“Yes, Miss Latterly.” He waited while she did so. He was a tall man, extraordinarily handsome in a dark, highly patrician way. His was a face in which both temper and charm were equally balanced. He might be an excellent friend, entertaining, intelligent and quick to understand, but also she judged he would be an implacable enemy. “I understand you brought Lady Ravensbrook home, having observed she was taken ill,” he said, allowing it to be half a question.
“Yes, my lord.” She waited for him to continue, watching his expression to see the fear or the pity in it. It was not a mobile face. There was a stiffness in him, both of nature and of a rigid upbringing of self-mastery, extending perhaps as far back as the nursery. She had known many such men before, both in the aristocracy and in the army. They were born into families used to power and its responsibilities as much as its privileges. They took for granted the respect and obedience of others, and expected to pay for them in the self-discipline taught from the nursery onwards, the mastery of indulgence to the softer things, either emotional or physical. He stood to attention, like a soldier, in the warm library, surrounded by the deep color of the old wood, velvet and leather, and she could judge nothing of him at all. If he was racked by pity for his wife, he masked it in front of her. If he was wary of hiring her, or afraid of catching the illness himself, it was too well hidden for her to see.
“My footman said you are a nurse. Is that correct?” He moved his lips so very slightly it was barely discernible, but there was an inflexion in his voice when he spoke the word nurse that betrayed his feelings. Nurses were generally women of the roughest sort; very often they were drunken, dishonest, and of a physical appearance where the more lucrative occupation of prostitute was not open to them. Their duties were largely those of scrubbing, emptying slops and on occasion disposing of dressings or rolling new bandages and tending to linen. Actual care of patients lay with doctors, and most certainly all decisions, attention to wounds or giving of medicines.
Of course, since Florence Nightingale’s fame in the Crimea, many people were aware that a nurse could be much more, but it was very far from the normal case. Lord Ravensbrook was obviously among the skeptics. He would not be openly offensive without provocation, but his view of her was the same as his view would have been of Mary, or any of the other East End women who helped in the pesthouse. Hester found her body stiffening and her jaws tight with anger. For all her ignorance and dirt, Mary had a compassion which was eminently worthy of his respect.
She made an effort to stand even straighter.
“Yes, I am.” She did not add “sir.” “I learned my craft in the Crimea, with Miss Nightingale. My family did not approve, which was not unexpected. They considered I should remain at home and marry someone suitable. But that was not the path I wished.” She saw in his face that he was not in the slightest interested in her life or the reasons for her choice, but reluctantly he had a certain respect. The mention of the Crimea held a credit he could not deny.
“I see. Presumably you have tended fever before, other than in Limehouse?”
“Regrettably—yes.”
He raised black eyebrows, straight and level above deep set eyes.
“Regrettably? Does that not give you an advantage of experience?”
“It is not pleasant. I saw too many men die who need not have.”
His expression closed over. “I am not concerned with your political opinions, Miss—er—Latterly. My only interest is in your ability to nurse my wife, and your willingness.”
“Of course I am willing. And I have as much ability as anyone.”
“Then it remains only to discuss your remuneration.”
“I consider Lady Ravensbrook my friend,” she said icily. “I do not require remuneration.” She could regret that later. She most assuredly required funds from somewhere, but she had enormous satisfaction in denying him now. It would be worth a little chill or hunger.
He was taken aback. She could see it in his face. He regarded her soiled and crumpled clothes, of very mediocre quality, and her weary face and straggly hair, and a minuscule flicker of amusement crossed his mouth and vanished.
“I’m obliged to you,” he accepted. “Dingle will attend to any laundry that may be necessary and prepare and bring to you whatever food you desire, but since she will be in the company of other servants, she will not enter the sickroom. I have a responsibility to do what I can to keep the fever from spreading throughout the household, and then God knows where.”
“Of course,” she said levelly, wondering how much he was thinking of himself, whether he would visit the sickroom … or not.
“We will have a cot put into the dressing room where you may rest,” he went on. “May we send to your home for any change of clothes you require? If that is not suitable, I am sure Dingle could find you something. You look not dissimilar in build.”
Remembering Dingle’s scrubbed, middle-aged face and meticulously plain clothes, Hester found it not a flattering thought, but then on the other hand, she was of a surprisingly comely figure for such a dour woman, so perhaps she should not be downhearted about it.
“Thank you,” she said briefly. “I am afraid I have little available at home. I have been in Limehouse for so many days I have had no opportunity to launder.”
“Just so.” At the mention of Limehouse his face tightened, and his disapproval of Enid’s participation was plain enough not to need words, not that he would have spoken them in front of her. “Then it is agreed? You will remain here as long as it is required.” It was an assumption, and as far as he was concerned, the matter was finished.
“She may need nursing all the time,” she pointed out. “Night as well as day, when the crisis comes.”
“Is that more than you can cope with, Miss—Latterly?”
She dimly heard someone’s footsteps crossing the hall behind her and fading away as they went into another room.
“Yes it is,” she said decisively. “Especially since I still have some moral commitment to the hospital in Limehouse. I cannot leave Lady Callandra totally without experienced assistance.”
A flash of temper crossed his face and he drew in his breath sharply.
“My wife is a great deal more important to me, Miss Latterly, than a score of paupers in the East End who will almost assuredly
die anyway, if not of this, then of something else. If you require some remuneration, then please say so. It is not dishonorable to be rewarded for one’s labor.”
She curbed the answer that rose to her lips, although with difficulty. She was too tired to be bothered with such trivialities of arrogance and misjudgment.