Page 37 of The Number of Love
But she would treat it as she did everything else—a mental exercise. She counted the steps as they entered. How long it took to travel down the corridor, up the stairs to the lieutenant’s ward, down the next corridor. How many doors on each side of the hallway. Calculate the hour by how far into the rooms the light from the windows stretched.
Dot turned in at the appropriate door, but Margot halted, her ears nearly twitching. From somewhere down the corridor came a French diatribe in a cultured female voice. It acted like a magnet upon her bones, pulling her toward it.
“Margot?”
She motioned Dot on. “Go ahead. I’ll find you in a moment. I want to see who’s shouting in French.”
Dot disappeared into the ward with a chuckle. Margot followed her ears down the corridor, to the entrance of a small administrative room in which two women stood. The younger was the one doing the shouting, her words complete with a few uniquely Gallic gestures of her hands. She was dressed in serviceable grey, like the nurses, but jewels winked at her ears and from her fingers. And her curly blond hair had been shorn above the shoulders. Somehow Margot couldn’t imagine the strict matrons allowing that for just any nurse or volunteer.
The matron in front of her, in a crisp white apron over a dowdy grey dress, wore a pinched expression on her face. “I’m terribly sorry, Your Grace, but I’m sure whatever you’re on about has a reasonable explanation.”
Margot leaned into the doorframe. “She said that she’s tired of being given only the neat and tidy jobs after years volunteering here, just because her husband’s a duke, and that if it wouldn’t be too ironic for words, she’d complain to him of this preferential treatment. But then any changes would be a result ofmorepreferential treatment, and so she’s thoroughly stymied, and she knows nothing will change, and so she’ll just shout about it for a moment, get it out of her system, and then pretend to be a reasonable British lady again.”
The duchess spun on her, amusement sparkling in her eyes. “Had I known someone was handy who could understand me, I would have made the rant in Monegasque.”
Margot lifted her brows. “My Italian is passable too—I probably still could have pieced the gist of it together.Je suis désolée.”
Her Grace tilted her head and studied her. “Northern France or Belgium?”
“Louvain.” Margot mirrored her position. “Given the reference to Monegasque, may I assume Monaco?”
“Oui.” She smiled. “Though not recently. I suppose eventually I ought to claim to be from either Yorkshire, where my father lives, or the Cotswolds, where I now do.” The lady held out a hand, masculine style. “Brook Wildon.”
“The Duchess of Stafford!” the ward matron practically shouted, exasperation bringing her up onto the balls of her feet. As if ready to pounce on Margot if she dared to greet so lofty a personage by name.
Margot shook the duchess’s hand. “I believe you’ve met my brother at one of his concerts. Lukas De Wilde. And I am Margot.”
“Oh yes, you’re the mathematician! He’s mentioned you. Fondly. Tell me...” Brook reached into a bag slung onto her shoulder and pulled out a few papers. “It’s really very fortuitous that I should run into you. I’ve been trying to find someone to discuss this with, but none of my friends care in the least, and my husband, who first introduced me to these concepts, is a bit busy at the present time. Have you read Professor Einstein’s latest paper on how general relativity describes the creation and fate of the universe?”
Margot’s fingers itched—not like her insides did when someonesaid something stupid, but in a way that made her reach out and take the proffered paper with more enthusiasm than could possibly be polite. “I have not been able to find any recent copies of thePreussische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Sitzungsberichte.”
“It’s rather difficult to get anything originally published in German right now, to be sure. But my grandfather has connections.” Brook waved a hand. “Keep that one, read it, and then I would love your thoughts, if you’ve the time. Are you volunteering here?”
She nearly nodded, just because of all the positivity thrumming through her head. But she caught herself. “No. I’m just visiting a patient with a friend.” Unable to resist, she thumbed through the journal.
“Then take this too.” A calling card appeared in Margot’s vision and tucked itself into the page of the journal she’d opened to. “When you’ve had a chance to read it, just jot me a note, and we’ll arrange tea or dinner or whatever is most convenient for you.”
“I will. Thank you so much, Your Grace.” She dragged her gaze off all those beautiful scientific words long enough to smile at the lady.
Said lady positioned a hat over her short curls with a grin. “Excellent. So glad to have met you, Margot. I’ll let you get back to your friend, and I to my boys, before my father can spoil them beyond recognition.Bonne soirée!”
“Merci. À vous aussi.” Margot’s eyes ran down the index of the journal. All the articles looked interesting, but she made special note of where Professor Einstein’s began—page 142. At least with all the codebreaking she’d been doing, her German was more or less fluent. She ought to be able to follow the professor’s words. And the numbers, of course, would speak for themselves in that language unique to them, independent of German or English or French.
The matron huffed and took Margot by the elbow, propelling her back into the corridor. “I ought to take that from you, young lady—it is surely a sin to fill your mind with that rot.”
“I beg your pardon?” Margot closed the journal and tucked it under the arm opposite the matron.
“How the universe was created, she said. And its fate! As if wedon’t know the former and can ever know the latter. That is in the Lord’s hands, not man’s.” The woman’s brows met above her nose in a frown.
Margot’s neck itched. “We can know it was created by God and still ask questions as tohow, madam. That is not a sin. And if you think it is, then I find it curious that you work in a hospital, because is not medicine to the human form as theoretical physics is to the universe? Seeking to understand the order by which the Lord set the world in motion?”
Ahmphwas the matron’s answer to that. She stared at where the duchess’s figure disappeared down the stairwell. “Blessed as we are to have such a patroness, that one is not fitting company for a girl like you. You ought to dispose of that card. Bobbing her hair as she’s done—and I’ve heard she’s even been seen in trousers! Hardly a good influence on an impressionable young thing like yourself.”
“Animpressionable young thing?” A wave crashed over her, making her head feel tight and her throat close off and her heart pound so hard that the wordsunknown heart conditionflickered through her brain.
She hated being calledyoung. Hated it. Too long she had been dismissed, her ideas ignored solely because she hadn’t been alive as long as others. She’d thought those days were beyond her now that she’d been part of the adult world for so many years. But no, this frumpish lump of a woman would speak down to her simply because her skin was smooth with youth. Andimpressionable? As if she hadn’t mind enough to make it up for herself? That she would just follow someone else’sfashionchoices?
As if it even mattered if she did?
