any healer would need—powders and pills for the stomach, ointments that would treat rashes or sties of the eye, fever mixture, styptic water. Laudanum. She could smell their aromas without unstoppering a bottle or opening a packet—the acidic bite, the odd sweetness.
She straightened, curiosity satisfied. Those aromas belonged in her failed past.
“I did not expect to find the space so sparsely equipped.” She had never been in a physician’s office before. Her family could not afford the services of a doctor. Neither could most folks in Carlow, leaving them to the care of the apothecary, or women like her mother and herself.
I tried so hard, Mary. Though none of the Fergusons had believed that.
“I require little more than what you see,” he said. “As a physician, I don’t need saws or bottles of leeches. And I do not stock more than a minimum of medicines in that cabinet. It’s easy enough to obtain preparations from a nearby apothecary. There’s no need for me to keep much on hand in the office, aside from simple instruments such as my stethoscope.”
Crossing to a table against the far wall, he opened an intricately inlaid walnut case polished to a dizzying sheen. He pulled out three pieces of pale wood tubing, one bell-shaped on its end, and began fitting them together.
“It’s a device to aid in listening to the heart and lungs, Miss Dunne,” he continued. “I purchased it last year in France. When I hired Miss Guimond, in fact. It’s quite simple yet elegant. Would you like to examine it?” Pride lifted his voice.
“No. Thank you, Dr. Edmunds.” At one time, she would have been intrigued.
Returning the stethoscope to its case, he pressed his hand gently upon the lid to close it, running his fingertips across the top of the case until they slid off the nearest side. A strange little gesture, bittersweet. Clearly regretful.
“On these shelves and in my desk are where I keep my patient files . . .”
Rachel crossed to his desk to follow his instruction when her gaze settled on a medical text atop it, previously hidden from her view by the stacks of paper. Pages lay open to a small illustration of the inside of a swollen throat.
In a flash, she was back at Mary Ferguson’s bedside, her face the oddest shade of blue . . . Wake up, Mary. “Oh,” she muttered. Every ounce of blood left her head to pool in her feet.
“Miss Dunne, you are unwell.” Dr. Edmunds clutched her elbow to keep her from falling. What did he see on her face, in her eyes? A woman who had failed at the one thing she’d long believed herself most competent at—healing? “Why didn’t you tell me?”
His hand shifted to feel her pulse, brushing back with his thumb the cuff banding her sleeve. At the gentle touch of his hand, her blood came rushing back, a wall she ran into full force.
“Doctor . . .” She jumped back, jerked her sleeve down over her hand. “I . . . Dr. Edmunds. I assure you I am not ill. I missed breakfast, that is all, and am still weary from my journey. You need not examine me.”
He looked almost as startled as she felt. “I didn’t mean to upset you. My apologies again for being overly familiar. It seems I cannot help myself. A physician’s habit.”
“I . . . I need to go outside.” What was wrong with her? She was made of sturdier stock than what she was exhibiting. Irish stock. Timelessly strong, weathered but never beaten, the blood of Celtic warriors in her veins.
Too late to wish for her hastily discarded sachet. “I must catch a breath of air.”
“Let me escort you. If you faint, you might strike your head and hurt yourself.”
His words echoed down the hallway after her, because she had already fled.
“Miss Dunne looks unwell, sir.” Depositing the morning newspapers on the office desk, Mrs. Mainprice peered at James, the corners of her eyes creasing until her skin looked like the pattern of cracks in a glaze of sugar. “I passed her in the hallway, rushing headfirst for the garden, white as a ghost.”
“She nearly fainted in here. Something in my medical text upset her.” It lay open to a section on throat diseases. He’d been advising Dr. Calvert on the treatment of a patient suffering from diptheritis, and the picture of swelling and excess membranous tissue, though unpleasant, was far from the worst. Although the illustration had certainly bothered Miss