The Wedding Game (15 page)

His mouth tightened. He could see the revulsion in her hazel eyes, hear it in the question itself. He could almost hear Marianne asking the same question in the same tone. “Not your usual stomping ground, I'm afraid,” he said with undisguised contempt.

Chastity flushed a little. “I wouldn't have thought it was yours,” she said. “It's hardly Harley Street.”

He gazed at her in silence for a minute and she began to feel like an insect under a microscope, then he agreed dryly, “No, it's not. But if you keep yourself to yourself, don't touch anything or anyone, and don't breathe too deeply, it's to be hoped you won't catch anything unsavory.”

Her flush deepened. She had certainly intruded, but she didn't think she'd done anything to deserve this disdain. “I'll go and find a hackney,” she said with as much dignity as she could muster.

“Don't be absurd,” he snapped. “You don't really believe hackneys ply their trade in these streets.”

Chastity took a deep breath and said with careful lack of expression, “If you would tell me exactly how to get out of this warren of streets to somewhere vaguely familiar, I'll leave you to your work. You have a lot of patients waiting.”

He didn't answer immediately, but the angry frown creasing his forehead above the thick eyebrows deepened. The last thing he wanted was this Society lady poking her nose into his very private business. If she chose to blab about it, it would be all over town in no time. How many wealthy patients would be willing to patronize a physician who also had a surgery in the London slums? They'd run a mile. But the damage was already done and he couldn't in all conscience let her leave unescorted.

“I doubt you're capable of looking after yourself in that warren, as you put it,” he said eventually. “And you'll certainly draw unwelcome attention to yourself. You may find these surroundings distasteful, but you need to wait until I'm ready to take you home. Take that chair over there.” He gestured to a chair by the window.

She wanted to tell him that
distasteful
was not the word. She found the surroundings wretched, desperate; they filled her with horror and compassion, but in the face of his sardonic tone she was damned if she was going to tell him that. “I'll find a seat in the outer office,” she stated, turning to go.

“I don't recommend that,” Douglas said. “There are any number of infections hanging around in that room just waiting for a rarified flower such as yourself to host them.”

“And
you
don't get them?” she inquired, the edge to her voice growing sharper. She couldn't understand his abrupt and hostile manner. He was entitled to some degree of annoyance, but this was too much, and she wasn't prepared to let him get away with it. “You don't consider you might pass them on to people you meet in your other life, Dr. Farrell?”

“You may rest assured, Miss Duncan, that I disinfect myself thoroughly,” he said with that same flicker of contempt.

Chastity took herself out to the waiting room and found a spare seat. Children whined and sniffed; their blank-eyed mothers administered slaps and hugs indiscriminately. Everyone shivered. Chastity handed out the last of her peppermints and wished she had more. They were a small enough solace in the face of this collective misery but at least she felt as if she was contributing something. She huddled into her coat with her reflections as Douglas moved among his patients, talking softly to each one in the waiting room before taking them into his office.

This doctor was a very different man from the urbane physician of Wimpole and Harley Streets . . . and very different from the man who had a passion for music and who could be a charming and witty dinner companion, not to mention a liberty-taking carriage escort. He was a positive Jekyll and Hyde. But why was he working here? Were these the only patients who would come to him? Or was it simply that he didn't yet have a sufficiently established practice in the more salubrious office on Harley Street to give this one up? Could these people even pay him? Certainly not much.

Could it be choice?
she thought suddenly, watching as he knelt on the dirty floor in front of an elderly woman whose badly swollen feet were wrapped in rags. He unwrapped the rags, holding her misshapen feet in the palms of his hands, tenderly palpating the ankles. It came to Chastity as a blinding revelation that he was treating these wretched folk with something akin to love. And they hung on his every word, their eyes following him as he moved among them. But how in the world did this scene jibe with a wealthy Harley Street practice?

And why had he been so contemptuous, so hostile towards her if he loved what he was doing? If he was proud of what he was doing? It was more as if he was embarrassed at being caught out at something that he was ashamed of.

For close to two hours, Chastity sat against the wall, trying to appear invisible. At least she'd solved the answer to the licorice and humbugs, she reflected, noticing that most patients as they left had some kind of medicine and the children without exception left his office with a handful of sweets. Finally he called in the last patient and she was the only person left in the waiting room. She got up from the rickety chair, feeling stiff and cold from sitting still so long, and went to the fireplace, stretching her hands to the meager glow.

She heard his office door open, heard him say, “Bring Maddie back in two days, Mrs. Garth. It's very important that I see her again. Don't forget.” Chastity straightened and turned slowly to watch him show a thin woman and an even thinner child out the front door.

“Poor souls,” she said rather helplessly.

“Yes, that's exactly what they are. Poor.” He moved past her to the grate and bent to bank the fire, then rose and extinguished the lamps. “Did you find it an interesting afternoon? An enlightening one, perhaps?” That same adversarial note was in his voice. It was as if he was challenging her in some way.

“No, I found it depressing,” she said. “I can understand why you would want to move to Harley Street.”

“Can you?” he said with a short laugh. “Can you, indeed?” He opened the door for her and she stepped out into the icy street, wrapping the scarf around her throat while he closed the door.

“You're not locking it?”

“There's nothing to steal, and someone might need to come in from the cold,” he said curtly. He looked down at her with that same frown creasing his brow. “Would it be too much to ask you to keep this little adventure of yours a secret?”

Chastity thought he sounded as if the request had been dragged from him by wild horses. She said rather coldly, “I'm not in the habit of gossiping. Besides, your business is no business of mine.”

He looked unconvinced but then gave a short nod and said, “Let's hurry, I'm freezing to death.”

He took her hand and pulled her along beside him as he strode rapidly away from the terrace and the church and along a series of miserable streets until they turned suddenly into the broad thoroughfare of Kensington High Street. “We'll take the omnibus from the corner,” he said. “It goes directly to Oxford Street.”

Chastity was about to say that in this cold she would prefer to take a hackney but bit her tongue. After what she'd seen this afternoon it wouldn't surprise her if the doctor didn't have the cab fare.
She
did, but remembering how he'd reacted when she'd hinted he might be a little short in the coin department, she wasn't prepared to risk a reprise by offering to pay for the ride herself.

Fortunately, the bus came quickly. It was fairly full but Douglas pushed her somewhat unceremoniously into the center, where there was a spare seat, or half a seat, the other half being occupied by a woman of very generous proportions who was also hung about with parcels and held a capacious handbag on her knee from which she had taken out her knitting. Chastity took the perch available and Douglas stood in the aisle, one hand on the seat back, the other holding the ceiling strap. He was so tall, it brushed his shoulder and he could reach it without so much as a stretch.

“So, what were these questions you wanted to ask me so urgently?” he inquired, handing the conductor sixpence for their fares as the omnibus lurched to a stop.

Chastity's large seat companion wanted to get off at the stop, giving Chastity time to consider her hastily manufactured excuse. It seemed rather feeble after the events of the afternoon. With mumbled apologies the woman banged her way past Chastity, parcels swinging precariously, knitting needles sticking out dangerously from the wide-open handbag. When she had finally staggered down the aisle trailing apologies, bruises, and scrapes in her wake, Chastity slipped over into the window seat, which was pleasantly warm from its previous occupant, and Douglas took the seat beside her.

“So?” he said.

It might be feeble but it was all she had. “I wasn't sure if we would meet again socially before Christmas and I didn't have your address,” she said. “I wanted to know what arrangements you wanted to make about coming to Romsey.”

“That was the question . . . the only question?” he asked incredulously. “You followed me into the darkest depths of Earl's Court to ask me something that trivial?”

“You might consider it trivial,” Chastity snapped, well on the defensive now. “But as your hostess, I don't find it in the least so. Are you intending to arrive on Christmas Eve, or the day itself? How long do you intend to stay? Will you be bringing servants? These are all vital matters.”

He leaned his head back and laughed without the slightest hint of humor. “Vital matters. Dear God, I suppose for some people they are.” He turned his head to look at her. “After what you saw this afternoon, how can you call—No, forgive me.” He shook his head. “I know perfectly well I couldn't expect someone like you to understand.”

Someone like you.
Chastity was chilled by something quite other than the cold evening.
What kind of person did he think she was?
She'd been shocked, horrified, filled with pity for those people. And in different circumstances would have been overcome with admiration for Douglas Farrell. Except that his hostility rather blunted the edge of admiration, and besides, he must presumably be intending to leave that practice when he established himself instead among the rich socialites of the city, a wealthy wife upon his arm. But she couldn't say any of that, because she wasn't supposed to know about the wife part of his ambition, or about the contempt with which he viewed the rich socialites who would line his pockets. He had only revealed that to the representative of the Go-Between. And it was that same contempt he'd been directing at her all afternoon.

She said tartly, “Since you're abandoning those people in favor of a rather easier and more lucrative practice, I don't think you can throw stones, Dr. Farrell.”

He said nothing. He had seen her distaste, the way she had shrunk from the unfortunates in his waiting room. He certainly wasn't going to waste his breath explaining himself to her.

Chastity said suddenly, “I'm getting off at the next stop. I'll take a hackney from there.” She stood up, her face rather white under the flickering streetlights that illuminated the vehicle.

Douglas would have attempted to stop her, attempted an apology even, but he was rather alarmed by her pallor, which was particularly startling against the redness of her hair. She looked about to weep, he thought. “I'll take you—”

“No, you won't,” she interrupted. “Thank you, but no. If you would let me pass, please?”

He stood up and she brushed past him, pushing her way towards the exit. He sat down again, tight-lipped. That had been nothing short of a debacle that threatened to throw all his plans into jeopardy. He had been furious at the position Chastity had put him in, the need to extract a promise from her as if St. Mary Abbot's was something of which he was ashamed. And he had hated her presence in his surgery, as much because he felt he was somehow exposing his patients' miseries to someone who couldn't empathize with them as by the threat she posed to his privacy and his plans.

But none of that was adequate excuse for having been so damnably and disastrously rude to her. In fact, he couldn't understand what had provoked him to such a foolish display of antagonism; he was usually expert at keeping his thoughts and feelings to himself. He knew that he couldn't realistically expect someone from Chastity's social circles and experience to feel anything but the revulsion she had made no attempt to disguise for the wretched inhabitants of the city slums, so it shouldn't have come as a surprise to him. He knew perfectly well that it wasn't realistic to expect any woman who would suit his marital purposes to sympathize with his mission. He had long ago accepted that a simple lack of objection from his spouse would serve his purpose perfectly well.

But now how was he to retrieve the situation? He could hardly spend Christmas as the guest of a woman he had so deeply offended, and if he was to court Laura Della Luca, he needed to have access to her. Christmas under the same roof was the perfect opportunity.

The omnibus lurched to a stop at Oxford Street and Douglas pushed his way to the exit. He stepped down onto the street, which despite the cold was thronged with Christmas shoppers, and strode off towards Wimpole Street debating his next move. He would have to try to make amends to Chastity without delay. Flowers first, a visit of apology afterwards . . . bearing, of course, the answers to her
vital
hostess questions, always assuming she was still interested in the answers.

Chastity arrived home still feeling emotionally winded. She hurried past Jenkins, who had the door open for her before she could get her key in the lock.

“Everything all right, Miss Chas?”

“Yes . . . yes, thank you, Jenkins. I'm just half-frozen,” she called over her shoulder as she headed up the stairs to the welcome and familiar seclusion of her parlor. Here it was warm, the fire ablaze, the lamps lit. She unpeeled her outer garments and threw them over a chair by the door before dropping into a deep armchair by the fire. She propped her feet on the fender and closed her eyes for a minute.