A Distant Shore (10 page)

Warren smiled wryly. “Thank you, Campbell, but such flattery is not necessary.”

Ian flushed again. He wished he had not risen to Wells’s juvenile challenge, accusing him of cowardice. To think he might have just jeopardized his entire future by putting forth such a bold suggestion...

“I am willing,” Warren said abruptly, “to consider it.”

Ian blinked. “You... you are?”

“Do not sound so incredulous. I did not, you will appreciate, say that I thought this idea would have a successful outcome.”

“No, sir,” Ian said quickly. His mind reeled with the implication of Warren’s words. He realized he had never truly expected the Chief of Surgery to consider allowing Wells, an unheard-of dentist, to experiment in the revered Bulfinch Theatre.

“In fact,” Warren continued, his tone turning censorious, “I have every belief that it will be a dismal failure. The idea that any substance could completely numb the human body to excruciating pain—it boggles the mind.”

“That it does, sir,” Ian agreed, and Warren favored him with the faintest flicker of a smile.

“And it is that possibility that makes me agree to your preposterous suggestion,” Warren finished. “Write me a formal proposal, Campbell, and I will put my stamp upon it.”

“Yes, sir.”

Warren nodded his dismissal. “It will not be I who is the fool when this all turns out to be a humbug,” he said, and Ian swallowed.

No, he would be the fool.

Still Warren’s warning could not diminish his ebullient mood as he returned home that night, intending to send a letter to Wells in the next day’s post.

He whistled as he hurried up the walk, throwing off his hat and cloak before coming into the drawing room and sweeping a bemused Caroline into his arms.

“What is the meaning of this!” she exclaimed, laughing, after Ian had kissed her soundly.

“John Collins Warren, the Chief of Surgery, has agreed to allow us to perform a surgery with the use of ether—and in the Bulfinch Theatre, no less!”

Caroline drew back a little from him. “Us?”

“Wells and me, I mean,” Ian clarified, and Caroline slipped from his arms.

“Odd,” she said, her hand to her throat, “I thought you meant you and—and me.”

Ian stared at her in bewilderment. “Surely you could not think—the Bulfinch Theatre—”

“Of course I did not think I would be present,” Caroline said, her voice sharpening. “I am not quite so deluded. But I did think, for a moment at least, that the successes in your research were mine also, as your wife. That—that you wished to share them with me.” Her voice trembled and she turned away. “How foolish of me.”

This was about Riddell’s money, Ian thought with a pang of both irritation and guilt. Again. Caroline could not let go of the fact that he refused to use it and in consequence she saw everything to do with his research as a slight.

“The success belongs to both of us, Caroline,” Ian said. “Of course it does. No matter what funds I use.”

“I am afraid I disagree,” Caroline replied softly. She turned back to face him, her lovely face pale, her eyes wide and sad. “You have never shared your research with me. You have never really wanted to.”

He let out an annoyed huff of breath. “If you mean, do I keep you informed of all the particulars, then, as a woman—”

“Don’t tell me that as a woman I could not countenance it!” Her eyes flashed a warning. “I think you know I am made of stronger stuff than that, no matter how silly and foolish I was as a young girl.” She took a deep breath and shook her head. “No, Ian. I fear this is something you will never understand, and that makes it all the harder. In our marriage, in your research, I thought—I hoped we would be… partners, of a sort. At least in heart and mind. But ever since I offered my inheritance you have withdrawn from me with both. And it grieves me sorely.” She smiled sadly, her lips trembling. “Which, in turn I fear, only annoys you more.”

Ian stared at her, wishing he could offer words of comfort, yet not knowing what they would be. He knew she was, at least in part, correct in her suspicions. He had drawn away from her rather than face another battle about Riddell’s money. He just hadn’t realized she’d noticed.

“Caroline—” he began, but she shook her head, her eyes now bright with tears.

“Let us not speak of it,” she murmured, and brushed past him into the hall.

“Isobel!”

Margaret sailed into the drawing room with her usual graceful flourish, kissing her sister-in-law on both cheeks before gesturing for her to sit in one of the chintz-covered chairs by the fireplace. “I’ve asked Ella to bring tea,” she said, sitting across from Isobel and arranging her green and gold striped skirts around her. As usual, Margaret looked lovely and vibrant in the latest fashion, her Gigot sleeves flaring to the elbow and then tight to the wrist. Her hair was arranged in a sleek chignon, with clusters of curls dancing at her brow. She smiled merrily. “I have had such pleasant news. My niece, Margaret MacDougall—Maggie, as she’s called—will be coming to stay with me while Henry is away. She is to arrive at the end of the week.”

“Mother told me,” Isobel murmured. “It is indeed pleasant for you to have company at this trying time.”

Margaret cocked her head, her eyes bright with speculation. “Indeed. Pray forgive me if I am speaking out of turn, but dear Isobel, you do look a little peaked.”

“Do I?” Isobel tried to smile, although she had hardly felt anything close to happiness since her father had forbidden her to put her name on Mr. Anderson’s list a week ago. She had attempted to talk to him again, and he had been quite severe with her. Her mother she had not dared speak to at all, for her stony expression was far too forbidding.

Both of her parents, Isobel had mused with quiet desolation, had become even more determined for her not to marry a missionary, or at least put her name on the list of women who were willing to do so. And just as they had deepened their convictions, so had Isobel. There was nothing for her in Boston but more of the same—teaching and living with her parents. The older she became the drearier such a life would seem. She had to find a way to escape.

She had to put her name on that list.

Ella bustled quietly in with the tea tray, and the next few moments were taken up with pouring, giving Isobel enough time to gather her courage and tell Margaret of her plan. Her sister-in-law was her last hope for getting herself on that list; she thought Margaret, with her confidence and determination, just might prevail where she had not succeeded.

“If truth be told,” she said, taking a sip of tea, “I have had quite a bit on my mind this last week.”

Margaret’s expression sharpened with interest and Isobel saw her sister-in-law’s eyebrows arch over the rim of her teacup. “Have you?”

“Yes, indeed.” Isobel set her cup down and took a deep breath. “I’m sure you can appreciate, Margaret, that my lot these last ten years has not been an easy one.”

Margaret’s expression sobered and she set her teacup down as well. “The life of an unmarried woman is never easy,” she agreed quietly, “although I would think the First School would afford you some pleasure as well as purpose.”

“It does,” Isobel assured her. Margaret had started the school, and though with Charlotte she had too many cares to continue, Isobel knew the cause was still dear to Margaret’s heart... more dear, she suspected, than it was to her own. “But I confess, I do not relish a continued life of teaching and living at my parents’ home.”

Margaret considered the matter for a moment. “Perhaps there are more options available to you than you might realize,” she said finally. “Women are able to accomplish far more now than they used to. Why, look at Elizabeth Palmer Peabody—she helped to start The Temple School with Mr. Alcott, and only this year she has started her Foreign Library, run out of her very own living room!”

Isobel managed a tight smile. “Her parents’ living room, I believe.” Although she had never met Miss Peabody, she was well acquainted with the woman’s rather notorious exploits. The Temple School was considered liberal enough to have become ridiculous, and the Peabodys were caught up in the recent fashion of Transcendentalism, which Isobel’s far more conservative parents would never condone. In any case, Isobel had no wish to run a library out of her living room, or debate philosophy with other ‘free thinkers’. She wanted a husband, maybe even a child. The kind of life most women took for granted.

“Still,” Margaret continued, ever the reformer, “Dr. Channing himself reads the paper there, and lawyers and professors discuss—”

“I have no wish or talent to start a salon,” Isobel interjected flatly. “the First School’s more modest aims are more to my liking.”

Margaret pursed her lips. “Yet you do not wish to continue?”

Isobel suppressed a sigh. This conversation was not going as she had hoped or planned. She knew Margaret possessed more intellectual curiosity than she did; her sister-in-law sometimes socialized with the less radical of the Trascendentalists, and enjoyed discussing a variety of topics from poetry to politics. Meanwhile, Isobel acknowledged grimly, she simply wanted to marry. “It is not that I wish to stop teaching,” she finally said, “but that I wish for more.”

Margaret wrinkled her brow in confusion. “More?”

“Yes. More.” Why, Isobel wondered, was it so hard for her family to understand? Were they simply so cushioned from the reality of a life of loneliness, with their spouses and children around them? Could no one understand how she felt? She took a deep breath. “There is a list,” she began, and Margaret leaned forward, curiosity sparking in her eyes.

“Go on.”

Quickly, her face flushing with a humiliation she could not help but feel, Isobel told her of Mr. Anderson’s list and both her ambition and difficulty to be named on it.

“You wish to marry a missionary?” Margaret said, her tone incredulous. “Isobel, you might live in the rudest sort of place! In a grass hut, even!”

Isobel gazed at her sister-in-law levelly. “I might.”

“And you would be willing to forsake the comforts of known society for such a thing?” Margaret pressed, sounding half-horrified, half-fascinated.

“Yes.” In truth Isobel had not attempted to envision her life as a missionary’s wife too closely. She could certainly not see herself in a grass hut. But she would have time to consider such things later, when she’d actually agreed to marry a missionary. When she’d found a man who possessed gentleness and humor, and that still seemed like a distant day indeed. Getting her name on that list—finally having
hope
—was the extent of her ambition at this point.

“But if your father forbids it…” Margaret began slowly, trailing off as she looked helplessly at Isobel.

“I seem to remember,” Isobel said quietly, “that you went against your own father’s wishes, once upon a time.”

Margaret blushed and looked away, a small smile playing about her mouth. Although it was before Isobel had even met her, she recalled the story of her brother Henry and Margaret’s courtship well enough. Margaret’s father had refused to allow Margaret to be included in her brother’s tutorials back in Scotland, and without his knowledge or approval she had sought her own education—and engaged Henry as her tutor.