Jamie had haunted me—in spite of all my efforts to forget, to immerse myself in the life I had. Would I have found the strength to come back, if he hadn’t remained as a constant presence in my heart, my dreams?

“You won’t forget her, Fanny,” I said, and squeezed her hand. “She won’t forget you, either.”

The wind had come up; I heard it rushing through the trees outside, and the glass window rattled in its frame.

“We’d better close the shutters,” I said, getting up to do so. The surgery window was the largest in the house and thus endowed with both external and internal shutters—both to protect the precious expanse of glass panes from bad weather and potential attack and to insulate the room against the creeping cold.

As I leaned out with the shutter hook in my hand, though, I saw a tall black figure hastening toward the house, skirts and cloak flying in the wind.

“You and your little dog, too,” I murmured, and risked a glance at the forest, in case of flying monkeys. A blast of cold air rushed past me into the surgery, rattling glassware and flipping the pages of the Merck Manual that I had left open on the counter. Luckily I’d taken the precaution of removing the copyright page …

“What did you say?” Fanny had followed me and stood now in the surgery door, Bluebell yawning behind her.

“Mrs. Cunningham’s coming,” I said, leaving the shutters open and closing the window. “Go and let her in, will you? Put her in the parlor and tell her I’ll be right there; perhaps she’s come for the slippery elm powder I promised her.”

So far as Fanny was concerned, Mrs. Cunningham probably was the Wicked Witch of the West, and her manner in inviting the lady inside reflected as much. To my surprise, I heard Mrs. Cunningham declining to sit in the parlor, and in seconds, she was in the door of the surgery, windblown as a bat, and pale as a pat of fresh butter.

“I need …” But she was sagging toward the floor as she spoke, and fell into my arms before she managed a whispered “help.”

Fanny gasped, but grabbed Mrs. Cunningham round the waist, and together we bundled her onto my surgery table. She was clutching her black shawl tight with one hand, holding on like grim death. She’d been gripping it against the wind so hard that her fingers had locked with cold, and it was a job to get the shawl loose.

“Bloody hell,” I said, but mildly, seeing what the trouble was. “How did you manage to do that? Fanny, get me the whisky.”

“Fell,” Mrs. Cunningham rasped, beginning to get her breath back. “Tripped over the scuttle, like a fool.” Her right shoulder was badly dislocated, the humerus humped and elbow drawn in against her ribs, the apparent deformity adding a lot to the witchy impression.