The Death of Jane Lawrence(43)

He flinched, and when he answered, his voice was low and soft, a caress. “I thought only of your happiness.”

“I saw things. I saw Elodie, Augustine.”

The intake of breath through his teeth was sharp. “If you had known it to be only a nightmare, you would have been free.”

Her heart thundered in her ears. “Free from what?”

But before he could respond, Jane heard footsteps fast approaching. Augustine stepped away, smoothing down his waistcoat, as Hunt came around the corner.

“I’m afraid we have exhausted the decanter,” the doctor said, then, “Oh, did I interrupt?”

“Strategizing only,” Augustine said, and he sounded embarrassed but composed. There was no hint of fear in his voice, and Jane drew strength from his playacting. They would offer no hint of weakness to their unwanted guests.

Jane turned to Hunt, the demure smile she had learned to wear for Mr. Cunningham’s clients settled on her features. “I’ll send for Mrs. Purl to replenish it,” she said. Hunt nodded and disappeared.

Jane buried her face in her hands, taking refuge for just a moment. This was too much, all of it. She needed answers. She needed some kind of plan to move forward.

But when she looked up once more, her husband was already ducking back into the sitting room.





CHAPTER SEVENTEEN


MRS. LUTHBRIGHT CONJURED a feast from nothing. The table groaned under the seemingly endless parade of small courses. Half a dozen root vegetables, cooked in just as many ways, their staggered arrival buying time for the stews of dried meats, rehydrated in a desperate rush with wine, off flavors masked with young herbs sown only months ago. Liquor drenched every item to communicate luxury and wipe away any criticism. Jane clasped Mrs. Luthbright’s shoulder and whispered a fervent thanks, but what put a smile on the cook’s face was Jane’s promise to wash the dishes herself. Relieved, Mrs. Luthbright had gone out under the darkening sky, followed less eagerly by Mrs. Purl, whom Jane had promised was not expected to find beds for the raucous crowd inside.

Jane sat beside her husband at the head of the table. Hunt produced from her valise more wine from abroad, sparkling and sour. Conversation ranged widely, tides shifting, words forming changing webs across the long table. At one moment, Vingh was describing a heroic surgery where the patient had writhed despite the ether but his bowels, perforated by industrial equipment, had been stitched whole again after the labor of five surgeons over three hours. (Whether the patient survived the night went unaddressed.) At another, Hunt was discussing the newest advances in the theory of disease transmission. And then the conversation would turn to gossip, to absent friends and hated rivals, to who was receiving funding for what, and what the Crown might ask of its physicians next.

Despite herself, she was entranced.

These were great and brilliant doctors, finely educated in a way she could not match but found herself desiring. In another life, she might have been one of them, able to discuss mathematical theory with the authority of a university graduate. Philosophical debate sprang up and consumed the whole table, and Augustine dove in as well. It was impossible to resist as her intellect thrilled. She found herself sparring with him over points of logic. It was glorious. Delirious.

In the service of their guests’ comfort, she cast aside her memories of the night before, of strange, statuesque figures and red-eyed wives lurking in windows. She gave herself over to the fantasy instead, and for two hours, her guests saw her and did not laugh, and it seemed as if the impossible could become real. It seemed that if she could only contrive to divide the world by zero, she could have everything she’d never thought to wish for.

And then the dinner finished, and her guests rose and retreated back to the sitting room. She could smell tobacco smoke curling in the air as she gathered up the dishes and carried them off to the kitchen. The darkened windows of Lindridge Hall held no figures. The lights remained lit. She had passed through the fire, and on the other side was a better reality.

On her fourth trip to gather dishes, Jane realized the dining room was no longer empty. Dr. Nizamiev sat in Augustine’s seat and caught Jane’s gaze as she inexpertly stacked greasy platters. She rose and approached Jane with such precise steps that she almost seemed to glide across the floor, as she had in the surgery. The image of the figures outside the library returned to Jane, and her stomach turned to lead.

“Dr. Nizamiev,” she said, in proper greeting at last.

“The new Mrs. Lawrence,” Dr. Nizamiev returned, inclining her head slightly. Her eyes never left Jane’s face. It had been barely a week since Mr. Renton’s death, but it felt like half a lifetime away, with everything that had changed. And Jane’s unease with Dr. Nizamiev had only grown.

Given the strange mysteries of Lindridge Hall and her husband’s lies, precisely what kind of specialist had he called forth from Camhurst to see a patient with an impossible ailment?

“How do you find married life, then?”

For all she knew, the question was a trap. “New,” Jane said, hoping to end the conversation.

Dr. Nizamiev laughed. It was sharp and short and, to Jane’s ear, calculated. “So it is. May we speak of your husband, given your better vantage point?”

“I—Yes, though I don’t know what I could tell you that you don’t already know.”

“It is what I can tell you,” Dr. Nizamiev said.