The Surgeon's Lady

“You mentioned Stonehouse.” Heavens, Laura, she told herself, let the man be. He’s trying to go home.

He seemed in no particular hurry. “I started my duties there last week after returning from Jamaica.”

He must have noticed the question on her face. “Stonehouse is a Royal Naval Hospital between Plymouth and Devonport. By the dockyards. I am one of the two staff surgeons to some eight hundred patients, depending on Boney.”

She couldn’t have heard him right. “So many! How can you possibly get away?”

“Not often,” he said as she walked him to the door. “I did insist on seeing me mum, however. After Jamaica, she was pining after my careworn visage.”

“Is there no Mrs. Brittle?”

“Not besides me mum,” he said cheerfully, as he walked down the stairs with her. “Any woman I’m to court will have to come to Stonehouse and empty slops.”

Laura laughed. “And probably wash smelly bandages.”

“Certainly.” He nodded to her. “Just leave the side door open. I’ll lock it when I come in, if you and Nana have already gone to bed.”

When she returned to the sitting room, Nana was awake and knitting by the window. She held up her work. “Soakers. Mrs. Brittle says I can never knit too many. Do you knit, sister?”

She did. They spent the evening knitting. Under Nana’s gentle questions, she was even able to talk about her marriage and Sir James Taunton.

“He wanted an heir, and reckoned his first wife had been at fault,” Laura said, her eyes on her knitting. “After a year of trying, he had a stroke and left me in peace.” She knew that was enough to tell Nana. “I … I do have a lovely estate in Taunton.”

Nana didn’t look convinced.

“It’s lovely,” Laura repeated. “If I never see it again, it wouldn’t be any loss to me. Life is amazingly dull when you want for nothing.”

Nana did smile at that. She leaned back and rested her hand on her abdomen. “Please don’t tell Oliver, but life moved faster at the Mulberry, when I was hauling water up and down stairs, placating our few lodgers, and sweeping hearths.”

“You’ll be busy soon enough.”

“So I will.” Nana leaned forward and took Laura’s hands in hers. “Oliver’s all right, isn’t he?”

If she hadn’t felt so confident in Lt. Brittle’s comments, Laura knew she could not have spoken. “I do believe he is, this captain of yours. You’re a goose, Nana! No wonder everyone loves you.”

Laura shared Nana’s bed that night, because Nana insisted she did not want to be alone. She saw that Nana was comfortable, touched by the way she matter-of-factly pulled the boat cloak over her side of the bed and tucked what would be Oliver’s pillow lengthwise to her. Laura smiled at that and got her own pillow from the other bedchamber.

She knew her sister was tired, but Nana had another question. “Laura, who raised you before you came to Miss Pym’s? I had Gran.”

I had no one, she thought. My mother, whoever she was, had no interest in me. “When I tell you, you’ll understand a little more about our dear father.”

Nana gave an unladylike snort. She giggled then. “Laura, I almost said something I’ve heard Oliver say when he didn’t know I was listening, but I would probably lose all credit with you.”

You could never do that, Laura thought. “As I was saying, when you so rudely interrupted—there you go again!—our dear father’s problems with money began with the fourth Viscount Ratliffe, who was as dissolute and spendthrift as our loving parent. Nana! Your manners!”

“Sorry,” came Nana’s meek reply in the dark, followed by a barely suppressed laugh, probably smothered in the folds of her darling’s boat cloak.

“Lord Ratliffe Number Four was hell-bent on a flaming career as London’s greatest ne’er-do-well when one of the Wesley brothers—John, I believe—took him on as a project, after John’s return from Georgia. Nana, are you awake?”

“Of course I am,” came the sleepy reply.

“I’ll move along. Dear Grandpapa renounced his evil ways, turned to Methodism, and set up his own illegitimate daughter—our beloved Pym—as the headmistress of a female academy. I spent my earliest years in a Wesley orphanage.”

Nana reached under Oliver’s pillow and took her sister’s hand. “Laura,” was all she said.

“If you don’t know any better, what is the harm?” Laura said. “You know the rest as well as I do. After Grandpa died, our father was forced by some curious honor we scarcely knew he possessed, to maintain Pym’s school and keep us in it. Of course, he found a way to make us pay, didn’t he? Nana, I’m so ashamed I did not have your courage.”

Nana pushed aside Oliver’s pillow and her voice was fierce. “Laura! Listen to me! You had no one to help you and nowhere to go.” She held Laura by the shoulders. “You have us now. You always will.” Her grip relaxed. “Heavens, you’ll think I’m ferocious.”

“You are, sister,” Laura said, drawing a shaky breath. “Did you terrify that French officer in Oliver’s prison?”

“Probably,” Nana said, her tone kindly again. “He deserved it, though, for getting between me and my love.”

And that is that, Laura thought, as her sister found Oliver’s pillow again and stretched it out.

She thought Nana slept, but then: “Laura, please say you’ll stay here. I need you.”

“I’ll stay.” I need you more, she thought, as her eyes closed.

Laura woke a few hours later, because she heard the bedchamber door open. She sat up, alert, to see the tall form of Lt. Brittle—what had Nana called him? Phil?—holding up a lantern similar to one she had used in James’s sick room, with its sides slatted to allow only a little light, enough to see a patient by.

He could see that she was sitting up in bed, but he didn’t pause at the door. He came closer in stockinged feet, to kneel by her.

“Is she all right?” he whispered.

“She’s fine,” Laura whispered back, leaning close to him, unwilling to wake Nana. “We’ve been catching up on our lives.”

“You’re a welcome distraction,” he said. “She needs you.” She could see him distinctly now in the subdued light. “I like to ward walk before I sleep. Good night, Lady Taunton.”

Laura nodded and lay down again, grateful for his reassuring presence, even if he did nothing more than shine a light and let her know he was there. To her unspeakable pleasure, he tugged the coverlet up higher and patted her shoulder, before he got to his feet and left the room as quietly as he had entered it.

She put her hand where he had touched her, closed her eyes and slept.

Chapter Three

Lt. Brittle left before breakfast. Laura thought she might have to bully her sister to sit still and eat, in her anticipation for the captain to arrive, but admonition was unnecessary. After the meal, Nana went to the kitchen to plan the week’s menus, while Laura went to the book room to write a letter to Taunton.

Writing the letter was a simple matter. Laura wondered what her butler and housekeeper would say when they learned she planned to stay in Torquay for the immediate future. She wanted to recommend holidays for them all, but knew that would be a shock to the system for her retainers, none of whom was younger than fifty.

She was sealing the letter when she heard the front door open, then firm steps in the front hall. He’s here, she thought. Nana will never hear him from the kitchen. She stood up, wondering whether to go to the kitchen or into the foyer to introduce herself. Shyness kept her from doing either, but it didn’t matter.

“Nana?”

Captain Worthy’s voice wasn’t loud, but it carried, even though probably not far enough to reach the kitchen.

Laura hadn’t known her sister long. Certainly she had no reason to appreciate how close a bond between husband and wife could be. She opened the bookroom door just as Nana sped past her, arms open wide.

Their embrace was wordless, but the intensity of it made Laura catch her breath. She opened the door enough to see her sister caught in the arms of a tall man made even taller by the fore and aft hat he wore, which was cocked slightly to the side to accommodate a bandage around his head.