"Mercedes Lackey - EM 3 - The Serpents Shadow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lackey Mercedes)

no one in the United Kingdom would ever deny her expertise.
"How old are you, if I may ask?" he continued.
"Five and twenty," she replied crisply. "And that may seem a trifle
young to you to have become a physician and surgeon. But I had been
studying medicine under the tutelage of my father since I was old
enough to read, and achieved Doctor of Medicine at the University of
Delhi at the age of twenty-two."
He nodded slowly. "And you were practicing alongside your father as
well?"
"I was certified in India as a practicing physician," she reminded
him, taking pains to keep her impatience and growing frustration out
of her voice. "I was my father's partner in his practice. Wives and
daughters of military personnel felt more comfortable consulting a
female physician in matters of a personal and delicate nature. I
aided him as a physician in my own right for a period of nearly four
years."
"That was in India; you might find ladies feel differently about you
here," he replied, the expected hint that her mixed blood would prove
a handicap, and a more tactful hint than she had expected.
She smiled a small, cold smile, as cold as her feet in those
wretched, tight little leather "walking" shoes she'd laced onto her
feet. "The women of the poor take what they are offered; and for that
matter, so do the men," she told him. "They can hardly afford to take
their patronage elsewhere, since there is no alternative. I will-if
certified-be undertaking work for certain Christian charities. The
Fleet Charity Clinic, to be precise." There were also certain
suffragist.charities she would be working for as well, but it wasn't
wise to mention those.
Charity work would scarcely allow her to earn much of a living, which
was why most male physicians wouldn't even consider it. She would not
tell him what else she had in mind to augment her income.
He brightened a little at that. Probably because I won't be a threat
to the practices of any of the young male physicians, who have wives
with the proper attitudes to support, she thought, amused in spite of
her resentment. She suppressed the desire to sniff, as her nose
tickled a little.
"Far be it from me to become an impediment to someone who wishes to
devote herself to the welfare of the poor," he replied with ponderous
piety, and removed a document from beneath the results of her
examinations, signing it quickly. He passed it to her over the desk;
she received it in those black-gloved hands-black, for she was still
in mourning for her father, and though Society might forgive the
occasional breach of strict mourning in a young white woman, it would
never do so for her. The year of formal mourning was not yet up, and
in the interest of economy, she had already decided to prolong it as
long as she could. Mourning colors gave her a certain safety. Even a
brute would not offer too much insult to a woman in mourning, even if
she was a half-breed.
That paper was her medical certification, giving her the authority to
practice medicine, and the right to practice surgery here in this