The Healing Season. Ruth Axtell Morren
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Had she really been able to fall asleep after all she’d seen last night? Eleanor shook her head as she walked softly toward the bed.
Hearing her approach, the doctor turned. “I’m sorry to disturb your slumber.”
She passed both her hands down the sides of her head, trying to smooth her hair. She must look a fright.
“How is she?” she asked, made even more self-conscious under the doctor’s steady gaze, which seemed to miss nothing from her tangled locks to her rumpled, bloodstained dress.
“About the same,” he answered, turning his attention back to Betsy. “That’s good news, actually,” he added, his tone gentler than it had been the previous evening when he’d barked orders like a ship’s commander. Last night she’d put up with it only because she was so desperately frightened for Betsy’s life. The doctor had seemed so competent, never hesitating in his rapid actions, his hands skillful and steady.
But this morning was a different story. Betsy was out of the woods, it appeared, and the doctor didn’t look quite so fierce.
Eleanor wet her lips, considering how to play this scene. The grateful friend…the composed nurse…the weary toiler…
She studied the doctor a few seconds before turning a questioning glance in the other man’s direction.
The doctor answered the unspoken question in her eyes. “This is my apprentice, Mr. Beverly.” The man was only a youth from what she could see.
“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Beverly,” she said graciously, extending her hand. “Excuse my appearance. Dr.…?” She raised an eyebrow to the dark-haired doctor.
“Mr. Russell,” he supplied for her. “I’m a surgeon,” he added, explaining the lack of title.
She nodded and addressed herself to the youth. “Mr. Russell can tell you how we spent our evening. I haven’t had a chance to go home and change my garments.”
The boy was blushing furiously and stammering protestations.
“I would introduce you,” the surgeon said, “but as we didn’t have time for the niceties last night, I am afraid I am still ignorant of your identity.”
“Eleanor Neville.” She never tired of the sound of the stage name she’d given herself. It had the ring of quality. The syllables rolled off her tongue with self-assurance.
“Mrs. Neville,” the youth stammered. “It’s an honor to meet you.”
“Thank you.” She gave a demure smile. It was obvious he recognized the name.
The surgeon made no sign that her name meant anything to him. “Has she awakened at all?” he asked her.
“Once,” she replied. “She was thirsty and I gave her a few sips of water as you suggested with the powder. That was all she could manage.”
He nodded. “Yes, it’s to be expected.”
“I haven’t had time to go home yet. I wanted to ask you—can she be moved? It would be much easier to take care of her in my own house.”
“I’m afraid she has lost too much blood to be moved this soon.”
Eleanor frowned. “I don’t know how often I will be able to stop in to see her. Perhaps you could recommend a nurse. I could pay her.” She turned an apologetic smile toward the younger man. “I must be at work most afternoons and evenings.”
As he nodded in understanding, she turned to find the surgeon’s eyes on her. They held a censure that made her wonder what she had said that was so wrong.
In the light of day she saw that his dark hair was actually auburn, its coppery shade deepened to chocolate-brown in the eyes focused on her. Before she could speak, his attention shifted to his apprentice.
The two men spent the next couple of minutes discussing Betsy’s case. Eleanor heard words like erysipelas, necrosis, and blood poisoning. Mr. Russell took the woman’s temperature, felt her pulse and finally said to Eleanor, “Continue giving her the ergot. Also, comfrey tea. It will help bring down any inflammation and stanch the bleeding. I’ll be by tomorrow, but if she takes a turn for the worse, send the boy around again.”
She nodded. “I’ll do my best, but as I said, I must leave her in the evening to work.”
He looked down at her, and again she felt strong disapproval emanating from those dark irises. “Can you not forgo your evening’s activities for one night?”
She stared at him for a moment. Forgo her evening’s performance at the theater? What did he think she was—a mere chorus girl? She glanced at the young man, and seeing his cheeks turn deep red, she felt vindicated. Obviously he understood the impossibility of the suggestion.
She drew herself up. “I couldn’t possibly ‘forgo’ my duties tonight.”
“Are you so popular with your clientele that you cannot give up an evening’s earnings for the sake of your friend here? May I remind you she is still in grave danger?”
Her eyes grew wider.
“Ian,” the apprentice began hesitatingly, “Mrs. Neville isn’t…er…uh…”
As Eleanor glanced from one man to the other in puzzlement, it suddenly dawned on her. The good surgeon thought she was a prostitute! Her nostrils flared as she drew herself up.
Abruptly, she clamped her mouth shut on the set down she was about to give him. Putting both hands on her hips, she thrust one forward, shaking back her hair away from her face.
“Well, I don’t know now,” she drawled in her broadest cockney. “I got me clients, and they ’spect to see me regular. Kinda like yer patients, I should imagine. Wot ’appens if you don’t come callin’, eh? Go to the next quack down the block, I shouldn’t wonder.”
She blew on her fingernails and polished them against her bodice, as she gave the young man a firm nod. His mouth hung open and his eyes stared at her.
“There’re so many gents callin’ theirselves doctors nowadays, a cove’s gotta watch out for ’is business, ain’t it so, Mr. Beverly?”
“Oh…uh, yes, ma’am.” His jaws worked furiously, as if they needed to catch up to his words.
She began strutting around the room, hands still on her hips, swaying them just as she saw the women outside the theater do. “So, you see ’ow it is, Doc. I got me rounds tonight, just like you.”
She turned back to them and gave the doctor a long, slow look up the length of his tall, slim physique.
When she reached his eyes, she detected the same stern look he’d worn throughout the night as he’d battled for Betsy’s life. She flicked a glance at the young apprentice. He’d lost his dumb stupor and was actually grinning. He must have figured out she was playacting.
“Oh, we understand, perfectly, Mrs. Neville,” Mr. Beverly told her with a vigorous nod.
“All I understand,” said the surgeon, “is that your young friend’s life is hanging by a thread. Her only hope lies in skilled nursing help.”
As Ian strode from the building, he experienced the impotent fury he did every time he saw a young woman unmindful of the consequences of her street life. Hadn’t Mrs. Neville learned something from seeing her friend nearly bleed to death?
He clenched his jaw. The woman was more beautiful than she had a right to be. She might be able to ply her trade for a few short years, but then what? If she’d seen the ugly results he dealt with every day from women dying of the pox or clap, she’d rethink her occupation.
He chanced a glance at Jem, his young apprentice, already regretting having brought him. The woman had enthralled him in a few minutes of conversation.
In reality Jem was his uncle’s latest apprentice at the apothecary, but