The Lady in the Tower Read Online Free Page B

of the blood-soaked procedures a surgeon dealt with, he couldn’t keep
the disbelief from his tone.  “ All of them?”
    Her eyes
flashed. “I needn’t have attended the Royal College to be a capable healer. I
assisted my father whenever he had patients at the house, and I steeped his
potions and tonics when he became too busy—” she gave him a low look,
“—speaking to lecture halls filled with boys who wouldn’t know a forceps
from a lancet.”
    “Well, of
course they wouldn’t know. They were there to learn, weren’t they?”
    Her reply was
to fold her generous mouth into a mulish line.
    He waited for
her to continue but she instead became focused on her hands, which she gripped
together in her lap. Something about the way she sat there, stiff and aloof,
walled off in her tower of ill-perceived certainty and misconceptions, dared
him to storm her walls.
    He never
backed away from a challenge. “Let me see if I have this correct. You learned
healing skills from your father, but due to your gender, you knew you’d never
have the opportunity to attend the College. So, you apprenticed with him, and
he allowed it, despite it being illegal—”
    “Which is
grossly unfair!”
    “— despite the law,
and now that he’s gone, you have been carrying out his teachings.”
    Her throat
worked as she swallowed. “I help where and when I can. That’s not beyond the law.” She shot him a hard
look. “You may not think me a capable healer – indeed, I know what you
think of my skills in that area – but I am good at what I do.”
    He spread his
hands. “I never said otherwise.”
    “You say it
with every condescending look you send my way. When Albert—” Her voice
broke, but after a scant second, she said in a calmer, icy tone. “Neither you,
nor his family, would allow me a chance to complete a treatment.”
    “Because it
was not your place.”
    She bristled.
“ Place ? You mean because I’m female.”
    “Not at all.
Granted, that would be more than enough for others, but that was not my
reason.” He hesitated, then offered softly, “You were unfit for the case
because you were his wife.” He leaned forward and placed a hand on her knee. It
was a bold move, but suddenly, he was desperate for her attention, for her to hear him. “No physician, man or woman, should attempt to treat someone they love.
You cannot think clearly. No one can . ”
    “I could!” She
twisted the strap of the satchel around her hand. He wondered if she was even
aware she did it. “And I was succeeding, too, until you came in.”
    “Oh?” He
leaned back and crossed his arms. “You were finding an answer to Lord Kilkenny’s illness?”
    “Yes! I mean,
no. But I was at least trying. ”
    “I know you
were,” he said gravely. “Too hard.”
    Her eyes grew
wet. “I was only. . . I spent so many hours looking
through my father’s texts. Perhaps I—”
    “Exactly. You
were distraught. And understandably so. Lady Kilkenny , one of the horrible aspects of this profession is
that sometimes, no matter what we do, patients die. It is a hard fact of the
profession, and not a lesson one wishes to learn while tending a member of
one’s own family.” He’d merely guessed that her father had tried to shelter her
from that knowledge, and he could tell from the way her brows knit together
that he was right. She’d never been in a situation to care for a patient only
to lose them despite everything. For himself, he knew all too well. He’d lost
too many to count in Belgium.
    He saw her
fighting tears and handed her his linen handkerchief. Quietly, he said, “That,
what you’re feeling now, is why one doesn’t treat family. You’re too close to
see the reality in front of you. Hope does many things, but it doesn’t cure.”
    She dabbed at
her eyes with his handkerchief. “I suppose that’s a valid concern.”
    “There are
other reasons, too. What if Lord Kilkenny had died
under your care, and there you were, your