The Wildest Rake

‘By dancing attendance upon those we despise?’ demanded Cornelia, facing her with blazing eyes.

Her mother sighed. ‘You are angry. I understand why, child. Sir Rendel is wild and, perhaps, dissolute. But we must not be too hard upon him.’

Cornelia laughed mirthlessly. ‘Oh, no, do not let us be too hard upon him. He is rich and powerful.’

Mistress Brent reddened and snapped back. ‘Your virtuous protests would convince me more, Cornelia, if I did not know why you dislike him. Well, let me tell you now, you will never marry Andrew Belgrave while I am above ground, no, not if you weep your eyes blind for him. He will never be more than a humble physician. He has neither ambition nor stomach for life. He is more suited for a monk’s life than anything else.’ She drew breath, panting, and added, ‘What is more, I do not like him.’

Cornelia stared at her, white-faced. ‘How can you dislike him? He is a saint. He is so kind, so gentle . . . how could anyone dislike him?’

Mistress Brent stared obstinately at her. ‘He is too saintly for me. Why, if every man acted as he does, the world would come to an end, there would be no food for children, no trade, no money, nothing. We would all live hand to mouth as he does. Do you not see, he takes money from more honest men by practising his trade and asking no payment, so that the poor flock to him. He has no right to do such a thing.’

Cornelia shook her head in disbelief. ‘I never thought to hear such things from you, Mother. I know many a poor family who would have lost a father, or a child, for want of a doctor, if Andrew had not visited them freely. If he were a canting humbug I could understand your resentment. But he practises his religion, he does not merely preach it. Nobody could point a finger at him for hypocrisy.’

Mistress Brent looked angrily at her. ‘You are still ready to put your father and myself into the pillory, I see, although you spring so hotly to defend your dearest Andrew.’

‘Mother. That was unjust. I was not thinking of you when I spoke just now.’ Cornelia was near to tears. She ran to her carved wooden chest and threw back the lid. Dragging out her gowns, she flung them, higgledy-piggledy, on the bed. ‘Choose what I shall wear, then. I cannot bear these constant disputes.’

Her mother opened her mouth, then closed it again. She turned over the gowns, frowning. ‘Your green is the newest, but Sir Rendel has seen that. Your yellow is too plain and old. The rose pink is pretty, but needs new ribbons and trimmings, and there is little time.’

‘Ellen could do it for me,’ said Cornelia. She had managed to talk some of their neighbours into putting out plain sewing with Ellen, who was now out of bed and increasingly anxious because she had no news yet of her husband’s ship.

‘But could she finish it in time?’ asked Mistress Brent.

‘I will take it there myself and help her with it,’ Cornelia said.

Her mother sighed impatiently. ‘What is the point of keeping a sewing maid and doing her work for her? If you do it we shall only waste the good money we pay Ellen.’

‘Oh, Mother,’ Cornelia groaned. ‘If you could see her, so changed, so full of foreboding for her husband, and with her little baby on her lap. ‘

Mistress Brent eyed her irritably. ‘Cornelia, sometimes I could gladly box your ears. The young are always over-virtuous for others. You think you know all there is to know of life. There is a priggish streak in you which enrages me.’

‘Thank you, Mother,’ grinned Cornelia. ‘Then I may help Ellen? The faster the work is done the better.’

As they walked past Andrew’s house he came out and stood, his black gown fluttering in the autumn wind, taking off his hat.

‘How are you, Cornelia?’

‘I am well,’ she said, looking sharply at his thin, lined face. ‘But you look so tired. Why do you not take a day in the country before the winter sets in and you are too busy?’

He laughed, his blue eyes twinkling. ‘You are behind the times. The winter chills have already begun. I have been dosing everyone in sight this past week. Even my housekeeper has fallen sick.’ He sighed. ‘Poor soul, I am afraid she cannot last the winter. Her chest sounds like a boiling cauldron. She has had chills before, but this one has taken all her strength. I do not like the look I see in her face—I’ve seen that shadow too many times before not to recognise it.’ His pale features were grim. ‘I was not long at my profession before I made the acquaintance of Death’s shade. It stalks some sickrooms from the first hour you arrive, and when you see it, you know your hardest effort will be unavailing.’

‘Poor woman,’ said Cornelia sadly.

He grinned at her doggedly. ‘Oh, I have not given her up yet, child. I shall fight. Death and I are old opponents. Sometimes I win, sometimes he does. Until the last breath I fight him off.’

‘But if she does die, what will you do?’

‘I do not know,’ he said, shrugging. ‘I am not an easy man to work for—I know that. Meals at all times, and many of them going back to the kitchen uneaten. Callers at all hours. I shall not find it

easy to replace her.’ He turned his head to cough, and she saw, with a fresh pang of anxiety, the veins in his temples standing out like whipcord. He was too thin, his skin too pale.

Half to herself, she said, ‘What drives you, Andrew? Do you want to kill yourself with work?’

He looked down at the cobbled street. ‘When my mother died for want of a doctor who knew his trade, I swore to devote my whole life to the service of the sick.’ He paused. A heavy sigh came. ‘There is no room for anything else in my life, Cornelia,’ he added quietly.

She felt suddenly very cold. Her skin seemed to tighten over the bones of her face.

‘I see,’ she said, in a flat voice.