Finding Bliss (13 page)

At first it didn’t occur to him that
there was anything unusual about the house-call. Usually there were four or
five servants in the vicinity, shaking with the fear that they would be injured
when Lady Normand hurled an oil lamp or some crystal or china decoration at
them. But when Eric walked into the foyer, the butler seemed calmer than usual.

“Dr. Benchley, good afternoon. Lady Normand is expecting you,”
the man said frowning curiously.

“I was summoned by a lad in your livery to attend to an
episode of hysterics. Has she calmed down on her own this time?” Eric asked.

“I am unaware that there has been any, sir. But Lady Normand
is in the drawing room. Perhaps you would like to check in on her since you’ve
come so far?” the man asked not meeting Eric’s gaze.

“I’ll give her a quick look, in case she’s on the verge.”

There was a queer sense of foreboding in the man’s behavior.
But Eric was determined to make sure Lady Normand didn’t need medication. It
would take much longer to get her calm if she were already in the throes of her
reaction so to head the problem off preventatively seemed the wisest choice. Eric
followed the butler up the massive stairway and into drawing room.

“Dr. Benchley,” the butler announced as he opened the door.

Lady Normand was in the room, seated on a sofa near the
fire. Her eyes looked red-rimmed and it was apparent that she had been
emotional sometime recently.

Eric walked in and turned to the butler to request a maid or
female servant to attend the exam. But the man had vanished without a sound. This
didn’t really upset Eric. Most of the time butlers seemed to know what to do
before being asked.

Eric turned back to face Lady Normand.

“How are you feeling this afternoon? I got word you were in
need of a surgeon,” Eric replied, looking diagnostically at the woman on the
sofa.

“Dr. Benchley, do come in. Yes, I had a little episode a bit
ago. It wasn’t soup related, though.” The woman gave a dramatic wince as though
the word was too painful for her.

“No, it was my mother-in-law’s fault. She brought me such
dreadful news today. The new Lord Normand is planning to have the London house
remodeled and orders me to remain here for the entire season! I won’t be able
to visit my friends or have anything to distract me in my sad hours. It caused
me such spasms and shortness of breath, I had to leave a morning visit to Lady
Norfolk so abruptly I thought she might think I slighted her!” Lady Normand
wailed.

Tears were curiously absent from her face, Eric noted. Pursuant
to his role as caregiver, he asked her if she needed a new bottle of laudanum.

“I really don’t like to take it, you see. It makes me all
muddled and lazy,” she said as she removed her lap throw and stood to walk
toward the chair closer to Eric.

Her gown was loose around her shoulders and a flash of a
scandalously black corset appeared accidentally. Or so he thought. The minute
Lady Normand was close enough she affected a very theatrical swoon. Eric braced
his body so that he caught her from behind.

Knowing, as any good surgeon would that this swoon was fake,
Eric felt the hair on the back of his neck prickle. Lady Normand was a bit
melodramatic, but she was genuinely distraught in all her previous episodes. This
was nothing like her usual behavior. The memory of a rumor from one of his
colleagues at the hospital came to the foreground of this thought.

It was rumored that Lady Normand had a proclivity for
afternoon sex and her lover, the current Lord Normand—her deceased husband’s
rakish cousin, had recently become engaged to a wealthy baron’s daughter. A
stab of recognition at the sound of Lady Lyle’s voice, Lady Normand’s mother,
coming quickly into the room jolted Eric into action.

He shoved Lady Normand to the chair so fast she gasped in
indignation.

“Lady Normand, I’ll leave you with a bottle of tonic. Take a
tablespoon before you go to bed each evening until this unfortunate period in
your life has passed. In future, you will need to seek treatment from Dr.
Stemley. I’m no longer available for house-calls.

“I’m accepting extra hospital duties, you see. We’re working
to ensure there are enough doctors for the spring fevers and colds that
children are suffering so dreadfully this year already. I’ll leave the bottle
with your butler. No, no! Don’t get up,” Eric said briskly.

He nodded a curt acknowledgment to Lady Lyle as she burst
into the room but found no compromise to protest. Eric didn’t wait around for
the butler to see him out. He rummaged in his satchel for a bottle of watered
opiate and placed it on the table in the foyer as he left.

Following his narrow escape, Eric
went straight to his favorite coffee house to calm his nerves. It was a very
close call! The nerve of that woman to try and trap him, HIM—a mere mister
even, into an unfortunate marriage was beyond the pale!

What was she thinking? It would have been a nagging
disaster if she’d managed to get me hooked! I’m not poor, but I’m not ton
either! What on earth would she do when she woke up and realized the stupidity
of her actions?

Eric spent the remainder of the evening in deep
contemplation over the warning. If it hadn’t been for her, he surely wouldn’t
have known what was coming! No! If she hadn’t invaded his day the way that she
did, he would have stayed at his office seeing normal people with real medical
problems. When her summons arrived, he would have easily asked Stemley or his
nurse to attend to the problem.

Eric’s usual “house-calls” these days were with women he held
no professional ties to whatsoever. And those house-calls always took place in
the darker hours of evening. He knew better!

After a couple of hours of personal reflection, Eric
commiserated with a few of his fellow surgeons over a bottle of bourbon. Several
of them shared similar stories. One man, an older barber-surgeon, told the
younger men in the group that if you made house calls to any unwed women, you
were better off taking a nurse along for precaution. Even some who have
husbands need a buffer, he’d warned.

The table raised glasses to salute the sage advice. Eric
drank his usual limit of three glasses before paying his tab and heading for
home.

Home for Eric was a boarding house
establishment that catered to surgeons fresh from medical school. Most were
bachelors with no skills for cooking or laundry. But Eric, having grown up
mostly without a mother, knew how to cook, clean and launder his own clothes.

His rented lodgings were slightly more advantageous. More
like a smallish house, Eric’s place was equipped with a kitchen, a dining table
and a separate living room and bedroom.

He could afford a better place, having inherited his boyhood
home in Cardiff when his father died. But he couldn’t quite bring himself to
sell the house or the land yet. So instead, he leased the property and lived
closer to his work.

When he arrived home, Eric set his satchel down and stared
at the emptiness of his life. It never felt lonely coming home after a long day
at work. Not usually. But somehow, after seeing an old familiar face today, he
craved companionship.

The restless ache in his chest for someone to talk to didn’t
sit well with his confirmed bachelor status. He moved around the rooms of his
rented home and tried to find activities to busy himself.

Opening a medical journal he recently purchased, Eric
studied a few of the newer remedies for common ailments for an hour or so. When
that did nothing to alleviate his loneliness, he decided to take a practiced
approach to the problem. He would make another ill-advised house-call in the
morning … to Whisper Chase.

Bliss, Bristol, March 1811

The next morning started out much as
the previous one, except Bliss let herself sleep in a little before waking
Pauline. Her best morning dress, a lovely shade of deep plum muslin, was refreshed
in anticipation of Eric’s arrival.

She saw the upcoming visit with stunning clarity after her efforts
the day before and knew, without doubt, how it would unfold. She fully expected
an exercise in futility.

At breakfast, Penelope asked who she expected to call. Bliss
gave her the name without hesitation.

“Dr. Eric Benchley is coming,” she said with a clever face
void of any hint of subterfuge. Penelope was not convinced.

“Is this your way of proving your theory, darling? Well I
hate to disappoint you. I saw Dr. Marks last month, and the diagnosis was much
the same as I have told you over and over. I’m a woman of a certain age. I am
feeling tired and uncomfortable as is logical for a woman over forty.”

Penelope held herself in a semblance of lofty disdain. Bliss
giggled.

“Eric is an old family friend. I didn’t summon him here to
attend to you, though I think I’ll have him do an exam just to prove my point. You
really should learn never to doubt me, Aunt Pen,” Bliss told her with
distinctive counter disdain. Penelope rolled her eyes.

Before the breakfast dishes were
cleared, the butler entered the breakfast room to announce that Dr. Benchley
was waiting for them in the downstairs sitting room. Penelope rose
dramatically, swaying slightly as she did, and walked behind the butler with undisguised
irritation.

Bliss skipped ahead of her slow pace and entered the room
ahead of her aunt. Penelope walked in as Eric rose from his seat to bow.

“Lady Osterburg, it is a pleasure to meet you,” Eric said
with a quirked brow at Bliss.

“Likewise, Dr. Benchley. When Bliss told me she was
expecting a visitor I had no idea it would be a professional surgeon of high
regard such as you. Welcome to Whisper Chase.”

“Interesting. Bliss told you I was expected? Well, I had it
on good authority that an unwed lady, such as Lady Bliss is, was not allowed to
receive visitors,” Eric said with a gleam in his eye.

“That’s not what I said. I said it would be improper for me
to receive certain types of house-calls,” she said with lofty disdain. Her
mention of his offer made him clear his throat nervously.

“But since you’re already here, I hope you won’t mind doing
a little work in service to a friend. My aunt is expecting a baby, and she
refuses to believe me when I tell her it is certain.”

Bliss turned to look at Penelope’s shocked expression for
two seconds before turning to fetch Penelope’s ladies’ maid.

By the time she returned, Penelope was seated on the sofa,
and Eric was regaling her with a few of Bliss’s less accurate childhood
predictions. Bliss tried not to let their doubt cloud her judgment. She
motioned for Marla to stand near her mistress while she turned to direct Eric’s
attention to the obvious signs of pregnancy.

“Aunt Pen is forever dozing off at inopportune times. She is
slower and has trouble with exertion from even the most sedate walks in the
morning. Her housekeeper reports that her vision is altered slightly and that
her appetite changed considerably over the last few months,” Bliss reported
succinctly.

Eric turned to stare at Penelope with a shrewd expression.

“Is that true, Lady Osterburg?” Eric asked simply.

“Yes, I’m also hot even when the weather is cool enough to
make my husband require an evening fire, and I am having difficulty sleeping
for needing to use the necessary. All signs which hint at my time of life,
according to Dr. Edgar Marks—my personal surgeon,” Penelope sighed.

Eric remained at her side giving her a professional
assessment even though knew he could probably trust Marks’ diagnosis.

“Did he examine you physically? There are signs of both
pregnancy and a woman’s cessation which can delineate the two conditions,” Eric
pointed out to humor Bliss, no doubt.

“There wasn’t any need. My courses ceased well over nine
months ago. If this were a pregnancy, Dr. Benchley, then I am having a longer
gestation than an elephant. I’m not the one in need of convincing,” Penelope
chuckled.

Eric smiled and gave Bliss a look that clearly showed which
camp he was in.

“What about her yen for strawberries? Aunt Pen has never
liked them before. And Marla told my ladies maid specifically that she has been
consuming all the jams and jellies in the larder of that flavor since January. And
she also asks the gardener every afternoon when the crop will be ready. That’s
not a usual sign of someone who is shoring up her child-bearing days, is it?”
Bliss asked.

In truth this was grasping at straws. But other than
predicting the exact moment of the birth, which was still several weeks away
and slightly more difficult to pinpoint, Bliss had nothing else that was
remotely convincing.

“It is true that some women, upon reaching their later
years, develop keener senses and tastes for foods they’ve never shown even a
remote interest in. It’s hardly telling, Bliss,” Eric said pointedly.

At that moment Marla, the ladies’ maid cleared her throat.

“What?” Penelope asked stubbornly.

“You’ve had no appetite for any of your regular favorites
either, my lady. You positively turn your nose up at oatmeal, and you haven’t
eaten bacon since well before Lent,” Marla said softly.

“That, again, points more to a change in preference, not
pregnancy. I’m inclined to side with your aunt, Bliss. This is clearly not the
first time someone has mistaken the change of life for a baby. Women often have
difficulty resigning themselves to the fact that their days as a mother are moving
into a different phase,” Eric said softly.

Penelope’s eyes misted over, and she excused herself to
retrieve a handkerchief from her bodice.

“Fine, then. I give up. You are never going to believe me
anyway. But I will say, on record, that when the truth comes out I will have
absolutely no scruples in telling you that I was right. I’ve never once, when
I’ve been accurate in predicting an outcome, given over to such behavior. But I
will say ‘I told you so’ when
this
baby comes.”