her breathing strained, her plump cheeks flaring with red. She was so small, so helpless, lost in the middle of that bed. The tiniest of human creatures. A mustard seed in the crush of humanity. God, can You even see her? “I am so very afraid.”
“’Tis natural to be afraid, miss, but God is with you. Whom shall you fear?”
Myself. I fear myself.
Trembling, Rachel laid a hand upon Amelia’s chest, felt her racing heart thrum beneath her fingertips, the source and echo of life. She had to help this child. There was no other course. She was a healer, like her mother had been. And if she failed . . . she had to accept that. Stop blaming herself. Stop blaming God for not listening. Leave the outcome in His hands.
Where it belonged.
God, forgive me. I have been so filled with arrogance and pride. They have blinded me from the truth. Help me now to be strong. And, if You choose, through the work of my humble hands let Your healing flow.
Rachel reached for Mrs. Mainprice’s hand. “Stay with me. Pray with me. I cannot do this alone.”
“You can do all things through Christ who strengthens you, Miss Dunne.”
“Then let us pray to Him.”
She closed her eyes and began to recite every prayer she could think of. She was joined by Mrs. Mainprice until both their voices grew hoarse and the hours ticked onward into the dead of night.
“Dash, Edmunds, I’d have come sooner if I’d known.” Hathaway fingered his top hat. The buttons of his overcoat were misaligned and his cravat disheveled. “I was at the club celebrating my engagement, but I neglected to tell my landlady where I’d gone. Not that she’d have remembered even if I had.”
“It’s quite all right. The worst is over.” For Mrs. Blencowe, if not for Amelia.
Mrs. Blencowe’s labor had taken hours, but she had delivered the child. A tiny boy, alive, if puny and blue-tinged. A rough massage had revived the infant, though James feared for his long-term health, as well as the health of his mother. Drained, she had bled fiercely. James and the monthly nurse had swabbed her with vinegar-soaked rags until the flood had stopped. If she didn’t fever, she might live. A large if.
James tugged his gloves over his fingers. “Congratulations on your pending marriage, Hathaway.”
“Say you’ll come to the wedding. Oh, bless me, Edmunds, she’s a veritable angel and my parents adore her. I couldn’t have found better.”
Memories pressed, their load like ropes dragging James down. “Be true to her, Hathaway, and don’t fail her. Don’t fail anyone.”
“I’m not intending on failing her.” Hathaway blinked, his bliss dimming like a candle flame ruffled by a breeze. “Are you quite all right, Edmunds?”
No. God in heaven, no. “My congratulations again, Hathaway, but I can’t delay. I must go. Good luck here.”
James slipped out of the house. From nowhere, a fog had lifted off the streets to muffle the sounds of carriages passing in the dark night. What hour had it become? He withdrew his watch. Almost eleven in the evening. The hour’s lateness ached in the small of his back, painfully stiffened the muscles at the base of his skull.
He pocketed the watch and marched on, down Pall Mall toward Belgravia and whatever awaited him at home. Hackneys passed without stopping at his signal, filled with customers bound to happier prospects. James passed the rows of clubs, candlelight yellow in their windows, their front doors exhaling smoke and the baritone rumble of men’s voices. The one he occasionally frequented was just a few doors down. He might step inside and say a final good-bye to the colleagues he would find there, enjoying their chops and the endless gossip about theater women or politics or the mean-spiritedness of their wives. Drift along on a current of topics far removed from his own problems.
Be an idiot.
The fog swirled in his path as he strode along, like ghosts chasing him. The ghost of a woman he had married in order to please his father, a man impossible to please; the specter of his medical career, which he’d pursued with a single-minded ambition that excluded everyone around him, until the losses grew so great he couldn’t bear them anymore; the apparition of his only child, held at such a safe distance that she feared him and treated him like a stranger.
I was going to make it all up to you, though, Amelia . . . tomorrow.
Always tomorrow.
The bell of a church tolled,