Kitabı oxu: «The Healing Season»

Praise for
RUTH AXTELL MORREN
and her novels

DAWN IN MY HEART

“Morren turns in a superior romantic historical.”

—Booklist

“Morren’s tales are always well plotted and fascinating, and this one is no exception. 4½ stars.”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews

LILAC SPRING

“Lilac Spring blooms with heartfelt yearning and genuine conflict as Cherish and Silas seek God’s will for their lives. Fascinating details about 19th-century shipbuilding are planted here and there, bringing an historical feel to this faith-filled romance.”

—Liz Curtis Higgs, bestselling author of Whence Came a Prince

WILD ROSE

Selected as a Booklist Top 10 Christian Novel for 2005

“The charm of the story lies in Morren’s ability to portray real passion between her characters. Wild Rose is not so much a romance as an old-fashioned love story.”

—Booklist

WINTER IS PAST

“Ruth Axtell Morren writes with skill, sensitivity and great heart about the things that matter most…. Make room on your keeper shelf for a new favorite.”

—New York Times bestselling author Susan Wiggs

“Inspires readers toward a deeper trust in the transforming power of God…[Readers] will find in Winter Is Past a novel not to be put down and a new favorite author.”

—Christian Retailing

The Healing Season
Ruth Axtell Morren

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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For Justin, Adája and André.

Thanks, guys, for putting up with a writing

mom. When I dotted the final i and crossed

the final t on this one, André said,

“Great, that means you won’t be on the

computer 24/7 anymore.”

Only until the next story beckons…

But unto you that fear my name shall the sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings.

—Malachi 4:2

The Bible is a book of reversals. Old things become new, the dead come to life, the lost are found. Even those who were the vilest of sinners are now empowered by grace to become the virgin bride of Jesus Christ.

—Francis Frangipane,

Holiness, Truth and the Presence of God

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Epilogue

Questions for Discussion

Author’s Note

Chapter One

London, 1817

The sight that greeted Ian Russell as he stood in the doorway of the dark, malodorous room gave him that sense of helplessness he hated. It was in stark contrast to those times when he was setting a bone or stitching up a wound, knowing he was actively assisting a person in his recovery.

This situation was the kind where he knew his pitifully small store of skills would be of little use.

Here, only God’s grace could save the pathetically young woman lying on the iron bed in front of him, her life ebbing from her like the tide in the Thames, leaving exposed the muddy rocks and embankments on each side.

Blood soaked the covers all around the lower half of the bed. Ian crossed the small room in a few strides and set down his square, black case at the foot of the bed.

The women were always young: fourteen, fifteen, twenty, sometimes even thirty—if they lived that long. Women in their prime, their lives snuffed out by the life growing within them. This one didn’t appear to be more than seventeen or eighteen.

As he began drawing back the bedclothes, he looked at the only other occupant of the dim room—a young woman sitting beside the bed.

“Will…will she be all right?” she asked fearfully. He spared her another glance and found himself caught by her breathtaking loveliness. Large, long-lashed eyes appealed to him for reassurance. Strands of light-colored hair framed delicately etched features as if an artist’s finest brush had been used to trace the slim nose, the fragile curve of her cheek, the pert bow of her lips.

He blinked, realizing he’d been staring. “I don’t know,” he answered honestly before clearing his mind of everything but saving the life of the pale girl lying on the sodden bed.

“Can you tell me what happened?” he asked, attempting to determine whether it was a miscarriage by nature, or a young woman’s attempt to abort an unwanted life.

As he lifted the girl’s skirts and measured the extent of dilation, he listened to the other woman’s low, hesitant account.

“She had…tried to drink something…several things, I think…but nothing worked. I think she grew desperate and tried to get rid of it herself.” She raised her hand and showed him the knitting needle. “I found this beside her.”

It didn’t bode well. Blood poisoning could already have set in. If the girl contracted a severe case of fever, she’d be dead in a few days. He prayed she hadn’t punctured anything but the membranes.

Sending a plea heavenward, Ian set to work to stop the bleeding.

“Can you remove her stays?” he asked the young woman sitting by the bed. Would she be able to handle what was in store, or was she too squeamish?

The young woman stood and gingerly approached him. As she hesitated, he repressed an impatient sigh. Pretty and useless. Probably a lightskirt, he decided, like the one lying unconscious. His heart raged with the familiar frustration at how easily a young woman’s virtue was lost in this part of London.

But he had no one else to assist him. It was two in the morning, and he’d been summoned from his bed, with no idea what he would find when he arrived at his destination.

The edges of the young woman’s sleeves were stained with blood as if she’d already tried to help her friend. At his bidding now, she leaned over the bed and began to lift the girl’s dress higher. Her hands were shaking so much they fumbled on the lacings of the corset.

“Here, let me,” he said, barely concealing his annoyance. He took one of the scalpels from his case and slit the corset up its length.

It was a wonder the girl hadn’t already miscarried, the way she was bound so tightly. She was further along than he’d supposed.

He addressed his reluctant assistant. “It’s important that we stop the bleeding. In order to do that, I’m going to have to remove the unborn child. Do you think you’ll be up to this? You’re not going to faint on me?”

The woman stared at him, her pupils wide black pools within silvery irises. She bit her lip. “I’ll…I’ll try not to.”

“You’ve got to do better than that.” He tried for the note of encouragement he used with students around the dissecting table for the first time, but his mind was more concerned with the young girl bleeding to death. They had a long night ahead of them.

Dawn was lighting the interior of the room when Ian straightened to massage the kinks out of his lower back.

He glanced at his young assistant. Her pretty frock was ruined, the front and sleeves spattered with blood.

She hadn’t fainted, he’d give her that, although many times he thought she’d be sick. She’d clasped her hand over her mouth more than once. Now she wiped the perspiration from her forehead with her sleeve, pushing back the damp golden strands of hair that had fallen from their knot.

“The bleeding has abated and her pulse, though weak, is regular. We’ve done all we can for now.” He turned away from the bed to the basin of water to wash his hands.

After dumping it out the window and pouring some fresh water to wash off his instruments, he asked, “Can you see if there are any fresh linens for the bed?”

She started, then glanced around the dingy surroundings. “I don’t know if she would have anything.”

“Perhaps the woman who let me in earlier. Can you ask her?”

She pressed her lips together. “I doubt she would be so obliging.”

“I suggest you find out. Bribe her if you have to. Your friend can’t lie in that bloody mess.” He nodded curtly toward the soiled linens.

The young woman straightened her back and gave him a look that told him the words had stung. It was the first hint of anything other than fear he’d seen in her all night. He’d rarely had such a jittery nurse. He was surprised a woman her age—at least twenty, he’d judge—hadn’t been around a delivery room before.

She left the room without a word.

Ian forgot her as he dumped cranioclast, regular forceps, crochet and hooks into the basin. The water immediately clouded red.

He had little hope the girl on the bed would survive. If the loss of blood didn’t kill her, childbed fever likely would.

The other woman returned as he was drying the instruments.

“You had some success,” he said, noting the folded linens she carried in her arms.

“Not with the landlady.” She laid the gray sheets down on the vacated chair and eyed the bed. “The neighbor upstairs whose boy went to fetch you last night gave me what little she could spare.”

As she continued standing there, he approached the bed. “Here, I’ll show you how.” He began to strip the soiled sheets from under the patient, again amazed at the woman’s ignorance in changing a bed for an invalid. “If you can procure some fresh ticking for this bed later today, it would help.”

She nodded, taking hold of the sheet on the other side of the bed. After they had done the best they could with the limited supplies available, Ian took up the bucket with the remains of the night’s work.

“I’m going to see about a burial.”

Once again the young woman looked queasy. She averted her eyes from the bucket and nodded.

Ian found the lad who’d brought him the night before and had him fetch a shovel.

Out in the small, refuse-filled yard, he dug a hole deep enough to keep stray animals from uncovering it, dumped the remains into it, and filled it with the dirt.

Dear God, he began, then stopped, not quite knowing what more to say. A poor half-formed child, destined for a miserable existence if it had come to term. And yet, he felt the familiar sense of defeat over every lost life, life that hadn’t yet had a chance to live.

Thank You for sparing the mother, he finally continued. I pray You’ll watch over her in the coming days that she might heal. Bless this infant. Welcome him into Your kingdom.

He gave a final pat with the back of the shovel to the unmarked grave and returned it to the boy. “Thank you.”

“Sorry for getting you up in the middle of the night. Mum and I ’eard the screams. ’Twas awful. Sounded like she was dying.” He sniffed. “Mum’d ’eard as ’ow you don’t charge people wot ’aven’t got ’ny blunt.”

He nodded. “You did the right thing.”

Ian trudged back upstairs. He reentered the room and gathered his things to depart. Ignoring the other woman, he bent over his patient and felt her forehead. If fever didn’t develop over the next twenty-four hours, she had a fighting chance.

Lord, grant her Thy healing, if it be Thy will. Show her Thy mercy and grace.

He straightened and turned to the young woman who had been sitting by the bedside. Once again he was struck with her beauty. Ethereal and fragile…how deceiving looks could be.

In another few years she’d probably be poxed and coming around to St. Thomas’s to be treated, like so many of the women he saw.

“I’ll be by later in the morning to check on her,” he told the young woman. “There isn’t much you can do for her now, except keep her warm and give her some water to sip if she wakes.” He handed her a small parcel from his satchel. “This is ergot. If you stir a little in water, it will help stop the bleeding.”

She took it gingerly. He tried to give some words of encouragement, but didn’t want to get her hopes too high. “Try to get some rest yourself,” he said simply.

She made no reply, so he gave a last look toward the girl on the bed. What she needed was divine intervention, and he was too exhausted to pray.

Ian departed the room as silently as he’d come.

Eleanor woke to the sound of low voices. Her maid knew better than to disturb her before noon.

Her eyelids protested as she forced them open. Two men stood by the bed. Frightened, she sat up, finding herself in a chair. She didn’t remember falling asleep here. Why wasn’t she in her bed?

Betsy! Recollection came back in a heap of nightmarish images. Her friend had been bleeding to death when Eleanor had found her.

Aching muscles in her neck and back shrieked in outrage as she looked toward the bed. The tall, young doctor who’d arrived in the wee hours of the night was standing at Betsy’s bedside now, another man beside him.

He’d come back as he’d promised.

Had Betsy made it? Eleanor couldn’t see past the two men.

Standing, she winced at the pins and needles shooting through her feet. What time could it be? It was difficult to judge from the overcast day visible through the small, dirty window. Had she really been able to fall asleep after all she’d seen last night? Eleanor shook her head as she walked softly toward the bed.

Hearing her approach, the doctor turned. “I’m sorry to disturb your slumber.”

She passed both her hands down the sides of her head, trying to smooth her hair. She must look a fright.

“How is she?” she asked, made even more self-conscious under the doctor’s steady gaze, which seemed to miss nothing from her tangled locks to her rumpled, bloodstained dress.

“About the same,” he answered, turning his attention back to Betsy. “That’s good news, actually,” he added, his tone gentler than it had been the previous evening when he’d barked orders like a ship’s commander. Last night she’d put up with it only because she was so desperately frightened for Betsy’s life. The doctor had seemed so competent, never hesitating in his rapid actions, his hands skillful and steady.

But this morning was a different story. Betsy was out of the woods, it appeared, and the doctor didn’t look quite so fierce.

Eleanor wet her lips, considering how to play this scene. The grateful friend…the composed nurse…the weary toiler…

She studied the doctor a few seconds before turning a questioning glance in the other man’s direction.

The doctor answered the unspoken question in her eyes. “This is my apprentice, Mr. Beverly.” The man was only a youth from what she could see.

“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Beverly,” she said graciously, extending her hand. “Excuse my appearance. Dr.…?” She raised an eyebrow to the dark-haired doctor.

“Mr. Russell,” he supplied for her. “I’m a surgeon,” he added, explaining the lack of title.

She nodded and addressed herself to the youth. “Mr. Russell can tell you how we spent our evening. I haven’t had a chance to go home and change my garments.”

The boy was blushing furiously and stammering protestations.

“I would introduce you,” the surgeon said, “but as we didn’t have time for the niceties last night, I am afraid I am still ignorant of your identity.”

“Eleanor Neville.” She never tired of the sound of the stage name she’d given herself. It had the ring of quality. The syllables rolled off her tongue with self-assurance.

“Mrs. Neville,” the youth stammered. “It’s an honor to meet you.”

“Thank you.” She gave a demure smile. It was obvious he recognized the name.

The surgeon made no sign that her name meant anything to him. “Has she awakened at all?” he asked her.

“Once,” she replied. “She was thirsty and I gave her a few sips of water as you suggested with the powder. That was all she could manage.”

He nodded. “Yes, it’s to be expected.”

“I haven’t had time to go home yet. I wanted to ask you—can she be moved? It would be much easier to take care of her in my own house.”

“I’m afraid she has lost too much blood to be moved this soon.”

Eleanor frowned. “I don’t know how often I will be able to stop in to see her. Perhaps you could recommend a nurse. I could pay her.” She turned an apologetic smile toward the younger man. “I must be at work most afternoons and evenings.”

As he nodded in understanding, she turned to find the surgeon’s eyes on her. They held a censure that made her wonder what she had said that was so wrong.

In the light of day she saw that his dark hair was actually auburn, its coppery shade deepened to chocolate-brown in the eyes focused on her. Before she could speak, his attention shifted to his apprentice.

The two men spent the next couple of minutes discussing Betsy’s case. Eleanor heard words like erysipelas, necrosis, and blood poisoning. Mr. Russell took the woman’s temperature, felt her pulse and finally said to Eleanor, “Continue giving her the ergot. Also, comfrey tea. It will help bring down any inflammation and stanch the bleeding. I’ll be by tomorrow, but if she takes a turn for the worse, send the boy around again.”

She nodded. “I’ll do my best, but as I said, I must leave her in the evening to work.”

He looked down at her, and again she felt strong disapproval emanating from those dark irises. “Can you not forgo your evening’s activities for one night?”

She stared at him for a moment. Forgo her evening’s performance at the theater? What did he think she was—a mere chorus girl? She glanced at the young man, and seeing his cheeks turn deep red, she felt vindicated. Obviously he understood the impossibility of the suggestion.

She drew herself up. “I couldn’t possibly ‘forgo’ my duties tonight.”

“Are you so popular with your clientele that you cannot give up an evening’s earnings for the sake of your friend here? May I remind you she is still in grave danger?”

Her eyes grew wider.

“Ian,” the apprentice began hesitatingly, “Mrs. Neville isn’t…er…uh…”

As Eleanor glanced from one man to the other in puzzlement, it suddenly dawned on her. The good surgeon thought she was a prostitute! Her nostrils flared as she drew herself up.

Abruptly, she clamped her mouth shut on the set down she was about to give him. Putting both hands on her hips, she thrust one forward, shaking back her hair away from her face.

“Well, I don’t know now,” she drawled in her broadest cockney. “I got me clients, and they ’spect to see me regular. Kinda like yer patients, I should imagine. Wot ’appens if you don’t come callin’, eh? Go to the next quack down the block, I shouldn’t wonder.”

She blew on her fingernails and polished them against her bodice, as she gave the young man a firm nod. His mouth hung open and his eyes stared at her.

“There’re so many gents callin’ theirselves doctors nowadays, a cove’s gotta watch out for ’is business, ain’t it so, Mr. Beverly?”

“Oh…uh, yes, ma’am.” His jaws worked furiously, as if they needed to catch up to his words.

She began strutting around the room, hands still on her hips, swaying them just as she saw the women outside the theater do. “So, you see ’ow it is, Doc. I got me rounds tonight, just like you.”

She turned back to them and gave the doctor a long, slow look up the length of his tall, slim physique.

When she reached his eyes, she detected the same stern look he’d worn throughout the night as he’d battled for Betsy’s life. She flicked a glance at the young apprentice. He’d lost his dumb stupor and was actually grinning. He must have figured out she was playacting.

“Oh, we understand, perfectly, Mrs. Neville,” Mr. Beverly told her with a vigorous nod.

“All I understand,” said the surgeon, “is that your young friend’s life is hanging by a thread. Her only hope lies in skilled nursing help.”

As Ian strode from the building, he experienced the impotent fury he did every time he saw a young woman unmindful of the consequences of her street life. Hadn’t Mrs. Neville learned something from seeing her friend nearly bleed to death?

He clenched his jaw. The woman was more beautiful than she had a right to be. She might be able to ply her trade for a few short years, but then what? If she’d seen the ugly results he dealt with every day from women dying of the pox or clap, she’d rethink her occupation.

He chanced a glance at Jem, his young apprentice, already regretting having brought him. The woman had enthralled him in a few minutes of conversation.

In reality Jem was his uncle’s latest apprentice at the apothecary, but Ian knew how important it was for an apothecary to get practical experience with patients, so he took him on his rounds whenever he had a chance.

The boy was whistling a cheerful tune that Ian didn’t recognize. “You can’t let every pretty face discompose you, my boy,” Ian chided, remembering the boy’s blushes around the beautiful Mrs. Neville.

Jem’s pale complexion turned ruddy again. “But that wasn’t just any pretty lady, that was Eleanor Neville!”

“Is she related to royalty?”

The boy stopped in his tracks. “Don’t you know who Mrs. Neville is?”

“Not a clue. Should I?”

“She’s the greatest actress on the stage.”

An actress? He stared at Jem in disbelief. Then he remembered her strange turnaround, one moment a frightened young woman, her speech too refined for her mean surroundings, the next talking like any common streetwalker. She had been pulling his leg! He shook his head. He had misjudged her, and she had turned the tables on him. He couldn’t help a grudging smile.

“An actress, is she?” he asked thoughtfully. “I’ve heard of the great Mrs. Siddons and Dorothy Jordan, but of Mrs. Eleanor Neville, not a whisper.”

“That’s because those others are at the Drury Lane. Mrs. Neville plays in the burlettas at the Surrey.”

Burlettas! The word conjured up images of women prancing about a stage, singing bawdy songs.

“Don’t look like that! You should see her sing and dance. And she’s funny. She has more talent in her tiny finger than all the actresses at the Drury Lane and Covent Garden put together.”

“I guess I’ll just have to take your word for that.” Ian resumed his walk, unwilling to spend more time thinking about a vulgar actress. The description belied the delicately featured young woman who had fought beside him throughout the night.

“You can joke, but someday you’ll see I’m right,” Jem insisted.

“I doubt I shall have such an opportunity since I rarely indulge in theatergoing, much less musical burlesque.” He glanced at the street they were on. “Let’s get a hack at the corner and go to Piccadilly. We’ll visit Mrs. Winthrop and then stop in and see how Mr. Steven’s hernia is doing.”

As they continued in silence, Ian noticed Jem shaking his head once or twice. Finally the boy could keep still no longer. “I can’t believe you didn’t recognize Mrs. Neville. Why, her playbills are posted everywhere. She’s been taking London by storm in her latest role. I’ve heard even the Prince is enchanted.”

“Well, then I must be the only one in London who has not yet succumbed to Mrs. Eleanor Neville’s charms. She was almost useless as an assistant.” Again, a different picture rose to his mind, of a young woman overcoming her terror to save a friend’s life. He shook aside the image. An actress was little better than a prostitute.

“I was afraid I’d have to divide my time between reviving her and keeping my primary patient from bleeding to death,” he added cuttingly.

“Poor thing! She must have had a rough time of it. I wish I’d been there with you!”

Ian looked at the young man with pity. “To help my patient or to hold Mrs. Neville’s hand?”

Ian couldn’t help picturing those slim hands with their almond shaped nails, how they’d smoothed back the patient’s hair from her brow, and remembering her soft voice as she encouraged her friend throughout the night’s ordeal.

An actress? The image wouldn’t fit the one formed last night. How long would the innocent-looking, ladylike woman be impressed upon Ian’s memory?

Chapter Two

As she sat before her mirror, her maid dressing her hair, Eleanor was gratified to note that a full nine hours’ rest followed by the special wash for her face made of cream and the pulverized seeds of melons, cucumber and gourds had left her complexion as fresh and soft as a babe’s.

She touched the skin of her cheek, satisfied she would need no cosmetics today.

With her toilette completed, Eleanor went to her wardrobe and surveyed her gowns. The mulberry sarcenet with the frogged collar? She tapped her forefinger lightly against her lips in consideration. No, too militaristic.

The pale apricot silk with the emerald-green sash? She had a pretty bonnet that matched it perfectly. Too frivolous?

She ran her hand over the various gowns that hung side by side, organized by shades of color. Blues, from palest icy snow to deepest midnight, greens from bottle to apple, reds from burgundy to cerise, and so on to the white muslins and satins. She enjoyed seeing the palette of colors. Gone forever were the days when she was lucky enough to have one dirty garment to clothe her back.

She pulled out one gown and then another until she finally decided on a walking dress of white jaconet muslin with its richly embroidered cuffs and flounced hemline. With it she wore a dark blue spencer and her newest French bonnet of white satin, trimmed with blue ribbons and an ostrich plume down one side of the crown.

When she had judged herself ready, she stood before her cheval glass for a final inspection. Her blond tresses peeked beneath the bonnet, with a small cluster of white roses set amidst the curls. She fluffed up her lace collar. White gloves and half boots in white and blue kid finished the outfit. The picture of maidenly innocence and purity.

“How do I look, Clara?” she asked the young maid.

“Very pretty, ma’am. The colors become you.”

Eleanor smiled in recognition of the fact. Good. If her appearance didn’t put Mr. Russell to shame, her name wasn’t Eleanor Neville.

She took up the shawl and beaded reticule her maid held out to her.

“Is the coach ready?” she asked Clara.

“I’ll see, madam,” Clara answered with a bob of her head and curtsy.

“I shall be in the drawing room below,” Eleanor said.

She had found out from the young boy in Betsy’s rooming house that Mr. Russell had a dispensary in Southwark, in the vicinity of Guy’s and St. Thomas’s Hospitals. They were not so very far from the theater, she thought, as she sat in her coach and rode from her own neighborhood in Bloomsbury and headed toward the southern bank of the Thames.

She needed to accomplish two things on this visit to the surgeon: firstly, to find out about proper nursing care for Betsy, and secondly, to clear up a few things to the good doctor.

She would present such a composed, elegant contrast to the woman he’d seen the night before last that he would fall all over himself with apologies.

She was not a streetwalker and had never been. It mortified her more than she cared to admit that after so many years, someone could so easily fail to notice her refinement and see only the dirty street urchin.

It hadn’t helped that she’d behaved like such a poor-spirited creature during Betsy’s ordeal. But it had been awful finding Betsy like that. Eleanor still felt a twinge of nausea just thinking about it.

She gazed out the window of her chaise, no longer seeing the streets, but recalling the terrified young girl, younger than Betsy, when she’d gone into premature labor. She rarely ever called up those memories, but last night had summoned up all the horrors of those hours of painful labor in vivid detail.

Her own delivery had ended successfully in the birth of a child who had survived, but the ordeal for a scared, undernourished, ignorant girl had almost killed her.

She folded her gloved hands on her lap. Those days were far behind her. She was a different person, one older and wiser in the ways of the world, and few people knew anything of her past.

The coach arrived at the surgeon’s address, and the coachman helped her descend onto the busy street.

The building looked respectable enough. Mr. Russell must have achieved some success in his profession to be able to open his own dispensary.

Several people stood in line at the front. As she neared the brick building, she noticed the brass plaque by the door.

Mr. Ian Russell, licensed Surgeon, Royal College of Surgeons

Mr. Albert Denton, Apothecary-Surgeon

Below it appeared: Midwifery Services.

She pushed past those waiting, ignoring their angry looks and murmurs, and entered the brick building.

Immediately, she took a step back. The place reeked of sickness and poverty. The waiting room was packed with unwashed bodies—young, old, and every age in between. By their dress, they did not look like paying patients. The rumors must be true that Mr. Russell served one and all.

Every available wooden bench was occupied. Some huddled on the floor. The rest stood leaning against the walls.

Eleanor braced herself and ventured farther into the waiting room. She was surrounded by the lowest refuse of life, those that inhabited Southwark and other similar London neighborhoods. She saw them lurking at the fringes of the theater every night when she departed in her coach. Hard work and determination had enabled her to escape these surroundings, and she had no desire to ever live in such conditions again.

She took a few steps more and found a bit of wall space to lean against. Daring another peek around her, she saw that some of the sick had even brought a form of payment: a pigeon in a small wooden cage, a handkerchief wrapped around some bulky item—a half-dozen potatoes or turnips to give to the good surgeon in exchange for his services.

She heard moans of pain beside her and, looking down, she saw a man holding his wrist gingerly in his other hand. Beside him sat another with an exposed ulcerated leg propped up in front of him.

Eleanor brought her scented handkerchief to her nostrils, fearing the foul miasma that permeated the air. She couldn’t take the risk of exposing herself to some perilous humor and sicken.

All eyes were upon her—at least of those patients not too caught up in their pain. She read admiration and some envy in their glances. She was accustomed to that look and bestowed smiles on one and all alike before retreating behind an impersonal gaze above the crowd.

The closed door opposite her across the room suddenly opened and she recognized Mr. Beverly, the young apprentice. She waved her handkerchief at him. He saw her immediately and nodded in greeting, a wide grin splitting his face. She smiled graciously, relieved to see that he immediately made his way toward her.

“Mrs. Neville, what are you doing here? Has the young woman taken a turn for the worse?”

“No, though she is still very weak. But it is about Miss Simms that I am here. If I could speak with Mr. Russell for a few moments?” She gave him a look of gentle entreaty.

“Yes, of course, madam. Let me inform him that you are here.” He took an apologetic glance about the room. “As you can see, he’s quite busy today, but I know he’ll see you as soon as I let him know you are here.”

“I shan’t require much of his time.”

He was gone only a few moments before returning to beckon her through the door.

Mr. Russell was finishing bandaging up a patient’s arm.

“That should do it, Tom,” he told the burly young man. “Let’s hope you fall off no more ladders for a while, eh?”

“You’re right, there, Mr. Russell. I’ve got to watch me step from now on.”

“All right. Come by in a week and we’ll see how you’re mending.”

As soon as the man had left, Mr. Russell came toward her. The smile he had given the male patient disappeared and he was back to the frowning surgeon. Eleanor suppressed her vexation. All the trouble she’d taken with her appearance and she didn’t detect even a trace of admiration in those brown eyes.

He probably knew nothing of fashion. Look at him, in his vest, the sleeves of his shirt rolled up to his elbows. Her physician would never so much as remove his frock coat when he came for a visit.

“Mrs. Neville, Jem tells me you’ve come about your friend.”

She cleared her features of anything but concern. “Yes, about Betsy Simms. I’m quite distraught. I haven’t been able to stop by to see her since early yesterday afternoon. She felt warm to my touch. I brought fresh linens and some broth, but I greatly fear her being alone there. I tried to talk to the landlady, but she didn’t care to involve herself in any way.”

“What about the boy’s mother? The one who lives upstairs.”

“I tried her, too, but she works all day. She promised to look in this evening.”

“She has no family?”

Eleanor shook her head sadly. “None that I know of. She is a singer at the theater where I work.” She wondered if the words meant anything to him, but saw no reaction in his eyes.

“When she missed a performance, I stopped by her room on my way home. I didn’t want her to be dismissed from the troupe. I found her doubled over, bleeding…well, you saw her condition.”

Again his eyes gave her no clue to his thoughts, though he listened intently. She scanned the rest of his face, noticing again the reddish tints of his hair. She wondered if he had the fiery temper to match.

“I see,” he replied, his tone softening. “You said she had taken some potions?”

“Yes, she told me she’d been to a local herbalist who’d given her a remedy to take, but to no avail. Then she’d bought something from a quack. It made her awfully sick, but still…” Her voice trailed off at the indelicate subject.

“No menses,” he finished for her.

“Just so,” she murmured, looking down at her hands, which still held her handkerchief.

“I’ll stop by to see her again today.”

“That would be most kind,” she said with a grateful smile. “Are you sure she cannot be moved?”

“It would be highly risky at this point. You cannot nurse her yourself?”

“No. I can look in on her every day and bring her fresh linens and refreshment, but I usually have rehearsals in the afternoon and performances in the evening. My evenings are late, so in consequence, my day begins later than most.”

He was weighing her words. Finally, he said, “It may be possible to find her a nurse through a Methodist mission I work with. There are many worthy women who give of their time there to help the poor and infirm.”

“If they could send someone, I’d gladly pay her. I meant to tell you as well to send your medical bills to me.”

He dismissed her offer with an impatient wave of his hand. “Don’t worry about it. Why don’t you go to the mission and inquire about a nurse? They are usually shorthanded themselves, so I don’t promise anything.”

“Very well. Where is this mission?”

“In Whitechapel.”

“Whitechapel?” Her voice rose in dismay. That was worse than Southwark.

“Yes.”

“You want me to go there alone?”

“I beg your pardon. I go there so often myself, I forget it’s not the kind of neighborhood a lady would frequent.” His glance strayed to the outfit she’d given so much thought to that morning.

She wasn’t quite sure his tone conveyed a compliment. “I should think not.”

He considered a few seconds longer and finally answered, the words coming out slowly, as if he was reluctant to utter them. “If you’d like…I could accompany you there. Would late this afternoon be satisfactory? Your Miss Simms should really have some nursing help as soon as possible.”

She nodded. “I will be at the theater this evening, but I don’t have a rehearsal this afternoon.”

“I can leave as soon as I finish with all my patients here.”

“Very well. Do you have a carriage?”

He shook his head. “No, I don’t keep a carriage.”

“We can go in mine, if you think my coachman won’t be beaten and robbed while he is waiting for us.”

“He’ll be quite all right, I assure you.”

“Then I’ll come by around three o’clock. Does that give you sufficient time?”

“Yes, that would be fine.”

As she turned to go, his next words stopped her. “I believe I owe you an apology.”

She turned around slowly.

“The other night, I mistook you for…”

Assuming her cockney, she filled in, “A doxy?”

She detected a slight flush on his cheeks. At his nod, she batted her hand coyly. “Gor! Think nothin’ of it, guv’n’r. ’Appens all the time. I don’t know wot it is about folks, but they’re forever mistayken me for someone else. Sometimes even the Queen, poor old deah. I tell ’em ‘I ain’t such ’igh quolity.” She finished with a hearty laugh. “But neither am I no judy, no, sir!”

He was giving her a bemused look, as if he didn’t know what to make of her little performance. “You’re an actress.”

“Yes,” she answered in her own accent. “You’ve never been to the Surrey—the Royal Circus now?”

“No.”

“No? It’s not far from here.”

“I don’t go to the theater.”

Her eyes widened in disbelief. “Never?” The theater was one of the few places where everyone could meet and find enjoyment, from highest to lowest in society. “Are you a Quaker?”

He gave a slight smile. “No, I haven’t the time for such amusement.”

She remembered the packed waiting room. “I can well believe that.”

When he said nothing more, she knew it was time to make her exit. “I shall not keep you from those who need you more. Until three o’clock, then?”

“Until three o’clock.”

Ian popped a few cardamom seeds into his mouth as he watched Mrs. Neville’s chaise pull up at the curb of the dispensary. The actress was punctual, at least. He was still annoyed with himself that he’d committed to accompanying her to the mission. He had little time to spare for excursions like this. Still, the girl needed nursing. It was a miracle she was even alive.

The coachman opened the door and let down the steps. Ian climbed into the smart coach, nodding to Mrs. Neville and seating himself opposite her in its snug interior.

She glanced toward the dispensary before the carriage door shut behind him. “It looks deserted now. What a difference from this morning.”

“Yes, every broken limb has been set, every wound bandaged.”

As the carriage lumbered forward, she asked him, “Do you have such a roomful of patients every day?”

He smiled slightly. “No. Sometimes there are more.” He grinned at the horrified look in her eyes. “I’m only partially speaking in jest. The dispensary is only open four days a week. On the other days I do rounds at St. Thomas’s Hospital a few streets down and hold an anatomy lecture for students there. I also tend the sick at the mission we’re heading for. Then there are the days I pay house calls.”

“When do you rest?”

“I honor the Lord’s Day, unless I’m called for an emergency.”

She nodded and looked out her window. Had he satisfied her interest with his answers and was she now back to thoughts of her own world?

What would occupy such a woman’s thoughts? He found himself unable to draw his eyes away from her. For one thing, she had an exquisite profile. Her small-brimmed bonnet gave him an ample view. Her curls were sun-burnished wheat. Her forehead was high, her nose slim and only slightly uptilted, her lips like two soft cushions, her chin a smooth curve encased in a ruffled white collar.

But her most striking feature was those eyes. Pale silver rimmed by long, thick lashes a shade darker than her hair.

This afternoon she was dressed in a dark blue jacket and white skirt, which looked very fashionable to his untrained eyes. He frowned, trying to remember if she had worn the same outfit earlier in the day. But he couldn’t recall. It had been something dark, but he couldn’t remember the shade. He’d been too dazzled by the shade of her eyes to notice much of anything else.

Chiding himself for acting like a schoolboy, he tore his attention away from her and examined the interior of the coach. It had a comfortable, velvet-upholstered cabin, which looked too clean and new to be a hired vehicle. To keep such a carriage in London, with its pair of horses, was quite expensive.

He wondered how a mere actress could afford its upkeep. He glanced at her again, remembering Jem’s high praises. She must indeed be a successful actress to be outfitted so well. Still, he doubted. He knew actresses usually had some titled gentleman setting them up in style.

But she went by Mrs. Neville.

“Your husband, is he an actor as well?” he found himself asking.

She turned to him. “There is no Mr. Neville,” she replied, her pale eyes looking soft and innocent in the light.

“I’m sorry,” he answered immediately, assuming she was widowed.

She smiled, leaving him spellbound. The elegant beauty was now transformed into a lovely young girl. “You think I am a widow? I repeat, there is no, nor ever was, a Mr. Neville. It’s merely a stage name.”

It was his turn to be surprised. “You mean it’s not your real name?” She must think him an unsophisticated country bumpkin.

She laughed a tinkling laugh. “I just liked the sound of Mrs. Eleanor Neville. It adds a sort of dignity, don’t you think?”

“Yes, I suppose it does,” he answered slowly, trying to adjust his notions of her. Curiosity got the better of him. “What was your…er…name before?”

The friendly look was gone, in its place cool disdain. “My previous name is of no account. It has been long dead and forgotten.”

He felt the skin of his face burn and knew a telltale flush must be spreading across his cheeks, but Mrs. Neville had already turned back to her window. Despite her rebuke, he felt more intrigued than ever. Why would a person ever change her name? Was it a commonplace practice among theatrical people?

It was a long carriage ride, across the Thames and through the congested streets of the City. He spoke no more to her, preferring to concentrate his thoughts on the rest of the evening. He would probably stop at his uncle’s apothecary shop to drop off several prescriptions and pick up the ones he’d had Jem leave earlier in the day. He needed to check on a few patients. That brought his thoughts back to the young woman who’d nearly killed herself.

“Did you have a chance to look in on—er—Miss Simms again, Mrs. Neville?”

Mrs. Neville. He couldn’t get used to the name anymore. It made her sound matronly, completely at odds with the young ingenue looking at him.

“Yes, I stopped to see Betsy before I came to collect you. She had awakened. I fed her some broth and gave her the powder you left. She was still very weak although she didn’t seem feverish.”

He nodded, glad the danger was passing. “I’ll go around tonight.”

“She’s very scared,” Mrs. Neville added.

“She might well be. She almost killed herself.”

“She doesn’t think she had any other choice. If she’d been discovered in a family way, she would have lost her position. If that had happened, she’d have lost her room. She would have ended up in the street. What would she have done with a child then?”

Ian was well familiar with the scenario. He saw it played out countless times a day.

He began to feel a grudging admiration for the young actress. She had not abandoned her friend and was now going to some lengths to assure her full recuperation. He continued to observe her as the carriage trod the cobblestone streets. Beneath Mrs. Neville’s fashionable appearance, there lay a woman very much aware of the grimmer realities of life.

The carriage drew up at the Methodist mission. Eleanor looked around her suspiciously as Mr. Russell helped her alight. The streets had grown narrower and smellier. She clutched her handkerchief to her nose as the doctor led her toward the entrance of the mission.

It at least had a welcoming appearance. A lamp stood at the door and the stoop was swept clean. They entered without knocking.

Eleanor breathed in the warm air before once more putting her handkerchief to her face, this time to mask the smell of cooked cabbage and lye soap.

Mr. Russell poked his head into a room and finding no one led her farther down the corridor.

“Good afternoon, Doctor,” an older woman called out cheerfully as she emerged from another room. “We weren’t expecting you today. What can I do for you?”

“Is Miss Breton in at the moment?”

“No, I’m sorry, sir, she had to step out.”

“Who is in the infirmary?”

“Mrs. Smith.”

“I shall go in and speak with her, then. Thank you.”

Eleanor noticed the woman eyeing her as they walked by and entered a long room filled with beds. Every one was occupied, she noticed, and they all held children. She’d never seen a children’s hospital before. She looked curiously at each bed as Mr. Russell led her toward a woman at the far end.

After brief introductions, she listened as the surgeon explained to the woman their need for a nurse. Eleanor only half paid attention, her interest drawn to the children in the room. A little girl in a nearby bed smiled at her, and she couldn’t help smiling back. Slowly, she inched her way toward her. The child’s dark hair and eyes reminded her of her own Sarah.

“Are you feeling poorly?” she asked the girl softly.

The child nodded. “I was, but now I’m feeling much better. Nurse tells me I must stay in bed a while longer, though.”

“Yes, you must get stronger.” The child was so thin it was a wonder her illness hadn’t done her in.

A young boy beside her called for her attention, and before long Eleanor found herself visiting each bed whose occupant was awake.

Mr. Russell approached her. “We’re very fortunate. There is a lady who is available to spend part of the day with Miss Simms. We can go to her house now and make arrangements if you have time. She lives not far from here.”

“Very well. Let’s be off.” She turned to the children around her and smiled. “I want to see you all well the next time I visit. If you promise, I’ll bring you a treat.”

“We promise!” they all chorused back.