“Because it’s better than the alternative,” he said with a careless shrug.
“What’s the alternative? Lye?”
“Feeling.”
“Feeling what?” she asked, confused.
His grin faded. “Everything.”
He’d said something similar to her before, but now having sampled gin herself she was loath to imagine what kind of demons would be worth such daily abuse.
“Maybe…maybe you could try a nice tea with lemon instead?” she suggested.
Picking up the tankard, he drank what was left, slammed it down onto the bar, and swiped a hand across his mouth. His eyes, when they met hers, were as dark and bitter as a cloudy sky brewing above a tempestuous sea. “Maybe you can mind your own damned business.” With that, he grabbed a brown glass jug presumably filled with more gin and stalked out of the tavern, leaving Rosemary to trail behind him, her expression troubled.
It would have been simpler if the duke had sustained his illusion of a careless rogue. But having seen his pain, she couldn’t make herselfunsee it. Some might come across a stray dog in the street and turn the other way when it showed its teeth and growled. But she preferred to take a different approach. An animal with its hackles up was an animal that was either afraid or injured. Often both. Such a creature needed gentleness and understanding, not condemnation and judgment.
It was in Rosemary’s nature to be a healer. A helper. A nurturer of all things broken.
And it appeared as though she’d just found her next stray dog.
A doctor camethe next day to examine Rosemary’s grandmother. At eighty-two years of age, Lady Ellinwood, who’d reverted back to her maiden name after the death of her husband, had also outlived her sister, her daughter-in-law, and her child. She was a stern woman with an iron constitution. A battle class naval ship in a sea of wooden schooners.
Rosemary had learned at an early age not to cross her. Where her grandmother was concerned, obedience was the best way to preserve calm waters. No doubt her American cousins would have chaffed and rebelled against such an arrangement, but Rosemary was content to do what was asked of her if it meant being left alone to do what she wanted. She was also aware–more so now than when she’d been a young girl still reeling from the sudden death of her parents–that her grandmother was her best means by which to keep a roof over her head and clothes on her back and food in her belly…lest she exchange what independence she had for a wedding ring and marriage to a husband who would most likely expect unfavorable things of her, such as hosting dinner parties and–horror of all horrors–releasing Sir Reginald back into the wild.
It made Lady Ellinwood’s lingering illness all the more concerning. Of course, Rosemary was worried for her grandmother’s sake. But she was also worried about what would happen toherif something happened to her grandmother.
Lady Ellinwood had battled flare-ups of her gout before. A painful condition that affected the joints, particularly those in the ankles and feet, it rendered her completely bedridden. Their family physician, a man even older than Lady Ellinwood, had come up with a plethora of treatments over the years, from applying a slab of raw steak to the afflicted area to draining the diseased blood with leeches. In Rosemary’s opinion, blood was better servedinthe body than out of it, but she also understood that when faced with an incurable disease doing something was often better than doing nothing.
The Earl of Hawkridge’s doctor, however, hadn’t brought in dead hunks of cow fleshorsucker worms. Instead, he’d ordered Lady Ellinwood’s personal maid to maintain a strict regime of hot compresses followed by cold, and a tonic with anti-inflammatory properties to be taken thrice daily.
To Rosemary’s enormous relief, the unconventional treatment had actually worked and her grandmother’s gout had never looked better. But for some reason, Lady Ellinwood continued to insist that her legs were too painful to get out of bed, thus preventing their departure from the manor and causing Rosemary to call upon the doctor once more to see if there was anything he had missed during his previous examination.
“Her joints are swollen,” he told Rosemary in the privacy of the hallway once they’d left Lady Ellinwood’s chambers in order to let her rest. “But then, that is to be expected given her age and natural degradation of the joints from her prior episodes of gout.”
Rosemary knotted her hands together behind her back. “Then shecanwalk?”
“Not just that, but she must. Staying in bed is doing no favors to your grandmother’s circulation.” The doctor, a tall man with brown hair that was beginning to gray at the temple, studied Rosemary with calm, intelligent blue eyes. “I prescribe to the theory that as a person ages, their muscles and bones begin to lose mass and strength. This process is only increased by lack of exercise and movement. To put it bluntly, the longer Lady Ellinwood chooses to remain bedridden the longer she shallhaveto remain bedridden.”
“Then what you are saying, if I understand correctly, is that there is no medical reason why my grandmother is not on her feet,” Rosemary summarized, her brow creasing.
The doctor nodded. “Precisely. If there is no improvement over the next two days, let me know and I shall refer you to a specialist from the Belclaire Institution.”
“But that’s…that’s an asylum,” she said, taken aback.
“Part of it, yes. However, there is a growing constituency of doctors and philosophers, led by Dr. Wilhelm Wundt, who believe that a person’s mind is just as important, if not more so, in the healing process as what ails them physically. Have you ever the opportunity to attend one of Dr. Wundt’s lectures, I highly recommend it. If you are fluent in German, his most recent publication,Handbuch der Medicinischen Physik, is an excellent read. It is my understanding that they are working on an English translation.” He adjusted his grip on his black leather medical bag. “If there is nothing else, Miss Stanhope, I’ve a newborn with croup to attend.”
She wished the doctor luck and then waited until he’d gone downstairs and she heard the front door open and close before she quietly slipped back into her grandmother’s room. The curtains were closed and the room was dark; her grandmother a small lump under the covers in the middle of the bed. The size of the mattress dwarfed her, making her appear frail in stature. But while Lady Ellinwood was many things–autocratic, strict, and officious, to name a few–frail wasnotan adjective that Rosemary would ever use to describe the elder matriarch.
“Grandmother,” she called softly. “Are you awake?”
“Yes,” came the feeble reply. “Has the doctor left?”
“A few minutes ago.”
With suspicious zest, Lady Ellinwood threw off the covers and sat upright. Reaching for her wire-rimmed spectacles, she perched them on the edge of her nose and waved her granddaughter forward with an impatient flick of her wrist. “Open those drapes, then come here. I want to get a closer look at you and those freckles on your face. What have I said about going out in the sun without a bonnet? We’re going to need lemon water, buckets of it,” she ordered her beleaguered maid, Janelle, who was never far from her side and generally wore the appearance of a puppy that had been kicked too many times. “Well, what are you waiting for? I haven’t all day!”
“Thank you,” Rosemary murmured as Janelle hurried from the room. Then her hands crept self-consciously to her cheeks as she reluctantly approached the side of the bed. “I’m sorry. I–I lost my bonnet.”
