A Kiss For Midwinter

Or maybe this: Don’t take the prussic acid. Whatever you do, don’t take the prussic acid.

Perhaps he might whisper a single phrase: Don’t believe a word he said.

But he’d given the man his word. Besides—he told himself—he knew his place. He was scarcely twenty-one, hadn’t even had his first lecture in medicine. He was not at the point where he should be publicly contradicting a man more than three times his age. Besides, what did he know? A little book learning was all he had. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe Parwine’s experience meant he did know better.

All that was rubbish, and he knew it. As he left, her eyes fell on him. He didn’t even know the girl’s name, but his guilt made him see accusation in her gaze. You could help me.

Superstition, that—nobody could read thoughts from a single glance. It was his own conscience that he saw reflected in her eyes. But he didn’t say anything. He didn’t speak because he was young. He didn’t speak because he doubted his memory of the pharmacopeia. And most thorny of all, Jonas kept his silence because Parwine had offered him his practice once he graduated.

It was the last reason he remembered in the weeks that followed when he queried one of the instructing physicians about the recommended dosage for prussic acid. Almost nothing, the man told him. And for pregnant women? Never.

For years afterward, Jonas dreamed of her eyes—those harsh, cold, accusing depths. He could have helped her.

When he finally graduated, he swore the oath of Hippocrates on Apollo the healer. But it was her face he saw when he spoke, her eyes that bored into his when he promised to do no harm.

Five years later

THE MOST UNREASONABLE NOTION JONAS EVER HAD—the nonsensical fixed point of his adult life—started from an excess of rationality. And yet at the time when it happened, everything he did made perfect sense.

He first heard the name “Lydia Charingford” on a brilliant summer day nearly five years after he’d made the rounds with Parwine. He discovered it, not because he recognized her, but because he didn’t. He liked the look of her, so he asked his friend who she was after service one Sunday.

“Would you like an introduction?” Toford asked, a knowing look in his eye.

“It depends,” he responded. “I’m trying to decide whether I favor round numbers or complete information.”

Toford frowned. “For God’s sake, Grantham, use English. What the devil do you mean by that?”

They were standing in a corner of the churchyard, looking over the crowd. It was a fine day at the end of summer, and all the ladies were wearing their loveliest—and their lightest—gowns. The young ladies had been casting welcoming glances his way throughout the rector’s lengthy sermon. Jonas was young, handsome, and—with Parwine now retired—in possession of an excellent income.

Those curious, hopeful glances had made him feel very nice indeed. The breeze was refreshing, the sun was warm, and the ladies were all vying to make a good impression on him. It was a damned good time to be a man.

He was watching the ladies in return. No point in pretending he wasn’t; he intended to take a wife and had only to choose her. But Toford was still staring at him in confusion.

“I mean,” Jonas told him, “that during the service, I made a rank-ordered list of the ten prettiest young ladies in Leicester. I intend to speak with every one of them.”

Toford nodded thoughtfully. “Good plan, Grantham, good plan. I did much the same thing last year, and see how it served me.”

Mrs. Toford had teeth that were far too large. She wouldn’t have ranked anywhere on Jonas’s list. Jonas managed a polite murmur of approval.

“Ten, though,” Toford continued. “Ten’s a lot of women to speak with. You’re tall. You’re respectable. Why not limit yourself to three, maybe five? It’s hard enough work, trying to see if one woman will suit you. My head hurts just thinking of the effort.”

Jonas waved this off. “Yes, well. I have demanding tastes. What if number one snorts when she laughs? What if number six is untidy? What if number eight doesn’t like me?”

“Doesn’t like you?” Toford’s brows rose. “Grantham, I think you have it all wrong.” He looked around and then lowered his voice to just above a whisper. “See here,” he said. “We’re men. We don’t have to marry. These girls, here? They’ve seen their sisters, their friends placed firmly on the shelf. They know their prospects if they don’t catch a man. It’s not their place to like or not like. It’s their place to marry any way they can, and it’s ours to choose.”

“Be that as it may. One never knows what a woman might find off-putting. I’d rather cast my net broadly than miss altogether. And, as it happens, I have a few defects in my character.”

For instance, he was fairly certain that his list of local beauties, arranged by degree of physical attractiveness, was not something that members of the opposite sex would find particularly compelling. Also, he had decided it would be best not to mention his main reason for wanting to marry—that he thought it expedient to procure a regular source of sexual intercourse without risking syphilis.

“Defects?” Toford squinted at him. “Huh. Strange, irrational creatures, women are. Miss Charingford is what number on your list?”

There was the problem. “Eleven. Well, ten, sometimes—but only some of the time. Miss Perrod is usually ten. But at some angles, in some lighting…” He shrugged. “You see my conundrum. If I want to talk to the ten loveliest young ladies, I might need to include Miss Charingford. But if I do, I’ll have eleven, not ten. Both results make my hands itch.” He rubbed them together, but it didn’t help. That unpleasant sensation he felt in the palms of his hands was an illusion, a mere echo of that same itch somewhere in his brain.

“Maybe,” Toford said, “maybe you should talk to her—not for the list, mind you, but just as a way of seeing her up close. Evaluating whether she should be included or not.”

“Ah,” he said in relief. “Good thinking.”

Which was how he found himself walking around a park a few days later, with Miss Lydia Charingford on his arm, wondering how quickly he could extricate himself from the conversation. Closer examination revealed that she was number eleven. Most definitely eleven, with those freckles that he hadn’t noticed from a distance and that too-wide smile. Furthermore, she fussed with the ribbons of her gown and responded to his conversational overtures in monosyllables.