by Merry Farmer
“Elsie doesn’t speak,” Lawrence explained. “But if she has something to say to you, she finds other ways to let you know.”
“How endearing.” Armstrong smiled at Elsie, then studied the picture. “But I don’t understand.”
“Let me see.” Lawrence leaned over, peeking at the drawing. It was a simple picture of a stick-figure man and woman standing close together with smiles on their faces. But a third stick figure with an angry face stood off to one side. An uneasy feeling spilled down Lawrence’s back.
“Why on earth would I be angry at your…Lawrence and your sister?” Armstrong asked.
Lawrence arched a brow at the fact that Armstrong had assumed he was the angry man.
But Elsie shook her head and pointed to the smiling man.
Armstrong returned her smile. “Yes, I’m certain you and I will become great friends.”
Elsie fixed Armstrong with a look that was so close to the way Flossie and Jason and everyone else in town had been rolling their eyes at Armstrong that Lawrence nearly laughed. “Perhaps you should hold onto the drawing for a while until its meaning becomes clear,” he said.
“I will indeed,” Armstrong said, tucking the paper into the inside pocket of his jacket. “Now if you will forgive me,” he said, standing, “I need to get back into town. I need to speak with Dr. Pycroft to gauge his opinion on hiring medical personal to staff my hotel.” He said goodbye to Mother Grace and Elsie.
Lawrence stood and shook Armstrong’s hand, then walked him through the house to the door. “I’ll be in touch if I have any ideas about door handles,” Lawrence said.
“Thank you, Mr. Smith.” Armstrong shook his hand one final, unnecessary time. “I do so appreciate your help in this endeavor.”
Lawrence waved him off, but as soon as Armstrong mounted his horse and rode off, his smile dropped. Armstrong was everything Lawrence didn’t want to be, and yet, the more time that passed, the more he was being drawn into that world.
Marshall
Of course it would happen that within moments of Alex leaving the hospital, several cases of illness and injury would rush into the waiting room. Marshall had been looking forward to a relatively relaxed afternoon, one in which he could catch up on much-needed inventory and paperwork. But first came a farmer with a stomach complaint who vomited in the waiting room, and then, as soon as Nurse Nyman had ushered him to one of the examination rooms and the porter had cleaned up the mess, Ted Foley had darted through the doors, his nose bleeding like a stuck pig.
“Sorry, Marshall,” Ted apologized as Marshall gestured for him to come to the free examination room. “June hit me with a pan.”
“The two of you got into a fight, did you?” Marshall asked, breaking into a laugh. Ted and June were one of the happiest old married couples in Brynthwaite.
Ted laughed with him and shook his head, which sent blood splattering to the examination table where he sat. “She turned to hang the pan just as I stood up from setting down a crate of old bottles.”
“Bad timing,” Marshall continued to chuckle.
“It was. Only the blasted thing hasn’t stopped bleeding.”
“That’s because it’s broken,” Marshall said.
He set Ted’s nose and had him rest for a few minutes, his nostrils stuffed with gauze, before rushing on to the next emergency.
He was halfway across the hall when Lady Arabella skittered in from the waiting room, her hands full of letters and a small parcel. Marshall changed direction to meet her.
“Dr. Pycroft,” Nurse Stephens called to him from the top of the stairs at the same moment. “You’re needed in the men’s ward.”
“Blast,” Marshall muttered under his breath. “I’m never going to get the inventory done, am I?” he asked Lady Arabella—not expecting an answer—as he took the mail from her.
“I could do it,” Arabella offered. “Inventory is just a matter of writing down how many of things we have on hand, isn’t it?”
Marshall eyed the woman warily. She’d been using “we” to talk about the hospital more and more recently. It wasn’t healthy, all things considered. At the same time, he had to admit they could use her help.
He winced as he headed into the office with the mail, nodding for Arabella to follow him. As soon as he set the mail on the desk—noting that the parcel was from the quack company Jason had insisted he order “madness medicine” from—he crossed to fetch the inventory checklist.
“The first page is a list of medicines,” he explained in a rush, heading out of the office. “They’re stored in the dispensary. The second page is for bandages and instruments.”
“Which are kept in the surgery,” Arabella finished for him. She flipped through the pages of the checklist. “And I see this last page is for foodstuffs for the cafeteria.”
Marshall’s brow went up. So the fine Lady Arabella knew how to work after all. “Do you think you can manage it without supervision?”
“Yes, Dr. Pycroft, I can,” she said with more confidence than Marshall had seen in her for some time.
Confident that Arabella would get the job done, Marshall headed upstairs to the wards. The emergency turned out to be yet another stomach complaint that had come to a messy head. It made Marshall glad he’d sent Alex home. The last thing he needed was for his pregnant wife to be laid low with gastroenteritis, not to mention the possibility of the girls catching it. The ever-present worry that a few cases might turn into an epidemic plagued him as he assessed the situation and did what he could to make the sufferers feel better.
It was a good hour before he was able to head downstairs to check on Arabella’s progress. And it was just his luck that the first person he met—standing in the doorway between the waiting room and the hall, looking anxious and uncertain—was Colin Armstrong.
“For the love of God,” Marshall murmured before plastering on a smile and marching toward the man. “Mr. Armstrong. What brings you here today? Not an injury, I hope.”
“No, no, nothing of the sort,” Armstrong said, bursting into his usual smile. Marshall wondered if the man knew how silly that constant smile made him look. “I was hoping to consult with you about a matter regarding my new hotel,” he said.
Of course, he did, Marshall thought to himself. Aloud, he said, “Come right this way. We can talk in my office.”
“Only if you have a free moment,” Armstrong said, following him down the hall.
“This moment is as free as I ever have,” Marshall said, pausing at the open door to his office to gesture for Armstrong to precede him. “How can I help you today?”
Armstrong paused near the first desk in the room, which was technically Alex’s. Since Marshall hoped to get rid of the man as quickly as possible, he simply leaned against the desk and crossed his arms as though he were about to diagnose an illness.
“I was thinking of keeping a doctor on staff at my hotel,” Armstrong began, “and I was wondering if you had any thoughts on that.”
“I’m not certain it’s necessary,” Marshall said. “Unless you plan to bill your hotel as a health resort.”
“I might.” Armstrong tapped his chin, his eyes still dancing with enthusiasm even though he wore a thoughtful look. “I’ve tried bringing the subject up with Jason Throckmorton several times, but he tells me he never considered it because your hospital is so close to his hotel. But Ambleside doesn’t have a hospital.”
“True,” Marshall said, wondering how long the man would continue to waste his time. “Brynthwaite Hospital serves Ambleside as well, unless patients wish to travel to Windermere.”
“Precisely,” Armstrong said. “Which is why—”
He stopped mid-sentence, his mouth hanging open, as Arabella walked into the room. She stared at the inventory clipboard and so didn’t see Armstrong or his reaction immediately. “Dr. Pycroft,” she began. “I looked for carbolic acid in the dispensary but I couldn’t find—oh.” She glanced up barely in time to avoid running headlong into Armstrong.
“Oh dear. I’m sorry. I didn’t see you there.”
“Not at all, madam,” Armstrong said in a strangely airy voice, snatching his hat from his head. “Not at all.” His eyes took on a moony glow.
For her part, Arabella stared back at him with a sudden flush, her shoulders hitching as though she held her breath. “Hello,” she said.
“Hello,” Armstrong replied.
There was a pause before Arabella repeated, “Hello.”
“Very pleased to meet you,” Armstrong said.
The two hadn’t dropped eye contact from the moment their eyes met. Marshall would have slapped a hand to his face and shook his head with a groan if the two of them weren’t right in front of him. Then again, it looked to all intents and purposes as though the rest of the world had suddenly ceased to exist for the pair.
“Dear God help us all,” he murmured, testing to see whether either Armstrong or Arabella was listening. Neither reacted. It was worse than Marshall thought.
He cleared his throat, standing straight and moving close enough to the pair to remind them they weren’t alone.
“Lady Arabella, may I introduce Mr. Colin Armstrong,” Marshall said. “Mr. Armstrong is building a hotel in Ambleside.”
“How do you do?” Arabella asked in a misty voice.
“Armstrong, this is Lady Arabella Fretwell,” Marshall continued the introduction. He paused, loath to say what he knew he had to. “Lady Arabella is the wife of Mr. George Fretwell, whose father recently married Lady Charlotte Dyson, my wife’s mother.”
Armstrong’s dreamy smile lasted for only a few more heartbeats before suddenly dropping. “Oh,” he said, then in a lower register, “Oh.” He pressed a hand over the front of his jacket. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Lady Arabella,” he continued, recovering his charm, or what passed for charm. “Are you a volunteer at the hospital?” he asked. “For one can see by the healthy glow you present and the perfection of your form that you couldn’t possibly be a patient.”
Arabella blushed and lowered her eyes. “I am a volunteer, Mr. Armstrong,” she said. “In fact, I just had a question for Dr. Pycroft about the hospital’s inventory.” She raised her eyes to glance longingly at Armstrong.
The moment was pure treacle. Marshall couldn’t stand it for another second. “Carbolic acid is kept in the surgery, Lady Arabella,” he told her. He twisted to snatch the parcel containing Jason’s medicine from the desk. “Armstrong, I was just on my way over to the hotel. Would you care to accompany me?”
It was the first time Armstrong didn’t respond to an invitation to go to the hotel with an outpouring of enthusiasm. He continued to stare at Arabella as though the sun had risen, only to instantly be covered with clouds. Finally, after the two of them gazed wistfully into each other’s eyes in what Marshall felt was an entire Shakespearian tragedy conducted within the space of fifteen seconds, Armstrong sighed and said, “I’d better go with you, Dr. Pycroft.”
Marshall rubbed a hand over his face to keep himself from snorting and started toward the door. Armstrong followed him.
“It was truly a wonder to meet you, Lady Arabella,” Armstrong said, pausing in the doorway.
“And to meet you,” Arabella said in a voice worthy of a captive princess in a tower.
Marshall shook his head as he and Armstrong walked down the hall, through the waiting room, and out to the street. “I shouldn’t tell you this,” he said in a low voice, “but her husband is an ass.”
“No,” Armstrong gasped. He glanced over his shoulder at the hospital door.
“It’s a long story,” Marshall said.
The two of them continued on to the hotel. Armstrong seemed more agitated than Marshall had ever seen him. He kept looking back at the hospital and rubbing his chest for some inexplicable reason. At one point, he muttered, “Was that what she was trying to tell me?”
Marshall left the question unanswered. It clearly wasn’t for him to begin with. They crossed through the gate and into the hotel’s gardens, which Jason had paid to have filled with early blooms. Marshall had half a mind to treat Alex to supper at the hotel, seeing as it looked so grand these days. He supposed that’s why Jason put so much effort into landscaping.
As they crossed through the front door into the lobby, Marshall glanced back over his shoulder, still contemplating gardens and suppers and ways he and Alex could spend a final evening together before the baby was born. Armstrong walked on, heading straight up the stairs to where Marshall assumed his rented room was located.
Marshall’s thoughts were in several places at once when he was accosted with a cry of, “Wendell Keegan, what in heaven’s name are you doing here?”
Marshall flinched. It took him a moment to realize that the question had been addressed to him. He searched for the source only to find Flossie’s sister staring hard at him from the other side of the lobby. He’d seen the woman a few times, but on Flossie’s advice had avoided ever speaking to her. As soon as he turned toward her, Betsy’s shocked expression turned to confusion.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Betsy said, stepping closer and squinting hard at him. “I could have sworn you were someone I know from back home.”
“No, I’ve lived in Brynthwaite for most of my life, except when I was in London,” Marshall said.
“Forgive me.” Betsy curtsied as though he were someone above her, but she continued to stare. “Only, you look so much like Wendell Keegan that it’s…it’s uncanny.”
“I don’t know anyone named—”
Marshall stopped, his throat squeezing and his heart suddenly pounding furiously. Keegan. He’d heard the name before, but he wasn’t certain where.
“Huh,” Betsy said. She shook her head as if to clear her thoughts. “You really do look like him. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you two were brothers.”
A second chill passed down Marshall’s spine. “I’m an orphan,” he said. “The only brothers I have are Jason Throckmorton and Lawrence Smith.”
Betsy blinked. “Oh. So you must be Dr. Marshall Pycroft. I’ve heard so much about you.”
She smiled in a friendly way that reminded him a little too much of Winnie. It was enough to make him desperate to leave the hotel as soon as possible. He crossed to the desk, handed the parcel to Daniel with a short, “This is for Jason,” then turned and headed for the door.
“Maybe your people come from Lincoln?” Betsy asked as Marshall left.
“No,” he said without looking at her again.
He tried to push the odd encounter aside, but his brain had fixed on it. Keegan. He was certain he’d heard the name before, a long time ago. Keegan. Keegan. It must have been a patient he treated once, perhaps in London.
He marched on, barely noticing the commotion going on at the intersection where Clara had died. A few men had gathered and were talking in alarmed tones and pointing down the hill toward the lake. More men were running to join them, but Marshall pushed right past the growing crowd. He headed home instead of back to the hospital.
But instead of finding the peace and answers he sought at home, he was assailed by the inexplicable din of Molly banging on a piano in his front parlor and Mary and Matty attempting to talk over it while Lawrence’s baby, Bracken, wailed.
“Stop playing the piano,” Mary shouted. “You’re upsetting the baby.”
“Perhaps it would be best to give the instrument a rest,” Alex said from the other side of the parlor, where most of the room’s furniture had been crammed into the corner. Alex looked beyond weary as she sat in one chair, resting her feet on another, and rubbing her forehead.
“But Alex said I must practice if I want to be a concert pianist,” Molly shouted as she banged the wrong keys.
“Not right now,” Matty hollered at her.
“Papa’s home,” Martha squealed above the din, charging toward him.
She slammed into him with a hug that nearly knocked the wind out of him. Marshall picked her up with a bit of a grunt. She was getting
too big to be picked up. Alex rushed to stand as fast as she could—which wasn’t fast at all—and crossed to kiss his cheek.
“What’s all this about?” Marshall asked, staring with wide eyes at the piano.
“It’s a mystery gift,” Martha told him.
“I don’t know who it’s from,” Alex told him, far more serious than Martha. “Mary said it was delivered this morning, when the younger girls were at school.”
“I’m going to be a concert pianist when I grow up, Papa,” Molly declared, continuing to play.
“That’s lovely, dear,” Marshall said, stepping around furniture and toys and a general mess that he had no idea how to rid from his house. The word “mystery” had fired his nerves all over again. He approached Mary, interested in her explanation for the piano, but one look at Matty and a memory struck him. The night of Hoag’s death, before the man had abducted her, she’d asked him a peculiar question out of the blue. She’d asked if he knew anything about his father. And now someone was telling him he could have been the brother of a man he’d never met.
He wasn’t certain what made him throw caution to the wind to ask her, but before he could stop himself—with her baby crying, Molly playing piano, and Mary shouting at her to stop—he blurted, “Have you ever heard the name Keegan?”
All of the color drained from Matty’s face as she answered, “Yes.”
Matty
The last thing Matty expected in the midst of the chaos of the Pycroft house was for Marshall to ask about Keegan. But she could see in the way his whole body went taut with shock that something had happened to bring the issue to a head. Marshall paled and stared at her with heartbreaking intensity.
“Where did you hear the name?” he asked, his voice hoarse.
“Papa, will you please tell Molly to stop banging away?” Mary asked, attempting to look haughty and mature but sounding like a peevish schoolgirl.
“Papa, tell Mary I have to practice,” Molly called over her shoulder, banging on the keys.
