The Irish Healer (32 page)

“We should pray, Miss Dunne,” said Mrs. Mainprice.

Would prayer do any good now, when it had failed before?

“Do you know what I used to pray for as a girl, Mrs. Mainprice?” Rachel pressed her fingers against the window
frame as if she might shove the glass away and fly through, freed from this room. “I used to pray that God would make us rich, that God would help my father learn how to make money”
Rather than fritter it away
. “Well, that never happened. When I was older, I prayed God would not let my father die. But of course, he did die. Then, so many times, I prayed for the people I tried to heal. Sometimes God listened. Many times He did not. When He let Mary Ferguson fall ill and then die . . .” Her fingers pushed against the wood. Pushed hard. “She was only a wee child, Mrs. Mainprice.”

“Mary Ferguson was a child?” Rachel heard the surprise in the housekeeper’s voice, the sudden worry.

“Younger than Amelia. So frail and helpless. She had an angel’s face and the greatest misfortune to be born in Craigue, near the stink of the tanneries and the filth of the streets.” Rachel’s breathing came in ragged shudders. “She was innocent and sweet, in spite of her drunken father’s mistreatment, a resilient blade of grass springing up after being repeatedly trod down. I prayed hard for her. Neighbors came and prayed too. When she died, I knew God was not watching over the least of His sparrows. And when I was accused of her murder, I knew He had abandoned me for good.”

Silence stretched. Rachel’s fingernails dug into the wood frame, risking a splinter.

Skirts rustling, Mrs. Mainprice stood and rested her hand, a touch light as purest down, upon Rachel’s shoulder. “God has never abandoned you, child. But He doesn’t always answer our pleas the way we expect. It doesn’t mean He doesn’t love us.”

Rachel met the other woman’s gaze. “Forcing me to witness
another death hardly seems like love. Especially the death of another innocent child.”

“Who ever promised life would be easy?” Her dark eyes flashed with the challenge she was laying out. “God gave you and Dr. Edmunds a special gift—the gift to care for the sick. The gift to heal. I saw what you did with Joe’s arm. I remember how you rushed to help the apple seller when she was injured in the street. A young girl, mind you! You’re a healer and you cannot turn away from that calling. That’s why God sent you to us. That’s why you’re here now, why you had the courage to chase Dr. Calvert off. You know you’re a healer. Help the lass. She needs you.”

“I cannot,” Rachel insisted. “I do not have the ability or faith anymore to help Amelia.”

“I think you do. If only you would let yourself realize it.” Mrs. Mainprice’s hand squeezed, willed strength into Rachel. “If only you’d release the anger, the disappointment. If only you’d forgive yourself for what happened in Ireland. For what happened with Molly. If only you’d give yourself over to God.”

Rachel looked into the other woman’s eyes. Could she forgive herself? Could she trust a God she had blamed for so long?

She turned to gaze down at Amelia, the girl’s limbs stiffening from the cramps that seized her body, her breathing strained, her plump cheeks flaring with red. She was so small, so helpless, lost in the middle of that bed. The tiniest of human creatures. A mustard seed in the crush of humanity.
God, can You even see her?
“I am so very afraid.”

“’Tis natural to be afraid, miss, but God is with you. Whom shall you fear?”

Myself. I fear myself
.

Trembling, Rachel laid a hand upon Amelia’s chest, felt her racing heart thrum beneath her fingertips, the source and echo of life. She had to help this child. There was no other course. She was a healer, like her mother had been. And if she failed . . . she had to accept that. Stop blaming herself. Stop blaming God for not listening. Leave the outcome in His hands.

Where it belonged.

God, forgive me. I have been so filled with arrogance and pride. They have blinded me from the truth. Help me now to be strong. And, if You choose, through the work of my humble hands let Your healing flow
.

Rachel reached for Mrs. Mainprice’s hand. “Stay with me. Pray with me. I cannot do this alone.”

“You can do all things through Christ who strengthens you, Miss Dunne.”

“Then let us pray to Him.”

She closed her eyes and began to recite every prayer she could think of. She was joined by Mrs. Mainprice until both their voices grew hoarse and the hours ticked onward into the dead of night.

“Dash, Edmunds, I’d have come sooner if I’d known.” Hathaway fingered his top hat. The buttons of his overcoat were misaligned and his cravat disheveled. “I was at the club celebrating my engagement, but I neglected to tell my landlady where I’d gone. Not that she’d have remembered even if I had.”

“It’s quite all right. The worst is over.” For Mrs. Blencowe, if not for Amelia.

Mrs. Blencowe’s labor had taken hours, but she had delivered the child. A tiny boy, alive, if puny and blue-tinged. A rough massage had revived the infant, though James feared for his long-term health, as well as the health of his mother. Drained, she had bled fiercely. James and the monthly nurse had swabbed her with vinegar-soaked rags until the flood had stopped. If she didn’t fever, she might live. A large
if
.

James tugged his gloves over his fingers. “Congratulations on your pending marriage, Hathaway.”

“Say you’ll come to the wedding. Oh, bless me, Edmunds, she’s a veritable angel and my parents adore her. I couldn’t have found better.”

Memories pressed, their load like ropes dragging James down. “Be true to her, Hathaway, and don’t fail her. Don’t fail anyone.”

“I’m not intending on failing her.” Hathaway blinked, his bliss dimming like a candle flame ruffled by a breeze. “Are you quite all right, Edmunds?”

No. God in heaven, no
. “My congratulations again, Hathaway, but I can’t delay. I must go. Good luck here.”

James slipped out of the house. From nowhere, a fog had lifted off the streets to muffle the sounds of carriages passing in the dark night. What hour had it become? He withdrew his watch. Almost eleven in the evening. The hour’s lateness ached in the small of his back, painfully stiffened the muscles at the base of his skull.

He pocketed the watch and marched on, down Pall Mall toward Belgravia and whatever awaited him at home. Hackneys passed without stopping at his signal, filled with
customers bound to happier prospects. James passed the rows of clubs, candlelight yellow in their windows, their front doors exhaling smoke and the baritone rumble of men’s voices. The one he occasionally frequented was just a few doors down. He might step inside and say a final good-bye to the colleagues he would find there, enjoying their chops and the endless gossip about theater women or politics or the mean-spiritedness of their wives. Drift along on a current of topics far removed from his own problems.

Be an idiot.

The fog swirled in his path as he strode along, like ghosts chasing him. The ghost of a woman he had married in order to please his father, a man impossible to please; the specter of his medical career, which he’d pursued with a single-minded ambition that excluded everyone around him, until the losses grew so great he couldn’t bear them anymore; the apparition of his only child, held at such a safe distance that she feared him and treated him like a stranger.

I was going to make it all up to you, though, Amelia . . . tomorrow
.

Always tomorrow.

The bell of a church tolled, followed by another and another, all of them striking eleven. They sounded like a death knell to James. He had received the news about Amelia over five hours ago—forever to a cholera victim, who could perish in hours or just minutes, like Agnes’s sister who had collapsed and died outside the chophouse. Even Thaddeus, with all his training, would find it hard to halt the momentum leading toward collapse. One moment the patient would be only vaguely ill, the next . . .

A shudder overtook him, and James jerked his coat collar up around his neck, the wool rasping across the stubble sprouting on his chin, unable to fend off the chill. Impossible to get warm when the chill was coming from deep within, crystallizing like hoarfrost to coat his heart with ice.
God, grant me Your mercy; give me strength
.

He tripped over a break in the pavement and grabbed the iron railings surrounding a churchyard to arrest his fall. He was exhausted, couldn’t recall when he’d last eaten, and now he was stumbling about like a drunken man. The gate to the yard hung open and James went inside, collapsing onto a bench set against the iron fence. He would pause for just a moment, long enough to quiet the pounding of his heart, jittering like a fly entrapped in pitch. Ancient trees and twisted headstones rose ethereal and white, picked out by the light of the moon, monuments to others’ losses, others’ heartbreak. He rested his head against the fence and closed his eyes, pressed his skull into the hard metal as if the pain might serve as atonement.

Heavenly Father, I have failed everyone who counted on me
. All those patients he hadn’t been competent enough to save; Mariah; Rachel, whose friendship he had sacrificed rather than reveal his miserable truth; Amelia. It had to be over for the child, and he hadn’t been there. So very likely she had drawn her last breath without him to witness it, her tiny hand clutched in Sophia’s, her aunt’s name the last word she would likely utter.

Because James had made so very certain the girl would never call for him.

Just as my father had not called for me
.

He sobbed out his sorrow, tears that coursed hot on his face, the cold moonlight doing nothing to ease the burn.
I have even failed You, God. I’ve attended church, done my duty as a good Christian, but where has my heart been?

“Merciful Father, help me though I’m undeserving,” he pleaded, turning his gaze to the heavens, dark and indecipherable above his head. “Help me see my way through these trials, as only You can. I am sorry for everything I’ve done wrong, all the people I’ve hurt. Forgive my stupid selfishness, my weakness. Give me the strength I lack. Help me accept Your will if it’s Your decision to let Amelia pass into the kingdom. Help me . . .” His voice broke as tears strangled him.

No God, don’t take Amelia. I couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t lose her too
.

Dashing his tears from his cheeks, James pressed his palms against his thighs and stood. No more delay. The time had come to face what he had avoided for too long.

James turned down the next road and headed toward Belgravia, his feet moving him inexorably toward home. He picked up speed the closer he got, his pulse racing in time with his steps, until he was running, his heart thudding in his head.

Lord, dearest Lord, let it not be too late for Amelia. Get me there in time to hold her close one last time
 . . .

CHAPTER 28

Calvert, what are you doing here?” James asked, reaching his front door a few seconds after his colleague. Joe, rumpled and bleary-eyed, had just opened the door to Calvert’s knocking. “Where is Castleton? I sent for him.”

The other man sniffled, extracted a handkerchief, and blew heartily into it. “Castleton thinks he’s contracted the cholera. Sick as a dog. Sent me here to tend to the young girl in his place. Just got back from Lord Wellsley’s fete to check on her.” He pursed his lips and gave James a sweeping, censorious look. “Whoever she is.”

“She is my daughter.” He said the words firmly, without remorse. For the first time.

Calvert’s bushy eyebrows jogged upward. “Daughter? You’ve a daughter?”

“I pray I still do.” James shoved past the fellow’s corpulent frame, which reeked of cigar smoke and a long evening. “Joe, how is Amelia?”

“I haven’t ’eard anythin’ meself, sir,” the boy answered. “But it’s been awful quiet up there.”

Which could mean any number of things. James shot a glance back over his shoulder. “Thank you, Calvert, but you’re not needed any longer.”

“But . . .” the man spluttered, “but I had to pay the hackney double to rush back over here!”

“You’ve my apologies,” James called back as he ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time. He’d already reached the first floor when he heard the front door slam shut.

He kept running until he reached the attic rooms. The hush was tangible, the quiet heavy as the air in a church. Or a graveyard. The door to the bedchamber Amelia used stood partly open, and a thin sliver of orange light cut a rectangle on the wood planks of the hallway floor.

A floorboard creaked as he eased the door open, and Rachel, seated at a chair by the bed, spun her head to look at him. The mixture of emotions on her face was unreadable. His gaze didn’t linger long enough to decipher them. His eyes skipped over both Rachel and Mrs. Mainprice to the girl lying still on the bed, her face and body concealed by the enveloping sheets. He was too late.

Heavenly Father, don’t let it be so. Do not let her be lost to me
.

“Is she gone?” His legs somehow continued to support him, though at any second his knees would certainly buckle.