They were discussing the ward. There had been a run of childbed fever through the winter, three women lost in January, and the talk had turned to what might be laid in against the spring. A Mrs Ferrers, who was holding the floor on the subject with misguided knowledge, was urging the committee to fund a quantity of the purgative root for the ward.
Violet listened. She had not meant to speak. She had meant to get through the hour and go home. But Mrs Ferrers was wrong to recommend a strong decoction given to women already weak from the bed.
“Forgive me,” Violet heard herself say. “But I do not think you would want to give it at that strength. Not to a woman in childbed.”
The room turned to her. Mrs Ferrers turned to her with bright eyes and tight lips, preparing to condescend.
“My grandmother—”
“Was likely an excellent woman.” Violet kept her voice even and her hands steady in her lap. “But that root is a purgative before it is anything else, and a woman who has lost blood cannot spare what it will take from her. You would do better with a simple infusion, raspberry leaf and a little of the white archangel, and keep your stronger physic for a body that can stand to be emptied. If you mean to spend the committee’s money on one thing, spend it on clean linen and a window that opens. The fever travels in the close air more than in the blood. My mother held that and buried fewer mothers than most.”
There was a silence of a particular quality. One where people were shocked to hear something sensible from one they hadn’t expected.
The hospital’s own matron, a square, weathered woman, leaned forward. “The white archangel,” she said. “The deadnettle. Would you use the flower or the leaf, Your Grace?”
“The flower tops. Dried in shade, not sun, or it loses the virtue.”
“And for the afterpains, when they won’t settle?”
“A little cramp bark, if you can get it true. It is often adulterated. I could tell you where to get it true.”
One question followed another, and another, and within the hour the room had quietly reorganised itself around the chair Violet sat in. Mrs Ferrers retreated into wounded dignity by the urn. The matron pulled her own chair closer. Even the soft-faced woman had begun to write things down.
Cranbrook said nothing at all but watched her with something akin to triumph. That warmed Violet more than she would have thought possible among strangers.
“Well done. That went much more smoothly than when the second duchess joined the meeting. What was her name? Catherine?” Cranbrook fixed her gloves while they waited for the carriage. “Such a lively creature she was, always laughing. Now do not think that was a compliment. I know people find such personality charming, but I did not find her charming. We would be discussing serious matters, some life or death, and there she went laughing and taking the discussion in tangents.”
They boarded the carriage and sat across from each other. “I never could credit it, you know,” the Duchess of Cranbrook continued. “The way she went. Catherine. A woman who swam like a fish, summer and winter both, and then to drown, of all things. I never could make it sit.” The older woman caught herself. “I beg your pardon, my dear. Sometimes this old mouth runs off without permission.”
“You needn’t beg my pardon,” Violet said.
And she meant it. But Her Grace’s words had lodged, and she couldn’t help but feel troubled.
She came home later than she had meant to, and the lamps were lit in the hall. Henry was there.
He was standing at the foot of the great staircase with a letter in his hand. The letter was not open. He looked at her, and something about the way he looked at her was different tonight. She did not know what to do with it, but she was aware, absurdly, of the loose pin at her temple and the mud at her hem, and aware that he had noticed and did not seem to mind either.
“You are late,” he said.
“The committee ran long. The Duchess of Cranbrook is thorough.”
“She is that.” His gaze moved over her with appreciation and not in inspection. “I am told there is to be a ball,” he said, his gaze returning to her face.
“Yes. I had very little to do with the deciding of it.”
“No. One does not, with Cranbrook.”
Violet gave him a small nod and walked past him onto the stairs. When she had reached the third step: “Violet.”
She turned.
He stood with the unopened letter in his hand and looked up at her, and for a moment she thought he might come up the stairs. And her heart did a foolish and undignified thing at the prospect of it.
But he only inclined his head. “Goodnight.”
“Goodnight, Your Grace.”
She went up. And at the turn of the stair, where the banister curved and the lamplight gave out, she glanced back.