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“Even if so, it is not the best idea for you to be out riding so soon.” I frowned and glanced over to where her mother talked amongst her friends, cheerfully chatting away, looking like a pink bird in her clothing. “I can only assume it was your mama’s idea.”
“I do not wish you to think harshly of her, Dr. Darrington,” she said softly as she, too, looked at her mother. “Everything she does is for the securement of my future.”
The woman fed her poison. Yes, she had not known it was toxic or would cause so much harm. But nevertheless, her mother had forced her to take medicine for a condition that did not exist.
“Your height is not a detriment to your future, my lady” was all I could bring myself to say without being rude.
“If only that were so.” She frowned and glanced toward me. “I know you do not wish to offend me, but the truth of the matter is I am a giant in comparison to my peers. Even among gentlemen, I often stand a whole head, sometimes even shoulders, above them. Who will want such a wife—”
“If you believe that to be true, I shall not argue with you, but I will ask: Do you believe yourself to be the only one of your kind?”
“What?”
“If you are a giant, you cannot be the sole giant in the land. There shall be a match for you whether he be a giant or not. There is someone for everyone. You merely have to believe it.”
She laughed. “I did not think you such an idealist, Dr. Darrington.”
“I am not, but I still do not wish for you to harm yourself or allow harm to come to you for mere matrimony.”
“It is merely matrimony to you, a man, but everything to us ladies,” she reminded me, and she was not wrong. The proof of it was the sheer number of people in the park around us. “Nevertheless, I shall heed your warning, and so shall my mama. I do not believe anyone has ever admonished her for her actions as you did. She feels a great deal of regret. She even told me I need not come and should rest. It was I who pushed to show the world I was well.”
“Very well, but should you feel ill in the slightest, you must call for me.”
“Shall you come?” Her eyebrows rose. “The talk of the ton is that you have snubbed us for those less fortunate.”
I sighed—these people and their talk. “I have slighted no one. I merely wish to be fair in my treatment. And as you are a former patient, I shall always be of service.”
She opened her mouth to speak but was interrupted by the voice behind us. “Dr. Darrington!”
I turned to see a much older man. He was slender, tall, and graying, with age spots around his nose, holding on to his sleek cane and dressed in the finest velvet suit, with a group of men behind him.
“Sir Grisham?” Lady Clementina said.
“Lady Clementina, how are you?” he questioned. “I do hope this…person is not bringing you greater confusion.”
“No.” She glanced at me. “What could I be perplexed about?”
“Lady Clementina, I believe it best you return to your mother,” I said as I got off my horse.
“Gentlemen.” She nodded to them before quickly taking her leave.
I glanced over them all. I could only assume they were doctors as well. Why else would they ally themselves behind Sir Grisham? “How may I help you, sirs?”
“You may return to where every bastard originally stems from!” Sir Grisham snapped at me.
“As my mother is dead, I do not believe that a possibility, sir.”
He took another step toward me. “Do you believe this to be a matter of jest, boy? Who the hell do you believe yourself to be to ruin my reputation? Long before your ill-begotten conception, I had been called a doctor. And now you think to slander my practices and steal my patients? They say your kind has no honor, but at the very least, you should have sense.”
My hand clenched into a fist, and fury rose up like fire within me. How badly I wished to show him how much sense he lacked.
“Apologies, sir, if I have offended you,” I forced out instead. No good would come from fighting with him. Even if I were to win in an argument or fistfight, at the end of the day, all anyone would hear was that the bastard son of Whitmear was causing trouble in London society.
“You have greatly offended me, and you shall now remedy it by returning all my patients and retracting your accusations about my treatment.”
“I shall not, for my diagnoses are sound, sir. You are free to meet with these patients again and explain yourself to them. But I will not go against my own word.”
