Page 127 of The Summer Country

“I would mourn you.” The hall felt suddenly very small and very close, the air warm and heavy. Clearing his throat, Nathaniel added, “And I’m sure Mr. Davenant would shed a tear. He might even write you an ode.”

“Thank you,” said Emily with some asperity. “Do you rate my value so low? I’d hoped for a sonnet sequence at least.”

Nathaniel didn’t rise to the challenge. “I rate you higher than you think. That’s why I need to make you understand. You don’t know what you’re offering. I know you saw the cholera in Bristol. But the climate—it’s different there. I don’t think you understand the effect the heat has on the spread of the disease. Or if not the spread, at least the smell.”

“Will you let me be the judge of that? I promise not to swoon on you.”

“I never expected you would.” Nathaniel seized on another line of attack. “Have you thought that there might be an objection to your staying here alone in my uncle’s house?”

“But I’m not alone,” said Emily. “You’re here.”

Nathaniel raised a brow. “My point.”

Emily grimaced at him. “Do you really care what evil-minded people think? Besides,” she added impatiently, “anyone who has seen the work you do would know you haven’t the energy to go about ravishing people!”

Nathaniel put his face into his hands and snorted, shoulders shaking with helpless mirth. “I don’t know whether to be comforted or insulted.”

“Don’t make me dose you with laudanum for your nerves.”

“My nerves are beyond laudanum.” Lifting his head, Nathaniel blinked away tears of laughter. “My, er, stamina aside, evil-minded people will talk if an unmarried man and woman share a house. Not during the height of the panic, perhaps, but afterward.”

Emily had to acknowledge the justice of that. “I could go back to Miss Lee’s, I suppose,” she said doubtfully.

“Good Lord, do you think I want to sign your death warrant? The Lord only knows where she gets her water. I could take lodgings—”

“There is one obvious solution,” pointed out Emily. “We could bring patients in.”

“You want me to turn my uncle’s house into a hospital.”

“If you put it that way—yes.” Seeing that he was wavering, she added reasonably, “We could limit it to women and children if you like. Surely, no one could object to that.”

“No one, indeed,” murmured Dr. Braithwaite.

“They’ll be too sick to steal the silver. You’ve said yourself, you’re not allowed to house them in the hospital because of the rules regarding infectious diseases. Besides,” she added, “it’s only fair. I let you use my house as an infirmary.”

“For broken arms,” said Nathaniel. “Not the bowel death.”

But he found two nurses from the hospital and installed them in the servants’ quarters and arranged for cots and pallets to be delivered and set up in bedrooms and along the veranda. Word was sent to Belle View. London Turner sent back his approval and an elderly relation to serve as chaperone to Emily. He asked only that they not burn the house down in his absence, and that they save all receipts.

Cousin Bella wasn’t terribly much use as a practical nurse, but she told wonderful stories, sitting and knitting and talking as Emily plunged yet another load of soiled sheets into the kettle in the yard or splashed lime across the floor.

“Trust my uncle not to miss a trick,” said Nathaniel darkly, when Cousin Bella arrived, sitting on a cart piled high with blankets and rolled mattresses and even a squawking crate of poultry.

“I like her,” said Emily firmly, and she found that while Cousin Bella wasn’t much for mopping up sick or changing soiled nappies, she was a wonder with the young children, many of whom had lost their parents and siblings, and found themselves weak and sick in a strange house with echoing high ceilings and stern-looking portraits on the walls. She never wearied of telling endless stories about clever spiders and thwarted witches, each more fantastical than the last, keeping even the sickest children spellbound as Emily bustled about changing sheets and swaddling cloths, feeling brows and emptying bedpans.

A public fast day was held on June 14, but both Nathaniel and Emily were too busy to attend the service at the cathedral. Nearly three hundred died that day in Bridgetown, and as many again were taken ill. Word had spread that London Turner’s house had turned infirmary, and even Cousin Bella had her hands full, admitting those they could admit, turning away those they couldn’t, helping to set up a tent in the yard to make room for more beds, more babies. Cots marched in lines down the veranda. Mrs. Turner’s prized silver and china were locked away and the great mahogany table turned on its side to make room for more beds in the dining room.

The days took on their own strange pattern as they battled death. June boiled into July. The house was divided into sections, one for cholera patients, one for children who had lost their families. Nathaniel grumbled that he’d never anticipated running an orphanage, but Emily just thrust freshly boiled coffee at him and told him to drink up and not to think she didn’t know about the sweets in his pockets, and could he please stop inciting riot among her younger patients?

They took great delight in scoring points off each other, the one bright spot in otherwise grim days, days of relentless heat and hideous smells. There were recoveries, but there were deaths too, and Emily found herself having to spend some time in the airing cupboard to hide her damp eyes from the other nurses.

“You shouldn’t be ashamed of mourning them,” said Nathaniel, who discovered her when he came in for clean sheets.

“It’s not terribly productive, is it,” retorted Emily, wiping her nose clumsily on the back of her hand. “Do you weep every time you lose a patient? But oh, I had such hopes of her!”

“Courage.” Nathaniel produced a clean handkerchief from his waistcoat pocket. He paused at the door of the airing cupboard, his face in shadow. “It doesn’t get easier, you know. No matter how many patients one treats. I was called to the Reverend Bannister’s home this morning. His youngest died yesterday. The idiot man not only kissed the baby in his coffin but encouraged the boy’s sister to do the same.”

“Oh no,” said Emily, the handkerchief crumpled in her hand.