Lady in the Mist - Laurie Alice Eakes [52]
“We should have sought for another apothecary to come when Teagues died,” another council member declared. “A female this young? It’s bound to cause trouble.”
“Many women are not comfortable with a man attending—” A hubbub of voices interrupted Tabitha’s explanation. From the exclamations, most of these men didn’t care if their wives were uncomfortable or not.
“It’s the safety of the mother and the child that matters,” Mr. Lester, the postmaster, said in his soft voice. “I understand that doctors can use implements that help the birthing process and have saved many lives.”
Tabitha clenched her fists beneath the shelter of the table. The man was right. Doctors held the monopoly on the use of forceps. From what she’d read, many mothers and their babies had been saved by this instrument, as it was thinner than even slender hands like hers and could aid the baby’s entrance into the world.
“In Norfolk,” Wilkins declared, “women are happy to use a physician’s care.”
“Not all of them.” Tabitha caught and held his gaze and smiled.
His face reddened. But he held all the cards in this game, if he persuaded the others to go along with his scheme of discrediting her. If Sally sued for support of her child and called Tabitha to testify, Wilkins’s lawyers could bring her testimony into disrepute by claiming she merely wanted revenge.
Oh, you are a clever man.
All she could do was attempt to discredit him now.
“You’ve accused me of providing poor care to your wife on the night of her accident,” Tabitha said. “But you weren’t with her, so how would you know what sort of care I provided her?”
Most of the men frowned at her. None gave Wilkins the glances or murmurs of disapproval she would have expected at the least.
“What man wishes to be about when his wife is in travail?” Lester shuddered, and his spectacles slid down his nose.
Now the murmurs came—murmurs of assent to Lester’s assertion.
Tabitha glanced from one to another and was almost glad she wasn’t married. Almost. She knew these men, had known most of them all her life. She’d delivered a few of their children and had been present when her mother delivered still more. Most of them loved their wives, some even as devoted as bridegrooms. Their devotion led to a horror of hearing their wives suffering to bear the fruit of their union and affection. Most of them had stayed nearby, despite their terror of “women’s things.”
But Wilkins had left his young, new, and expectant wife alone even before her travail . . .
Which meant none of the men would blame him. He hadn’t known until his presence was no longer necessary.
Tabitha compressed her lips to stop from biting them. She tried to catch the eye of each man present. Only Mayor Kendall, the one unmarried and childless man in the group, would return her gaze. “What qualifies you, Miss Eckles?” he asked.
Tabitha took a long, deep breath to ensure the steadiness of her voice. “I apprenticed with my mother for six years before her death. The women of my family have always started working with their mothers at the age of sixteen, whether married or not. So when Momma died, I took on the practice. And when the apothecary died last year—”
“You thought you could act like a surgeon at the least.” Wilkins sneered. “Uppity for a female.”
“Mayor Kendall’s redemptioner owes a well-healed hand to my care,” Tabitha shot back. “If I hadn’t cleaned it and stitched it—”
“Was that what you were doing with him on the beach yesterday?” Wilkins overrode her explanation, his upper lip curling. “Cleaning and stitching his hand, with your hair hanging down like a wanton?”
The room erupted into exclamations of outrage.
“Hair down in the middle of the afternoon?”
“And the Sabbath.”
“Wasn’t at church.”
“And him a bondsman. Indecent.”
Kendall called for silence. Once the men had complied, he turned to Tabitha, his eyes full of sympathy and concern. “Please wait for us in the entrance hall. We will call you in when we finish our discussion and vote.”
“Yes, sir.” Head high, back straight, knees too tense to wobble, Tabitha exited