Winter's Cold Heart (Seasons Book 1)

by Laura Landon

  She wiped the blood away again, then rushed inside James’s bedroom with the bucket of snow.

  “I brought in some snow to pack the towels with.”

  “Excellent,” Doctor Jarvis answered as he continued to work on James’s leg. “I’m almost done,” he said, “which is a good thing. Your brother is starting to—”

  Lydia wiped her forehead, then placed the bloody cloth on the bedside table. She didn’t think he’d been watching, but he must have seen it.

  “What the hell happened?”

  “It’s nothing,” Lydia said turning her head so he couldn’t see the extent of her injury. She didn’t think it was too severe, but she was starting to get light-headed and her forehead throbbed.

  “I asked you what you did.”

  “I fell getting the snow and hit my head on the bucket.”

  “Stop what you’re doing and press a cold cloth against the cut.”

  Lydia knew better than to argue with him. She pressed the cloth against her forehead, then continued to minister to James.

  Doctor Jarvis was correct. James was starting to wake. He thrashed his head back and forth and moved enough that Doctor Jarvis had a difficult time bandaging his leg.

  “Here,” Lydia said. “Let me help. I’ll hold him still while you finish.”

  “I’m going to regret letting you help me,” he said. “You should be sitting quietly until I can see how badly you’re hurt.”

  “It’s just a scratch. You know head wounds always bleed profusely.”

  “Let’s pray that’s right in your case.”

  Lydia prayed it was, too. Her head ached like bloody blazes and her stomach churned from the pain and a lack of anything to eat since lunchtime. She took in several deep breaths hoping her head would clear and she wouldn’t embarrass herself by fainting.

  She held her brother’s leg while Doctor Jarvis finished. When he was done, he poured some laudanum into a glass of whisky and lifted James’s head so he could drink. While he was tending James, Lydia gathered the soiled cloths and carried them along with a basin of dirty water to the kitchen.

  Her head ached even more and the room spun in dizzying circles. She needed something to eat, yet she knew if she ate anything it would come back up. She tossed the water out the back door and dropped the soiled cloths into a bucket to boil later, then turned to make her way to the nearest chair.

  She needed to sit. Her legs weren’t steady beneath her and her entire body seemed to tremble uncontrollably.

  She’d only taken one step toward the table when she lost her balance. Before she reached a chair, the room went dark and she collapsed to the floor.

  . . . .

  “Miss McDowell!”

  Joshua heard the crash of a chair overturning and raced from his patient’s bedroom. He knew he should have made the young woman remain in the bedroom and not overexert herself. The cut on her forehead was deep and still bleeding.

  “Miss McDowell?” he said, kneeling beside her.

  He felt her forehead and her cheeks. They were cool and clammy, but not alarmingly so. He brushed the hair from her face and placed a hand on her shoulder to keep her from trying to rise. Her eyes fluttered, then opened.

  “Don’t move. Just lie still.”

  “I’m fine,” she said in a voice filled with pain.

  “Of course you are. It’s quite normal for people who are physically fine to faint and end up on the floor.”

  “I just—”

  “Just relax,” he instructed without giving her a chance to argue.

  Joshua glanced around the kitchen and saw a cushioned rocking chair on the opposite side of the room close to the hearth. He scooped her up into his arms and carried her across the room. After he’d placed a blanket over her lap, he filled a basin of water and cleaned her wound.

  As he touched her face he found himself fascinated by its porcelain smoothness, by her eyelashes that seemed impossibly long and full, by the softness of the moist curls that framed her face. His movements became less of a treatment and more of a caress. The emotion he experienced was foreign to him and he scarcely knew what had come over him.

  “You’re fortunate the wound isn’t as deep as I feared it was. I don’t think I’ll need to sew your flesh together.” He reared back and grinned. “Unless you want me to, that is.”

  Her gaze shot upward and her eyes locked with his. Joshua couldn’t keep the humor from his eyes.

  “That wasn’t funny,” she said, meeting his gaze and failing to hold a serious expression.

  “It wasn’t? And here I’ve been told I have a keen sense of humor.” Joshua placed a folded cloth on her wound and brought her hand up over it. “Hold this but don’t press too hard. The bleeding has stopped and I don’t want it to start again.”

  She did what she was told.

  “Do you have some wine here?”

  “Yes. In the sitting room, in the cupboard.”

  Joshua left the room and returned with a bottle of wine and a glass. “Here,” he said handing her a nearly full glass of wine.

  “Hopefully, you don’t have something else for me to do,” she said when she’d taken a sip of the wine. “I’ve run out of hands.”

  Joshua couldn’t stop the bark of laughter from escaping. “I see you’re a match for my humor.”

  “I can give you a run, Doctor Jarvis,” she said taking another sip of her wine.

  “Joshua,” he said. “You might as well call me Joshua, since it’s not likely I’ll be rushed with patients and have to leave. Nor will I be able to return to my surgery anytime soon. It seems to be snowing even harder, if that’s possible, and your brother will need me to watch over him.”

  “Then you must call me Lydia.”

  Joshua kept his gaze focused on her and couldn’t seem to turn away from her.

  “Lydia. It’s a lovely name.”

  Her cheeks turned a rosy red as if she was embarrassed he’d complimented her. She demurely lowered her gaze. But not before he noticed yet again the dazzling blueness of her eyes.

  He thought if he could, he would like to stare at her features all day long, and deep into the night.

  “You’re staring.”

  Joshua recovered his wits and took a step away. Yes, he’d been staring. How could he not?

  He returned to the sitting room and brought a pillow from the settee and placed it behind her head. “Close your eyes now and relax. I’ll return after I’ve seen to your brother.”

  “If I close my eyes, how will I know you’re not still staring?” She cocked her head and raised an eyebrow as if she’d just issued an unanswerable fact.

  He laughed.

  “Well, let’s just assume I’ll be staring.”

  He winked, making her laugh, and left the room.

  Joshua walked down the hall to Lydia’s brother’s room. Before he entered, he braced his hand against the door frame and lowered his head beneath his outstretched arm. For a moment he’d actually forgotten how disrupted his life was. How uncertain his future had become. This woman had so easily diverted him from his own worry that something inside him felt like grasping on to her to keep that pleasant distraction close by.

  But that was sheer folly. He could never do that to Miss McDowell. Even though he was drawn to her unlike he’d ever been drawn to another female, he sensed she regarded him with suspicion. And why shouldn’t she? If the people of Middleton discovered he’d tended James McDowell, he was certain their reaction wouldn’t be kind. They might even take their anger out on Lydia.

  Joshua stepped into McDowell’s bedroom and checked on his patient. Lydia’s brother would be lucky if he didn’t develop a fever. He would be luckier still if he survived.

  The wound Joshua tended was deep and the flesh around it had been mangled beyond simple repair. Even if Joshua managed to keep McDowell alive, he doubted he could save his leg.

  Even if he managed to save his patient’s leg, he doubted he could ever restore his own former p
ride.

  Three

  Lydia opened her eyes and looked around the room. She’d fallen asleep. She wasn’t sure how long she’d slept but it must have been well over an hour. She turned her head to look out the window but couldn’t see anything but darkness and snow plastered against the panes. She placed her hands on the arms of the chair in an effort to rise.

  “Don’t try to get up without help,” the doctor’s deep, rich voice said from beside her.

  Lydia turned her head and found him approaching her.

  “How do you feel?”

  Lydia lifted her gaze. She saw concern in his compassionate eyes. “Much better. My head scarcely hurts.” It was a small lie, but she abhorred the thought that he might view her as a simpering female.

  “Good.”

  “How is James?”

  “He’s sleeping at the moment. But he’s developed a fever. I’ve placed cold cloths on him and it seems to help, but that could change at any moment.”

  Lydia nodded and was about to speak, but Doctor Jarvis held up a hand in warning. “You’ll smell alcohol on him, but don’t be alarmed. I’ve dampened the towels with a modest amount of the whiskey, which may help. But you must not try to do this yourself. Too much alcohol soaking through his skin and he could slip away.”

  The doctor’s words poured rampant energy into her worries. James could slip away? Then why would this man use such a dangerous procedure? Lydia rose without his aid and turned toward the bedroom, determined to remove the alcohol-soaked cloths. The man was known to be careless with his patients. How could she trust him to get the procedure correct when he’d already killed two people who seemed on the verge of recovering?

  She rushed to her brother’s room and began pulling the reeking towels from her brother’s body.

  “Lydia! What on earth are you doing?”

  She refused to turn to the doctor but continued her mission.

  “Lydia? Stop now. It was working, can’t you see?”

  She grasped the final towel but stopped, startled by James’s peaceful sleep. In wonder, she laid her hand on his chest. It was very nearly the same warmth as her own hand. Swiftly, she moved her hand to his cheek and then his forehead, but there was no alarming warmth.

  “Just a little longer, Lydia. To be safe.” Joshua Jarvis walked to the opposite side of the bed. “Help me now. I’ll show you how to arrange the cloths.”

  Lydia shrank away. She’d jumped to an unwarranted conclusion, as if she knew better than he how to treat her brother. Her eyes moved to the exposed wound on James’s leg. It looked as wretched as ever, but the edges of the long wound that had been such an angry red were slightly less inflamed. He had a long way to go before the wound could truly be said to be improving, but this was a small step in the right direction.

  Perhaps Doctor Jarvis did not deserve her suspicion after all.

  Still…

  Lydia squared her shoulders. “In future I’ll expect you to explain your plan before you do anything further to my brother. Is that understood?”

  Doctor Jarvis remained bent over James, still as stone. The only thing that moved was his hand that slowly smoothed the final towel in place. Then, as slowly as an awakening sphinx, he straightened to his full height.

  And left the room.

  . . . .

  Lydia sat before the fire, agonizing over her brutal words to the man who was saving her brother. Why in God’s name had she chosen to believe the townspeople—most of whom she scarcely knew—over what she’d witnessed with her own eyes? He’d been deathly silent for the last several hours, explaining in clipped terms every move he was about to make.

  “Now I’ll pour some weak tea into a cup and help your brother to drink it.”

  Lydia grimaced. “All right, all right. You don’t have to explain every move. Just the medical ones.”

  “Ah. So you only wish to pass judgment upon things about which you know little or nothing.”

  She felt her eyes flare with annoyance.

  “Really, now. Must you be so exasperating? Forget I said anything.”

  She waited for him to speak, and when he finally did, it was to change the subject. Perhaps she’d been forgiven. She couldn’t quite tell.

  “Do you and your brother live here alone?”

  The change of subject threw her for a moment. But his neutral tone was welcome after the stony words that had passed between them for the last few hours.

  “Yes, but we have a day maid who comes in each morning. I sent her home when it started to snow. James also has someone who comes to help him with the livestock, but he sent him home, as well.”

  The doctor nodded, then helped Lydia rise when she held out her hand for assistance. Her throbbing head made her secretly welcome his attentiveness.

  The man was tall and muscular, his tendons rippling where his sleeves had been rolled up. She prepared herself for his strong grasp. But nothing prepared her for the welcome tingle that traveled up her arm when she discovered his touch to be once again gentle, steady, even comforting.

  Then, instead of releasing her hand, he stepped even closer to her. She tipped her head to look him in the eyes and he focused his gaze on hers. She sat still as stone until ever so slowly, his gaze lowered to her mouth.

  He was going to kiss her. Lydia knew it as surely as she knew her own heart was beating like a smithy’s hammer. As his hand came up to her cheek she fought the panic rising in her breast.

  And then his thumb stroked the tender skin below her eye, making her bite her lower lip to stop its quivering.

  He drew closer, peering into the depths of her right eye as she held her breath. But an instant later the heat rose to her cheeks.

  The man wasn’t trying to kiss her. He was examining her. That was all. No kiss, no caressing thumb. Just checking to see that her eyes were clear. As any doctor would.

  Yet her heart was slow to release its vision.

  In her mind, the doctor lowered his head until his lips touched hers.

  In her mind, Lydia skimmed her palms up his soft linen shirt, then wrapped her arms around his neck.

  In her mind, her fingers tangled in the hint of curls that covered his collar. She could literally feel its soft thickness even as he deepened their imaginary kiss.

  She’d never felt so forward. It was not her nature to be biddable where men were concerned. Even though she’d been engaged to be married, and had been kissed once or twice, the boys’ affections had never moved her as this fanciful kiss with the doctor had. How could anything be so mind-altering?

  With a smile, the doctor raised his other hand to her other cheek, cradling her face as he smiled.

  “It appears you’re on the mend, Miss McDowell.”

  As he began to withdraw his hands, Lydia hoisted herself from the chair and put several paces between herself and the man who still had her blushing.

  But he hadn’t seemed to notice. He merely turned, walked to the window, and wiped the glass. “I don’t think the snow has let up any.”

  “Are you saying you’re stranded here?” Lydia was suddenly ashamed of the disdain in her voice.

  He turned his head to look at her over his shoulder. “I promise I shall leave at the earliest opportunity so nobody will discover you’ve been sequestered here with the village murderer.”

  Lydia gasped. “I didn’t mean—”

  The doctor looked at her for several heart-stopping moments. “Of course you did.”

  Lydia turned sharply toward the stove on the far wall of the kitchen. “I made some stew earlier,” Lydia said after several moments. “It’s in the cold cellar. I’ll heat it so we can have something to eat.”

  “Tell me where it is and I’ll get it,” he said.

  “The hatch is there in the floor, just to your left. The stewpot is on the first shelf at the bottom of the steps,” Lydia answered.

  Joshua Jarvis lifted the hatch and prepared to descend into the cellar. Lydia braced her hands against the back of a ch
air. That silly bump on her head must have sent her temporarily mad. No matter which way she turned her gaze, she saw the kiss that had never happened, felt the lips that had never brushed hers, relished yet again the flood of emotion the kiss had launched.

  The imaginary kiss, that is.

  Lydia pushed herself away from the chair and went to the bedroom to check on James. She pressed her hand to his forehead, then rinsed the towel that was drying there in fresh, cold water. His head turned when the cool cloth touched him.

  “Lydia?”

  “Yes, James.” She leaned closer to him and brushed several strands of hair from his temple.

  “Is Doctor Jarvis still here?”

  “Yes, James. It’s snowing so hard I doubt he’ll be able to leave for at least a day or two.”

  He reached a finger to point at her bandaged forehead. “Are you… all right?”

  Lydia smiled. “Yes, James. I’m fine.”

  “Good. Could I have something to drink?”

  “Of course,” she said, lifting the restorative glass of wine to his lips.

  Before she’d placed the glass back on the table, Doctor Jarvis entered the room. He walked to the bed and lifted the sheet covering her brother’s wound.

  Lydia didn’t look at her brother’s leg, but she could tell that Joshua Jarvis wasn’t happy with what he saw. Her brother must have thought the same.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “Your wound is showing signs of infection. I have a poultice ready. Hopefully, that will draw out the infection.”

  “And if it doesn’t?”

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

  James grasped the doctor’s wrist. “Don’t take off my leg, Doctor.”

  “Hopefully, it won’t come to that.”

  Her brother turned to Lydia with anxious eyes. “Promise me you won’t let him take off my leg, Lydia. I don’t want to live with just one leg.”

  “Oh, James—”

  “Promise me, Liddy.”