The Lady Who Lived Again. Thomasine Rappold
circulation left him sallow, fluid swelled his chest and limbs, and now this chronic cough.
Maddie waited on tenterhooks until Grandfather finally caught his breath. He despised being coddled. In fact, he barely allowed the application of the salve she used to disguise her healing attempts. At seventy-two, he still had the same pride that helped him amass a great fortune as a young man. Wiping his mouth with his napkin, he cleared his throat, then continued as if nothing were amiss. “So it’s settled then. You’re attending.”
“I must. For Amelia.” She took a long breath. “For the girls.”
He reached for his drink. Maddie rarely mentioned the accident to him anymore; it simply wasn’t worth the effort. Grandfather had mourned the tragedy in his own way, in silence and denial—and he’d insisted she do the same. While he’d been a constant presence as she recovered from her injuries, she’d had to manage her grief in private.
She hated that she still harbored some resentment about this silly code of silence. Especially now, when Grandfather’s health was so poor. She loved the man with all her heart, but he had imposed a critical distance between them by refusing to discuss what happened. Try as she might to ignore it, Maddie continued to feel the ache of their unsaid words through every crevice of her lonely soul. Several long moments passed before she spoke again.
“Pastor Hogle will be at the wedding.”
Grandfather frowned. “To hell with Pastor Hogle.”
“And Daniel.”
“To hell with him, too.” He took another sip of port. “You’ll have to find your guts, girl, but you’ll find them.”
He spoke the truth with his usual curt elegance, and she was grateful for his support.
“I suppose you may go ahead and send for Cousin Marvin,” she said.
He lowered his weary eyes to the drink in his trembling hand.
“About Marvin…” He studied the glass as though searching for words in its crimson contents. The lengthy pause signaled that the forthcoming news wouldn’t be good. “Marvin is unable to escort you.”
Her heart sank.
“He left for Paris last week. But perhaps I can—”
“No, Grandfather, you cannot. I love you to pieces for offering, but I won’t have you jeopardizing your health by escorting me. This affair will be crowded and filled with people you loathe.”
He didn’t argue. He didn’t have the strength to argue, let alone attend the wedding and the string of events leading up to it. Amelia had written of her plans for a shopping trip, a lakeside picnic, rehearsal dinner, and dance. In another lifetime, Maddie would have swanned happily through twice that number of parties without a second thought. Now, it all sounded so overwhelming.
Grandfather nodded in surrender. “My dancing is not what it used to be, anyway,” he teased. “We’ll devise a different plan.”
Thanks to Cousin Marvin, they’d have to. Not that she could blame Marv for choosing the glitter of Paris over waltzing with his poor pariah cousin at a sleepy upstate wedding.
“Of course we will.” She smiled with feigned optimism. And we have a mere four weeks to do it.
* * * *
Jace was pleased to see Mrs. Tremont eating the venison he’d procured from Les Toomey. After giving up his search for the deer he’d hit that morning, he’d resorted to accepting two pounds of venison in lieu of payment for stitching Les’s finger. Had Jace known Les always had an ample supply of fresh venison on hand, he’d have asked for it earlier instead of wasting an entire day in the woods in pursuit of an animal that had vanished into thin air. But then he wouldn’t have met the young woman he couldn’t get out of his mind.
There was something so haunting about her. Those soulful brown eyes and flush cheeks. Those lips. Her delicate visage opposed the stiff pride in her shoulders, the brusque lift of her chin. Jace couldn’t recall ever being so intrigued by a woman. Fearlessness was a rare quality in a woman, but one Miss Sutter seemed to possess in spades.
From her angry reaction, he’d obviously struck a nerve by questioning her sanity. But what the devil had she expected after her reckless behavior with a wild and wounded animal? Their strange encounter, while memorable, hadn’t gone well. Stranger still was that Jace had been in Misty Lake for a month before crossing her path. Literally.
While the town would soon fill with summer guests from the city, Madeline Sutter was a local. Even the residents on the far outskirts of town had managed to sate their curiosity about the new doctor by stopping by his office or “accidentally” bumping into him somewhere.
Jace glanced around the kitchen of Mrs. Tremont’s remote cottage in the woods, wondering if Madeline Sutter called such a place home. His curiosity became too much to contain.
“I met your neighbor this morning,” he said. “Madeline Sutter.”
Mrs. Tremont stopped chewing, then swallowed hard. “Oh, that one.”
Not exactly the response he’d expected. “She asked me to send her regards.”
With an unpleasant twist of her lips, she speared a piece of meat with her fork, then popped it into her mouth.
Jace waited as she chewed, but she offered nothing further on the subject. Her silence intrigued him.
“She lives with her grandfather?” he pressed.
She frowned, her eyes sinking into a sea of deep wrinkles. “Adam Sutter should have sent her away after the accident. Would have been better for everyone, the girl included.”
“Accident?”
“Wagon accident, three years ago. Worst misfortune ever to strike this town.” Her voice dipped low with the weight of her sorrow. “Madeline Sutter was one of four girls inside the wagon when it crashed into a tree.” Mrs. Tremont set down her fork. “All four were killed.”
Jace tilted his head, wondering for a moment if he’d heard her correctly. “But you said she was one of four—”
“She died, too.”
Jace blinked.
“Mrs. Tremont, that doesn’t make sense,” he challenged, shaking his head.
“Sense or no sense, the girl was as dead as a doornail and laid out with the others until the next day.”
He leaned forward. “What happened the next day?”
“She opened her eyes.”
Christ Almighty. Jace sat back in his seat. He’d read of such extraordinary cases, where comatose patients awoke after days, sometimes weeks. Of course those patients weren’t pronounced dead. Thinking on it, Jace supposed he could understand how it might happen, given the circumstances and Misty Lake’s remote location.
Accidents involving multiple victims were always chaotic. The distraction of hysterical relatives and bystanders often hindered treatment. Especially in a small community like this one, where the physician knew the victims and their families personally. In all the confusion, Doctor Filmore had obviously missed Madeline’s pulse. Jace blew out a breath as he imagined the scene. “That must have been quite a shock.”
“It was terrifying,” the old woman agreed. Closing her troubled eyes, she shuddered for effect. “To see her awake from the dead like she did…”
The words stopped him short. Mrs. Tremont didn’t strike him as one prone to theatrics, but surely she couldn’t be serious.
“Ma’am, you do realize that the doctor made a mistake.” Jace paused. “Don’t you?”
She pointed a bony finger.
“You, young man, are a stranger to Misty Lake. Doctor Benjamin Filmore is one of us. For over thirty years, he