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Chapter Nineteen
“Be respectful and obedient to your governess.”
Private Education: A Practical Plan for the Studies of Young Ladies.
Elizabeth Appleton. 1815.
“Find out all you can, Kian.”
“Right yer are,” the Scotsman declared, retrieving his greatcoat from the library sofa and swishing it about his shoulders. “I reckon me and her betrothed’ll have a wee chat.” And he flapped his metal-laden apparel.
“You’re all mouth,” Seth stated, rotating his shoulder and stretching his arms.
“And yer all beaten. Get to the basement. I’ll see yer on the morrow.”
Seth tipped his brandy glass in Kian’s direction as his friend departed with a doff of hat, and then he took himself to linger by the oval window and watch the last of the daylight hours bleed into night. The drizzle of this afternoon had lessened, leaving turbid fog that slunk across the lawns of Green Park with menace.
Thank blazes Kian had been there today, as what would he have done if…
He slugged the brandy, savoured the burn and tossed the thought to hell – if was a word invented by the devil to drive you to Bedlam. He’d learned that with time.
In the dusk-black pane, his wearied reflection grimaced: shadowed eyes, furrowed brow and tight jaw. Punches to the gut and clobbers to the chops he was accustomed to, but a bloody iron hoof stung like a hive of bees. The basement beckoned, so he set down his glass and–
With a crash, the door burst open, thumping against its stop as a mahogany tea trolley trundled into the room.
But this was unlike any tea trolley his housekeeper brought him.
For instead of the usual Hawkins fine bone-china tea service with potted cream and buttered crumpets, there lay every last item of curative paraphernalia from the Academy’s medical mishap cupboard, along with the entire assemblage of Betty’s tonics, ointments, powders and potions – items that he’d not seen for years…many years. And were most probably noxious by now.
The tea trolley’s middle tier held three voluminous books beside an array of bandages, tourniquet lengths, linen strips and flannels while the lower tier was laden with sharp pins, gouging instruments, bone nippers, probing scissors and blades of every conceivable width.
More fearsome than the contents of a tooth-puller’s back room.
Its huffing peddler appeared – Matilda wearing that buttercup gown which could melt his gizzards to pottage, barefoot with hair loose and a little damp. She halted, pushed up her glasses and glared.
“Don’t move,” she commanded before twisting to dart from the library.
He remained motionless.
And was that a…bone saw?
Upon their return from the literary event, a pallid Matilda had been ushered to her bedchamber by his housekeeper for a hot bath and a few tipples of Betty’s Special Tonic, which Seth knew consisted of her husband’s stash of illegal whisky and…well, that was it, actually, although certain herbs had always been alluded to.
It could send a farm ox to the land of nod, yet it appeared Matilda was made of sterner stuff.
In fact, a quarter-full glass of it nestled in the corner of the trolley.
Not a moment later, a bundle of white towels arrived with Matilda somewhere beneath. She flopped them to the round reading table.
“I am here to tend your wound. Take off your shirt.” And she tapped a foot, her bare pink toes negating the sternness somewhat.
“I don’t–”
“Do not tell me it’s nothing. I know that hoof caught you, Seth Hawkins, so sit down.”
She put hands to hips. He shivered… “I am perfectly well–”
“Bruising can lead to sepsis, dropsy or the flux if not seen to. So sit.” Her voice softened. “And let me tend to you.”
