Chapter Two
Village of Trentham
Fifteen Years Later
1817
Elinor washed the blood from her hands and turned back to the young boy. His eyes were crusted with dried tears and his lids had become heavy. He would sleep soon enough. She motioned to the boy’s mother to step outside.
“He’ll be fine, Mrs. Carruthers. It was only a shallow cut. The skull tends to bleed quite freely, so it appeared worse than it was. He will sleep the day through from the small amount of laudanum I gave him. Tomorrow he can resume his normal diet but keep him indoors and quiet for a few days.”
“Oh thank you, Lady Trentham!” The older woman wiped tears from her weather-reddened cheeks and took Elinor’s hand and kissed the back of it before Elinor knew what she was doing. “I was that frantic when I went to Doctor Venable’s house and learned he was off helpin’ Squire’s eldest with her first labor. But for you my boy would have died. I know he would.”
Elinor gently tugged her hand away from the woman’s viselike grasp. “No, no, he most certainly wouldn’t have. It was only a small cut, ma’am, nothing life-threatening. Now, you should take him home, before he wakes up.”
“I’ve got no money, my lady.” Her ruddy cheeks darkened even more.
“Please don’t concern yourself with that, Mrs. Carruthers.”
“Mr. Carruthers is fixed to bring in the lambs soon. I’ll bring you a fine leg of lamb.”
“That will be lovely.”
Mrs. Carruthers finally left, taking her sleeping child and embarrassing gratitude with her, leaving Elinor to tidy up her surgery. She’d learned to take the gifts her patients offered, even when they couldn’t afford to give such things away and Elinor didn’t need them. But she didn’t wish to insult the goodhearted folk and she always found a place for the offerings, usually in some other needy household; God knew there were enough of them on the current Earl of Trentham’s lands.
Elinor frowned as she bundled up the soiled linen. She liked thinking about her dead husband’s nephew—the current earl—almost as much as she liked thinking about her dead husband, which was to say not at all.
Instead, she turned her mind to the work she had yet to finish today. She was studying the human digestive system and had not completed the essay Doctor Venable had assigned her.
She finished cleaning the small surgery and was about to commence her studies when Beth bustled in, her plump, rosy cheeks bright with two spots of color.
“You must come with me, my lady. Quickly now. His lordship approaches with a guest.” Beth glanced around the room, her mouth tightening with disapproval. “You know how the earl feels about, well . . . about what it is you do here.”
Elinor closed the medical text she’d only just opened. “Fortunately I don’t need to concern myself with his lordship’s likes or dislikes, Beth. I am free of all male interference and direction in my life until I shuffle off my mortal coil.”
Beth frowned. “Well I don’t know nothin’ about those kinds of coals, my lady, but I do know you’ve blood on your second-best muslin. Come now, we must make haste.”
Her maid scolded Elinor nonstop as she dragged her from the outbuilding that served as her surgery toward the Dower House, which was her home. Beth did not stop when they reached her chambers. Instead, she yanked off the offending gown and then clucked and fussed as she garbed Elinor in her third-best morning gown.
“This dress is shameful, my lady. I can’t turn the hem again, it’s all but threadbare.”
“Where did you speak to Lord Trentham?” Elinor asked, before Beth could launch into her favorite topic: the dismal state of Elinor’s wardrobe.
“He was bound for town when I was coming back from the market, my lady.” She paused in the act of fastening the small buttons to cast a rapturous glance at Elinor. “With him was the most handsome man I have seen in . . . well . . . maybe ever.”
“Oh? Who is this paragon?”
“He’s not a foreigner, my lady, but a proper gentleman.”
Elinor bit back a smile. “A paragon is something of unsurpassed excellence, Beth, not a foreign dignitary.”
“He has the most beautiful green eyes,” Beth continued, not interested in a vocabulary lesson. “And hair the color of polished copper. He was dressed bang up to the nines, my lady, and made his lordship look quite dull. His coat was a dark mustard shade with—”
Elinor held up one hand. “Green, copper, mustard? He sounds quite vulgar. Did his hat have bells?”
Beth grunted. “Oh you do like to tease, my lady.” She gave Elinor’s shawl a few twitches before stepping back to admire her handiwork in the mirror. Her smile faltered.
“Poor Beth,” Elinor chuckled, patting her maid’s hand. “I don’t give you much to work with, do I?” She stumped toward the door, her leg heavy and awkward from standing too long in her surgery.
“Oh, my lady, what a thing to say. Why, you’ve a sweet figure and such lovely eyes. And beautiful, thick hair, if you’d only let me—”
“I suppose I must offer them tea,” Elinor said, stopping her maid before she could get started on yet another of her favorite harangues: Elinor’s person and how she failed to make the most of it. “Will you have Hetty send in some of her currant buns. They are just the sort of thing to appeal to gentlemen. I shall receive them in the library,” she added, closing the door on her servant’s protests before limping down the narrow stairs to the second floor.
She would receive her visitors in the book-lined room no matter that it defied convention—or maybe because it defied convention—and would irritate her dead husband’s successor.
Elinor loathed Charles Atwood, the Fifth Earl of Trentham, and he loathed her right back. He was a greedy, self-absorbed man who did a
