Read Online Edith Layton by To Wed a Stranger - Free Book Online

Miles’s own knees had felt weak as he’d seen her beautiful inky tresses seized, clipped to the scalp, and burned in the fireplace. She’d been too sick to protest, perhaps too sick to notice. But it had near killed him.
    The bloodletting the fifth day had almost finished Miles and the doctor. Miles had come into the room after washing up that morning to see the doctor holding her limp wrist, watching her rich, dark blood flowing and the color in her face ebbing as he drained her life away. Miles had lost his temper and maybe his mind, because he’d shouted, ordering the doctor to stop and get out, threatening mayhem if he didn’t obey.
    And so now it was just he and her maid and the housekeeper attending to her, because the doctor refused to return. Just as well. Miles didn’t trust him anymore, or himself with the man. Instead, he’d sent for a surgeon in London, an excellent man. Harry Selfridge had served with him, and owed him, and would come.
    But would he be too late?
     
    “Yarrow and elderflower?” Miles said on a tired laugh. “Lungwort and cinquefoil? And then I suppose you chant, ‘Round around the cauldron go, in the poisoned entrails throw?’ I thinknot, Mrs. Farrow. Thank you, Mrs. Kent,” he told his housekeeper, ignoring the plump little woman he’d just spoken to. “But I don’t believe in witchcraft.”
    “Nor do I!” the plump woman spoke up. “The yarrow, elderflower, and peppermint is a time-honored specific for the influenza. The lungwort and cinquefoil is for the cough. Speedwell and agrimony might help as well. These remedies have been noted as far back as Culpepper and haven’t yet been repudiated by modern physicians.”
    Miles rubbed a hand over his aching eyes. His housekeeper had come to his study and told him that a healer everyone in the district respected had come to see him. He’d invited Mrs. Farrow in, if only to have someone else to talk to about Annabelle’s illness. The middle-aged, neatly if not fashionably dressed woman had impressed him. He’d been expecting an ignorant crone, but Mrs. Farrow spoke in accents befitting a duchess.
    “My father was a landholder here in the district,” she’d told him proudly, “but his mother and her grandmother before her were herbalists, and they taught me their lore. I’ve researched even more. I may not be able to cure your good lady but I will not harm her. I may well be able to settle some of her symptoms, my lord; at the least I can make her rest more easily.”
    “But herbs and such brews…” he said unhappily.
    “May do her some good; I promise no more. When Mrs. Kent sent to me and told me of your lady’s plight, I came at once. I know her symptoms. Dr. Morrison should have sent for me. We’re old adversaries, but even he can’t and won’t gainsay me. Mind, he won’t recommend me. I suppose it galls him that I have as large a practice as he does. And as many satisfied patients, I might add. Nevertheless, if you refuse, I’ll go. I came out of duty, not for personal gain. I have patients aplenty.”
    Miles rubbed his chin and was startled by the scratching sound. It had been a long time since he’d shaved. It had been even longer since he’d cared. He honestly didn’t know what to do. Yet another day had passed and Annabelle was no better, perhaps worse. She slept most of the time now, the fever baking her. He bathed her with cold cloths when her skin seemed afire and packed blankets around her when she shivered. But to dose her with magic?
    He stood, irresolute. He’d been in his study composing a letter to Annabelle’s parents when this woman appeared. Now he realized his thoughts were as disorderly as his appearance. He hadn’t slept or eaten properly in a while.
    He wasn’t grieving for Annabelle now, it was too soon. Now he was grieving for her bad judgment in having wed as senselessly as he had. But how could she have imagined sickness? Sheshould have, and so should he, because now he realized