The Irish Healer

Chapter 10





Will you be leaving your excellent cook behind, James?” asked Thaddeus, his thick, dark sideburns shifting as he grinned. “My wife would love to have her.”

“I’m afraid, Thaddeus, Mrs. Mainprice goes with me,” replied James, signaling Molly to clear the remainder of the dessert from the dining room.

Thaddeus leaned back and patted his mouth one last time with the napkin. Molly whisked it away before it barely had time to rest on the tablecloth. “The boiled capon, the turbot, the haricot verts almondine . . . most impressive.”

“And the marvelous raspberry-and-currant tart. Do not forget that, Thaddeus,” said Miss Castleton, seated beside her brother. Blonde and fine-boned, deceptively fragile-looking, she shimmered like dew upon fields of spring grass in her gown of layered lime-green muslin. A beautiful display. And though she had complimented the meal, she’d hardly touched any of it. James knew her thoughts lay elsewhere. On marriage.

To him.

God, show me the way out of this without offending a friend.

“I’m glad you both enjoyed the meal,” James said. “I will relay your compliments to Mrs. Mainprice.”

“If you change your mind about taking her to Finchingfield with you, just let me know.” Thaddeus shook his head. “Ah, James, every time I think about you leaving, I still refuse to believe it. And in less than a month. Though I should have been expecting you might finally decide to go. Your father did want you to take over the property.”

“He did.” Though I’ve been far from ready. As much as the doctoring had worn him down, the responsibilities . . . the duties he would face in Finchingfield were even more wearying.

James smiled at Thaddeus and his sister, who did not need to know the conflict churning in his head, nor would likely care. “If all goes well, my departure will be sooner than a month. My assistant is rapidly cataloging the library and the contents of my office, my father’s property in Finchingfield is being repaired and repainted, and my patients have all been informed—”

“And I can hear them now: ’How dare that Dr. Edmunds leave us to the likes of Dr. Castleton! He has no bedside manner and will likely kill us all off within a fortnight.’”

“None of them have protested as yet.”

“Furthermore, there’s Finchingfield itself,” Thaddeus continued, warming to his subject. Miss Castleton sipped quietly from a glass of lemonade and tried to look disinterested, though James knew she hung on every word. “A lovely area, no doubt at all. And your family’s house is grand, if a bit tumbled-down. But you’ll be bored in a month’s time, maybe a week’s time, pottering around in the garden, ambling down country lanes occupied by nothing more than farmers’ wagons and country wives on their way to market, counting the hours to your next meal or the days to a visit by the local parson.”

An itch developed along James’s torso, an itch of irritation. He had heard this commentary repeatedly from Thaddeus since he’d told his friend about his decision to leave London and his thriving practice.

“I shall enjoy the clean air and quiet,” James insisted. “And I will finally have time to actually read all the books I’ve amassed in my library.”

“All you need to complete the picture is a dog at your feet, cozy by the fire. Well, that shall be thrilling. Don’t you agree, Louisa?”

“Actually, Thaddeus, country air does sound like a most pleasing change from the air of London.” She smiled prettily at James, willing him to see how eager she was to join him there.

James gave her a noncommittal nod, sipped from his glass of seltzer, and stayed quiet. The countryside would never suit her. Louisa Castleton was born to the city like a bird was meant to fly.

“Louisa, I do believe you’ve grown bored with London,” said her brother, lifting his brows but not looking truly surprised at her comment. “I never thought that would be possible.”

“Indeed. It’s become rather tedious. The countryside would be most charming. Of course, I would wish to come to town every so often. As you are here, Thaddeus.” She sounded as if she’d rehearsed her plans for some time. “But I know nothing of Finchingfield. You’ve been there, but I never have. Perhaps Dr. Edmunds will be so kind as to invite me someday.”

She turned her gaze on James, and he saw the desperation in her eyes. James’s grip on his glass tightened. He blamed Thaddeus for letting his sister cling to the hope they would wed. Blamed himself for not rectifying the mistake earlier. He refused to marry out of obligation. He had done that before . . . and failed miserably.

“Molly,” he called out, bringing the maid back into the dining room. “Dr. Castleton and I are ready for our cigars. Also, could you send for Miss Dunne? I would like her to escort Miss Castleton to the drawing room and keep her company until Dr. Castleton and I are finished.”

He felt, rather than noticed, Miss Castleton brighten. She must be thinking that the awaited time has come.

“Yes, sir,” Molly replied, placing the inlaid wood cigar box at his side and hurrying off.

“Who is Miss Dunne?” asked Thaddeus. “The name sounds Irish.”

“She’s the assistant I hired. Very intelligent, disciplined young woman.” Who had weighed next-to-nothing when he’d carried her in his arms, tucked against his chest. He had held her closer than he’d needed to. James swallowed some seltzer. “She is a cousin of an old friend of Mariah’s. She was in need of a job for a short while, until she becomes established in London. She plans on teaching, I believe.”

“Sounds as though she has quite won you over, this Irish teacher,” stated Miss Castleton, voice taut, her face maintaining a polite smile while her eyes hardened.

“If by ‘won me over’ you mean I’ve come to appreciate how competent she is, then yes, Miss Castleton, she has won me over. And I’m happy to have helped her. Her family has encountered financial difficulties, forcing her to seek employment here.”

Thaddeus clicked his tongue against his teeth. “Like so many of them. The Irish are coming by the droves off steamers. There must be hundreds of them settling around St. Giles. Turning the place into a stinking hole, if you ask me. They show up at my front door during my one hour of seeing charity patients with their grimy children or drunk husbands and think I can cure them.” He scoffed. “What they fail to realize is if they would live in clean surroundings, not packed cheek-by-jowl like herring in a jar, and abstained from their drink and their other foul habits, they might not contract every known disease.”

His sister was nodding in agreement.

“I doubt they enjoy the surroundings they find themselves in, Thaddeus,” James said, seeking to defend a people he had paid little attention to in the past. Miss Dunne’s people. “We must help them where we can, even if all we do is offer treatment and advice. If they wish to improve their condition, the best will manage.”

“I do wonder if they know how to work hard enough to do so. Soon they’ll overrun the city, and then what will the rest of us do? They bring disease along with increased crime. I’ve heard from several colleagues that the cholera has returned among the immigrants and poor on the East Side. Soon it will be in the slums of St. Giles, mark my word. And that is coming too close for comfort.”

“I didn’t realize the cholera had returned,” James said, gleaning the one piece of significant news buried within Thaddeus’s diatribe. “I have been so preoccupied recently, I hadn’t heard.”

“A case here or there.” He looked over at his sister. “There is no need to worry, Louisa. It’s a disease that prefers the poor, as you know. You will be perfectly safe, so long as you stay away from St. Giles.”

“Oh, Thaddeus, I pray it stays there!” she said, her cheeks paling. “Do you recall that my lady’s maid lost her sister to the cholera in March? And so quickly. She died in less than twelve hours. Horrid, wretched disease. I shall insist upon leaving London if it spreads.”

“If you truly feel the need, Louisa, I shall make certain you do.”

A knock sounded on the doorframe and Miss Dunne entered. She wore her usual drab frock, but her hair blazed in the light of the chandelier, rich as flames, attracting the eye. James wondered if she knew how she demanded attention. Even Thaddeus was staring at her.

Courteously, James stood, catching Miss Castleton by surprise that he felt the need to do so. Catching himself by surprise as well. Miss Dunne has won me over. “This is Miss Dunne. Might I introduce Dr. Castleton and his sister, Miss Louisa Castleton?”

Miss Dunne’s gaze flicked over Miss Castleton. He would pay money to know what those eyes saw, what that mind thought.

She gave a quick curtsy. “I am pleased to make your acquaintance. What did you wish, Dr. Edmunds?”

“Could you show Miss Castleton to the drawing room and make sure that refreshments are brought up? Coffee and whatever else Mrs. Mainprice believes appropriate. Dr. Castleton and I shall be joining her there shortly.”

Thaddeus pulled back his sister’s chair and she rose, imperious. What she thought of Miss Dunne was evident in every rigid line of her face. “Take as long as you need, gentlemen,” she said. “I shall be perfectly all right in the company of this . . . charming young woman.”

“Please come with me, Miss Castleton,” said Miss Dunne. She was better at keeping her opinions concealed.

“A lovely young woman,” said Thaddeus, once they left the dining room. “For a creature of her class.”

How easily Thaddeus had placed Miss Dunne, assigned her the compartment all the newly arrived Irish occupied whether they belonged in it or not. James found it far more difficult to classify her, though. Was she the draw of an undertow? The soft murmur of twill skirts brushing across leather boots? The faintest scent of some wild Irish flower he had smelled on her hair when he’d carried her away from the injured apple girl?

Or something else entirely?

“Cigar?” Opening the cigar box, James withdrew one and held the box out to Thaddeus.

Thaddeus grinned at his cigar. “Ah, I shall miss these. Tell me that after you’ve married Louisa, you’ll let me come to Finchingfield House to smoke your excellent Havanas.”

“We need to talk about that, Thaddeus.” James lit his cigar off a chandelier candle and pulled in a long hot breath of smoke. The taste, which he usually enjoyed, was sour in his mouth. “I have no intention of asking Louisa to marry me. I don’t intend on asking anyone to marry me, ever. I am sorry. Tell her I’m sorry.”

“A widower for the rest of your life . . . what an idiotic plan.”

“The reality, Thaddeus, is that marrying again would be the wrong thing for me to do. I don’t need another wife.”

“You do need a wife, like any sane man does. Even I finally gave in. Louisa would make the perfect mistress of your household. She is lovely, accomplished, well spoken. Knows not to mind what sort of hours you’d keep. I don’t understand why you are so unwilling to have her.”

“Because I do not love her.” A voice from his past haunted: “Do you love me, James?”

He wasn’t sure he could love anyone.

“Is love a requirement for marriage?” Thaddeus asked, far too coolly. His wife was quiet and proper, an excellent hostess and calm companion, admired but not adored. Like most wives James knew.

“It is a requirement for me.” James flicked ash off his cigar onto a plate taken from the sideboard. Ash showered across the plate, off the edge, and onto the table.

“And what of Amelia? If you remarry, you could finally remove her from your sister-in-law’s care and bring her home. I know Mrs. Woodbridge has done a marvelous job, a task many a woman has done for a deceased sister, but Amelia needs both a mother and a father.”

The earlier itch along James’s spine returned. “Sophia will be moving to Finchingfield House with Amelia, once the house is ready for them. She will have the both of us then.”

Behind a thin curtain of cigar smoke,Thaddeus’s eyes took on a pitying look. “I’m sure Mrs. Woodbridge is more than delighted with that arrangement. She shall never have to leave Amelia’s side.”

“Sophia loves Amelia like a mother. The child is all she has, since her husband died. I can’t just force the girl away from her, and Amelia wouldn’t ever want to leave Sophia.”

Thaddeus groaned. “I don’t like any of this. The decision to quit your practice, flee London, and take up puttering in the countryside because your father requested on his deathbed that Amelia be raised there . . . Don’t mistake me, I respect your father’s dying wish, but none of this feels right. I had hoped when you didn’t rush up to Finchingfield immediately that you agreed with me. But farming . . . It isn’t what I ever thought you would do with your life. What happened to the James I used to know? The one who used to be ambitious, confident. The most promising physician I had ever met.”

He died three years ago, Thaddeus. “You should be pleased I’m leaving London. You’ll profit handsomely from taking over my practice.”

“I’m hardly pleased. Just do me a favor . . . make certain you know what you’re doing.”

“I am retiring to the countryside. The last time I checked, that is not a criminal offense.” James stubbed out his cigar, barely smoked, and tugged hard on his waistcoat. “Let’s join the ladies before I regret having you take over my practice. Those patients of mine just might be right about worrying that you’ll become their physician.”





Rachel smiled nervously at Miss Castleton, perched on a sofa placed at an angle to the large drawing room window. She could hear Dr. Edmunds’s voice, loud in the dining room just below them, his words but not his tone muffled by the thickness of the wood between. She imagined Miss Castleton could hear him as well, though her expression was a calm and unruffled flatness as if she were deaf to the world. Sipping her coffee with practiced elegance, Miss Castleton looked around the room, though Rachel suspected she had been there before.

Unease stretched between them, pulled tight as the warp on a loom, until Rachel feared her nerves would snap. What am I doing here? She wished she could leave, her curiosity about Miss Castleton well sated, but leaving would be unpardonably rude.

Downstairs, the voices stopped. Certainly Miss Castleton had noticed, for the sudden silence below caused her shoulders to visibly relax.

“Would you care for more coffee, Miss Castleton?” asked Rachel, looking to fill the void with something resembling polite conversation. Miss Castleton hadn’t said a word to her other than “yes” or “no” since they had been alone together. To expect she might say more was unrealistic. A woman who was the sister of a gentleman, who aspired to be the wife of a gentleman, would not readily converse with someone she viewed as her inferior. Although Rachel evidently intrigued her. Miss Castleton had watched her closely when Rachel had poured the coffee for them both. “Or perhaps a bite of seedcake?”

“More coffee would be pleasant.” Miss Castleton stared down the length of her fine nose while Rachel refilled her cup. “Can you remind me what your position is in this household, Miss Dunne?”

“I am Dr. Edmunds’s assistant.” And right now I feel as insignificant as a bug . . .

“I thought he already had an assistant. Miss Guimond.”

“She is no longer with Dr. Edmunds, but I have not replaced her. I am cataloging the contents of his library and helping pack his office. A temporary position until I find a place in a school as a teacher.”

Miss Castleton’s eyes, a gorgeous violet fringed by fair eyelashes, peered at her. Rachel decided they were her best feature and made her quite amazingly lovely. “So you’re not to go with the rest of the household to Finchingfield.”

“No.”

“Yes, I remember that is what James . . . oh, I mean, Dr. Edmunds, told us.” She attempted to look embarrassed at having so familiarly dropped Dr. Edmunds’s Christian name, though Rachel suspected it was no accident. “It must be hard to find respectable employment, coming as you are from Ireland.”

The barb found its mark, but Rachel ignored the temptation to react to its sting. It was likely Miss Castleton meant to be spiteful; it was just as likely she was merely speaking the awful truth as she knew it. “I am fortunate that my cousin, Miss Harwood, will assist me. She knows of several charity schools where I might find a position.”

“Ah, a charity school. Of course, that would be perfect for you, Miss Dunne. I’ve visited many of them myself, when I’ve been able, and the children are so pitiable.” A moue of compassion attempted to fix itself upon her mouth. “Perhaps I can assist in founding such a place in Finchingfield, if there is a need.”

The stupid pinch of jealousy returned. “You are also moving to Finchingfield?”

“Oh, I should not have stated it so plainly, but I believe I shall be.” She began to whisper conspiratorially, “Between us, Miss Dunne, I do expect that Dr. Edmunds is about to ask for my hand in marriage. If he has not already broached the subject with my brother, who acts as my guardian in place of our father, long deceased.”

“You must be very excited by the prospect of such a marriage,” replied Rachel, vividly aware that she did not want to be party to Miss Castleton’s expectations. She would prefer to know absolutely nothing about Miss Castleton and Dr. Edmunds’s matrimonial plans. “Dr. Edmunds is a fine man.”

“Indeed, I am thrilled,” said Miss Castleton, dreamily. “I have always longed to live in the countryside.”

Rachel bit back a hasty rejoinder. You should be thrilled to be with him. That sentiment should be Miss Castleton’s uppermost thought. How could Dr. Edmunds wish to marry Miss Castleton? They were as opposite as the poles of a magnet. He was serious and she decidedly frivolous. He needed someone who could understand him. Who knew what it meant to be drawn to an injured child in a road. Miss Castleton seemed more likely to stride away, eyes averted from the street urchin, than to bend down to offer aid.

“Congratulations, Miss Castleton.” Rachel scraped together all the goodwill she could gather and found sufficient to truly mean her words. “I wish you great joy.”

Miss Castleton’s eyes widened, taken aback that Rachel—a poor Irish girl—could be gracious enough, well bred enough, to extend sincere felicitations. “Why, thank you.”

The men entered the drawing room. Dr. Edmunds’s gaze sought out Rachel before looking anywhere else. Before drifting to the woman who intended on moving to Finchingfield with him. Drift to Miss Castleton, though, they eventually did.

Rachel stood. “It was very agreeable to speak with you, Miss Castleton. Good evening to you.”

“Good evening, Miss Dunne. I wish you success with your endeavors.”

Dr. Castleton went to join his sister on the sofa. Rachel attempted to slip by Dr. Edmunds, still waiting just inside the doorway. He lifted a hand to stop her. “Please stay, Miss Dunne. It’s early yet.”

“I cannot, Dr. Edmunds. Because of my unfortunate fainting spell earlier, I still have work to attend in the library and must leave you to your guests.”

“If you insist.”

“I do.”

“Always sensible, Miss Dunne.”

“That I am.” For I know where I do not belong.

“Dr. Edmunds,” called out Miss Castleton possessively, “please join us. Thaddeus has started to tell an amusing story about a hot potato seller he encountered today, and you must hear it.”

Dr. Edmunds bowed his head and ceased attempting to convince Rachel to stay, strolling away to take a seat across from Miss Castleton. He made a remark to her that was out of Rachel’s hearing and she smiled. The sight constricted Rachel’s chest for no particular reason she could name. Miss Castleton was of Dr. Edmunds’s world. Maybe she would make him happy. She obviously enjoyed his company and wanted to be his wife. They would have beautiful children and be blessed by God.

Rachel turned slowly on her heel and closed the door behind her.