Page 7 of A Stormy Season

“Send for me if he awakens.” Mr. Pyle was leaving.

“Is there nothing you can do for him?” Luke felt his anger shifting toward the surgeon. “Are you leaving him to die?”

“There is nothing else that I can do.” Mr. Pyle straightened his shoulders and looked Luke in the eye. “I’m sorry, sir, but his healing is in God’s hands now.”

Luke didn’t trust himself to speak, so he gave a quick nod and turned away.

In God’s hands.Wasn’t that where Luke had placed his marriage?

He knew he couldn’t let this bitterness gain a foothold, but he had desperately wanted to believe that things would get better, that his wife would not be unfaithful to him and show so little interest in her home and her child.

Why must he live a destroyed life instead of the normal one everyone else seemed to enjoy? Wives of English gentlemen did not behave in such a way as to bring shame upon themselves and their families. So why had his wife done that?

God, I want to pray for Cobb, for you to heal him, but . . . do you even hear me? Do you even care?

He was wrong to think such things, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself. They were in his mind before he could counter them.

Mr. Pyle had departed when the scullery maid hurried over and started cleaning up what was left of the drying blood on the floor.

Who would have done this violence? Obviously they had been looking for something, focusing in on Anne’s room. But what?

His mind went to Lenoir, whom he’d seen watching him in the park. Did that man have something to do with this? He couldn’t have been the one who’d searched the house, but was he behind it?

Luke remembered that Henry had asked him to let him know if Luke saw the man following him.

The two footmen, Smith and Burke, approached. “We searched the house and found no one. Should we fetch the constable?”

“No, not just yet. In fact, I will . . . will speak to the proper authority. Thank you. But I do have a task for you.”

They stared expectantly.

“I want one of you to watch Jeffrey’s room at all times, and the other to watch the back door until I tell you otherwise. Just as a precaution.”

The men nodded. “Yes, sir.”

Luke hurried from the house, barely remembering to grab his hat on the way out.

Chapter Three

When Jane entered her shop, she saw that there were new hats in the window. She admired them for a few moments before heading to the back, where she found her partner, Catherine Cosworth, speaking to a customer about the summer muslin fabric she was thinking of purchasing.

Jane caught Catherine’s eye and they exchanged a quick look before Jane proceeded to the tiny room where the account books were kept.

As she sat in the chair behind the desk and reached for the ledger, she let out a long sigh of contentment. There was something so satisfying in knowing that one had a job to do, something necessary and exact, the reconciling of numbers on a page. It was a task that was precise, with a beginning and an end—and it was normally done by men.

Even more satisfying was knowing that this business belonged to Jane—half of it, leastwise—and that she was taking care of it. This sense of ownership was something she’d never before experienced, and it gave her life a sense of purpose. Someday, she predicted, more women would seek out such employment and purpose.

Jane picked up the two stacks of receipts—one for sales and the other for purchase orders—and began to enter the numbers in the ledger.

How tidy and perfect the rows of numbers were, if she did say so herself. The clerk that Catherine had previously employed had written in such a careless hand, sometimes it was difficult for Jane to decipher what he’d recorded. But she was careful to make her pen strokes with precision. Then she would use a piece of scrap paper to add or subtract the columns of numbers before entering the sum into the ledger.

Once the numbers had been written, she would analyze them: the different purchases, the price of each, profit margins, and prepare to discuss it all with Catherine when she was not busy with a customer.

“You have a head for business, Jane,” Catherine had told her more than once. “You are so good mathematically, with all the figuring and numbers, it’s almost scandalous.”

“Why should men be the only ones who are good at business and numbers? But you are better than I am at knowing what styles and materials to have in stock, purchasing everything at the best possible cost, and knowing the right price for things. You are the true heart and soul of the shop.”

“Well, I would not even have a shop if it were not for you.”