“You have worked magic,” Augustine said.
She nearly laughed, but stilled as she saw Augustine’s expression. It was not an ill-chosen turn of phrase, a simple expression of thanks. No; he looked horrified. Awed.
He meant magic.
“No,” she said.
“She could not have survived the night otherwise,” Augustine said. “You have worked magic, magic surgeons would die for, magic I tried to teach myself and failed.”
“Augustine—”
“She has been drawn back from the very edge of death,” he said, abandoning their patient and taking her hand. “How did you learn it? The books in my study?”
She looked to the text she had left on the table by the window, the one she had read from the night before. It was only a novel. “I learned nothing,” she said, turning back to him. “Do you see chalk and salt? I only gave her attention and company. I only believed that she deserved to live.”
She had not even willed it strongly.
Had she?
Or was the intensity of the willing not the point, but the pervasiveness of it? She had not let herself falter in her belief the night before. Perhaps …
But no.
“What of your dire warnings?” she hissed, drawing close to him, nearly looming. “Of the risks of magic, of why Lindridge Hall should forestall me, forestall you? You seemed very clear the other night.”
He stepped back, eyes going wide. “No,” he said, hands lifting. “No, I didn’t mean…”
“Hypocrite,” Jane said.
“You cannot fault me for hoping that the world I used to dream of, the potential of magic, was real,” Augustine returned.
Oh, but she could.
Abigail gave another whimper of pain, her head lolling. It was one of the first movements she had made besides breath. “She needs laudanum,” Jane said, desperate to change the subject, to clear the sickroom air of their clashing anger.
“Not laudanum; it is a sedative, and might harm her already delicate breathing,” Augustine said. The correction steadied him; he was once again his surgeon self. “An infusion of willow bark in her broth may help, though.”
Jane nodded and, with reluctance, left Abigail’s side and went to the compounding room.
Augustine followed.
She scanned the bottles of medicine lining the shelves, then pulled down the crock that contained willow bark. At her side, Augustine selected one of several bottles filled with fine white powder. When he set it on the counter, the glass clattered from the shaking of his hands.
Still ill, then.
“In addition to that, I will need your help,” he said, tone strident to cover embarrassment. “I can’t see patients as I am. Please compound a quarter measure with water.”
“Cocaine?” she asked, drawing up close enough to see the label.
“It will steady me.” He regarded her evenly.
“Did you not return to Lindridge Hall last night?”
“I did, though your intrusion seems to have riled the spirits,” he said.
Jane stepped back, eyes wide. “What?”
“They would not leave me alone,” Augustine said, glaring at her a moment before scrubbing at his eyes. “Before, I could sleep, after a fashion. They would come to me, torment me, and then leave, and I could sleep a few hours, then rest in the carriage on the way to town. But last night, they came to me in an unceasing parade.”
“Do not blame me,” Jane whispered, drawing in upon herself.
“But what else has changed, except your involvement? If I am lucky,” he continued, “then with time, they will settle, like birds stirred from their roost. But you will stay far away from Lindridge Hall, for my sake as well as yours. And you will help me tend to my patients.”
She eyed the jar of fine white powder, pictured the prick of the needle as he injected it into his veins. It was only medicine. It was a solution, a necessary one.
“You saw me, during Mrs. Yew’s surgery,” Augustine pressed. “I am just as much a danger exhausted as I was sick.”
He was right. Damn the spirits of Lindridge Hall for responding to her so, for making her not just the betrayed victim, but a cause of harm to others. Go back, she wanted to tell him. Go back and fix the root of this. You must fix this.
But he didn’t know enough, and was too afraid to try. And it was far too dangerous for her to touch.
And yet as she mixed his suspension, as she watched him inject it, as she fed bitter broth to Abigail, who should not have survived the night, she wondered if there was still some way for her to help.