Juliana (17 page)

But even if Castleton did the right thing in the end, it wouldn’t improve James’s opinion of him. He was worse than a prig. He was…

What was worse than a prig?

He was a
turd.

Anyhow, James was no longer going on these outings to save her from the turd—or at least not
only
to save her from the turd. He liked her company. She was bright and charming, and she cared about people. She’d cared about
him
when he’d feared a stupid snake. And, all right, she was very pretty. But he couldn’t help noticing
that
—it was simply an objective fact.

All of which pointed to another fact: He fancied Juliana Chase.

He didn’t love her, of course—he wouldn’t, couldn’t love her or anyone else. But fancying a girl was very different from loving her. And it wasn’t a betrayal of Anne, because it wasn’t long-lasting or meaningful. James had fancied other girls before he met Anne, and it had always taken the same course: They danced. They flirted. They went on outings. They stole a kiss or two. Then their interest waned and they went their separate ways.

It would be the same with Juliana, he thought with a contented yawn. And today she had baked him macaroons, which meant he was one step closer to kissing her.

He was very much looking forward to that part of the course.

She followed his yawn with one of her own and tried to cover it with a hand.

“I saw that,” he said.

“I’m not bored, I promise.”

“I didn’t think so,” he assured her. “It’s a medical fact that yawns are contagious.”

She smiled, making him smile, too. He appreciated a girl who appreciated his attempts at humor.

“Are you as short on sleep as I?” she asked.

“I’m afraid I am. I was up half the night finishing the speech I’m delivering this evening in the House of Lords.”

“A speech?” She looked dubious.

“Your confidence in me is an inspiration,” he said dryly.

“It’s not that!” she said, chastened. “I was just…surprised. I’ve always pictured parliamentary speeches being given by aging lords in grey wigs. Not someone like you.”

“Someone with hair?”

She swatted his arm. “Someone
young
.”

He nodded his understanding. As one of the youngest members of the House, he
was
being rather bold. He shouldn’t have brought up the speech—now his nerves had returned.

“What is your speech about?”

“A bill I’ve put forth to publicly fund smallpox vaccinations and make them compulsory for infants.”

“Compulsory?” Her blue-green-hazel eyes widened. “I’ve never heard of such an idea.”

“I’m not surprised. England is quite behind the times on this matter. Vaccinations were made compulsory in Bavaria in 1807, Denmark in 1810, Norway in 1811, Bohemia and Russia in 1812, and now this year in Sweden.” He hoped he had all those dates right; he’d had to memorize them for the speech. “If we’re to defeat this scourge, everyone must cooperate.”

She seemed to mull that over for a minute. “This is very important to you, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it’s very important.”

“Why is that?”

“Must there be a reason? Can’t it just be for the good of humanity?”

“I think not,” she said. “Not when you’re so passionate about the subject.”

He mentally added
perceptive
to the list of her assets. “My brother died of smallpox.”

“Oh,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry.”

“There was nothing I could do to help him. Nothing I could do but watch him die. Have you ever seen someone suffering with it?”

She shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. At least not in the final stages.”

“I hope you never will. The pain is excruciating, and the pocks—well, never mind.” He wouldn’t sicken her by describing the way they’d spread until Philip had seemed to be little more than one huge, oozing pustule. “Suffice it to say I’m hoping someday no one will ever suffer with it again. And I plan to do my part to make that happen.”

Her gaze was full of admiration. “You’re a good person, James.”

Her praise made his spirits soar, but she didn’t need to know that. So he shrugged. “We cannot afford to ignore this chance. Vaccination has given mankind an opportunity we’ve never had before—to wipe a horrific disease off the face of the earth. Forever.”

“I hope you can convince Parliament, then,” she said and reached to take his hand.

She was holding his hand. He was afraid to react, for fear she might notice and snatch hers away. Keeping himself still, he glanced toward her chaperone, but Lady Frances was still gazing out the window, humming softly to herself.

He looked down at their joined hands. Juliana wasn’t wearing gloves. Prior to flouncing out to the carriage, she’d grabbed her umbrella but left a pair of white gloves sitting on the marble-topped table. Lady Frances hadn’t noticed—shocking!—and James hadn’t thought to remind Juliana to take them.

Or maybe he hadn’t wanted her to.

Her hand felt small in his, her palm smooth and warm. He couldn’t remember ever being so aware of anyone touching him before. Well, it
had
been over a year, he supposed, since he’d held a girl’s hand.

“I see now,” she said. “Your brother’s death is why you became a physician. I’ve been wondering what would compel an earl to take up doctoring,” she added, squeezing his fingers with compassion.

He tried not to squeeze back, lest she realize what she was doing. “That’s sound reasoning, but not the way it happened. Philip was my older brother—he was supposed to be the earl. I became a physician before his death, not after, because, as a second son, I needed a profession. I was at his bedside as his physician when he died.”

“You don’t blame yourself for his death, do you?” Sympathy flooded her eyes. “Just because you’re a doctor—”

“Good gracious, no!” What an active imagination she had. Even in James’s darkest days, he’d never tortured himself with
that
. “He had the severe form of smallpox—variola major—which defies treatment. There is nothing a physician can do but keep the patient as comfortable as possible and hope for the best.”

“So doctors do nothing?”

“Oh, there are things they
try
, but they generally involve bleeding, emetics, and purgatives—methods I don’t favor. I’ve found they weaken a patient more than they strengthen him.” He shook his head. It was difficult talking about this, but it seemed important, somehow, that Juliana understand his point of view. “I don’t blame myself for his death. But I
would
blame myself if I allowed smallpox to continue destroying lives without doing everything in my power to stop it.”

She nodded. Her eyes looked blue now, a blue softened by kindness and concern. “I’m truly sorry you lost your brother to such a devastating disease.”

“You must have lost a brother, too,” he realized suddenly. “Else Griffin wouldn’t be the marquess. He wasn’t meant to be, was he? After Oxford, he joined the military, same as I did.”

“Our brother Charles died of consumption,” she said. “A few months after our mother succumbed to it first.”

They called consumption a “gentle death,” but James knew better. Its victims might fade away rather slowly and gracefully, but watching a loved one die was never easy. And Juliana had suffered through that twice.

“Consumption seems to descend upon certain families,” he told her. “Probably because it’s not easily transmitted like smallpox, but after weeks and months in the same home—”

“I thought it wasn’t contagious.” She looked shocked. “We all cared for my mother and brother with no concern of risking our own health. The doctors told us consumption is caused by the patient’s own constitution and runs in families only because relations are so often alike.”

“That may be the prevailing wisdom, but I don’t believe it. And I’m not alone. More than two thousand years ago, Hippocrates himself warned doctors to be wary of contracting it from patients. And early in the last century, Benjamin Marten wrote a paper theorizing that consumption is caused by ‘wonderfully minute living creatures’ that can pass from one person to another, although rarely without extended periods of contact.” His explanation didn’t seem to be making her rest any easier, so he tried a different approach. “I don’t expect you need to worry about catching it now if you haven’t already. Nor should your sisters or Griffin. Whatever ‘minute creatures’ might have been in your home are long gone, I’m certain, and you needn’t fret that you were all born with constitutions that will cause you to develop it, either.”

“So Charles caught it from our mother, but none of the rest of us did.” She drew and released a breath. “I’ve always wondered if the rest of us might succumb eventually. Is it wicked of me to be relieved?”

“It’s natural to be relieved,” he said. “And I could be wrong. Most physicians wouldn’t agree with me.”

“
I
don’t think you’re wrong,” she said. “I think you’re a man who thinks for himself, who looks for his own answers instead of blindly accepting what others claim. We need your sort of people. You’re the people who discover things that make the world better for all of us.”

She would never know how much her words meant to him. He faced a lot of scorn from respected doctors—some of them even his own mentors—who sneered at his adoption of new, unconventional practices like refusing to bleed patients and believing cleanliness helped prevent infection. He wasn’t the only physician who embraced such ideas, but he was definitely in the minority. Sometimes the pressure made James question his own judgement. But he never quite lost his faith that they—doctors—could do better. They could do more than offer old wisdom. They could provide
cures
.

And Juliana’s faith in
him
made the pressure that much more bearable.

“Thank you,” he said, squeezing her hand.

A mistake. Looking startled, she pulled it away. “So.” She cleared her throat. “Tomorrow evening at the ball…just how are you planning to ask Lady Amanda if you might court her?”

His jaw dropped. The sudden turnabout made him feel as if his brain had just fallen off a cliff. How did she do that? How had Juliana gone from holding his hand to assuming he was still planning to court Lady Amanda?

Well, he wasn’t. He’d decided instead to court Juliana. Or rather, to complete the sequence of this odd, sort-of courtship they’d already begun.

Put simply, he’d decided to kiss her so he could get on with his life.

But he didn’t quite know how to answer her question, because she hadn’t asked him
if
he was planning to court Lady Amanda. She’d asked
how
he was planning to ask for permission.

When he didn’t immediately respond, she added, “Perhaps I can help you devise some particularly gallant method.”

“Like what? Shall I ride into the ball on a charger, dressed in armor?”

“Really, now, James, be serious.”

He
was
serious. Serious about wanting to kiss Juliana.

“James?” Juliana asked. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

Lucky for him, just then the carriage rolled to a halt in front of the Egyptian Hall, saving him from another question he couldn’t answer.

THE EXTERIOR
of the museum at Number Twenty-two Piccadilly bore a vague resemblance to an Egyptian temple. A very vague resemblance. In fact, it would look rather Palladian, Juliana thought, were it not for the ankhs along the cornice and the two full-length statues that flanked a window above the entrance.

“Are those sculptures supposed to be Egyptian?” Aunt Frances asked.

“An Egyptian god and goddess.” James gestured toward the figures. “That’s Isis on the left, and her brother and husband, Osiris, on the right.”

Juliana wondered how he’d come to know such things. “Shall we have a look inside?”

James gave the doorman three shillings for their admission, took a guidebook and handed it to Juliana, then ushered her and her aunt into the museum.

“So many people,” Aunt Frances said, looking dazed as they jostled their way down a corridor.

“They’ve all come to see Napoleon’s carriage,” Juliana told her. “And Captain Cook’s artifacts. And,” she added, reading off the cover of the guidebook, “’the Collection of Fifteen Thousand Natural and Foreign Curiosities, Antiques, and Productions of the Fine Arts.’”

“I’m feeling faint,” Aunt Frances said.

“We don’t have to look at all of them, Auntie. Listen to this.” Pausing in the first of the exhibition rooms, Juliana quoted from the introduction. “’The museum’s owner, William Bullock, formed his collection during seventeen years of arduous research at a cost of thirty thousand pounds.’”

“Thirty thousand pounds,” James said in wonder. “Just think how many vaccinations all that money could have provided.”

Or how many foundlings it could have fed, Juliana thought. But there were other good uses for money. “Widening the public’s horizons is also a worthy cause. Don’t you agree, Aunt Frances?” She glanced around. “Aunt Frances?”

“There she is.” James pointed toward an exhibit of stuffed African animals. “On that bench, by the rail.”