“YOU’RE NOT EVEN TRYING TO WIN THIS WAGER,” Lydia said, as they left the small house behind. “You can’t very well bring me along on your house calls on the assurance that there is no bright side to be found, when you are planning to sweep in and hire the poor boy yourself.”
He looked over at her and smiled, and that expression made her feel…
No, it didn’t make her feel anything. She looked away.
“I don’t even have to look for the bright side! I was prepared to talk about the way he cares for his brothers—anyone can see he loves them—but then you went and ruined things for yourself. You have already counteracted any repressive, morbid things you might say. Henry suffered a terrible accident, but by an act of generosity, he will do very well. Your actions make no sense.”
He simply smiled. “On the contrary. I am doing precisely what I planned.”
“Do you not want to win?”
“I want to win. I want to win very much.” He’d offered her his arm again on the way back and she’d taken it. Some men folded a hand over a woman’s when they walked with her. He set two fingers against her wrist, yet that lesser contact seemed intimate in a way that she couldn’t explain.
She glanced down.
Or maybe she could explain why it seemed so different. He’d insinuated his hand in that small gap between her gloves and her cuff, and his fingers were bare. She could feel the warmth of his skin directly on hers.
“You are not wearing gloves,” Lydia said in shock.
He simply tapped his fingers against her wrist and kept walking. “Very observant, Miss Charingford.”
Little flakes of snow drifted down.
“Why are you not wearing gloves? Your hands must be almost frozen. It’s extremely cold out.”
But his fingers were warm, exceedingly warm.
“I never wear gloves when I pay house calls.” His forefinger drew a little line down her wrist as he spoke. “In fact, I almost never wear gloves anymore.”
He stared straight ahead of him as he spoke.
“I hesitate to ask…but is there some reason for this? You are not wealthy enough to be that eccentric.”
A faint smile touched his lips. “Perhaps you may have noticed this, Miss Charingford,” he said, “but I have a small number of defects in my character. This one stems from scientific ignorance.”
“Now you have piqued my curiosity.”
“There is a study by Doctor Semmelweis in Austria,” he said. “He has been much maligned for it, but I see no fault with the methodology. Semmelweis worked in a hospital in Vienna, and he decided to make one tiny little change in his practice. After he performed an autopsy—and before he delivered a child—he washed his hands in a solution of chlorinated lime.” He looked over at her. “He found that when he did so, the incidence of childbed fever was reduced by an astonishing ninety percent.”
“Good heavens.”
There was a sparkle to his eye, a liveliness in his step. His speech grew faster, more confident. “Think of that, in connection with John Snow’s discovery. In the midst of a cholera epidemic, Snow removed one pump handle—and with that single action, stopped the spread of disease. Every few years brings a new medical discovery, a new way of looking at the world. There is more happening that we do not understand and cannot see. But those two things, taken together… If Semmelweis is right, doctors are conveying sickness. That makes us pump handles, bringing illness from patient to patient. I started washing my hands after seeing any patient who had a contagious disease.”
“What a terrible thought.”
“And then I would put my hands in my gloves, and I would start to wonder. What if I hadn’t completely scrubbed the contagion away? If I had not, my gloves would be contaminated. I’d be walking around with my hands in mitts that were positively squirming with whatever it is that transmits disease.” He looked away. “One mistake, and I might contaminate my gloves forever. Needless to say, I stopped wearing gloves.”
He pursed his lips as he spoke.
“That is…”
He gave her a rueful look. “Odd? I’ve engaged in the most amazing screaming matches with other physicians over the practice. Doctors are gentlemen. Gentlemen have clean hands.” He set his jaw. “Most of the young men my age agree, but the older ones… They’ve been going from autopsy to childbirth for years, and refuse to admit that they might be the source of contagion themselves. To be honest, I think that the medical profession will only fully institute the practice of hand-washing once our elders stop practicing.”
“I wasn’t going to say it was odd,” said Lydia. “I actually think that is rather an extraordinary thing to do. I’m impressed.”
He let out a laugh. “Trust you, Miss Charingford, to turn my world upside down. You take my most admirable characteristics and twist them into faults. But when I admit something that I am sure exposes me for the strange man that I am, I receive the first compliment that I have ever received from you.”
“Surely not the first!”
“The absolute first. I’ve counted.”
She swallowed. The way he was looking at her… She felt like a teapot set on the hob, warming to a slow boil under his gaze.
“There is something you said earlier that I don’t understand,” Lydia said.
“Miss Charingford.” He folded his arms and looked at her forbiddingly. “I’m sure I said a great deal that you found unfamiliar.” His mouth set in a straight line. “I suppose it’s too much to hope that you have a question about gonorrhea. Those questions are so much easier to answer.”
She paused and tilted her head. “I think,” she said, “that you may have the most dreadful sense of humor of any man that I have ever encountered.”
He didn’t protest. “I’m fairly certain I do.” He glanced down at her. “And yet you have not run screaming. I count that as progress; I have become positively acceptable. Now what was it you were going to ask?”
“I was going to ask about what you said earlier. That you’d…that you’d…not used a French letter in eighteen months.” She swallowed. “I know I shouldn’t talk about this, but…but you actually answer my questions. Tell me if this is too impertinent—”
“No such thing.” But his voice had become even more forbidding.
Still, Lydia felt heartened. “It’s acceptable for men to…to visit women without being married. Like with Mrs. Hall, the other day. Are you telling me you don’t?”