The Irish Healer (10 page)

He heard Mrs. Mainprice’s voice before he saw her thundering down his front steps, an old blue blanket in her hands. “Make some room for the lass, will you?”

James shoved aside two scruffy boys, crossing sweepers
he recognized from over on Knightsbridge, who had come running to take advantage of the confusion and try their hands at picking pockets of the unsuspecting. “Get away before I summon the constable over there.”

A seam formed in the crowd ahead of him and he pressed through. A phaeton had overturned in the middle of the road. Its red-faced owner worked to free his struggling horse from its traces while Joe tried to calm the animal, barely missing flailing hooves. The two nags attached to a nearby cart, St. William’s Benevolence Society emblazoned on its side, shuffled and snorted their agitation. The policeman began shouting for everyone to clear the street, adding to the din.

A clutch of people was gathered just beyond the phaeton. Mrs. Mainprice disappeared into their midst.

“Let me through,” James called out, stepping over a broken earthenware pitcher he recognized as once having belonged to him. He thought he saw the top of Miss Dunne’s head, the bright blaze of her hair, low to the ground. Was she injured? His heartbeat ratcheted up. “I’m a physician; let me through.”

Mrs. Mainprice heard his voice and waved to him. “Oh, sir, thank goodness you’re here! You’ve got to help.”

One of his neighbors, the banker’s wife with her silverish hair and curiously coordinating day dress, sidestepped to make room, taking her parlor-maid with her.

“It’s a girl, Dr. Edmunds. One of those street sellers who are always coming around. She’s been run over,” she said without any particular compassion.

The last of the crowd parted. Mrs. Mainprice had draped the blue blanket over the huddled pile on the street. The girl’s basket lay not far away, apples cascading onto the
road, shiny globes of pink lodged in the dung and the filth. Miss Dunne was seated in the disgusting mess, the child’s head cradled on her lap, snarled strands of hair the shade of dead grass splayed across her apron. Spots of color rode high on the girl’s cheeks—was she more than five years of age?—and she pinched her eyes shut against the pain.

James dropped to his knees next to Miss Dunne. “What happened?”

She glanced over. “I dropped the box. She was in the road when the carriage veered around it. He ran into her. It was my fault.”

Impulsively James pressed a hand to her elbow, the thick twill of her gown rough beneath his fingers. “Don’t blame yourself. Please.”

She looked away from his face, down at the girl quietly moaning in her lap.

James dropped his hand. “Has she been moved at all?”

“No. I made certain she was not seriously injured before letting anyone lift her off the road.”

“Very good, Miss Dunne. That was precisely the right thing to do. Poor creature.” He brushed the child’s hair back from her face, scratched from scraping against the ground, a smear of dirt along her jaw She whimpered and squirmed. “Shh, little one. Hush now.”

His fingertips lingered, shaking as he drew them down the side of her face. Cleaned up, the girl might resemble Amelia, with her daintily pointed chin. He blinked away the image. In truth, she looked nothing like his daughter, but he saw Amelia’s face everywhere these days.

James peeled back the blanket. A crosshatching of cuts bled scarlet onto her threadbare dress. Her left arm dangled
awkwardly from above the elbow, bending in a direction no arm was meant to go.

“I think only her arm is broken,” Miss Dunne said, her voice abruptly gone faint, as if coming from a distance. “I checked her ribs and . . . legs and . . . and . . .”

He looked up from his examination of the girl, saw Miss Dunne go pale, and caught her just before her head hit the ground.

Rachel sputtered awake, the acrid stench of ammonia making her eyes water. Voices buzzed all around her, like a hundred flies circling her head. She blinked up at Dr. Edmunds’s face, hovering very close above hers.

He smiled then looked over his shoulder. “As you see, Mrs. Mainprice, quick-lime and muriate of ammonia works every time.”

Mrs. Mainprice took the bottle he held out and tucked it into the pocket hidden deep within her voluminous skirts. “Glad to see you awake, miss. Was worried about you for a moment there.” She nodded and moved out of Rachel’s view.

“What is going on?” Rachel’s head felt strange, empty and loose as if she had left a portion of her brain on the cobblestones. She tried to focus on his face.

“You fainted, Miss Dunne.”

Oh, yes. The little apple seller and her broken arm
 . . . A fresh wave of lightheadedness swept over Rachel.

Dr. Edmunds shimmied his arms beneath her legs and her shoulders. “Hang on tight. Unless you want me to drop you.”

“I can walk,” she protested, though the spinning of her
head made clear there would be no walking in her immediate future.

“I think not.”

Rachel tensed her eyes against the dizziness and clasped her hands behind his neck. She felt the strong muscles of his shoulders bunch and then he stood. The smell of his shaving soap—the scent of almonds—wafted off his cheek, his face was so near to hers. Shifting her weight, he ascended the steps.

“But what about the apple seller?” Rachel tried to peer around his arm. “She is still in the street.”

Curious onlookers knotted around the girl, forming a wall that prevented Rachel from seeing the child. Mrs. Mainprice’s familiar frilled white cap peeked between arms and bodies.

“Mrs. Mainprice will tend to her until a surgeon arrives.”

“But the girl needs help now” The child had been shivering and Rachel had sent Mrs. Mainprice to get a blanket to keep her warm. There had been so much blood, and the way her arm dangled . . . Rachel’s head reeled and she closed her eyes. “The poor child was run over like a dog in the road.”

“I know, Miss Dunne.” Weariness edged the doctor’s voice. He passed through the open front door, and they entered the cool darkness of the hallway. The sight of the crowd was lost to Rachel. “But I will see that she’s properly tended to.”

“Will it be enough?” she whispered.

If he heard, he didn’t answer, though she thought she felt tension move through his chest, crushed tight against her own.

He carried her down the hallway and into his office. Carefully, he settled her onto the settee.

“Molly, bring a lap rug and some hot tea for Miss Dunne,” he ordered the maid, who had followed them into the room.

She missed the comfort of his arms the moment he withdrew them.
Silly Rachel
. “I shall be fine, Dr. Edmunds. You do not need to stay with me.”

“Let me decide what you need.” He smiled a doctor’s comforting smile and pressed his fingertips to the pulse in her throat. “Good. Steady” They swept along the line of her cheek, soft as a feather stroke, before lifting away to leave the feel of them on her skin.

He inhaled a rapid breath and stepped back.

“Is anything the matter?” Rachel asked.

“Not with you.” He wiped his hands together as if trying to remove something from his fingers. “I believe I shall send Mrs. Mainprice in here to sit with you until you’re feeling better.”

“Can’t right sees ’em as yet.” Joe swiveled his head the other direction and poked it farther through the open window in Rachel’s bedchamber. “Nope. Not comin’ that way either.”

“It’s quite all right, Joe. I should not be so curious.” What Miss Castleton looked like was none of her affair, anyway. Besides, Rachel’s room was so high up from the street, she’d likely see nothing more than the top of the woman’s bonnet.

Joe pulled himself back into the room. “But women are always curious ’bout other women.”

“Well, this woman needs not to be.”

“Eh.” He winked. “If you don’ mind me sayin’, yer a hundred times prettier than ’er, Miss Dunne.”

“A fine compliment, Joe.”

“A true one.” The bells chimed in the nearest church towers, striking five. “Cor, is that the time now? I’ll ’ave me ’ead boxed if I don’t get those water glasses shined up afore the company arrives.”

He scuttled out of her room.

“Thank you for bringing up my tray,” Rachel called after him.

She sighed and pulled shut the window before the temptation to lean out it herself took hold. Her tray of food waited on the chair by her bed. A quiet and simple meal compared to the feast that would be going on downstairs. A very boring one if she didn’t occupy her mind with something other than pondering the Castletons.

Rachel headed down the stairs, bound for the library and a borrowed book, just as Dr. Edmunds appeared in the second-floor hallway.

“Miss Dunne, I’d just been coming to check on you.” He was dressed in evening clothes, his fingers fumbling with his cravat. He was gloriously handsome, the sharp points of his collar emphasizing the line of his jaw, the deep indigo of his tailcoat turning his eyes the shimmering blue-gray of rain-misted pebbles.

All for Miss Castleton.

Rachel bobbed her head, pulling her gaze off his face before he realized she was staring. “I was heading down to the library to borrow a book to read. If you do not mind.”

“Certainly not. You are recovered, then?”

“I am, and I regret causing you any trouble today. As my father would say, repentance will not cure mischief, though.”

He smiled, a hasty movement of his lips, and she was
caught up in the sight of it. “You’ve nothing to repent. You’ve caused no mischief, and the girl will be fine. In fact, without your calm handling of the situation, she might have come to a great deal more harm.”

“Do not compliment me for being weak and faint-hearted.”

He dropped his hands then, a portion of his cravat coming unraveled as he did so. “I do not think of you as being weak, Miss Dunne. Not in the least.”

She blushed. “Dr. Edmunds, your neck cloth needs retying. Let me try,” Rachel offered, though it had been years since she’d tied a cravat. Anything to change the direction of his words or her thoughts.

“Molly is not the most efficient valet,” he said. Rachel stepped up to him, her fingers deft on the heavy white silk, so close to his cleanly shaven chin. The scent of tangy cologne rose off his clothes. She tried not to notice how near her hand was to his face, or that the tips of her sturdy and scuffed half boots were within inches of his polished black shoes. Or that an errant strand of hair curled over his forehead, requiring only the merest lift of her hand to sweep it back into place.

“Regarding the apple girl,” he said, his steady gaze on Rachel’s face, “if you wish to see how she’s progressing, we can go to her home in a day or so. You were very concerned about her.”

“I was.” Even though she was not Rachel’s patient and therefore not her responsibility. But when did that sort of recognition stop her heart from squeezing at the thought of the child’s injuries? “I would like that. So long as the visit is not an inconvenience to you, Dr. Edmunds.”

“None whatsoever. I usually check up on all my patients. I have to make sure the surgeon’s done a proper job.”

“They can be so—” Rachel stopped. She had nearly admitted her opinion of surgeons, especially those who treated impoverished children, and the knot slipped in her shaking fingers. “I am not good at tying a cravat at all.”

“I trust you’ll succeed. Try again,” he encouraged.

She picked up the ends of the strip of cloth and began tying it again. What was fashionable? A simple loose knot with the ends tucked into the waistcoat would be best. And all she could manage, with her nerves jangling as they were.

Knot finished, her fingertips brushed against the thick linen of his shirt as she hastily tucked the neck cloth. “There you are. I hope it is passable.”

“Very passable, and now I won’t be late for dinner.”

“Your friends have yet to arrive, I believe. Not that I have been attempting to watch for your dinner companions, Dr. Edmunds . . .” Her cheeks warmed. How she wished she could keep from blushing at the least provocation.

He seemed amused. It was hard to tell, when amusement sat so uncomfortably on his face. “Dr. Castleton would be flattered to know of your interest, Miss Dunne.”