Lady of Milkweed Manor Read online

  “Remove your frock, if you please.”

  She felt her mouth drop open. “I beg your pardon.”

  “Your frock. Remove it. Come, come. I haven’t all day.”

  “But is that really quite necessary?”

  “There’s no need to feign modesty with me, Miss Smith.”

  “I am feigning nothing . . .”

  “I am a physician, Miss Smith. I assure you the female form holds no mysteries for me.”

  No mystery she could well believe, but still!

  “Perhaps I only imagined the pains. Really. I feel quite, quite well now.”

  “Do not flatter yourself, Miss Smith. A female body in this distended shape does more to repulse a man than entice him, I assure you.”

  Now she felt shame heaped atop her embarrassment and irritation. Did he really think she thought he might be interested in her as a woman?

  He went on, “I have a beautiful wife at home with blond curls and an eighteen-inch waist.” Here he paused. “Of course she also has a tongue to rival King Arthur’s sword.”

  “The two often go together, I find,” Charlotte murmured, thinking of Beatrice. She did not move but felt his eyes studying her.

  “Do I know you, Miss Smith?”

  “I do not believe so.”

  “You seem familiar somehow. Where do you come from?”

  “I . . .” What had she told Mrs. Moorling? She realized he could check her file. “I am lately of Hertfordshire.”

  “Hertfordshire? Hmm . . . and we have not met before?”

  “I do not believe so, no.”

  “Ah well, it will come to me. Now, do you wish to know if your babe is all right or not?”

  She squeezed her eyes shut, swallowing. “Oh, very well.” She reached around and began unfastening her buttons. Of all days to wear a frock that buttoned down the back.

  “Here, here.” He walked up behind her and impatiently began working the buttons. “I’ll miss my hunt at this rate.”

  At that moment, the door burst open and Dr. Taylor strode in. He stopped suddenly, clearly startled to see the room occupied. His bespectacled gaze went from Preston to Charlotte and back again. He frowned.

  “What’s all this, then?”

  “I should ask the same of you, barging in here.”

  “Mrs. Moorling sent for me. Said you had yet to make it in.”

  “Well, clearly she was mistaken. For here I am, seeing a patient.”

  Dr. Taylor opened his mouth, then apparently thought better of what he was going to say. Instead, he tossed his case casually on the desk and said lightly, “I thought you were off hunting grouse today.”

  “I depart this afternoon.”

  “Well, why not leave early. Make a day of it.”

  “But I have women to see. Patients.”

  “I’ll see them for you. My day is already spoiled. No point in both of us being indoors on such a fine day as this.”

  “Well, I—”

  “Off with you, man. I’ll see to Miss Smith myself. I saw her when she first arrived.”

  “I’ll wager you did.”

  “Go on. Before I change my mind.”

  “I shall. Before I change mine.”

  Dr. Preston grabbed his bag from the desk, his coat from the back of the chair, and strode from the room without so much as a glance her way. The slamming door punctuated the tension in the room, which didn’t fade as quickly as the sound. Charlotte felt unaccountably guilty, awkwardly trying to reach around herself and refasten her frock.

  Dr. Taylor stood there, staring at the desk. Then he looked at her, evidently unaware of her struggle.

  “Why were you seeing Preston? I saw you only last week.”

  “Mrs. Moorling insisted. I am having pains.”

  Instantly his strained demeanor snapped into professional concern. “What sort of pains?”

  “Cramping pains, here. And I . . . I am . . .” She could barely make herself say the word aloud to him.

  “Any bleeding?”

  She nodded, relieved to have it out. “A bit.”

  “And the babe, when was the last time you felt movement?”

  Charlotte felt tears fill her eyes. “Not once all day.”

  “Do not be alarmed, probably just enjoying a bit of slumber. Still, I ought to give another listen.”

  He again retrieved the wooden tube from his bag, and Charlotte sat on the table as she had before, but this time she was praying.

  Please, God, please, God, please, God. . . .

  He pressed the tube to the center of her abdomen and stared blindly in concentration. Then he repositioned the tube to one side . . . and the other. Charlotte studied his expression with growing trepidation.

  “Do you hear anything?”

  He moved the tube lower.

  “Can you not hear it?” she tried again.

  “Not with you talking.”

  He moved the tube again.

  “I suppose some would say I ought to be relieved, but I am not.”

  “Of course not. Shh.”

  Charlotte bit her lip. “Do you suppose this is God’s punishment?”

  “Charlotte, please lie down on the table.” He ignored her question. “I need to listen lower, but it’s difficult with you sitting up.” When she complied, he pressed the tube very low indeed, where the underside of her rounded belly nearly met with her hipbones. He listened intently, his face growing, she concluded, terribly grim. Tears fell down Charlotte’s temples and into her hair. He moved the tube above the opposite hip bone and pressed it in deep, nearly painfully so. This time he closed his eyes as if to focus on his sense of hearing alone. Or perhaps he was wincing, realizing the painful truth.

  “Well, hello there.”

  “What?”

  “I hear your little lad a’way down here.”

  “You do?”

  He nodded, set his tube down, and lifted his hands above her abdomen. “May I?”

  Charlotte appreciated his consideration. She guessed he would not ask permission before examining other patients who came to him. She swallowed but nodded. He put his hands firmly around the lower portion of her belly, feeling and gently pushing.

  “Here is his little rump right here.”

  “You can feel that?”

  “He is all curled up down here, bottom side up. No wonder I had difficulty auscultating his heart.”

  “He is all right, then?”

  “Seems so. About the bleeding though.”

  “It is only a little.”

  “Yes, and it does not necessarily mean there are any problems. Still, I ought to examine you . . . internally, to see if your body is readying to give birth.”

  “But it is too soon!” She sat up on the table.

  He looked at her quizzically, and Charlotte saw the question in his eyes. Too soon to examine you or too soon to give birth? She looked away from his raised-brow gaze.

  “Charlotte?”

  She squeezed her eyes closed and reached behind herself again, attempting to undo the remaining buttons, unable to look at him as she did so.

  Would it be less terrible to disrobe before Dr. Taylor than Dr. Preston—or worse? Eyes still winced shut, she was surprised to hear the door open. She looked and saw him standing at the threshold, his hand on the latch.

  “There’s no need to remove your gown,” he said over his shoulder.

  He called for Gibbs and whispered instructions to her in the corridor. In a few minutes she returned, Mrs. Krebs in tow.

  Dr. Taylor said, “Mrs. Krebs will have a look at you, Char . . . Miss Smith.”

  “I will,” Mrs. Krebs grumbled, “but I’m no surgeon, mind.”

  “A finer midwife I have never known.”

  “That’s been a few years now, Dr. Taylor.”

  “You remember the rudiments, no doubt.”

  “I suspect so.”

  To Charlotte he said, “If she sees anything worrisome, I will need to examine you myself, but i
f not, we shall wait a day or two and see if the bleeding ceases on its own. All right?”

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  He left the room, and Charlotte wondered which of them was more relieved.

  Mrs. Krebs found nothing amiss and helped Charlotte refasten the buttons she could not reach earlier. “Dr. Taylor must have taken a shine to you, miss,” she said.

  “No! Nothing of the kind. It is only that he . . . that he is known to my family. That is, when I was quite young. It is a bit awkward, is all.”

  She tutted, then said, “As you say, miss.” She left the room, leaving Charlotte quite sure the woman didn’t believe a word she had said.

  Our milkweed is tenacious of life. Its roots lie deep

  as if to get away from the plow.”

  —JOHN BURROUGHS

  CHAPTER 9

  Charlotte added a few more pieces of coal to the fire, washed her hands and face in the basin, cleaned her teeth, and climbed into bed. She checked to make sure the candlestick was on the night table, within reach. Pulling the rough blanket up under her chin, she waited for sleep—or a scream—to come.

  Sleep must have come first, for when the scream came Charlotte awoke with a start, forgetting her plan for a moment. Quietly, so as not to awaken Mae beside her, she crawled out of bed and wrapped her dressing gown around her. Carrying the candlestick to the mantel, she took a match-straw from the tinderbox and lit it in the fire, using this to light the wick. Then she tiptoed to the door. Letting herself out and closing the door quietly behind her, Charlotte listened. Hearing nothing, she lifted her candle high, grateful for the light, hoping it would chase away the fear and ease the raw nerves eating at her heart.

  The scream sounded again—and her nerves moved on to her stomach.

  Charlotte crept down the dark corridor, her candle flickering against the grey walls and the stone floor beneath her stocking feet. The chill night air seeped through her stockings, through her nightdress and dressing gown. But her shivering had little to do with the cold. It had to do with the scream. Such an unearthly sound. Charlotte had lived in the manor long enough to have heard any number of shouts, cries, and groans of women delivering babes. Those were earthy, striving, determined sounds—awful to hear yet bearable for the sweet relief that followed and, Lord willing, the responding cry of a newborn that rose up to wash away memory of pain and struggle.

  This cry was met with no relief, no answering cry of new life. This cry did not rise and fall with the regularity of birthing pains—increasing, building, then abruptly sighing into silence. These cries were clapped off, silenced for hours, days even, only to escape, to rise up in shrill desperation, in anger sometimes, in woeful distress, only to cut off mid-cry a few minutes later. No gradual fading, no sense of the cries having accomplished, nor brought forth, nor delivered anything or anyone. These were the cries Charlotte had come to dread, the ones that brought gooseflesh to Charlotte’s skin and darkness to her soul. She longed to banish both.

  She continued down the corridor—the opposite direction from the common rooms and foundling ward—to its end. She knew the staircase to the upper floors stood in the center of the building and serviced both wings. So when she reached the far wall and the corridor simply ended, with the cries seeming still quite distant, Charlotte was confused. Had the drafty old house played tricks on her ears, her mind even? The cry rose again, closer yet still muffled. She tried one of the doors, which opened to a small cleaning pantry. Then she tried another door, which opened onto an empty chamber. Why hadn’t it been offered her? She extended the candle farther into the room and saw it housed neither hearth nor bed but only a few old chairs and a wardrobe. Without bothering to close that door, she tried the last—a narrow, plain thing, a linen closet, perhaps.

  She lifted the latch and the door flew out at her with surprising velocity. Charlotte gasped and nearly dropped her candle. She cupped her hand around the flame and only just managed to keep it alight. She looked inside the door. This was no closet. This was a second set of stairs. And from its narrowness she guessed it had been designed for servants’ use in the building’s original design. A servant might silently disappear and reappear in the corridor, bearing coal for the upstairs bedrooms or bringing down chamber pots and the like, she supposed.

  And that’s when she heard it again—the scream, darting down the staircase and piercing her with its nearness, its wildness. What was this? All the girls were on this floor, as far as she knew. The higher floors were more difficult to heat, and the Manor Home had insufficient staff to manage all the available space. She had heard Gibbs complaining of having to haul down a chest of drawers from above stairs, and gathered that some of the upstairs rooms were still furnished while others were used for storage. And Dr. Taylor, she knew, kept rooms up there when he was on duty during the night.

  When she heard a door open above her, Charlotte stepped back quickly from the doorway, hand to her heart. Whoever was coming down the stairs was descending rapidly. She knew she would never make it back to her room undetected. She quickly slipped into the empty chamber she had so recently inspected, setting her candlestick on the floor in the corner, hoping her body would block its small light.

  Footsteps hit the landing and entered the corridor. Charlotte held her breath. Candlelight preceded the shadowed figure past the open doorway. Charlotte peered out from behind the door and made out the figure of a man. The familiar smell of antiseptic and herbs confirmed the identity of the man more readily than his fleeting figure. Dr. Taylor. Not surprising. He made no secret of sleeping above stairs. Then why was she so frightened?

  Charlotte stood there, heart pounding, trying to quiet her breathing as the candlelight and footsteps faded and she was alone again. But for how long? Did she have time to sneak back to her room before he returned from whatever errand or mission took him from his room this late at night? She wasn’t sure she wanted to return to her room without knowing who was screaming yet neither was she certain she wanted to know. Did she have the courage to ascend those black stairs alone? Retrieving her candle, she stepped into the corridor and listened once more. Silence. Surprising herself, she took a deep breath, reopened the stairway door, and closed it behind her, allowing it to swallow her whole.

  She paused at the top of the stairs, listening. She heard—what was it? Sobbing? Yes, a woman was sobbing now. The same woman who had been screaming? Or another? How many people were up here? And why? Charlotte slowly pushed the door open and held forth her candle to illumine the upper floor. She saw door after door on either side of a long, dim passageway. Midway down its length, one door on the left gaped open, faint light leaking out to blend with the glow of an oil lamp on a small table on the opposite side of the corridor. She could hear the crying more clearly now, but still could distinguish no words.

  She had taken two steps down the passageway when she heard the door open and close below. She gasped. Caught. Blowing out her candle, she looked wildly about her, but where could she go? She tried the handle of the door closest her. Locked. She had no time to check every door, and something told her they would all be locked as well. Grateful for stockinged feet, she hurried down the corridor as quickly as her additional girth would allow. Knowing nothing else to do, she bustled through the open doorway and stepped behind the door.

  What was she doing? She had stepped into the one lit room, like a moth to a flame. And now she was trapped. Dr. Taylor would come in and find her there in but a few seconds. What would she say? What could she say? Foolish girl! She should have stayed in the corridor and simply said she’d heard a scream and came to see if help was needed. She’d done nothing wrong . . . until now. She stole a quick look about the room. Rumpled bedclothes, a coat tossed over a chair. On the chest a leather case, a bulky medical bag, a hat, gloves. A Bible. A miniature portrait of a woman in wedding clothes. She couldn’t see it well from this vantage, but she knew it must be Dr. Taylor’s wife. Good heavens! What if Mrs. Taylor had been lying there in bed,
gaping at this stranger who barged right in and hid behind her door? Then there would be screaming indeed! Relieved, she remembered that Dr. Taylor had mentioned he and his wife had a townhouse some distance away, which they shared with his father.

  The footsteps in the corridor were coming closer. Then they paused right outside the door. Did he sense her presence? Had he heard her? She would just step out and tell him the truth. Forgive me, Dr. Taylor, you gave me a fright. I heard a scream and . . . She heard the jiggle of a door handle, a key in a lock. She stepped out. Dr. Taylor was unlocking the door across the way. His back to her, he opened it a crack, hesitating, apparently listening. He retrieved an apothecary bottle from his coat pocket and checked the label by light of the table lamp, before tucking the bottle back into his pocket. Then he took hold of the lamp itself. With his free hand, he pushed the door open just enough to allow himself in. In that flash of moment, before the door shut behind him, Charlotte saw a figure fly at Dr. Taylor. Charlotte put her hand over her mouth, stifling a gasp, and stepped into the corridor.

  She heard a thud, then a voice—a woman’s voice, but strange—crying out a string of syllables. “Nonononon . . . !”

  “Stop it!” Dr. Taylor boomed, in a voice so strong and commanding, Charlotte would not have believed it from Daniel Taylor had she not seen him just enter the room. She felt chilled, stunned, as if he were shouting directly at her. Never would she have imagined him speaking to anyone, let alone one of his patients, in that manner. But then the sobbing started again, and she heard the more familiar sound of Dr. Taylor’s soothing voice rumble through the closed door.