Mrs. Woodward’s co-conspirator, standing beside her, nodded her head so vigorously that the several artificial birds on her hat rustled their wings, about to take flight. “So unsuitable, don’t you think, dear Martha? Heavy-handed! And what is she calling herself? A gardener? A landscaper? A nurseryman?”
“A horticulturist,” Henry Woodward, prompted by fairness, piped up.
With one motion, both women turned on him.
Henry quailed. He had served responsibly and honorably during the War Between the States; and, as he confided later to a drinking buddy over the Rouge’s generous bar, he would rather face the guns of a charging cavalry than the wrath of godly women with their skirts in a frizz.
Especially when those women’s looks were homelier than a mud fence, and the target of their wrath might have been the beautiful subject of a Renaissance painting, stepped down from the frame.
Last of all was Miss Letitia Burton.
When word got out that she was actually working with Dr. Havers, that she was actually learning a trade, that she was actually planni
ng a future based on therapeutic care, Turnabout just about lost its collective mind. Imagine that, this gently born woman putting herself and her endurance to the test by dealing with the repulsive blood and gore of people needing medical attention.
Why, everyone knew that any member of the gentler sex should surely be shielded from such harsh realities on the seamier side of life!
A female in trade was certainly bad enough. Sometimes that was a necessity, such as Miss Elvira Gotham’s occupation, over at the mercantile. Still a lady, Lord knew; still delicate and fragile (despite her occasional use of a waspish tongue). It was hardly her fault that she’d been left a spinster, with no means of support other than this one.
But doctoring?
Obviously educated far beyond her needs, no matter what Letitia’s station in life.
Why else would she take on such a demeaning, unladylike profession? Shame on her family (and especially Ben, as patriarch) for not refusing her permission; shame on Gabriel Havers for sympathizing with and encouraging her mad notion.
“Well, now, there’s somethin’ to be said about bein’ nursed outa sickness by a filly as winsome as this here one,” ventured Lean Joe McKean, from the land office porch where he was busily engaged in propping up one of the support posts. “Pretty as a painted wagon, she is.”
“Would sure make you wanna get back on your feet in a hurry, wouldn’t it?” agreed the assayer, Marcus Finch. “You think she’ll stick it out?”
“Dunno. She’s got that kinda look in her eye. Reckon she goes after somethin’ and don’t give up till she’s got it. Still...a man can dream, can’t he?”
Finch, watching the young woman in question stride along with great purpose, shrugged. “S’pose so. But not too much, since we’re both married. I don’t think our wives would take kindly to lettin’ some dewy-faced female be a-tendin’ to our needs.”
If it seemed that there was a great deal of lollygagging going on, mainly by the masculine segment of the populace, while the Burtons were busy taking over the town, it was, mercifully, of brief duration and usually while the residents were proceeding from one business or event to another, based around mealtime. While working men did do their share of porch-sitting, and could find innumerable subjects to gossip about while whittling or spitting or getting their whiskers trimmed, they would eventually set off for their afternoon’s chosen work.
The final consensus of the general population, at the end of the day: Far better Miss Letitia Burton find herself a husband, like any other self-respecting female, than to take up some profession which would only shun and scold her.
Chapter Two
“DREAMS,” MUTTERED LETITIA, in a tone that sounded distinctly disgusted.
“What’s that, Letty?”
“I said, dreams.”
“Something wrong with dreams?”
“Only if they’re your own, and they don’t conform to public opinion.”
She was slumped tiredly at the Forresters’ kitchen table—the hub from which all familial social activity seemed to be generated—while Camellia, listening with only half an ear, stirred up the batter for her husband’s favorite chocolate cake. Letty, her medical studies progressing by leaps and bounds, had been asked by Dr. Havers to accompany him to an outlying ranch, where one of the farmhands had somehow gotten his arm stuck through by a pitchfork’s tines.
“Durn fool,” Gabe, with Letty beside him in the surrey, had complained all the way out along the main dirt road. “Dunno how you’d do such a blockheaded thing to yourself, ’less you weren’t tendin’ right smart to business. It ain’t the piercin’ that’s the problem, mind you; it’s all the filth and muck that those tines were prob’ly swimmin’ in that could cause real trouble.”
“Sepsis, you mean.”
He had sent her a sideways look, pleased by her perception. “Darlin’, at the rate you’re goin’, I can soon let you take over my practice whilst I retire to the sunny south.”
“Doctor,” she had reminded him with a smile, “you are in the sunny south.”