Answering the urgency in her voice, Nkiruka lifted the baby away, as Vincent said, “What is happening?”
Jane knew before Dr. Jones answered him. Now that she thought of it, the fatigue, her chills, and her own knowledge of friends who had not survived their lying-in all spoke to one answer. It was not acceptable. She had a very clear vision of growing old with Vincent. Of teaching with him. Of watching her father feed their children strawberries. Of spending time—
“She is bleeding, and I cannot find where.”
Jane felt Vincent lift her into his familiar strong arms. She tried very hard to tell him that she loved him. He would need to remember that, but grey swam at the edges of her vision, then crowded together and became a field of black.
Thirty-three
Eyes of the Sleepers
Vincent felt his muse go limp in his arms. Her face was pale and bloodless. The sweat from her labours had not yet dried, but all the tension had gone out of her body. His throat began to close. Vincent held his breath until he was not choking on his own fear. “Jane?”
“Mr. Hamilton.” Dr. Jones’s voice snapped him back to himself.
He strode across the room and set Jane down as carefully as he could on the bed. Her head lolled to the side as though her neck had no bone in it at all. He stepped back, tucking his hands behind himself to hide the shaking.
Dr. Jones snapped Jane’s shift up with frightening competence. Frightening because, as competent as she was, she still looked grave. The blood that stained Jane’s chemise began to pool onto the blankets of the bed. Vincent covered his mouth and turned away. Nkiruka stood next to the brazier, rocking Charles in her arms. All the wrinkles in her face were drawn together in despair.
Vincent turned back to the bed, running his hands through his hair as he tried desperately to restore order to his thoughts. Jane was bleeding. If the doctor could not find and stanch the bleeding—
Vincent snatched the thread of panic, tying it off. He did not have time for that. Jane did not have time for that.
“What can I do?”
“Take your son into the other room.” Dr. Jones had put her hand inside Jane.
He sucked in a breath and caught the next string of panic, tying it to the first. He shoved both away from him. Dr. Jones must know by this point that Vincent would not get in the way, which meant she did not want him to witness something. She did not want him to watch Jane die.
The folds and threads wrapped around him in a tapestry of fear, nearly driving the breath from his body. He held still until he could push them away enough to draw breath, and while he did, he watched Dr. Jones try to save his Muse.
Dr. Jones had her eyes half closed, brows drawn together in a frown as she concentrated on what she was feeling. Vincent had no understanding of the interior of a woman’s body. His education had not included medicine, as that was a trade, and a nobleman’s son did not go into a trade. All he was good for were a thousand fashionably useless things, and glamour. Glamour could do nothing except create illusions. What Dr. Jones needed was a way to find out what was bleeding.
And there, Vincent caught a single, slender thread of hope. “If you could see inside her, would that help?”
“Take your son outside.”
“Would it help?”
“I do not have the time to explain the curves of the human form that make that impossible.”
“I am not—” Vincent broke off with a growl and just wove a lointaine vision instead. A boucle torsadée could also show something at a remote distance, but it needed to run in a straight line. That would not suit. The lointaine vision could be bent and twisted around obstacles. It required constant maintenance, but he could snake it through a keyhole if need be.
Holding the threads, Vincent twisted them past Dr. Jones’s hand. This shortness of breath was welcome. This was not one more symptom of his inability to govern his sensibilities. Jaw tight, Vincent made a particular kink in the near end of the thread and stretched it into a thin, flat disc that showed whatever the far end of the thread pointed at. The threads themselves were not visible, save in this one spot. For all the world, it looked as if he held a dish of blood shrouded in shadow. Concentrating, he twisted a skein of the full spectrum around the running thread of the lointaine vision and made the image brighter. The tips of Dr. Jones’s fingers appeared at the edges of the disc.
Dr. Jones let out her breath in a rush. “Yes. Yes, that helps.” She shook the visible wonder away and her brow furrowed back into concentration as she watched the lointaine vision. “Can you move it where I am pointing?”
“Yes.”