The Wedding Game by Jane Feather Page A

unashamedly trawling for a rich wife and a wealthy practice waste any time at all on the poor and infirm of the London slums? Perhaps he had no choice, she decided. Perhaps he was such a bad doctor, only the poor who had no alternative would go to him. From what she'd seen of his general attitude, he'd have a hard time buttering up the wealthy socialites who required a mixture of obsequiousness and authority in their medical practitioners. He probably realized that, hence the need for the well-connected wife who could smooth out the rough edges, or, in the case of the Signorina Della Luca, ride right over them, herding prospective patients to his Harley Street practice like so many stunned cattle to the abattoir.
    Chastity yawned, somewhat dismayed by her own malice. It was not at all like her. She set the letter on the secretaire, intending to give it to Prue's butler to post in the morning, then returned to bed, this time to sleep.
             
    It was cold in the bare back room despite the miserable flicker of a coal fire in the grate. The woman on the straw-filled mattress writhed in silence, stoically enduring what she had endured six times before.
    Douglas Farrell straightened from his examination and said softly, “Bring that candle closer, Ellie.”
    The girl, who looked to be no more than eight, hurriedly brought the stub of a candle over to the doctor. She held it high, as he instructed, but averted her eyes from her mother's agony.
    “Did you boil the water?” Douglas asked, his tone still soft and gentle as he palpated the swollen abdomen.
    “Charlie's doin' it,” the child replied. “Ma's goin' t'be all right, i'n't she, Doctor?”
    “Your mother knows what she's doing,” he replied. The woman jerked, and his hands moved swiftly now between the blood-streaked thighs. “Hold the candle steady, Ellie.”
    The woman cried out abruptly for the first time, her body convulsed, and a blood-soaked scrap appeared between the doctor's hands. He worked fast and deftly, clearing the infant's nasal passages. A thin cry emerged and the blue body took on a pinkish hue. “A boy, Mrs. Jones,” he said, cutting the thick cord and tying it. He laid the child on his mother's breast. “Small but healthy enough.”
    The woman gazed in blank-eyed exhaustion at the infant, then with experienced fingers she attached his mouth to her nipple. “'Tis to be 'oped I've some milk this time,” she murmured.
    Douglas turned to wash his hands in a basin of cold water, the hot would be for the mother and child. There wasn't enough fuel in this hovel to heat more than one bowl. “I'll get the midwife to you,” he said.
    “No, Doctor. Us can manage,” the woman protested weakly. “Our Ellie there can 'elp clean up. No need to disturb the midwife.”
    Douglas offered no objection. He knew there was no money here for a midwife's services and the eldest daughter had enough experience by now. He bent over the woman, felt her brow, said softly to Ellie, “If there's fever, send for me at once. You understand?”
    “Yes, Doctor.” The child nodded vigorously.
    He opened the girl's hand and laid a coin on her palm, closing her fingers tightly over it. “Get candles, a bucket of coal, and milk for your ma,” he said. “Don't let your da see it.”
    She nodded solemnly, tucking her closed fist against her ragged skirt. He patted her shoulder and left the room, bending his head below the low lintel of the narrow door that separated the back room from the front. A room that was in no better case when it came to fire, light, and furniture than the other. Piles of rags scattered across the floor served as beds, a broken chair stood beside a fireplace, where a saucepan with a miserly quantity of water stood on a trivet over two or three coals, tended by a boy of around five, although judging by his stunted growth he could be several years older.
    “Where's your da, Charlie?”
    “Down the pub,” the boy said, staring into the pan