lad there seems to think I was supposed to be an aging spinster. Was there some confusion over my age?”
His eyes grew even stonier, if such a thing were possible. “Yes, there was. I was expecting someone nearer forty, which is why Joe didn’t recognize you initially.”
“I see.” The confusion explained the scowl. “You do not think that my cousin and I intentionally misled you about my age, do you?”
“Should I?”
“Of course not. I would never . . .” lie to you? But wouldn’t she, when she planned to never admit to him the most critical detail of her life? “I did not ask her to give you the impression I was anything other than twenty years old.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“I trust my youth will not be a problem.”
“That depends on you, Miss Dunne,” he answered, stopping to look at her as they reached the gig. “If you do good work, then there is no problem at all.”
“I will work very hard, Dr. Edmunds.” So long as he did not ask her to sit with his patients, as Claire had assured her in the letters she had sent to Mother, all would be well. She could never sit with a sick person again. She had made a vow to herself never to fail again, and attending the ill would only result in failure. “You will have no complaints about me.”
“As I expect of any of my staff,” he said tersely, conversation concluded, and climbed into the gig.
Joe easily hoisted her carpetbag onto the back of the vehicle. It was pathetically light, holding only another gown, a thin cloak, some undergarments, and a few items to dress her hair. She had left her Bible at home, sitting atop her chest of drawers. If God had forgotten her in her time of crisis, she’d reasoned, there was no need to remember Him.
Once she settled in the gig, Dr. Edmunds grabbed the reins and steered them away from the docks, Joe clinging like a boy-sized spider to the rear of the vehicle. They journeyed up one street and down the next, past warehouses and bustling markets overflowing with vendors. Church towers pierced the sky like so many upraised arms reaching for God. Officious buildings with grand columned entry ways fought for space. And all the people—the clamor and the commotion—were stifling, making Rachel long for air and open sky. There would be no more of that here, though, where any glimpse of green seemed unlikely, where any hope for the sound of a warbler’s trill would be muffled by the impossible din, and the warm smells of a neighbor’s oven would be drowned in the cloying stench of sewer.
She must have shuddered, because Dr. Edmunds glanced her way. “Overwhelmed, Miss Dunne?” He almost sounded sympathetic.
“It is quite different from home.”
“But there is some beauty here, beneath the filth. Many magnificent buildings that are the glory of England. Such as that one.” He nodded toward a building with a great dome rising. “That is St. Paul’s. I’ve been promising my staff I would take them to services there, but I’ve not found the time. They’ve had to make do with our St. Peter’s.” He peered over at her. “By the way, I would expect you to attend church services with the rest of the staff.”
Rachel could not bring herself to nod. God was not a part of her plans. “What are those buildings?” she asked, pointing to the right.
“They’re the Old Bailey and Newgate Prison. There’s been a prison on that site since the time of Henry Plantagenet. I’ve been told that when those doors close behind a prisoner, the sound they make is like entering the realms of hell. A very fearsome place.”
Her skin prickled; she knew exactly how fearsome the interior of a prison could be. In considerable detail, she could describe the smells and the chill and the ungodly noises, the weeping and wailing. The other sounds people made while they bade their time and avoided contemplating their fates. She could tell the good doctor precisely what it was like to face a bewigged judge, her hands gripping the rubbed-smooth rail of the defendant’s dock, the sounding board overhead echoing every tremor in her voice as she pleaded to be believed. Even as she had stopped believing in herself.
Heavy traffic forced the gig to halt, and Rachel felt Dr. Edmunds watching her. Did he see the guilt on her person, like the mark they used to put upon thieves’ hands?