Julia couldn’t face him. Not after that kiss. She couldn’t face any of it.
She’d rather stay in bed, safe and secure, huddled within the draperies of her four-poster. If the price of that security was a visit from the odious Dr. Cordingley, then so be it.
* * *
Julia was awakened in the morning not by her maid but by her mother. Seated on the edge of the bed, Lady Wychwood was clothed in a black silk carriage dress, as if she’d only just arrived from the railway station. She stared down at Julia with an expression so severe Julia was tempted to close her eyes again and feign sleep.
Once acknowledged as handsome, Mama’s face had long since been etched by unhappiness and infirmity. Her features were drawn, her skin sallow, and her eyes prone to watering—a consequence of the camphor oil she used to alleviate the aches in her limbs.
“Awake at last,” she said in tones of deep disapproval. “Would that I had had the luxury of sleeping late this morning.”
Julia made no effort to sit up. She remained tucked safe in bed, her white cotton nightgown rumpled and her long unplaited hair tangled about her shoulders.
Mama’s gaze narrowed. “Nothing to say for yourself? Very well. You can listen.”
Julia’s stomach sank. Her mother’s lectures could be as dismal as her father’s.
“My journey’s overtaxed me,” Mama said. “I must retire to my room before I do myself a permanent injury. But know this: Your father may have tolerated your obstinate carrying on, but I will not. If a gentleman as illustrious as the Earl of Gresham has indicated an interest in you, you will do your duty, or by heaven you’ll feel the consequences for it.”
A rare flicker of defiance sparked in Julia’s breast. “I’d rather take the consequences.”
Mama’s eyes kindled. “Ungrateful girl! To think of how I suffered to bring you into this world, sacrificing my health, very nearly my life, and all so you could defy me in this fashion. Have you no sense of what you owe me? Of what you owe your poor father? That I should have birthed such a thankless child!”
“Why did you?” Julia asked. “You needn’t have married Papa. You had a fortune in your own right.”
“I did my duty,” Mama snapped back. “I did what my family required of me. And so shall you.”
Julia regarded her mother in silence. Mama had been but seventeen when she’d been betrothed to Papa, the coddled only son of a wealthy family, decades older than his young bride, and prone to prolonged bouts of illness.
In the aftermath of Julia’s birth, his perpetually frail condition had seemed to rub off on her mother.
Julia could scarcely remember a time when Mama hadn’t been the victim of megrims, the vapors, or the ague. Her list of ailments had grown over the years, leading to a great deal of time spent alone in her rooms, or away from home, cloistered in a luxurious hotel in one of the fashionable spa towns.
As Julia had grown older, she’d often wondered if her mother had used the excuse of poor health as a means of securing her privacy and independence. She and Papa had never had another child. They kept separate rooms and maintained largely separate lives. It was the closest thing to Mama being a widow. And Papa couldn’t complain, not when his own health was in such a precarious state—though he regularly lamented his lack of a male heir.
Women had so little power in life to control their destinies. Julia had experienced the lack of it firsthand.
She was experiencing it now.
If claiming illness could offer her a fraction of the same freedom it had given her mother, Julia didn’t see why she shouldn’t take advantage of it.
“I can’t do my duty in this condition,” she said. “I’m not able to do anything.”
Mama’s lips thinned. “Maidenish nerves, I don’t wonder.”
“It isn’t that.”
“What is it, then? Mrs. Major claims you were indisposed last night, but she failed to report the specifics of your complaint.”
“My stomach aches,” Julia said. “And I have pains in my chest.” That much was true. Her heart felt as though it had been trod on by an elephant. “I need a few days of rest to restore myself.”
Mama expression became pensive. “Your eyes are swollen. And your nose is red. Dr. Cordingley warned me about danger to the mucous membranes in those with imbalanced humors.”
The only danger Julia was in was from excessive weeping. She’d cried last night into her pillow. She felt a little like crying now, truth be told. But she was done with feeling sorry for herself. Done with pining over Captain Blunt.
If she could just be alone with one of her books, the world would right itself eventually.
“Have you a fever?” Mama pressed the back of her hand to Julia’s brow. She withdrew it, frowning. “I’m so feverish myself I can hardly tell.” She stood. “I’ll summon the physician.”
Julia’s pulse quickened with apprehension. It was one thing to contemplate bloodletting in the abstract. But faced with the imminent possibility of it, her composure began to crack. “I don’t need Dr. Cordingley. I only need a few days in bed.”
“Nonsense,” Mama replied. “You’ll feel better after a good bloodletting.”
* * *
Julia did not, in fact, feel better after a good bloodletting. She felt weak, light-headed, and entirely incapable of defending herself against Dr. Cordingley’s backward opinions on women’s reading habits.
“Novels are at the root of it, mark my words,” he said as he packed away his brass scarificator. The octagonal brass casing of the horrible instrument housed a mechanism of spring-loaded blades used to create cuts in the flesh. It was more efficient than a lancet, allowing for greater blood flow with one strike.
And there had been so much blood this time. By the time the procedure was completed, Julia was scarcely able to lower her bandaged arm from the bleeding bowl back to the bed.
“Reading novels promotes an excess of heat in the body,” Dr. Cordingley went on. “Fevers, palpitations, and so forth. It cannot be permitted in the female sex. In young ladies like your daughter, the passions must be repressed rather than stimulated.”
Mama sat in a chair near the door, a lace handkerchief pressed over her mouth. She nodded her head in agreement. “As you say, Doctor.”
Dr. Cordingley cast a disdainful look at the stack of novels on Julia’s bedside table. “You’d do well to dispose of these, and any others in her possession.”
“I shall,” Mama said.
“No.” Julia managed a faint objection. “You can’t. They’re mine.”