She had avoided going home as long as she could, said yes to all the births since he’d passed, slept at the Lying-In and then the Godwin house. What a blessing that this new deadness inside her had been kept at bay by life there.

“Please God,” she whispered, alone in the dark cab. “Watch over her.”

Which is when Dr. Poignand skirted across her memory, and his unclean hands in Mary’s womb.

Marguerite greeted the midwife at the door, her young face pinched with worry. Mrs. B stepped inside and looked up to the ceiling. She could feel it even there, the convulsing house, and heard the iron bedstead strike the wall. There was no mistaking a racking fever.

“Poignand is seeing her now. And there’s a Dr. Fordyce as well.”

“Fordyce?”

“I don’t know. Seems to be a friend. But Mr. Godwin said you should go straight up.”

Mrs. B climbed the stairs, already short of breath, a hand on the wall to brace her way.

Godwin, pale as fright, opened the bedchamber door, holding the mewling baby to his chest. “Thank God,” he said.

Poignand was at Mary’s bedside, trying to feel her pulse, while her whole body shivered and shook.

“Please make it stop, Mrs. Blenkinsop,” said Godwin.

Mrs. B glanced at the older gentleman leaning against the far wall. He seemed to be holding up that side of the room with his own corpulence. He balanced a gold snuff box on his palm and took a generous pinch, watching Poignand out of slitted eyes.

“Fordyce, Mrs. Blenkinsop.”

She nodded to him and brushed past, set her bag down, and tossed her cape onto a chair. She wrung out a cloth from a bowl of cool water, put her elbows on the bed, and mopped Mary’s damp brow—her eyes were fevered and high up in her head.

“I’m here,” she whispered. “We’ll get you through this.”

She wasn’t sure Mary could hear her until she gripped Mrs. B’s sleeve with her hot hand and clung to her hard.

When the shaking finally subsided, and Mary slept, Poignand continued his examination. He felt the pelvis, the joints, for signs of swelling and heat. “I ought to have a look at her tongue,” he said.

“Let her rest,” said Fordyce in a Scottish brogue, with the grumbling slur of a man well into his cups. “None of that helps, anyway.”

“Fordyce is a lecturer,” Poignand said to Godwin, ignoring his rival. “In chemistry.”

“And the practice of medicine,” said Fordyce.

“Oh, do you see patients?” said Poignand tartly. “‘Put out your tongue—there. Let me feel your pulse—that will do.’”

“All that business tells us nothing of the sort of fever it is. Have to let it run its course, see what shape it takes, whether it resolves on its own.”