The Irish Healer (17 page)

Tucking her skirts between her knees, Rachel knelt to poke through the lower shelves. A tiny container of syrup of poppy, dusty from lack of use, was stuffed in the back. Just enough for her needs. Next, she discovered an empty brown bottle that could serve to contain the tonic and was rising to stand when the kitchen door swung open. She turned to smile a greeting, expecting Mrs. Mainprice. Instead, Molly entered.

“Molly!” The bottle skittered from Rachel’s grasp. She caught it before it crashed to the tiles.

Molly’s eyes were red and puffy as fresh pastry. She had been crying. “Mrs. Mainprice told me to come look for you. She said I’m to take some potion you’ve made.”

“I have yet to gather all the ingredients.” Rachel was clutching the bottle so tightly, she feared it might shatter in her hands. Carefully, she set it on the table. “And it is a tonic, not a potion.”

“Tonic, then.” Molly glanced curiously at the empty bottle and the contents of the basket. “It cures the dyspepsia?”

“It might help you.”

“You only want to help me because you’re scared I’ll show your letter to Dr. Edmunds.”

“You should return the letter, Molly. It is mine. You should not have taken it.”

“I don’t think I’ll be returning your precious letter just yet.” Molly’s eyes narrowed. “A trial, eh? Whose, yours?”

“You do not understand.” Thank heavens Mother’s letter hadn’t mentioned the specifics of the trial, but Rachel was not naive enough to think that any sensible person wouldn’t surmise the worst from what she had written. “It is not what you think.”

“The doctor might believe exactly what I think, though, and you know it. The chance he will is the only reason you’d help me.”

“That is not true. I want to help you because . . .”
it is the right thing to do. Because the urge to cure is in my bones
. She fought to keep her voice calm and confident. “I want to help because it is what I can do, not because I am guilty of anything.”

“Humph.” Molly’s lips pinched into a thin pink line as she frowned at Rachel. “What other medicines can you make up?”

“I know several recipes for poultices, tisanes, and infusions,” Rachel answered, trying to follow the new direction of the conversation.

“Do you have one to help womanly complaints?” Molly asked, lowering her voice though they were completely alone in the kitchen.

Rachel followed suit. “Is that what is bothering you? Are your monthlies so painful they are making you ill?”

“It’s not pain.” Molly rubbed the palm of her hand over the back of the other in an irritated, sawing motion. “You know I need help with them.”

“I don’t follow you . . .”

Just then, the servants’ bell from Dr. Edmunds’s office sounded a harsh, insistent clang. Molly huffed her annoyance. “You’re awfully thick, then. I’ll go find help elsewhere. I should’ve figured you’d be no use.”

“Molly, I am not trying to be difficult. I honestly am willing to provide whatever assistance you need. The tonic, anything.”

“Your tonic won’t cure what’s wrong with me.” She spun on her heel and rushed off, black skirts slapping against a broom propped up near the door, knocking it over.

Rachel sighed with frustration and went to straighten the broom. Her hand paused on the handle as realization struck. Heavens, she was dense. The vague stomach illness, the talk about her monthly courses . . . Molly’s troubles were indeed more than her mother’s tonic would cure.

The girl was pregnant.

CHAPTER 15

James!” Sophia’s voice boomed down the hallway, followed by the crisp rustle of her heavy skirts drawing near the office. Flustered, Peg scrambled to get ahead of her so that she could be properly announced. “I must speak with you immediately.”

James stuffed his pen back into its holder and rose, tugging his waistcoat flat. It was not a good sign that Sophia was in such a rush she was willingly ignoring customary manners.

He waved off the maid. “To what do I owe the pleasure of a visit, Sophia? I would offer you dinner, but I have a previously arranged engagement with Dr. Calvert in an hour and can’t—”

“I am not here to be fed, James.” With a huff, she dropped onto the settee tucked against the wall. “Miss Castleton came to visit me. She informed me that she is leaving town. Not that I care to know her whereabouts, frankly, but she was rather distressed. It seems her brother has told her there are fresh cases of the cholera, near St. George’s,” said Sophia, naming a church a few short blocks from her house.
Her hands clenched at the waist of her dress. She sounded as calm as a minister reassuring his faithful, but her fingers told another story. “She has insisted on leaving London, even though he advised her there was no need.”

Thaddeus hadn’t sent James the news about these latest cases. He must have deemed them irrelevant, even if Miss Castleton did not.

“I’m sure there’s no reason to be alarmed, Sophia. They must be isolated cases. I will look into them in the morning. I’ll stop in at the hospital and see what’s happening, if it would reduce your anxiety.”

“It would.” The sort of smile one gives to feign valor lifted the corners of her lips but did nothing to soften the anxious lines fanning out from her mouth like patterns of frost along a window. “However, I confess to being a trifle upset with Agnes, in light of this news. Yesterday, she came back from a walk with Amelia claiming to feel rather fatigued. She sent Amelia to bed early and retired shortly after. I have already had the doctor in, and he says it’s just exhaustion.”

“Symptoms?”

“Agnes felt vaguely unwell, she claimed, and frightfully tired. Her condition worries me because, just a few days ago, she’d gone to see her sister who lives near Soho Square. Not the best part of town anymore.” Sophia’s knuckles looked white against the black of her skirts. “She took Amelia, too, without informing me first.”

James pulled his gaze off her hands. He wouldn’t let her agitation affect him. “Agnes must have overexerted herself. It’s been very warm lately. She simply needs rest.”

“So you do not think . . .?”

“No,” he reassured, understanding what she was asking.
It couldn’t be the cholera. “I don’t think that at all. Agnes is getting on in years and tires easily. By the time you return home, you’ll find her up and good as new.”

“You are undoubtedly right, but I very much dislike hearing that the cholera is moving closer to my house.”

“Isolated cases, as I said before. However, if you’re concerned about contracting the cholera, stay out of the city and keep the household from going as well. Especially Amelia.”

Especially her.

James had a sudden memory of Amelia’s tiny, round face peering back at him from the comfort of Agnes’s bony arms as the nurse carried the baby away from the house, off to Sophia’s, where she was to be cosseted, tended by a loving aunt who had replaced the mother she’d lost, always safe.

“I would propose we leave London,” Sophia was saying, “except we’ve nowhere to go. Other than Finchingfield House,” she added, hopefully.

James shook his head. “The house isn’t ready to be occupied. I am heading there in two days, but from what I understand, it’s in terrible condition. There is water damage to the north rooms from a leak in the roof and most of the bedchambers on that end need repair. I intended to stay there no more than a day myself, this trip.”

“Then Amelia and I have to stay in town.”

“If you stay within the neighborhoods of Mayfair or Belgravia, you won’t come to any harm, Sophia. Trust me. Everything will be all right.”

He didn’t blame her for the skeptical look she shot him. He didn’t feel much more optimistic himself.

Through the drawing-room blinds, Rachel peered at the top of Mrs. Woodbridge’s head, the gray feathers of her bonnet fluttering as she ducked to enter the hired carriage, Dr. Edmunds’s hand at her elbow. Had Rachel heard correctly? She had been heading for his office to consult with the doctor on what to do with a duplicate travel memoir she’d found in the library when the sound of his sister-in-law’s voice had stopped her. Rachel had no desire to face Mrs. Woodbridge. The woman clearly despised her. Rachel had begun to turn away when she heard the word which had stopped her in her tracks—
cholera
. She had only eavesdropped in the hallway for a few moments before hurrying off, but it had been long enough.

Letting the slat fall, Rachel retreated from the window The cholera was spreading in London, alarming Mrs. Woodbridge, her voice so taut with anxiety it had affected Rachel. She shuddered and rubbed her hands over her arms. Mrs. Woodbridge should be alarmed. They should all be alarmed. The cholera was a disease to be feared. Rachel could think of a dozen possible cures, but would any of them work against such a rapidly wasting illness? Chalk and laudanum, linseed tea or maybe beef broth, or both. Perhaps her mother’s tonic. She didn’t want to have to discover what worked, though. If she contracted the disease and succumbed, who would help Mother and the rest? Should they even come to London if the cholera was spreading through town?

There was always the possibility, however, that Mrs. Woodbridge was mistaken. She seemed the sort of woman who might panic. There was only one way to be certain. Mrs. Mainprice would know.

She found the housekeeper out in the garden, clipping chives for the evening dinner.

Mrs. Mainprice straightened from her task, kneading the small of her back. “
Och
, Miss Dunne. This is a sad excuse for a kitchen garden.”

“The garden will be better at Finchingfield House, I expect.”

“Indeed, it will.” She bundled her clippings and stepped onto the gravel path. “You’ll be able to see for yourself, miss. Glad to hear you’re coming with us.”

“So am I.” Not that she could have refused Dr. Edmunds’s somewhat brisk request.

Mrs. Mainprice handed Rachel the chives, green as fresh lichen and spicy smelling, and descended the stairs leading into the kitchen. Rachel followed her into the dim recesses of the kitchen, hot and sticky from the laundry hanging suspended before the fire. In Ireland, the linens would be hung to dry outside on a day as fair as today. In Ireland, the air wouldn’t turn freshly cleaned bedsheets black from soot and smuts in a half hour, however.

“So what were you needing, child?” the housekeeper asked, peering at Rachel as she took the bundle of herbs and spread them on the table.

“I wanted to know if something were true.”

“If what were true?” Mrs. Mainprice slid a knife from its block and began chopping the chives.

“That the cholera is spreading through town.” Rachel crossed to the other side of the table so she could see the housekeeper’s face. “I have heard that the Castletons are leaving London out of worry. Mrs. Woodbridge came to talk to Dr. Edmunds about it.”

“
Och
.” The knife flashed in her hands. “I’ve heard the
disease is bad in St. Giles parish, miss. And that’s none too far from where Mrs. Woodbridge lives. She should be worried. Poor lass.”

Lass? Sophia Woodbridge?
“But do you think it will spread further?”

Mrs. Mainprice’s attention stayed fixed on the herbs, rapidly being reduced to a pile of chopped green. “There’s those who claim ’tis just a matter of time. Heard from the housekeeper down at Mr. Pratt’s that the newspapers one day claim it’s the Lord’s vengeance, then the next they’re tamping down any rumors that we’ve got ourselves another epidemic.” She swept up the herbs and dropped them into the iron pot suspended over the fire. “You’ll be safe while you’re in Finchingfield, Miss Dunne.”

“I shall only be there for a day.”

The housekeeper glanced over her shoulder. “You could ask the master if there is a position in the house and stay with us. Until the disease passes. Or longer if you’d like, and he’d agree.”

And be a servant forever, Peg glaring, Molly hateful . . . Dr. Edmunds close but ever out of reach?
Her only true choice was to stay in London and hope for the best. “My family is depending on me. I will make more money as a teacher here in London, helping children as I have always intended.”

Mrs. Mainprice clucked her tongue and nodded. “I will pray for you every day, Miss Dunne. Know that I will.”

Rachel rolled her lips between her teeth. She would need those prayers.