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those who do. There seems an equally restless spirit among those in the regiment as there is here.”
    “They spend much time waiting for their orders,” he admitted. “And there is illness among their quarters far worse than what I suffer now. Still, I can’t help envying their sense of purpose.”
    A look of sympathy flitted across the doctor’s face. “To be helpless is unbearable,” she agreed. Raising a hand, she felt his forehead, saying, “You are not feverish at present. Have you suffered any confusion when the chill comes over you?”
    “It troubles my dreams,” he admitted.
    She rose and went to the medicine cabinet with its collection of glass vials. “I wish to start you on a quinine dosage for the bronchial inflammation,” she told him, selecting a bottle from the upper shelf. “It will help with the cough and the fever both and has proven itself many times for my father’s patients.”
    “Then I will take it right away if you will tell me the proper dosage.”
    “Such faith.” A smile stirred the doctor’s lips. “You have benefited from a physician’s care before, Mr. Widlow?”
    “No—that is, never a qualified one. When I was a boy, a traveling man beseeched the audience members to provide him a lock of their hair. In exchange, he mixed a special elixir to cure their woes.”
    “And this worked?” Mariah raised her brows at the story.
    “For a time.” He leaned closer. “I suspect the chief ingredient was rum, you see.”
    Jealousy rippled through Nell as she witnessed their playful exchange. Never had she seen anyone threaten the doctor’s taciturn demeanor so effortlessly. Every smile, every blush he drew from the other woman’s reserved exterior was like a stab to her own carefully concealed feelings.
    With mixed emotions, she listened as they arranged to meet again within the week. “This illness has been allowed to take firm root,” Mariah explained, seeing her patient to the door. “It may be many weeks before the medicine dissolves its hold on you.”
    Consultations like this one in the parlor were beginning to cause anxiety among the Darrows for fear of gossip. As a result, Nell was quietly appointed as chaperone. Placed in the background, she performed such household tasks as hanging the wash or scrubbing the plank floor that never came clean while trying to be as unnoticed and unobvious as possible.
    How painful this became—watching the boy she loved grow to love another—was not to be thought of in comparison with the relief of seeing his strength return. His spirit improved even before the quinine and other treatments took their miraculous effect on his body. Obviously caught by the doctor’s beauty, he showed even greater admiration for her knowledge.
    Their conversations, which spanned everything from politics to science, fell on Nell’s unwilling ears with a sting. She could hear the undertones that laced their voices, the things left unsaid as they traded looks and ideas. Emotions pushed their way to the surface when the doctor’s touch lingered too long, her patient reaching to brush her hand in return.
    One day, looking up to dust the mirror above the mantel, she saw the couple reflected past her own plain features, standing in the hall, their heads bent close together, as Arthur pressed a kiss to the doctor’s upturned mouth.
    It was not their first, judging by the way it lingered. Mariah’s hand reached to trace his jaw, a smile forming as she told him something in a whisper.
    Nell quickly moved out of sight, hands clutching the rag close to her chest. Her heart beat wildly, her mind reeling from the image in the glass. She had not meant to see it, but soon learned it was hardly being kept a secret.
    The couple was seen together in town and sometimes walking by the spring on a Sunday afternoon. Mariah never attended church, else word of their courtship might have spread faster.
    As it was, the doctor showed no sign of relinquishing her agnostic