The Wonder(63)

“Kitty!” Rosaleen O’Donnell’s cry was irritated.

“Coming.” The slavey hurried off.

Lib helped Anna up and onto a chair so she could change the bedding.

Anna huddled over the jar, arranging the stems. One was dogwood; Lib’s fingers itched to tear up its cruciform bloom, the brown marks of the Roman nails.

The child stroked an unremarkable leaf. “Look, Mrs. Lib, even the little teeth have tinier little teeth all over them.”

Lib thought of the fallen molar in her apron. She pulled the new sheets very tight and smooth. (A crease can score skin as surely as a whip, Miss N. always said.) She tucked Anna back into bed and covered her with three blankets.

Dinner, at four, was some kind of fish stew. Lib was wiping her plate with oat bread when Dr. McBrearty bustled in. She got up so fast that she almost knocked over her chair, oddly ashamed to be caught eating.

“Good day, Doctor,” the girl croaked, struggling up, and Lib raced to put another pillow behind her.

“Well, Anna. You’ve a good colour on you this afternoon.”

Could the old man really be mistaking that hectic flush for health?

He was gentle with the girl, at least, examining her as he chitchatted about the unusually fine weather. He kept referring to Lib in a mollifying way as our good Mrs. Wright here.

“Anna just lost a tooth,” said Lib.

“I see,” he said. “Do you know what I’ve brought you, child, kindly lent by Sir Otway Blackett himself? A bath chair, on wheels, so you can take the air without overtiring yourself.”

“Thank you, Doctor.”

After another minute, he took his leave, but Lib followed him to just outside the bedroom door.

“Fascinating,” he murmured.

The word struck her dumb.

“The swelling of the limbs, the darkening skin, that blue tint to her lips and nails… I do believe Anna’s altering at a systemic level,” he confided in her ear. “It stands to reason that a constitution powered by something other than food would operate differently.”

Lib had to look away so McBrearty wouldn’t see her rage.

The baronet’s chair was parked just inside the front door: a bulky thing in worn green velvet with three wheels and a folding hood. Kitty was standing at the long table, red eyes dripping as she chopped onions.

“But I still see no real, imminent risk in the absence of a plunging temperature or a constant pallor,” McBrearty went on, rubbing his side-whiskers.

Pallor! Had the man studied medicine by reading French novels? “I’ve known men on their deathbeds look yellow or red more than white,” Lib told him, her voice rising despite her efforts.

“Have you really? But Anna has no fits either, you notice, and no delirium,” he wound up. “It goes without saying, of course, that you must send for me if she shows any sign of serious exhaustion.”

“She’s already bedridden!”

“A few days’ rest should do her a world of good. I wouldn’t be surprised if she rallied by the end of the week.”

So McBrearty was twice the idiot she’d thought him. “Doctor,” said Lib, “if you won’t call off this watch—”

The hint of threat in her tone made his face close up. He snapped, “For one thing, such a step would require the unanimous consent of the committee.”

“Then ask them.”

He spoke in Lib’s ear, making her jump. “If I were to propose that we abort the watch on the grounds that it’s jeopardizing the child’s health by preventing some secret method of feeding, how would that look? It would be tantamount to a declaration that my old friends the O’Donnells are vile cheats!”

Lib whispered back, “How will it look if your old friends let their daughter die?”

McBrearty sucked in his breath. “Is this how Miss Nightingale taught you to speak to your superiors?”

“She taught me to fight for my patients’ lives.”

“Mrs. Wright, be so good as to let go of my sleeve.”

Lib hadn’t even realized she was gripping it.

The old man tugged it away and headed out of the cabin.

Kitty’s mouth hung open.

When Lib hurried back into the bedroom, she found Anna asleep again, the snub nose letting out the lightest of snores. Still oddly lovely, despite everything wrong with her.

By rights Lib should have been packing her bag and asking for the driver with the jaunting car to take her to the station at Athlone. If she believed this watch to be indefensible, she should have no further part in it.

But she couldn’t leave.

At half past ten that Tuesday night, at Ryan’s, Lib tiptoed across the passage and tapped on William Byrne’s door.

No answer.

What if he’d returned to Dublin by now, revolted by what Lib was letting happen to Anna O’Donnell? What if another guest came to the door; how could she explain herself? Suddenly she saw this as others would: a desperate woman outside a man’s bedroom.

She’d wait to the count of three, and then—

The door was flung open. William Byrne, wild-haired and in his shirtsleeves. “You.”

Lib blushed so fast it hurt her face. The only mercy was that he wasn’t in his nightshirt. “Please excuse me.”

“No, no. Is something the matter? Won’t you—” His eyes veered to the bed and back.