She Brought a Doctor’s Bag to the Duke’s Estate — By Winter, the Village Was Grateful
Chapter 9
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She went the next morning. She carried the bag, the notebook, the three vials wrapped in flannel, and a map of Kestleford with the sick houses marked in red.The footman showed her not to the library, but to the steward's office. Josiah Harcourt was waiting there behind his desk, his hands folded, his round face pleasant."His Grace is engaged, Miss Carrow," he said. "He has asked me to hear whatever it is you have come about. And I should tell you before you begin that I have been told what you were doing at Harrow Head on Sunday."Harcourt heard her out. He was very good at listening: he nodded at the map, held the black vial to the window, and turned the pages of her father's notebook with a respectful finger. Then he closed it and handed it back."Miss Carrow, I will be frank with you because I believe you are a sensible woman. The Hartside Company pays this estate £900 a year for its lease. It is the only money this house has that the bailiffs have not already counted. If you go about the village saying the Duke's water is poison, there will be a panic. The company will take fright and go to law. His Grace will be ruined, and the village with him, for there is not a family in Kestleford that does not live off this estate one way or another.""And if I say nothing, Mr. Harcourt, they will go on burying their children.""Their children die of what children have always died of: damp, bad air off the bog, poor feeding." He smiled. "I have taken the liberty of writing to Dr. Lionel Strand of Hexham, a physician of the Edinburgh school. He will examine the village and give us a proper opinion. Until he has, I must ask you to keep your parlor chemistry to yourself. The cottage is His Grace's, you will recall, and Lady Day is not so very far off."She walked out of the steward's office without another word, and she did not go back down the drive. She went round by the stable yard and waited at the bridge where the curricle had gone over, because she had learned in a fortnight that the Duke of Harrowmere rode out alone every morning at nine and came back the same way.He reined in when he saw her; for a moment, she thought he would ride past. "Miss Carrow.""Your Grace. Your steward has told me you were engaged. I have waited so that you might be disengaged."He dismounted. She told him—standing in the road with the gray horse blowing at her shoulder—everything she had told Harcourt, and one thing more: Jem Rookwood's hands.When she had finished, he said nothing for so long that she thought he had not been listening.