An Honest Heart (19 page)

“Good afternoon, Nan. Is Miss Bainbridge in?”

“No. She goes to the poorhouse at Oxford Castle on S-Saturdays, to give the women dressmaking lessons.” Nan twisted the end of her russet braid around her fingers.

“Oh. Please tell her I called in—no, actually, I believe I should give her this news as soon as possible. Is she at the poorhouse now?”

“Yes.” Nan’s tone indicated wariness at his intention of going there.

“Thank you.” He inclined his head to Nan, then to Phyllis and her customer, and went back out into the street. Going into the women’s area of a debtor’s prison could bring rumors and speculation down on even the most pious bishop; however, the idea of Caddy Bainbridge risking not only her reputation but her virtue every time she set foot through the prison gate made him spur his horse into a trot.

He’d seen the old Norman castle-turned-prison a few times since arriving in Oxfordshire, but he’d not yet had a reason to call in—they already had doctors who supposedly saw to the needs of the inmates. However, it would not hurt to make himself known to the proprietors.

Half an hour after arriving—and after examining the turnkey’s carbuncle—Neal made it into the innards of the prison. Most of the inmates met him with eyes vacant of any emotion but despair, while a few eyed him with avarice and speculation, as if calculating how much money he might have on him.

He followed the turnkey’s directions to get to the room where Caddy held her lessons. He climbed rickety stairs to the third level and watched his footing down the narrow corridor to the room at the end.

Stopping in the doorway, Neal looked around. Taking up this entire level of the castle’s tower, the round room’s windows let in light from all angles. A well-worn table in the center held a large basket that had lace and ribbons and fabric draped over its sides. Around it sat at least two dozen women and girls bent over projects, needles and scissors glittering in the warm spring sunlight.

Caddy Bainbridge moved from person to person, praising the work, making corrections sound like suggestions, as she taught each one techniques to make her sewing better.

When every one of the women in the room had noticed him and looked his direction, Caddy finally turned around. Her cheeks reddened, and she drew in a deep breath.

Neal had a similar reaction at seeing her. She wore a plain gray dress covered in a large apron, and her hair had been pulled into a neat knot at her nape, which was mostly obscured by a lacy day cap that did its best to cover the majority of the bandaging wrapped around her head.

Seeing her here, working with the people Grandmamma would have called “the least of these,” captured his heart thoroughly and irrevocably. He’d admired her before. Now he had to admit that he was definitely falling in love with her. She represented everything he’d always wanted in a life companion: smart, good humor, and a heart for those less fortunate.

But he could not entertain such thoughts—not yet. He must get to know her better, find out if she would accept him for who he really was, not just for what he seemed to be.

“Please, do not let me disturb your lesson.” He set his kit down on the floor and leaned against the wall near the door.

Caddy excused herself from the young woman she’d been helping and crossed the room to Neal. The layer of dust on the old stone floor swirled about the hem of her skirts as she walked, and halfway to him she paused to sneeze.

He straightened, ready to offer her his handkerchief, but she pulled one from the cuff of her sleeve before she reached him.

“Is anything wrong?” She kept her voice low, probably because she knew every ear in the room was trained on them.

“I stopped at the store to see you, but Nan told me you were here. I saw the constable a little bit ago.” He looked up and smiled at a few curious faces, then lowered his voice even more. “The trial is set for Monday. Nine o’clock. I have already seen Mrs. Longrieve. I will call on her Monday morning and hitch up the cab. We will stop by for you on our way into town.”

Caddy’s brows pinched with her frown. “I shall be ready when you arrive. Do you think . . . ?” She seemed to wilt before she could finish the question.

“That is why we are going. To do whatever we can to ensure Thomas is allowed to go home.” Neal reached out and plucked a piece of brown thread from her sleeve near her shoulder. His fingers tingled from the brief contact with the warmth he felt through the soft wool.

Caddy closed her eyes and swallowed hard, her cheeks reddening again. Neal controlled his smile, assuming she also reacted to the all-too-fleeting contact.

“I . . .” She glanced over her shoulder. “I am almost finished here. Do you . . . would you mind waiting and riding back with me? I have stayed longer than usual, and it will be dark soon.”

“It would be my pleasure, Miss Bainbridge.” As soon as she turned, Neal bit the inside of his cheek to keep from giving voice to his pleasure over her request. He swallowed back the
hurrah
and instead leaned against the wall again, watching as Caddy instructed her pupils how to finish off the pleats they were fashioning.

Once finished, each of the women packed her project away into a bag—probably one of the first items Caddy had them make—and left. While Caddy put on her bonnet, Neal placed the unused fabrics into the basket, then he set his kit on top, and carried it out for her.

She retrieved the horse she’d hired from the livery, and he assisted her in lashing the basket behind the saddle before doing the same with his bag on his horse. When he turned to offer her assistance up, he found her already mounted and watching him with an expectant expression. With a grin, he swung up into the saddle and led the way away from the castle.

Out in the street, he kept his horse at a moderate walk, wanting to extend the amount of time he had her to himself.

“Do you truly believe the judge will allow anything to be said on Mr. Longrieve’s behalf? The constable seemed to think the trial would be a formality, that his sentence was already decided the moment he was arrested.”

“I hope when they see that you, the victim of the crime, are there to speak on his behalf, they will show mercy and not convict him.” Neal noticed how the light and shadows caused by the setting sun ahead of them defined the angles and curves of Caddy’s face and figure. For a shopkeeper, she sat a horse well, as if born to the saddle.

“I’ve prayed every day since he was arrested that they do not send him to Australia. If that is to be his punishment, they’d be better to condemn him to death.”

Neal’s stomach dropped and heat climbed up into his cheeks. “You cannot truly believe that he would be better off dead than transported to Australia.”

Caddy’s usually soft chin hardened and jutted forward. She looked at him, eyes flashing. “I do indeed. Everything I have heard and read about that place is horrifying. It is the realization of hell on earth. I would not wish such a fate onto my worst enemy.”

“Have you ever met anyone who has been to Australia?”

She looked affronted. “Of course not! The only people who go there are criminals and murderers.”

Neal turned his gaze forward, teeth clenched, trying to find words that would educate and not accuse. “Perhaps you have not heard everything there is to know about it. Did you know that settlers have been going there for more than fifty years? Good, hardworking people, starting farms and businesses, creating cities, and bringing civilization to the untamed land.”

He looked over in time to see Caddy shaking her head. “I am amazed at your capacity to see the good in others, Doctor. Even on the far side of the world, you defend those who are indefensible.”

He could not put voice to the amazement he felt at her inability to set aside her prejudice against people she knew nothing about outside of rumor and innuendo. Yet he could not muster the same anger he’d felt toward the people in Grandmamma’s village when they’d spoken many of the same insults about Australia and the people who lived there. Instead, what had been a tiny flame now flared into a blazing fire of desire to make Caddy change her mind—not through words of persuasion, but by making her fall in love with someone born on the far continent.

By making her fall in love with him.

Caddy pressed her lips together in frustration. Obviously, Dr. Stradbroke hadn’t liked what she’d had to say about Australia, but she couldn’t lie about how she felt. Everyone she knew agreed with her.

As silence fell between them, Caddy began to regret being so forward with her opinions. She did not understand why, but Neal had obviously taken offense to something she had said. Rather than angry, though, he looked disappointed. Perhaps if he would be more forthcoming about himself, she would have a better idea of what to say and what not to say around him.

The silence grew uncomfortable, so she cast around for another topic. “When do you think you can take the stitches out?”

Neal turned to look at her almost as if startled to find her still beside him. “Oh, another week perhaps.” He reined his horse closer to her as they turned into a narrower street filled with more traffic.

An apology tripped to the end of her tongue, but not knowing what to apologize for, she kept it in. There must be something they could talk about. She knew from experience he did not like speaking about his past. She also knew that he had gotten more than an earful about her own past from Mother on his several visits in his capacity as doctor to both of them. No use in cutting a cloth that was already tattered.

“You ride into town every week to the castle to teach those women how to sew?” Neal’s forehead pleated with what looked like consternation. “It is rather dangerous, do you not think? Anything could happen to you while you’re there.”

His concern for her safety ebbed up to replace her anxiety over his earlier disappointment. “I worried about it in the beginning, yes. But the jailors and turnkeys knew me from when I would visit with my father many years ago. They have ensured my safety.”

“Your father took you to the poorhouse with him?”

“He did not want to, in the beginning. But I begged and pleaded until he allowed me to accompany him. I think part of the reason he gave in eventually was that he got bored making the two-hour ride into town and then back home by himself.”

Neal cocked his head like a dog trying to understand a new command. “Your father’s parish was outside of Oxford. The poorhouse would not have been under his purview. So why would he have been visiting?”

“We lived in a very poor parish. At any given time, at least one person from our congregation was in debtor’s prison. In fact, it was one of those parishioners who taught me to design and sew dresses during our weekly visits. She had been a seamstress in London, married, and moved to her husband’s farm. But after he died, she had no way to earn a living, since no one out in the country needed her skills. I would sneak copies of
Godey’s
in to her, along with pencil and paper, and she would show me how to design a pattern based on the styles in the fashion plates.”

“What happened to her?”

“My father helped her sell the farm, which allowed her to pay off her debt and move back to London, where she became a seamstress again. I served at her shop as an apprentice for three years after I left school. Then she loaned me the money to open my own shop. She would not allow me to repay her monetarily; instead she asked that I pick up the work she had been doing at the castle—teaching any woman there who wanted to learn how to make a living with needle and thread.”

“Are you still in correspondence with her?”

“Oh, yes. I will be staying with her when I go to London to see the Great Exhibition.”

At the mention of the Exhibition, Neal’s expression once again closed and he turned his face forward. Frustration gathered in Caddy’s chest. Just when it seemed like they were getting somewhere, he shut down.

Suddenly, Neal turned and looked at her again. “You said you did your apprenticeship after you left school. Where did you attend?”

“The Oxford College for Young Ladies.” At Neal’s raised brows, she knew she need not explain the exclusivity the school generally applied to the pupils it admitted. “My father and the headmaster were childhood friends and attended Oxford together. That is how I got in.”

“Did you like it there?”

Caddy sighed, hating to admit the truth, given how hard her father had worked not only to get her into the finishing school but to keep her there. “No. However, it was a good education, and even at a young age I was quite aware of what a blessing the opportunity was. And I count some of my former classmates among my most loyal customers. If it had not been for them taking pity on an old school chum, my shop might not have stayed open a full year.” She hesitated, then forged ahead with what she really wanted to say. “Where did you go to school?”

“Here, at Oxford. But once I finished my education, it was easier to get my start in the north, where there are fewer doctors. Manchester. York. Big cities with large populations of people who have little to no means to pay for a doctor’s care but still need to receive it.”