There's Something About Lady Mary (25 page)

They walked on in silence for a while, just listening to the sound of the gravel crunching beneath their feet. Blackbirds swirled across the sky in a flurry of dark feathers before disappearing into a tree.

“I am curious, though,” Mr. Croyden suddenly told her. “As a young man, your father always kept a journal.”

Mary’s head snapped around to stare at the man who claimed to be her uncle, but whom in reality she didn’t really know from a hole in the wall. What on earth did he know about the journals, and why the sudden interest?

“I was wondering if he might have continued to do so,” Mr. Croyden said, looking completely undeterred by Mary’s reaction to his question.

“Why do you ask?” She did her best to sound completely dispassionate.

“Because if there is one thing that I remember about your father, it is how meticulous he always was. Even during his apprenticeships, he always questioned his superiors at every turn; drove them mad, you know. He would compare procedures, as I recall, always striving to find the best method instead of just following along like a sheep. I admired him for it, and, well, the thing is that I was hoping that he might still be able to help me.”

The slightest frown appeared on Mary’s forehead as she turned her head to look at her uncle. “I am sorry, Mr. Croyden, you must forgive me, but I am completely lost now. Would you please explain yourself to me?”

“Yes, of course,” Mr. Croyden replied with a tight smile. “As it happens, I have recently been diagnosed with a sarcoma. The last three surgeons I spoke to have advised me to have my leg amputated, but I was hoping that there might be another option. In fact, I was hoping that if my brother did continue to keep his journals, that there might be something in them that I might be able to use.”

Mary stared at him. “You have a sarcoma on your leg?”

Staring straight ahead and into the distance, Mr. Croyden grimly nodded his head.

“How big is it?”

“About the size of an egg,” he muttered.

“Good heavens,” Mary said softly. There was grave concern in her eyes now as she reached out to take her uncle’s arm, squeezing it gently as a mark of comfort. “I will have to discuss this with Mr. Summersby since. . .” She saw the look of desperation on Mr. Croyden’s face and forced herself to give him a reassuring smile. “I promise that we will do what we can; I don’t have much experience with such things, but I do know that amputating can worsen your condition. In fact, I once saw a patient who had chosen that exact same course of action, hoping to rid himself of a sarcoma in his arm. The cancer metastasized, and the man died.” Perhaps not the most positive thing she could tell a sick man, but he deserved to know the truth.

“Oh, dear,” Mr. Croyden groaned, looking more miserable than ever, then turned his head to look at her with a hint of curiosity. “Would you by any chance care to tell me how you managed to see such a thing? I know that my brother enjoyed breaking the rules, but I cannot imagine that he would have allowed his daughter to. . .”

His words died at the stony look in Mary’s eyes. “Most people would disapprove,” she told him calmly, waiting to gauge his reaction. “But my father taught me everything he knew about medicine. He trained me to be quite a skilled surgeon.”

“Really? How very. . .unusual.” There was a lack of astonishment in his voice, however, that put Mary on guard once again. Why would such an outrageous admission not shock him more?

“But what about the journals?” Mr. Croyden pressed. “Doesn’t John suggest any form of treatment that might prevent me from having to cut off a limb?”

Mary sighed, her momentary suspicions set aside in light of a medically related challenge. “If I am not mistaken, he does mention a type of treatment that he came across once in Paris. He never tried it, though, and, to be honest, it would probably take a while for me to perfect it.”

“But it might work? There might be a slight possibility that I can be cured?” Mr. Croyden asked hopefully.

Mary hated having to tell the man that it was very unlikely that she would be able to do anything other than what the other surgeons had offered to do. “I shall have another look at my father’s journals as soon as we return to the house,” she said. “Depending on what I find, we will try to determine the best course of action. I shall have to examine you, though.”

“Yes, of course,” her uncle said, breathing a sigh of relief. “And I can help you if you like—with the journals, I mean. I am quite curious to see what else my brother might have written about over the years.”

Mary cast him a sidelong glance. She couldn’t help but wonder if everything Mr. Croyden had just told her was true. Once again, Ryan’s words rang loudly in her head:
Don’t trust anyone.

“M
ary, I was wondering if I might be able to have a word with you in private,” Ryan whispered as he followed her from the dining room after dinner that evening.

“Yes, of course,” she said. She looked about hesitantly as the rest of the party wandered off toward the parlor. “I need to speak with you too. Where can we. . .?”

“This way,” he told her, taking her by the arm and pulling her through a wide archway.

He led her toward the conservatory, where the humid air was filled with the scent of wet soil. Mary stared up at the glass dome covering the room as she took Ryan’s hand and followed him along a tiled walkway toward a small seating area that looked out over the gardens.

“Mary,” Ryan said gravely, releasing his hold on her so that he could arrange one of the rattan chairs for her, “I was looking through your father’s journals again, just before dinner, and something stood out, something that I hadn’t noticed before.”

“Oh?” Mary asked with mounting curiosity as she sat down. Her eyes trailed after Ryan as he moved to the opposite side of the table.

“Remember all of those surgical cases your father mentioned? The ones where all the patients died?” He took the seat across from her and then leaned forward to rest his elbows on his thighs.

Mary nodded. Of course she remembered; she’d scarcely been able to think of anything else since Ryan had pointed it out.

“Well, at the end of each of those entries, there are always a couple of letters: MH, MC, SB, VR, MT, I think. There are a few more, but I don’t recall what they are right now.” He frowned. “The interesting part is that these letters keep being repeated. I believe I counted roughly thirty VR’s alone.”

Mary looked off into the distance as she mulled this over. “Initials perhaps?” she finally suggested.

“I thought about that too,” Ryan told her. “But if they are, then they don’t belong to anybody that I’ve ever heard of.”

Mary had to agree with that. Though she hadn’t met all of her father’s friends and colleagues, she was quite certain that she knew the names of most of them. None of these initials—if that was what they were—matched.

“So, even with this new discovery, we haven’t really made any progress at all in terms of figuring out what this is all about.”

“Well, I’m not so sure about that,” Ryan told her with a smile. “You see, I had to read every single bit of information to find it, but eventually I did. One entry actually lists the date of the surgery and the hospital in which it was performed. When we get back to London in another couple of days, we can go to that hospital, ask them to pull the records, and see if a name matching those initials pops up.”

“Oh, Ryan!” Mary exclaimed with an edge of excitement, “I could absolutely kiss you right now.”

“Then by all means,” he told her with a devilish grin, “go right ahead. I certainly won’t be stopping you.”

She looked nervously about the room, confident that someone would jump out from behind one of the ferns the minute her lips touched Ryan’s. “I, er. . .I don’t think. . .”

“Then I shall have to kiss
you,
” he said as he leaned across the table between them to place a tender kiss upon her lips. “After all, I’ve been able to think of very little else since earlier in the day when we—”

“Ryan,” she muttered, cutting him off, “someone might hear you.”

“Unfortunately for you,” he told her mischievously, “I really don’t care. In fact, I don’t mind if the whole world knows that all I can think of is you, lying naked beneath me on the bed while I—”

“Stop,” Mary laughed, almost chokingly. “Please stop; it is hot enough in here as it is without your steaming up the windows by saying such indecent things. Besides, there is another matter that we need to discuss, so I really would appreciate it if you could be serious for just a moment longer.”

“Only if you promise me that such an effort will be greatly rewarded upstairs in your bedroom later this evening,” he murmured as he waggled his eyebrows with exaggerated fervor.

“I shall look forward to it,” Mary told him with a playful smile, while a slow heat made its way toward her cheeks.

“Excellent,” he said. He leaned back against his chair and folded his hands patiently in his lap. “Then by all means tell me. What is on your mind?”

She told Ryan about her conversation with her uncle and how she’d assured him that she’d check the journals for a way in which to treat his sarcoma. “I didn’t get a chance to do it yet, so perhaps we could do it together and save some time. I know that my father mentioned a cancer patient in there somewhere, a woman who was treated by a Parisian surgeon, I believe. As far as I recall, her situation was quite different from what my uncle is now faced with, but maybe we can try to apply a similar cure.”

Ryan looked at her skeptically. “That isn’t all, though, is it? Something else is bothering you; I can tell.”

“Well, with everything that has happened so far, I just don’t feel very comfortable about this man whom I really do not know showing up out of nowhere and declaring to be my long-lost uncle. He mentioned the journals a couple of times and has asked me to see them under the pretext that he wants to understand his brother’s reasons for leaving, and. . .Oh, I do not know, something about it just doesn’t feel right.”

“Well, I am quite sure that he is who he claims to be Mary, or Percy would not have brought him all the way out here. I can guarantee that a thorough background check was done to make sure that he is not an imposter, especially because of everything that has happened.

“However, it is not for me to say if he is somehow involved in the threats against you. I suppose it might make sense that a man who is as sick as he is would want to get his hands on your father’s journals, where he might discover other possible treatment options that physicians in this country are otherwise ignorant of.” Ryan paused for a moment, as if considering the possibility of Alistair Croyden’s being the very culprit they’d been seeking. “Of course, we would need something more solid to go on than just a hunch, but I have to admit that he would also have a compelling reason to resent both you and your father.”

Mary stared at Ryan, her brow furrowing into a deep frown. “Because of the inheritance?”

“Well, of course, Mary. Your grandfather snubbed Mr. Croyden in the worst possible way. When your father left, declaring he wanted nothing more to do with the family, your grandfather still left everything to him, even though your uncle stuck around, waiting and hoping, I would imagine, that just a small bit of your grandfather’s fortune might go to him. But it did not. Your father was your grandfather’s favorite, and your grandfather could not possibly have made that fact any clearer. It would be strange if Mr. Croyden did not hold some sort of grudge against him—and now you.”

Mary leaned back against her chair. She was silent as she considered everything Ryan had said. “What should I do?” she finally asked.

“I think you should do what you can to help him with his sarcoma. Just be cautious; act under the assumption that he cannot be trusted. After all, we know very little about him aside from what he has told you.”

“Very well then,” Mary agreed, rising to her feet. Ryan got up as well and came toward her, offering her his arm. “I will examine him in the morning once I have gone over my father’s notes.” Turning her head to gaze out of the tall windows that surrounded them, Mary caught her breath. “Good heavens, Ryan, it is snowing!”

Sure enough, large plump flakes were drifting lazily toward the ground. “And this in the middle of July,” Ryan muttered, sounding just as astonished as Mary. Wrapping one arm about her shoulders, they remained there for a long while, quietly watching the ground vanish beneath a smooth blanket of white.

T
he following morning, Mary got up early, even though she’d sat up late trying to devise a plan by which to help her uncle. The method that her father had suggested in his notes would require a bit of planning if they were to carry it out successfully, but she did believe that it might be possible.

“Mr. Croyden,” she said as she took a seat across from her father’s brother in the library, “my father did make an entry in one of his journals that just might be of use to us.”

Mr. Croyden looked at her expectantly, almost unable to contain his enthusiasm. He was clearly eager to find out what Mary had in mind.

“He mentions a physician in Paris who, roughly forty years ago, cured a woman of cancer by applying a septic dressing. I cannot guarantee that such a treatment will work for you, but I do believe that it is worth a try.”

Mr. Croyden looked mildly perplexed. “I do not even understand why something like that might work,” he said.

“Well, I suppose that the infection brought on by the dressing might have somehow stimulated the woman’s immune system.” Mary paused for a moment as she regarded her uncle quite thoughtfully. “You have to understand that this woman went through many bouts of severe fever as a result of this, before she was finally cured.”

“But she
was
cured?” Mr. Croyden asked hopefully. “Completely?”

Mary nodded. “Yes,” she said. “It appears so.”

“Excellent,” Mr. Croyden remarked with a satisfied nod. “I must say that I am very pleased with your efforts.”