Chapter 4

Chapter

Four

Nigel

" I 'll bring it over now, Doctor."

"Thank you." Nigel smiled and retreated to the corner of the inn where he so often took his meals. The sun had dropped in the night sky so far that it cast the thinnest of yellow lights through the small windows of the inn. Tallow candles filled the space, with one rushlight in the middle of the table where Nigel sat himself. Shaking off his tailcoat, for the summer's eve was a hot one, he sat heavily down into a settle bench and waited for his food.

Tonight, the inn was busy, and his friend, the innkeeper, Bernard, was rushed off his feet. It took many minutes for him to deliver the pigeon pie to Nigel with the ale and apologized profusely for the wait.

"You don't need to worry, Bernard. I can see you're busy. How's the back, by the way?" he asked, taking the ale and gesturing with the cup to the large man beside him.

Bernard was a man who always ate the scraps off his diners' plates to save money elsewhere. The result was a large belly and with his active job taking care of the inn, the extra weight and the labor had led to a bad back indeed.

"Oh, poor. Poor indeed." He shook his head, making his jowls tremble.

"Have you tried the tonic I gave you?" Nigel asked, sitting forward and resting his elbows on the edge of the table.

Bernard glanced over his shoulder in the direction of his wife, Sarah, who stood at the bar serving other customers.

"She says I'm not to drink too much. We can't afford much more of it."

"Bernard, please, just take it." Nigel pleaded with him. He'd seen for himself when examining Bernard that he was in excessive pain. "I can always look at lowering the price of the tonic if it's needed."

"You would do that?" Bernard's eyes widened.

"Yes, of course. But remember our deal." Nigel gestured to his rounded stomach. "Lose a little of that weight as well. It may keep your warm, but it's what is making your back so bad."

"I remember, Doctor. Thank you. Thank you so much." He hurried back off to the bar with a fresh spring in his step.

Nigel smiled as he watched him walk away. His customers were both poor and wealthy, he didn't discriminate or choose between them, and as he never did this occupation for the money, he did not mind what he was paid for his services.

As long as I help people, that is what matters most.

Nigel turned his attention to his food and pulled out a book he'd managed to purchase after leaving Lady Georgiana's house, discussing problems of the heart and its rhythms. As he ate, he finished the ale quickly and saw out of the corner of his eye a slender hand that took the empty cup.

"Would you like another, sir?" a woman's gentle voice asked.

Nigel looked up, so shocked at the fair face before him that he was tongue-tied for a minute or too. She had great blue eyes and rich brown hair. Her cheap gown showed she was a girl who worked at the bar, and when she caught him looking, she smiled all the more.

"Erm, yes. Thank you." He nodded at her, offering up a few more coins.

She hurried away and returned a few minutes later with a fresh ale that she placed down in front of him. When she didn't go away at once, Nigel was distracted, staring at her once again.

Well, I can't deny everything, can I? I'm still a man.

As much as he divided himself from women these days, a beautiful face was still captivating.

"Would you like some company, sir?" She gestured to the empty settle bench opposite him and offered another one of those sweet smiles.

For a second, Nigel didn't say anything. A brief imagination flashed in his mind of accepting her offer and sitting down with her, talking for a short while. It would be an indulgence indeed, to allow himself to smile and talk with a young woman as fair as her.

I must remember my resolution.

"Not tonight. Thank you." He looked away from her down at his book, pretending to be keenly interested in what he was reading.

"Very well. Night, sir." She retreated from the table and moved back toward the bar.

When he was certain she had turned away, Nigel lifted his head enough for his eyes to follow her. He admired her another time, taking in the hair, the curve of her neck and the way she walked. It did something to him, stirred something deep within his gut, an intense longing. Yet she was gone so fast behind the bar that it dampened the feeling fast.

Returning his focus to his food and his book, he tried his best not to think about her again. He thought of the heart and the way it pumped blood around the body, how many ventricles there were and the latest theories on what stimulated the heart to pump at all. He read of some evasive ideas, of one man who though it was a person's spirit itself that kept the heart beating. There was another who proposed it was some sort of signal, like the connection of nerves. Lastly, there was some mad theory of it being heat in the body.

All rubbish, I am certain.

Distracted at the end of the evening when the beautiful woman came to collect his empty cup and plate once more, he could not sit still anymore. He left the inn, much sooner than he normally would have done, waving to Bernard in parting as he stepped outside.

It is for the best.

As darkness swept in, Nigel climbed the last of the stairs up to his attic rooms. The corridor was small and poky, he even bumped his shoulders repeatedly against the walls as he struggled in the darkness, fumbling in his pockets to search for a key.

It didn't seem to matter how cramped the conditions were, Nigel had no intention of purchasing anything larger.

This will do for a doctor like me. Why would I need anything vaster than this?

He eventually managed to put the key in the lock and turn the door, stepping inside. Dropping his medicine bag and his book to the nearest table, he reached for the mantelpiece and hunted for a tinder box, lighting a small rushlight.

The feeble flame cast a small amount of light across the room, so he raised it higher, allowing it to fall on as many things as possible. The buttery light revealed the stacks of books, some falling off shelves for there were so many. The table that should have been a dining table was set up more like a desk, with so many doctor's notes and books that the oak surface was barely discernible at all.

Pushing some of the books to the side, Nigel retrieved the notebook where he had made notes for Lady Georgiana that day and laid it flat with the others. Amongst the papers on the table were the periodicals that Lady Georgiana had given him, written by her daughter-in-law and some of the other successful society ladies the Dowager Countess liked to talk so much about.

Nigel dropped one of his books on top of the periodicals. He'd accepted them when Lady Georgiana offered one day, but he'd taken no further interest in them as he spent too much of his time reading and researching his own business affairs. There were new books on anatomy that he had yet to add to his collection, and he knew that Lady Georgiana had recently acquired a set of books on the studies of an Italian doctor that he was most keen to read.

Finding his eyes sore after reading so long that day, he rubbed them, trying to soothe some of that feeling and stepped back from the table, turning to look at the rest of the room.

On the far side was a small armchair beside a fire, and another stack of shelves bearing books beside it. Discretely hidden by the shelves was a door that led to his bedchamber and garderobe. He stepped through this door, taking the rushlight with him, intent on finding some peace.

After undressing, he laid down on the bed in nothing but a loose pair of breeches. It was too hot to think of wearing a nightshirt or pulling the covers over his body. He laid on the bed, staring at the ceiling with the rushlight beside him. Frequently, he considered blowing the flame out and casting the room into darkness, but every time he closed his eyes, he found sleep was a great distance away.

His mind was too active. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the beautiful face of the woman from the inn and wondered what could have happened if he had invited her to sit down with him. They were a distance apart in positions, but that was far from what was on his mind. He imagined other things instead, indulgences of her being in the same bed, of stolen touches, things that would excite and make his body shudder.

"No." He spoke aloud as his eyes opened.

He'd promised long ago that such things were no longer for him. He'd closed down his life to the idea of a partnership with anyone.

As he sat up in the bed, with Lady Georgiana's words from their meeting that day coming back to him.

"Do you take your own advice, Doctor?... You are old enough to be married, are you not? Yet you have not taken a wife."

Nigel pushed the words away angrily and stepped off the bed, abandoning the idea of sleep altogether. He told himself it was the heat that made it too difficult. How could he possibly sleep when the air was too hot?

Standing, he took the rushlight and moved back to the main room of his apartments. He thrust open the window, trying to let in a little of the cool night's breeze, then he sat down in the chair by the window and reached for one of his many books. Turning the pages to his bookmark, he absorbed himself in the world of his teachings, trying to focus on them as much as possible.

He was there for so long that the rushlight burnt out completely, just as his eyes slipped shut. He drifted into a restless sleep where he saw many things.

He saw Lady Georgiana, staring at the flowers as she held a hand to her chest. She was in pain, or frightened, he could not tell, but when he spoke to her, she would not say what scared her so much. She merely continued to stare at the flowers.

He followed her gaze, looking out to the garden where he saw someone wandering between those flowers. He couldn't see the figure clearly, but he could tell it was a woman from the silhouette that revealed a gown. She wandered through the garden with ease, trailing her fingers across the blooms.

Then abruptly, the image in his mind changed.

Nigel was no longer in the sunny garden room of Lady Georgiana's house. He stood in the cold doorway of another room, where the air felt like ice and there was dew on the tip of his nose. He stepped into the room, bending down beneath the low timber beams, his eyes set on the bed.

Nigel woke up. He dropped the book off his lap as his head turned around, frantically in the darkness. He breathed heavily as the heat struck him and he remembered he was not in the cold room anymore.

It was a dream, a memory. That is all.