clean linens. The mother needed regular servings of cow’s milk and butter, which were fortunately in good supply, given the season. Red meat was another necessity, as was a stern warning to both mama and papa about the perils of too many births in quick succession.
I could not take Ann’s hand because I held the reins, but I needed to somehow express my thanks to her for her aid. She had been a calm, good-humored assistant, and she had not sworn in any language no matter the provocation. She had helped me stay calm, in other words, and thus I could focus on my patient more effectively.
We pulled around to the Belle Terre stable, and I leaped down to assist my wife from the bench.
She alighted and kept her hands resting on my arms. “You did well, Hugh. I was proud of you. Go fetch Miss Fletcher, and I’ll see that the Grants get another hamper from us before sunset.”
I was proud of you. The words stunned me, as that earlier little squeeze to my hand had stunned me. I fumbled for something to say, something winsome and husbandly, but not too familiar. I was glad to have you there. You made the situation much easier. I’d forgotten what a wonderful birthing assistant you are.
What came out of my handsome, well-educated, charming mouth? “I’ll see you at dinner.”
Ann smiled. “You’ll need a bath first.”
She strode off with that particularly confident gait of hers, and I wanted to call after her, to squeeze her hand, to lay even a single small rock in a new and broader foundation for our marriage.
“A bath sounds lovely,” I called, which earned me a curious look from the horse and no reaction at all from my retreating wife.
I came upon Miss Fletcher marching along the lane about a quarter mile from the Grants’ abode.
“Miss Fletcher.” I brought the horse to a halt. “May I offer you a lift to the village?”
I was an unrelated male to whom she had been introduced only in passing. I was not even English, and I’d dwelled at Belle Terre for only the past few months. Another woman might have hesitated, despite the fact that I drove an open gig and she was doubtless exhausted.
“Merciful ministers of heaven, yes, you may.” She climbed nimbly onto the bench before I could assist her. “I thought that child would never deign to join the earthly sphere, monsieur, and it did not occur to me the issue was the mother’s position.”
“Position and posture,” I replied, signaling the horse to trot on. “The urge to push can mean an urge to arch the back, which is counterproductive to the desired outcome, especially when the infant is large. I’m surprised Mrs. Grant herself did not know that.”
Miss Fletcher arranged a worn canvas haversack at her feet. “All she knew, by the time you arrived, was that Dervid would never again get within six feet of her. She said the same thing after the twins were born. Young Oswald arrived about a year later.”
“The Grants are devoted, then. That is all to the good, considering the effort involved in raising so many children.”
Miss Fletcher gave me a sidewise glance. She wore a straw hat, which did less to conceal her features than a poke bonnet would have.
“The Grants are young,” she said, though she herself was hardly old. “They are too poor to afford many comforts. I’m sure they decide after the arrival of each child to forgo the activities that lead to conception, but with what pleasures can they replace marital congress? How can they preserve a sense of intimacy if what they impose on themselves is instead frustration?”
A blunt and interesting speech, especially coming from a genteel English spinster. A change of subject was in order.
“Your father was the vicar?”
“Yes, and thus I was not raised in ignorance of life’s more vexing conundrums. Thou shalt not kill, unless thou stealeth a spoon. Then one’s death can become roaringly good entertainment for an enormous throng. God save the king, but nobody asks God to save the people from the king when his profligate regent bankrupts the nation in a time of war.”
In London, one did not bruit about such sentiments, because the crown employed spies to lurk in the taverns and report sedition wherever it arose.
We were not in London. “Are you part French?”
“I am good, sturdy Sussex stock by birth, monsieur, but I accompanied my mother on many of her calls to sickrooms and birthing rooms. I also assisted her with her dame school. Mrs. Cooper has allowed me to continue in that capacity, but as you doubtless know, we lack competent medical practitioners in these surrounds.”
“Not even a midwife?”
We rolled along between the fields and pastures as Miss Fletcher answered questions that had lurked at the edges of my awareness.
The local surgeon-apothecary had retired without a successor several years ago. The midwife had left the area to dwell with a daughter even before that, leaving the aging Mrs. Fletcher to cope as best she could. The neighborhood was merely genteel—no lofty titles to underwrite the cost of hiring medical talent—and the village was half empty as a result of decades of enclosures. Bad harvests had been painfully frequent in the past two decades.
All over England, the countryside was losing population, and landowners were struggling with falling rents and rising foreign competition for their corn and produce.
“If you could choose,” Miss Fletcher said, “to open a surgery in London and have your patients come to you, coin in hand, or to practice here, where your payment might be in eggs you do not need, which would you prefer? You could hold surgery hours in the village on given days, but illness has no calendar. More likely, you would spend years trotting up and down the lanes in all weather to deal with a putrid sore throat here or a colicky baby there. When old age or a carriage accident claimed you, you would have nothing to show for all your hard work.”
Was she trying to wave me off? Making conversation? “Should we then leave the families of our squires and yeomen without medical care?”
She took off her straw hat to sweep a lock of hair over her ear, the gesture unselfconscious and feminine. She was… pretty. Not English-rose pretty, but her features were lit with intelligence, even as tired as she was, and she was given to smiling. I noticed this as I might notice that a passing stranger had an uneven gait, or that a baby crying in church sounded tired rather than hungry.
Miss Fletcher turned her face up to the westering sun and closed her eyes. “We pay a pittance,” she said, “but we do pay—to ensure that immortal souls have some care in every shire, monsieur. One cannot see the soul, one cannot be assured of its existence save for the bleatings set forth by ancient men in ancient texts. And yet, we pay to keep those souls in good repair, as my mother would say.
“At the same time,” she went on, “we leave the Grants and their ilk to fend for themselves when illness strikes. If you asked the struggling farmers of England to pay taxes for the support of a local physician, as opposed to supporting the Regent’s debts, the East India Company, or the Church, which do you suppose they’d choose? Which would result in a happier, healthier nation?”
She had an interesting point, particularly in light of the perennial agitation in England to extend suffrage beyond the relatively wealthy few.
“Is this what a vicarage upbringing yields in Merry Olde England?” I asked. “Radical philosophy and political speculation?”
She put her hat back on and left the ribbons trailing. “I am an only child. My mother grew tired of my father’s philosophical maunderings, and I was thus exposed to more theorizing than most would deem healthy for a girl. I often accompanied Papa on his calls, and that meant many miles of Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Locke, and Adam Smith.”
“How did your father die?” That was a physician’s question, though Miss Fletcher did not take offense.
“Ague,” she said as the gig clattered over the arched bridge that brought the village green into view. “He went off on a winter night to attend a sick parishioner, slipped into a ditch, and got a soaking. Lung fever followed. He was hale and hearty one day and, a fortnight later, making his final arrangements.”
“Ditch water is notorious for propagating foul miasmas. I am sorry for your loss, but glad you took to heart his determination to comfort the sick and ailing. Mrs. Grant might well have lost her life or her baby if not for you.”
“And if not for you, monsieur. I wasn’t sure you’d come.” Miss Fletcher took a belated interest in tying her hat’s ribbons. “Thank you for that. Death in childbed is horrible. Painful, messy, undignified, and so… despairing. If the mother has other children or a devoted spouse, she’s not only dying, her heart is breaking. She feels like a failure before God, nature, and her own family, and that is so unfair.”
“Tragic,” I said. “One of few times when that word is genuinely applicable.”
Miss Fletcher peered at me. “Yes.”
We enjoyed a moment of medical understanding, though a sad moment.
I realized as we tooled around the green that I had been guilty of a crime I detested, that of making judgments based on superficialities. Ann and I dwelled at Belle Terre by default. We had other properties, but Belle Terre was commodious, and Fiona seemed to like it.
I dreaded the day when Ann suggested I might be more comfortable establishing my household at one of those other properties, but I accepted that such a day might come. I did not enjoy sleeping in the dressing closet, and in all likelihood, Ann did not enjoy knowing I slumbered there.
The difficulty for me was, no matter where I chose to dwell, I was viewed with suspicion by my English neighbors. I talked funny, and people who spoke as I did, people who shared my national heritage, had shot at, killed, and maimed my English neighbors in untold numbers. That those French soldiers had also been shooting at me from time to time was of no moment.
Nor was it relevant that the English had been shooting back at my fellow Frenchmen on every occasion.
Miss Fletcher was a warning to me not to grow lazy in my thinking. I had consigned the entire shire to backwardness because of the actions of a few. My neighbors had recently seen me arrested and detained for a crime I had not committed—a tale for another time, as Lady Violet would say—and I had retaliated by tarring the whole community with the brush of ignorance and prejudice.
Miss Fletcher was far from ignorant, and her thinking was so distant from close-minded that she gave even me—a product of revolutionary France—pause.
We pulled up to the stone cottage with the blue salvia in the window boxes. The dwelling was as tidy as Miss Fletcher, with symmetrical white curtains hanging in the windows and more salvia growing along the walkway. The little front yard of grass was bordered by a stone wall, much as the Grants’ home was, but the effect was markedly different here.
When I assisted Miss Fletcher from the gig, I learned that she was lighter than she looked. She also weaved a bit when her feet touched terra firma.
“Steady,” I said, keeping a hand on her arm. “I hope you helped yourself to something from the hampers, Miss Fletcher.”
She shook her head and stepped back. “The children needed the food far more than I did. Thank you for your many kindnesses, monsieur. I hope I’ll see you and madame at the trials on Saturday.”
I had no interest in trials of any sort. “I beg your pardon?”
“Some old master of foxhounds two centuries ago figured out that if the pack sees some exercise over the summer, they go into hunting season in better condition. We race the swiftest hounds twice a month from Beltane onward. After Michaelmas, we have horse races for the same reason. The result is a cross between a village fete and a race meet, with the occasional informal prizefight behind the smithy. I’m not supposed to know about the prizefights.”
Violence, spirits, and contests of speed. English entertainments in a nutshell. My inclination was to decline, but how much longer did I expect my wife to dwell in isolation at Belle Terre? At Ann’s insistence, we’d hosted Lady Violet and her beau, Sebastian MacHeath, Marquess of Dunkeld, for a short visit.
We’d had no callers other than the current vicar and his wife. Ann was probably lonely, and not for more of my snoring from the dressing closet.
“I will ask my wife if we are free. What time does the gathering start?”
“Six-ish, by the country clock. I’ll look forward to seeing you there.” She let herself through a wooden gate painted light blue and then turned to face the street. “Will you look in on Mrs. Grant?”
“Am I welcome to?” In the space of a short drive, I had learned that I could trust Miss Fletcher to answer the question honestly.
“You will make Dervid uncomfortable, because he cannot pay you, but Mrs. Grant will be relieved to see you. She’s had other babies, but has never had a chance to question a physician about how to go on with them.”
“She needs to not have babies for a time. Two years at least.”
That indelicate observation prompted Miss Fletcher to study the salvia that had likely been blooming in her yard for weeks. “Tell that to Dervid, why don’t you? My mother was never quite equal to lecturing the papas, but somebody clearly needs to.”
I was that somebody. Husbands, in my opinion, ought to attend their wives in childbed, even titled husbands. Most of those fellows would doubtless rather take up arms against the whole Grand Armée than endure one hour of a woman’s travail—travail the husband at least in part caused.
The baby might be the work of divine providence, but a man decided when his own breeches came off.
I waited by the gig until Miss Fletcher had entered her house, then resumed my seat on the bench. As I turned the vehicle, I got a nod and touch of the hat brim from our local magistrate, Thaddeus Freeman. He and I had played a few games of interesting chess while he’d detained me in his home—detained me illegally, as it turned out.
He’d had his reasons. I nodded in return, my hands being on the reins. I did not precisely like Freeman, but I respected him. He, too, had served on the Peninsula, and he, too, was a man with regrets.
I passed again over the arched bridge and took the lane toward Belle Terre. Ann would probably enjoy a call from Miss Fletcher. They were both blazingly smart, independent, and physically and intellectually vigorous women.
Perhaps I should have invited Miss Fletcher to tea? But no, that was for Ann to do, if she pleased to do it. When I reached Belle Terre, I handed the gig off to a stable boy and approached the house with visions of a warm soaking bath quickening my steps. I was half submerged in that bath, drowsing at my leisure, when it occurred to me that I liked Miss Fletcher.
I liked women generally, but on the strength of our conversation and my observations of her in the birthing room, I liked her.
I had not yet decided whether my liking was a good thing or a troublesome thing when I rose from the water and began toweling myself dry. I was thus in a state of complete undress and caught entirely unaware when my wife walked into the bedroom.