‘And we shall have Queen Victoria to tea, and I will grow angel wings. As if someone like you would marry someone like me! It makes no sense. While I’m grateful for your flattery, it doesn’t mean I will let you insult me.’
I felt a twinge of guilt when I saw how crushed he was by my reaction. ‘I take it you have other plans?’ he said.
‘You think I am desperate for a husband? That I’m an old maid of thirty? Well, I have ambitions of my own. When I am finally released from the hospital after my mandatory four years are done, I will work in the colonies. You are not the only one who seeks adventure and success. Africa, or India, I think… I have always wanted to live in sunnier climes.’
I had no such plans, of course. It had been Aisling who had talked of these things; these were her ideas I heard coming from my lips.
‘Don’t go to India, Chapman. It may sound charming, but, trust me, there’s nothing romantic about a bout of dysentery. And then there’s the malaria.’
‘Is that your idea of a proposal? Marry me – it’s better than dysentery?’
He burst out laughing, which only made me angry. ‘What’s so funny?’
‘I’m imagining you in a village full of lepers. I’m not sure it’s for you, Chapman, considering your feelings on nursing the natives at the London. You know, you should stop getting in your own way and avoiding the inevitable for no good reason other than pride. Marry me! Despite our origins, we are too similar a breed to stay apart.’
‘I’m glad you think my ideas amusing. I may look like a desperate spinster to you, Dr Lancaster, but even I would demand a better proposal than that.’
‘You do yourself an injustice. You talk as if you are as old as Matron.’
‘I’m older than you.’
‘Only by a little.’
‘How much?’
‘I’m twenty-five.’
‘You look twelve. Besides, what about your family? They’ll never allow it. I’m sure your mother would be overjoyed to hear that her son has asked a lower-class nurse five years his senior to be his wife. I grew up in the Salvation Army, Dr Lancaster, crashing cymbals and having vegetables thrown at my head by drunks, so forgive me for being dubious as to why a surgeon would consider me his belle.’
I got up from his bed in a temper and walked to the mirror to smooth my hair and clothes from where his rummaging had disturbed them.
‘I am too old and bitter,’ I told him. ‘Better to spend your pretty words on a younger girl. You won’t have to work so hard.’
‘I like to work hard, Chapman.’
I reminded him that I had no family and that there would be no wealthy aunts or uncles leaving an inheritance. He said dead family members were his favourite kind, that it would make Christmas more bearable. I told him there was no money, certainly not a dowry. He said he would have his own income once his practice was established and would inherit Abbingdale Hall one day, along with all that came with it. But what of his mother? Wouldn’t she need to consider a match for him; wouldn’t she have done this already?
‘There are things you need to understand about me also, Chapman. There is my beloved twin Helen, who is small and, like many small creatures, is inclined to think of herself as much bigger than she is. Picture an extremely ferocious Jack Russell. When you meet her, you’ll see what I mean. Helen very much prefers me being far away in London so she can play queen of the castle, and for the time being I’m happy to let this continue. My moment will come, and meanwhile she is occupied with the drudgery of running the household and admonishing the staff. Then there’s my mother, a fragile old coot who quivers and shakes but still paints her face as if she is a debutante of seventeen, despite the fact that it droops on one side and she can’t speak without dribbling. I can do what I like. My father was the one to be wary of, but he’s long gone, dropped dead when I was fourteen; his heart stopped, like a watch. You and I are similar in that we are both free birds, Chapman. They won’t make a fuss if we marry, and even if they do disapprove, they won’t risk the embarrassment of making a scene.’
Thomas had this indestructible belief that life would reward him. Only money brings that kind of confidence. Wealth in England is guarded by a closed conspiracy: you have to be invited in. Someone like me may as well have been a vampire, but Thomas was already on the inside, begging me to join him. What could it be like to sit in a grand house with twenty servants and know you would never fall to the bottom of the ladder? Thomas was impulsive, spoiled, over loud and an attention-seeker. Like his father, he enjoyed collecting things and he loved shopping and spending money – he bought me a shrunken head from South America just to watch me open it and scream. A small part of me worried that I was just another thing he was attempting to collect, but even if that were true, would it matter? I would be living in a house in Chelsea.
The second time he proposed, he told me I had to marry him because he was colour-blind and in danger of leaving the house in badly put-together clothes, so it was my duty to save him from this fate. We both laughed. It was true, he confused green with red and sometimes brown. I stopped laughing when in the next breath he got down on one knee and presented me with a huge diamond solitaire on platinum. I had to
