She watched her husband in unfamiliar clothes, squatting beside
their wardrobe. He’d not even mentioned what all of Richmond was proclaiming, his part in the afternoon’s carriage tragedy.
“Judith, where are my shirts?” he called, yanking off the borrowed linsey-woolsey garment.
“If you insist on changing your linens daily,” she stammered, “I shall have to boil shirts more often.”
“I change them for you, wife!”
“Me?”
“Do not women prefer their lovers clean? Or was I instructed poorly in this regard?”
She touched his collarbone. He smelled of the horse he’d gentled—wild, but far from unpleasant. “You were not,” she admitted.
“Well, then! They cannot all be in need of washing. Judith, my mother has fortified me with at least two dozen.” He saw it, her guilt. His eyes narrowed. “You’ve given them away, haven’t you?”
“I—”
“Sacre-bleu!
You’re wrapped a dozen dock urchins in softest cotton while I’m itching unto madness!”
Judith knelt beside him. “Oh, Ethan, forgive me! But the winter grows so cold, and …”
His laughter erased her worry. He opened another compartment in their wardrobe. “Behold,” he commanded. “Mother’s knitted at least a dozen scarfs more than I can use. Give all but one of those away, but no more of my underwear, yes? I am no hair-shirt penitential!”
“No,” she agreed, moving closer beside him. She was doing more than clothing urchins, she was breaking the law, putting them all in jeopardy. She didn’t deserve his trust. Ignoring the scarf bounty, Judith eased his boots off. There. He smiled as she worked to ease the strains of the day from his legs. Higher. What did his thighs feel like through the tight weave of butternut trousers? Like muscled silk, she decided. His hand touched her hair.
“Are you trying to seduce me, wife,” he asked gruffly, fingers touching the pulsing vein at her throat, “into forgiveness of your theft?”
“It would be no attrition, to exchange what is heaven for my transgression.”
“So, you advise against this?” Lips, warm, pliant, pressing kisses to new-bared skin. “And this?” His clever fingers, exploring tender places.
“Not while I have breath to answer you yea or … oh, Ethan, yes …”
Dr. Foster called from downstairs. Ethan stifled a groan. “He’s not done with me. I don’t suppose your good works will earn me any time out of Jordan’s hell, will they?” She tried to cast him a stern look, but it dissolved as he kissed her again, saying, “I’ll return soon.”
“Do, sweet boy,” she urged, as he again donned the rough-weave shirt with a wince of discomfort.
Ethan had harbored a motherless child with the warmth of his body this day, a godly thing. Surely Dr. Foster would not look harshly on his apprentice. How Judith wanted her husband’s body close to her and their own tiny being in her dreamtime. And she could not require he wear that borrowed shirt when she had stolen so many of his own, could she? At the thought of him lying naked beside her, her blood raced. Did that make her a wanton?
Purpose, Judith.
She tried to chase the disturbing thought away.
Find some purpose.
She shut the drawer of their wardrobe.
Judith heard the beginnings of the argument downstairs as she turned down their bed.
“Where were you when I was performing that surgery?”
“Beside you, sir.”
“Where was your mind? Away, off on one of your fanciful expeditions! Doctors cannot afford such extravagances, Ethan.”
“I was listening.”
“Not to me!”
“To her. To Mrs. Prichard.”
“So. You’re saying what that rabble says! That she wasn’t dead. That I took your knife and murdered her.”
“No, sir. I’m not saying that at all.”
“Betrayal, from you? Damnation! The woman was dead!”
“Yes, sir.”
“No sound came from her, do you hear me? She did not speak!”
“No, sir.”
“So, what were you listening to?”
“I don’t know how to—”
“There is far too much you don’t know, Ethan.”
“Yes, sir. Always will be, I suspect.”
Judith reached the bottom of the stairs as the physician threw up his arms in frustration. Ethan sat on the sofa as Jordan stormed the room on his stronger legs. She felt her frame become ramrod-straight as she watched from the shadows.
“You defied me, Ethan.”
“Yes, sir.”
It was a statement of agreement, without remorse.
“Then you left the scene without permission, with our patient—”
“My
patient, if I defied you.”
There. There was her Ethan.
“Your patient? What are you now,
my
teacher?”
“No, sir.”
“Why not? Why not set up your own practice, you arrogant brat? Do you know what they call you now?” Jordan Foster demanded.
“Who, sir?”
“You know very well who. Our patients, the neighbors, every horse trader you’ve advised, and woman or child you’ve charmed!”
“Ask Mrs. Atwater how charming I am. She thinks Judith is the most long-suffering wife since—”
“Ethan, that crone tried to buy you away from me.”
“Mrs. Atwater?”
“No, that Ballard woman!”
“Well.” Judith heard Ethan’s sniff of indignation. “I hope you told her I am not for sale.”
In spite of her anger, Judith stifled a giggle behind her hand as Jordan continued.
“She said you’ve learned enough of hacking limbs and cutting innards and dosing people with laudanum. She wants you and Judith to learn about birth, about life, now. Not just you, but Judith, too. She offered to pay me for your time away from my instruction! Do you hear? Both of you are now to follow her around to her superstitious patients, helping them push their children into the world! What do you think of that, Dr. Blair?”
Judith stepped forward, out of the shadows. “I think it’s a good idea,” she said quietly.
The physician’s eyes avoided hers as she stood beside Ethan. “I’m sorry if we woke you, Judith.”
“I was not asleep.” She anchored her hand at her husband’s shoulder. “And you have no childbearing women as patients, Jordan. Most trust their own womenfolk and the midwives. It would be an opportunity for us. As the battlefield was for you.”
“Judith, Ethan and I need to discuss—”
“Mother Ballard’s offer? When it was made to us both?”
“No. There will be no discussion on that matter. I expressly forbid it.”
Ethan’s hand covered hers. “Forgive me, Jordan,” he said quietly, “but you are not in that position.”
“What position do you hold, Ethan Blair?” came out of their benefactor with the intensity of a rapier’s thrust, hard and cold.
“A voluntary one, sir, your assistant. And you have no hold over my wife whatsoever.”
“No assistant of mine will talk with creatures of the air while we perform surgery!”
“Zut alors!
They are real! Mrs. Prichard, Fayette, Clarisse, the slaves in the hold, your own generous wife and children—they live here!” Ethan’s fingers thumped against the scar on his head, which had now gone crimson in his agitation. “Does that make me a madman? Then that is what I am. There is nothing I can do about it!
Rien du tout!”
Judith watched the doctor’s eyes soften with remorse. But it was too late. Ethan’s own had steeled. It was almost as if they had exchanged places. Jordan Foster exhaled a sigh. Of what? she wondered. Pity? Her anger surged. Her visionary husband needed no one’s pity.
“Judith, please leave us to discuss this matter—”
“Judith is my partner in this and everything,” Ethan interrupted. “And we both need her here, I think, sir.”
“Toward what purpose?”
“To see it remains a discussion and not an exercise in futility.”
“It already is that. You’ll go where your capricious head leads, as always! Well, you will not take Judith with you, not this time. Not in her delicate state, I will not have it!”
Dr. Foster turned away from them.
Judith remembered back to Dartmoor Prison when a guard, bent on beating an inmate, was prevented by the Light coming through her. She offered a quick prayer.
“Jordan Foster!” she called.
He turned around.
“My state is wondrous and healthy, not delicate. All his life my husband has been guided by women’s hands, including my own through the knowledge passed on to me from my father. You have allowed it. Mother Ballard is a healer. She has knowledge we require. Ethan and I value her offer of guidance. Our respect, our love for you, does not diminish with this. Trust us, sir. Please. We need you both.”
“You need nothing! Nothing but the power of those eyes, that voice, Judith Mercer,” he accused. “They stop mere mortals in their tracks.”
Judith felt her knees buckle. The body of her young husband, even off balance, took over. She felt his arms help sit her down beside him. She felt his gentle kiss above her brow. “You are right, of course, Jordan,” he agreed with his master. “Still, it humors this lady to abide here with us.” He grinned. “Now, can we deny our Judith her amusement?”
She thought it was the sound of her nuzzling against his borrowed rough, linsey-woolsey shirt that caused the noise at first. A noise like the swarm of bees. But when she felt him tense, she knew it a bigger sound, approaching their door.
“You see? You see what you have brought down on us?” the doctor shouted from his place at the window.
“If I have brought it down, I will contend with it now. If you would take Judith upstairs, sir—”
“No!” She fought his attempts to hand her to the physician. “Ethan, you must not go out there.”
He had her elbows firmly. His calmness permeated her distress. “This is a misunderstanding. Stay with Dr. Foster. I will call you if I tangle things further,” he said quietly, touching the side of her face, the coldness of his fingers the only sign of his fear.
“Will you?” she demanded.
“
Mais oui
,”he. assured her. “You, Judith, are our hidden ace.”
“Ace?”
He smiled at her ignorance of the expression, of his card tricks.
The doctor stepped between them. “If you think you’re—”
Ethan matched his stance. “I don’t think, remember?” he shot back, his anger erupting in a clean, white flame. “But I am a Virginian, like them. You and Judith are outsiders. I have the best chance. Now, for God’s sake, Jordan, hold on to my wife!”
He pushed her into the stunned doctor’s arms and walked out the door.
Judith recognized few in a sea of faces—angry, shouting. “Get the knife! Search! Search for other bodies!”
It subsided into murmurs as they caught sight of her in the doorway with Dr. Foster’s hand at her shoulder. The gathering crowd of men were doing something they would not do, were their women among them. Judith sensed it in her bones. Now her presence quieted them, touched them with shame. Could her presence do all that? Is that why even Jordan Foster respected it, and was not pulling her inside? One of the men stepped forward.
“It’s very late, Constable Warren,” Ethan addressed him. “My wife needs her rest.”
“Aye, sir. But I have a request for a search of your premises, regarding a certain incident on High Street today.”
“I see. You have a warrant, of course.”
“Well, no.”
“As this is America, you will need one to enter our house, search, or seize property.”
“Mr. Blair, it would be better for you—”
“It would be better for you, sir, if you were to obey the laws you are sworn to uphold.”
“Was she dead?” someone shouted. “Was my Leah dead before you butchers took your knives to her?”
Judith didn’t see the large man himself until Ethan walked down the steps and into the crowd. The hush allowed her to hear every soft-spoken word her husband spoke. “She was, Mr. Prichard. Dr. Foster and I are heartfelt sorry for your loss.”
“They made me look,” he said quietly. “Identify. She still smelled like flour, vanilla.”
“Have you seen your daughter, sir?” Ethan asked.
“Sophie? She’s with the miller’s wife.”
“Not Sophie. Your new daughter, sir.”
“No. They say she’ll die, too, the baby.”
“She has a pretty mouth.”
“Does she?”
“I think she would be glad for your company.”
“You doctors. You did your best by my Leah?”