The Death of Jane Lawrence(38)

Jane went cold, cringing farther into the cellar hallway, where she had no excuse to be.

“I—Yes, she is in,” Mrs. Purl answered. Jane pictured the bobbing of her head as she curtsied, though she could hear the strain in the woman’s voice. “If you’ll come to the sitting room, Doctor, doctors, I’ll go and fetch her.”

More chatter, more indistinct words, moving away. Jane crept closer to the foyer, and caught the edges of their shadows as they entered the other room.

Pulling her skirts up around her knees and trying to move as swiftly and as silently as possible, Jane raced up the staircase. She stopped only when she reached the bedroom door. She quailed at the thought of stepping back inside, but she could not be found clutching her valise. Too many questions if she were, questions she could not answer in front of an audience. She forced herself to open the door once more, and, averting her eyes from the bed, she placed her bag back down.

She all but ran to the study, then, because it made far more sense for Mrs. Purl to find her there. But stepping inside was a new blow. She remembered Augustine finally taking her in his arms on their wedding day, his eager, bashful smile—but also the shock of a woman’s name in his ledger, her own uncertainty, the anger that she could not summon now. And there, in the window, was her reflection, so much like what she had seen the night before. But it was hers, through and through.

Her eyes were sunken, her hair limp, her lips pursed tight. Evidence of her distress. Jane had never cared much for her appearance, except when it would draw attention. This, among doctors, would.

She pinched furiously at her cheeks, trying to draw color up into her pallor. She stared at her reflection and willed herself to be placid and pleasant. She sought out the Jane that had been and wrenched her into the form of a mask.

In the window, a happier woman looked back at her. Jane smiled, and though it felt thin, it looked easy.

Mrs. Purl mounted the stairs below her, her footsteps echoing up as Jane threw herself into the desk chair and cracked open the ledger.

The tidy columns sickened her.

“Ma’am?”

Jane turned in her seat to look at Mrs. Purl, her face as pinched and drawn and clearly unhappy as Jane’s own had been. She wanted to throw herself down at Mrs. Purl’s feet and to beg the woman for a way out, for a way home. But instead, Jane said, “I heard a carriage. Is it Dr. Lawrence?” The lie sat ashen on her tongue but sounded smooth and calm enough. Was this how Augustine had felt when he had lied to her that morning?

“No, ma’am. It appears,” Mrs. Purl said, wringing her apron in her worn hands, “that Dr. Lawrence invited several of his colleagues over. Did he mention anything of the sort to you, Mrs. Lawrence? They intend to stay the week, but we don’t have the stores, or the beds, and…” She trailed off, helpless.

Jane wanted to blame Augustine in that moment, wanted desperately to have Mrs. Purl on her side, aligned against a master who kept the truth from them. But that would not solve their dilemma. “I’m sure it’s a misunderstanding,” Jane said instead. “I’ll go attend to them.” She approached the door, and Mrs. Purl stepped out of the way. But as Jane made her way down the hall, Mrs. Purl cleared her throat.

“Pardon, ma’am,” Mrs. Purl said. “It’s just, you didn’t ask where to find them.”

Jane froze. She ducked her head. A poor liar, I. “Oh, I—I had assumed you’d put them in”—the sitting room—“the dining room, seeing as it is quite clean.”

“The sitting room, ma’am. I cleaned the curtains just this morning, thank everything.”

Jane looked over her shoulder with a sheepish smile that was not hard to fake. “Of course. What good timing,” she said.

Mrs. Purl smiled back, but it was not happy.

Jane descended the stairs.



* * *



THEY WERE WAITING for her; a cry went up as she reached the doorway.

“Mrs. Lawrence!” a small woman with brilliant copper hair declared, leaping up from her armchair (faded, embarrassingly understuffed, but clean). She crossed the room to Jane, holding out her hands. “We are so glad to finally meet you. I am Dr. Georgiana Hunt.” Her cheeks were ruddy with drink already, courtesy of a snifter she’d left behind on the end table by her chair, and her eyes sparkled as she took hold of Jane, drawing her fully into the room. She wore fitted men’s trousers, a high-necked blouse and vest, and a long coat, tailored precisely. The coat wasn’t a surgeon’s apron, but it had certain similarities. It was still rumpled from a day’s journey in a carriage.

Come all the way from Camhurst, against Augustine’s direct request, and so soon upon the news of the marriage. Why? It could not be just to meet her.

“Augustine’s new bride, doctors!” Dr. Hunt announced. Another cheer went up from all assembled. There were five men scattered about the room, as well as two other ladies in the company. One wore a dress closely modeled on traditional undertakers’ garb, with a black high-collared vest and narrow skirt. Her brown hair was trimmed in a startlingly masculine style.

The other was Dr. Nizamiev, the specialist from the asylum in Camhurst.

Jane’s world contracted, tilting ever so slightly off-kilter. But of course Dr. Nizamiev was here; if these other schoolmates of Augustine’s had come, why not her, whom he had seen much more recently?