own experience gave her the ability to see.
She stood up and went to the window, breathing in the scent of coal smoke and someone’s dinner already cooking. Her dress collar choked her and her knees threatened to buckle whenever she walked across the blue-and-white carpeted room. On the street beneath her, though, life proceeded as normal. Carriages and carts rattled down the cobblestones. A nursemaid hurried by with her charge in hand. Toting a large metal tray hung on straps wrapped around his neck, a pie-man paraded through the intersection of the streets, calling out his price. All this going on while Rachel fervently wished for Dr. Edmunds to reappear so she could escape.
Pressing her back against the sill, Rachel stared at Dr. Edmunds’s patient, muttering to himself in his laudanum-induced sleep. The man was dying. Bathing his head, dosing him repeatedly, was only delaying the inevitable. And all the purging . . .
Her stomach churned as bile rose. God, why are You doing this to me? The thought that she might be in this room when Mr. Fenton-Smith breathed his last—when another family member would stare at Rachel with sorrow and disbelief and accusation—choked off her breath. You let him die. It is Your fault.
“You killed her . . .”
The room spun and Rachel clutched at the windowsill, resolved to keep from fainting. If only she could gather her wits to think what to do, what her mother might do. Did he need more fluids or less? A tonic, broth fortified with wine? A cold bath or a hot bath? Blankets, fresh air, windows closed, leeches? She knew she should feel reassured—instead of lost and helpless—that Dr. Edmunds seemed to be no more certain of how to help the man.
A noise out on the street caught her attention. A hackney had arrived and was depositing a man onto the pavement. Dr. Edmunds was back. She grabbed up her bonnet and fled the room. She was down the stairs almost as quickly as it took a maid to appear to open the door to him.
He stepped back, startled. “Miss Dunne!”
“Mr. Fenton-Smith is sinking, Dr. Edmunds. It is well you have returned. Now I must hurry to catch your hackney before it departs.” She brushed past him, hurtling headlong through the doorway.
“But will you be all right?” he asked as she leaped into the carriage.
Rachel slammed the door behind her. “Dr. Edmunds, truly, I wish I knew.”
She rapped on the roof, signaling the driver to depart, leaving Dr. Edmunds to stare worriedly after her.
Moonlight crept along the floor and the sounds of the house dwindled until all Rachel could hear was the noise of carriages returning neighbors from suppers and fetes. Dr. Edmunds had yet to return from the Fenton-Smiths’. The staff had given up waiting and gone to bed—even Joe, who tended to scurry about in the wee hours, attending last-minute tasks. Sleep eluding her, Rachel stared up at the bedchamber ceiling until she memorized every dip and crack in the plaster. She feared the nightmares about Mary would return as soon as she closed her eyes. Maybe they would even include Mr. Fenton-Smith. The sight of him squirming on his bed, his face beading with sweat and then going dry as chalk while he moaned and heaved, kept swimming in her brain. She should probably just get up and do some work in the library.
Sighing, Rachel threw back the top sheet and counterpane, dropped her feet to the floor, and shimmied them into her slippers. After lighting a candle, she fetched her robe and slipped out into the hallway. She was just passing Dr. Edmunds’s office at the rear of the house when she heard a key in the back door lock. She froze, uncertain whether to flee or scream the household awake. Before she could decide, the door eased open on well-oiled hinges and Molly stepped through.
“Molly! You frightened me!”
Startled, Molly dropped the key onto the tiled floor with a clatter. “Bloo . . . what’re you doing up?” She bent to retrieve the key and held still, listening to hear if the rest of the household had awakened to the noise.
“I came down to fetch some water before doing some work. I could not sleep.”
Molly closed the door behind her and threw the bolt. “Well, get some water then.”
“I did not realize you were out. Is everything all right? It must be past eleven.”
She tossed her head flippantly, the action making her wobble as if she was