An ally, perhaps, in a roomful of enemies.
The surgeon had turned away, and was already speaking to the Earl of Harlow. “He should be bloodlet.”
Mara winced, a vision coming, fast and unsettling, leeches dotting flesh, each one fat with her mother’s blood. “No.”
No one looked to her. No one seemed to hear her.
“Is it necessary?” The earl did not seem convinced.
The doctor looked to the wound. “Yes.”
“No!” she repeated, louder this time. Bloodletting killed. And it would take Temple’s life as sure as it had taken her mother’s.
The doctor continued. “And who knows what else the woman did to him. What might need to be reversed. Bloodletting is the answer.”
“Bloodletting is not the answer,” Mara said, placing herself at Temple’s side, between him and the surgeon, who was now extracting a large square box from his bag. No one listened.
No one but the Countess of Harlow.
“I am not certain that this is the right course of treatment, either,” she said, all seriousness, coming to stand next to Mara.
“You are not a doctor, either, my lady.”
“We may not be doctors, sirrah, but we were the best he had, were we not?”
The surgeon pursed his lips. “I will not stand for being spoken to in such a way. And by—” He waved a hand at them.
Cross stepped forward, ready to do battle for his wife. “By whom, precisely?”
The doctor noticed his misstep. “Of course I don’t mean Lady Harlow, my lord. I mean”—he waved at Mara—“this woman.”
He said woman like it was a filthy word.
Mara might have cared if Temple’s life were not hanging in the balance. She ignored the insult. “Have you blooded him before?”
There was a pause, and she thought the surgeon might not answer her until the countess stood her ground and added, “It’s an excellent question.”
The doctor hesitated, until Cross prompted, “Doctor?”
“No. He’s never required it.”
Mara looked to Temple, still as death on the table. Of course he hadn’t. The man was unbeatable. He’d doubtfully required any treatment at all. Until now.
Until he’d nearly died.
She looked to the countess. “My lady?” she asked, letting her feelings on the matter sound in the words. Show on her face. Don’t allow this.
Please, let him live.
The countess nodded once and turned to her husband. “We should wait. He is healthy and strong. I would rather he be given the opportunity to mend on his own than lose additional blood.”
Mara released the breath she had not known she was holding, hot emotion burning at her eyes.
“Women cannot possibly understand the basics of this kind of medicine. Their minds—” He waved a hand in the air. “They are not equipped for such knowledge.”
“I beg your pardon.” Countess Harlow was obviously displeased.
Mara could not waste energy on taking offense. Not when Temple’s life was in the balance. She stood her ground. “Even women can understand that blood does not typically leave the body. I see no reason to believe we do not require all we have.”
It was an uncommon theory. And unpopular. But most people hadn’t seen their mothers die, paler and sicker by the minute, covered in leeches and cut with blades. She’d seen proof that bloodletting was never the answer.
The surgeon sighed, no doubt realizing he was going to have to deal with the women in the room. He spoke as though to a child, and Mara noted the earl’s jaw set in irritation. “We must offset the balance. What he has lost in the shoulder, we must take from the leg.”
“That is utter idiocy.” Mara turned to the countess—her only ally. “If a roof leaks, one does not bore a second hole in the ceiling.”
The doctor had had enough. He puffed up and turned to Bourne. “I won’t be schooled on my field of expertise by women. They leave, or I do.”
“Then you should leave, and we shall find another surgeon,” the countess said.
“Pippa,” Cross said, the words soft but firm, and Mara could hear the edge in them. He did not wish his friend to die.
If only he would realize that Mara did not wish it, either.
“Give him the night,” she begged. “Twelve hours to present a fever—an infection of any kind—and then let your barber at him.”
The doctor’s eyes went wide at the insulting words, and Mara would have laughed if she weren’t so desperate to keep the man and his cruel contraption from Temple. “I wouldn’t treat him now if you tripled my fee.”
Mara hated the man then, so similar he was to the myriad of London doctors who had poked and prodded and pronounced her mother untreatable. They’d left her to die, even as Mara had begged her father to push them. To find someone who would treat her with something other than leeches and laudanum.
Even as he’d ignored her and left her without control.