Winter's Cold Heart (Seasons Book 1)

by Laura Landon

  . . . .

  Lydia tried to give reason to what was happening between them, but it was impossible to make sense of her confused thoughts. It wasn’t as if she’d never been kissed before and yet that’s exactly what it felt like. Any kiss she’d known previously now seemed like a feeble pretender.

  Even though she’d been engaged to be married and the man she thought would be her husband had kissed her once or twice, he’d never kissed her like Joshua Jarvis was kissing her now.

  Joshua opened his mouth atop hers and Lydia followed his lead. The sweetness of his lips left her craving more, and she pressed against him with abandon. Allowed him access without hesitation.

  His arms tightened around her, clasping her to him as if he feared if he didn’t hold her tightly enough, he’d lose her. But he would not. She knew that now. Had known it for some hours now. She couldn’t imagine a place she’d rather be than in his arms, nestled close to him while he held her as if she were the most important person in the world to him.

  Joshua kissed her again, then lifted his mouth from her.

  A slight moan of protest echoed around her and it took a moment for Lydia to realize the sound came from her. It took another moment for her to realize Joshua had cut off their kiss because someone was knocking on the door.

  “Shh,” Joshua warned her as he placed a finger over her lips. “Give me time to get to your brother’s bedroom, then answer the door.”

  Lydia nodded, trying desperately not to feel his absence so shamefully. After two long, chastising breaths she straightened her clothes as he walked away from her. When she was sure he was out of sight, she went to the door and opened it.

  “Good day, Miss McDowell,” a girlish voice said.

  “Miss Carmichael? My goodness! Do come in.”

  Lydia opened the door and stepped back so Jenny Carmichael could enter. The gangly seventeen-year-old stood on the door mat stamping huge clumps of snow from her trousers.

  It was difficult not to stare at the girl’s appearance. She was clearly wearing her father’s clothing—an oversized coat and baggy trousers tucked into boots large enough for two feet. As she unwound the knitted muffler from her head more snow fell to the floor.

  The young woman appeared ill at ease, much as she had appeared the one time James had introduced Lydia to her at the stile that separated his property from her father’s holding. She and her father were James’s closest neighbors.

  “I’m sure you find it odd that I’m here, Miss McDowell.” She stood on the doormat as she rather obviously fought to settle her nerves.

  “Not at all,” Lydia lied. “Are you in need of something?”

  “Oh no. But father told me how grievously James was injured by the bull.”

  “We were so very grateful your father was there to help me get James into the cottage before the snowstorm began. He’s very ill, but we think he’s going to make a full recovery.”

  The girl’s agitation seemed to escalate. “But that’s just it, you see. You…you brought Doctor Jarvis to attend him. Instead of Doctor Weatherby. Papa saw Doctor Jarvis tending his horse.”

  “That’s true,” Lydia said. “In fact, Doctor Jarvis is here right now. He’s barely left James’s bedside since he arrived.”

  The Carmichael girl cleared her throat. As she shifted nervously, Lydia noted her bitten nails.

  “Do you think that was wise, Miss McDowell?”

  “What? Asking Doctor Jarvis to attend James instead of Doctor Weatherby?”

  Jenny’s cheeks darkened. “Well, he’s a murderer!” She blurted out the words and then clamped a hand over her own mouth. “Can I see him? I need to know that he’s being taken care of.”

  Lydia assessed the concern on the girlish face. It was obvious she cared for James, but considering Jenny’s lack of maturity for her age, Lydia couldn’t help but think Jenny had an awkward crush on her brother. From the comments James had made, he did not harbor any tender feelings for his neighbor.

  The girl took a step closer. “Please, Miss McDowell. Please, allow me to see him. Just for a few minutes. I promise I won’t bother him.”

  Lydia didn’t have the heart to refuse the girl’s request. “Only for a moment, Jenny. James is very ill. I don’t want him to be disturbed.”

  “Oh, thank you. Thank you,” Jenny repeated as she followed Lydia to James’s bedroom. When the girl entered the room she froze and glared at Joshua Jarvis until he stepped back to give the girl a degree of privacy. But Lydia remained in the doorway while Jenny rushed to James’s bedside.

  Something compelled Lydia to stay at her post.

  Jenny reached out to hold James’s hand as she whispered in his ear. “I love you, James. I’ll love you forever, ’til death do us part.”

  Her brother’s eyes widened, and something akin to alarm crossed his face.

  A shiver ran down Lydia’s spine and she stepped into James’s room, indicating it was time for Jenny to leave.

  The girl reluctantly followed Lydia to the door. Lydia breathed a sigh of relief when the neighbor was gone from their house. There’d been something about Jenny Carmichael’s visit that made a slight shiver trace the base of her neck.

  “Is your brother’s visitor gone?” Joshua asked coming back into the room as he dried his hands on a linen dish towel.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m glad. I need to leave for a while.”

  “Why? How long?”

  “I’m not sure. If I can get to Russetsville, Bennet will have a new liniment I’ve read about that I think will help your brother. He’s always the first one to try new things and he has reported great success. From what he’s told me, I’m sure it has a better chance of stemming the infection. And,” he hesitated, “and he’ll have morphine.” He watched her as she took in what he was saying.

  “Morphine. That…that’s dangerous. Do you…do you know how…”

  Joshua stepped to her and laid a hand on her arm. “I would never use something that I wasn’t sure of, Lydia. Don’t you trust me?”

  She tried to keep the indecision from her face but sensed when he read it in her eyes. She needed him to know she no longer doubted him.

  “I do, Joshua. Truly, I do trust you.”

  It was more than relief that washed across his face with her words. He seemed immeasurably grateful as he drew himself to his full, impressive height.

  “Depending on the roads,” he said, “I might be gone a day or more. Keep fluids in him and keep him as quiet as you can.”

  Lydia thought of her brother lying still and pale on the bed. “He’s getting worse, isn’t he?”

  “He’s not improving like I’d hoped he would. He needs the more powerful liniment if we stand a chance of keeping the infection from spreading. And he desperately needs relief from the pain.”

  Lydia took a step closer to Joshua, praying that he would take her in his arms and hold her. She needed his strength more now than she’d ever needed it.

  Without hesitation, Joshua reached out and pulled her to him. He wrapped his arms around her and brought his mouth down over hers.

  “I won’t be long,” he said at last.

  “Promise me,” Lydia begged, more frightened over her brother’s volatile condition than she’d ever felt before.

  “I promise, Lydia. I promise,” he repeated, then kissed her once more. “I’ll return as quickly as possible.

  In a rustle of coat and muffler he was gone.

  . . . .

  Not long after Joshua left, her brother’s fever spiked and refused to go down. Lydia fought it with every skill she possessed. Then the edges of the wound turned an angry red, and nothing she did seemed to help. No amount of cold water eased her brother’s fevered brow, and no careful application of salve quieted the inflamed wound.

  James thrashed on the bed, flinging his arms to and fro, more than once striking her on the shoulder and across the face.

  Lydia was desperate. She had no answers. She didn’t know wh
at to do that would ease her brother’s thrashing. If only Joshua hadn’t left her.

  After flailing uncontrollably for what seemed hours, James finally collapsed from exhaustion, leaving the wound gaping and oozing from the stitches that had been torn free.

  Where was Joshua? What should she do?

  Before she had time to reconsider, Lydia retrieved her coat, tied a heavy scarf around her neck, and raced to the neighboring cottage for help.

  Five

  Joshua pushed his mare through the heavy snow as fast as he dared. It had taken him longer than he’d anticipated to reach Russetsville and get the piric acid and morphine. He’d conferred hurriedly with Bennet Chamberlain and felt certain that the medicines now stowed in his saddle pouch were just what his patient needed.

  It had taken his mount longer to travel through the new drifts clogging the roads, but at last he saw the smoke rising from the chimney on James McDowell’s cottage. He was almost there. He was finally back to Lydia.

  When he reached the little house on Carriage Hill, he stabled his horse and raced to the wooden door. With a turn of the latch he shoved the door open.

  “Lydia! I’m back, Lydia.”

  Joshua knew right away that something was wrong. The eerie silence that met him was a like a warning shot to alert him that nothing was as it should be. He raced through the house to the bedroom where Lydia’s brother should be lying on the bed. But the covers were strewn about and the bed was empty.

  “Lydia!”

  Instead of hearing Lydia’s voice, Joshua only heard James McDowell’s painful moan coming from the far side of the room.

  Joshua raced around the bed and knelt beside his patient. First, he checked Lydia’s brother’s leg, then he grabbed a sheet from the bed and wrapped it around the exposed wound. He’d torn open several of the stitches and Joshua worked swiftly to stop the bleeding. When he had the wound wrapped, he struggled to pick James up from the floor and place him back on the bed.

  “Here,” he said lifting his head and placing some laudanum-laced wine to his lips.

  James drank a long swallow of the liquid, then sank back to the pillow.

  “Where’s your sister?” Joshua asked.

  “Right here, Doctor Jarvis.”

  Joshua looked over his shoulder to where Lydia stood in the doorway with Doctor Weatherby at her side. He shifted his gaze from Lydia to the older doctor, then back again. Anger he failed to keep at bay reared its ugly head.

  “You weren’t here and I needed help,” she whispered.

  Joshua glared at her. He refused to shift his gaze from her. Had she lied when she said she trusted him?

  “I didn’t know what to do, Joshua. I was so afraid.”

  “You couldn’t wait a little longer for me to return?”

  “James became suddenly worse. I was afraid he was going to die. Mr. Carmichael got me through to Dr. Weatherby who…who was good enough to come.”

  Joshua had no choice but to shift his gaze from her. It was entirely too uncomfortable to meet her eyes, or he might say things he would regret.

  He couldn’t look at her any longer. She’d admitted she didn’t want to come for him but her brother had insisted. In his absence she’d managed to get her way. The doctor she’d wanted all along to tend her brother was here to take his place.

  “I’ll leave you with the doctor. You have what you’ve wanted from the beginning.”

  “No, Joshua. Don’t leave.”

  “There’s nothing for me to do here. I’m sure Doctor Weatherby can do anything that needs to be done.”

  “Joshua? Didn’t you get the medicines you went after?”

  There was a pleading in her voice. A desperation that tore through him. But he could not give in. She’d used him enough.

  Without looking in her direction, Joshua shook his head, then took a step back when the older doctor took his place beside the bed. He bent over Lydia’s brother’s leg and lifted the bandage Joshua had just placed over the wound.

  Joshua couldn’t bear to watch someone else caring for his patient. He turned to leave.

  “What medications are you referring to?”

  Joshua hesitated. “Piric acid. And morphine.”

  The doctor huffed. “Balderdash, man. Piric acid? This leg has to come off or he’ll die,” Doctor Weatherby stated in an emotionless voice.

  Joshua stopped and turned. “No! His leg does not have to come off.”

  “It does if you don’t want him to die.”

  “No!”

  Doctor Weatherby glared at him with a hostile expression. “It would help if you would assist me instead of arguing with me.”

  “No, I won’t assist you in taking off this leg. It doesn’t need to come off.” Joshua knelt beside Lydia’s brother and took his hand. “Your leg doesn’t need to come off. I can save your leg.”

  “I don’t want to die.”

  “You won’t, James. I promise you won’t.”

  “Lydia?” her brother pleaded.

  Lydia turned her head until her eyes locked with her brother’s.

  Joshua waited. He waited until she gave the nod that she trusted him over Doctor Weatherby. He waited until she indicated she trusted Joshua’s skills as a doctor. If she didn’t, there could never be anything between them.

  “Trust me, Lydia,” Joshua pleaded softly.

  Without lifting her gaze from his, she nodded. “I do, Joshua. I trust you.”

  Joshua’s heart swelled until he feared his chest might explode. Before he could adequately respond, Lydia reached out and clasped her fingers to his. The feel of her flesh against his gave him a newfound sense of courage he hadn’t realized he needed.

  “I warn you, Miss McDowell,” the elderly Doctor Weatherby said in a stern voice. “The longer you wait, you’re sentencing your brother to certain death.”

  Lydia turned away from the doctor’s reprimand, then heard the door close as Doctor Weatherby left. She kept her gaze focused on Joshua’s until the house became quiet. “What do you want me to do?”

  “We’ll start with the morphine. Then the piric acid wash.”

  Joshua prepared the hypodermic needle, conscious every moment of Lydia’s wariness. It was a formidable implement and he expected at any moment that she would forbid him to administer the morphine. But she did not.

  Once James settled into the deep, quiet, morphine-induced slumber, Joshua carefully prepared the piric acid wash. “Put the hypodermic in boiling water for ten minutes. We’ll use it to get the piric acid as deeply into the wound as we can.” He handed her the instrument. “Then warm up another willow bark poultice. Once we’ve applied it around the outside edges of the wound to reduce the swelling, we’ll bandage his leg again and wait.”

  Lydia took the foul-smelling vial from him and warmed it on the brazier in the corner of the bedroom, then helped him tend to her brother.

  They worked together in harmonious fashion. Joshua penetrated the wound liberally with the acid, removed the most damaged flesh, then re-applied the remainder of the concoction, while Lydia readied the poultice and cut new bandages to wrap around her brother’s leg. When Joshua finished sewing the jagged wound, he applied the bandages and poultice and stood up and rolled his stiff shoulders. “Now, we wait,” he said as he washed his hands and cleared the soiled bedclothes and cloths from the bed.

  Joshua watched Lydia as she pulled the covers over her brother. There were tears in her eyes and Joshua knew the ordeal had been more traumatic than she’d let on. She was truly upset and on the verge of collapse.

  He walked closer to her and turned her to face him. Then, he pulled her into his arms and held her.

  “Your brother will be fine now,” he said with more conviction than he felt. He walked with her to a large velvet wing-backed chair and sat down, relieved when she allowed him to draw her onto his lap. He wrapped a blanket over her and held her while she softly cried.

  When she quieted, he kissed her forehead, then watched unti
l she closed her eyes and slept.

  . . . .

  Her brother’s fever rose quickly, an initial response to the invasive treatment. Lydia and Joshua battled with everything Joshua knew to do. James thrashed so violently that Joshua was forced to throw himself over the young man’s body to keep him from falling from the bed. Then, just as suddenly, his thrashing stopped and he trembled from chills that attacked him.

  Lydia gathered as many covers as she could find to keep her brother warm, but nothing seemed to help. And Joshua feared he couldn’t keep his promise to save her brother.

  The hours dragged on endlessly, and Joshua fought with all his skill to encourage James McDowell to stay with them and not give in to death. The pale expression on Lydia’s face told him she feared Joshua’s promise had been a lie.

  But finally, her brother’s fever broke and Joshua knew he’d turned the corner and would live. Lydia sat on the edge of the bed beside her brother. With trembling fingers she brushed back strands of dark mahogany hair from her brother’s forehead. Joshua had never seen a more tender sight.

  Then slowly, she lifted her head and looked at him with tears of joy and relief running down her cheeks. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  “You’re welcome,” Joshua answered. There was no explaining the emotions he felt. He’d never prayed so hard in all his life. He’d never prayed more fervently that a patient would live. He knew if James McDowell died he’d never allow himself to hold Lydia again.

  How could she ever forgive him if he failed to keep his promise?

  Joshua checked the wound while Lydia straightened the room. When Joshua was sure his patient slept soundly, they walked arm in arm to the drawing room. Their immense relief seemed to unite them, and he sensed her pressing into his side as a silent thank you.

  He turned, eagerly welcoming the gratitude he saw in her eyes as she turned her face up to his.

  “We did it,” she whispered.

  Joshua wrapped his arms around her and lowered his mouth until his lips were just a breath away from hers.

  “We did it,” he echoed.