“But—”
“I shall wait on Mrs. Wells at seven in the morning, which is far earlier than she deserves. No sooner. Tell your sister to stop with her hysterics and behave with some decency.”
Rose was too shocked to speak.
“And for God’s sake, if you bother me again tonight, I’ll not come in the morning, either.”
“Doctor Chillingsworth. Please.”
He shut the door in her face.
“I tried to tell you, Miss.” Beside her, Josephs sounded apologetic. “I did.”
He had, and she hadn’t wanted to listen. She hadn’t dared to listen, because there was no one else to be found at this time of night but this man.
This man who had spent ten years in the West Indies. Who had called Patricia dramatic, had accused her of falsifying her condition simply because she craved attention.
I saw a hundred women like your sister, he had said. For weeks she’d listened to Chillingsworth talk. For weeks, she had wanted to believe that when he said women like your sister he had meant women who were pregnant with their first child. But he hadn’t qualified his comments with a statement about pregnant women. He’d talked about working in the West Indies.
A more dramatic set of lying malingers I have never observed.
It was a punch to the stomach. Rose inhaled. The cold air felt like a knife in her lungs. But she didn’t have time to weep over it or to gnash her teeth at the unfairness. She didn’t have time to rail at life’s injustices.
In the back of her mind, she was still counting contractions—and she knew now that they were coming even closer.
“Josephs.” She was proud of herself; her voice was steady. “Find someone. Anyone. Please. I’m…”
She paused. Odd, how times like this made everything clear. There was no room for worry or second-guessing, no space for wounded pride any longer. There was nothing but her sister.
“I’m going to find someone who will help,” she said.
Chapter Nine
SOMEONE WAS POUNDING on Stephen’s door.
It was his first coherent thought upon waking—that hard, repeated tattoo beating in time with an urgency he did not understand, but felt instinctively in his blood.
He came out of bed, put on trousers and a loose shirt, and slipped downstairs.
He opened the door onto a white flurry of snow—and in dark counterpoint, with the streetlight behind her making a golden halo about her, Rose Sweetly. She had a cloak pulled about her, but her teeth were chattering noisily.
“Rose?” He had to be dreaming, but from experience, his dreams of her had never had her so bundled up.
“Stephen.” She sounded almost frantic. “I don’t know what to do. Patricia is in labor—her water broke—the baby’s coming and it’s still breech—”
“I’ll go fetch someone.”
“No.” She turned her head away and swiped at her eyes. “Mrs. Walton is out on another call, and Doctor Chillingsworth is…not available. Josephs is off in search of someone farther afield, but there is no time. The baby is coming now, and I don’t know what to do.”
He’d never seen her so upset. Little crystals of ice clung to her eyelashes, to the corners of her eye. Frozen tears, he realized. Her lips quivered.
“Right,” he heard himself say. “My father was a stable master. I’ve birthed dozens of horses, one of them breech. It’s not the same thing—”
But she was on the verge of a panic, and she needed him.
“—but I’m happy to come,” he finished. “Don’t worry. It’s going to be all right.”
“That’s what I kept telling Patricia.” Her teeth chattered. “And it just keeps getting worse and worse instead.”
“Well, you’re going to have to keep telling your sister that,” he said. “That’s your job now, Rose. You keep telling her that—and we’ll make sure it’s true. Come along.”
He found a pair of shoes in the hall.
“You’re coming like that?”
“No point wasting time. You’re only two houses down, after all.”
Rose nodded. It was cold outside—cold enough for the wind to cut right through the linen of his shirt, cold enough to drive the last remnants of his weariness from him. He followed her to her home. When she fumbled with her key, he took it from her numb fingers, unlocking the door.
“Rose,” he said as she took off her cloak in the hallway. “The most important thing is that you must not let her panic. You’re her sister. It doesn’t matter if there’s reason for her to be frightened; we must do our best not to scare her. You’re in command. I’m just here to make jokes. Understand?”
She paused looking up at him.
He set a finger on her chin. His hands were cold, but her skin was colder. No knowing how long she’d been outside looking for someone. Her lips parted; for a second, she looked up at him as if expecting a kiss. For a second, he wanted to give her one.
Instead, he took a handkerchief from his pocket and very gently wiped the ice crystals from her lashes.