“I’ve been thinking about it for a while, but I hesitated to bring it up.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I keep a lot of things to myself.”
“Did you do that with me? When we were first married?” He asked, not bothering to conceal the desperation in his voice.
Lizzie nodded and looked away. Colin’s stomach hurt.
“You can make a list of supplies and we’ll send Stevenson out this afternoon,” he said instead of further pursuing the topic.
“I’d like to go myself, I rather like such errands.”
“We can go tomorrow morning, if you wish?” Talbot asked, praying that she’d accept his company when she didn’t have to.
“All right,” was all she said.
That afternoon, they went to the poorhouse again.
“Look here, the good-looking lordling is back,” the dirty old woman called out when Talbot entered the consumption ward, and her entire room laughed.
“Call me Talbot,” he offered, feeling an inexplicable fondness for the vulgar woman. “Do you need my assistance with anything?”
“I’m here waiting to die, so if you can do anything to make that less vexing, be my guest,” she said and had another coughing fit.
Droplets of blood were coming out of her mouth with every bout, and her clothing and bedding were already heavily stained by it.
“What are you dying of?” Talbot decided to adopt her way of conversing, seeing as they didn’t exactly have time to tiptoe around matters.
He looked around, saw a chair, and pulled it closer (not too close, for the stench around her was what he imagined a festering gangrene smelled like) to her bed and sat down.
“The Doctor with the young wife told me I have a cold in my lungs.”
Talbot had personally witnessed Hettie address the Doctor by his name and was amused by how she described him now.
“Would you like me to read to you?” Talbot suggested, and Hettie eyed him with suspicion.
“Depends, what do you plan on reading? The Bible?”
“No, I bought some chapbooks from a salesman downstairs. Let us see,” he said as he pulled the poorly-made, thin booklets out of his waistcoat pocket. “We have a historical story, a ballad about love, and a story about devotion and morality, which, judging from your expression when you mentioned the Bible, I doubt you’ll be interested in.”
He was almost sorry that he’d made her laugh again when she started choking on another cough in the middle of it.
“I like you, Talbot. Let’s hear the historical story.”
Hettie’s entire body transformed as she listened to Talbot, who did his best to enact the different characters and voices, since he’d noticed that everyone else in the room had grown quiet and was listening as well.
When he finished, he looked up at her, and she looked like a young child who had been transported to a magical world through the power of storytelling. Her gaze was bright, and her shoulders relaxed. Her right hand was stroking her left, like she was comforting herself.
“Shall I bring more next week?” He asked in a conversational tone, pretending like nothing extraordinary was happening.
“Yes, please,” Hettie said with a meek nod.
“I need to talk to you about the smell,” he told Cooper as they were exiting the building later.
“I cannot do anything about that, Talbot,” the other man said defensively.
“I wasn’t asking you to.Iwant to do something,” Talbot said haughtily. “I want to pay workers to transport the tubs, and washerwomen to heat the water, and maids and manservants to assist the paupers in the consumption ward on Wednesday mornings. I’ll have my valet find a way to get them clean clothes and bed linen as well,” he mused.
