Page 62 of A Sight to Behold
“Well, I’m glad I’m here,” Isabel said. “Thank you for the warm welcome.”
Wendy squinted and pressed her lips together in a suspicious smile. “Why are you here?”
Isabel sucked her cheeks in but remained silent.
“Is there another reason for them to be here, besides wanting to meet Lance’s friends?” Pippa asked.
“I’m afraid there is,” Isabel said, seemingly displeased. “He wants to see me.”
“But you live together, I’m sure…” Yet Pippa’s voice trailed off when Wendy gave her a somber look. “Oh!”
“And I’d rather not be seen,” Isabel said, rubbing her hands together in discomfort.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
At five o’clockthe next morning Pippa took the doctors’ shared carriage home. It had been lovely talking to Nick’s friends throughout the night, but she didn’t want to Wife Six to catch her sneaking back to Cloverdale House. Thus, she returned to the breakfast table as usual and took her customary seat next to Bea, who gave her an inquisitive stare. Pippa couldn’t answer at the moment. She sat there, ignoring Wife Six. As she’d predicted, nobody besides Bea had noticed her absence. All was as usual and Pippa felt for the soft spot on the side of her breakfast roll before she split it open, her glasses safely tucked away. And yet, everything had changed. Her little tolerance for Wife Six had evaporated and Pippa had grown impatient with her father’s hypocrisy, indulging himself in a destructive lifestyle while scrutinizing Pippa for the slightest transgression.
Not that seducing Nick and agreeing to marry him was a small transgression.
It was all but and it meant the world.
Now Pippa had to get the world to bend to her will the way Nick managed to make light bend through a lens. And she refused to remain silent.
“How can you pay Sir Matthews so much for laying rocks on your back daily?”
“It’s called crystal therapy; he’s a healer.”
“Why don’t you go to a real doctor instead?”
“Ah, where would I find a trustworthy doctor, hm?” Father’s question was rhetorical, and Pippa knew it was best not toanswer. “I’ve had enough experience with doctors, Pippa. It has sufficed for a lifetime.”
“Well, I don’t believe Sir Matthews is doing you any good. On the contrary.”
“Who made you the expert on doctors, hm?” He had the same telltale you-are-just-a-girl attitude whenever Pippa offered constructive criticism.
“I had the same experience as you. Do you think I forgot the surgeon who came out of Mother’s bedchambers shaking his head in defeat? Or the physician who cut her wrist to let her blood? Or the other physician who gave her so much laudanum that she hallucinated?”
Her father grunted and shrugged, which made his big belly jiggle like lemon custard.
“And I remember the last one, the youngest of them all. He sat with us for two days and a night, checking her breathing and her pulse. He didn’t leave her side until her time had come.”
“He waited with us for her death, Pippa. That’s all.” Father’s voice had a vulnerability and sincerity that Pippa hadn’t heard in a long time.
“He knew it was hopeless, yet he stayed to make her comfortable.”
“No, he didn’t know what to do and couldn’t help her, so she died. Pippa, your mother died because none of those damn doctors could help her.” Father was always read to condemn the doctors, but he refused to take responsibility for letting his own health decline.
“She died because she was ill. She’d fallen ill a long time ago, and it got worse over the years. None of the doctors made her ill.”You, on the contrary, are doing something to make yourself ill. And your newest wife makes me sick.
“They didn’t make her better either.”
“That may be. But they didn’t kill her.”
“The hopelessness did, Pippa. Every time one of them told us that there was nothing like it that they’d ever encountered, she wilted a bit more until it was finally too late to come back.”
“How can you blame the doctors? She was already ill when they met her. She didn’t catch it from them, nor was it their fault that whatever she had was incurable. Even hope couldn’t save her.”
“Don’t be so naive, my child. A doctor is far from a good Samaritan. They don’t take on a patient out of the goodness of their heart and try to make them better. It’s their job, and they charge a lot of money for that.”
