all right. Honest,” she said, still curled on her side. “Miss Dunne shouldn’t have fetched you.” In the light of the candle, Rachel could see a circle of rusty red on the white sheet, down below her belly. Condemning evidence. Dr. Edmunds spotted it too.
“Molly, you’re bleeding heavily. Are you having trouble with your monthlies?”
“I . . . unh.” Another spasm overtook her and she pulled tight into a ball.
“Dr. Edmunds, she is pregnant,” said Rachel. He may as well know now what he was facing.
“She’s lying!” Molly protested between gritted teeth. “She hopes you’ll dismiss me. She hates me.”
The line of his jaw tightened and he stripped back the sheet. The bloom of red was clearer against Molly’s linen chemise, crimson on cream. An exhalation whistled through his teeth. “Miss Dunne, bring warm water and a towel. Some fresh linens as well.”
Rachel gaped at him. “You want me to help? After what I . . . after what you said?”
“You’re here and I need you to help me. Molly needs you,” he said succinctly.
Rachel did as he asked, running down to the kitchen to heat a kettle. She roused the fire to life, set water to heat, and fetched clean towels and sheets. Everything gathered, Rachel returned to the bedchamber. While she’d been in the kitchen, Dr. Edmunds had gone to his office to retrieve his medicines—a bottle of fever mixture, another of elixir of vitriol, the common brown bottle of laudanum.
His face was set with concentration, his hands moving steadily and assuredly as he laid out his paraphernalia. “Miss Dunne, mix a tablespoonful of the fever mixture in two cups of water while I prepare the medicine to ease . . . Molly’s cramping.”
Meaning her body’s efforts to rid itself of the baby. He poured out drops from the elixir of vitriol into a glass of water—a good cut-glass goblet from the crate in the dining room—adding a small amount of laudanum to help Molly sleep. Rachel dropped the towels and sheets nearby, hastily poured the hot water into the empty washbasin, some of it splashing over the rim. Using the doctor’s silver measuring spoon, she made up the fever concoction and set it at his elbow.
“Here, Molly, take both of these. They will help you.” Gently, he lifted her head. She gagged on the taste but bravely swallowed both.
Meanwhile, Rachel dipped one of the smaller towels in the hot water and wrung it out.
“I think it best you wash Molly up, Miss Dunne.”
Respectfully, he turned aside and shook out the sheets while Rachel washed the drying blood off Molly. The maid was too weak to protest, though she had sufficient energy to glare. Rachel slipped off Molly’s stained chemise, found a clean one in the chest, and helped the girl into it. Dr. Edmunds handed her a sheet and Rachel replaced the old one, Dr. Edmunds assisting as she lifted the mattress to hold the sheet in place. Molly closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep.
Exhausted, Rachel’s knees gave way and she dropped down onto the lone chair in the room. She clutched her robe tight around her neck. The maid’s color had evened out, her breathing steadied. Molly had passed through the worst.
“Molly shall recover,” she stated.
Dr. Edmunds finished saying a prayer and tucked the clean sheet around Molly’s arms, untangling her braid from beneath it to lie out upon the dimity sheet, a rope of brown against white.
“She’s strong.” He ran his fingers through his hair, curling and wild. “Too strong, perhaps. She didn’t lose the baby, which I gather was what she was trying to do.”
“She purchased a tonic, and I think this was her second attempt to use it.”
He gathered up the dirty towels and threw them atop the stained sheet.
“So you knew what she was planning.” He tied the linens into a bundle for laundering later, his hands jerking the knot secure. “Is this household keeping any more secrets from me?”
“I was not completely certain until this afternoon what Molly intended to do,” Rachel answered in defense.
He swiveled his head to look at her. “Yet you suspected she was pregnant. You suspected and decided not to tell me.”
“I knew she had been meeting a man, but I promised her I would say nothing to you. In return for her not revealing what she had learned about my trial.”
“If ever there was a time to break a promise, this would’ve been it, Miss Dunne. You might have saved her this failed abortion.