The Brynthwaite Boys

Episode One – A Promising Start

Brynthwaite, Cumbria – 1895

Flossie

The afternoon train from the city of Manchester to the scenic town of Brynthwaite was forty-five minutes late. Other passengers may have enjoyed the leisurely journey through the Lake District’s pastoral hills, misty forests, and fertile valleys. They may have gasped at the beauty of each new vista as the train meandered its way through green fields, fresh with May blooms. They skies were a crisp blue with only a few white clouds on the horizon, but Flossie Stowe could only think of one thing. If the train didn’t hurry, she would be late for the appointment that could change her life.

“Brynthwaite,” a porter called, poking his head into the third-class car. “Brynthwaite, next stop.”

Flossie let out a breath of relief as she felt the train slow. Just as quickly, she took in a new one. It was a small miracle that fortune had dropped this opportunity in her lap, just when it was most needed. Her wages at Crestmont Grange had been adequate. She’d certainly been able to send the much-needed funds home to her sister, Betsy, and then some. But Betsy always needed more, and the unpleasantness from Crestmont was still there. The people of Brynthwaite surely had their opinions on the building of a modest hotel in their town, but they could never know what a godsend it was for those who truly needed it.

The train’s whistle sounded, and outside the window the countryside gave way to clusters of cottages and outbuildings, then larger yards and warehouses, and finally the imposing stone edifice of the train station itself. Already a decent crowd had gathered on the platform—workmen in overalls ready to unload cargo, porters in their crisp uniforms, eyes already trained on first-class, where they might hope to get the best tips, and townspeople of all description, waiting for visitors.

“Polly,” Flossie gasped in relief at the sight of her friend waiting with the others. Polly was hard to miss, with her copper-gold hair and cheery face. Growing up together in Lincolnshire they had been nicknamed “the two Irish lasses,” Polly for her copper hair and green eyes and Flossie for her black hair and blue eyes, though neither one of them had a drop of Irish blood, that they knew of. They’d been as inseparable as sisters until age and the need to work had pulled them apart. But not anymore.

Flossie poked her head out the train’s open window and waved to her friend. Polly’s face lit up when she saw her.

“Flossie,” she cried with all the youthful exuberance the two of them had had as girls.

It was torture to wait for the train to stop fully and for Flossie to shuffle into line with the rest of the departing passengers. She let an older couple go before her and took a moment to help a frazzled mother with her young children on her way out, but at long last, she stepped down from the train and onto the platform.

“You’re here,” Polly called to her, rushing to meet Flossie in a warm embrace that had both of them giggling. “You’re actually here. I can hug you and see you and everything.”

“I am here,” Flossie laughed aloud. “But I’m late. Oh, Polly, I’m so late. My appointment with Mr. Throckmorton is at two-thirty, and it’s already quarter-past now.”

“I know,” Polly exclaimed. She grabbed Flossie’s hand and tugged her to the end of the platform, closer to the station. “I’ve been waiting here for an hour, growing more anxious by the minute. Lady Elizabeth gave me leave to come meet you, but I don’t think she expected it to take this long.”

“Oh no.” Flossie pressed a hand to her racing heart. “Will she be very upset?”

Polly laughed. “I doubt it. She doesn’t have immediate need for her lady’s maid in the middle of the afternoon, especially not when she’s at home with no one but her aunt and her cousin and anyone who decides to pay a call. Which could mean half the gentlemen in the county, come to think of it.”

“That much is a relief, at least.” Flossie knew how much fine ladies relied on their maids from the way that Lady Morley at Crestmont had driven poor Miss Lambert half mad with her constant requests, but from the regular correspondence Polly had sent to Flossie, it was apparent that “Lady E.” was quite different than Lady Morley.

“Do you have a ticket for your luggage?” Polly asked, tugging Flossie further on.

“I do somewhere,” Flossie replied, handling the small, cast-off reticule that her former employer had thrown in the rag-bag years ago.

“Good.” Polly pushed her along. “We’ll come back for your things later. Right now, it’s important to get you to The Dragon’s Head as soon as possible.”

“The Dragon’s Head,” Flossie laughed as they climbed down the stairs at the back of the station and into a busy street. “The name sounds more like a pub than a hotel.”

“Lady E. says that Mr. Throckmorton chose the name for its novelty,” Polly said, steering them to the left and up a slight hill. “She says that Mr. Throckmorton’s other hotels are all named something quite banal, like The King’s Arms Hotel in Birmingham or The Lion’s Mark in London, but that he wanted something that would truly stand out for Brynthwaite.”

“I can’t imagine why,” Flossie said, puffing to keep up with Polly’s fast pace. “Brynthwaite isn’t half so fine or large as any of those towns.”

“Which is precisely why he needed a name to inspire a sense of grandeur,” Polly laughed. “Although the other bit of speculation I heard is that Mr. Throckmorton was in one of his tempers when he was pressed for a name and he overheard his solicitor call him a fire-breathing dragon. Can you imagine?” She burst into a peel of laughter.

All Flossie could do was imagine. She’d been imagining little else but the comings and goings of the lives of people in Brynthwaite since Polly began writing to her. It seemed that Polly knew something about everyone in town—possibly more than they suspected—on account of her position as lady’s maid to the grand dame of the area. Lady Elizabeth’s father, Lord Gerald Dyson, Earl of Thornwell, may have been the reigning lord of the land, but he was old and infirm, and his only child, Lady Elizabeth, was the squire in every way but name and gender. As her letters attested, Polly considered it her duty to keep Lady E. informed of everything in the lives of all of Brynthwaite’s citizens, a duty for which she had been rewarded with the position of lady’s maid at the tender age of twenty-six.

And Polly was devoted to her duties.

“Of course, guests will come to the hotel to enjoy the scenery,” she prattled on. “There isn’t much else this far from civilization but scenery. Lucky for Mr. Throckmorton, holidays in the country are all the rage. He told Lady E. that his hotel will cater to only the finest custom, and—oh!”

“What?” Flossie stumbled at her friend’s sudden exclamation.

“Look over there.” Polly lowered her voice to a whisper, slowing her steps and glancing to the other side of the street.

Flossie looked. A gentleman who appeared to be in his late-thirties with dark hair and a moustache, wearing a bowler hat rushed up the street, dodging a fellow pedestrian. A woman with three girls in tow chased him.

“Marshall Pycroft, where do you think you’re going?” the woman shouted. A few people on the street glanced her way and frowned. The man slowed his steps and winced. Flossie blinked in surprise as the woman went on. “Yesterday it was the baking, and today you tell me I need to do my own washing as well? Like we were common farm laborers?”

The man in the bowler turned back to her, jaw clenched. “Could we not discuss this later this evening, when I am home, Clara?”

“And why should I hold my peace?” The woman, Clara, raised her voice. “Are you ashamed to have our neighbors know how low we have sunk? I left London for this, Marshall, London,” she all but wept. “I left my home and my family. I thought I would be a doctor’s wife, respected and admired, but I’m nothing but a drudge now.”

“Please, Clara, keep your voice down.”

“That’s Dr. Pycroft,” Polly whispered, tugging Flossie on. “He grew up here, at the very hospital he runs now. It used to be an orphanage then.”

“And it’s a hospital now,” Flossie said, remembering aloud the details Polly had written to her. Brynthwaite Municipal Orphanage had been the home to many children, ostensibly in the attempt to keep them out of the workhouse. It had been so badly run, though, that the crown had shut it down ten years ago and converted it into Brynthwaite Hospital. Dr. Marshall Pycroft had been hired to run the place a few years ago, though what that entailed, Flossie could only manage.

“I can do the washing, Mama,” the oldest of the girls tagging behind Mrs. Pycroft spoke up. “I’m old enough.”

“Quiet, Mary,” Mrs. Pycroft snapped. “I won’t have a daughter of mine stooping as low as a washerwoman.”

“Mrs. Pycroft thinks awfully well of herself,” Polly went on, sending a sly look across the street to the bickering couple before picking up speed again. “She thinks that because her father was a solicitor in a London firm, her feet smell better than half the folks in Brynthwaite. They don’t have any money, though. The hospital survives on a tiny stipend from the crown, and the rest is up to Dr. Pycroft himself to raise. Lady E. helps out as much as she can, but one can only do so much.”

“Oh, I see.” Flossie sent one last look over her shoulder to Dr. Pycroft and his wife. They were clearly still bickering, but they’d lowered their voices. Flossie’s heart went out to the Pycroft girls, Mary and her sisters, who stood there looking dejected.

She wasn’t the only one who noticed the argument. A few yards up, a man was watching the Pycroft’s with a pained look on his face. He was a strange man too, to Flossie’s reckoning. He was handsome, probably the same age as Dr. Pycroft, and wore simple, workman’s clothes. His sleeves were rolled up to show strong forearms, but he held himself with the grace of a noble. And he carried the strangest lattice of iron over one shoulder.

“Who is that?” Flossie asked.

Polly paused and turned to look. The man across the street turned in time to see the two of them staring. He smiled and nodded. Flossie smiled and dipped her head in return. Polly gasped.

“Don’t look at him, don’t look at him!” she said, grabbing Flossie’s hand and rushing on.

“What? Why?” Flossie missed a step in her haste to catch up.

“That’s Lawrence Smith.”

Flossie shook her head. “Who is he?”

“He’s the blacksmith,” Polly hissed, careful not to face him, although her eyes darted to the side.

“There’s nothing wrong with being a blacksmith,” Flossie said.

“It’s not that,” Polly went on. “He’s…he’s mysterious.”

“Mysterious?” Flossie laughed. “He just looks like a kind and comely man to me. You’ve never mentioned him in your letters.”

“There are some things a lady can’t write about. He’s a gypsy,” Polly said. “Or at least he would be if it weren’t for the fact that he was born and raised in Brynthwaite.”

“Then he’s not a gypsy,” Flossie reasoned, although from his dark coloring, he easily could have been.

“Folks still swear that he is,” Polly explained. “Mr. Smith was raised at the orphanage too. There’s plenty who think that his folks were gypsies, and that for some reason they dropped him off here and left him. What kind of man is he if even the gypsies didn’t want him?”

“He wasn’t a man when he was left at the orphanage, he was a baby,” Flossie reasoned. “You can’t tell what kind of man a baby is going to grow up to be.”

“Oh, but he did grow up to be that man,” Polly insisted, her green eyes round. “He’s not a Christian,” she whispered as though it were the gravest of sins. “He practices the old ways. There’s folk who say they’ve caught him saying chants at the full moon and putting curses on people.”

Flossie laughed. “I don’t believe in curses.”

“You might if you—oh!” Polly peeked over her shoulder, then snapped straight and picked up her pace. “Don’t look now, but he’s following us.”

Flossie did look. All she saw was a man carrying an iron contraption over his shoulder, smiling as though he enjoyed the fine summer day as much as the larks and the bees. He didn’t seem like the kind who would curse anyone.

“Are you sure he’s that sinister?” she asked Polly.

Polly bit her lip, slow to answer. “Well, he is friendly with Dr. Pycroft. Because they were raised together at the orphanage, you see. And Mr. Throckmorton was too.”

“What, Mr. Throckmorton who owns hotels in London and Manchester, and The Dragon’s Head too?”

“And a hotel in Liverpool.” Polly nodded. “He’s a Brynthwaite boy. Raised at the orphanage and sent out to seek his fortune, same as Dr. Pycroft. Only, where Dr. Pycroft went in for schooling and doctoring, Mr. Throckmorton was more interested in getting rich and building things.”

“So he’s friends with Mr. Smith?”

“Yes,” Polly said. She frowned. “I think. He must be. But it’s hard to tell, since Mr. Throckmorton has only been in town for a fortnight now. But I see him and Dr. Pycroft entering The Fox and Lion Pub together all the time, and Mr. Smith with them sometimes.” She paused to consider. “Yes, I’m certain they’re friends. I wonder if Lady E. knows about this?” She considered it, then shook her head. “A man as rich and powerful as Mr. Throckmorton being friends with a gypsy like Mr. Smith is not something you see every day.”

“No,” Flossie agreed.

They rushed on up the street toward an intersection. Flossie noted all manner of shops and businesses to one side. The building on the corner had a shingle out front with a fox and a lion. Beyond that she could see the dreary gray edifice of a two-story building. It had a large placard over the door that read “Brynthwaite Hospital,” which told her they were nearing the center of town. A few other grand buildings stood out against the quaint houses and shops. Flossie craned her neck and searched to see if she could get a glimpse of the town hall or the new hotel amongst all of the old—

“Oh! Flossie, watch out!”

Polly grabbed Flossie’s arm and pulled her back just in time as a carriage drawn by two horses charged around the corner. They came so close that Flossie could feel the wind on her face and smell the sweat of the horses. She gasped and pressed a hand to her heart.

“Good gracious, that was close,” she panted.

“Did your whole life pass before your eyes?” Polly asked, her eyes wide, but her alarm quickly fading. “They say people’s whole life passes before their eyes when they almost die.”

“Not this time,” Flossie reassured her.

“It’s a terrible corner,” Polly told her, squeezing her hand and turning right to cross the street. “Carriages and carts come rushing around at all speeds. Mayor Crimpley says it’s because of the downhill slant from the hill road. He says it makes drivers careless and horses reckless. Why, we’ve had half a dozen injuries and one poor man killed at this corner in the past year.”

“Is there anything that can be done about it?” Flossie asked.

Polly shrugged. “The mayor keeps saying he’ll look into it.”

Her answer was short as they had turned to walk up a steeper section of hill. Flossie’s legs ached in no time and her heart thumped with exertion, but her spirits soared. Right there, about a hundred yards in front of them, was the front gate of The Dragon’s Head.

The Dragon’s Head had been constructed as much for beauty as for formidability. It stood three stories tall, built at the top of a hill so that it overlooked not only the entire town of Brynthwaite, but the lake that gave the town its name, Brynswater. The building’s two wings had been constructed at angles that allowed for the most magnificent views of nature possible from as many windows as could be managed. The two wings were joined by a central section with even taller windows, and an observation deck. Flossie imagined that anyone standing on that deck could see everything in the valley and on the lake, and half of the hills and forests in the area too.

“Here we are,” Polly declared. “And not a moment too late.”

They passed through the open font gates in a low wall around the property. Flossie was surprised to find the garden inside of the gates to be a mess of dirt and masonry, with workers climbing all over themselves to get things done. At closer inspection, the hotel clearly wasn’t finished. Workmen were still constructing one of the outbuildings and even parts of the main structure. Through the windows, Flossie spotted a handful of women cleaning with furious energy. The windows were curtainless and had the empty feeling of a building that wasn’t yet inhabited.

“Ooh, he did follow us,” Polly whispered as they started up the marble stairs toward the hotel’s front door.

“Who?”

Flossie answered her own question by turning to see Mr. Smith striding through the gate as though he owned the place. That was where the following stopped, though. He took the ironwork off of his shoulder and walked it along the side of the house. One of the workers stopped what he was doing to come and take it from him. In a flash, Flossie knew what the metal thing was—an ornate grate that would fit over a window well.

She didn’t have time to observe more, though. Polly rushed her through the hotel’s front door and into the lobby.

The lobby was more finished than the front garden. The warm wood paneling was polished, and the green and gold wallpaper looked as crisp as if it had just come off a roll. To one side, a wide doorway opened to what appeared to be a dining room—though the tables were bare and scattered and stacks of chairs stood randomly between them—while to the other side was a hall and a grand staircase, carpeted with new, dark green carpet. A long oak desk stood at the back of the lobby, and behind that was an open door to one side and a closed one to the other. A young man in what looked to Flossie like livery stood behind the desk, sorting through something out of sight that clinked and clattered. He glanced up as Flossie and Polly approached.

“Miss Florence Stowe to see Mr. Throckmorton,” Polly announced importantly.

The young man glanced up. He raked Flossie with an assessing sweep of his eyes, and apparently found her wanting something. Flossie stood straighter and arched an eyebrow. The young man shifted into a mirthless smile.

“Wait here,” he said, and turned to the open door behind him. “Mr. Throckmorton, you have—”

“Yes, I heard.” The young man was interrupted by a baritone snap. An imposing gentleman marched into the doorway. His sharp eyes looked from Polly to Flossie, as if Flossie were an hour late to her interview instead of exactly on time. “Come in.”

The gentleman, Mr. Throckmorton, stepped back into his office without another word. Flossie took a deep breath and exchanged a wary look with Polly. Polly gave her an encouraging nod and motioned for her to go on. The young man at the desk ignored both of them.

Steeling her courage, Flossie dodged around the desk and entered the office behind it. Mr. Throckmorton closed the door, then marched ahead of her toward a desk. There was nothing to be frightened of, she told herself. Mr. Throckmorton knew why she was here. He’d granted her the interview. His hotel obviously needed staff. She was at the right place at the right time. All she had to do was speak up for herself, something she had more than enough experience doing.

“Come in,” Mr. Throckmorton repeated as he reached his desk, sounding perturbed. “I don’t like dawdling.”

“No, sir,” Flossie said, picking up her pace and coming to stand in front of the room’s large desk.

Mr. Throckmorton’s office had the same scattered, unfinished feeling as the rest of the hotel, in spite of its sumptuousness. The desk was a fine example of craftsmanship, but it was littered with papers, binders, and samples of everything from wallpaper to fabric to stone. Several framed paintings sat on the floor, leaning against the walls where Flossie assumed they would be hung as soon as someone found the time. Behind the desk stood two tall, twin windows, both without curtains. They were the only windows in the room.

Mr. Throckmorton himself was the only thing about the room that didn’t seem hastily put together. On the contrary, no one could have mistaken Mr. Throckmorton as anything but a gentleman of means. His hair was brushed and parted with precision, he was clean-shaven, and as he gestured for Flossie to stand where she was already standing, she saw that his nails were precisely kept. His clothes were of the latest style and fit well. The only oddity about them was that he wore his stylish, knee-length coat buttoned up, in spite of being indoors in the middle of the day. Lord Morley had preferred the same kind of coat, but he and every other gentleman Flossie had seen wore them open to reveal some sort of splendid waistcoat.

“Florence Stowe?” Mr. Throckmorton asked as he took a seat behind his desk.

“Yes, sir,” Flossie answered with a short curtsy. “Flossie, if you prefer.”

“Flossie,” he repeated, shuffling through the papers on his desk. “And you come from,” he paused for the amount of time it took him to find a letter written in a fine hand amongst the clutter on his desk, “from Derbyshire.”

“Of late from Derbyshire, yes, sir,” she told him. “Though I was born and raised in Lincolnshire.”

Mr. Throckmorton remained silent, scanning the letter. “You were upstairs maid in the house of Lord Morley, Earl of Derby, at Crestmont Grange?”

“Yes, sir,” Flossie answered.

Mr. Throckmorton glanced up at her over the top of the letter with a tight frown. “Why would an upstairs maid in the house of an earl wish to leave her position to come to work at an untried hotel in the Lake District?”

The blunt force of the question sent prickles of self-consciousness down Flossie’s back. She couldn’t hide the blush that tinted her cheeks or the anxiety in her eyes, but she could hide the truth.

“I felt it was time for a change, sir,” she explained. She forced herself to meet the man’s hazel eyes as she spoke. Liars never looked you in the eye. “I had been working at Crestmont Grange since I entered service as a kitchen maid when I was twelve. And though I proved myself and was advanced to the rank of upstairs maid in good order, I found that I craved a bigger challenge.”

“A bigger challenge?” Mr. Throckmorton cocked an eyebrow. “You’ll certainly find that here.”

“I hope so, sir.” She held her breath, willing him not to ask deeper questions.

“Did the Morleys entertain much?” he asked, setting the letter down and leaning closer to her across the desk.

Flossie’s heart thumped in her chest. If she kept her wits about her, she could prevent him from asking anything she didn’t want to answer.

“They entertained during the hunt. Lady Morley has a wide circle of friends who she invites to stay whenever possible. The staff at the Grange was frequently called upon to make up and refresh the bedrooms with little notice, as well as tending to the guests and residents quickly and efficiently.”

“So you have experience in a fast-paced environment,” Mr. Throckmorton concluded.

“Yes, sir.” Some of Flossie’s tension melted. He’d taken exactly what she’d wanted him to take from her explanation.

“And you got along well with the other staff?”

A bolt of fear seized her. She willed herself to remain calm, to keep her face pleasant and neutral, and to reply without a tremor in her voice. “Yes, sir. The housekeeper never had reason to complain.” She couldn’t complain about what she didn’t know, after all.

“You want to leave all that for this hotel?” Mr. Throckmorton questioned her again.

Flossie swallowed, weighing her options. The truth wasn’t one of those options, at least not the whole truth. A tiny slice of it might be enough.

“As you may know, sir, Miss Polly Penrose, lady’s maid to Lady Elizabeth Dyson, is a dear friend of mine from childhood. It was she who informed me that the hotel was hiring maids. I relished the opportunity to live close to my friend once more.”

Mr. Throckmorton stared at her. For one horrible moment, Flossie thought he could see right through her clothes, through her skin, and straight into her heart, his gaze was so piercing. She couldn’t let her shame show, and so met his stare with her own. She would not look away first. She would not betray what could ruin her.

At last, Mr. Throckmorton took a breath, his eyes fluttering down to the letter in front of him.

“Yes,” he said, taking it up and scanning it once more, “Lady Elizabeth recommends you herself. I cannot refuse such a glowing recommendation from such an esteemed personage.”

This time, it was Mr. Throckmorton whose face betrayed his thoughts. Enough color came to his cheeks to betray everything Polly had said in her letters about him hotly pursuing Lady E.

“You have the job, Miss Stowe,” he said, meeting her eyes again.

“Thank you, sir.” Flossie burst into a wide smile. She could feel the joy of those few words spill through her. More than joy, relief. At last, she could start over. She could put the past behind her and begin again.

Jason

“I trust you are prepared to start immediately,” Jason told the beaming Miss Stowe.

“Yes, sir.”

She was a pretty thing when she smiled like that, with eyes as blue as the sky after a storm and cheeks as pink as roses.

Before the thought could take hold of him and cause the havoc he worked so hard to avoid, he frowned and cleared his throat, then stood.

“The staff quarters are on the ground floor behind the stairs,” he informed her, coming around the side of his desk, tugging his coat straight, and looking away from her. “See Dora about assigning you a room. You can move your things in—”

His words were cut off as the corner of his coat brushed a stack of bills, mail orders, and curtain samples, sending them flying. Miss Stowe jumped, and with lightning-fast reflexes, caught the pile before it could so much as skew.

For a moment, both of them were stock still. Jason hadn’t realized anyone could move so fast. At last, Miss Stowe let out a breath and set the stack of papers and fabric back in its place on the desk.

“Well done, Miss Stowe,” he said, tempted to smile, but stopping himself. “If the hotel ever fields a cricket team, I’ll be sure to make you keeper.”

“Thank you, sir,” she replied, meeting his eyes.

He glanced away, gesturing for Miss Stowe to precede him to the office door. He would have to do something about the way she looked at him, without apology and with only a hint of deference, for his sake as much as for hers. He suspected those eyes of hers had the power in them to undo months of painful progress.

Jason stepped ahead to open the door, then followed Miss Stowe out of his office, taking his hat from its hook by the doorway. That hook was the one thing he had insisted be put in place in his office. For everything else, the hotel came before him.

“Are you going out, sir?” Samuel, the young man he’d hired last week to tend the front desk asked as Jason swept past.

“Yes,” Jason answered. Samuel didn’t require any more of an answer. Like Miss Stowe, he had come from service. It seemed half of his new staff had come out of one great northern estate or another. It made him wonder what service put people through these days. And to think, when he’d left the orphanage, they’d told him that if he worked hard, he might be able to earn a place as a footman.

Jason loved proving people wrong.

A peal of giggles to the right drew his attention as he strode through the lobby. Miss Stowe had rushed over to Miss Penrose, and the two were carried away in a fit of exuberance, brought on, no doubt, by Miss Stowe informing her friend that he’d given her the job. The rush of heat and blood through him at the sight of two such lovely girls was enough to make Jason wonder if he’d made a mistake. Recommendation from Lady Elizabeth or no recommendation, he would have done better to hire the plainest girls Cumbria had to offer.

The thought turned his frown into a glower as he stepped through the hotel’s open front door and into its disaster of a front garden. He didn’t mind the door being kept open. It was a fine May day, and sunlight had always done wonders for him. It was the incessant ticking of the great, invisible clock within as he surveyed the dirt and disorganization of the garden that pressed on him. In just over a fortnight, The Dragon’s Head was set to open. He already had bookings. His agents in London and Manchester had done their job, exciting interest in Brynthwaite as an upscale retreat for toffs in search of a little country air. He was determined to give them everything they’d been promised, but if the workmen didn’t pick up the pace, he ran the risk of falling flat.

“Jason!”

Lawrence’s shout snagged Jason before he made it to the gate and into the street. He stopped abruptly and pivoted to find his friend striding toward him from across the soon-to-be lawn. Miss Stowe and Miss Penrose nearly barreled into his back, they were so busy watching Lawrence. Miss Penrose’s eyes were as round as saucers. The ghost of a grin tweaked the corner of Jason’s grim mouth. He hadn’t believed his old friend when Lawrence had told him half of the genteel girls in town were afraid of him. When they were young lads in their prime, the girls couldn’t get enough of Lawrence. Of him either, if he was being honest. Lawrence always had handled it much better than him.

“Before you go, let me show you the new grate,” Lawrence said as he approached.

Jason stepped back, tipping his head slightly to Miss Stowe and Miss Penrose as they passed between him and Lawrence on the path. Miss Stowe was staring at him once more. Those damned eyes of hers made him feel as naked as…. Well, it was best not to go there. As soon as they had passed and gone out through the gate, Jason left the path to meet Lawrence.

“Let’s see what you’ve got,” he said as Lawrence fell into step beside him.

Lawrence fell into business so smoothly that anyone who didn’t know better would think he was a serious man. “Since this one is for the garden side, I added a floral motif.”

“I didn’t realize grates had a motif,” Jason replied. He dodged a pile of stones that would become a rustic garden wall—sooner rather than later, he hoped. The mason and his assistant bowed and doffed their hats, which was ridiculous considering that Archie Hudson, the mason, had thrown stones at him and the rest of the orphanage children when they were boys.

“Nature has her hands in everything, even iron,” Lawrence explained with a smile.

He was right. The grate that a pair of craftsmen were fitting over a cellar window on the side of the hotel’s south wing was a thing of beauty. Lawrence had worked it with leaves and blossoms, as if it were a screen for a lady’s boudoir rather than a thing of utility.

“Lawrence, you never cease to amaze me,” Jason said, thumping his friend on the back.

Lawrence laughed. “This from the man who could buy me a hundred times over.”

“Never,” Jason replied. “There is no price for you. I just wish that I could hire you for more work.”

“You’ve given me more work than I can handle,” Lawrence came back. “Oliver is far more talented than anyone gives him credit for, but at the end of the day, the two of us can barely keep up with the orders you’ve placed.”

“You will have them done in time, won’t you?” The twist and pinch of time getting away from him bunched Jason’s already tight shoulders. His whole world was tension and the stress of the effort it took each moment just to hold himself together.

Lawrence nodded consideringly. “I’ve prioritized. Everything that will be most readily apparent to your guests will be finished first. A few minor pieces that won’t be seen as often or that don’t need to be as polished will come along afterwards. It won’t all be done by the time you’re open, but most of it will.”

Jason let himself grin. “You’re just trying to stay on as long as possible.”

Lawrence chuckled and turned to head back toward the front gate, Jason striding at his side. “Work has never been a problem,” he said. “I could shoe horses and forge gates and hinges every day if I wanted to.”

“That’s a relief,” Jason nodded.

“I’ll never want for anything as long as I have the sky above me and the earth beneath me,” Lawrence went on, reverent as a poet.

“Someday I’ll learn to be as content as you,” Jason said.

They wound their way along a flagstone path that was actually finished as the hotel’s head gardener transplanted a bush that looked ready to burst with color. Good. The more attractive a picture this hotel presented, the better his chances of making it a success would be, and the more people—certain people in particular—could see his success, not just hear tales of it, the better his chances of making his whole life a success would be.

“I see you hired another maid,” Lawrence commented as they turned onto the main path and headed down to the gate.”

“The one with Miss Penrose.” It was more of a clarification than a question.

“She’s a beauty.”

“Really? I hadn’t noticed,” Jason lied.

“Striking hair and eyes, kissable mouth, shapely.”

Jason sighed. “If you’re attempting to tease me, I would rather you didn’t,” he snapped.

Lawrence chuckled. “Jason, if I failed to tease you, then what was the use of all those years we spent wreaking havoc together?”

Jason sent his friend a wary sidelong glance. There was no sense holding the cruel joke against him. Lawrence didn’t know what he was saying. He hadn’t been in London for the last decade. He didn’t know.

“Teasing is well and good, but some things cut to the quick. Now if you will excuse me, I have to stop by the hospital.”

“Hospital?” Lawrence balked. “You’re not sick, are you?”

Jason ignored him. “Just a stop before I head up to Huntington Hall.”

He had hoped to leave it at that and escape, but Lawrence stopped him with, “Still paying court to Lady E, I see?”

With a face as grim as death, Jason replied, “Always.”

For a moment, Lawrence’s humor shifted to pity. The sight of it turned Jason’s stomach.

“I wish you luck, then.” Lawrence nodded. “Why don’t we meet at the Fox and Lion for supper and you can tell me all about your conquest.”

The bitter feeling in Jason’s stomach stayed right where it was, but he softened his features when he said, “All right.”

Lawrence waved goodbye to him, then headed down one side of High Street, while Jason marched off down the other.

Brynthwaite Hospital was only a hundred yards or so from the entrance to The Dragon’s Head, down the hill. Jason had planned it that way when he purchased the land. He wanted his guests to feel the assurance of having a first-rate medical facility within a stone’s throw. He had wanted that, but instead he had Brynthwaite Hospital.

The building was as colorless and foreboding now as it had been when he and Lawrence and Marshall Pycroft had been awaken at dawn every day, thrown into drab gray uniforms, and marched down to the gloomy mess hall for tasteless porridge and watered-down milk. Whereas the sunlight seemed to sparkle and dance in the glass windows of the shops and houses across the street, all light and happiness was sucked into the hospital, where it withered and died.

A pair of coughing children huddled inside of the dark foyer as Jason stepped through the front door. It got worse from there. The front room of the hospital—once a coatroom packed with dozens of identical, ugly cloaks in varying sizes, and boots that were seldom claimed by the same owner twice—was now a waiting room. An over-crowded, sick-smelling waiting room with a single, harried nurse clucking and fussing at the potential patients, as if it were their fault they were there. As it happened, that same nurse, Mrs. Garforth, had been responsible for shoving orphans into those long-ago cloaks and boots, just as she was responsible for the people in the waiting room now. Some things were as immovable as the pyramids, and Mrs. Garforth was one of them.

“Mr. Throckmorton,” she exclaimed when she noticed Jason, saying his so-called family name the same way she would ‘Mr. Up-To-No-Good’ when he was ten.

“Mrs. Garforth.” Jason removed his hat and bowed to her with a shadow of the fearful respect that she had demanded as a much younger woman. “Is Dr. Pycroft in his office?”

Mr. Garforth laughed. “He’s in his office and on the ward and in surgery all at once. Good luck finding him.”

Jason took that as permission to cross out of the waiting room and into the hallway that had stayed fresh in his mind years after he’d walked out for what he had hoped would be good. A child was screaming blue murder and crying in a room somewhere off one of the side corridors. A depressing chorus of moans and grunting sounded from somewhere else, likely one of the old classrooms that had been converted into a recovery room or examination room. On top of that, the shrill shouting of a pair of nurses, arguing over who should clean up after someone or other reverberated off the walls. It was enough to bring on a headache in five seconds.

“Marshall,” Jason boomed. Anywhere else and he wouldn’t have dared to holler, but childhood experience had taught him that the only way to be heard in this building was to be the loudest.

A crash sounded down the hall, followed by a frustrated, “Dammit!”

Moments later, Marshall stomped out into the hall, a bloody rag in his hands. “Simon,” he bellowed, face red, moustache bristling. “Simon, you lazy cur, where are you?” He spotted Jason and stormed down the hall toward him.

“Things are a little busy?” Jason said.

Marshall huffed a mirthless laugh. “Busy, chaotic, insane, muddled, and impossible is more like,” he growled. “Simon, goddam you!”

Another crash sounded from above, followed by the pounding of footsteps heading down the building’s main staircase. Jason knew every creak and step of those stairs like the back of his hand.

“Yes, Dr. Pycroft? You called, Dr. Pycroft?” The gangling young man that nearly lost his footing at the bottom of the stairs reminded Jason a little too much of the underfed, under-educated boys that had been dropped off at the orphanage and had no idea how their lives had gotten so thoroughly away from them—as opposed to the boys like him, Marshall, and Lawrence, who had been at the orphanage so long they remembered nothing else.

“Help Mr. Vair in examination room two. I’ve lanced and bandaged that boil, but he needs help getting his trousers back on,” Marshall ordered the young man.

Simon swallowed, turning slightly green, and wearily said, “Yes, Dr. Pycroft.” He ran off into the room Marshall had come from.

Marshall turned to Jason, finishing wiping his hands and thrusting the dirty cloth into his apron. “What do you want?”

Jason was too used to rough manners to blink at his friend’s foul mood. He knew too much about Marshall's home life to ask what had him in such a temper.

“I’ve come for my medicine,” he said, lowering his voice.

Marshall narrowed his eyes and sniffed. “Oh, that?” Both syllables dripped with disapproval.

“Yes, that,” Jason said with a clenched jaw. Added to the tension in his back, clenching his jaw pushed the headache he had from walking into the building to raging fullness.

“It did come in,” Marshall conceded. He huffed out a breath and marched past Jason to the hospital’s office.

The office was surprisingly tidy, given the chaos in the rest of the hospital. If ‘tidy’ was a word that could be used to describe neatly arranged piles of bills, carefully scrubbed cupboards with nothing in them but a few bottles, and a locked cash door that Jason was reasonably certain had less than five pounds in it. Marshall crossed to a cabinet, opened the door, and took out a blue glass bottle that was about the size of his hand. With a frown firmly in place that etched lines between his eyes, Marshall brought the bottle to Jason and thrust it at him.

“It’s useless swill,” he said.

Jason took the bottle and slipped it into the pocket of his coat. “What do I owe you?”

“You owe me the decency of not believing in quack tonics to cure fabricated diseases.”

Jason flinched. Leave it to Marshall to say exactly what he felt. Leave it to him not to understand at all.

“Did you read the ingredients?” Jason asked, a burst of shame making him mumble the way he had when the headmaster of the orphanage had dragged him up for disciplinary action. He took a bill from his pocket and handed it across to his friend.

“I did,” Marshall said, taking the money and crossing his arms. “There’s nothing in there that will kill you, if what the bottle says it contains is true. Which is a big ‘if.’ Chamomile, lavender—which I thought was quaint. A trace of opiates, I’m sure. It’s mostly alcohol. You can medicate yourself with that at the Fox and Lion.”

“Thank you for your expert medical advice, Dr. Pycroft,” Jason snarled. “I plan to do exactly that for supper with Lawrence. You’re invited, by the way.”

All of Marshall’s pent-up fury rushed out on a sigh, and he rubbed his forehead. “I’ll get there if I can. If Clara doesn’t come for my blood first.”

Jason arched a brow. It was the closest he would come to asking about his friend’s marital problems. Marshall replied by shaking his head, tangible weariness blanketing him.

“You need to be careful about these so-called medicines,” Marshall said, more sympathy in his voice. “The ones that aren’t as harmless and useless as tea could cause serious damage.”

“That’s why I have you order them and vet the contents before I take them,” Jason said, unable to meet his friend’s eyes.

Marshall crossed his arms. “It’s all in your head, man,” he said. “You’re no more afflicted than I am.”

“No?” Jason drawled. Marshall had no idea what kind of suffering he’d been through, what kind of suffering he endured on a daily basis. Lawrence laughed at him too. Between the two of them, they seemed to think he should just let nature take its natural course and damn him.

“If it vexes you that much,” Marshall said, lowering his voice and stepping closer, “why not just go down to London and—”

“I’ve just spent the last ten years in London,” Jason snapped, “and believe me, it did not help matters at all. Quite the opp—”

He was cut off by another crash and a cry from the hall.

“Bloody hell,” Marshall growled and cut around Jason to rush out of the office. “What the devil is going on in here? Can’t I turn my back for five minutes without the walls crumbling?”

Just like that, Jason was forgotten as his friend rushed off to put out whatever fire had been started. Jason debated staying to help him out. Heaven only knew that Marshall needed help. There was no point, though. He didn’t know what he was doing and would only be in the way. He left the office and strode out through the hall and the waiting room. Mrs. Garforth gave him a suspicious look as he went. That much was a familiar comfort, at least.

As soon as he was out in the sunshine of High Street, Jason’s headache lifted. He crossed the road and marched on to the livery that stood around the corner. As soon as the stables were finished at the hotel, he would move his carriage and horses there, but in the meantime, they were housed at the public livery. The groom there rushed off to saddle his horse, and within fifteen minutes, Jason was riding calmly away from the center of Brynthwaite and out along the lake road toward Huntington Hall.

As far back as Jason could remember, the one thing that had soothed his soul and put his troubles to rest was riding. Sitting on a horse, all of the pain and the shame and the struggles that his life had thrown at him were forgotten. He loved the sunshine and the fresh air, and if he’d had time, he would have gone riding through the forests and glens around Brynthwaite until he lost himself entirely. People whispered about Lawrence being the wild gypsy, but Jason knew that a drop of that magic—that magic or that curse—had ended up in his blood too.

At the same time, nothing could get him to Huntington Hall fast enough. The vast estate that had once encompassed Brynthwaite and the entire surrounding area was the ancestral seat of the Dyson family. They had been the earls of Thornwell and lords of the land as long as anyone could remember and farther. Dysons had owned the land as far back as the sixteenth century, and for all that time they had lived in harmony with the village and farm folk under their care. The modern world had changed the nature of that relationship, and the long illness of Lord Thornwell had changed the face of the representative of the first family, but Lady Elizabeth was as well-loved by the people whose great-grandparents had once owed fealty to her family.

Jason had loved her for as long as he could remember. His heart sped up as he turned his horse off the main road and onto the well-kept lane that wound up the hill toward the manor house. As a boy, he’d caught a glimpse of Lady Elizabeth riding through town in an open carriage, her golden-blond hair loose down her back and a garland of rosebuds and ribbons on her head. He’d lost his heart to her right there and then, and every waking moment had been devoted to discovering how a poor orphan boy could make himself grand enough to win the hand of the fair maiden who lived in the castle on the hill. Every step he took when he left Brynthwaite, every pound he made, every accomplishment he had numbered was for one thing and one thing only—for Lady Elizabeth.

“The ladies are in the rose garden, enjoying tea and company,” Lord Thornwell’s butler, Hugo, informed him when Jason called at the front door. “If you will come this way sir, I can show you out to the party.”

“The party?”

An uneasy prickle raced down Jason’s back. He had hoped to catch Lady E. alone, to impress her with the progress his hotel was making and to please her by telling her he’d hired the maid she had recommended. He hadn’t counted on competition, particularly not in the form of Mrs. Crimpley, the mayor’s insufferable wife, and a dandy of some sort that he’d never clapped eyes on before. The dandy was there with his mother, of all things, and along with Lady Charlotte Dyson, Lady E’s widowed aunt, and her daughter, Alexandra, Lady E’s cousin, it was far less of an intimate afternoon than Jason had hoped for. His hopes fell flat at his feet.

“Lady Elizabeth,” he made a deep bow to her once Hugo announced him. As was only fitting a gentleman of the highest order—a gentleman he would have given his eye teeth to actually be—Jason bowed to the other ladies in as close to the proper order as he could figure out on the fly. “Lady Dyson, Mrs. Crimpley, Lady Alexandra—”

“Doctor Dyson,” he was sure he heard Alexandra grumble.

“—and Mrs…?”

“Hello, Mr. Throckmorton.” Lady Elizabeth graced him with a smile. “This is Lady McGovern, a friend of my mother’s, and her son, Lord Angus McGovern.”

Lord Angus stood, spilling the tea cloth draped over one of his knees to the grass, and crossed to shake Jason’s hand.

“It is a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Throckmorton.” The young man pumped Jason’s hand. He still held a teacup in his other hand and splashed tea over the sides. “I won’t be outnumbered anymore,” the man added with a snorting chuckle.

Oh. Dear. God. Jason did his best to smile. He wished he could run. He would have done better to stay at the hotel and oversee preparations.

Or so he thought, until Lady E. smiled at him.

“How are things at your fine hotel, Mr. Throckmorton?” she asked, the sunlight no match for the beauty of her blue eyes.

Another set of blue eyes rushed suddenly to mind, but he shut the image away.

“Preparations are—”

“Mr. Throckmorton is opening a hotel in town,” Lady E. spoke over him, leaning toward Lady McGovern and her simpering son. “It’s quite lovely, if I do say so myself. How many rooms did you say it has again, Mr. Throckmorton?”

“Twenty-four,” Jason said. “And a dining—”

“Yes, there’s a restaurant attached to it,” Lady E. rushed on. “I’m sure it will be quite splendid and that we will dine there frequently.”

That’s why I built it, Jason thought.

“I hear the views from the guest rooms are lovely,” Lady E. said, “and that it is sure to attract the finest clientele, here to see the lakes in all their beauty.”

“Is that so?” Lady McGovern asked Jason.

“It is,” Lady E. answered for him. “We are so proud of our Mr. Throckmorton. He is a local boy, you know, raised at Brynthwaite Municipal Orphanage.”

Jason fought to keep the wince he felt from showing on his face. Lady McGovern flinched, blinking rapidly at him.

“An orphan? Good lord,” Lord Angus exclaimed. He also relaxed, as though certain Jason could no longer be considered competition. He was a fool.

“I may have been born in humble circumstances,” Jason began.

“Mr. Throckmorton has made quite a name for himself,” Lady E. interrupted, bright as the dawn. “He owns a great number of hotels in London, Manchester, Liverpool, why, all over England.”

“Six hotels,” Jason said as modestly as he could.

Lord Angus frowned and tensed all over again. Jason sent him a gloating grin. Lady McGovern glanced to Lady Dyson, who nodded with a knowing smile. Alexandra’s brow was knit and her posture loose, as if she wasn’t paying attention to the conversation at all.

“I say it’s proof of what a good, English education can do for a man with the drive to improve himself,” Lady E. said followed by, “Do sit down, Mr. Throckmorton.”

“Thank you, Lady Elizabeth.”

It was just Jason’s luck that the only empty chairs were at the far end of the circle from where Lady E. sat, next to Alexandra. He took it as well as he could, and strode across the gathering, then turned to sit in one of the white-painted wrought-iron chairs.

As he lowered himself, the bottle in his pocket clinked, and then spilled out onto the grass.

“Oh. What’s that?” Lady E. asked.

The one time Jason would have preferred not to catch her notice. When Alexandra leaned over to retrieve the bottle, Jason held his breath. Blood and embarrassment rushed to his face. He prepared for disaster as Alexandra studied the front of the bottle, flipped it to read the back, then handed it to him. Their eyes met.

Alexandra

Finally, something interesting had happened. She wouldn’t die of boredom after all. What was a social-climbing hotelier doing with a bottle of some quack remedy? It was impossible to figure out what illness it was for from the label. She’d seen similar stuff sold in hamlets in Hampshire. It could have been intended as a cure for baldness or rheumatism or plantar warts, for all the label revealed. Mr. Throckmorton may have been an orphan, but he was also a sophisticated gentlemen, one smart enough to make a name and a fortune for himself. He should have been smart enough to know that remedies like the one he’d just slipped casually back into his coat pocket were no better than pond water, and frequently twice as dangerous.

“It’s nothing,” he answered Elizabeth’s question. “Just some cough syrup. The dust at the hotel due to the construction irritates my throat sometimes is all.”

It was not cough syrup.

Interesting.

“What is the name of the syrup?” Elizabeth pressed on. “Do they sell it at Faraday’s store? Perhaps we should buy a bottle. I’ll tell Polly to pick some up next time she’s in town.”

“It does not come from Faraday’s,” Mr. Throckmorton said, his color growing higher and higher. “I purchased it through the hospital.”

“Ah, the hospital,” Elizabeth sighed and sank.

For a change, Alexandra perked up. “Is there a hospital in town?”

True to form, her mother caught her breath and glowered as if someone had uttered an obscene word.

Elizabeth merely blinked. “Of course there’s a hospital in town,” she said. “I’m surprised no one has told you about it yet, dear cousin.”

“Are you interested in hospitals, Lady Alexandra?” the boob, Lord Angus, asked her.

Alex clenched her teeth and took a few seconds to compose herself before her temper could draw her to stand and walk over to the idiot to punch him in the nose.

“My daughter had a passing interest in medicine,” her mother answered, mouth tight.

Alex arched an eyebrow, close to quivering with rage. “I have a degree in medical science, Lord Angus, and a license to practice medicine. In fact, in Hampshire, before being dragged up the breadth of the country to sit idly in my dear cousin’s garden last week, growing more useless and indolent by the moment, I was a doctor with my own practice.”

“Alexandra,” her mother hissed, attempting to silence her as ever.

“Which is exactly the point,” Elizabeth said, ignoring Alex’s bite. She, at least was on Alex’s side. “I’m shocked that no one has given you a tour of the hospital. I would have taken you myself, but since you arrived last week, we’ve been so preoccupied with parties and shopping and entertaining fine guests, such as yourself, Lord Angus, that there hasn’t been time. I was certain someone else would tell you all about it.”

“If only they had,” Alex said and sipped her tea. She hoped that raising the cup to her mouth to hide half of her face would steer the conversation well away from her. In fact, she wished all conversations would steer away from her. She had no idea how ladies could simply sit and pose and be so useless all day when the real world was out there, pulsing. It had only been a week, but if something didn’t change soon, she would be forced to take drastic measures.

“A female medical doctor is quite unusual,” Lord Angus said, crushing Alex’s hopes of disappearing. “Why, I didn’t realize that medical colleges would even allow female students.”

“They do,” Alex replied, as flat as she could.

“I was so proud of Alexandra when she wrote to tell me she got in to Winchester Medical College,” Elizabeth prattled on, always the center of attention and the focus of the conversation, as usual. “She’s ever so smart. She eclipses me at every turn.”

Alex owed it to her cousin to share a genuine smile with her. Elizabeth didn’t mean to be vapid, she’d been born to it. It irritated Alex to no end, because her dear cousin had it in her to be just as innovative and revolutionary as she herself wanted to be. Elizabeth was bright, quick, and industrious. She had taken over from her father more effectively than any brother could, and she was a pure genius at avoiding marriage, which Alex and Elizabeth both knew would spell the end of Elizabeth’s freedom and ascendency. Why she chose to devote so much of that energy to gossip and meddling in the lives of the people around her, Alex would never know.

“If you haven’t had a chance to visit the hospital as of yet,” Mr. Throckmorton said beside her, “then I urge you to visit as soon as possible.”

“Oh?” There was a look in the man’s eye, like the spark of an idea, that made Alex reassess him.

“I happen to be friends with Dr. Marshall Pycroft, the chief doctor and administrator of the hospital. I just came from there. He is sorely in need of qualified help.”

“Is he?” Yes, Mr. Throckmorton was a bird of a different feather than she had thought if he suggested that she, a woman, should look in on a hospital that was in need of staff. “I shall have to check into it.” As soon as possible too. She scouted the garden, looking for an excuse to leave the party.

“Alexandra,” her mother snapped.

Alex met her eyes. There was more in that one harsh look than anyone sitting nearby could possibly guess at. That look and her name barked like that held years-worth of disapproval and discouragement. It held scolding that Alex was far too old to endure, and the powerlessness that came with being an unmarried woman under the protection of a mother who had always ruled with an iron hand.

“If you need syrup for your cough, Mr. Throckmorton, because of the dust, does that mean that construction is still under way?”

Elizabeth’s nosy question was just the relief Alex was looking for. Chances are it was deliberate on Elizabeth’s part. Alex would thank her later.

“A few projects are still underway,” Mr. Throckmorton answered, “but rest assured, the hotel will be completed in time for its opening in a few weeks.”

Alex let herself drift off once more as Elizabeth pried for gossip about the hotel, and as Mr. Throckmorton catered to her every whim. The man was besotted, which seemed like a terrible shame in the light of how he’d just proved himself to be more than most men Alex had run across. Few of the gentlemen of her acquaintance would admit that a woman had a brain, much less that she could be a physician. Lord only knew how hard it had been to prove that to the faculty and her fellow students in Winchester. And even though the best position she could get upon graduation was that of country doctor—after dozens and dozens of applications to hospitals and institutions across southern England had been rejected—she missed medicine the way she would miss a child that had died.

In the end, she couldn’t stand the ache of knowing there was a hospital that needed help so close by. As the others rambled on about the hotel, she stood, put her teacup aside, and wandered off, heading back to the house. She couldn’t wait another second, couldn’t possibly stand the agony of being kept from the one thing she loved for a moment.

“Alexandra!”

Her mother caught up to her as she crossed through the hall, after ordering Hugo to have the governess cart brought up for her. Alex stiffened her back and prepared for battle.

“Mother,” she greeted her mother with as pleasant a smile as she could fake.

“Why have you left the party? Lord Angus was just telling us about his horses.”

Alex sighed. “I am not interested in Lord Angus’s horses. I am not interested in Lord Angus.”

“Well you should be,” her mother snapped. “I’ve never been more humiliated in my life. I asked Lady McGovern especially to bring her son so that the two of you could meet.”

Alex clenched her jaw. Every other day, her mother had never been more humiliated in her life.

“No, Mother,” she said.

Her mother drew back, blinking rapidly. “What do you mean, ‘no, Mother?’”

“I mean no, I will not blithely marry the first man that you thrust at me. I have no wish to marry at all.”

“Well, I never,” her mother sputtered and snorted. Her eyes held all of the fire and fury of a dragon about to strike.

“And that is precisely the problem,” Alex snapped. “You never. You never think before you act, you never consult me, and you never give a care to my wishes.”

Her mother’s face flushed red with anger. “I think of nothing but you, my dear,” she said just above a whisper, her voice tight. “I think of you every moment of the day. Everything I do is for you, to prevent you from ruining yourself beyond all repair.”

“Choosing to work, to be a doctor, is not ruining myself beyond repair,” Alex rehashed the same argument she’d been making for too many years. “It is making something of my life and helping those who need me.”

“You can help those who need you by becoming the wife of a gentleman, and then using your position to spearhead as many charitable campaigns as you would like,” her mother said, as though completely baffled by her daughter’s thinking.

Hugo stepped in through the front door. “The cart, my lady,” he announced.

“Thank you, Hugo.” Alex nodded to him.

“Cart?” Her mother’s eyes went bright with alarm. “What do you need a cart for? We have guest.”

“I only wish to get out and enjoy the fresh air and scenery,” Alex lied. Her mother had lived in daily fear that Alex would pack her things and flee without warning since they had arrived in Cumbria. Those fears were well-founded.

Her mother narrowed her eyes in suspicion now. “Let me fetch Hilda to go with you,” she said, referring to her maid.

“No, Mother. The governess cart is waiting, and I would only bore her. I’m not in the mood to converse.”

“You wouldn’t have to converse with Hilda, she’s just a maid,” her mother argued.

“No,” Alex replied. It was final.

She turned on her heel and marched out past Hugo, through the front door, and to the drive. The governess cart was waiting, the reins held by a groom. She helped herself up into the seat and took the reins, snapping them over the horse’s back to move on before her mother could stop her. She didn’t look back.

If she had thought things through a little more clearly, she would have asked Mr. Throckmorton exactly where the hospital was in town. She was certain it couldn’t be that hard to find, though. She drove into town, ignoring the enticing displays in shop windows, designed to lure ladies into spending more than they could afford, and searched instead of the sick and injured.

Aside from a near miss with another carriage at a dangerous corner, she was able to find the huge gray building with the words Brynthwaite Hospital above the door without incident. It took somewhat longer to find a place to leave the cart without it obstructing traffic. Fortunately, there was a livery nearby. By the time she finally marched through the hospital’s doors, her heart was in her throat and every instinct to heal that she had was buzzing.

“Can I help you, ma’am?” a gruff old nurse asked Alex as she stood in the crowded waiting room, taking it all in.

Two contusions, a few skin irritations, but mostly coughs that sounded similar in nature. An outbreak of influenza? No, the patients didn’t seem flushed or listless enough. Perhaps widespread hay fever, then? Or a minor but persistent bronchial complaint?

“Yes.” Alex brought herself back to the task at hand. “I’m here to see Dr. Marshall Pycroft.”

The nurse clucked and shook her head. “What do you people think this is, a social club? It’s a bloody hospital! Or at least it would be if you folks would let the doctor do his job.”

Alex raised her eyebrows. “Is Dr. Pycroft available?”

The nurse sighed and pushed past a bench full of coughers to trundle off down the hall to one side. Alex watched her go, unclear whether she had been dismissed or whether the nurse had gone to fetch Dr. Pycroft. It didn’t seem to matter, not when there was so much to be done before her. She tugged off her gloves and marched to the end of the row of coughers.

“How are you feeling?” she asked a middle-aged man with a red, bulbous nose. “Is the cough in your lungs or higher? Is it dry or moist?”

By the time the nurse returned, a harried, dark-haired man with a moustache scowling behind her, Alex had interviewed more than a dozen of the coughers, ascertained that their symptoms were similar and indicative of some sort of contagion, and formulated the best course of treatment. She had only just started telling some of the sufferers to take a syrup of black cherry and slippery elm, when the nurse gasped and barked, “What are you doing?”

Alex stood and ignored the nurse in favor of extending her hand to the man.

“Dr. Marshall Pycroft, I presume?” she asked, excitement and promise racing through her.

“Yes.” He stared at her. “And you are?”

“Dr. Alexandra Dyson.” It felt so good to utter those words again that her head went light.

The reactions around her were just as satisfying. Dr. Pycroft’s brow shot up. The nurse gasped and murmured “Dyson!” Several of the patients around her hummed and smiled, as though her questions and advice suddenly made sense.

“Doctor Dyson?” Dr. Pycroft asked, shaking her hand.

“Yes.” There was no point waiting for pleasantries to tackle what she’d come here for. “I believe several of these patients are suffering from bronchitis, Dr. Pycroft. I’ve seen the symptoms before in my practice in Hampshire. Do you have a quantity of black cherry and slippery elm syrup that could be dispensed to them or is there a chemist nearby where they could purchase the needed medicine?”

Silence. Dr. Pycroft stared at her. The nurse gawked as if she was a side show at the circus. Even the coughers stopped coughing to see what would happen next.

“Our dispensary is sadly depleted,” Dr. Pycroft began slowly. “I’ve had little time to take stock and send for fresh supplies these last few weeks.” Without pausing, he launched right into a suspicious, “Why are you here?”

This would work. Alex knew it like she knew most of the patients in the waiting room needed nothing more than rest, liquids, and a few simple remedies.

“I just met a friend of yours, a Mr. Throckmorton, up at my cousin’s house. He informed me that the hospital was in need of qualified medical help. I am a doctor. I am looking for a position. I’ve come to see if we might come to an understanding.”

“A doctor?” The nurse finally found her voice. “But you’re a woman.”

“I am,” Alex conceded, glancing to her, then back to Dr. Pycroft. “I take it you do not see a wide variety of female physicians here in the north?” It was a tasteless dig at the provinciality of Cumbria, but if it got her the job, she would stoop to feigned snobbery.

“No,” Dr. Pycroft asked. “We do not. Come with me, Dr. Dyson.”

Thrilled at the progress she was making, Alex followed Dr. Pycroft as he turned and stormed through the waiting room and down the hall where the nurse had disappeared earlier. The size and scope of the hospital began to sink in to Alex as they passed several examination rooms and a large staircase. She could hear activity from the floor above, and the occasional murmur of someone in one of the rooms or another.

“You have quite a bit of space,” she observed as Dr. Pycroft led her on.

He replied with a mirthless laugh. “Space has never been a problem. We could house half the county in here if we packed them in tight enough. Folks come from miles away for treatment. No, space is not the problem.”

“Staffing is, I assume,” Alex answered.

Another grim laugh. “I am the only doctor for this entire hospital,” Dr. Pycroft told her, turning the corner into a wide, clean office. “If you can believe it. We’ve several nurses and a handful of porters who border on competent, but one doctor. Me.”

“So you are in the market for a second,” she asked, eyes bright.

Dr. Pycroft leaned against the edge of the room’s desk, crossing his arms and staring at her as if she were about to point and laugh at him.

“I’ve no time for pranks, Dr. Dyson,” he cut right to the point. “I’ve no time for ladies playing physician for their own amusement. You may have a medical degree—some women do these days—but I won’t have you larking about in my hospital, doling out cherry syrup when it suits you and leaving as soon as you’re bored. Hospitals are no laughing matter. They’re not like the tender charities you ladies like to dabble in.”

Alex stood straight. “I may be a lady by birth, Dr. Pycroft, but I am a doctor by calling. As such, I am well aware of the realities of medicine. I am not squeamish and I assure you, I am very serious. I want to work at this hospital.”

He was silent. Alex clenched her jaw and held herself rigid as he examined her. More than a few of her colleagues in medical school had raked her with glances that were intended to do everything from intimidate to scandalize. She’d received more indecent comments and proposals than she had compliments or accolades. Dr. Pycroft’s look was calculated, assessing. He was taking her seriously. It was as encouraging as her world got.

“Where did you study?” he asked suddenly.

“Winchester Medical College,” she answered without blinking. “Class of ’91. I have been practicing in rural Hampshire for these past three years.”

“What brings you to Brynthwaite?”

“My mother,” she answered, failing to keep the bitterness out of her voice. She cleared her throat and elaborated. “My father passed away several years ago. Weeks before I graduated, as it happens.” A twinge of the old grief, at the tragedy of her father never getting to see the daughter he was so proud of achieve the goal that had been his dream as much as hers, hit her. “My mother would have preferred to say in Hampshire, but as the widow of a second son, she soon found her finances in dire straits. My father’s brother, Lord Thornwell, offered us a home at Huntington Hall, so here we are.”

Dr. Pycroft nodded. “You were willing to leave your practice to come live in a grand house?”

“No, I was not willing,” she said, frowning, wondering if she liked the man or not. “I was forced to come here on the threat that if I didn’t, my income would be cut. My position in Hampshire was not enough to provide for a living, and there were few who were willing to shelter a single female doctor.” And damn them all for turning their backs on her when she had done so much for them.

“This is not easy work, Dr. Dyson,” Dr. Pycroft went on. “The hospital is under-funded and frequently without all the supplies I would prefer we had. We see a variety of cases, though, and perform a full spectrum of surgeries. Do you think you can keep up with the intensity?”

“Yes,” she answered without reservation. In fact, the very word ‘surgery’ sent a thrill through her that most women would only feel at the prospect of a coming-out ball. “I will not disappoint you, Dr. Pycroft.” Although she may disappoint everyone else.

Dr. Pycroft pushed away from his desk. “I am in desperate need, Dr. Dyson, and so I will take you on provisionally.”

Joy burst in Alex’s chest. Even a provisional hire was pure heaven. “Thank you, Dr. Pycroft.” She couldn’t help but smile.

His face softened a hair at the expression. “I will, of course, be checking your license and your credentials at my soonest possible convenience. If I find anything out of order, you will be asked to leave. Can you start on Monday?”

“Monday?” Alex asked. “I can start right now. You certainly need someone to assist with the patients in the waiting room.”

Dr. Pycroft turned and blinked at her as he stepped back out into the hall. “Right now? Dr. Dyson, you are not dressed to attend to the sick.”

Alex glanced down at her afternoon dress. He was right. It was more suited to the tea her cousin was probably still hosting. She couldn’t wait to get the useless thing bloodied.

“Do you have an apron?” she asked.

If she wasn’t mistaken, a grin tweaked the corner of Dr. Pycroft’s mouth. “In the dispensary, which is that door there.”

He pointed down the hall closer to the waiting room. His expression lightened and then fell again at the sight of a young girl, about twelve, striding down the hall toward him with a glower that matched the one he’d been wearing earlier.

“Mary.” He let out a breath and strode toward her. “What is it, my darling?”

Marshall

Fate gave with one hand and took with the other. Just when his savior had stepped through the door in the form of Dr. Alexandra Dyson, filling him with the hope that a few things might actually get done around the hospital for a change, the light went out again.

“What is it?” he asked his daughter, coming to stand in front of her in the middle of the hall.

“Mother sent me to fetch you home,” Mary sighed. She seemed as little pleased to be sent on the errand as he was to be on the receiving end of it. “She says that if you want your laundry finished, you should come and do it yourself.”

“Bloody hell,” he swore. Mary was used to such things. She was the one person who wouldn’t hold anything against him. They were in it together. “What now?”

“She tried to wash the clothes,” Mary said, “but if you ask me, she made a mess of it on purpose. Everything is soaked at home, and there are washing suds on the walls.”

Marshall clenched his teeth. The woman was punishing him. She had been punishing him since the day he announced they were moving home to Brynthwaite. He turned to send an apologetic glance to Dr. Dyson, another woman who had been dragged up to the back end of nowhere against her will. Unlike Clara, however, Dr. Dyson looked as though he had just made her life immeasurably better instead of worse.

“Dr. Dyson, I’d like you to meet my daughter, Mary,” He introduced them.

“How do you do?” Mary asked, making a nice curtsy.

“Quite well,” Dr. Dyson answered.

“Are you a real doctor?” Mary asked.

“I am,” Dr. Dyson smiled. There was such pride in her voice, in her smile. That was a blessed change from everything Marshall was used to.

“I’ve just hired Dr. Dyson to work here at the hospital,” Marshall went on, “and you can go home and tell your mother that while she may be up to her neck in sopping laundry and soap suds, we are up to our eyeballs in sick and injured people who need to be treated without delay.”

“Yes, Papa,” Mary said, far too gloomy for a bright girl her age. She shook her head. “I don’t understand why she won’t just let me do the laundry. I know how. Nora and I watched her maid do the laundry when I was playing at her house.”

He had to grin and kiss her forehead. She was the sweetest daughter a man could ask for. But he questioned the wisdom of letting her have friends who employed a variety of servants. It would only set her expectations higher than he could ever hope to meet. At the same time, Marshall knew that his eldest was every bit as capable as she claimed she was.

“Tell your mother that I will be home directly, but that I’ve instructed you to help tidy up the place before I get there. Then you can do as much laundry as you’d like and claim you’re only following orders, like a good soldier.”

“Yes, Papa.” Mary burst into a smile. It both warmed Marshall’s heart and hardened it. These were not the things that should make a girl so close to growing up happy.

Mary pressed up to her toes and kissed Marshall’s cheek before turning and running off. Marshall watched her go, the weight of parental love and guilt hanging over him.

“She’s a fine young lady,” Dr. Dyson commented.

Marshall started. He’d forgotten that his new employee was there.

“She is that,” he said, putting on his best frown and gesturing for Dr. Dyson to follow her down the hall to the dispensary. “She takes too much on her young shoulders,” he lamented.

“Though she seems capable of handling it,” Dr. Dyson said.

“Which is precisely the problem,” he muttered, hoping she hadn’t heard. “Here are the aprons. You may want to make a quick survey of the medicines we have on hand. Simon is supposed to do inventory twice a week, but he’s had his hands full, so I doubt he’s taken stock since last month.”

“If we make it through all of the people in the waiting room, I may be able to do that,” Dr. Dyson said.

The woman was magnificent. Then again, anyone, be they king or beggar, who would have said those words to him just then would be considered magnificent. But there was something about having so much help offered by a handsome woman in an expensive frock that made it that much sweeter.

Marshall left Dr. Dyson to her perusal and marched back into the hall. “Mrs. Garforth,” he called, heading for the waiting room.

“Yes, Dr. Pycroft?” Mrs. Garforth answered him. She was waiting, solid as Gibraltar, just on the other side of the doorway to the waiting room. Almost as if she had been listening for him, listening to everything that had been said moments before. Well, it had been her job to get him into trouble when he was a boy. Some habits died hard.

“Mrs. Garforth, Dr. Dyson is now employed at the hospital. You will do your utmost to be sure that she has all the assistance that she requires as she acquaints herself with the building, the supplies, and the patients.”

“A woman doctor?” Mrs. Garforth balked.

Marshall nodded, then turned to head back into the hall. “Any doctor is a godsend at this point, Mrs. Garforth. You will not give her a hard time.”

“Yes, Dr. Pycroft,” she called after him, unconvincing.

Marshal frowned and headed upstairs to the wards to break the news to Simon and the other porters as well as the ward nurses. The hospital had been built as a home for unwanted children, and was designed to accommodate plenty of them. He halls were wide, the staircase was wider still, and in spite of being dark and closed-off, the rooms were large. Growing up, he’d lived almost his whole life within the confines of the orphanage. He’d eaten in the mess hall downstairs—still in use as a mess hall and recreation room for those patients too ill to leave but well enough to be out of bed, and their family when they had come from far afield—he’d been schooled in the stuffy rooms that now constituted examination rooms, the hospital’s surgery, and his office, and he’d laid his head to rest each night in the boy’s dormitory.

The dormitories were where anything of any actual importance had ever happened in Brynthwaite Municipal Orphanage. There were two of them—two gigantic, long rooms that ran nearly the entire length of the second floor of the building, with bathrooms at the end. One dorm had been for boys and the other for girls. The ages of the children tossed in together hadn’t mattered, and more than a few nights were interrupted by the older children bullying the younger ones senseless. Marshall had only been too grateful to have Jason and Lawrence there to defend him from the worst of it. They had grown tougher from the relentless teasing. He had threatened to fall apart under the constant onslaught. Even now, knowing that the boy’s dormitory was nothing more than the men’s ward of a hospital he oversaw and knowing it was filled with the sick and infirm, stepping into the room sent chills down his back.

“Simon,” he barked, harsher than he needed to be to hide the trickle of old fear down his back.

“Yes, Dr. Pycroft.” Simon sprang up from where he was mopping up sick next to the bed of a man who had eaten dangerously bad meat the day before.

“We have a new doctor aboard with us,” he said. It felt good to say.

“We do?” Simon blinked.

“Our prayers have been answered,” Nurse Callow, a middle-aged spinster of a thing who only spoke a few times a month sighed with joy.

Marshall nodded to her. “Dr. Alexandra Dyson. And yes, she’s a woman.”

“A woman doctor?” a man in a bed next to him, his foot enclosed in a cast and elevated by a stack of pillows, snorted. “I ain’t lettin’ no female doctor touch me.”

“I wouldn’t touch you either, Horace,” Marshall snapped at the man.

Horace laughed, as did a handful of the patients near him, but damn, it brought up a problem he hadn’t considered. He needed all the help he could get, but that didn’t mean everyone would accept that help. Well, he would cross that bridge when he came to it.

“I’m certain Dr. Dyson will be up here at some point, so you can introduce yourselves to her then. She was eager to get straight to work without the grand tour. So be kind to her when you see her.” He glanced around at the patients laid out in their beds. “If any of you so much as says ‘boo’ to her and frightens her away, I’ll have you on my surgery table in a trice, and I can’t guarantee which body parts will still be attached when you wake up.”

More raucous laughter followed him as he turned on his heel and marched out of the room. He let out a breath, shook his shoulders loose, and continued on to the woman’s and children’s ward. The women’s and children’s ward had been the girl’s dormitory, and as such it inspired far less horror in Marshall. He knew full well that the same miserable tactics of forcibly-induced hierarchy had existed amongst the girls growing up as much as it had with the boys, but as he had never been a part of it, the ward didn’t hold the same sense of doom for him.

“Good afternoon, ladies,” he greeted the dozen or so female patients.

“Good afternoon, Dr. Pycroft,” they answered, some sullen, others eager to please. Marshall wasn’t sure which made him more nervous.

“Nurse Stevens, Nurse Nyman, we have a new doctor on staff, Dr. Alexandra Dyson,” he announced without preamble.

“Alexandra?” Nurse Stevens asked, straightening from where she was spooning some sort of vile medicine down the throat of a listless young boy. “A woman?”

Marshall sighed. He might as well get used to the question now. “Yes. A woman and a doctor. We don’t care how God made her, so long as she’s willing to help us heal the sick, which she is. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, Dr. Pycroft,” the two nurses answered in unison.

Their eyes grew round as they glanced over Marshall’s shoulder.

“Dr. Pycroft,” Dr. Dyson spoke right behind him, slightly out of breath. “A man has just been brought in with a broken leg. He fell off a ladder. I just started stitching up a young woman’s split hand, and Mrs. Garforth sent me up to fetch you.”

Marshall laughed mirthlessly. “Baptism by fire, is it, Dr. Dyson?” He turned to the ward. “Here she is, your new doctor. Treat her well.”

“Yes, Dr. Pycroft.”

It was a blessing that Nurses Stevens and Nyman seemed instantly taken with the idea of a woman doctor. The less people he would have to convince of Dr. Dyson’s worth, the better.

Marshall headed downstairs to see to the man with the broken leg. He had neither the time nor the patience to check Dr. Dyson to be sure she was stitching the woman’s hand up correctly or with proper hygiene. For a man who had never trusted a soul beyond the friends he was raised with, trusting Dr. Dyson to do her job came surprisingly easily. Or perhaps that was because he was desperate.

The leg fracture turned out to be tricky. He had a devil of a time setting the poor man’s bone while he wailed and moaned, and eventually passed out from the pain. If they’d had the medicines to spare, he would have poured them down the man’s throat in an instant. Instead, he left the man bandaged and splinted and sleeping in one examination room while tending to another man with a hideous case of pox from head to toe in another room. Time ceased to have any meaning. The sick just kept coming, but as long as they were coming, Marshall would do whatever he could to make them better. If he worked hard enough, if he pursued cures diligently enough, then perhaps one day not a single soul would have to step foot in this blasted building again. Everyone, far and wide, would be well and happy, and he could finally rest.

“Dr. Pycroft, it’s well past six o’clock, and most of the patients have already gone home for the night or been admitted,” Mrs. Garforth informed him after he sent a cheeky beggar with a sprained wrist on his way.

Oblivious to anything but the inventory of injuries and illnesses running through his brain, he asked, “Has supper been started for the patients?”

“Started and half-served,” Mrs. Garforth answered. “And before you ask it, the linens are being washed and all the other washing has been sent out.”

“Thank God for that,” Marshall said. If they had to do all their own washing, they’d never get anything— “Dammit,” he huffed, remembering the debacle that waited for him at home.

Mrs. Garforth stared at him as if she would take soap to his mouth for cursing.

“Double dammit,” he hissed. He’d told Jason he would meet up with him and Lawrence at the Fox and Lion that evening too. Well, if it came down to having a drink with his friends in the pub or going home to a hysterical wife who wouldn’t give him a moment’s peace, the decision was easy.

He took off his apron and threw it in the hamper with the rest of the things that needed washing, washed his hands as thoroughly as he could, donned his coat, then marched out through the waiting room and into the street. He headed straight-away across the busy intersection and into the Fox and Lion. Familial duty or not, he needed a drink to fortify himself for what was to come. Lucky for him, Lawrence was already sitting at a table in the back corner. Marshall gestured to the barkeep—who knew him well enough to nod in return and start pulling a beer—then headed to the table.

“Tough day?” Lawrence asked as Marshall plopped into his chair.

Marshall groaned, letting the stress of his life roll off his shoulders and pull his posture down with it.

Lawrence chuckled. “The only man who can be pressed down by so many cares is a man who cares in the first place,” he said.

Marshall arched an eyebrow at him. “Fine words from someone who did not spend the entire day barely able to catch his breath as the crowd in the waiting room piled up. Where did this bronchitis come from anyhow?”

“I hear they’ve got it bad down Kendal way,” Lawrence said.

“Yes, and can’t the hospital in Kendal handle it without giving it to us?”

Lawrence shrugged. “They probably have their hands full too. You know poor folk are willing to make the journey all the way to Brynthwaite Hospital because you refuse to turn anyone away, whether they can pay or not.”

“And most of them fall into the ‘not’ category,” Marshall grumbled. That would be the death of him someday. “At least there is one light on the horizon,” he said, perking up a shade when the barkeep brought him his pint. “I’ve got a new doctor.”

“You actually found someone willing to work for the peanuts that you’re able to pay?” Lawrence smiled.

Halfway through his first sip, Marshall sighed. “Dammit, I forgot to discuss payment with her.”

“With her?” Lawrence sat straighter, his brow rising nearly to his hairline.

“Yes, yes,” Marshall grumbled. “I’ve hired a woman doctor. She comes highly qualified and unlike every other doctor this side of Yorkshire, she seems to actually want the job.”

Lawrence nodded consideringly as Marshall gulped his beer. “It makes sense,” he said. “If she’s a woman, chances are it’s been hard for her to find a position. I suppose a doctor like that would be willing to work for free if it came to it.”

“I won’t let that happen,” Marshall said. He paused, staring at his pint glass. “Though now that I think about it, she may not be in dire need of money in the first place. Dr. Alexandra Dyson.”

That was all he needed to say. Lawrence broke into a smile. “Lord Thornwell’s niece? I’d heard she and her mother moved in at the Hall. Didn’t know she was a doctor, though.”

“Apparently.”

The two men sat there in silence for a few seconds. Marshall relished his beer and Lawrence picked at a meat pie he was nearly finished eating. Lawrence’s expression grew far away, then serious.

“I wanted to ask you something,” he said at length.

“Ask,” Marshall said, feeling better now that he had some alcohol in him.

Lawrence met his eyes. “Is Jason ill?”

Marshall blinked, then burst into wry laughter. “Jason is no more ill than you or I.”

Lawrence quirked an eyebrow. “Why has he been coming to you to order him cures since he moved back, then?”

Marshall let out a long breath. “There’s nothing wrong with Jason that hasn’t been wrong with him for the last twenty years. He’s high-strung and ambitious. He’s so blasted determined to prove himself to the world that he can’t relax. Mark my words, that man won’t ever give himself a moment’s peace until they’ve erected a statue of him in the center of town, and even then, he’d probably work for a bigger one.”

“And that’s all it is?” Lawrence asked.

Marshall took another drink of his beer, instantly second-guessing himself. “I’m sure it is. The man is driven—driven by forces beyond his control, forces that I wouldn’t want pushing me, but driven still.”

Lawrence hummed and took another bite of his pie. “I’ve asked Mother Grace about it.”

“Mother Grace,” Marshall grumbled and sniffed.

“But she says to wait and watch,” Lawrence finished, a sharp edge to his voice.

He and Marshall had never seen eye-to-eye about the old witch who lived alone in the woods, and they never would. Mother Grace practiced the old arts, to hear Lawrence tell it. To Marshall, she was just another misguided old woman who couldn’t appreciate the gifts of modern science and medicine. She was probably the sort who had concocted the useless trash Jason kept ordering from him in the first place.

“All Jason needs is a woman,” Marshall went on, nearing the bottom of his pint glass. “Although much good it’s done me.”

Lawrence’s mouth quirked into a grin. “I believe a woman is what Jason is trying for.”

The two of them shared a sympathetic laugh. “If anyone can win Lady E’s hand,” Marshall said, “it’s Jason. He’s the only man I know with enough determination to break through that fine lady’s defenses.”

“He’ll never do it,” Lawrence contradicted him. “Lady E. gains nothing by marrying. I hate to see Jason suffer over her.”

“Five pounds say we’ll be standing up with him before the end of the year,” Marshall countered.

“What’s this about five pounds?”

Their bet was interrupted as Jason himself strode up to the table, looking like a gentleman who had a burr up his backside.

“Marshall here has just bet me five pounds that you’ll have Lady E. at the altar before the end of the year,” Lawrence said without any thought as to how their friend would take being made the center of a wager.

Much to Marshall’s surprise, Jason smiled. “That’s a bet you would lose, Lawrence. I will convince Lady E. to marry me.”

“I’m sure you will,” Lawrence said, his tone suggesting anything but.

Jason turned and waved to the barkeep, who instantly pulled a pint for him the way he had for Marshall.

“How did it go at the Hall?” Lawrence asked, sending a sly glance Marshall’s way.

Jason’s smile died as he took a seat. “Once again, I failed to speak to Lady E. alone. Her mother invited some wretched dandy and his mother for tea. Mrs. Crimpley was there too, which meant I had to listen to an earful about how horrible the hotel is and how it interrupts the town’s view and will cause crime and delinquency.”

“Is that so?” Marshall laughed. Lawrence laughed with him. The mayor’s wife thought a new display of bonnets at the milliner’s would cause crime and delinquency.

“She can winge all she likes,” James went on, taking his beer from the barkeep when it was delivered. “The hotel will go forward with or without her approval, and it will be a smashing success.”

“Here, here,” Marshall said, raising his glass.

Jason and Lawrence raised theirs as well—though Lawrence’s was already empty—and toasted. Marshall and James drank.

“Oh, and is it you I have to thank for sending Dr. Alexandra Dyson my way?” Marshall asked after he finished off his pint. He was almost ready to turn and head for home now.

“Was it?” Jason asked in turn. He shrugged. “I mentioned that you needed help at the hospital and—”

“Oh bloody hell,” Marshall interrupted. He sat suddenly straight, dread washing through him. “I left her there. I left that woman at the hospital, running around after patients, without so much as saying goodbye.” Hard guilt twisted his stomach.

Jason and Lawrence laughed. It was like old times, only with more responsibility heaped on all of their shoulders. Well, on Marshall’s and Jason’s shoulders. Marshall still wasn’t convinced Lawrence had shouldered an ounce of worry in his life.

“Don’t you think you’d better go find her before old Garforth stuffs her full of gruel and wraps her knuckles?” Jason asked.

Marshall grunted. “She might at that. That old battleax would never let us rest.”

“She couldn’t let us rest,” Lawrence countered. “She knew that if she did, we would run circles around her.”

“We ran circles around her anyway,” Jason added.

They shared another companionable chuckle. Something deep in Marshall’s chest unwound. It was good to have both of his friends back where he could enjoy a pint with them after a hard day. He and Lawrence had met up when they could, but their lives, taken individually, were so different. It took Jason to make the magic work. The three of them together were better than any two of them apart.

“Well, lads,” Marshall said, slapping the table and standing. “I might not be able to rescue Dr. Alexandra this evening, but I’ve been told I have a house that is floating away on a wave of wash-water and suds. I’d better go home while I have a home to go to.”

“Poor man,” Jason said with a solemn nod.

Marshall patted him on the back as he pulled his aching body out of the pub chair and prepared to go.

“Keep me informed about your grand endeavors, Jason. I have a bet to win,” he said, then turned to go.

Lawrence

It was painful to watch such a good friend in so much pain. Both of them. Marshall dragged his feet out the pub door, looking like he was pulling half a ton of bricks after him.

“Strange how so many believe that a woman is the solution to a man’s problems,” he said, sitting back in his chair. “Seems to me that they can cause more harm than good.”

Jason laughed, bitter and knowing, and took a long swig from his pint.

“I’m sorry, let me clarify,” Lawrence said, catching his mistake. “Women are wonderful. They are Nature’s perfect gift to this world. They should rightfully be worshiped as the goddesses they are. But marriage, on the other hand….”

“Are you going to start spouting all of your anti-matrimonial propaganda?” Jason asked, leaning back in his own chair.

“Marriage is a false institution, created by patriarchal religion as a means to control one spouse or the other,” Lawrence said.

“So the answer is yes, then.” Jason arched an eyebrow and crossed his arms.

“It is a paper construct,” Lawrence went on, as passionate about his beliefs as he was about tweaking his friend’s nose. “Its very nature is binding, constricting. A true union of male and female souls can only be achieved by physical, mental, and spiritual consent, a consent that has nothing to do with rules or laws.”

“Beyond nature’s law,” Jason finished his thought.

“Exactly.”

The two of them had had this discourse enough times in the past—in the past two weeks, even—that Jason was well-versed in all of Lawrence’s beliefs. Lawrence had the feeling that his old friend understood the philosophical arguments of hedonism, but that he, like so many, was held back by the constraints of society. Lawrence would have thought that being raised under the unique form of martial law that they’d been bent and nearly broken to would have wanted to make all of them cry out and struggle against those kinds of bonds for the rest of their days. Jason was different, though, and for the life of him, Lawrence had yet to figure out how.

“You’re only saying all that because Marshall is unhappy in his marriage,” Jason said. “If he was a blissful husband and doting father, you’d be sitting there telling me how glorious marriage is and how we should all rush headlong into it.”

“I would not,” Lawrence argued. “And for the record, Marshall is a doting father.”

“He is,” Jason agreed with a nod.

“As will you be, someday.”

Jason snorted. “Not at the rate I’m going.”

Deep sympathy expanded through Lawrence’s chest. “Why must it be Lady E?” he asked. “Why not some nice shop girl or…or that lovely new maid you hired this morning?”

Jason shot him a wary look—one that hid as much as it revealed.

“Don’t talk to me about maids or shop girls or ladies,” he said, sinking back into his chair with a wince. “Just the thought of them starts my mind wandering down paths I can’t afford to traverse.”

“No?” Lawrence studied his friend. Something was wrong. Marshall was right about him being highly-strung, but it was more than that. He shrugged. “At least you have the hotel to keep you occupied.”

“Yes,” Jason said, letting out a breath. “And it will be a small miracle if everything is in place for the opening in a few weeks.”

“It will work,” Lawrence said. “Your whole life, you’ve always made things work. One way or another.”

Jason nodded, sad and solemn. He stared at his empty pint glass on the tabletop. “Most things.”

Outside the pub window, the street had grown dark as night fell. Clouds had moved in, and now light spits of rain were streaking the windows. Lawrence didn’t mind a walk in the rain now and then, in fact, he enjoyed it. But he had a long way to go before he could rest his weary head.

“I should go and so should you,” he told Jason, standing.

“You’re right,” Jason said, pushing himself to his feet. He reached into the pocket of his buttoned-up coat and took out a bill, tossing it on the table. Jason threw around pound notes the way that children spun pennies in the street. “Dwelling on it will only make things worse,” he said as the two of them headed for the pub door together.

If only Lawrence could be entirely sure of what ‘it’ was.

They parted once they were in the street, Jason fixing his hat on his head and walking swiftly down the road to his hotel. Lawrence glanced up at the sky, then turned his steps to the road that led out of town and down a half mile to his forge. He was in no hurry. The May rain was cool and held the promise of flowers and grass. He smiled at it as he walked. It happened that a few of the fine citizens of Brynthwaite flinched at that smile and turned up their noses. One older woman even crossed over to the other side of the street. Lawrence could only laugh at her.

He picked up his pace once he passed the train station and the last few buildings at the edge of town. The train was long gone. It’d taken some things away with it and brought others, just as each new day and night did. Long ago, Lawrence had learned that it was best to ebb and flow with Nature instead of fighting her. Even the worst nights in the orphanage held lessons in them. You could fight against them and bury frustration deep in your soul, like Jason did, or you could let them pile and pile on top of you until they were likely to bury you alive, like Marshall. He chose to learn from them. And each little thing he learned helped him to find his place in the world more thoroughly.

His concern for his friends was still there, mixed with the molten stuff of his spirit, as he approached the forge. His workplace and home always had the faint red-orange glow of heat and life, of possibility and malleability. The forge itself had to be kept lit in order for the furnace to stay hot enough for him to do his work. Young Oliver Fulbright, a fellow orphan and a simpleton, by many people’s account, was there, as often as not, tending it with the single-minded devotion that his peculiarity instilled in him. The boy didn’t speak, but he knew everything there was to know about furnaces and fire, about metal and its working.

It wasn’t Oliver who stood under the overhanging roof covering the forge now, though.

Lawrence stopped, rain pelting down on him, and blinked to be sure what he was seeing was true. There, shivering under his roof, clothes ragged and hair wet and streaming, stood a young woman, staring at the fire.

“Hello?” Lawrence said, picking up his pace.

The young woman gasped and twisted to him, jumping back. Fear was bright in her eyes. Her face was bruised and her lip split and puffy on one side.

As soon as he was under the roof and out of the rain, Lawrence changed his tactics. He slowed his approach and held his hands out to the poor thing, reassuring her with a soft, “It’s all right. I won’t hurt you.”

The young woman took another half-step back, swaying closer to the hot forge, so Lawrence stopped where he was. In truth, she was standing too close to the fire. She had to have felt it, but rather than shrink away, she stayed right where she was. He looked her over as carefully as he could without alarming her. She had bare arms which also showed bruises and cuts. Her feet were visible under the ragged hem of her skirt, blistered and bloody.

“You’re hurt,” he said. “Let me help you.”

She didn’t answer, only stared at him. He dared to take another step toward her. This time she didn’t back away.

“My home is upstairs, above the forge. Will you come up there with me so I can take a look at your wounds and clean your feet?”

Still the young woman said nothing. She had to be about twenty. It was hard to tell what color her hair and eyes were in the dark of night by the light of the forge. She was skinny though, too skinny for a woman her age.

“Where did you come from?” he asked, stepping closer. She took in a breath and looked at him, met his eyes. “What is your name?”

She pursed her lips together several times, as if working up the will to speak.

At last she said, “I don’t know.”