The Apothecary's Daughter Part 52

John Evans strode down the street, his golden ta.s.sels flapping against his blue gown. On him, the effect was regal. Adam Graves had no doubt he had just been in the presence of a true gentleman. A man worth knowing.

The Master sputtered with anger and looked as though he might continue the dark task himself. But he seemed to consider the growing crowd of onlookers, and the fact that the burly constable was retreating with his bailiff, and instead followed after the beadle.

Standing there with smoke burning his eyes and lungs, Adam held the Haswell jar in his arms, feeling defeated and useless. He slowly walked toward Miss Haswell, who stepped forward to meet him as he drew near. Tears streamed down her cheeks. He met her eyes and held out the jar toward her. An offering. She took it mutely from him. For a moment, they both held it. Then he let go, turned, and walked away. Tears stung his own eyes, but that was only the smoke, doing what it would.

The past is the beginning of the beginning a the twilight of the dawn.

H. G. WELLS.

CHAPTER 46.

uch had been lost. But they would have lost far more without Dr. Graves's interference.

Still, Lilly was not surprised when he appeared at the shop door two days later, carrying both valise and medical case. That he had shaved off his moustache did surprise her, and she regarded the pale exposed skin above his lip with a feeling of nearly maternal tenderness.

He cleared his throat. "As you know," he began quietly, "I came here to see if a provisional partnership would work out." He smiled wistfully. "It did not."

"I am sorry," she whispered.

He nodded. "I have given up my partnership with Dr. Foster, though he no doubt would have broken our agreement had I not done so first."

"I do not blame you, for that decision nor for that day."

He looked down at the floor. "There comes a time, Miss Haswell, when a man must admit defeat."

She knew he was speaking of more than his profession. "Of course you must not yoke yourself with Foster, but might you not set up on your own?" She attempted a wry grin. "I know where you might let a surgery very cheaply."

"Thank you. But I know this village cannot support two competing physicians."

"Does Foster not mean to retire after all?"

He shrugged. "It does not signify. I go to London."

"To practice there?"

"Not private practice. I own now, I am not fit for it." With a lift of his hand, he cut off her objections before she could voice them. "I intend to return to Guy's Hospital. I was offered a teaching post there before and turned it down. Now I shall take it. No doubt I shall be quite content. I excel in academia." He grinned bravely. "It is only real life I fail to master."

He bowed and took his leave of her. She watched him go, regretting that he had come there only to be disappointed. Yet she knew it was not within her power to make him happy. Nor whole.

The shop cleanup continued. Given her father's state of health and their shaky finances, they could no longer fool themselves that they could restore the shop to its former glory. Humpty Dumpty had taken too great a fall. Though clearly grieving its loss, her father seemed oddly resigned to the closing of Haswell's. Perhaps even relieved. Lilly felt a muddle of conflicting emotions herself.

It took days to sort through the rubble and salvage what they could, to sweep up the spilled powders and scrub away the syrups soiling the shop floor, and to make sense of the jumble which had been her father's surgery. Her father had always been disorganized. His desk and sideboard were forever piled high with papers, but now those papers carpeted the floor and were wedged between sideboard and wall, desk and window. Lilly piled and sorted and read and tossed until the dustbin threatened to overflow. If the beadle must burn, Lilly thought tartly, why could he not have burned this lot? Such calamity was likely the only thing that would have driven them to this frenzy of purging and cleaning.

Charlie's cat, jolly, had fled the house during the fire, and had not been found. Though discouraged, Charlie did his best to help, splitting his time between Marlow House and home. At the moment he was sweeping the floor near the large front window, its display empty now save for the rescued apothecary jar.

Still in the surgery, Lilly reached down and pulled at a corner of paper sticking out from under the desk like a child sticking out its tongue.

"Charlie, come here a moment, please," she called.

Charlie was not clever, but he was very strong. When he appeared, she asked, "Do lift the corner of the desk for me, will you? Father's papers have flown everywhere, and knowing me, I'd miss the only one worth recovering."

Charlie heaved the heavy oak desk and Lilly s.n.a.t.c.hed the paper out. "Well done, Charlie. Thank you."

He grinned meekly before returning to his task.

She began to put the letter on the stacks remaining to be sorted when the handwriting caught her eye. This was no bill of lading, no chemist's advertis.e.m.e.nt. Hairs p.r.i.c.kled at the back of her neck. Her heart began to pound. She remembered this handwriting. Of course she would. It belonged to her mother.

Trembling, she sat on her father's desk chair and studied the letter. When had her mother written it? The paper was starting to yellow and bore deep indentations like a triangular leech bite, as though it had been pressed under that desk for a long time.

It had been directed to Charles Haswell without return address. The postal markings were faded and unreadable.

From where had she posted it? From someplace exotic, as Lilly had long imagined? From her London lodgings? Perhaps even from some nearby estate where she had a post? Lilly wondered if her father had read it and purposely hidden it from her all these years. Lilly ran a fingernail under the fold; the yellowed wax seal still held. It might very well have been lost in the chaos of her father's surgery, and lain there unread by anyone. Or perhaps the seal had become reaffixed from the pressure of the desk.

What answers did it hold?

Part of her longed to open it right then and there. Part of her was too exhausted to care. Did she really want to know?

She dutifully carried it up the stairs to her father's bedchamber. She was relieved to see him up and dressed, sitting at his little letterwriting desk, quill in hand.

He looked at her over his new spectacles, and she handed him the letter without comment. He turned it over in his hand, then sat still, staring at it, head bowed.

"I found it under your desk in the surgery."

He did not move.

"Do you know its contents?"

He gave a barely perceptible shake of his head.

"Father? "

"No, but I fear it."

"What more can she do to hurt us? After all this time?" Lilly held out her palm. He looked at her for a moment, blue eyes wide, before lowering his head again. He thrust the letter toward her without looking her way.

She took it from him and carried it to the window, where the light was better. She peeled open the shrunken wax seal and carefully unfolded the stiff yellowed paper.

A clue to the letter's age was given in its opening line.

A year has come and gone since I left Bedsley Priors.

Lilly read on silently. Finding out her mother was not traveling the continent nor the high seas as she had often imagined did not surprise her as it might once have done. At the time of this writing, her mother was living in London under another man's protection. But even that was not what shocked her.

"What can she mean?" Lilly murmured, and reread the section once more, this time aloud.

"I do not lay all the blame at your door, Charles. I know that as a wife, I was a disappointment, and that I broke our marriage vows even before you did, and in more respects. I had been unhappy for quite some time, as you well know.

"I release you to M., Charles. I know she is the wife of your heart. And if that poor afflicted girl can grow up with a father, then I shall take some comfort in that. Comfort I sorely need whenever guilt over leaving L. and C. rises to stab me in the hearta."

Lilly felt frozen and overheated all at once. Nerves tingled down her spine and through her limbs. Her mind spun and spun again, down through the years of memories, trying to force it all to make sense. It cannot mean what it appears to mean. It cannot.

She looked at her father and saw the shame and grief in his eyes. For so long she'd a.s.sumed him innocent, the victim. She had blamed her mother alone! Blamed and empathized with and longed for. What good was an endless memory if what it remembered had all been a lie?

"Is it true?" Lilly asked. "You and a Mrs. Mimpurse?"

"It was a long time ago."

The hands holding the letter shook. "How long?"

"More than twenty years a long before your mother left us. I thought we had got past it."

"Where was Mr. Mimpurse?"

"Gone, as he often was, before he left for good."

"Before he died, you mean?"

"You had better ask Maude about that."

"You want me to ask your lover? I think not." Never had Lilly used such a cutting tone with her father.

He winced.

Her mounting anger suddenly faded into a cold, dizzy cloud that threatened to suffocate her. "What does she mean, 'if that poor afflicted girl can grow up with a father'? Did she mean she expected you to marry Mrs. Mimpurse and raise Mary as your own?"

Her father looked at her. Two seconds pa.s.sed. Two ticks of the clock. Three. Four.

"She is my own."

The company of agreeable friends will be the best medicine.

DR. HILL, THE OLD MAN'S GUIDE TO HEALTH AND LONGER LIFE, 1764

CHAPTER Q-7.

illy burst into the coffeehouse through the front door, not the -J kitchen. Mary glanced up at her from where she was wiping off a table, startled by the door banging against the wall. Vaguely, Lilly noticed tears in Mary's eyes, eyes that were bloodshot and miserable.

Lilly faltered, suddenly not sure if, or how, to reveal her own news. Instead she asked, "What is it?"

Mary wiped randomly at the table without seeing its surface. Her finger bore only the smallest bandage now. "I know it is foolish. Did I not tell you he would be quickly shot of me once he learned a ?"

Oh no. "I am so sorry to hear it."

"I do not blame Mr. Shuttleworth, poor man. It is my own fault for not telling him I was not the woman he thought I was."

Lilly took a deep breath. She said unsteadily, "You are not the woman I thought you were either."

Mary looked up at her sharply, searchingly.

Lilly crossed the room and stood before her. "What do you know of your father? "

Mary straightened. "My father? Do you mean a Harold Mimpurse? "

Lilly asked quietly, "Do I?"

Mary stood perfectly still, only her sad blue eyes blinked. Eyes so like Charlie's, Lilly realized.

"Do you know?" Mary tentatively asked.

Lilly nodded. "Do you?"

"Yes."

They heard a sudden sc.r.a.ping of chair legs on the floor above them, and as the two stood there, staring at one another, Maude Mimpurse trod heavily down the stairs. She halted at the bottom step, holding the rail for support, looking from one of them to the other.

Lilly stepped forward and held the letter out to her. She kept her face impa.s.sive as Mrs. Mimpurse's wide eyes tried to search her own. Maude's gaze fled to the letter instead, and after a few seconds of skimming its contents, the woman pressed a trembling hand over her heart. She looked again at Lilly, shamefaced. The eyes she turned toward her daughter were filled with trepidation.

"You know?" she asked Mary.