William Monk 02 - A Dangerous Mourning

careful civility, keeping her voice much softer than the feeling inside her. Unconsciously she held the child closer to her. “I believe if you will operate quickly it will be his best chance.”
    “John Airdrie?” He turned back to look at her, a frown between his brows. He was a small man with gingery hair and a very neatly trimmed beard.
    “The child,” she said with gritted teeth. “He has a tubercular abscess in the joint of his shoulder. You are to excise it.”
    “Indeed?” he said coldly. “And where did you take your medical degree, Miss Latterly? You are very free with your advice to me. I have had occasion to remark on it a number of times!”
    “In the Crimea, sir,” she said immediately and without lowering her eyes.
    “Oh yes?” He pushed his hands into his trouser pockets. “Did you treat many children with tubercular shoulders there, Miss Latterly? I know it was a hard campaign, but were we really reduced to drafting sickly five-year-olds to do our fighting for us?” His smile was thin and pleased with itself. He spoiled his barb by adding to it. “If they were also reduced to permitting young women to study medicine, it was a far harder time than we here in England were led to believe.”
    “I think you in England were led to believe quite a lot that was not true,” she retorted, remembering all the comfortable lies and concealments that the press had printed to save the faces of government and army command. “They were actually very glad of us, as has been well demonstrated since.” She was referring to Florence Nightingale again, and they both knew it; names were not necessary.
    He winced. He resented all this fuss and adulation for one woman by common and uninformed people who knew no better. Medicine was a matter of skill, judgment and intelligence, not of wandering around interfering with established knowledge and practice.
    “Nevertheless, Miss Latterly, Miss Nightingale and all her helpers, including you, are amateurs and will remain so. There is no medical school in this country which admits women, or is ever likely to. Good heavens! The best universities do not even admit religious nonconformists! Females would be unimaginable. And who, pray, would allow them to practice? Now will you keep your opinions to yourself and attend to the duties for which we pay you? Take off Mrs. Warburton’s bandages and dispose of them—” His face creased with anger as she did not move. “And put that child down! If you wish for children to hold, then get married and have some, but do not sit here like a wet nurse. Bring me clean bandages so I can redress Mrs. Warburton’s wound. Then you may see if she will take a little ice. She looks feverish.”
    Hester was so furious she was rooted to the spot. His statements were monstrously irrelevant, patronizing and complacent, and she had no weapons she dared use against him. She could tell him all the incompetent, self-preserving, inadequate things she thought he was, but it would only defeat her purposes and make an even more bitter enemy of him than he was now. And perhaps John Airdrie would suffer.
    With a monumental effort she bit back the scalding contempt and the words remained inside her.
    “When are you going to operate on the child?” she repeated, staring at him.
    He colored very faintly. There was something in her eyes that discomfited him.
    “I had already decided to operate this afternoon, Miss Latterly. Your comments were quite unnecessary,” he lied—and she knew it, but kept it from her face.
    “I am sure your judgment is excellent,” she lied back.
    “Well what are you waiting for?” he demanded, taking his hands out of his pockets. “Put that child down and get on with it! Do you not know how to do what I asked? Surely your competence stretches that far?” He indulged in sarcasm again; he still had a great deal of status to recoup. “The bandages are in the cupboard at the end of the ward, and no doubt you have the key.”
    Hester was too angry to speak. She laid the child down gently, rose to her feet.
    “Is that not it, hanging at your waist?” he demanded.
    She strode past him, swinging the keys so wide and hard they clipped his coattails as she passed, and marched along the length of the ward to fetch the bandages.
       Hester had been on duty since dawn, and by four o’clock in the afternoon she was emotionally exhausted. Physically, her back ached, her legs were stiff, her feet hurt and her boots