“My mam says you’re a thornback, Miss, but I don’t know what that is.”
“A thornback?” Isobel Moore nearly choked on the word as she returned the slate to Patrick Finnegan, her eight-year-old pupil. He was a bright, cheeky child, and she couldn’t tell if he was baiting her or not. It was perfectly possible; he often liked to test the limits of her patience. And today, with autumn closing in and another endless, empty evening ahead of her, Isobel felt as if she had very little patience indeed.
As much as she had come to love teaching the children of Boston’s poor at the First School, days like today tried both her patience and her good will. Two of the older boys had scrapped and been sent home with a black eye and a bloody nose each; one of her youngest pupils, sweet Katie Rose, was home ill with what was feared to be dysentery. And her star pupil, Eileen O’Shaugnessy, had told her, at only ten years old, that this would be her last day of school for she was joining her ma and her older sisters sewing piecework in the dark, dank room they called home. Her eyesight, Isobel thought with a grim desolation, would be ruined by the time she was thirty, if not before.
And now Patrick Finnegan was giving her his cheeky grin, his eyes bright as buttons—he did know what a thornback was, she was sure of it. Isobel glanced around at the dozen other children in the little school room in Boston’s North End, all looking at her with avid but not unkind curiosity, wondering how she was going to respond to the insult, for insult it surely was. No longer even a spinster, at twenty-eight Isobel was worthy of the spikier, more unpleasant appellation of thornback—a woman who was unmarried with absolutely no prospects at all, completely dried up and on the shelf—and even these little children knew it.
“If your mother means that I am not married, then she is correct,” Isobel told Patrick, hating how stiff and prim she sounded yet unable to keep herself from it. A thornback indeed! “But it is not a discussion for this classroom, Patrick Finnegan. Check your sums.”
Isobel returned to the front of the room, trying to keep her expression serenely unruffled. The barb shouldn’t hurt her, she knew. She’d longed ago accepted her fate—or at least she’d tried to. Even so, it still stung, coming from a woman she’d never met who had arrived in this country only a few months ago and yet still had somehow comprehended the utter lack of Isobel’s prospects.
Compared to her pupils, Isobel knew she had little to complain about. She was healthy, fed, warmly and well dressed, and able to occupy herself with worthwhile tasks. Yet the thought of returning home to the stuffy confines of her parents’ house on Beacon Hill made her spirit wilt. She envisioned the dinner that Cook would have prepared: boiled ham, pigeon pie, and potatoes, followed by Washington cake or gingerbread and cream—all delicious and yet so stodgy and predictable, and accompanied by the equally predictable conversation between her and her parents as they all struggled to cover the awkwardness of having a nearly thirty-year-old daughter, unmarried, destined to live at home for the rest of her life.
It seemed quite incredible to think she’d once been the belle of Boston society—well, nearly—poised to marry an up and coming doctor. Oh, the dreams she’d cherished! She’d envisioned herself as Ian Campbell’s wife, had hoped to elevate him into society, to stand proudly by his side… as Caroline Reid—now Campbell—was doing.
It was Caroline whom Ian loved… pretty, vain, spoiled, silly Caroline Campbell. At least she had been so when Ian had first fallen in love with her five years ago. Caroline, Isobel acknowledged reluctantly yet fairly, seemed to have grown up a little, matured into a lovely young woman who held her head high in society. When they met socially, Isobel could smile and chat and act for all the world as if her heart hadn’t been broken into pieces by the man Caroline called her husband.
Despite his love for Caroline, Ian had behaved like a gentleman back then, and offered to marry Isobel when he’d realized the untenable position he’d put her in. Society had expected it, they’d appeared together so many times; although Isobel had painfully learned later that Ian had seen those pleasant evenings as nothing more than time spent with an affectionate little sister.
Isobel had refused to accept Ian’s offer. She hadn’t wanted a proposal made of pity, and she wouldn’t relegate herself to such an unhappy role as the wife of a man who married out of duty, not love.
For the last five years Isobel had devoted herself to the First School, teaching and organizing the classroom, drawing the pupils—the children she would never have—close to her heart. The other two teachers had left for their own more domestic pursuits: Margaret, the wife of Isobel’s brother Henry, had given up teaching when she’d had a child; and Ian Campbell’s sister, Eleanor, now married to Margaret’s brother, Rupert MacDougall, had headed West, where Rupert had been appointed a U.S. Marshal. Only Isobel had remained, half-wondering if she’d made the wrong choice five years ago, when she’d stood on her pride and told Ian she wouldn’t marry him.
Outside the sun was starting to sink behind the battered warehouses and shanties of Boston’s notorious North End. Isobel reached for the bell on her desk and rang it. “School dismissed,” she called out, and the children began to scramble from behind their desks. Isobel went to the door, watching them head out into the dusky afternoon. Some of them would spend the rest of the afternoon and some of the evening helping their parents with work—assembling matchboxes, sewing piecework, or even hauling crates down at the docks. It made her ache, to think of these bright little souls having to work so hard at such a young age. Sometimes she wondered if she did more harm than good, giving them an education yet not the means to use it.
“I didn’t mean it, Miss.”
Patrick stood in front of her by the door, a look of earnest repentance on his freckled face. “I don’t think you’re a thornyback.”
“It’s thornback, not thornyback, Patrick,” Isobel said with both a sigh and a smile. “Although not a word you ever need to use. I’ll see you tomorrow.” She gave him a quick pat on the head before he skipped off with the others.
Most of the time Isobel could ignore the pangs of longing she felt when she saw couples in society, or the swamping loneliness when she sat against the wall with the other matrons and spinsters at a tea dance or ball, tapping her foot to the music. She reminded herself of how blessed she was, to be intelligent and independent, with a calling as a teacher, surely one almost as high as that of wife or mother. She told herself she would rather have her freedom than a husband or child, although she didn’t feel particularly free. She told herself all those things, but in moments such as these, when the day had been thankless and difficult and she’d just been called a thornback by a cheeky child, she didn’t believe it. She struggled to keep her spirits from flagging; the temptation to wallow in bitterness and self-pity could become overwhelming, and did her no good at all.
“Ready, Miss?” John Caber, her brother Henry’s man, had come into the schoolroom. He stood outside the door every day that she taught, simply as a precaution, for the streets around North Square were not safe for a woman alone, or sometimes even for a man. John was well over six feet tall, and built like a mountain. He also, Isobel knew, carried a flintlock pistol in the pocket of his greatcoat.
Even with Caber’s protection, Isobel knew her parents were not particularly comfortable with having her spending her days with what they saw as the denizens and dregs of Boston. It was only because Margaret had started the school as a pet charity project that she could teach here at all, and feel as if she were doing something worthwhile in the world.
“Yes, John. Thank you.” Turning from the empty room, Isobel gathered her mantle and bonnet and headed with Caber into the chilly spring afternoon. The sun was beginning its descent behind the worn brick buildings of the square and already the streets were emptying, a cool breeze from the harbor bringing with it the sharp tang of brine and fish. In the hurrying crowds Isobel caught fragments of the Irish brogue that had become common in the North End, as ship after immigrant ship poured thousands of desperate souls into the city. Not, Isobel reflected, that they’d received a warm welcome; most shops had placards in their windows reading “Irish Need Not Apply”.
Lost in her thoughts, with Caber like a dark shadow at her elbow, Isobel almost bumped into the man handing out tracts in front of the Seaman’s Bethel.
“Good afternoon, Miss Moore!” Edward Taylor’s voice was deep and mellifluous, only one of the reasons his vigorous sermons had dubbed him the finest orator in all of Boston. Yet Taylor was not a man of circumstance or stature; his work was amongst the poorest and roughest here in the North End, where he’d started his seaman’s mission ten years ago.
Now he smiled, his eyes stern yet bright under his shock of dark hair, and he thrust a tract at Isobel, who had no choice but to accept the printed pamphlet with surprised grace.
“Adoniram Judson is back in America, after thirty-three years in Burma,” he said in that stentorian voice that possessed the power to make Isobel straighten her spine even there on the street corner. “An inspiring man, and a wonderful preacher. He’s speaking at the Bowdoin Street Church this Tuesday next. You would consider yourself most blessed to hear of his travails, Miss Moore.”
“I’m sure I would.” Isobel smiled faintly, the pamphlet still clutched in her gloved fist. “Thank you for availing me of such an opportunity, Father Taylor. Good day to you.” If she’d kept her voice brisk to remind him of the distance between their social positions, he did not acknowledge it. He merely smiled, his eyes all too shrewd and knowing under his shaggy brows, and turned to the next passerby, a worn-looking woman in a threadbare shawl and patched dress.
Father Taylor was known to treat all alike, whether it was an Irish mill worker or a lady of some social standing as herself. It gave her only a moment of pique, and even that was softened by her own ashamed acknowledgement of her vanity. After five years of teaching the poorest and humblest of society, she still had pretensions to snobbery, and what for? The children in her school possessed more determination and grit than she did.
She stuffed the pamphlet in her reticule, and urged on by Caber, mounted the carriage.
The carriage rumbled away from the warehouses and tenements huddled by the harbor, past the pavilioned Quincy Market, little more than ten years old and yet already on the fringes of a slum, and finally to the more prosperous Beacon Hill.
Caber helped her from the carriage and Isobel swept into the house on Charles Street she’d always called her home. The elegant foyer was quiet, although Isobel heard a faint rustling from her father’s study. She peeked past the half-opened door to see her father frowning down at a pile of papers, his half-moon spectacles perched on the rim of his nose.
Isobel watched him, noticing the worry lines drawn deeply from nose to mouth. She knew the financial crisis known as the Panic last year must have affected her father’s business interests, as it had any of the businessmen involved in speculation. More than one of Boston’s well-to-do families had suddenly found themselves in desperate straits, selling the family furniture and hiring their children out as governesses or tutors, or worse, living in pitiful dignity dependent on the charity of relatives.
Despite knowing of such people, Isobel realized she had not given more than a flicker of thought for her own family’s circumstances. She’d assumed they were different, protected from such risks or dangers. The house on Charles Street was her home, and as much as its comforting confines sometimes seemed like a prison, she could not imagine living anywhere else—or in more reduced circumstances. Surely, with all the other disappointments she’d faced, she would be protected from that.
Now, however, as she looked at her father’s careworn face, she wondered how badly his business interests had been affected. He certainly hadn’t spoken of it, and never would. Neither would she ask. Her father sighed, glanced up, and then caught sight of Isobel. He frowned slightly before his face softened, and he beckoned her in.
“How were your pupils today, my dear?”
Isobel stepped into the private sanctum of her father’s study, breathing in the comforting scents of pipe tobacco and polished leather. “As ever, I suppose, Father.” She knew her father had, on occasion, wondered at the purpose of educating children who would do no more with their lives than work in the factories or mills, and Isobel didn’t always have a clever answer. The answer she felt in her soul, an answer which shamed her a little, was that she was teaching as much for her own sake as her pupils’.
“You’re well?” A little crease had appeared between her father’s heavy brows, and Isobel knew he was worried about her, just as her mother was. Neither of them liked seeing her unhappy or restless; she was usually better at hiding it from them, but lately it had become more difficult to do so. Thornback. She forced a smile and then dropped a quick kiss on her father’s forehead. “Of course, Father. A bit fatigued, perhaps, but nothing that cannot be repaired with a night’s sleep.”
“You must rest before supper, then. I don’t want you becoming ill, Isobel.” Her father was already worried about the diseases that ran rampant in the city’s poorer neighborhoods—dysentery, cholera, typhoid fever. So far Isobel had remained healthy.
“No, indeed, I shall endeavor not to succumb.” Smiling, she slipped from the room and headed upstairs, determined to cast off the gloom that had briefly enshrouded her in the quiet solitude of the school.
Once in her bedroom, she tossed her reticule on her bureau, and the pamphlet from Father Taylor fluttered to the floor. Isobel stooped to pick it up, glancing at it with little interest. Although she attended church every Sunday with her parents, she wasn’t particularly interested in the fever that had been gripping so much of the country as of late, to hear about mission societies in far-flung places. Still, more out of boredom than any real interest, she scanned the pamphlet’s typewritten text. All Are Invited to Come and Hear of Mr. Judson’s Adventurous Journeys and Inspiring Experiences!
Isobel could hardly imagine being gone from this country for over thirty years, as Adoniram Judson had, or living in such a distant, different place as Burma. She could not even imagine what it looked like! She had certainly never read about it, or seen an illustration. What adventures had Adoniram Judson experienced? What tales might he tell? She placed the pamphlet on her bureau, thinking for a second that she might attend the lecture, and then dismissing it from her mind. It wasn’t the sort of thing she ever attended, and she could not imagine she would know anyone there.
Isobel slipped a thin, leather-bound book from underneath a piece of embroidery, and then curled up on the chair as the last rays of sunlight slanted across the floor, and turned to her marked place already deep into the story of The Runaway Orphan, a Romantic Tale by an Authoress. Sighing happily, Isobel lost herself in the pages and forgot even to turn up the wick on the oil lamp as the fading sunlight cast longer shadows across the floor.
“The fact remains, and will always remain, that ether is a dangerous substance and utterly inappropriate for use in a hospital.” James Henderson’s voice rang out across the salon, leaving a ripple of speculative murmur in its wake.
Dr. Ian Campbell tensed as he listened to his superior make his blustering pronouncement. Across the room, he saw his wife Caroline stiffen as well, even as she kept smiling. She met his gaze and gave a tiny shake of her head.
After a second’s pause, Ian heeded her silent warning, giving a terse nod before he managed a rueful smile even though anger surged through him at Henderson’s posturing, and in his own home…! The man’s arrogance had no bounds; Ian doubted he would consider, never mind acknowledge, the impropriety of speaking on such a matter in his host’s drawing room.
It was an ill-kept secret that Ian had been experimenting with the use of ether as an anesthetic for the last five years. He funded these experiments with his own time and money, and yet still they were disapproved of by the stuffy old guard of Boston’s medical community. James Henderson might have been choosing to be deliberately provocative, considering he was currently a guest at the soirée Caroline and Ian were putting on, but Ian suspected that his opinion was no more than what most of the others in the room that night thought, if they had an opinion on the matter at all.
Henderson was continuing to bluster, but interest had thankfully died when Ian had refused to take up the argument. He’d noticed the slyly speculative looks of some of the guests, and he ignored them. Within a few minutes the conversation had moved on to Mr. Alcott’s controversial Temple School.
“No corporal punishment—Alcott insists that if anyone’s hand is to be slapped, it should be the teacher’s,” a young woman confided, her hushed tone implying the delicious scandal of it all.
“Ridiculous. The man is a complete charlatan, and a blasphemer as well.” Henderson spoke again, his voice raised querulously.
Ian’s glance strayed to the ormolu clock on the mantle. He would have to sit through another hour of conversation at the very least. When Caroline had suggested these salons, fashioned after the ones that took place in a libertarian France, as described by the eminent Monsieur Tocqueville who had graced the American shores in the early 1830s, Ian had eagerly agreed.
They had both envisioned impassioned argument and lively debate, the exchange of ideas, or at least the respect of them, like the kind of conversations they had had with Henry and Margaret Moore or Rupert and Eleanor Campbell over many happy suppers. It seemed, however, the scope of conversation and innovation was limited, and too often they encountered guests like Dr. Henderson, determined to pontificate—as well as resist anything that hinted at innovation or reform.
A staid matron dressed in yellow satin, the buttons across her broad bosom threatening to pop open, launched into a lengthy description of her pallid daughter’s charms. They’d moved from medicine to education to the never-ending marriage mart. Ian took the opportunity to excuse himself.
He strode out of the overheated room to the balcony overlooking a quiet and peaceful Charles Street. A balmy spring breeze caressed his flushed face and his fingers curled around the wrought iron railing as he fought down the frustration he so often felt in these moments.
A year ago, he never would have been able to afford a house or an address such as this. He and Caroline had been living in rented rooms in the far more middle-class Back Bay. They had, Ian reflected now, been happy there. Happier, perhaps, he acknowledged with a rueful pang, than they were—or at least he was—amidst all this luxury. Their new wealth rested uneasily on Ian, considering he had not earned a penny of it himself. It rested entirely on Caroline’s uncle, Sir James Riddell, who had died a year ago, leaving her a small and unexpected fortune.
Five years ago, Riddell had been disgraced in Boston when his name had been linked with that of a counterfeiter, Matthew Dearborn. Ian had been present the night Dearborn died, and had watched the wretched man become engulfed in the flames of a fire Dearborn had started to destroy all evidence—a fire fed by thousands of counterfeit bills he’d been storing in a harborside warehouse.
Ian had been partly responsible for identifying Riddell’s role in the crime, and yet as a nobleman, Riddell had escaped the prejudiced hand of the law and had returned to Scotland to live out his days in quiet anonymity. He’d sold his estates and put the money in wiser—and more lawful—investments, so that when he died, he’d left a fairly tidy sum for his only remaining heir: Caroline.
It was hardly a fortune, but it was enough money to buy this house and see them situated comfortably in Boston, allowing them to be part of the city’s society, and live, Ian reflected, in the manner to which Caroline had generally been accustomed. He knew he should be grateful, for he had always intended to provide for her in the way she was used to and surely wanted. Yet the fact remained he wasn’t the one providing for her at all.
“People are beginning to talk.” Caroline stood framed by the French doors, her graceful figure swathed in pale blue silk, her blonde hair arranged in artful clusters of curls by each temple. Looking at her, Ian marveled yet again that she was his, and that she loved him. “Ian…”
“I’m sorry to leave the way I did. I couldn’t stand another diatribe from Dr. Henderson, and I didn’t want to say something I’d regret.”
“I know.” Caroline joined him on the terrace, resting one hand lightly on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, as well. I had no idea he’d go on like that.” She let out a tiny sigh. “Although I suppose it’s too much to ask of the man, to express even the most common courtesy. I would advise we not invite him again, but you know he could be useful to your career.”
“Indeed.” Ian rested his hand over hers and they remained silent for a moment, the cool evening air blowing over them.
“Do you suppose,” Caroline asked after a moment, her voice soft, “that ether will be accepted one day? Commonplace, even, for most operations?”
“I pray so.” Ian’s lips tightened as he thought of Dr. Henderson’s swaggering assurance. There was so much ignorance and hostility to fight against, even within the supposedly enlightened medical community. As for outside of it, few people wanted their own bodies and lives to be experimented on with a substance they regarded with suspicion or even fear. Ian could hardly blame them—and yet ether held the possibility, the promise, of so much… surgeries performed without pain, childbirth that was bearable, conditions that doctors now simply shook their head at able to be addressed and even healed. Why could none of them see it?
“I imagine sometimes it must be similar to what the first settlers thought upon coming to these shores,” Caroline said with a rueful smile. “Who could imagine that there would be towns and cities built upon such rugged and wild land? Yet they persevered.” She squeezed his shoulder. “And you must as well.”
Ian lifted her hand to his lips and brushed her fingers in a kiss. “Thank you, my darling. Your support means more to me than that of a pompous old windbag like Dr.—”
“Ian.” Caroline suppressed a scandalized smile. “Imagine if he heard you.”
“He’s talking too loudly,” he murmured, “to hear anything but his own voice.”
She shook her head, her eyes dancing, and Ian smiled and kissed her fingers again, letting his lips linger this time.
“Ian…” His name was a gentle reproof and she withdrew her hand, her expression turning serious. “You know that I want to support your research—”
“And you do,” he said, reaching for her hand once more. Laughing a little, Caroline pulled away.
“More than with just words,” she persisted. “You know that even after buying this house, there is still a fair bit of my inheritance left—”
Ian stilled, and then straightened as he took a step away from her. “You want to use your inheritance to fund my research?” he asked slowly. He had never considered such a thing; it had been too far out of the realm of desirability for it to have crossed his mind.
“Yes.” She smiled, her expression guileless, not seeming to notice how still he’d become, or the tempest he felt gathering within him. “With the money you could take more time away from the hospital and concentrate on your research. Perhaps acceptance will come more quickly if you’re able to—”
“No.” Ian didn’t mean to sound so flat and cold. He saw the shocked hurt flash in Caroline’s blue eyes and wished he’d tempered his reply. Yet he knew he could not have kept the instinctive refusal—the revulsion—he’d felt spring to his lips from spilling out. To take Riddell’s money for the research so precious to him, the research that was entirely his…
“Ian—”
“Listen to me, Caroline.” He caught her hands in his and felt how cold they’d become. He chafed them between his own and tried to smile, but it felt more like a grimace. “Caroline, my darling, I could not take that money from you. It was held in trust from you, from your uncle, and it was meant for you to do with as you wish—”
“You know under law it is yours rather than mine,” Caroline a. . .
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