Chapter Ten
J ohn grew impatient with his family’s antics in the study. He didn’t like where this was heading. Herbert had a small knife in hand, and there were needles and thread on a wooden tray.
“This is a very sharp blade; don’t take it out of the leather etui unless you absolutely need to use it. Keep it clean,” Dustin said as he slipped a tiny knife into a pouch of medical tools. “Keep practicing what I taught you while I’m gone.”
“What am I interrupting?” John came to his desk—ahem—their desk. The desk. Herbert jumped backward. He was doing something forbidden and avoided his gaze. “Dustin?”
“Herbert will remain available for emergencies while I’m in London,” his cousin declared.
“He’s just a boy, he can’t replace you!” John protested.
Dustin quirked a brow. “The duke or the doctor?”
“You’re a dentist,” John mumbled, realizing that Dustin had bested him at his own argument.
“With two years of general medical training, yes. And I’m not suggesting that Herbert knows what I do, but he can clean a wound and close a suture,” Dustin winked at Herbert, who beamed at him.
Irritating, truly, that after all he’d done to set an example for Herbert, the boy took after his cousin.
“When are you leaving?” John asked.
“As soon as Lexi has packed everything she needs. The carriage is ready. We have some important patients this week, and Felix requested my presence.”
“Felix?”
“Yes.”
“The dentist at Harley Street requested your presence, so you, the duke, are going there?” John tried to control his voice, but it was impossible not to let his anger show. “Like an audience or an appointment?”
“Don’t start again.”
“Again?” John combed his finger through his hair. “Are you jesting? I never stopped!”
Dustin blew out his cheeks slowly as if he were the one with a modicum of right to be frustrated.
“You only just arrived and brought a new duchess to the estate. Have you even met with all the tenants yet? Have you looked through the ledgers? Did you notice that the cost of seed is rising? Where’s that money going to come from? And what about wood for the winter? If we are all to be in here at Starcliff Castle this winter, we’ll need to heat it.”
“Am I coming home during the school holidays again?” Herbert asked as he tied the instruments of the etui.
“Perhaps.”
“If Uncle Dustin is here, I want to come home.”
“Oh for him you want to come home, but for me not?” John felt heat rising to the top of his head. He feared that his face would flush crimson, just like his father’s did in fits of fury, and he knew without a doubt that it already had.
“I want to help Uncle Dustin with the surgeries.”
John let out an angry growl. “Herbert, leave us.”
“No!” His boy didn’t merely look like Dustin; he behaved more like him than John. How was it possible that he had two boys to deal with now, one immature child who thought he was an adult and one immature duke who’d rather play doctor?
“Get out!”
Herbert harrumphed, lifted his chin, and carried the instruments out of the room as if they were a trophy he held.
“That’s your fault!” John hit his fist on the desk, no matter whose it was.
“How’s you shouting at your child my fault?” Dustin narrowed his eyes.
“Hah!” John tried not to let the sarcastic laugh slip, but it had. “You’re a child just like him, chasing a dream of healing the world. Are you mad?” Dustin gave a sardonic brow, but John remained unimpressed. “You’re the Duke of Duncan. Act like it!”
“Why do you act like it? You’re just screaming or poring over ledgers, and everything we do makes you unhappy.” Dustin crossed his arms.
“I’m not the duke! Don’t you realize it? I’m not—”
“I do realize it. I have no idea what you’d be called since I have the title, but you are the better man for the job.”
“Oh really?”
“Yes!” Dustin unfolded his hands and leaned on the desk. “Well, the tenants I have met may have lush orchards and fertile land, but they’re in pain, John. I’ve treated more in just a few weeks than in a year in Vienna, did you know that? They’ve been neglected.”
“Negl-… argh! How dare you?” It was getting hot. Purgatory hot.
“How dare I? How dare you? They are humans, just like you and me. They need medicine, they need treatment, and a whole slur of it! If I go to London now and help my friends, they will return the favor. We can’t bring Thomas Pritchard, the shepherd, to Nick for eye surgery, but I’m certain he needs it. If you let him shoot the fowl, he needs to see better. He shot at his neighbor’s chimney. Chimney, John! That’s not a pheasant, and nobody can eat it.”
John formed an “o” with his lips, but Dustin didn’t let him speak.
“Laura Smith has cavities, do you know that? She’s only thirteen like Herbert, and I promised to treat her when I’m back with more gold from London. I need to have the jewelers flatten it into sheets. I don’t have time to treat all these people and pour over the ledgers and roll my own gold foil.”
“Nobody asked you to check the farmers’ children’s teeth!”
“I didn’t need to check. They came to me. Do you know that there’s a line of people outside the back door of my clinic room every morning? William Haversham was with little Frank this morning; the boy needed stitches. I suspect he stumbled because his legs are not straight. We need Alfred here to fit him for splints so his legs grow straight.”
“Alfred Stein, the pediatrician?”
“Yes, and Andre, the orthopedist. Christopher Crenshaw injured his shoulder when he slipped on the ice last winter, didn’t he tell you? It keeps popping when he cuts the wood. This is not a trifle.”
John squared his back. “He never mentioned it to me.”
“Well, you didn’t ask.”
“Ahm…”
“You’ve served as the duke and redeemed our name, John. I’ll never forget that, and I know you’re a great steward now, but if I’m to be the duke, I need to know my people. And I can’t get to know their ailments without wishing to treat them. That’s just not me.”
“When there’s a problem, you want to fix it,” John mumbled. It was why Dustin had seemingly abandoned the dukedom, but John knew nothing was further from the truth. He’d left the estate in John’s capable hands and tried to avenge an injustice that had brought shame upon their family name. Dustin was ducal, just not in the traditional sense but he had a heart of a great man who’d serve his people.
“Here, this is what I wrote down so far.” Dustin walked around the desk and picked up a rather new-looking leather-bound ledger. He opened it and started reading:
“Crenshaw family at 42 Sutton Cottage: Christopher’s shoulder needs Alfie’s arnica ointment, and Andre should take a look at how it healed. His wife is due with their fifth child in about four months, by my calculation, so perhaps Phil and Shira could be here during the late autumn months and treat a few patients while they are ready for the birth. Meanwhile, I need about fifty-two casts for gold inlays for George Whitaker, his two sons, his wife, and her sister. That’ll be at least two weeks of work, if not more. Herbert is helping me with—”
“Wait, Herbert?”
“Yes, he’s very helpful. He has a steady hand and a resilient stomach, so I was thinking he could help with the smaller lacerations, stitches, and perhaps wound care of day-to-day operations.”
“Wound care? He may be good with his hands, but he’s certainly never helped me.”
“He told me you only ever wanted to show him the ledgers. He thinks it’s boring,” Dustin said. John arched a brow. When Herbert was the heir, it was important to understand the estate’s finances. Now, it wasn’t his business anymore—not if he wouldn’t be the heir anymore.
“Emma Hughes nearly cut off her fingertip yesterday, and Herbert cleaned her wound in the kitchen. He didn’t even need me, and his work was flawless.”
“Emma, the kitchen maid?”
“Yes, she sharpened a knife, and it was an accident while he was there.”
“Why was Herbert in the kitchen?”
“I beg your pardon?” Dustin looked up from the ledger. “Are you not listening? It’s good that he was; he saved her finger. And now it’s healing well, so there won’t be an infection. These people need help.”
John sucked his lower lip in. Dustin made a fair point, but those people were there to serve them, not vice versa. Although… couldn’t it be a give-and-take? Just because he never knew how to offer medical care, it didn’t mean that Dustin couldn’t offer it now.
John leaned with both hands on the desk and perused the list of names, ailments, and the doctors, nurses, or apothecaries he’d assigned them to.
“What’s wrong with Henry Clarke, the blacksmith?”
“Rheumatism. I’d send him to Andre to rule out that it’s not another injury to the joints.”
“And Edward Cooper, the shepherd?”
“He needs me.”
“And his wife?”
“Susan is not his wife; she’s his second-eldest daughter. She needs Nick. I don’t think she can see well and that’s why she can’t read.”
“His brother, George, needs Alfred and me.”
“Hm.”
“Understood.” John sighed in resignation.
“You see, if they are to grow up as loyal tenants, you need to look after them.”
“I have been…” Although John doubted that he’d done a good job. Yes, he’d restored the fortune and the functionality of the estate, but Dustin would clear their name. Could it be that Dustin was going to be a worthy duke after all?
“Well, you did it your way. Now I’ll do it my way.”
John flipped the page, and there were more names listed. More names stared back at him, each one a silent accusation. His tenants. People who’d relied on him, trusted him. It wasn’t his responsibility to care for his tenants like that as a duke. But they ought to make it their duty with Dustin, a duke with medical training, and several doctors willing to help.
John’s fingers trembled as he flipped the page, the paper whispering secrets he wished he could unhear. A knot tightened in his chest, guilt clawing at him with every heartbeat. These were not just names; they were lives, stories intertwined with his own, and he had let them down.
He read their names and recognized them but the realization that these people had gone years without medical attention struck him like a physical blow. He could almost feel their silent suffering, the quiet endurance of those who had no choice but to carry on. His mind raced, searching for excuses, explanations, anything to ease the burden of his remorse, but found none.
“I failed them.”
“No, you didn’t. You made sure they had homes, food, farmland, and a future. Without you, they could have all died of starvation, or they might have left to work in the cities. And then nobody would tend to our land,” Dustin said.
John swallowed hard.
“But if you want them to keep working at full capacity, they must be healthy. That’s where I can help.”
“And the other doctors and nurses from Harley Street.”
Dustin shrugged. “Consider it a house party when they come.”
That made John laugh. Dustin had an easy way of looking at physical ailments as something that could be treated rather than a crippling condition. He only ever saw solutions, not problems.
“You’ll need a lot of time to treat all these people. And the other doctors will need some space.”
Dustin’s eyes shot to John’s.
“I’ll have your back as your steward, Your Grace.” John bowed. “We are humbled to serve you.”
Dustin boxed John gently in the arm. “Stop that!”
“All right,” John laughed. “Let me know what I need to do while you are away then.”
“Well, look at this list of supplies I need: bandages, thread, cotton, and gauze. Could you have Melissa order these items here when she picks out the new curtains?”
“Lady Thumbridge? Why is she ordering curtains?”
“She’ll take over some of Lexi’s tasks while we are in London.”
Now John felt lightheaded and wished to sit. “She’s staying here?”
“To help Lexi and take on some of her tasks. What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing.”
Everything.