She shrugged helplessly. The carriage lurched into motion, and Jane waited for the sound of the crowd to fade.
It didn’t.
As they rattled through the streets, the wedding guests and the accumulated onlookers kept pace, shouting and laughing and hugging one another. Jane turned bright red as she stared out the small window in the cab door. She’d seen these parades before, friends and family escorting the newlywed couple to their home, some wearing masks, others playing loud music intended to celebrate, to confuse, to mark the transition from independence to marriage, but the thought that they could do the same for her seemed alien. Terrifying, the weight of their attention on her far too much. What was she meant to do, how was she meant to act?
“I truly didn’t think anybody would care about the wedding,” he said. “And yet we have an audience, and just this morning I received a letter from my colleagues in Camhurst, proposing that they come to celebrate the nuptials in person. I turned them down, of course,” he added hastily, as she tensed still further. The crowd outside was bad enough—hosting house guests would have stressed her far more.
Across the small gap between them, Augustine seemed to feel much the same. He grew paler with every second the noise outside did not abate, and he clutched the edge of the seat, knuckles white.
“They mean us well,” she said, trying to reassure them both.
But with the crowd around them, the carriage wasn’t able to make the turn that would take them to the surgery. Instead, the crowd bore them faster and faster toward the edge of town.
Augustine made a pained sound, and finally lurched toward the door, opening it even as the cobbled road gave way to dirt beneath them. “Mr. Lowell!” he called.
The older man appeared, grinning and doffing his hat in congratulations. “Dr. Lawrence! Mrs. Lawrence!”
“We are meant for the surgery!” Augustine’s cry barely surmounted the din of the crowd, which seemed to double, triple, with every passing minute. Jane couldn’t recognize half the unmasked faces in the crowd. She trembled, unsure of how to process such a great parade. It wasn’t for her; it wasn’t for him. Was it only for a marriage?
Were they all relieved to see her gone?
Mr. Lowell had lost his words and was turning a brilliant vermillion. “I, ah—” he stammered. “I had thought you would both be headed to Lindridge Hall tonight, sir. It being your wedding night and all. Mrs. Lawrence’s traveling case has already been sent on ahead.”
Augustine went very still, even with the jolting of the wheels, and Jane thought for a moment he might throw himself from the carriage. As she watched, he closed his eyes, as if fighting for control over himself.
Jane leaned into the open doorway. “It’s all right,” she said. “I can send home for another set of clothing. We just need to turn the carriage around. Can you help us?”
Mr. Lowell worried at the brim of his hat. “So you mean to live at the surgery … regularly?”
“Yes. I will be living there full time. Dr. Lawrence will continue living at … what did you call it? Lindridge Hall?”
“Aye, Lindridge Hall.” He struggled to keep pace with the carriage and stay close to the door, the crowd pushing on him from all sides. Frustrated, he hopped up onto the rail below the door, grabbing on to the top of the carriage to brace himself. Well-wishers cheered, grinning at Jane, waving and shouting and dancing. Somewhere behind them, a full band had begun to play, a cacophony of off-tempo brass and flutes. She was trapped in a nightmare.
Mr. Lowell turned his attention once more to Augustine, who was clutching tight to the door handle. “Sir, I apologize, I had thought when you asked for the spare bedroom to be fully appointed that, ah, that you meant it for later, when you’d both stay here on occasion. Not tonight. But I don’t know—” He grimaced, looking over his shoulder. “I don’t know that I can stop such a great crowd without causing a scene.”
She didn’t care about causing a scene, not really—but she could see her guardians out among the crowd, delighted and happy and proud, and she didn’t want to hurt them.
She froze, unable to decide.
“Mr. Lowell,” Augustine said at last, “have you also sent ahead the ingredients I had you purchase for dinner?”
“Yes, sir.”
He sat back in his seat, letting go of the door. Mr. Lowell braced it instead. Grimacing, Augustine said, “Then I suppose we will be dining at Lindridge Hall tonight. But I will be sending Mrs. Lawrence back to the surgery at sunset. That way she can fetch her belongings and the crowd need not be disrupted.”
He said it all in a strange, strained voice, but Mr. Lowell only nodded and said, “Yes, Doctor.”
He dropped back to the ground and shut the door behind him.
Jane searched Augustine’s face. He’d very eagerly agreed to the part of their arrangement where they would live separately, even more than the proposed lack of intimacy. He had never gone back on that element, even as they had discussed consummation and flirted around the edges of their business arrangement. It had struck her as odd, but it had aligned with what she’d needed, even as the rest of her plans fell apart, and so she hadn’t questioned it. But now, even given how uncomfortable the wedding procession was making the both of them, she couldn’t understand.
“I wouldn’t mind staying the night at Lindridge Hall. It would no doubt be much easier,” she said. “We can satisfy the legal requirements, then resume our arrangements tomorrow.”
“No,” he said, looking directly at her for the first time since the crowd had formed. He didn’t blush, didn’t flinch.
She frowned. “It is our wedding night. It seems appropriate that we—”
“You will never stay the night at Lindridge Hall.” His expression took on a darkness that she’d never seen before, not even the day that Mr. Renton had died, but then he shook himself. “Please understand that,” he said, voice softening. “Whatever else may or may not change about our … arrangement, that needs to remain true. You will never stay the night at Lindridge Hall, and I always will.”
“Why?”
He ran an absent hand through his hair. His dark suit and shirt were rumpled from the ride already. He looked abstracted and beautiful. Jane once more found herself wanting to kiss him, damn everything else.
She pushed the impulse away.
“Why, Augustine?”
“Because,” he said, “if a patient comes to the surgery when I am out—”
“Mr. Lowell can send for you tonight, if he has to, just as I would if that happened.”
He didn’t answer immediately, looking away from her and out at the crowd. His eyes grew unfocused. At last he said, “Because Lindridge Hall is not fit for you. It’s been empty for many years, and while I employ a cook and a maid, they are not there full-time. It is a very dark place. You’ll be far more comfortable in the surgery.”
“Why must you stay there, then?”
He grimaced. The carriage rocked as the dirt track they were on grew rougher, but the noise from outside continued despite the less pleasant terrain. “It’s my family home and there’s nobody else to keep it.”
“You can’t rent it out? Or stay only a few nights a week?” When he’d first laid down this rule, she’d accepted it at face value; she had marked it as none of her business. But now that she had kissed him, had worked beside him, had learned the sort of man he was beyond her statistical analysis, none of this made sense. Augustine Lawrence should have wanted to stay close to his patients, if not to her.