Heads were rolling. Fred Felbrigg was forced to resign and submit to investigation for alleged illegal actions and procedures. Meanwhile, the Metropolitan Police fell into disarray. It was recognized that a significant reorganization of the entire force was required, although no one seemed to have any good ideas on how to proceed.
All that mattered to Garrett was Ethan’s welfare. He’d been plunged into a whirlwind of activity ever since he had returned from Hampshire, when he should have been resting. Had it interfered with the healing process? Was he eating properly? Garrett had no choice but to bury herself in her work and wait patiently.
On the fourteenth day, after Garrett had seen her last patient of the day, she stood at the counter in her surgery and made notes, when there came an unexpected knock at the surgery door.
“Doctor,” came Eliza’s voice through the paneling. “There’s one more patient for you to see.”
Garrett frowned, setting down her pen. “I didn’t schedule anyone.”
After a pause, Eliza said, “It’s an emergency.”
“What kind of emergency?”
Silence.
Garrett’s nerves went hot and cold, and her pulse began to rampage. She forced herself to walk to the door, when every impulse screamed for her to sprint. With great care, she turned the handle of the door and opened it.
There was Ethan, bigger than life, leaning a shoulder against the doorjamb and smiling down at her. A rush of elation made her dizzy. He was even more handsome than she remembered, more breathtaking, more everything.
“Garrett,” he said softly, as if her name were a word for a dozen different lovely things, and she had to stiffen her knees to keep from melting right in front of him.
Two weeks, and not even one short visit, she reminded herself sternly.
“I don’t have time for another patient,” she told him, her brows rushing down.
“’Tis a serious affliction I have,” he said somberly.
“Oh?”
“The old tiblin bone is actin’ up again.”
She had to gnaw furiously on the insides of her cheeks and clear her throat to keep from laughing. “I’m afraid you’ll have to take care of that yourself,” she managed to say.
“It needs professional attention.”
Folding her arms across her chest, she regarded him with narrowed eyes. “I’ve waited and worried for two weeks, and then you appear without a word of warning, wanting me to—”
“No, no, acushla,” Ethan said softly, his blue eyes drinking her in. “All I want is to be near you. I’ve missed you so, darlin’. I’m fair ravished in love for you.” One of his big hands gripped the side of the door frame. “Let me in,” he whispered.
Yearning caught inside her like fire to tinder. She opened the door more widely, and stepped back on ramshackle legs.
Ethan crossed the threshold, closed the door with his foot, and pinned her against the paneling. Before she could draw breath, his mouth closed over hers, and he kissed her with the craving of years and dark, aching dreams. She moaned softly, arching against him, lost in the feel of his strength all around her. He cupped the side of her face in his hand, stroking her gently.
“I’ve wanted you every minute,” he whispered, brushing his lips over hers in satiny touches. He drew back to stare down at her with a smile glowing in his eyes. “But I’ve been helping to disassemble the Metropolitan Police, fix the broken parts, and put it all back together again. And testifying before two committees, and discussing new job prospects . . .” He bent to kiss an exposed part of her throat, his mouth hot and searching.
“I suppose those are good excuses,” Garrett said grudgingly, and sought his lips again. After another deep, exquisite kiss, she opened her eyes and asked hazily, “What job prospects?”
He touched his nose to hers. “They want to appoint me as assistant commissioner. I would organize a new investigation department with different sections, and the supervisor of each section would report directly to me.”
Garrett looked up at him in wonder.
“I would also have my own handpicked force of twelve detectives, to train and supervise as I see fit.” He paused and laughed unsteadily. “I don’t know if I’ll be any damned good at it. They only offered it to me because half of Felbrigg’s supervisors have resigned, and the rest are in jail.”
“You’ll be exceptional at it,” Garrett said. “The question is, do you want to?”
“I do,” he confessed with a slightly crooked grin, the dimple she adored appearing in his cheek. “I’d have to keep to more regular hours. And the offer comes with a fine house in Eaton Square and a direct telegraph line to Scotland Yard. After some negotiation, I made them throw in a phaeton and pair of matched horses for my wife.”
“For your wife,” Garrett repeated, her stomach filling with butterflies.
Ethan nodded, reaching into his pocket. “I’m not going to do this the conventional way,” he warned, and she laughed breathlessly.
“That’s perfect, then.”
He pressed something smooth and metallic into the palm of her hand. She looked down and saw a whistle cast in silver, strung on a glinting, glimmering silver chain. Noticing there was something engraved on it, she looked more closely.
Whenever you want me
“Garrett Gibson,” she heard him say, “you’ve a rare skill at healing—I’m living proof of that. But if you don’t marry me, you’ll have my broken heart to mend. Either way, I’m afraid you’re stuck with me, as I love you too much to be without you. Will you be my wife?”
Garrett looked up at him through bright, blurred eyes, too overwhelmed with joy to summon a single word.
She soon made the discovery that it was hard to blow a whistle when you were smiling.
But she managed it anyway.
Author’s Note
Dear Friends,
Although all my books are a labor of love, this one is especially close to my heart because it was inspired by a magnificent real-life woman, Dr. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson. Against great opposition, she earned a medical degree at the Sorbonne in 1870. In 1873, she managed to become the first licensed female physician in Britain. The British Medical Association promptly changed its rules afterward to prevent any other women from joining for the next twenty years. Dr. Anderson went on to co-found the first hospital staffed by women and became the first dean of a British medical school. She was also active in the women’s suffrage movement and became the first female mayor and magistrate in England, serving in the splendid town of Aldeburgh.
The Thames was so contaminated by sewage and industrial chemicals in Victorian times that tens of thousands of London residents were killed by cholera. In 1878, a pleasure steamship called the Princess Alice collided with another boat and sank. Over six hundred passengers died, with many of the deaths blamed, not on drowning, but asphyxiation. According to an account of the time, the Thames water was “hissing like soda water with baneful gasses.” In modern times, the Thames has been transformed into the cleanest major river that runs through a major city in the world and is teeming with fish and wildlife.
Although the conspiracy plot in Hello Stranger is, of course, fictional, there really was a secret and unauthorized team of agents, supervised by Edward George Jenkinson. He ran clandestine operations from the Home Office, often competing with Scotland Yard. Jenkinson was dismissed in 1887 and his force was replaced by the official “Special Irish Branch.”