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grace . It was really you with whom I meant to speak. May I take a moment of your time?”
    “I believe that could be managed . I take it you wish to discuss the lady. Lady Elizabeth Wentworth, as it happens.”
    “Wentworth? ” The physician’s face clouded over with thought.
    “Yes . I see you have the same thought I first had.”
    A sparkle lit the doctor’s eye . “Yes, your grace, Lady Julia was a magnificent woman. I remember the stir she caused whenever she walked to the village.”
    “Oh, indeed . I am not sure there’s ever been another quite like her. I’ll never forget her visit here.” Arthur knew his own eyes did not return the sparkle. “I doubt there’s a relation. In any case it’s the lady upstairs who concerns me now. What do you have to report?”
    The physician shifted with some discomfort and eyed the footman still near the door . Arthur reached the bottom of the stairs and strode towards the study he had so recently vacated. Smithson followed.
    Arthur leaned one hip against the corner of the wide writing desk and gestured Dr. Smithson toward a seat . He waited for the doctor to begin.
    “As I explained last night, both mother and child are in general good health . The child is most definitely somewhat early, but well formed, and I think with proper care he shall do well. And the mother, Lady Elizabeth, while healthy, is still fragile. She wants bed rest, of course, but soon enough she’ll be about, and I daresay can be on her way home before very long.”
    The doctor hesitated . Arthur looked up to catch his expression.
    “What concerns me, however, are the marks and bruises.”
    “Marks?”
    “Surely you noticed the welts across her legs and hips?”
    “Left by the brambles, I would have thought.”
    The doctor paused again, thoughtfully . “Brambles. And did the brambles also whip her back hard enough to draw blood, and lay a boot print across her belly?”

 

     
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter Three
     
    The silence grew as the doctor’s words sank in . How could such a small and delicate creature have suffered what the doctor suggested? Arthur shrugged loose his shoulders, suppressing the urge to stroke his own scar, relive his own pain.
    “Could you be mistaken ? I described how she was wandering, disoriented and aimless. Could she not have fallen and bruised herself that way?”
    Dr. Smithson hesitated . Arthur sensed his desire to give an agreeable answer fighting against his desire to speak the truth.
    “I am afraid not, your grace. ” Dr. Smithson’s large Adam’s apple bobbed.
    “Explain.”
    “If it were merely the bruise, I might wonder if it were possible - if by some strange coincidence Lady Elizabeth had not been injured in some other manner, and the marks only happened to resemble a boot print, with a well defined heel. But, in combination with her welts, I find that highly unlikely. Even the marks on her legs might have been excused as you suggested. The many marks across her back, though, speak for themselves. Somebody took a crop to her, I would guess, and not gently.”
    Arthur pursed his lips . He knew how a whip could sting. It was his duty to find out what had happened:  he had found her on his land. Did he have a tenant who would so misuse a lady? Perhaps some ruffian passing through, or . . . . Could her own family have done this to her if they had discovered her pregnant and unwed? He knew a father could be severe, but this?
    The doctor interrupted Arthur’s contemplation . “I am not sure whether it means anything or not, but I was also struck by the fact that her face was unmarked. I saw some slight bruising, but that I would put down to her wanderings. Those marks lacked the brutality of the others.”
    Arthur turned, his attention fixed on the doctor’s words . “What are you saying?”
    “I think whoever beat her didn’t want it to show.”
    “Why . . . ?” Arthur paused without completing the thought. He drummed his fingers along the