The Death of Jane Lawrence(65)

She looked to the text she had left on the table by the window, the one she had read from the night before. It was only a novel. “I learned nothing,” she said, turning back to him. “Do you see chalk and salt? I only gave her attention and company. I only believed that she deserved to live.”

She had not even willed it strongly.

Had she?

Or was the intensity of the willing not the point, but the pervasiveness of it? She had not let herself falter in her belief the night before. Perhaps …

But no.

“What of your dire warnings?” she hissed, drawing close to him, nearly looming. “Of the risks of magic, of why Lindridge Hall should forestall me, forestall you? You seemed very clear the other night.”

He stepped back, eyes going wide. “No,” he said, hands lifting. “No, I didn’t mean…”

“Hypocrite,” Jane said.

“You cannot fault me for hoping that the world I used to dream of, the potential of magic, was real,” Augustine returned.

Oh, but she could.

Abigail gave another whimper of pain, her head lolling. It was one of the first movements she had made besides breath. “She needs laudanum,” Jane said, desperate to change the subject, to clear the sickroom air of their clashing anger.

“Not laudanum; it is a sedative, and might harm her already delicate breathing,” Augustine said. The correction steadied him; he was once again his surgeon self. “An infusion of willow bark in her broth may help, though.”

Jane nodded and, with reluctance, left Abigail’s side and went to the compounding room.

Augustine followed.

She scanned the bottles of medicine lining the shelves, then pulled down the crock that contained willow bark. At her side, Augustine selected one of several bottles filled with fine white powder. When he set it on the counter, the glass clattered from the shaking of his hands.

Still ill, then.

“In addition to that, I will need your help,” he said, tone strident to cover embarrassment. “I can’t see patients as I am. Please compound a quarter measure with water.”

“Cocaine?” she asked, drawing up close enough to see the label.

“It will steady me.” He regarded her evenly.

“Did you not return to Lindridge Hall last night?”

“I did, though your intrusion seems to have riled the spirits,” he said.

Jane stepped back, eyes wide. “What?”

“They would not leave me alone,” Augustine said, glaring at her a moment before scrubbing at his eyes. “Before, I could sleep, after a fashion. They would come to me, torment me, and then leave, and I could sleep a few hours, then rest in the carriage on the way to town. But last night, they came to me in an unceasing parade.”

“Do not blame me,” Jane whispered, drawing in upon herself.

“But what else has changed, except your involvement? If I am lucky,” he continued, “then with time, they will settle, like birds stirred from their roost. But you will stay far away from Lindridge Hall, for my sake as well as yours. And you will help me tend to my patients.”

She eyed the jar of fine white powder, pictured the prick of the needle as he injected it into his veins. It was only medicine. It was a solution, a necessary one.

“You saw me, during Mrs. Yew’s surgery,” Augustine pressed. “I am just as much a danger exhausted as I was sick.”

He was right. Damn the spirits of Lindridge Hall for responding to her so, for making her not just the betrayed victim, but a cause of harm to others. Go back, she wanted to tell him. Go back and fix the root of this. You must fix this.

But he didn’t know enough, and was too afraid to try. And it was far too dangerous for her to touch.

And yet as she mixed his suspension, as she watched him inject it, as she fed bitter broth to Abigail, who should not have survived the night, she wondered if there was still some way for her to help.



* * *



THAT NIGHT, AGAINST her better instincts, she penned a letter to Dr. Nizamiev. She asked for guidance and help for Augustine. Anything she knew about how to avoid ending up floating in the air, how to touch magic without being seized by its impossibility. She’d seen the hunger in Augustine’s eyes that morning when he thought she had worked magic. What else did he hunger for, what else did he wish were different? Just the smallest offer of help might be enough to push Augustine toward attempting to set things right, if it was specific, if it was actionable.

The letter went out at first light, shortly before Augustine returned from Lindridge Hall, looking just as haggard, just as drawn. He took his dose of cocaine once more and tended his patients with less than his full focus, his full brilliance. His hands trembled. He dropped tools, forgot patients were waiting for him back in the kitchen, talked rapidly to himself about theories and frustrations. It was only by dint of his inherent need to heal and his long training that he managed at all.

Jane watched, and she helped, and she waited, hoping that a response from Camhurst would arrive with the evening post.

It didn’t. Augustine did, however, ask her to measure out laudanum for him, that he might sleep through the night. She hoped it would help.

His carriage left as the sun set, and Jane took thickened broth up to Augustine’s room, where Abigail now rested. She had woken up that morning, addled and in pain, but able to recognize her name. Her color was improving, her limbs warming on their own. Halfway through the day, Jane and Mr. Lowell had moved her at Augustine’s suggestion.