‘Doctor Munroe,’ Danny said pleasantly. ‘Meself and Mike, we thought we might drop by and have a word, with you. Private like.’ Danny swept his gaze around the ward.
Robert led them into his office and closed the door.
Resuming his seat, he waited until the two men had settled into their chairs on the other side of his desk.
‘What is it, Donovan?’
Danny’s face lost its pretence of friendliness. ‘You’ve been making some powerful enemies, so you have, Doctor Munroe, with your enforcement orders and bringing in inspectors to look into parish affairs,’ he said, picking up the crystal inkwell and turning it over in his hand.
‘I am surprised. Most folk seem mighty thankful that their streets are at last clean and their pumps working. If I’ve made enemies, it’s not of the ordinary folk hereabouts but of those who rob and cheat them to line their own pockets.’
Danny’s hand closed around the inkwell. ‘The folk around here are ignorant and don’t know what’s good for them. They’re too busy drinking and fecking.’
‘And you profit from both, don’t you? Dealing in both drink and prostitution as you do. And of course making good use of them yourself at the same time. I believe the late Kitty Henry was an intimate friend of yours. That is before she bled to death after some butcher cut your child from her.’
Danny’s face became a jigsaw of red and purple blotches and there was a crack of bones as his hand gripped the crystal inkwell tighter. Black Mike laid a hand on Danny’s arm. He shrugged it off and sprang to his feet. He drew the fist holding the inkwell back but Robert didn’t flinch. Black Mike took hold of Danny’s raised arm, more forcibly this time, and stopped it from completing its arc. Robert’s cool eyes locked on Danny’s and the men stood, the hatred palpable between them, for several seconds. Then Danny tossed the inkwell onto the desk. It landed on Robert’s research papers spilling the indigo ink across them.
‘I’ll be warning you, Doctor,’ Danny ground out.
Robert went to his office door and threw it open. ‘Out!’
His gaze didn’t waver. Then in a swift move for one of his size Danny spun on his heels and headed for the door. Black Mike, as always, was a step behind. Danny stopped as he came abreast of Robert and jabbed his finger at him. ‘You’ve been warned.’
Holding her lace handkerchief up to her mouth Caroline feigned a cough to hide a yawn. Beside her Mrs Munroe sat calm and serene and the hotel butler stood ready to open the door. For the third time the older woman’s glance went to the clock on the mantelshelf. Caroline followed the glance. Seven twenty-five.
Before she could stop it, a long sigh escaped her. As if it wasn’t boring enough to have to dine privately with Robert in his mother’s apartments rather than taking a table at the one of the Covent Garden dining houses frequented by London society, she had to wait under the disapproving eye of Mrs Munroe for Robert to arrive. In fact, after their last meeting when he’d quizzed her about his work and been so beastly, if they had actually been engaged she would have seriously considered breaking with him. But she couldn’t even have that satisfaction as she had yet to receive his proposal.
Caroline stole a glance at Robert’s mother and her shoulders slumped as she slid down in the chair.
When her mother had read out Mrs Munroe’s invitation to ‘take the season’ with her she had imagined balls in Whitehall, regimental parades at Brighton, and being seen in the Pump Room at Bath, not churches in Cheapside, promenading in Weymouth and taking the waters at Tunbridge.
Mrs Munroe was dull enough when she called on Mama and droned on for hours about how the poor should attend Sunday service to improve their morals, so why on earth did she ever agree to accompany her south on her yearly visit? Robert, of course. It was only because she had been so sure that Robert was going to make her an offer of marriage. But he hadn’t, and now what?
It wasn’t as if he hadn’t had an opportunity. If he’d wanted to he could have joined them for their stroll in St James’s Park. Then he couldn’t join them for the recital of the
Messiah
because he had to supervise some hospital thing. Then, just as they were getting ready to take tea with him in his rooms, he sent a note telling them he was too busy, and now they were leaving the day after tomorrow. But there was still time. If his mother would absent herself tonight, if only for twenty minutes, Robert could do as he should and all would be well.
Caroline put her elbow on the table and rested her cheek in her cupped hand. Mrs Munroe’s eyes fixed on her sharply. Caroline resumed her upright position and placed her hands on her lap.
‘Robert will be here any moment now,’ Mrs Munroe told her.
‘Doctor Munroe should really live close to town,’ Caroline sighed.
Mrs Munroe’s expression changed into the exasperated one she had worn almost every time Caroline ventured an opinion. ‘As I have explained to you on more than one occasion, my son is a
hospital
physician, and
hospital
physicians live near to their work.’
‘Well, why can’t he work in a hospital in a more fashionable part of London?’ she asked. ‘If he worked in Mayfair or Piccadilly, for instance, then I—’ she cast a swift glance at the woman beside her. ‘Then if Doctor Munroe took a wife she could call on other respectable hostesses in their neighbourhood while he was at the hospital. She might even be invited to tea with an earl’s wife or even a duchess. If Doctor Munroe treated someone in the government she might get presented at court.’
Mrs Munroe’s gaze was steely as it rested on her. ‘Might she?’
‘Indeed. Although it is a pity that we have King William now, because it would have been such fun to meet the dashing Prince of Wales.’
Mrs Munroe’s eyes rested on her for a long second, then she turned back to the clock. ‘I hope he caught a hackney carriage from the hospital and didn’t walk to the city. I understand that Whitechapel is a rough area full of beggars and pickpockets.’
A picture of Robert as she had seen him the week before came into Caroline’s mind.
‘I think Doctor Munroe’s stature would make even the most desperate vagrant think twice about attacking him,’ she said, thinking how Robert was at least a hand taller than Captain Miller and broader in the shoulders.
The tight-mouth expression left Mrs Munroe’s face. ‘My son has an athletic build and boxed at Stirling. He favours my dead brother.’ Inwardly Caroline groaned. ‘I had hoped that Robert, like his namesake, would choose a career in the Army. Have I told you about my brother’s part in Wellington’s victory?’
Caroline fixed the polite expression that her mother taught her on her face. ‘You have. And please do not distress yourself by reliving again your brother’s tragic death,’ she said, hoping to avoid the twenty-minute monologue about how Captain Robert held the flank of the field against Napoleon’s attack and died just as the Russians were sighted over the crest.
A quiver passed over Mrs Munroe’s downy cheek. ‘On the morning of the eighteenth, dear Rob was entrusted by Wellington to—’
There was a sharp rap on the door and the butler sprang to life. Robert entered and handed his coat and hat to the man. He had obviously been hurrying as his hair was windswept and his eyes bright. He was dressed formally in a charcoal grey frock coat with lighter grey trousers. He crossed the distance to the table in three strides.
‘Mama, I am so sorry for my lateness,’ he said kissing her briefly on the cheek. He turned to Caroline and inclined his head in her direction. ‘Miss Sinclair.’
Caroline widened her smile. With the turned-out wings of his shirt collar and his cravat framing his square jawline, she remembered why she had been so eager to suffer his mother’s company for the long ride to London. Tucking her chin and tilting her head slightly to one side, better to catch the light from the lamp to her right, she lowered her eyelashes slowly so he could appreciate their fullness and then raised them, only to find he was no longer looking at her.
‘You look as if you’ve been running,’ Mrs Munroe said, the worried lines from her forehead smooth now.
‘I only just got away from the hospital on time. I was tending a woman in labour. The child, a large one, was attempting to enter the world feet first and it took me two hours to turn him.’
Caroline gave a shudder and straightened one of the bows on her dress that had twisted.
‘Well, you’re here now,’ Mrs Munroe said, and indicated that he should take the empty chair.
Robert arranged his coat and sat down, whereupon two tall servants, immaculately dressed in the hotel livery, appeared with the dinner trolleys.
‘Have you been shopping again, Miss Sinclair?’ Robert asked, smiling at her.
‘Well, I so liked the pale cream day dress I procured from Bond Street the other day that I thought it just had to have a new hat to show it off to best advantage. I’d seen an absolutely ravishing one in the window of Magasin des Modes, with Belgian lace and a great number of ostrich feathers curling around its crown, so I just had to go back and buy it.’
‘How nice,’ Robert said. He glanced over to the dinner and rubbed his hands together. ‘I am ravenously hungry. Are you all ready for your trip to Tunbridge?’
Caroline’s nostrils flared. He was supposed tell her how well he thought she would look in her new outfit, not say how hungry he was.
Elspeth Munroe signalled and the two servants came forward with the soup tureen.
‘We are. My sister is expecting us on the Saturday coach and she is sending her steward to meet us. We are to spend a month with her and Mr Turner.’
‘Give Aunt Turner my love,’ Robert said, beaming good-naturedly at his mother. Caroline coughed lightly and his eyes flickered on her for a second.
‘Naturally.’ Mrs Munroe leant towards her son. ‘We are then going on to the sea, are we not, Caroline?’
Robert’s eyes rested on her with mild interest.
‘Indeed, we are - to Weymouth,’ Caroline told him with a little throaty giggle. ‘Which I hear is quite as jolly as Brighton.’
Robert smiled. ‘So I am led to believe.’
Mrs Munroe’s face formed itself into what Caroline called her Doing-God’s-Will face. ‘I told you that Mr Palfrey was called to glory in February.’ Robert nodded. His mother shook her head dolefully and the lace of her cap flapped against her temples. ‘Well, he was eighty-three, but I have extended our visit to Mrs Palfrey for a full six weeks to offer what comfort I can.’
Caroline’s heart sank. When Mrs Munroe had told her their itinerary included six weeks in Weymouth, she hadn’t envisaged it being to comfort an elderly widow.
‘Then we are to York for three weeks and from there back to Edinburgh. I expect to be home by September.’ Mrs Munroe opened her napkin, tucking it under her chin and into the neck of her black dress. ‘I have ordered only a simple dinner: soup, one course each of fish and fowl, followed by a cutlet of lamb and then fruit.’
‘It sounds delicious,’ Robert said, smiling broadly at his mother and not even glancing at Caroline. She drew her fair eyebrows together.
Picking up her spoon, Mrs Munroe gave her son a reproving look. ‘You wouldn’t have had to wait so long if you had come as we originally arranged, on Tuesday.’
‘I’m sorry. I had given my word to dine with Mr Chafford on Tuesday.’
Caroline glanced down at the thin soup in her bowl. It had small circles of fat floating on the surface and the odd pea bobbing underneath.
‘Where was that?’ she asked, rustling her skirt and playing with the lace cuffs of her new ivory dress. He had been there a full half-hour and not yet remarked on how well it suited her.
‘At the Angel and Crown, a supper room near to the hospital. We often dine there on a Tuesday. There is entertainment most nights at the Angel,’ he told them, concentrating on scooping up the last of his soup.
‘Entertainment!’ Mrs Munroe asked pursing her lips together tight. ‘What sort of entertainment?’
‘Nothing scandalous, Mama. Music mostly, but on Tuesdays there is a particularly fine singer.’ He reached across and placed his hand over his mother’s. ‘As you know, I have always had an ear for music.’ Mrs Munroe laughed and Robert joined in. ‘And of course both Chafford and I have to stay within the sound of the hospital bell,’ he explained, smiling at his mother. Caroline rustled her skirts again.
Robert glanced at her. ‘That’s a pretty gown.’
Caroline smiled and arched her neck. ‘It’s from Madame Grandemille. She dresses Lady Houghton and the Marchioness of Stretford.’
‘It’s charming,’ he told her. ‘I am sure it will be the talk of Edinburgh when you return.’
‘As you like it so much, I will wear it when you return to Edinburgh, Doctor Munroe,’ Caroline said, sending him what some would call a scandalously seductive look.
He smiled politely and the servants brought the fish course. Robert asked his mother how his sisters were and conversation moved on to family matters. Caroline tried to join in, telling Robert that she had bought his sister Hermione a new muff and Margot some ribbon for her bonnet, but he responded only with a brief smile.
From under her lashes, Caroline studied him as they consumed the red mullet with Cardinal sauce. She tried to catch his eye, to send him an invitation to admire her, to flirt with her. He was supposed to. That’s what men did. That’s what Captain Miller did, and he tried to kiss her, which of course she hadn’t allowed, but at least he tried. But what did Robert do when they were alone? She gripped the knife and fork tightly and glared at Robert’s averted face. Instead of telling her of his undying affection and begging her to marry him, all he could do was talk about his work. Her eyes narrowed and she gave him her displeased look, which he failed to see because he was staring at the window. The empty plates of the fish course were removed and the warm tableware for the following course was being set before them.