The Irish Healer (33 page)

“No,” Rachel answered quietly. “But she is not past the worst of her illness just yet. It is good that you are here. At last.”

He went to her side and looked down at Amelia, the flush of a fever still hot on his daughter’s cheeks. He pressed a finger to her wrist and felt . . . life. A pulse, weak but steady. Love, deep and powerful and possessive, crowded his heart.

“Thank God she’s still alive,” James murmured. He bowed his head, sent a prayer of thanksgiving to heaven, and closed his fingers around Amelia’s wrist. Tiny, fragile. Precious to him.

“She has been fighting hard.” Rachel brushed a strand of wheat-gold hair back from Amelia’s forehead. “There have been moments when I feared the worst, but Mrs. Mainprice would not let my spirits or my faith flag.”

She smiled at the housekeeper, who’d been busy gathering up damp used cloths.

Mrs. Mainprice lifted a weary smile in return. “’Tis glad I am to see you, sir. Miss Amelia needs you both to help her make it all the way back safely.” She slipped out of the room, leaving James and Rachel alone together.

“Rachel . . .” Where did he begin?

“Yes?” She was surprisingly composed, though her eyes were red-rimmed with weariness, her hair coming undone from her braid, her dress crumpled from her efforts. Even in precious jewels and silks, she couldn’t look more like an angel to him than she did at that moment.

“I’m sorry I didn’t come earlier. Dr. Hathaway was delayed in arriving at the Havertons’ . . .” James raked his fingers through his hair, as if ordering the strands could force order to his thoughts, his emotions. “Inexcusable, really.”

“All that matters is you are here now” Rachel’s eyes held no recrimination, only understanding. And forgiveness. “Mrs. Mainprice and I have done everything we know to do for Amelia—forcing liquids down her, keeping her cool and clean, quieting her fears. Praying. But when she called for you, there was no way we could answer that.”

“She called for me?”

Rachel nodded and reached for his hand, her fingers sliding to rest in the cup of his palm. “She needs her father. What child does not?”

Amelia needed him. Astonishment and awe spread warmth through his chest.

James pressed Rachel’s hand to his chest, held it close to his heart. “Thank you.”

“I did nothing.”

He lifted his other hand to tuck an errant strand of hair behind her ear, her skin warm against his fingertips. “You have done more than you could ever know.”

Sunlight slicing through the blinds struck Rachel directly in the eyes, making her cringe. She squeezed them closed and wondered, hazily, why the morning sun was hitting her in the face. Normally, it did not.

With a jolt, she lifted her head. Normally, she was not asleep in the upstairs attic room that faced east either.

“Dr. Edmunds?” Unfolding herself from where she slumped across the side of the bed, Rachel rubbed her eyes. She was alone in the room. When had he left? He had been at her side all night, bathing Amelia’s tiny limbs, lifting her head and encouraging his daughter to sip the tonic. Holding Rachel’s hand as they prayed together.

On a sigh, Rachel twisted in the chair and leaned over Amelia. “Amelia, sweeting? Are you awake?”

The child whimpered, softly, a noise of protest, and shifted in her sleep. Rachel swept a tangle of curls from
her forehead. Amelia’s skin was cool. Finally, cool. And her color was more even, her breathing more relaxed.

“Oh, dearest Lord,” she whispered. The crisis was finally, truly over. Amelia was going to live.

Wonder spread through her like sun filling shadowy nooks long unused to light.
God. Blessed God
 . . .

“Mrs. Mainprice!” she shouted, rushing out of the room, stumbling over the skirt hem snagged upon the heel of her shoe.

The housekeeper was already headed up the stairs, a tray conveying a bowl of thin soup in her hands. “Hush, I’m coming. Don’t wake Mrs. Woodbridge. She’s snoring down in the drawing room where I left her hours ago, sprawled across the settee like a drunken sailor. Never thought I’d see that.”

“But Mrs. Mainprice, it’s Amelia, she is . . . she is . . .”

“Going to be well.” Mrs. Mainprice grinned, a smile so large it pushed the folds of her face up around her eyes. The housekeeper balanced the tray in one hand, rested the other alongside Rachel’s cheek. “Our heavenly Father answered our prayers by working through you, child.”

Through me
.

“I could not have done it without you. You made me see how arrogantly blind I have been.”

“Then God has worked through us both,” Mrs. Mainprice said. “We should be grateful for His mercies. Here and now.”

Rachel smiled. How difficult she had made her life these past months by concentrating on the difficulties, letting the hardships rule.

She returned to Amelia’s side. Tenderly folding the sheet beneath Amelia’s chin, Rachel bent to brush her lips across
her smooth forehead, soft as the sweep of a feather to keep from disturbing her. “I am indeed grateful for God’s mercies, Mrs. Mainprice. Here and now.”

“’Tis glad I am to hear it.” Mrs. Mainprice set the tray on the dressing table. “I’ll tend to the child for now, miss. Try to get some soup in her when she wakes. You should go down to the kitchen for a bite of breakfast, take your food out into the garden. The master’s there. He might like to see you this morning.”

A flurry of nerves danced along Rachel’s arms. She swiped a hand over her tangled hair. “I shall not be gone long.”

The housekeeper smiled knowingly. “Take as long as you need, miss.”

The cup of coffee was cold in James’s hands, but he hadn’t taken a sip from it in a half hour, so it hardly mattered what temperature it was. He scratched his stubbled chin, set the cup on the bench next to him, and stretched out his legs. The day would be hot, last night’s damp lingering in the air, but he was chilled from lack of sleep and weariness and happy for the heat. He stared at the fountain, the stone scrubbed and ready for the new occupants. For once, for the first time since he’d accepted his father’s bidding that he move to Finchingfield, he could look on this tangible sign of his departure and not feel creeping dread.

Last night, as he’d sat at Amelia’s bedside, stroking her flaxen curls while she slept and Rachel dozed in a nearby chair, he had begun to feel a peace that had eluded him for too long. Odd, to feel peace at the sickbed of his only child,
but tranquility had descended like a warm cloak to shield him. He’d permitted his anxieties, his feelings of inadequacy to rule him for so long, he had managed to fulfill his greatest fear—that he would not live up to his father’s expectations. The only person he had truly failed, though, was himself.

He had smiled over at Rachel then, the candlelight falling softly on her sleeping face. After Molly had died, Rachel had claimed that she blamed God, yet she remained. She kept returning to do the things that caused her the most pain, in the end never flinching from her calling. She’d had more faith in God than he had, all along, even if she hadn’t realized it. The faith that made her do what was right.

And he had nearly let her go, walk out of his life forever. What a fool he’d been.

“Please, Lord, help me again . . .”

Just as he gave voice to the prayer, Rachel was there, coming down the gravel path.

The sun glinting on her red-gold hair, her pale eyes watching him, made him catch his breath. She was lovely. In more ways than mere physical beauty.

“Good morning, Dr. Edmunds,” she said in that lilting voice that had enraptured him from the beginning. “You do know that Amelia is better and will fully recover?”

James stood and gestured for her to take his seat. He leaned back against the fountain to keep himself from pacing.

“Thanks to you, Miss Dunne.”

“Thanks to God, not to me.” She yawned into her hand. “I am happy to have been able to help, though, and have my efforts work. Like they used to.”

A healer. Of course that’s what she had been back in Ireland. It explained why she knew how to attend to the apple
seller, why she’d been willing to go to Molly in St. Giles, and why she’d felt responsible when the girl had died. He had so much to learn about Rachel, a woman becoming more amazing by the minute.

“The woman you were accused of . . . harming. She was a patient of yours?” he asked.

“My mother and I never referred to them as patients, but you might think of them that way.” Rachel smiled fleetingly. “And Mary was not a woman; she was child. A wee girl whose greatest afflictions seemed to be poverty and neglect. I do not know what went wrong or why she perished. That has haunted me most of all. To fail and not understand the cause.”

The old, familiar pain tightened James’s chest and then, miraculously, lifted. “The price we sometimes pay as healers, Miss Dunne. The not knowing.”

Understanding—true understanding—lit her eyes. “It made you want to give up medicine.”

“I hate to admit this aloud, but I was a coward.” His heart was thumping hard in his chest as though he’d run a race. He knew, though, he still had so much farther to go. “But not anymore.”

“You will not be giving up your practice?”

“This morning, I made the decision to continue as a physician in Finchingfield.” He felt relieved saying it. How blind he had been. “Which should make my tenants—and my steward—happy. Nothing worse than an incompetent gentleman farmer interfering in their business.”

She smiled. “You would never be incompetent at anything you set your mind to.”

I might be, because I’m blundering this conversation quite miserably
 . . .

“I hope that’s true, because I’ve set my mind to addressing a problem I have let fester for too long.” The gravel crunched beneath his shoes as he leaned toward her. He looked down into her eyes, the color of a coastal sea lit by sunlight, and wished he could drown in them forever. “Last night I finally learned that I must become the father Amelia deserves. A real father. And provide her with a proper mother.”

The smile fell off Rachel’s face. “Miss Castleton will be pleased.”

“Miss Castleton? What has she to do with . . . You think I mean her?”

“Who else?”

James dropped to his knees in front of Rachel, gathered up her hands. They shivered like a leaf caught upon an autumn’s chill wind.

“I have been a heedless fool for so long, Rachel. It has become the only way I know how to behave.” Rachel tried to tug her fingers free but he only held them the tighter. “I have had many fine pearls cast before me and you are, by far, the greatest. The most precious pearl of all. From the moment I first saw you at St. Katherine’s Docks, you called to my heart, though I was too deaf to hear.”

Her hands stilled.

“I don’t deserve your affection,” James continued. “I can be aloof, abrupt, sometimes harshly judgmental, and clearly able to withhold my attention from those who need it the most. I intend on reforming, God willing, but I’ll need help. Your help. Please tell me that you’re willing to try. Tell me that you care for me. Please.”

CHAPTER 29

Rachel gazed on his face, saw the bright light of hope in his clear, gray eyes.

“You haven’t thought matters through, Dr. Edmunds,” she protested, her heart hammering. She loved him too much to let him be hasty, to let him regret choosing her, a poor Irish nobody.

“I believe I have. Quite thoroughly, and for the first time in a long time.”

“But . . . but your happiness over Amelia’s recovery has blinded you to the practical truth—I would never be welcomed among your friends and family. Even though the Harwoods are my cousins, I am not of your class, and I have a stain on my past that will forever leave a mark.”

“I don’t care what class you think you are or what happened in the past.” He squeezed her fingers so tightly they began to hurt. “I only care about you.”

“What about Mariah?”
Think, James. Think clearly . . . because my heart is riding on this
. “Her memory still haunts
you. It kept you from this garden, made you hide her portrait in the attic. What woman would want to come between you and the abiding love you still have for your deceased wife?” In a day or so, once it was clear Amelia was past all threat, he would remember his love for Mariah. And rethink his grateful affection for Rachel. She knew he would.