Chapter 4

Four

His head had not throbbed this wretchedly in months. Not since the absinthe incident of the previous June. The green liqueur was poison to Grant, and yet he'd been persuaded to drink far too much of it one wild evening at the Fallen Arch, a club that catered to London's demimonde. June the seventh crept up on him each year. The black storm that had once accompanied the date had lessened to a dreary, cold drizzle, and Grant admitted that was probably the reason he'd blinded himself with the green fairy at the Fallen Arch.

It was only natural that the day he'd lost his wife and infant child should be shrouded in black. Eight years had passed, and with each one, the memories of Sarah continued to fade. That night at the club, he'd tried to drown his guilt, and yet he'd only succeeded in debilitating himself for the next two days.

Last night, Grant hadn't indulged in anything stronger than whisky. His head didn't ache because of that, but because he hadn't slept. All night, into the early morning hours, he'd fluctuated between tossing in bed and pacing his room, as well as the halls of his home on St. James's Square.

Miss Jane Banks. What the devil was Cassie thinking? To hide a pregnant woman from her family, or her husband, or even just the father of her unborn child was a dangerous risk. It might very well be illegal. And Cassie's safe house sheltered several of these women at a time. Miss Khan, the midwife, had briefly explained about their endeavor and purpose after allowing him out back of the accountant's office that fronted the address. Grant had come to a stop at the base of a stairwell.

"The woman is with child?" His messenger, a former patient whom he paid well to conceal the truth of his identity, had only said that a feverish woman needed seeing to, fast.

"That's correct, doctor." Miss Khan had taken the first step up, but Grant stayed planted to the floorboards.

"Is she in labor?" he'd asked, his heartbeat beginning to increase. He did not oversee deliveries. Since Sarah's death, he hadn't been able to so much as think about them without feeling the onset of shivers and sweat. For that reason alone, he'd whittled down his patients in the ton to include just men and a few older women who couldn't bear children—and who wouldn't faint over his reputation.

"Not at this time," Miss Khan had said, her keen eyes narrowing. No doubt she'd noticed his brush with panic.

Once he'd started to follow her up the steps, she'd asked for his confidence; the safety of their residents depended on his silence. Grant had given his word—and then, he'd entered the upstairs room and come face to face with Lady Cassandra Sinclair.

The onslaught of shock and stark confusion, then the slow boil of understanding had left his limbs buzzing with restlessness. It had taken all his training and focus to calm himself enough to see to the feverish woman, to put her front of mind instead of the chit he'd so recently been in a closet with at Lady Dutton's ball.

After, in the drafty back room she'd preposterously called an office, Cassie's impertinence and her refusal to grasp the reason for his anger had only further stoked his temper. And now, the bloody woman knew his secret. For the last five years, ever since he'd quit his daily routine of wallowing in despair, he'd run the Church Street free clinic. Every Saturday, without fail, he'd arrive with his assistant, Hannah, and from ten o'clock until five in the evening, they would be inundated with all manner of situations. From simple cuts to festering wounds; cancerous masses to ingrown hairs; severed fingers to put-out eyes; swollen abdomens to broken bones. The variety of ailments was unending, and most people in Whitechapel were content to suffer until Saturday. Emergency calls were rare, but Grant had arranged a system so that he could protect his identity. It had worked. Until now.

"Four boxes," Hannah said from where she stood at the supply cabinets in his home surgery.

Grant looked up from the medical logbook he'd been reading through. "Four boxes of what?"

"Cotton linen." Her forehead creased. "You asked me to take inventory?"

"Oh, right. Yes. I did." He barely remembered his assistant entering the room while he'd been reading through the notes he'd taken about his fever patients over the last month. "Four boxes should be plenty for now, thank you."

Hannah turned back to the cabinets. "Did the emergency call last night not go well?"

Grant closed the logbook. "How did you know I went out?"

Miss Hannah Matthews only attended emergency calls with him during daylight hours, and only when she was at Thornton House, which was usually four times every week.

"Your bag is missing a tincture of Peruvian bark," she answered.

"Ah. Yes, of course." Had his mind not been boiled down to suet, he would have been able to deduce her reasoning for himself. "I was summoned for a fever patient."

In any other situation, he would have imparted much more about it to his assistant. As his late wife's younger sister, Hannah was family. And Grant was the only family she had left. Their mother died in childbirth when Hannah was just three. Their father then left her and Sarah to be raised by their grandmother, who'd passed away shortly before Sarah became his wife. Hannah had been just eighteen when Sarah died and was suddenly entirely dependent upon her brother-in-law. Unfortunately, he'd become an utter wreck. Knowing this, his eldest brother, Lawrence, and his wife, Mary, had taken in Hannah. Over time, she began to express an interest in Grant's work, and then, had offered to assist him when he needed another pair of hands.

Mary had been adamantly against it, saying the young lady should be getting married, not working—and with a physician, at that. It was beyond the pale! However, neither Hannah nor Grant had felt the need to regard Mary's complaints, shrill as they'd been, and she'd happily stayed on the fringes of the marriage mart while assisting Grant. Hannah was steady and serious and had a methodical sort of behavior that suited a clinic. He trusted her with all aspects of his patient logbook.

But now there was Lady Cassandra to think about. Something of which he'd already been doing too much of over the last week. He would be bathing, or reading, or eating, and on one occasion, even listening to a patient's heart rhythm through his stethoscope, when he'd realize he was not paying attention to what was going on around him. Instead, he'd be thinking about that damned closet in Lady Dutton's house. Cassie's heaving breaths, her palms against his chest. Her thigh tangling between his, her smell of apricots. He couldn't seem to stop his mind from reliving those several minutes. Or from imagining what other things could have happened, had he not fought his body's desire for her.

But it was just base lust. Had it been any woman shoved against him in that closet, he would have felt the same, he was sure of it. Probably even Lady Brookfield with her mole.

"The tincture should help," Hannah said, interrupting his increasingly cluttered thoughts. "Unless this fever is as serious as the other cases we've seen."

After their first fever patient had stumbled into the free clinic, Grant had insisted that Hannah keep her distance for a time. He was ultimately responsible for her and didn't want her to take ill. But she'd ignored his request and continued to join him.

"I fear it is."

He'd planned to wait until at least noon to return to the disguised location but now felt an increased sense of urgency. If he found Cassie in that room again, he'd wring her insolent neck.

Goodwin, his butler, appeared in the surgery entrance, and in his usual measured tone, announced a caller. "Lord James Thornton is here, my lord. I've shown him into the study."

Grant groaned and scrubbed his fingers through his hair. Two years his senior, James was closest to him in age, and by far his favorite brother. However, he never called this early in the day unless it had something to do with their father. The marquess's most recent complaints that his youngest and least preferred son was not carrying his weight when it came to providing the family title with its future heir had fallen to the back of his mind since last evening at Hope House.

"I'll return shortly," he said to Hannah, who only sealed her lips to bite back a smirk. She didn't yet know of the marquess's ultimatum, but she was perfectly aware that Grant was the black sheep of the family and was regularly hauled over the coals for his infractions.

He entered his study to find his brother seated at his desk, arms folded behind his head, and muddy riding boots up on the blotter.

"Ah, baby brother." A grin stretched James's face into the mischievous expression he wore when he knew he was being a pest.

"Get your shite-covered boots off my desk." Grant swiped them off, and James sat forward, laughing. "I take it you're here with some new decree from our loving father."

"Maybe I've just dropped in after my morning ride to say hello," he replied, standing up from the chair.

"I am not in the mood, James." Grant grabbed the decanter of single malt he kept on his desk, intending to pour himself a drink. But then slammed the stopper back in. It was too damned early, and he needed to return to Hope House.

"I can see that." James turned serious, something he could manage to do from time to time if he truly tried. "What has happened?"

Nothing having to do with Cassie Sinclair could be uttered, of course. So, Grant turned to the next most aggravating thing. "Is the marquess's order that I find a new wife and issue a son not reason enough?"

"Plenty, I suppose." James moved toward the leather Chesterfield. He fell backward onto the cushions and stretched out his legs again.

"Eight children," Grant said. "Three sired by Lawrence, three by Harold, and two by you, and none of them could be a boy? What is wrong with the lot of you?"

He would not include their younger sister in his satirized scathing. She was heartbroken that she hadn't conceived after three years of marriage, and besides, Penelope already received enough grief about it from their father.

James raised a brow, and as Grant had always been able to do, he read his brother's thoughts easily. He was thinking of the child that Grant had sired himself. The one who'd never drawn breath. Also a girl. But James knew better than to mention her.

"Perhaps we are all cursed to sire females," he said instead. He was being facetious. He adored his little girls, Letitia and Vivian.

"That is far too fatalistic an attitude for the marquess," Grant replied, eyeing the decanter once more. He turned his back to it and faced his brother. "When is the new one due to arrive again? Next month?"

It was the one last glittering hope Grant clung to: that James's wife, currently in confinement, would give birth to a boy. The boy their father had slowly become obsessed with receiving. The fact that primogeniture would safely see the Lindstrom title bestowed upon at least one of his four sons wasn't enough for the old tyrant. With no male offspring amongst those four sons, the title would eventually be shunted off to the next male heir. Some distant cousin or nephew, all of whom may as well have been common laborers for how Lord Lindstrom spoke of them.

"About a month, yes," James answered, but his tone held a warning, one he'd already illuminated before: that Grant should not hinge all his hope on the child being male. But it seemed his optimism had a mind of its own. Should Vera have a boy at the start of the new year, Grant would be off the hook.

Unfortunately, the marquess had given him only until the first of January to select a wife.

"I've come about Father's dinner tonight," James said to change the subject.

"I haven't heard about any dinner."

His brother rose to his feet, looking suddenly eager to depart. "This is you hearing. And you're to be there. No excuses. Eight o'clock."

He groaned. "I presume several unmarried ladies and their mothers will be in attendance," Grant said, pushing off from the edge of his desk as James headed for the exit.

"Our father is a hard man, I'm not ignorant to that. But you are two and thirty, brother. You should marry."

Thorns pricked the underside of his skin. "I was married. How is it that everyone constantly seems to forget that?"

James cocked his head. Then came forward and clasped Grant's shoulder. "No one has forgotten. We all loved Sarah. But it has been eight years." He gave a small shake of his head. "It is time to move on."

It wasn't a new sentiment. The first person to suggest it, just three months after Sarah's death, had received a broken nose and a cracked front tooth. He couldn't even recall the man's name. At that time, Grant had been visiting houses of vice nearly every night of the week to numb his incessant pain. His practice had been a shambles, his patients withdrawing to allow him time to grieve. But it was not acceptable for men to grieve for too long. He would recover, he"d been told, and find a new wife. Have more children. The comments had left him cold, and curious as to just how many men actually loved their wives.

He'd loved Sarah with blind passion. He'd worshipped her. She'd been beautiful, of course, but that hadn't been his sole reason. There had been so many little things about her, like her subdued wit, her penchant for anything pink, and her truly awful singing voice. It had been horrendously off key, and she'd known it, so she would abuse his ears with little songs whenever she felt the urge to annoy him. Not that it ever truly did. And yet, eight years on, he found he couldn't hear it anymore in his memory the way he once had.

James released his shoulder. "Besides, haven't you grown tired of superficial liaisons?"

"No." Not when they were the extent of what he was willing to risk.

Superficial rake. It was what Cassie had accused him of being when she'd walked in on Lady Brookfield showing him her mole. It was mostly accurate. He was superficial in many ways. He was a rake too, though he limited his number of bed partners to a healthy one-at-a-time—unlike many true rakes he knew.

Still, hearing Cassie accuse him of superficiality had struck with insult, while his brother's acknowledgement of it had left nary a mark.

He straightened up and cleared his throat. "I'll be at the damnable dinner, but I cannot promise I'll be on my best behavior."

He had a reputation to uphold, after all.

"You'd best try," James said on his way out. "Just pick a wife and be done with it. Father is serious about this. He holds the power to reduce your income to a pittance?—"

"As I well know," he interjected, the threat like the nick of a blunted razor.

"Enough for you to get by on bread and ale alone," James went on.

"Yes, yes, do shut up and leave."

His brother winked and did just that.

Christ. Bread and ale. Had he received even a solitary display of affection from his father over the course of his life, Grant might doubt the veracity of the warning. But the marquess did not make idle threats. And should Grant's income dry up, he'd be left with nothing but his physician earnings. It wouldn't be near enough to run this household and the free clinic. One solution he'd considered had been to leave Thornton House and live in Whitechapel at the Church Street clinic. He leased the entire building, which consisted of two floors and six rooms. But he'd already shoved that option into the rubbish. He wanted to be philanthropic, not poor—which he would be, once his upper-class patients learned he was doctoring to the pestilence ridden masses.

It brought his mind back to Lady Cassandra. She knew all about Dr. Brown now. Unlike Hannah, Hugh Marsden, and the few others who knew about the clinic, like his driver Merryton and of course, Goodwin, Grant didn't fully trust that Cassie would stay mum about it. Given her short temper and her impulsivity, he felt slightly precarious about the whole thing.

"Should I ready your bag?" Hannah asked as she entered the study. "It's nearly noon, and I suspect you'll want to check in on last night's patient."

She knew him well.

"Thank you," he said as anticipation churned his stomach. As much as he hoped Cassie was not there, he couldn't deny that it would be convenient. They needed to speak. And he would not shut up until he got the answer he wanted.