(Catherine POV)
The memory came unbidden as I stared at wounds that were clean but still seeping—my grandmother's voice explaining the properties of comfrey and yarrow, herbs she'd grown in the kitchen garden of our country house before Father's ambitions had moved us to London's suffocating proprieties.
Before I'd learned that knowing how to set bones and treat fever was considered unsuitable knowledge for young ladies whose value lay in ornamental rather than practical skills.
Before education had focused on accomplishments that impressed suitors rather than abilities that could save lives during emergencies that exceeded polite society's experience.
Before survival skills had been sacrificed in favor of social graces that felt increasingly irrelevant to circumstances I actually face
