The Irish Healer

Chapter 4





The man bending over Rachel released her hand so quickly she nearly fell back upon the stack of crates.

“I . . . I . . .” he stuttered, the confusion that flashed across his face turning into a scowl. “I beg your pardon. It was forward of me to clutch your hand so familiarly.”

“Then perhaps you should not have done so,” Rachel retorted sharply. She didn’t care if she was rude. She was angry she had fallen asleep, leaving herself vulnerable. And now some stranger—a gentleman, she corrected, based on the cut of his graphite-colored superfine wool coat and the sound of his voice—had accosted her. “What do you want with me?”

He answered with a question. “You are Miss Dunne, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I am. And you have the advantage, because I do not know who you are.”

“No, you don’t.” He frowned deeper, the muscles flexing along his jaw The expression marred the handsomeness of his face, cast a shadow over his eyes, gray as the stones of the Brownshill Dolmen, and just as hard. “I am your employer.”

“Oh.” Her cheeks flared. Not precisely the gracious first meeting she might have hoped for. “Of course, I should have thought so straightaway.”

“Joe,” he glanced over his shoulder, “this is she, it appears.”

Just then she noticed the boy standing to one side, the one he called Joe. It was the lad from the gig who’d been at the docks earlier.

Joe whistled between the gap in his front teeth. “Cor, sir, she ain’t no agin’ spinster lady.”

“No, Joe, she isn’t. And please don’t say ‘cor.’ Miss Dunne, I am Dr. Edmunds.” He offered a perfunctory bow of his head. “This here is Joe.”

“Good day to ya, miss,” said Joe, a friendly grin tilting his mouth. “Glad to see ya made it safe, after all. We was wonderin’ where you’d got to. Didn’ figure you ’ad any money to run off, though—”

“That’s quite enough, Joe.” Dr. Edmunds’s gaze made a quick assessment of her carpetbag. “Do you have any other luggage?”

“No, this is all I have,” she replied defensively.

“Just as well,” he answered, and signaled for the lad to take her pitiful lone bag. “There’s not much room in the gig.”

He began striding toward the carriage at such a rapid pace that Rachel imagined anyone observing them would conclude he was attempting to evade her.

“If I may, I have a question, Dr. Edmunds,” Rachel said, clutching at her skirts as she struggled to keep up. “Your lad there seems to think I was supposed to be an aging spinster. Was there some confusion over my age?”

His eyes grew even stonier, if such a thing were possible. “Yes, there was. I was expecting someone nearer forty, which is why Joe didn’t recognize you initially.”

“I see.” The confusion explained the scowl. “You do not think that my cousin and I intentionally misled you about my age, do you?”

“Should I?”

“Of course not. I would never . . .” lie to you? But wouldn’t she, when she planned to never admit to him the most critical detail of her life? “I did not ask her to give you the impression I was anything other than twenty years old.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“I trust my youth will not be a problem.”

“That depends on you, Miss Dunne,” he answered, stopping to look at her as they reached the gig. “If you do good work, then there is no problem at all.”

“I will work very hard, Dr. Edmunds.” So long as he did not ask her to sit with his patients, as Claire had assured her in the letters she had sent to Mother, all would be well. She could never sit with a sick person again. She had made a vow to herself never to fail again, and attending the ill would only result in failure. “You will have no complaints about me.”

“As I expect of any of my staff,” he said tersely, conversation concluded, and climbed into the gig.

Joe easily hoisted her carpetbag onto the back of the vehicle. It was pathetically light, holding only another gown, a thin cloak, some undergarments, and a few items to dress her hair. She had left her Bible at home, sitting atop her chest of drawers. If God had forgotten her in her time of crisis, she’d reasoned, there was no need to remember Him.

Once she settled in the gig, Dr. Edmunds grabbed the reins and steered them away from the docks, Joe clinging like a boy-sized spider to the rear of the vehicle. They journeyed up one street and down the next, past warehouses and bustling markets overflowing with vendors. Church towers pierced the sky like so many upraised arms reaching for God. Officious buildings with grand columned entry ways fought for space. And all the people—the clamor and the commotion—were stifling, making Rachel long for air and open sky. There would be no more of that here, though, where any glimpse of green seemed unlikely, where any hope for the sound of a warbler’s trill would be muffled by the impossible din, and the warm smells of a neighbor’s oven would be drowned in the cloying stench of sewer.

She must have shuddered, because Dr. Edmunds glanced her way. “Overwhelmed, Miss Dunne?” He almost sounded sympathetic.

“It is quite different from home.”

“But there is some beauty here, beneath the filth. Many magnificent buildings that are the glory of England. Such as that one.” He nodded toward a building with a great dome rising. “That is St. Paul’s. I’ve been promising my staff I would take them to services there, but I’ve not found the time. They’ve had to make do with our St. Peter’s.” He peered over at her. “By the way, I would expect you to attend church services with the rest of the staff.”

Rachel could not bring herself to nod. God was not a part of her plans. “What are those buildings?” she asked, pointing to the right.

“They’re the Old Bailey and Newgate Prison. There’s been a prison on that site since the time of Henry Plantagenet. I’ve been told that when those doors close behind a prisoner, the sound they make is like entering the realms of hell. A very fearsome place.”

Her skin prickled; she knew exactly how fearsome the interior of a prison could be. In considerable detail, she could describe the smells and the chill and the ungodly noises, the weeping and wailing. The other sounds people made while they bade their time and avoided contemplating their fates. She could tell the good doctor precisely what it was like to face a bewigged judge, her hands gripping the rubbed-smooth rail of the defendant’s dock, the sounding board overhead echoing every tremor in her voice as she pleaded to be believed. Even as she had stopped believing in herself.

Heavy traffic forced the gig to halt, and Rachel felt Dr. Edmunds watching her. Did he see the guilt on her person, like the mark they used to put upon thieves’ hands? Here sits an accused murderer. Someone he might not want within a hundred miles of his patients, let alone living in his very house. The irony . . .

With all the courage she possessed, Rachel returned his gaze. Look him in the eye. He must not suspect she had any secrets to hide. Her future depended upon him believing her to be the most upright woman in the world.

“Being inside a prison must be very fearsome,” Rachel replied, grateful the shaking in her voice was just a tiny echo of the shudder moving through her body, relieved when the traffic cleared and they began moving again. “The most dreadful experience imaginable.”





The remainder of the trip to Dr. Edmunds’s residence passed in awkward silence. Although it might have only been awkward for Rachel. Dr. Edmunds simply seemed irritated, his back as stiff as a hitching post, his grip strangling the reins.

He bounded out of the gig when it stopped in front of a terrace house, the iron railing surrounding its area perfectly black, the steps gleaming white, the brass door knocker shining in the dim sunlight sifting through the clouds. The house of a gentleman.

Joe offered his hand to help her down, giving a wink before handing her carpetbag to her. “Welcome to the ’ouse of the esteemed Dr. James Edmunds. Beware what lies within.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ll see, miss.”

Two women waited in the entry hall. The younger one, dressed in a black frock topped with a crisp apron, was obviously the maid. The other, imperious in widow’s weeds, scrutinized Rachel like she was a blot on the carpet.

“Sophia, I’m surprised you’re still here,” Dr. Edmunds said to the widow.

“I wished to see your aging Irish spinster, James. Who actually looks to be a young woman. A very dirty young woman. Are you certain you’ve got the right one?”

Rachel flushed.

Dr. Edmunds cast Rachel a quick glance. She thought she saw an apology in it. “Sophia, this is Miss Dunne. Miss Dunne, this is my sister-in-law, Mrs. Woodbridge.”

Rachel bobbed her head. “I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Mrs. Woodbridge.”

“Yes,” replied his sister-in-law, refusing to return the courtesy to a mere employee.

“Molly, show Miss Dunne to her room,” Dr. Edmunds instructed the one Rachel had decided was a maid. “Miss Dunne, I presume you’d like to clean up and have something to eat. Probably rest, also. We’ll meet in the morning to discuss your duties here. Seven o’clock sharp in the library. Molly or Peg can tell you where that is.”

“Yes, Dr. Edmunds,” she said, nodding. Food, rest would be heavenly. Getting away from Mrs. Woodbridge’s disapproving stare would be even better.

Rachel followed the maid up the stairs, carpetbag gripped in her hand. Mrs. Woodbridge watched her depart, her gaze boring a hole in Rachel’s back.

“You’re not going to keep her, are you, James?” Mrs. Woodbridge asked, her voice carrying clearly, making Rachel sound like a stray mongrel Dr. Edmunds had picked up. “Her cousin obviously misled you about her worth. For a reason, I would warrant, that is not to the girl’s credit.”

Rachel couldn’t hear Dr. Edmunds’s response, though Molly’s concurring harrumph was more than sufficiently loud.

Cheeks flaring, Rachel gripped her carpetbag more firmly and climbed behind the maid. It appeared she would find no friends in this household. Well, she would only be there for a month at most, according to Claire’s note. She could make do.

“How long have you been in service to Dr. Edmunds, Molly?” Rachel asked, trying to be friendly.

“Almost three years,” Molly answered brusquely, her voice bouncing off the staircase paneling, snowy white as the flowers of a guelder rose. Her tone was just as frosty.

They reached the third-floor landing with its low ceiling. Molly threw open the nearest door. “Here is your room. Next to Peg and me.”

The maid stepped aside and Rachel entered. The space was tiny, hardly bigger than a privy, and spare of decoration save an old multicolored carpet cut down to fit the space and a creamware ewer and basin on a stand adjacent a chest of drawers. Beneath a dormer window, a narrow bed clung to the faded pink wall. Rachel dropped her carpetbag next to the door. The room was clean and private. She should not expect anything more.

“Dinner is in a half hour,” said Molly. “I guess you’re to eat with us tonight. Don’t know about what’s to happen after. Best not be late. Mrs. Mainprice won’t wait for you.”

“I will not be late. Thank you, Molly.”

Molly tossed her head and strode out, skirts swirling.

Rachel cast a longing look at the bed. How she wanted to drop onto the thin, rose-colored counterpane and rest. She had hardly slept on the cramped ship and weariness ached in her bones. But dinner was only thirty minutes away, and she needed to wash up and brush the stains from her gown. The staff’s attitude would not improve if she continued to look like she had been sleeping in a gutter somewhere.

After carefully hanging her straw bonnet on a wall hook and putting her meager things in the chest, she changed into her green-trimmed dress and washed as well as she could. She found the back stairs and started down them. Voices ricocheted up the narrow stairwell and reached her ears. Rachel slowed her steps. They were talking about her.

“You should’ve seen the master’s face when he came back with her. He wasn’t happy to have had to go fetch her. I could see his blood was up across the room!” Unmistakably Molly’s voice.

“Naw! Say yer foolin’.” The voice of another girl. Peg, perhaps. She followed her declaration by a whinnying giggle.

“I say, what do you expect from some Irish girl? They’re all the same,” Molly declared. “Can’t even figure out how to properly arrive at their place of employment.”

“Molly, cease your tongue.” An older-sounding woman this time, with a deep and commanding voice. “Miss Dunne is not some ‘Irish girl.’ From what I’ve heard, her father was a respectable shop owner and her mother is as English as you or I. And her cousins are the Harwoods.”

“Her mother might be English, but her hair’s as red as any Irishman’s!”

“As though that proves something. I’ve had quite enough of this talk. It is most unchristian of you, and poor Miss Dunne is your better.”

“My better?” Molly scoffed. Rachel’s heart plummeted. They would be enemies for certain. “She doesn’t know her place, I say, Mrs. Mainprice. Didn’t even curtsy to Mrs. Woodbridge, like would be proper. And she and Miss Harwood lied about her age. Joe was told he’d be meeting an old spinster lady, not someone barely my age! Even the master didn’t know” Molly paused. Maybe she leaned forward. Maybe she shook her finger to emphasize her point. “Why did they lie, I ask you? Trying to pretend she’s something she’s not, is what I think.”

Rachel’s pulse raced while she tried to convince her arm to push open the kitchen door so she could deny that she and Claire had lied about anything.

“I think she’s hiding something,” Molly continued. “And I think Dr. Edmunds believes so too. I wouldn’t be surprised if the master dismisses her at once. Cheeky bit.”

“He’ll do no such thing,” stated Mrs. Mainprice. “We should welcome Miss Dunne and pray for her while she’s with us, is what we should be doing. Not gossiping.” A bowl or pot thudded onto a hard wood surface. “She’ll be down here soon, and I expect you both to be respectful and nice. Dr. Edmunds deserves a peaceful household, not a gaggle of staff members who fight with each other. For shame.”

“He shouldn’t have brought her, is all I’m saying.” Molly wasn’t finished arguing. “We could’ve helped him properly without anyone else’s help. Even with Miss Guimond gone, we could’ve taken care of everything ourselves.”

“Aye. I’m with Molly, Mrs. Mainprice,” said the girl with the piercing giggle. “For all we know, she’s like all the other Irish and’ll rob the ’ouse while we sleep.”

“Quiet, Peg. Don’t be silly.”

“Or worse. Mebbe she’ll kill us!”

Stillness followed Peg’s proclamation, while dread crept numbly along Rachel’s arms.

She could run back to her room and hide—and hence, starve—or stride into the kitchen to face them. Inconveniently, her stomach rumbled. She had huddled on the stair long enough.

Rachel pushed through the half-open kitchen door and stepped into the lions’ lair.