That didn’t seem to satisfy her. “Nothing complicated about saying ‘Mrs. Simms, I have a wife wandering about somewhere, and that’s the reason I don’t talk about things like getting married or courting anyone.’ Would’ve been the easiest thing in the world.”
She was right, of course. He’d avoided the topic because it was difficult to explain but also because, when he thought on it, he felt uneasy.
“I’m not the most tenderhearted of women,” Mrs. Simms said, “but I don’t like the idea of you being hurt.”
She was forever discounting her own benevolence. “Caring about people is nothing to be ashamed of.”
“Then why do you tuck your heart away as if you haven’t one at all? Seems to me, you think it something worth feeling shame over.”
Mrs. Simms continued folding bandages. Her criticism was not entirely unfounded. Leading with his heart had proven a poor choice in the past, making difficult decisions as a doctor impossible. It meant the pain of losing people was almost too sharp to bear. Keeping a clear head and his heart at a distance was far more advisable.
“Are you pleased to have Mrs. Milligan here?” Mrs. Simms asked, echoing the very question Gemma had posed the night before.
Why did either of them think he would be displeased? He couldn’t imagine anyone who wouldn’t enjoy Gemma’s company.
“It is good to see her again,” he said. “If nothing else, I don’t worry about her while she’s here.”
“And is that the only reason you’re glad she’s staying at the house for now?” Mrs. Simms never let a topic lie before she got the answers she wanted.
“I like Gemma. She brightens the house, and she makes me smile, which I appreciate.”
Mrs. Simms made a sound of pondering but no further comment. They worked for a while without talking. They both tended toward companionable silence in conversation when it was just the two of them.
Into the midst of this pause, a boy of about twelve years old rushed inside. “There’s a fire, Doc. Not too far off. Fletch told me to come get you.”
Fletcher’s network of street urchins was as efficient as they were invisible to the people who passed them every day.
To the urchin, Barnabus said, “Tell me exactly where the fire is while I scratch a note.”
The boy did exactly that, and Barnabus wrote a quick line to leave for Gemma should she return before he did. He left it on his desk in the sitting room with instructions to Mrs. Simms to direct Gemma to it.
He pulled on his coat, popped his tall hat on his head, grabbed his cane—a sword concealed inside—and took up his doctoring bag. They were out the door and on their way with hardly any time having passed at all. Familiarity bred efficiency.
The fire was not difficult to find, the smoldering remnants of it, at least. The smoke still spilling from the charred remains of the shop could likely be seen by a good portion of London. A fruit monger stood beside his cart not far distant. Two men, laborers by their appearance, leaned against a wall across the street. A man and woman stood at the mouth of an alley. Another man, more finely dressed than the others, sat on a bench with a newspaper on his lap. All within a few feet of the ashy skeleton of a building.
Fletcher was nearby as well, watching the embers. Today, he was dressed in his lower-class attire, which allowed him to go unnoticed around these poorer corners of London. Fletcher was a chameleon in every sense of the word, and it served him well.
Barnabus reached him. “Did the fire brigade not arrive?”
“The locals were warned not to send for the fire brigade.”
“Warned? You mean ‘threatened’?”
Fletcher nodded slowly. The tension around his mouth belied his devil-may-care appearance.
“Any injuries?” Barnabus indicated his doctoring bag.
“The man what worked there.”
“Worked? Past tense?”
Fletcher adjusted his hat while he pushed out a deep breath. “Whispers have it he might’ve been dead before the fire started.”
The Mastiff, no doubt, was behind this latest trouble. “Any idea why this particular man might have been targeted?”
“He was an undertaker who’d been bragging about being able to identify the resurrectionists who’ve been digging up fire victims.”
Barnabus looked at the blackened undertaker’s shop. “The question, then, is who silenced him? The resurrectionists or the one paying them?”