The Sins of the Wolf - Anne Perry [1]
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
1
HESTER LATTERLY SAT upright in the train, staring out of the window at the wide, rolling countryside of the Scottish Lowlands.
The early October sun rose through a haze above the horizon. It was a little after eight in the morning, and the stubble fields were still wreathed in mist, the great trees seeming to float rootless above it, their leaves only beginning to turn bronze on odd branches here and there. The buildings she could see were of solid gray stone, looking as if they had sprung from the land in a way the softer colors of the south never did. There were no thatched roofs here, no plaster walls pargeted in patterns, but tall chimneys smoking, crowstepped gables outlined against the sky, and broad windows winking in the early light.
She had come home when her parents had died at the close of the Crimean War, nearly a year and a half before. She would like to have stayed in Scutari until the bitter end, but the family tragedy had required her presence. Since then she had attempted to put into effect some of the new nursing practices she had learned so painfully, and even more, to reform England’s old-fashioned ideas of hospital hygiene in accordance with Miss Nightingale’s theories. And for her pains, she had been dismissed as opinionated and disobedient. There really was no defense against either charge. She was guilty.
Her father had died in social and financial disgrace. There was no money for her, or for her brother Charles. He would have provided for her, of course, out of his own salary, and she could have lived with him and his wife as a dependent, but that thought was intolerable. Within a short space of time she had found a position as a private nurse, and when the patient recovered, she had found another. Some were agreeable, others less so, but she had never been more than a week without some remunerative employment, and so she was her own mistress.
This summer she had taken another hospital appointment briefly, at the urgent request of her friend and frequent patron Lady Callandra Daviot, when the death of Nurse Barrymore had threatened Dr. Christian Beck with arrest and prosecution. When that matter had been finally resolved she had found another private post, but that too was at an end, and she was once again seeking a place.
She had found it in the form of an advertisement in a London newspaper. A prominent Edinburgh family was seeking a young woman of good birth, and some nursing background, to accompany Mrs. Mary Farraline, an elderly lady of delicate but not critical health, who wished to make the journey to London, and back again some six days later. One of Miss Nightingale’s ladies would be preferred. All travel would naturally be paid for by the family, and there would be a generous remuneration for the duties required. Applications were to be sent to Mrs. Baird McIvor, at 17 Ainslie Place, Edinburgh.
Hester had never been to Edinburgh before—indeed, she had not been to Scotland at all—and the thought of four such train journeys at this time of the year seemed most agreeable. She wrote to Mrs. McIvor stating her experience and qualifications, and her willingness to accept the position.
She received a reply four days later, and enclosed with Mrs. McIvor’s acceptance of her application was a second-class train ticket for the night journey to Edinburgh on the following Tuesday, leaving London at 9:15 in the evening and arriving in Edinburgh at 8:35 the morning after. A carriage would meet her at Waverley Station and take her to the Farraline house, where she would spend the day becoming acquainted with her patient, and that evening she and Mrs. Farraline would board the train and return to London.
Hester had made some inquiries, out of interest, even though she would barely arrive in Edinburgh before she left it again, at least on the initial visit. Perhaps when she returned with Mrs. Farraline after her stay in London