“I told you she would,” said Lydia.
“What letter?” asked Mary, studying each of our faces in turn.
“And it seemed to me we should talk,” I said. “Do not cry, Bessy! Come.”
I tapped the Pembroke table where they’d learned their French, geography, history, and motioned them to sit.
Mary levered Flossy off her lap and came to me first. Lydia and Bessy followed. The terrier rolled even closer to the grate, its head thrown back at a near-impossible angle.
“It is time for us to speak of our family and what is expected of you,” I began. “And to discuss the behavior that is, and is not, acceptable when being wooed by a young man.”
Lydia rolled her eyes.
“Lydia,” I said sharply. “Don’t you wish to be married?”
“I do, Mama,” she said, chastised.
I took her by the hand.
“But Mama,” said Bessy, her eyes downcast, “I’m no longer so certain that I do—”
“Do not be a fool, Bessy.” I took hers too. “To be married is a wonderful thing.”
I should have said merely that being married was better than not being married, but I hadn’t my mother’s strength to be so truthful.
The taste of Branwell’s sweat came back to me. And the sound of his panting, the waves of his back muscles rippling under my hand. Silly boy. He’d just been too eager, too hasty. That was all. At its worst, lying with a man was but a few moments of discomfort, a small price for my daughters to pay for a better life. And at its best—well, I would school Branwell to please me better next time.
“Marriage is what you should all aspire to, my darlings,” I said, squeezing the girls’ hands harder. “For once you are married, you may do anything you wish.”
* * *
I HAD RARELY BEEN in Dr. Crosby’s home since the call Edmund and I had paid when he’d first moved there. He was a stalwart at local social functions, wherever they were held, and, in a household our size, there was always some reason to summon the doctor, so it seemed ridiculous to upset the order of the world and visit him myself.
His house was small compared to Thorp Green Hall, but large when seen beside the cottages that lined the only street in Great Ouseburn. It was just a decade old (it had been built to the doctor’s specifications), and so the bricks were a rich red and not blackened by smoke or bordered by lichen. A carpenter had fashioned neoclassical columns in relief around the front door, and the maidservant ushered me through here, rather than down the passageway to my right, which led to the rear of the property and Dr. Crosby’s surgery. The parlor was the first room on the left, with a view of the street.
“I would not have come to you alone, Dr. Crosby, unless it was to consult with you on something serious,” I said, as soon as the fuss of tea was over and we were at last alone.
The good doctor nodded.
His furnishings were tasteful. The creams and pinks that made up the color scheme reminded me of my dressing room. But I was not here to exchange observations, compliments, and small talk.
“I can rely on your discretion?” I asked.
“But of course, Mrs. Robinson.” John Crosby replaced his teacup in its saucer and set it on the low table with the steady precision of a surgeon, although the only operations he conducted in the area around the Ouseburns were resetting the broken and dislocated bones of farmers and laboring men and pulling the occasional rotten tooth.
How to begin? I clasped my cup with both hands. The milky brown puddle splashed, threatening to cascade into my lap, and I held on tighter, imagining how it would scald and slice if the shards of porcelain shattered between my fingers.
“Dr. Crosby.” I swallowed. “It is a sad fact of life, of our society, I think, that a girl—a woman—can at times, through, perhaps, little fault of her own, find herself in trouble.”
“A sad tale but a common one, Mrs. Robinson,” he said, his brow furrowing. He leaned forward from the low-slung sofa, his elbows propped on top of his knees.
“And—forgive me, Dr. Crosby, I am no doctor—but, in such cases, I believe, there are things that can be done, procedures that can take matters out of God’s hands?”
John Crosby nodded slowly, as if reasoning out a complex argument, and took another gulp of tea, draining the dainty cup in one and setting it down before he replied. “That may well be the case, Mrs. Robinson. But wouldn’t it be easier, and safer, to send the unfortunate girl away? With some small sum of money, of course, to support her through her trials?”
I winced. “No, no, you misunderstand me,” I said, covering my face and peering at him through the latticework of my fingers. “I am not speaking of a servant.”
“Oh. One of your daughters.” He stood and leaned past my shoulder to fold over the wooden blinds. That was kind of him. It was true I didn’t wish to be watched. “The oldest Milner son, perhaps, or—? But no, I won’t inquire. In that case, Mrs. Robinson, I say, if he won’t marry her, the young man is a rogue.” He sat again and reached out his hands toward me. “But I can help you and do what needs to be done.”
Even he knew about Bessy and Will Milner, then? But there was no imminent danger there. Edmund had been planning a visit to Nun Monkton to delay any proposal. We’d determined that Bessy was young and skittish, like the fillies she spent hours brushing. It wouldn’t hurt for the boy to wait a few years. But then word had come that Nathaniel Milner, Will’s father, was ailing and wasn’t expected to last until Christmas. That would put a stop to his son’s romantic attentions for now.
Dr. Crosby threw and caught a small, unevenly embroidered cushion that some poor girl—a niece of his, maybe—must have worked on for months. There were flecks of blood caught under his fingernails. Of course. I’d called him away from his surgery, without a thought for the injured farmhands or colicky infants he might have been examining.
I shut my eyes tight and pressed the heels of my hands against my eyelids, sick at the sight of what I had longed to see for the last month or more, streaking my linens, floating in clots on the frothing surface of my chamber pot, racing down the silver-white paths that had traversed my thighs since my pregnancies. It hadn’t come, but I hadn’t panicked. Not at first. For I didn’t feel quite as I had with the girls, or Ned, or Georgie. Or maybe I’d simply forgotten.
“But what if, Dr. Crosby—John—what if I wasn’t asking about my daughters either?”
I considered him a friend, my ally against Edmund when he tried to medicate me, my eyes and ears at the Freemasons’ meetings in York, my dependable and favorite card partner. But I’d never plumbed the depths of our friendship before. My heart and stomach were giddy as dancers who’d overindulged at a ball, spiraling harder and harder until they flew apart, eating, drinking, laughing until the only release was to belch and purge.
The cushion thudded to the floor. Dr. Crosby did not speak for at least a minute.
“Then I would say that congratulations were in order?” he ventured, making a question out of what should not have been one.
“But what if—” My voice dropped to a whisper. “What if my husband— What if such a thing were impossible?”