“How the universe was created, she said. And its fate! As if we don’t know the former and can ever know the latter. That is in the Lord’s hands, not man’s.” The woman’s brows met above her nose in a frown.

Margot’s neck itched. “We can know it was created by God and still ask questions as to how, madam. That is not a sin. And if you think it is, then I find it curious that you work in a hospital, because is not medicine to the human form as theoretical physics is to the universe? Seeking to understand the order by which the Lord set the world in motion?”

A hmph was the matron’s answer to that. She stared at where the duchess’s figure disappeared down the stairwell. “Blessed as we are to have such a patroness, that one is not fitting company for a girl like you. You ought to dispose of that card. Bobbing her hair as she’s done—and I’ve heard she’s even been seen in trousers! Hardly a good influence on an impressionable young thing like yourself.”

“An impressionable young thing?” A wave crashed over her, making her head feel tight and her throat close off and her heart pound so hard that the words unknown heart condition flickered through her brain.

She hated being called young. Hated it. Too long she had been dismissed, her ideas ignored solely because she hadn’t been alive as long as others. She’d thought those days were beyond her now that she’d been part of the adult world for so many years. But no, this frumpish lump of a woman would speak down to her simply because her skin was smooth with youth. And impressionable? As if she hadn’t mind enough to make it up for herself? That she would just follow someone else’s fashion choices?

As if it even mattered if she did?

Margot yanked her elbow out of the woman’s grasp. With one hand she pulled the pins from her hair, and with the other she reached for a pair of scissors sitting on a wheeled cart outside one of the ward doors. The scientific journal smacked onto the floor.

“What in the world are you—?”

“Well, if I’m so impressionable . . .” She held out the long, dark coil of hair and, with a single snip, cut it off.

Still that wave crashed and roared and bubbled, making her breath come too fast. She slammed both shears and hair onto the cart and bent to snatch up the journal. “There. Now you know you may as well judge me as you do anyone else who doesn’t conform to your narrow-minded views.”

The woman made a sound that was half gasp, half squeak of protest.