Winter's Cold Heart by Laura Landon

Author:Laura Landon
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2019-11-21T16:00:00+00:00

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.

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