The Infamous Miss Ilsa Page 5

  “When I took this post, they had movers set my old office up just the way I’d left it,” Dr. Greyson said, as if reading Theo’s mind.

  Maybe it’s because he was fully grown now, but the room here seemed smaller than the one in Vancouver. The large furniture had felt distinguished then, but here it made the room seem cramped and airless.

  “Yes, I thought it looked familiar,” Theo said. He wandered over to one of the medical diagrams that hung on the wall. As a child, he had marvelled at all the complicated parts of the body and how beautifully they all fit together, but now he noticed the errors the diagram contained. That spleen was too large relative to the pancreas, and the diagram of the heart was based on the old understanding of the relative functions of each chamber.

  “I have arranged to turn one of the examining rooms into your office. You can furnish it as you see fit. You will meet patients here with me so that I can supervise your consultations.” Dr. Greyson sat down in his overstuffed chair and lit a pipe.

  “I understand the need for a trial period, but I was brought here to lighten your workload, not increase it.” The only other chair was reserved for patients, so he leaned against a bookshelf filled with specimen jars and books. The last thing he wanted was to remind Dr. Greyson of when he was Little Teddy, Infant Paralysis Patient and Pitiable Invalid.

  Dr. Greyson made a dismissive gesture with his pipe and leaned forwards in his chair. “It’s important that we don’t misunderstand one another, young man,” he said, making eye contact. “While your dear mother might have sent you up here with the idea that I’m an old man needing help, you’ll find that this is not the case. I am the one doing you a favour. There are not many physicians who practice medicine in the traditional fashion, so I am your last chance to get a real education in the profession.”

  The glass front cabinet near the door prominently displayed examples of what he meant by traditional medicine: Fatoff Obesity Creams, Lydia E. Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound, Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup. Snake oil and nostrums, all of them. Soothing syrups had been out of favour for a decade at least, given the controversies about dosing teething babies with morphine. One entire shelf was filled by neat rows of Restorative Vitality Water in gleaming green bottles; Dr. Greyson was encouraging that nonsense as well.

  Theo cleared his throat. “I am grateful for the opportunity to work with you, but I assure you that my education has been quite robust and—”

  Dr. Greyson’s cheeks pinked. “Oh, I’m sure you got a robust education from those charlatans at Victoria College.” His expression implied that the word robust was a euphemism for something vulgar. “We don’t need to get into my opinions on that diploma factory. In my day, you apprenticed under a respected doctor, you learned your trade, and you respected the medical traditions. None of this folderol of ether and carbolic, either. A doctor never used to be afraid of getting a little blood and bile on his coat. And now we’re pretending that a speck of dirt under the nails will kill a body dead.” His face was red now, and the only thing that stopped his rant was a coughing fit that sent bursts of pipe smoke to join the general haze around the ceiling of the room.

  It was clear that he thought Theo was here for a kind of re-education: a return to the time where bloodletting was sound practice and germ theory was heretical nonsense. Hell, maybe he could whip up some arsenic paste to poison old women in the pursuit of a clear complexion.

  Well, he would have to lead by example. Even someone as set in his ways as Dr. Greyson couldn’t object to treatments once they’d been proven effective. Once he’d earned the old man’s trust, they could reach some common ground. Theo put on his most deferential expression. “Quite so. One’s education is never truly finished.”

  “Yes,” said Dr. Greyson, recovering his breath. “Of course. Starting with lesson one, which will take place this Saturday. People want a doctor who’s a pillar of the community, someone they can respect, someone they like. People have been talking about you, Teddy. And it’s not just the citizens of Fraser Springs. Word gets around, you know.”

  Theo knew exactly what was coming. The cancelled welcome dance. The graceless social rounds with Mrs. McSheen. The horrifically awkward scene at Wilson’s Bathhouse.

  “In fairness, no one informed me about the, erm, social expectations of the position.”

  “My boy, that is the wrong outlook entirely. You should have been up and about at seven, ready to accept visitors. When you entered the ballroom, you should have immediately requested a song from the band and asked Mrs. McSheen for the first dance. You should have certainly corrected the pronunciation of your name right away. How do you think that dear lady, who was doing her best to help you, felt?”

  “I was trying to spare her feelings.” Theo could hear the whining tone creeping into his voice, and he hated it. Dr. Greyson might be a relic, medically speaking, but Theo had made a decidedly bad start, and there was no getting around that.

  “Well, you didn’t spare anyone’s feelings. Not a bit. For a boy who was brought up around the best and brightest of society, you have proven yourself remarkably impervious to charm and good grace. But luckily for you, there’s a second chance. Since that first evening was . . . ”—the words “a disaster” hung unspoken between them for a moment—“cut short, Wilson’s Bathhouse will be hosting a dance of its own this Saturday. You will come as my guest, you will summon up all the manners your dear mother taught you, and you will hope to hell that the citizens of Fraser Springs are as gracious as I know them to be.”

  Theo sighed. Dr. Greyson was right. “Yes, sir,” he said.

  “Very good. I will pick you up at eight o’clock tomorrow evening. And for God’s sake, lose the top hat and tails.”

  “Understood.”

  Dr. Greyson’s expression softened. “Cheer up, young man. If a country dance is the most uncomfortable part of your medical career, you won’t have much to complain about. Learn to handle this bunch, and you’ll be well positioned for your own practice.”

  If Theo had his way, he wouldn’t be a practicing physician at all, but he knew better than to say that to Dr. Greyson. A man who clearly did not believe in germ theory or laboratories would not take kindly to Theo’s pursuit of a career in epidemiology. Still, academia was its own small town. The same byzantine rumour mills and petty gossip. The same intricate protocol that always seemed to elude him. If he ever wanted to discuss bacterial mutations with Dr. Stottert in Germany or trace milk-borne scarlet fever in France with Dr. DuBois, he might as well practice by talking boils and bunions with the Finest People in our Beloved Fraser Springs.

  “Yes sir,” Theo said.

  Standing for so long had brought an ache to his hip and knee. Now was probably not the best time to tell Dr. Greyson that he could not dance. But he would show up, shake hands, make small talk, and hope to hell that Dr. Greyson was right and that the people of Fraser Springs—and one person in particular—were forgiving.

  Chapter 4

  By the following Friday, Ilsa was cautiously optimistic that the dance would be a success. Or, if not a complete success, at least not a shambles. Invitations had been delivered to those who would be offended by anything less formal, and word of mouth had taken care of the remainder of the guest list. The members of the town’s brass band were still disgruntled after their abrupt dismissal from last week’s dance, but Ilsa had begged and borrowed a satisfactory assortment of phonograph records for the evening. The food situation was well in hand and under budget, largely thanks to Doc Stryker’s gracious offer to supply the beverages. Given Doc’s well-known opinions on the appropriate amount of alcohol in a “festive” punch, the dance was unlikely to be dull.

  The planning had effectively been a second job for the past ten days, eating up the few free hours in her evenings. There hadn’t been time to even open this week’s newspapers, and she hadn’t updated her notes since Sunday. It was frustrating; although she knew that she’d done twice as much work as usual, it stil
l felt as if she’d done nothing that mattered.

  On the bright side, the rush of preparations had helped keep her from dwelling on the fact that at any given time, Theo Whitacre was working and sleeping and taking tea just a few hundred feet away from her. She’d been up and down the boardwalk dozens of times, and yet their paths hadn’t crossed again since that awful introduction at Wilson’s. She’d even gone to the St. Alice to personally deliver an invitation to “Drs. Greyson and Whitacre,” and Theo had been out of the office.

  The familiar early morning routine of setting up the kitchen for breakfast was not, unfortunately, enough to keep her mind occupied. Once she’d run down her mental list of food preparations for the day and for tomorrow’s party, she moved on to the guest list. The guest list brought her, inevitably, to Theo. The fact that she hadn’t seen him was beginning to seem less like luck and more like he was avoiding her. It was a small town; unless someone was confined to bed, she was going to see them at the dock, or the general store, or the post office. And Theo clearly wasn’t confined to his bed these days.

  She certainly had nothing to say to him, but didn’t he owe her an apology, or at least an explanation, even after all these years? They’d been introduced, after all. He knew where she worked, where she lived. He might be a doctor these days, but he was apparently still a coward.

  She banged the big enamelled coffeepot back onto the stovetop, making a satisfying clang to punctuate her righteous displeasure with the spoiled young doctors of the world.

  The sound was immediately followed by a sudden, awful screeching, and she nearly jumped out of her skin before she realized that it was only the noisy porch hinge opening.

  “You scared me half to death with that racket!” she said as the kitchen door pushed open. Nils, the bathhouse’s handyman, strode through with two huge pails of water.

  “Good morning to you, too,” he replied. He set down his load carefully, barely making a sound against the wood floor, before heaving the first pail over his shoulder to pour it into the kitchen cistern. Ilsa wasn’t above staring appreciatively at the casual display of strength; it really was a shame that a man as well put together as Nils Barson was more interested in bugs and muskrats than in getting himself a sweetheart.

  He put the empty pails out on the porch and came back in, wiping his hands on his denim trousers. “Coffee ready?” he asked.

  “Depends. When are you going to fix that devil door?”

  He grunted vaguely, which was about the extent of his vocabulary most mornings, and grabbed his usual mug from the shelf. She went to the icebox for the milk and then joined him at the big central table.

  “Are you coming to the dance tomorrow?” she asked.

  “Not planning to.”

  “But this is my dance. You’d have fun, I promise.” Another grunt. Were all men incapable of basic conversation or just the ones she met? Or maybe it was just the young, handsome ones who had so much trouble talking to her.

  Which gave her an idea . . .

  “Actually, I need you to be there. As a favour.” He narrowed his eyes at her over the top of his mug, considering.

  “You’re up to something.”

  She was, in fact, formulating a little bit of a plan, but she didn’t care for the way he said it. “I beg your pardon.”

  “You only make that sweet face when you’re up to a scheme.”

  “I do not scheme! I’m . . . organizing.”

  He huffed and drained the rest of his coffee. “Fine. What’s the favour?”

  “I need you to dance with me and look like you’re having fun when you do it.”

  “There’ll be a dozen men at your dance who can do that.”

  “But they might get the wrong idea if I flirt with them.”

  “And I won’t,” he sighed.

  “It’s a compliment! You’re trustworthy.”

  “So we put on a little show. Who for?”

  “Have you met the new doctor?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I have. And he owes me an apology.”

  That got Nil’s attention. He might not be a romantic, but he was as protective as a guard dog when it came to the Wilson’s girls.

  “Nothing like that!” she rushed to assure him. “I just want to make a point, that’s all. He might not even show up, but if he does, I need to make sure he sees me having a wonderful time.”

  “I still don’t understand.”

  “That’s because you know nothing about men,” she said, patting him on the arm.

  “Canadian men, maybe. Danes are straightforward.” He sighed. “One dance.”

  “Three dances and flirting.”

  “Two. And next time you make a pork roast, you save all the crackling for me.”

  “Deal,” she said.

  Nils sighed as he stood and brushed himself off. “Flirting. I don’t know why people can’t just say what they mean,” he muttered as he dumped his mug in the sink. “Would save everyone a heap of trouble.”

  Ah, Nils really didn’t understand. The situation with Theo was complicated, and his ignoring her was only causing things to fester. She was actually simplifying things, giving him a little push so that he’d realize the error of his ways. What was that saying about daylight being the best anti-septic? She’d make sure he couldn’t take his eyes off of her, then give him an opening to speak to her privately so they could get everything out in the open. Scheming accomplished, she rinsed out the mugs, put the milk in the icebox, and got back to work.

  • • •

  As he approached Wilson’s Bathhouse on Saturday evening, Theo scouted for a back entrance he could sneak through. Mrs. McSheen would be in there. Ilsa would be too. The risks that came with encountering either of them suddenly seemed unacceptably high. He barely attended to Dr. Greyson as they walked along together, Greyson prattling on about the town’s great and good.

  “Now, Mrs. McSheen has a lovely daughter just your age, but she is currently away at university in Toronto. Quite a tempest in a teapot there, I can assure you.” He lowered his voice confidentially. “Myself, I don’t hold with educating a female up to that level. Especially not in math and sciences. At any rate,” he went on, “the Peters girl and the Bellweathers’ daughter will both be in attendence. Both lovely creatures with all the charm and social graces one could hope for. The Bellweathers are the proprietors of the general store here, but they’re connected to Lionel Bellweather. I’m sure you’ve met Lionel, great friend of your father’s.”

  Dr. Greyson paused as if waiting for Theo to reply, but Theo had honestly lost the thread of names and relationships several steps back. He steered into a new subject. “And the owners of the bathhouse are the Wilsons?”

  “No, as a matter of fact. Wilson was the original owner, as I understand it. The place is currently run by the Sterlings. Wilson was the name of Mrs. Sterling’s first husband, who died many years past.”

  That name at least seemed familiar. “Isn’t the mayor named Sterling?”

  “Precisely. Mr. Owen Sterling. Do try to make up to the Sterlings, dear boy. Mr. Sterling’s a pleasant fellow. A writer, you know. Novels, adventure stories. I don’t go in for that kind of piffle, but they’re reviewed quite well, I believe. And he’s friends with Mr. Morse, who owns the St. Alice.”

  Theo could hear music and voices coming from the bathhouse, and the electrical lights blazing in the windows lit the boardwalk festively. Just an hour or two. Shake a few hands, remember a few names, smile. He could do this.

  Dr. Greyson didn’t bother to knock, opening the establishment’s front door directly into a scene of swirling colors and laughter. There was no servant to take their hats or coats, nor had a host greeted them properly at the door. The whole business struck Theo as hopelessly awkward, although Greyson seemed untroubled by the irregularity. He merely stood on the threshold between the small foyer and the large main room, smiling avuncularly until someone noticed their arrival.

  A large Victrola h
eld pride of place, currently playing a raspy recording of “In the Good Old Summer Time.” A flock of young men and women clustered around it, giggling and elbowing each other as they argued over the assortment of phonograph cylinders. A slim woman separated from the whirl of dancing and conversation and hurried over to them.

  Theo’s breath gave a little hitch. Ilsa. Her cheeks were flushed, and she seemed genuinely pleased to see them. Her pale hair was braided and piled high on her head, and her lips glowed with the faintest trace of rouge. She was wearing a confection of a dress, layers and layers of some sheer, shimmering fabric in soft green that rippled and flowed like water as she moved. He forced himself to meet her gaze. Because that was the polite thing to do, and also to avoid admiring how the little spangles of embroidery drew the eye down her body or how the dress nipped in at her waist just so.

  “Good evening, Dr. Greyson!” she said. Was she slightly breathless? “And good evening to you as well, Dr. Whitacre.” She smiled and held out her hand. Theo froze, years of etiquette drills suddenly clamouring for priority. One might shake hands with a married lady, but a young lady never offered her hand to a gentleman except upon first introductions. But to reject her hand so publicly would be equally rude. Would a nod suffice? Did any of this even apply to a dance held in a bathhouse in the middle of nowhere?

  Dr. Greyson seemed untroubled by the intricacies of the situation, taking Ilsa’s proffered hand and raising it to his lips with exaggerated courtliness. Ilsa beamed at him. No wonder all the Vancouver matrons adored the old man. Greyson stood back for Theo to do the same. Well then. The important thing was to carry oneself with confidence.