Read Online Avow by Chelsea Fine - Free Book Online Page B

this young fellow?”
    Gabriel glared at the doctor, already annoyed with his presence. “We don’t know . That i s why we called you.” He explained to the physician how Tristan had been in agonizing pain.
    “Oh my.” The doctor pushed his spectacles up further, pressing them into the skin between his eyes, and began examining Tristan. “The human body. So fragile. So many sick people everywhere. Just the other day, I treated a woman named Agnes who gave birth to the largest baby I’d ever seen and her pain, while quite intense, did not seem as debilitating as what this gentleman suffers from here.” The doctor raised Tristan’s arm in the air and dropped it. It crashed down to the bed, before forming a fist and punching the sheets again.
    “Hmm…” The doctor shuffled about, checking Tristan’s pulse and his forehead, looking in his eyes and listening to his chest. “Very odd. Very odd.” He shook his head and then—foolish man that he was—the doctor pinched Tristan’s bicep. For what reason, Gabriel was not sure.
    Tristan lashed out from the pillow and pinned the doctor against the wall, wrapping a hand around his throat and squeezing until the man’s face turned purple.
    Slow and low, Tristan bit out, “Do. Not. Pinch. Me,” before releasing the stunned physician and returning to his miserable groaning into the bed.
    Coughing and gasping, the doctor hurried away from the bed and looked at Gabriel and Nathaniel with wide eyes. “My, my. He is not well at all. He seems healthy—at least healthy enough to kill a man. Lots of muscle. Healthy skin color. But this apparent pain he suffers from—and his violent temperament—is perplexing.”
    Nathaniel looked at the doctor. “Do you have any solutions?”
    The doctor sighed. “None other than lavender water and prayer.”
    Doctors were useless.
    “Then I believe we are through with your services.” Gabriel tried to sound polite.
    “I must say,” said the doctor as he gathered his things, “this has been a most perplexing month. I treated a monkey with a liver infection, if you can believe that. Monkeys make the most atrocious sounds. And I had to perform surgery on an old bloke named Henry who thought he could cut out his chronic toothache with a knife—that one was rather gory. The human mouth is madness.”
    Gabriel wanted to strangle the man for all his nonsensical chatter.
    The doctor continued, “And then there was the young girl without her memories. Poor thing was lost, scared, and completely mad. I put her in a carriage and swiftly sent her far away. Named Scarlet, though I thought she looked more like a Mary. I nearly missed the ball because of her and I hate missing a good ball feast. And now I have this young man with an invisible pain, punching the bed sheets and choking me—”
    “What did you say?” Tristan whipped around, obviously forgetting about his great pain as his wild green eyes stared at the doctor.
    The doctor scoffed. “I was merely stating that I am mystified by your impossible pain and a bit offended at your attempt to kill me—”
    “No.” Tristan sat up in the bed. “What did you say about the girl named Scarlet?”
    The doctor paused in the doorway. “Oh. She was found wandering the woods a couple of years ago, quite close to here. Sad, really. She does not know anything but her name. I gave her some lavender water, but I hardly see how that will help her remember or help her temper. She was a mean little thing—”
    “What was her full name?”
    The doctor rubbed at his beard in thought. “I believe it was Jacobs. Yes. Scarlet Jacobs.”
    Gabriel was lost for words.
    Could it be?
    “She was a pretty thing,” the doctor said. “But feisty and not ladylike in any way. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she were raised in the wild.”
    “Neither would I,” Tristan said slowly.
    Gabriel saw the raw hope in Tristan’s eyes and felt a similar emotion stir in his own chest.
    Was Scarlet truly