Isabelle and Alexander by Rebecca Anderson (new books to read TXT) 📗

through her mind stayed to become contemplations, but now and then she found herself thinking what it might be like to become a widow at three and twenty. Would she, she wondered, settle here at Wellsgate? Would she return to her parents?

When she realized that these thoughts intruded on the storm of her mind, she hurried to push them away and replace them with fabricated certainties about Alexander’s complete recovery and immediate return to full health.

She tried to believe in these hopeful inventions even as she watched Alexander lying motionless and unresponsive.

For several days of what Isabelle began to think of as “preconvalescence,” Alexander lay unmoving. Surely, she thought, any day, any evening, any night now, he’ll sit up, complain of headache, and roar to be fed.

How she wished he’d do any of these things.

She spent days at his side, attempting to read books aloud to him only to discover that she read the same passages over and over. She picked up a set of drawing pencils from a table drawer and drew Alexander’s hands as they lay motionless on the thin blanket that covered him. She attempted needlework and discovered that her threads would tangle as quickly as her thoughts.

One afternoon, in anticipation of the doctor’s visit, Isabelle brought in fresh linens and sleepwear for Alexander. She knelt over him and brushed his hair from his forehead. Recoiling, she cried out. His skin was far too hot.

She poured a small basin of water and found a soft cloth. Sitting beside the couch, she dipped the cloth, wrung out the excess water, and laid it on Alexander’s brow. He did not move but for a deeper line between his eyes. She held his hands, hot as well, and attempted to cool them with more damp cloths.

At the doctor’s arrival, Isabelle requested to stay for the examination. For all other such assessments, she had removed herself for the sake of propriety, but Alexander wouldn’t be embarrassed about what he couldn’t see or hear, after all.

“I am sure the fever isn’t a positive development, but is this cause for worry?” she asked, looking earnestly at Doctor Kelley. His wrinkled hands slipped efficiently across Alexander’s forehead, shoulders, and arms. As he had each time he’d visited, he gave Isabelle a gentle and genuine smile. Not a large man, he seemed to fill the rooms he entered with a feeling of competence and confidence.

The doctor looked at her sideways as he continued to examine Alexander. “If the fever continues, there is much to concern me. If he doesn’t wake soon, there are likely far more troubling issues at hand.”

The forthright words did nothing to cover the doctor’s very personal concern. This was the man who had cared for Alexander’s family for several decades. Isabelle had learned over the previous days that Doctor Kelley had seen Alexander through childhood illnesses, quite a few accidents, and the death of the elder Mr. Osgood. He cared deeply about the outcome of this examination, and that care was apparent to Isabelle.

She tried and failed to keep a shaking out of her voice as she asked, “And why has he not awakened yet?”

He shook his head. “It’s impossible to say for certain. Many factors could be at play here. I believe the most likely situation is that Mr. Osgood has sustained an injury his body is attempting to heal and that healing can only take place while he remains at rest.” He turned to face her. “The body knows many secrets that we cannot imagine, and sometimes we have to trust it to heal itself.”

He adjusted a cushion under Alexander’s legs. “And you? Have you slept?”

“Of course.” Isabelle blushed. Was it so obvious that she’d spent several nights curled up on this parlor chair? “I am fine. Worry only about Mr. Osgood.”

“When he wakes, you may likely find yourself nursemaid to a difficult patient.” The doctor smiled at Isabelle. “I have set several bones for this one, and he fair denies the charge to sit still.”

Something about the doctor’s tone invited a deeper probing of this topic. “Did he break many bones as a child?”

The doctor shook his head as if remembering something uncomfortable. “His own and others’, I’m afraid.”

Isabelle gasped, and the doctor grinned at her. “Not from any malice, I assure you.”

“Is that typical of childhood in these parts?” she asked, playing into his obvious effort to relax her.

The gray head shook gently from side to side. “Ah, the stories I could tell.”

Isabelle laughed. “For a scone and a cup of tea, would you share one or two of them?”

The doctor picked up his bag. “Certainly, they’re all old news. Your husband surely told you all of his adventures.”

Surely.

Isabelle ignored the sting that assumption carried to her heart. Instead, she called upon Doctor Kelley’s obvious good humor. “But, sir, it would be a delightful diversion to hear them from your perspective.”

He looked at her as if to ascertain the sincerity of the invitation.

She would make it clear that she desired him to stay. “Please, sir? You could stay an hour, couldn’t you? We could visit, and perhaps by then his fever will have broken.”

“Would that it could,” he said. Then, possibly realizing that his comment sounded hopeless, he set the bag at the foot of a chair and turned to Isabelle, giving her his full attention. “Mrs. Osgood, it would be a great honor to share a scone and a cup of tea, not to mention impart a thing or two I’ve come to know about our Alec.”

Alec? She thought she remembered Mr. Kenworthy saying Mr. Osgood’s name thus, but she assumed he’d simply been rushing to get to the next words. Did Alexander have other friends who called him Alec? How odd that she had not known it. But, upon reflection, she realized that of her regular associates, she only ever heard the servants call him by his name; clearly, they would only ever refer to him as Mr. Osgood or sir. Isabelle