“He will be out of work for several weeks. Months, perhaps.”
Her mind went reflexively to the numbers. Months of not working, of not earning a wage. His house would founder. His bills would go unpaid. Dr. Lawrence’s would be one of them.
“He will not be able to repay you.”
Perhaps she could learn to be better in the surgery, but what of her numbers? They were her constants, her rules. Their logic flowed through her like blood, but they led now to horrible conclusions. Life was worth more than a sum on a page, and yet it was only worth a sum on a page.
“Mrs. Renton will pay as she can,” Dr. Lawrence said, oblivious to the nausea rising up in her. “Currently, that is not much. I don’t lose anything by not charging her more.”
Her fingers tightened around her teacup. “But sums don’t lie. I agree with you, I do, on moral grounds. But you will need to pay for equipment. Rent. Food and clothing. If you don’t, you cannot remain a doctor, can’t continue to save lives.”
The numbers had no room for kindness and humanity.
“There will be donations. There always are, in these cases.”
“Donations cannot be controlled,” she protested. “Cannot be relied upon.” She would see the disparity every day in the ledger. It would be her job to collect when she could.
“I’m sorry, Miss Shoringfield—Jane. I don’t claim to have an answer.”
She grimaced, ducked her head. “And neither do I. But I have a mind for sums. If I were your wife, I feel that it might lead to tension. Anger. Misunderstandings. I apologize, this isn’t something I anticipated when I made my proposal. Work has always been straightforward, and yet this is … not.”
It would not be appropriate for me to marry you. The words were so close, so ready to come out. This was foolishness. They were at odds with one another after only a day. Fondness was too much to hope for, but she needed them to agree with each other. Anything else was less than optimal.
“I will understand if you’ve reconsidered my suit,” she said, too embarrassed and stubborn by half to break the arrangement herself.
“I have not.”
Her heart sped.
“To be clear,” he added, “I am still not sure I wish to marry at all. But if we were to proceed, is it not natural to expect that we would learn over time how to sort all of this?”
Her mouth was dry. Her head ached. She wanted too many things all at once, and couldn’t see any of them clearly. “And what of your other misgivings?” she pressed instead. “The issue of—consummation?”
His gaze dropped, and he blushed. “I am sure that if we decided the marriage must be consummated, we could find a way for it to be consummated on mutually beneficial terms. There is room for me to see you as more than my employee, while still respecting your desire for distance. Don’t you think?”
His patient logic stunned her once more into silence. She searched his face, looking for some explanation. What had changed, over the course of one blood-soaked surgery? How had they transformed from him arguing against the idea, and her for it, to her trying to poke holes in both of their defenses?
Perhaps they agreed on some deeper level than she had been focused on.
“You would still consider me, knowing I will never stop talking of bills and expenses?” she ventured. “That I may not always see our patients as people?”
“Knowing that you are, in fact, human, and not some fevered fantasy of a lonely mind?” he responded.
Human. He heard her monstrousness and thought instead that she was human. He had come up against the limits of her plan, a plan that had felt so thoroughly considered until she’d actually met him, and devised ways that they could still proceed.
“You have clearly given this some thought since yesterday. Beyond my initial arguments.”
“More today—particularly since about halfway through my discussion of post-surgical care with Mrs. Renton,” he confessed, still not looking at her. “It occurred to me that your starting premise had merit. Marriage is always a business arrangement, of a kind, and not only do you have the skills to recommend yourself to me, you are … quite nice to be around.”
“Quite nice to be around,” she echoed. She wasn’t sure that she had ever been described in quite those terms.
“That is to say,” he continued, “if I didn’t enjoy speaking with you, your skills would have made it hard not to hire you, but marriage would have been out of the question. But as I do, even if the marriage would never be more than a strange employment arrangement between us, with a single legal obligation met, I don’t necessarily object to it being called a marriage.”