The Irish Healer, page 25
Rachel eased out of James’s embrace. “I shall tell you, Mrs. Woodbridge, everything there is to know and save you the trouble.”
“Rachel, you don’t have to,” he said, trying to drag her back to the security of his arms.
Her eyes sought his. “Yes, I do. I cannot hide any longer.” She interlaced her fingers with his and held on while she faced Sophia. “All you need to know is that my father was an Irish shopkeeper and my mother is the daughter of an English rector, a gentleman’s daughter. That her eldest brother was Anthony Harwood, whose widow lives in Mayfair, which I have seen to be a genteel neighborhood. That we led a decent and upright life in Carlow, Ireland. Until I was accused of murder.”
“Murder!” Sophia’s shout rattled the windows.
“I was accused but found innocent, because I was innocent,” Rachel continued, her voice gaining strength. “Unfortunately, the gossip damaged my mother’s business as a modiste and the work she did as a healer. I was forced to leave Ireland and come here to find work. Your brother-in-law did my cousin a great service and took me in.” Her fingers pressed his and she smiled all her gratitude at him. “A more generous act than the respectable Harwoods were willing to perform for me. You are a good man, James.”
His heart swelled with love for this incredible woman. He tucked her into his embrace once more and dropped a kiss onto her head. “You make me good, Rachel.”
“Oh no, James, no.” Sophia collapsed onto the sofa. “You cannot marry this girl. You’ll be drummed out of proper society. No one will speak to you. No one will look at you. Think of what you’ll be doing to Amelia, to her future. To all of us. Ruined. Utterly ruined.”
“The only way I’ll be drummed out of proper society is if you tell people what happened to Rachel back in Ireland,” James said pointedly.
“But others know,” Sophia sputtered.
“Miss Harwood and the rest of Rachel’s family would never breathe a word.”
Sophia sank into the cushions as if her bones had lost their ability to hold her up. “You can’t do this. I won’t let you.”
“It isn’t up to you. I’m lost and lonely, and Rachel can heal my heart. I love her more than life.” He smiled down into Rachel’s face and saw the answer to every prayer he had ever breathed in the line of her cheek, the curve of her lips, the warmth in her eyes. Here was God’s plan for him. This woman. Their future together. “I do, Rachel. I do love you more than life. All this time I’ve been beseeching God to show me the way, He was bringing me you. My hope for healing, my very soul.”
“Oh, James,” whispered Rachel, tears in her eyes.
“Oh, James,” Sophia echoed, a sob choking her words, “you’ve ruined everything.”
Mrs. Mainprice tapped on the door, the bottle of smelling salts in her hand.
“Here. Give those to me,” commanded Sophia, snatching the bottle out of the housekeeper’s hand. She uncorked it and inhaled, flinching from the sharp scent.
“Thank you, Mrs. Mainprice,” said James, excusing her.
He took the bottle from Sophia, set it on the table at her knee, and clasped her hands between his. They were cold and quivering with anger. “Please be at peace with my decision. I’ll never be happy without Rachel.”
“You will make us the laughingstock of all of England, James.” Desperation deepened the faint wrinkles that fanned out from her eyes. “Why cannot life stay as we’d planned? You and I and Amelia together in Finchingfield? It would have been perfect.”
“Because it isn’t enough for me any longer,” he replied. “I need Rachel.”
“You will be miserable, James,” said Sophia, her voice gone small and tired. “She isn’t the right one for you.”
“Yes, she is. God has been kind by bringing me Rachel, and I won’t turn away from His gift.” Sophia’s garnet wedding ring jabbed into his palm, but he wouldn’t let go until she understood just what Rachel meant to him. And if it required another hour—another day, weeks—of explaining, so be it. He wouldn’t be a coward any longer. “I want you to continue to be a part of my life, for Amelia because she loves you so; but that life has to include Rachel from now on.”
Sophia frowned and let out a sigh, all the fight exhaling on her breath. “It seems my brother-in-law insists upon having you as his wife, Miss Dunne.”
Rachel beamed at him. “It seems he does.”
“Then take him,” she said with a flick of her wrist. “Because I’ve had enough of his nonsense.”
“I believe she has given us her approval, Rachel,” said James, grinning. When was the last time he’d done that? Years. Maybe a lifetime. “Would your father have a saying for this moment, my dear?”
“The only one that comes to mind is something about a man’s wife being either his blessing or his bane.”
“You shall definitely be my blessing.” He glanced over at Sophia and took Rachel’s hand. “If you’ll please excuse us, Sophia, I need a private moment with my betrothed.”
James guided her down the hallway. Rachel’s heart fluttered like the wings of birds, and her head was so dizzy with love and hope and excitement she had to concentrate hard to keep from stumbling.
“Where are we going now?” she asked, laughing, the sound pouring out of her, fresh and happy.
“Do you know, Miss Rachel Dunne, I don’t think I have ever heard you laugh before. It reminds me of the tinkling of bells, or the sparkle of dew on grass.”
“I do believe, Dr. James Edmunds, you might wish to read more of the poetry you own,” she teased. “Your own verse is a little cliché.”
“Ah, Miss Dunne, I pray I’ll be spending far too much time with you to have time to read,” he replied, winking.
Her body flooded with delicious warmth. “You have not answered my question, though. You have not told me where we are going.”
“In here should suit,” he said, and tucked her into the library. The room where her life had begun in London. “I don’t think we need Sophia eavesdropping on this particular conversation.”
“And what conversation is that?” she asked, her blissful dizziness making her feel as though her feet might lift off the floor.
Arms embracing her, he crushed her to him. His eyes, the shade of a dove’s feathers, sparkled with a brilliance to outshine all the constellations in heaven. “A very short one, I hope. Say you love this weak and foolish man, Rachel Dunne. Say you’ll marry me.”
“I thought I have already agreed to marry you.”
“Not officially.”
“All right then.” She pulled in a breath and inhaled . . . him. He will be mine forever. My storybook hero. “Yes, I do love you, James Edmunds. With all my heart and all my soul. And I shall marry you.”
“Thank the Lord!”
His hands moving to gently cradle her head, he lowered his lips to hers, and she yielded to the force of their insistence, the press of his love, wished every particle of her body could meld with his. He was turning her knees to liquid, taking the air from her lungs, removing all thoughts from her mind until she could only feel and breathe and think of him.
Shakily, James lifted his head, dropped tender kisses upon her eyelids, her brow, the tip of her nose. “If I do not stop, I may not stop at all, and you’re not my wife yet.”
“Do not stop just yet, James,” she said, boldly, her breathing rushed.
“At your command, madam.”
He bent to kiss her mouth again, each kiss promising a love she had never imagined. A love she had hardly expected to find when she’d been standing on a London dock, fresh off an Irish steamer, her life in tatters. In spite of her doubts, her disbelief, God had worked a miracle for her.
A miracle whose name was James Edmunds.
CHAPTER 30
After a whirl of hasty preparation, they held the wedding a month later. Rachel’s only regret was that her mother had written to say that her family wouldn’t be able to attend. After postponing their arrival to wait for the cholera to subside in London, they now had to untangle the last of Father’s business dealings. At least they’d been spared any more threats from Mr. Ferguson. He had suddenly left Carlow not three weeks past, without a word of explanation, in the dark of the night. More of God’s mercies. James had kindly offered to postpone the wedding until her family could arrive, but Rachel knew what that suggestion cost him. It was hard enough to be separated for the sake of propriety, him moving to Finchingfield House, her staying in London. Any more time apart would be too hard for either of them to bear.
But soon—in less than an hour, to be precise—she would be his wife, to love and to cherish, to honor and obey, until death did them part, and her happiness surged until she feared her heart would stop from the power of the emotion.
Rachel smiled at Claire, adjusting the ribbon of Rachel’s butter-yellow silk bonnet one more time. “You can stop fussing, Claire.”
“I don’t believe I can! There,” she declared at last, stepping back from her handiwork. “I have never seen a lovelier bride. Especially when you blush like you’re doing right now He is a lucky man, you know.”
Rachel’s mother had declared much the same thing, that day Rachel had climbed onto a post chaise bound for Cork and the beginning of a life-changing journey. But Mother hadn’t known what the future would bring or who James Edmunds would turn out to be—the love of Rachel’s life. The other half of her soul.
“I am a lucky woman, Claire.”
Claire clasped Rachel’s fingers. “I think I envy you.”
“Someday, Claire, you will find someone wonderful too.”
A shadow of a memory dimmed the light of her cousin’s eyes, like a figure passing before a lantern, muting for an instant its glow. “Just to see you happy and in love is all I want right now But I do want you to be certain that you don’t mind giving up your plans to teach. That you will be content to merely be his wife.”
Rachel smiled at her cousin. Claire only wanted the best for her and the recognition warmed Rachel’s heart.
“I will not merely be his wife, though I promise you I would be most content to have that role alone. He wants me to be his attendant, since he’s going to start a small practice in Finchingfield, and I have agreed. Not that I think the role will be easy for me, but with God’s help, I am ready to try to be a healer again. I know that James and I shall make a marvelous team. So you see, you have no reason to worry about me.”
“I suppose I don’t.” Claire sighed, tears welling in her eyes. “Oh, Rachel, here I’ve just gained you and now I must let you go again.”
“You shall have Mother and the rest.” In the few days Claire had been in London, she had secured the rent of a space for Rachel’s mother to use as a dress shop, along with assistance from James. The letters that had passed back and forth between Ireland and London had made clear that Mother didn’t want to interfere in their life in Finchingfield and that she would prefer to make her own way in the city. Reluctantly, Rachel had agreed. “London is not so far away that there cannot be frequent visits.”
“You are very sensible, Rachel.”
“James has always thought so,” Rachel agreed.
“He must be more intelligent than I ever knew.”
Rachel rocked forward on her toes to press a kiss to her cousin’s cheek. “I am so grateful you came from Weymouth to be here with me.”
“An entire battalion of soldiers couldn’t have kept me away, Rachel. My mother’s protests and Gregory’s frowns of disapproval had no chance of succeeding at all.” Claire lifted her eyebrows. “Are you ready?”
“How is one ever ready for this?”
“Having never been a bride, I’m sure I don’t know” She blinked away the tears and smiled. “Let’s get out there before they think you have abandoned your handsome husband at the altar.”
Mrs. Mainprice was waiting for them at the rear of the church. She dabbed a handkerchief to her eyes when she spied Rachel. “Oh, bless me, miss, I knew I was right to hope for this moment.”
“You hoped I would wed Dr. Edmunds?”
“Of course I did. From the instant I realized the master was starting to think about something other than his own problems, I knew you’d caught his heart. And there you stand, the loveliest thing I’ve seen since I spotted my blessed departed husband coming up a country lane on an October morn. Wheesht, you are.” Tears spilled and she applied her handkerchief again. “Here, I’ve something for you.”
She handed Rachel a book of prayer and a small bouquet of crimson roses. Rachel lifted the flowers to her nose, the scent sweet as a spring morning in the Irish countryside, and she had to swallow down tears.
“I know you didn’t bring your Bible from home,” Mrs. Mainprice was saying, “so you can borrow my prayer book to carry. And the roses came from the garden. The summer’s last good bloom. Joe is ever so proud that his tending has encouraged them to be so lovely again.”
“They are lovely. I shall have to thank him.”
“Wait until well after the ceremony, miss. I think he’s bawling out in the church like a baby, right now.”
The organ began to play, signaling to Rachel it was time to begin. Mrs. Mainprice hugged her close before scurrying to her seat. Claire kissed Rachel’s cheek and turned up the aisle. Rachel stared at the length of the church, the apse looking a thousand miles distant, its stained-glass window glittering with rainbow light, the small gathering that occupied the pews pressing in on her. There was the now-healthy Dr. Castleton and his unobtrusive wife. But not his sister, who had begged off for fear of the cholera still sparingly present in London, though Rachel knew her reason ran so much deeper. Joe, his face blotchy from tears, insistent on being allowed to attend. Peg, still learning to cope with Rachel’s sudden elevation to mistress, was absent so that she could stay at the house to ready the food for the breakfast afterward. Sophia sat in the front-most pew, honoring the occasion by wearing a deep burgundy gown instead of her usual unrelieved black, her expression stern but accepting. Amelia’s nursemaid Agnes, recovered from her bout with the cholera, sat on one side of Sophia. At the other side was little Amelia, her cheeks rosy and curls bright, smiling at Rachel. They had become good friends in the past month. She prayed she could become a good mother to the girl as well.
Claire was halfway down the aisle when Rachel’s gaze turned to James. He waited eagerly for her at the rector’s side, a smile on his face. Love tingled along every nerve ending, coursed through every blood vessel, thrilled the deepest part of her heart. Washed away the last of her pain and anguish.
Oh God, I will bless You all my days for bringing me him.
Then Rachel smiled her love at James and took a step forward.
Into tomorrow.
Into forever.
Acknowledgments
No author can write a book without the support of others. Great thanks go to my wonderful agent, Natasha Kern, who never ceased believing in me, and to the fabulous staff at Worthy—especially Jeana Ledbetter, who loved my words.
I am deeply blessed to have had the insight and encouragement of many fellow authors, the most important my long-time critique partner and a fabulous author, Candace Calvert. My rock!
Lastly, I would like to acknowledge my family for never once letting me quit. Much love.
The Irish Healer is Nancy Herriman’s debut novel. An award-winning writer, she received an engineering degree from the University of Cincinnati. After retiring from a career in the high-tech industry, she pursued her love of writing. Nancy lives in the Midwest with her husband and two teenaged children, and performs with various choral groups in her spare time.
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Table of Contents
Cover
Half title
Title
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Acknowledgments
Nancy Herriman, The Irish Healer
