Mary stopped in her tracks. “You do not paint a very pretty picture of your father,” she said grimly.
“Well, you have to understand, nobility doesn’t have the luxury of marrying just anyone they please. They have obligations, obligations that every man in our family has always honored. . .until John met Harriet, that is. Your grandfather, however, was not capable of accepting that his firstborn son would pick a woman over everything that he and all the previous generations had worked so hard to achieve.”
“But surely your father could just have let you inherit his title instead. If he had two sons, then I don’t quite see why it would be such a big issue if the elder decided to follow another course.”
“No, it is probably quite difficult for you to understand,” Mr. Croyden told her, but he didn’t patronize. Instead, there was kindness in his voice. “John was the apple of our father’s eye, you see. He doted on him since the very day that he was born, preparing him for the position he would one day fill. And even so, he never stopped him from studying medicine; he understood that John was passionate about that and that taking it away from him would do more harm than good. But he always thought that the day would come when John would face his responsibilities, take his seat in Parliament, and honor his family name.
“In the meantime, I decided to study law. After all, I always supposed that John would inherit everything and that I would have to make my own way in the world.”
“And did you succeed?” Mary asked him. “Did you become a lawyer?”
“I did,” Mr. Croyden told her thoughtfully. “And a good thing too, as it turns out, because in spite of what Father had told John about cutting him out of the will, the old man was never able to follow through. I think he always imagined that John would return to pick up the reins, but as you have probably concluded, he never did.”
“But the estate and the house in London—somebody must have taken care of those places after your father passed away,” Mary said, baffled by the oddity of it all.
“Oh, yes, there were caretakers, housekeepers, and butlers, all of them put in place by your father to keep things running just enough to stop them from falling into disrepair.” Mr. Croyden stopped to look at Mary, studying her for a moment. “He didn’t want any of it for himself, but he kept it all for you.”
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.
CHAPTER TWENTY
“Mary, 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 nak*d 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.”