The Irish Healer by Nancy Herriman

some time. “But I know nothing of Finchingfield. You’ve been there, but Inever have. Perhaps Dr. Edmunds will be so kind as to invite me someday.”
    She turned her gaze on James, and he saw the desperation in her eyes. James’s grip on his glass tightened. He blamed Thaddeus for letting his sister cling to the hope they would wed. Blamed himself for not rectifying the mistake earlier. He refused to marry out of obligation. He had done that before . . . and failed miserably.
    “Molly,” he called out, bringing the maid back into the dining room. “Dr. Castleton and I are ready for our cigars. Also, could you send for Miss Dunne? I would like her to escort Miss Castleton to the drawing room and keep her company until Dr. Castleton and I are finished.”
    He felt, rather than noticed, Miss Castleton brighten. She must be thinking that the awaited time has come .
    “Yes, sir,” Molly replied, placing the inlaid wood cigar box at his side and hurrying off.
    “Who is Miss Dunne?” asked Thaddeus. “The name sounds Irish.”
    “She’s the assistant I hired. Very intelligent, disciplined young woman.” Who had weighed next-to-nothing when he’d carried her in his arms, tucked against his chest. He had held her closer than he’d needed to. James swallowed some seltzer. “She is a cousin of an old friend of Mariah’s. She was in need of a job for a short while, until she becomes established in London. She plans on teaching, I believe.”
    “Sounds as though she has quite won you over, this Irish teacher,” stated Miss Castleton, voice taut, her face maintaining a polite smile while her eyes hardened.
    “If by ‘won me over’ you mean I’ve come to appreciatehow competent she is, then yes, Miss Castleton, she has won me over. And I’m happy to have helped her. Her family has encountered financial difficulties, forcing her to seek employment here.”
    Thaddeus clicked his tongue against his teeth. “Like so many of them. The Irish are coming by the droves off steamers. There must be hundreds of them settling around St. Giles. Turning the place into a stinking hole, if you ask me. They show up at my front door during my one hour of seeing charity patients with their grimy children or drunk husbands and think I can cure them.” He scoffed. “What they fail to realize is if they would live in clean surroundings, not packed cheek-by-jowl like herring in a jar, and abstained from their drink and their other foul habits, they might not contract every known disease.”
    His sister was nodding in agreement.
    “I doubt they enjoy the surroundings they find themselves in, Thaddeus,” James said, seeking to defend a people he had paid little attention to in the past. Miss Dunne’s people. “We must help them where we can, even if all we do is offer treatment and advice. If they wish to improve their condition, the best will manage.”
    “I do wonder if they know how to work hard enough to do so. Soon they’ll overrun the city, and then what will the rest of us do? They bring disease along with increased crime. I’ve heard from several colleagues that the cholera has returned among the immigrants and poor on the East Side. Soon it will be in the slums of St. Giles, mark my word. And that is coming too close for comfort.”
    “I didn’t realize the cholera had returned,” James said, gleaning the one piece of significant news buried withinThaddeus’s diatribe. “I have been so preoccupied recently, I hadn’t heard.”
    “A case here or there.” He looked over at his sister. “There is no need to worry, Louisa. It’s a disease that prefers the poor, as you know. You will be perfectly safe, so long as you stay away from St. Giles.”
    “Oh, Thaddeus, I pray it stays there!” she said, her cheeks paling. “Do you recall that my lady’s maid lost her sister to the cholera in March? And so quickly. She died in less than twelve hours. Horrid, wretched disease. I shall insist upon leaving London if it