Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [11]
Zabeth’s own infant slept in a basket in the pantry at the rear of the house. While Zabeth prepared his second drink, the doctor stooped to peer at him. The child was vigorously healthy, substantially bigger and more robust than his nursing partner. The father was dead, executed by Toussaint the previous fall for some military infraction. Because the two babies were roughly of an age, Elise had turned her own over to Zabeth to wet-nurse. By virtue of Zabeth’s excursions to the hospital, the babies were beginning to be weaned.
“What time is supper?” he inquired, rising to accept the freshened glass.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Zabeth said, mildly flustered. “Madame said she will go out, and perhaps you with her? But I will speak to the cook, what will you take? There is either fish or chicken.”
“Chicken,” the doctor said. When he returned to the parlor, Isabelle was standing to make her farewells. She teased the baby’s chin with a fingernail, exchanged a maternal glance with Elise, kissed the doctor on both cheeks, and then went out.
“Now then,” Elise said, giving him a measuring glance. “Your beard is a bit bedraggled, sir.”
The doctor took a great gulp of his drink. “It’s hardly worth troubling a barber with the few hairs which remain on my head,” he said.
“Perhaps you’re right,” his sister returned. “But just you come with me.”
In her boudoir, Elise laid the baby on the bed and hemmed her in with cushions. Mireille mewed and smacked her lips, but did not wake. Elise motioned the doctor to a chair by the french doors onto the balcony— there was still enough light in the sky to see clearly there.
“Now then.” She extracted a small pair of scissors from an enameled necessary box. “Be still.” For a moment she clipped in silence. Then—“I wish you would excuse Zabeth from the hospital.”
“Well, if you—”
“Don’t talk—I’ll nick you if you wag your jaw.” She flashed the scissors. “Mireille is restless in the daytime when Zabeth is gone. And Zabeth is so fearful of the fever, no matter what you say. You know it upset her terribly when Toussaint ordered Bouquart to shoot himself. Here, turn your head this way. This way . . . Perhaps they ought to go to Ennery with the other children.”
“Oh indeed, if you think it best . . .” the doctor began. This had been his own original suggestion, when the yellow fever first appeared among the crew of the Merry Bell, but Elise had not wanted to be parted from Mireille. “And would you go with them, then?”
Elise drew back to study him, scissors poised. “You are presentable,” she declared. She put the scissors away in the box, and went to her dressing table to light the two candles either side of the mirror, for the room was rapidly growing dim.
“No, I don’t think I will go to Ennery just now,” she said. “Not when I expect my husband hourly into port.” The wry expression accompanying those last words brought out faint wrinkles at the corners of her mouth, which the doctor could see in the reflection. Elise must have noticed them too. She brushed at them with powder.
“You’re going out, I gather.” The doctor touched a fingertip to the shortened hairs of his beard.
“The soirée at Government House,” Elise said, catching his eye in the mirror. “Will you come?”
“No, I think not, not tonight. It has been a weary day at the hospital. They are already stewing me a chicken here.”
Elise had stopped listening. She adjusted her décolletage in the mirror, then returned her attention to her face. Though the flush of her youth was gone, she was certainly still a handsome woman, her natural graces now requiring just the slightest, most subtle assistance of art. The doctor was reluctant to disrupt her concentration. Much as he tried not to think about it, he knew very well she had recently taken a lover.
“Madame ma sœur,” he said hesitantly. “It strikes me that you have chosen a very dangerous divertissement . . . and for so many reasons.”
“Reasons for the danger, you mean?” Elise made another minute adjustment to her bosom before rotating on her stool