However, Mrs Barton’s worried aspect always gave the impression not only of age, but of her never being young.
‘Lettuce, I am glad you graced us with your presence,’ Mrs Barton said, pushing her lips together with that characteristic click of the tongue.
‘I aim to please.’ Letty crossed the room, placing a dutiful kiss on her mother’s smooth cheek, before seating herself in a more comfortable chair opposite.
‘Although I do not know what time you think this is to be rising?’
‘One in the afternoon,’ Letty affirmed, glancing at the mantel clock.
‘Are you ill?’
‘I do not think so.’
‘Only severe illness is sufficient reason to lie abed until this hour.’
‘I will try to remedy the situation. Would a cold or chill suffice?’
A frown puckered her mother’s forehead. ‘Your sense of humour is too much like your father’s. And you disappeared yesterday almost as soon as you had arrived.’
‘Disappeared—gracious, I feel like a magician at a village fair. I went into the library and then home.’
‘You were invited to a garden party, not to skulk in the library.’
‘Indeed, skulking sounds positively criminal. You always make my life feel so much more exciting than its reality.’
Her mother’s forehead furrowed into a deeper crease. ‘Criminal is not “exciting”. And you always talk in riddles. Your father was much the same. We are lucky that your brother had the good sense to marry a young lady related to a duke.’
‘I believe the relation is distant and Father’s money, as opposed to Ramsey’s sense, might have had more to do with it,’ Letty murmured.
‘Your comment is ill bred and ungrateful. Your brother’s marriage to dear Florence provides you entrance into a level of society I never enjoyed. But do you not take advantage of this? No. You spent close to two years with her in London and did not acquire a single suitor. In fact, you hardly seemed to socialise at all—or only under duress. Now you live here on your own in a ludicrously eccentric manner while squandering your inheritance which is the only thing likely to entice a suitable husband.’
‘My delightful personality and good looks will not?’ Letty quipped. ‘Anyway, my lifestyle is much too frugal for much squandering.’
‘You have purchased a house and must run that establishment.’
‘Two, actually. I rent one to the doctor next door.’
‘Who is also odd, from what I hear. No one even sees the man. Anyway, back to the garden party. Dear Florence purposefully invited Mr Chester. Indeed, she arranged the party all specially for you, you know.’
‘I didn’t. It certainly looked lovely. I appreciated everything. Particularly the elephant. And the giraffe.’ Letty sat in the chair opposite, lolling in excess as though to compensate for her mother’s stiffness.
‘Elephant? I do hope you are not losing your reason. It is not done, you know.’
‘I was referring to the box tree sculpted like an elephant. In fact, the box trees all resembled wild animals. Combined with the stone lion, it felt like a veritable African adventure.’
Her mother’s frown deepened. ‘I am uncertain if African adventures are entirely appropriate.’
‘Really, that quite ruins my plans for next week. By the way, did you want tea or any other refreshment?’
‘Can Sarah make tea?’
‘She can boil water.’
‘Fine, but I won’t be diverted. Florence wanted you to meet Mr Chester. We both did. It was excessively irritating that you did not.’
‘Chester?’ Letty frowned. She remembered a middle-aged gentleman of that name.
‘He has a sizeable income and is related to an earl.’
‘Doesn’t he also have a bald head, a bad temper—and a wife?’
‘She’s dead. A month since,’ Mrs Barton announced with unseemly enthusiasm.
‘Gracious, I can’t drag the poor man down the aisle when she is hardly cold in her grave.’
‘You wouldn’t drag him down the aisle immediately. You would reach an understanding. The wedding would come after a seemly interlude. And really, you cannot be too picky. You are not in the first blush of youth and no great beauty.’
‘Certainly, I am guaranteed not to become vain,’ Letty muttered.
‘Moreover, you have chosen this eccentric lifestyle,’ her mother continued, ignoring the comment. ‘I mean you do not have a proper cook, butler or scullery maid. And sharing Sarah with that young doctor, I don’t think that’s the thing at all.’
‘I hardly think my virtue will be compromised because my maid also dusts for a gentleman.’
Her mother made another tutting sound. ‘You can scoff all you want. But Florence and Ramsey will have their own family soon. I know your father left you comfortably placed, but your funds are not unlimited. And Ramsey cannot be expected to support you in this nonsense.’
Letty rubbed the cloth of her skirt between her fingers, then stilled her hand. She’d heard this all a thousand times and refused to believe her mother’s doomsday prediction. After all, she was almost self-sufficient.
Although she did tend to be paid in rather a lot of root vegetables which, she supposed, might lead to a healthy lifestyle, but hardly one of affluence.
Yes, it was a tenuous, fragile success and one based on smoke and mirrors. The purchase of the two houses and the doctor’s buggy had taken a considerable sum and her training in London was not without cost. Moreover, it would only take ‘Dr Hatfield’ to make some mistake, or some sharp-eyed individual to see beyond the wig, spectacles, her flattened chest and man’s attire.
Briefly, her mother’s face softened. ‘Besides, this must get lonely. Your father and I weren’t close exactly, but we shared a common goal to look after you and Ramsey, to secure the best for you. Surely you must want a family, children?’
For a moment, Letty remembered Mrs Jamison’s expression as she held her baby. It would be something to feel such love. It would be something to create new life. Yet she remembered also the mothers she had seen in hospital whose children could not be saved. She remembered the desperation in their eyes. They had been broken by the loss.
The pain of losing a child must be more awful than anything she could imagine. She’d felt broken enough by her father’s unexpected death. Even now she could see him in stark detail, his face ashen, contorted with pain as his hand flew in a futile gesture to his chest before dropping to the floor.
There was nothing she could do.
Was that when she’d decided that she must find a way, however desperate and crazy, to pursue medicine? Was that when she’d realised that she could not be satisfied with reading alone or even sneaking after the midwives?
Those visits had started a few years earlier. Whenever her mother was in London, Letty would wander to Mrs Soames’s cottage, fascinated with its bundles of herbs hanging from the ceiling, air heavy with the scent of caudle. Later, she became more daring, tagging along when Mrs Soames was summoned to attend a birth. At first, Mrs Soames had shooed her away, but eventually she’d been allowed to boil water or bring in the hot caudle for the mother to drink.
Of course, she’d been motivated in part by rebellion, a need to experience something before becoming enclosed within the noose of