The Irish Healer, page 24
“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.
He released her fingers. “All this is about Mariah?”
“I do not want you to ever have regrets. I want you to be certain you know what you are asking.”
“I was certain.” He rocked back on his heels. The light in his eyes guttered out. “It’s you who apparently has doubts.”
“I just know how much your wife meant to you.”
“You do, do you?” James straightened and began pacing. “Maybe I should tell you what Mariah meant to me so you really understand.”
Rachel couldn’t bear to see him upset, and she certainly didn’t want him to notice if she began to cry, so she looked away, down at the gravel, at an insect crawling along in the detritus of scattered dead leaves. As vulnerable as she was.
“I knew Mariah since she was a little girl,” he began, like he was commencing a storybook tale. One with an unhappy ending, though. “Our families were close acquaintances and my father always adored her. After all, she was perfect—lovely, pristinely respectable, accomplished, demure. Well bred.”
“She does sound perfect.”
“Hm. Perfect.” He paused. He might have run his fingers through his hair. She didn’t look up to check. “The perfect and only possible wife for me. There was only one problem—she didn’t love me, and I didn’t love her. That’s no great sin; many people marry without love, I know I didn’t dwell on the inadequacy of our feelings for long. Once I was financially able to set up a household, I asked for her hand, even though it meant giving up my plans to spend time in Scotland and on the Continent furthering my studies. The marriage proposal greatly pleased my father, which almost made up for my sacrifices. For once, I didn’t fail him. Instead, I failed her.”
His voice cracked. Rachel held as still as her wobbling spine would allow.
“I respected Mariah,” he continued. “I cared for her, and she was a good wife to me, but our relationship was always cool. I thought it might change when she got with child, but we’d grown too distant by then. I had spent so much time building up my practice, I hardly ever saw her. The worst of it was I didn’t realize how difficult her pregnancy had been, how weak she’d become. I was honestly surprised when she came down with the childbed fever. Mariah, afflicted? She had always seemed healthy. And then she was gone, too quickly.”
He stopped talking, and she wondered if he had concluded his tale. The clatter and hum of the city intruded in the silence, reminding Rachel that the day was advancing and she still had to wash up. Pack. Leave.
His feet came to a halt in front of her. “When Mariah died, my father was fiercely angry, utterly disgusted with me. We fought terribly for days until he stormed out of the house and never crossed the threshold again, leaving me with a newborn child and a shattered heart. Poor little Amelia, who looked exactly like Mariah from the minute she was born. Every time I saw her, I knew I would be reminded that I had failed to be the husband I could’ve been. That I couldn’t even be a good enough physician to heal my own wife. And that my father despised me for it, which made me despise myself.”
He squatted on his heels, bringing his face level with hers, forcing her to look at him. “I hid from this garden and from Mariah’s portrait for the same reason I hid from Amelia—self-loathing. However, last night I learned that I’m ready to move past my pain. That God will give me the strength to start a new life if I’m willing to reach for it. But I want that life to include you.”
From somewhere, Rachel found breath. “I do not know what to say, Dr. Edmunds.”
“First, you can stop calling me Dr. Edmunds and call me James.” He gathered her hands to his chest. She could feel his heart beating through the layers of his waistcoat and linen shirt. “Listen, Rachel, I love you. Say you love me too. Say you’ll come with me to Finchingfield. Be Amelia’s mother. Be my wife.”
Her pulse beat in time with his, swift as a fiddler’s jig. She was tempted to fall into his arms, whisper her love, but she had to say what was in her head, not in her heart.
“There are too many obstacles. For instance, there is still my family to consider,” she said. “What of them? Would you have them live with us in Finchingfield?”
“Can you only think of obstacles, Rachel?”
“It is frighteningly easy, when there are so many,” she answered. “Such as Mrs. Woodbridge. If you still intend for her to live at Finchingfield House, how could I live there as well? She despises me and would make our lives miserable.”
His jaw set and he pulled Rachel up from the bench. He tugged her toward the house. “Come with me. We’ll attend to this right now. I did not spend last night praying for forgiveness and strength, asking God for a second chance, to have you doubt my commitment to you.”
“Where are we going?” she asked, tripping behind him.
“To talk to Sophia. Mrs. Mainprice,” he shouted, spying his housekeeper on the kitchen steps, the empty soup bowl in her hands. “Can you take a moment from tending Amelia to bring the smelling salts to the drawing room? We may have need of them.”
James pushed open the drawing room door. Sophia dozed on the settee, a lap rug thrown over her legs, loose hair straggling across her wan cheeks. He had never seen her look so exhausted.
“Maybe we should come back later,” Rachel suggested, halting in the doorway.
“Oh, no. I’m not waiting any longer.”
Leaning over the settee, he gently shook Sophia’s shoulder. “Sophia, wake up. I must speak with you.”
“James? When did you return?” She rubbed her eyes, stuffed her pins back into her hair and slowly sat up. “Amelia isn’t worse, is she? When I last spoke to Mrs. Mainprice, she was doing better, but that was hours ago.”
“She will be quite fine. Thanks to Rachel’s loving care.” He signaled for Rachel to join him. When she came to his side, he slid his arm around her waist and tucked her close. Her slim, small body fit perfectly, as if made to be a part of him.
Sophia’s gaze flicked over them. “What is the meaning of this? And what is she still doing here? I thought she was supposed to be moving to a lodging house or some sort of place.”
“That’s not going to happen now. I want you to be the first to know.” James held onto Rachel and felt her warmth spread, fill him like a balm to his soul. “I intend to take Rachel as my wife.”
He waited for the storm to break over their heads. It was not long in coming.
“What?” Sophia screeched, throwing the lap rug off of her. Rachel jerked nervously, her hip bumping against his. “You can’t be serious, James. Have you gone utterly mad? What has she done to persuade you? I shudder to think.”
James clutched Rachel’s arm to keep her from marching angrily out of the room. “There was no subterfuge, Sophia, no persuasion, other than me finally recognizing how much she means to me. I love her and want to marry her.”
“How could you even contemplate such a thing?” Sophia asked, her eyes turning dark as jet as she glared at Rachel. “You claimed you never wanted to marry again, James, yet here you are, telling me you intend on replacing dearest Mariah with this Irish nobody. A servant with a dubious past. You are a gentleman, and she is beneath you. Mark my words, I will find out everything there is to know about her and prove to you she’s unworthy.”
