waited while his gaze swept over her face before settling on her eyes. “Miss Dunne, this is good-bye. I have been called away to attend Lady Haverton’s daughter, a most important patient, during the delivery of her child—the first grandchild for the Havertons—and I might not return before you depart tomorrow. I have left your fee in your bedchamber.”
Good-bye, and the last time they would see each other. It was wrong to be parting on sour terms, but there was no helping that.
“You would leave Amelia right now?” she asked, selfishly satisfied to see him flinch.
“Sophia is with Amelia, and she was sleeping well before the funeral. Her fever is abating. So it is safe for me to go. Besides, Lady Haverton will have no one else in attendance besides me. Her daughter is frail and will need the best of help.”
“Lady Haverton will miss you, then, when you are gone to Finchingfield and no longer doctoring.”
“Someone shall miss me, at least.”
Was that comment meant for her?
Rachel held out her hand to shake his. “Good-bye, Dr. Edmunds.”
He raised her fingers to his lips, his mouth warm upon her bare skin. She flushed to her toes.
“Good-bye, Miss Dunne,” he murmured and then he was gone.
CHAPTER 26
The only words that came to James’s brain were curses, and he released one softly before the door opened to his knock. He presented his gloves and hat to Lady Haverton’s utterly proper footman and followed the man up to the bedchamber. I might never see Rachel again. Never. Never.
As had always been planned. But still . . .
“There you are, Dr. Edmunds.” Lady Haverton’s booming voice echoed down the staircase. “Come at once, sir. My daughter is in much pain and she needs your assistance.”
The urgency in her voice focused his attention. He grabbed the walnut staircase railing and propelled himself up the thickly carpeted stairs. This would be his final case and he had to do the best he could for Lady Haverton’s daughter.
Lady Haverton waited impatiently outside a door open at the end of the hallway. She led him inside. The room was stuffy, windows shuttered against the outside air, and smelled of sweat. The odor mingled sickeningly with the scent of fading roses, a bouquet of which had been left to perish on the mahogany dressing table. A monthly nurse was stacking towels alongside a basin atop the washstand, while another servant hurried past James with a pile of stained sheets. Lady Haverton’s daughter, wan and frail, was nearly lost among the snowy-white pillows and thick mattress of her curtained bed. Her face shone with perspiration, and two eyes the blue of Delft china blinked fearfully.
“Oh, Doctor. Thank the good Lord you’ve come,” she said weakly, her hand reaching for his. It was clammy to the touch.
James set down his medical bag and pulled up a chair. Dorothea Haverton Blencowe had always been a frail woman, even before she’d married. Carrying a baby had sapped whatever vitality she once had. “Mrs. Blencowe, how are you feeling?”
“Tired. Very tired. I do wish my dear husband could be at my side, but . . . but I know that’s not proper. He is in the library with Father. Maybe drinking port. He’s so afraid.” A contraction overtook her, and she gulped down a cry until it passed. “I told him to pray. For me. Rather than drink. Though . . . though it’s the wages of Eve’s sin that we suffer so.”
Lady Haverton leaned around James and gently patted her daughter’s hand. “Do not fret, my dear, and do not try to talk. The doctor does not need conversation, and you will only make matters worse for you and the baby.”
“Now, Mrs. Blencowe, I do not wish to make you uncomfortable, but I need to examine you a little to see how the baby is progressing. I shall feel your belly and listen with my stethoscope.”
She nodded and he pulled the stethoscope case from his bag. The sight of it recalled the day he had proudly shown the stethoscope to Rachel and she’d nearly fainted. Will everything I do from now on remind me of her? Even in Finchingfield, he wouldn’t be able to escape the memories. He would see her in the meadow, the kitchen, the library. Forever, he would remember.
Mrs. Blencowe primly turned her head aside as James lifted her chemise and rested the stethoscope on the swell of her abdomen. He found the baby’s heartbeat. It weakened, dipped too low as