Cry for Passion (19 page)

“Mrs. Brown, help me move this trunk and we’ll make a table for Mrs. Clarring,” called Rose to attention.

The housekeeper and the maid lifted the heavy leather-and-brass trunk and moved it in front of the armchair. A third woman—the cook, no doubt—carried a cloth-covered tray.

“Mrs. Finley, put the tray here,” the housekeeper directed. “Mrs. Clarring, if ye’ll be seated.”

Rose gingerly sat, too-soft velvet molding her buttocks.

Irresistibly she remembered the cradle of Jack’s pelvis.

A clearing throat brought Rose to the present.

The three women—housekeeper, maid and cook—stood side by side, patiently waiting.

Rose surveyed the breakfast tray: A steepled white linen cloth jutted out from a white china cup.

“The plate and cutlery are new,” she observed.

“Yes, ma’am.” The tall woman—the cook—spoke up. Rose draped the napkin over her lap and picked up a shiny fork. “I purchased them this morning, along with other necessities.”

“I see.” The scrambled eggs were moist and surprisingly flavorful. Rose swallowed. “That was very thoughtful of you. You are Mrs. Finley?”

“Yes, ma’am, if you please.”

Steam rose from a small white pot. Rose poured a fragrant cup of tea.

A creamer, sugar bowl and a saucer of lemon slices occupied the far corner of the tray.

She knew how deeply Jack filled her body, she thought with a curious pang, but she did not know how he took his tea.

“Breakfast is quite delicious, Mrs. Finley.” Rose added a cube of sugar to her tea. “If you’ll give me the bill, I’ll reimburse you.”

“Mr. Lodoun paid for it, ma’am.”

Rose froze, teaspoon creating a dark swirl.

“Mr. Lodoun?” she repeated. Carefully she tapped the teaspoon against delicate china and balanced it on the edge of the matching white saucer. “Exactly what did Mr. Lodoun say and do this morning?”

While she lay sleeping, dreaming of another man.

“He gave us a twenty-pound banknote and told us to buy what we needed to prepare ye breakfast.” The housekeeper bluntly spoke up. “He told us to watch over ye during the day, to not let anyone ye don’t know enter the house.”

As if Jonathon would cause her harm.

But he could.

Because of men like Jack.

“And then he told us to buy a toothbrush and a bar of unscented soap.”

A hiccup of laughter caught in Rose’s throat.

“And then,” the housekeeper grimly concluded, “he said we should purchase a shaving kit.”

Correctly holding the knife and fork—spine erect, vulva throbbing—Rose sliced off a sliver of ham. “As you said, Mrs. Dobkins, a bit of a tartar.”

“Shall we go over the menu, Mrs. Clarring?” the cook anxiously asked, all three women so obviously in need of employment.

It wasn’t that difficult lanced through Rose.

Love-blind. Love-starved.

Every woman had a weakness.

Chapter 20

“I can’t, Dr. Burns.” Tears streaked the woman’s face; an angry lesion cracked the corner of her mouth, the manifestation of pernicious anemia. She was thirty-one years old; she looked fifty-one. “I’ve been birthin’ since I was fifteen. I can’t birth another bairn. I just can’t.”

Pain and poverty were bleak counterpoints to the bright sunshine streaming through slanted blinds.

Before the trial, Sarah remembered, it had rained. After the trial, the wind had chased away the clouds.

The pain and poverty had remained, a London staple.

“Then you shan’t, Mrs. Wilkins.” Reaching over the sturdy wooden table that served as her desk, Sarah clasped rough red hands and answered the younger woman’s plea. “You shan’t.”

The woman’s relief was immediately overcome by guilt.

Her fingers—twice as small as those of Sarah—turned and gripped her hand so tightly Sarah fought not to wince. “I love me childers, Dr. Burns.”

“I know you do, Mrs. Wilkins.”

Sarah had long ago learned that the love of children and the consequences of bearing children were two separate issues.

“I don’t regret birthin’ ’em.”

“Of course you don’t,” Sarah soothed.

“But I ’ave nine bairns alivin’. An’ I’m so tired.” Fresh tears bubbled up inside the woman’s red-rimmed eyes. “I can’t do it agin.”

She was physically and emotionally exhausted; years of pregnancy and nursing had depleted her body of iron. She would die: If not while giving birth, then afterward, feeding the child from her body when she herself did not have enough to eat.

Still, Sarah had to ask: “Have you told Mr. Wilkins?”

“He wouldn’ understand.”

Many men didn’t understand the toll their physical demands made on women.

“Then we won’t ask him to give more than he’s capable of giving,” Sarah said.

The words eerily echoed the woman for whom she had been subpoenaed.

“I can’t pay right away,” redirected Sarah’s thoughts.

The small office—white walls cracked; pine woodwork chipped—was ample evidence that many of her patients couldn’t pay their fees “right away.”

“Don’t you worry about that, Mrs. Wilkins; we’ll work out something.” Sarah was merely thankful the woman had come to her instead of a local butcher who would have mutilated if not killed her outright. “But if we’re to keep you safe, we need to do this soon.”

A wafting polka filled the sudden lull of grinding carriage wheels.

The harsh lines of guilt that etched the young-old woman’s face suddenly eased.

“Monday,” she said, pulling free her hands.

“Monday,” Sarah confirmed, letting her go.

The thirty-one-year-old woman walked out of the small office—shoulders squared, spine straight—and shut the door behind her.

Sarah did not know if she’d be back or not. Sometimes women chose their own options: arsenic; the path of a carriage; the Thames. All Sarah could do was hope she would make the right decision.

She closed the file on Mrs. Wilkins and dropped it into a wooden crate.

A hesitant tap pierced the monotonous whine of carriage wheels. The soft click was accompanied by a draft of stale air.

“Miss Days,” Sarah acknowledged, riffling through papers, “do you have Mrs. Maloney’s chart?”

But it wasn’t the secretary who answered.

“I’m sorry, Dr. Burns; Miss Days said I should come in.”

Abruptly reduced to a six-foot-one-inch-tall, thirty-four-year-old spinster instead of a sexless, ageless physician, Sarah jerked upright.

Eyes the color of cornflowers snagged her gaze.

The small office suddenly pulsed with the secrets the members of the Men and Women’s Club had publicly revealed, and the secrets they privately hoarded.

“Hello, Mrs. Clarring,” Sarah said, acutely aware of the fashionable woman who stood five feet tall and of her own ungainly stature swathed in a wrinkled white frock coat. Stethoscope throttling her throat, she hid her embarrassment behind bluntness. “What are you doing here?”

“I wanted to commend you on your testimony.” Sincerity radiated from the painfully pretty woman from whom Sarah had sat across for two years, yet with whom she had never become friends. “I don’t think the jury would have reached the verdict they did had it not been for you.”

Sarah was not used to praise: There was very little to be had for a woman who worked in a career dominated by men. All she could think to say was: “I did no more than what any of us did.”

Concern darkened Rose Clarring’s eyes. “Have you lost many patients because of the trial?”

Esther Palmer and Thomas Pierce—fellow members of the club—crowded the small office.

The newspapers had reported that both the teacher and the banker had been dismissed from their positions before the trial. Their reward for confiding in their employers.

“No,” Sarah gruffly answered. “My patients have neither the money nor the time to read the papers.”

Sarah knew that was not the case with the members of the prosperous middle-class society to which Rose Clarring belonged.

She had once been envious of the petite woman. She could no longer hold her beauty against her.

“Sit down, Mrs. Clarring,” Sarah briskly instructed. Mentally she reviewed the patients who waited outside: Their health was not critical. Surely they wouldn’t begrudge her a few minutes with a woman she wished she’d befriended. “Would you like tea?”

“No, thank you.” Rose Clarring quietly closed the door, white egret feathers waving above a stylish black hat. “I won’t keep you long.”

The scent of roses infiltrated the acrid scent of antiseptic.

Incongruously Sarah compared the thirty-three-year-old woman to the thirty-one-year-old woman who had just left.

Outwardly, there was no comparison: Rose Clarring had no children, and her clear, unlined skin shone with good health. Yet both women walked with purpose.

“How may I help you, Mrs. Clarring?”

Rose Clarring did not answer. Instead, she sat with a graceful flair that Sarah—tall and big-boned—had never been able to cultivate, and asked: “How is Mr. Addimore?”

Hot blood flooded Sarah’s face, remembering the past meeting in which she had confessed her desire to be small and vulnerable, and George Addimore had confessed his inability to maintain an erection.

She knew that Rose Clarring also remembered the meeting.

Sarah resisted the urge to hide the unlikely relationship budding between herself and the accountant: They had all been through too much to lie to one another.

“He lost his position at the accounting firm,” she said matter-of-factly.

After the trial.

The family-owned business would not chance their respectable clients being corrupted by a man who belonged to the “Club of Dreadful Delights,” as The Times had labeled the Men and Women’s Club.

“I’m so sorry, Dr. Burns.”

The regret on Rose Clarring’s face warmed Sarah.

Sarah wanted to ask if she had suffered at the hands of her husband, but the privacy within which each club member had cloaked themselves for two years halted her.

“He’s opening his own office; he’ll manage,” Sarah said. It had been three days since the trial ended. Impulsively, she asked, “Have you heard from anyone?”

The regret inside the blue eyes deepened. “No.”

Sarah pictured the London Museum and the elegant board-room in which they had weekly held their meetings. “Do you think we’ll ever meet again?”

“I don’t know,” Rose Clarring said honestly. “I like to think so. But we’re not the same people we were two years ago. I’m not certain what we could offer one another now.”

Friendship, Sarah thought.

But the club members who had banded together in the gallery as a group had walked out of the courtroom as couples.

All save for Rose Clarring: She had walked alone.

Sarah and George Addimore had been among the last members to be called to witness. Sarah suddenly needed to know: “Did you hear Miss Fredericks testify?”

One of the two women who had refused to accompany them to the Achilles Book Shoppe, and whose mother was dying of syphilis.

“No.” A sudden smile lit Rose Clarring’s eyes. For a brief moment Sarah saw the friend the petite woman would have been, if only Sarah had possessed the courage. “But you would have been quite proud of Miss Hoppleworth. Did you know she was certified to teach at university?”

“No,” Sarah said. “I didn’t.”

“She said she preferred being a student over a teacher because she liked to learn.” Admiration mingled with amusement inside the bright blue gaze. “Mr. Lodoun asked if she learned much in the club. She said yes, indeed. When he asked her to provide an example, she replied, ‘I am now learning about law.’ ”

Sarah visualized the thirty-six-year-old secretary who wore silver-framed glasses.

“When Mr. Lodoun asked why she voted Mrs. Hart into our society,” Rose Clarring continued, “she said it was because of her honesty. He dismissed her, but Miss Hoppleworth protested she hadn’t answered the question to her satisfaction. The judge intervened, instructing her she had answered the question to Mr. Lodoun’s satisfaction, and therefore, to the satisfaction of the court. ‘Consider this another lesson in your study of the law, Miss Hoppleworth, ’ he told her.”

Sarah could not restrain herself: She laughed, a hearty bray of uninhibited jocularity. The shocked quietness emanating from the waiting room sobered her.

“I am certain you gave a credible presentation, too, Mrs. Clarring,” she awkwardly offered.

The smile lighting Rose Clarring’s face faded. “I believe we all discovered of what we’re made, Dr. Burns.”

The Daily Herald had called her a child murderess, for blocking the conception of her husband’s children.

Sarah suddenly wanted to comfort this woman who stood thirteen inches shorter than she, but she didn’t know how. So she spoke with the mannish bluffness she had learned in medical school: “Jack Lodoun is a right bastard for suggesting the things he did.”

Her words did not have the hoped-for effect.

“It would be fruitless to blame Mr. Lodoun for what he said inside the courtroom.” Rose Clarring glanced down at her lap, round hat hiding her expression. “Like us, he did what he had to do.”

“And what if Mrs. Hart hadn’t won her liberty, Mrs. Clarring?” Sarah returned, remembering all the men who had made her studies difficult, simply because she was a woman. “Would you still say he was not to blame?”

One second Sarah stared at black felt and white feathers; the next instant she gazed into Rose Clarring’s eyes. “Without Mr. Lodoun, Dr. Burns, would you have had the courage to turn to Mr. Addimore?”

There was steel inside fragile cornflowers, Sarah thought.

And truth.

Without the subpoena, George Addimore would not have offered his arm, and she would not have walked down a London street with a man three inches shorter than she.

“No,” Sarah admitted. And then, on a restless wave of impatience that penetrated the cracked wall, she said: “You didn’t come to this part of town merely to compliment me, Mrs. Clarring.” She repeated: “What can I do for you?”

The purpose Sarah had seen in Rose Clarring’s posture blossomed inside her eyes. “You are an excellent physician, Dr. Burns: I would like your advice regarding preventive checks.”