The Irish Healer (19 page)

“We both expect otherwise though, don’t we?”

Lightly touching her elbow, he guided her into the carriage and shut the door, tipped his hat, and strode off.

Mrs. Mainprice watched their interchange with interest. “The master surely enjoys talking with you, miss. More than he ever did with Miss Guimond, ’tis certain.”

Rachel blushed. “He is just very kind.”

“Aye. That he is, and wise of you to notice.”

How could I not?

Rachel settled onto the seat next to Peg, already attempting to doze. Dr. Edmunds climbed onto his mare and gave last-minute instructions to the coachman. Joe watched from the curb; he’d promised that today he would post Claire’s money to Ireland. Rachel had included a note telling them to wait until she could be certain the threat of cholera had passed, delaying their reunion. A necessity, she supposed. Molly, who had roused herself, joined Joe on the pavement. Together, they waved off the carriage before the sun had done more than paint the sky a purple dark as the heart of a fresh bloom of hound’s-tongue.

They set off as fast as traffic—heavy even at this early hour—would permit. For many minutes, they traveled along the long, green expanse of a great park—Hyde Park, Mrs. Mainprice informed her—then veered away from it. Almost immediately, the jam of townhouses and shops gave way to gardens and orchards and spacious lawns surrounding tidy houses. A hill rose to their north, the former regent’s park to their south, and the sky stretched into the distance. Another flurry of development came and went, with its poorhouse and small factories, then suddenly they were in countryside and open air. Rachel sighed deeply, the past days’ tension exhaling with her breath, easing from her neck and shoulders. And all it took was the sight of some green . . .

“Ah,” she sighed again. Peg grumbled at her to raise the window and close the shade so they could sleep, which made Mrs. Mainprice tut at them both.

Dr. Edmunds rode up alongside. The rising sun cast a golden glow over his features, burnishing them. “Miss Dunne, you might wish to get some rest. It’s a long and tiring journey.”

“Told ya,” Peg muttered, quiet enough that only the occupants of the carriage could hear, and huddled into her shawl.

Rachel ignored her. “I am interested in seeing the sights, Dr. Edmunds. I doubt I could rest if I tried.”

“Pleased to be away from London?” he asked, guessing at her true feelings.

She smiled. “I am.”

“I thought you might be. Which is why I instructed the driver to skirt the city to the north rather than pass through it. A less direct route to Essex, but a more pleasant one.”

“Thank you, Dr. Edmunds.”

“My pleasure, Miss Dunne.” Tapping fingertips to his hat, he pressed his heels against his mare’s flanks and set her trotting. Rachel poked her head through the window and watched the set of his shoulders, his fluid movement of his torso as he rode ahead of them.
He was thinking of me, of what I might enjoy
 . . .

“Can ya shut the window?” Peg snapped.

Rachel jerked her head back in, slid the window up, and caught sight of Mrs. Mainprice’s contented smile before she snuffed it out.

CHAPTER 17

Six long hours later, which included a stop for luncheon, they approached Finchingfield and Dr. Edmunds’s family estate. The place where he would make his mark as a gentleman farmer. The most successful gentleman farmer if it killed him, Rachel recalled with a wry smile.

Kneading the cramp in the small of her back, she raised the window shade all the way. Finchingfield town stood on a small rise, a collection of snow-white houses with thatched roofs marching up the gentle slope, the square stone tower of an old church rising above them, and a windmill turning slowly. They pulled off the main road before reaching the town, venturing down a short lane to a large reddish brick house. Acreage rolling beyond the house lay like an emerald patchwork blanket upon gentle hills.

“Oh my,” Rachel murmured. “It is quite lovely.”

Mrs. Mainprice stretched wearily and leaned over for a view. “That there would be the old master’s house.”

The house was simpler and smaller than Rachel expected, only five windows across and lacking a grand entrance, instead making do with a bottle-green door and plain arched light above it. Its very simplicity was elegant. She decided she could not see Miss Castleton being mistress of such a house. She needed bow windows and magnificent iron railings.

It was equally clear that a discredited Irish healer who empathized with a penniless apple seller and blurted out poultice recommendations would not make an appropriate mistress either.

“The house is quite pretty,” Rachel observed, the comment inadequate.

“I’ve always liked it. A home meant for a family. You can’t see from here, but it has a lovely fenced garden at the back and a stream where those trees are in the distance. The master used to fish there as a boy and go swimming when it was hot.” Mrs. Mainprice smiled, her eyes crinkling at the corners. “Oh, those were good days, they were. ’Twas here that Dr. Edmunds first realized how much he wanted to be a physician. I remember a time when he brought home an injured bird he’d found and tried to convince the old master to fix its wings. When the old Dr. Edmunds refused because he was busy, then the young master went and took care of the bird himself. So proud he was. Ah yes, good days indeed.”

Rachel gazed at the trees, the house with its large windows. She breathed in the smell of grass and good soil. If Dr. Edmunds married again, he would do well to raise his children here. Inexplicably, Rachel’s throat tightened, and she had to look away.

Wheels crunching gravel, the carriage rattled on to the front door and pulled to a halt. Dr. Edmunds pulled his horse alongside and hopped down. Tying the reins to an iron loop dangling from a post, he came over to the carriage, the tails of his greatcoat flapping against his boots.

“There doesn’t appear to be anyone here right now, Mrs. Mainprice,” he said. “The steward said he opened the house and aired it out, had one of his girls take up all the furniture covers and sweep out the worst of the cobwebs. I expect there’s much left to be done, however, such as examining the water damage upstairs.”

“I’m sure Mr. Jackson and his girls did the best they could. We’ll manage the rest, sir. Leave the work to us,” she said confidently, giving a groan as she squeezed her way through the narrow carriage door. Peg slipped out behind.

“I trust the remainder of your trip was comfortable, Miss Dunne?” he asked as Rachel descended the unfolded carriage steps, his fingertips brushing her elbow in assistance.

Her heart lifted on the crisp air filling her lungs, air that didn’t stink of coal smoke or sewers. “Very comfortable, Dr. Edmunds, and much better than steerage on a steamer.”

“Do you like the house?” he asked, sounding eager for her response.

“I do. It seems an honest place.”

“
Honest
is an unusual word to use.”

“However the description feels suitable. The house is so perfect and simple. Such a building would not permit the occupant to be anything but upright and straightforward, like the courses of the bricks themselves.”

“My father was a very upright man. A good man.”

“As surely are you.”

He looked down at her. They stood together, too close to be proper, the air warming from his proximity.

“I appreciate the compliment, Miss Dunne. However, I do not deserve it,” he said, his gaze gone solemn, regretful. What could a man like him possibly regret? What memory tortured him so?

Peg called to him from the side of the house, stopping him before he could say more. “Dr. Edmunds, sir, the back door’s been left open for us.”

“I will speak with you later.” He pulled his gaze off Rachel and stepped away from her.

Mrs. Mainprice was waiting for Rachel at the corner of the house. She accompanied the housekeeper to the kitchen door, casting one last glance at where Dr. Edmunds stood in conversation with Peg.

“We’ve much work to accomplish, Miss Dunne, if you want some time to see the grounds,” said Mrs. Mainprice, stepping over the high stone threshold.

Just before Rachel did the same, she noticed Dr. Edmunds return her glance and hold it. Long enough that the contact felt like an invisible caress.

Guard your heart, Rachel
.

But it was too late.

Odd to be in his father’s house without the old man.

James moved from one room to the next, delaying meeting with Miss Dunne. He needed to do this, prod the wounds, to observe if they were healing clean or infected still. He already knew what to expect he would discover.

He pushed open the dining room door. Mr. Jackson’s daughter had forgotten to remove the cover from the walnut dining table. It hung mute and still and white as a winding sheet. James could picture his father at the head of the table, lecturing on botany or the phases of the moon or the discovery of nitrous oxide and its possible uses. Quoting from the Bible as easily as he could recite passages from William Buchan’s massive medical text. Mother, when she’d been well enough to join them, wearing her wan, passive smile. And James, not learning his role until too late, daring to argue, turning his father’s face crimson.

James retreated from the space and wandered down to the library. Here the memories would be the strongest. Easing open the door, he entered the hushed room. Curtains drawn, it was nearly as dark as James’s library back in London. He could pull aside the draperies here, however. Beyond these windows didn’t stand a garden of recrimination. James opened the curtains and surveyed the room. So far as he could tell, nothing had been touched since the day his father had taken ill and had been ushered off to a bedchamber that, according to his housekeeper, he had never left again. James should have been there for those final moments, wished his father’s soul well on its eternal journey, but he hadn’t been. His father had not sent for him.

James sank into the russet leather chair, ran a hand across the surface of the desk, breaking a trail through the coating of fine dust that had accumulated since the Holland cloth cover had been removed in the past few days. It felt wrong, sacrilegious, to be sitting here in his father’s chair. He felt as if any second the old man would stride through
the door and give the look that silenced all, restored everyone to their proper place.

His father would not be striding through that door, though. Thirteen months ago, James had seen his casket lowered into the muddy churchyard, had thrown the first handful of dirt onto the carved wood surface in the role of son and heir. His father was gone and with the Lord. This house, these grounds, all of it was now his. His and Amelia’s, as his father had wished. The message he had left behind was short, frank, utterly clear—bring Amelia to Finchingfield. Even from the grave, his father could control James’s life. He had delayed the reunion as long as possible, until his distaste for practicing medicine had grown too strong and he had conceded in the end. Letting his father win again.

Sighing, he closed his eyes, breathed in the familiar smells—musty books, pipe smoke, lemon wax. The aroma of disappointment and disapproval. James’s chest constricted. The sooner he claimed the house, the sooner he could banish the old man’s ghost from it.

The sooner he could lay to rest all the expectations of a man who had been more judge than father.

“The view from up here is amazing.” Rachel pushed the heavy brocade curtains aside. The countryside rolled and dipped, cows and sheep scattered like buff and ivory dots across the hillsides, and not far away stood the rooftops of the town, the giant vanes of the mill twirling in the wind. A world like Ireland and yet not like Ireland. Heather wouldn’t
turn those hills purple in the late summer, and the dusky smoke from turf fires wouldn’t billow from those chimneys in the winter. But the scene was more pleasing than any view of London and made her homesick.

“It reminds me of home.”

“Humph,” Peg grumbled frostily, not acting in the least appreciative Rachel had volunteered to help her.

Rachel dragged her gaze off the scenery and unhooked the curtain rings from the panels, letting the first one drop to the floor in a cloud of dust. Mrs. Mainprice had chided her for wanting to do servant’s work, but the doctor had yet to meet with her about her tasks here and Rachel had thought cleaning out the bedchamber better than idling . . . and letting her thoughts wander where they didn’t belong.