Splintered Heart (The Bentons and Northcutts 2) ✅

Chapter Five

Phoebe and Benjamin returned to the inn at sundown. The physicians, while impressed with her bedside care and knowledge of medicine, had seemed overly eager to get rid of her. Though he had not said much in words, Phoebe could sense that they did not want her to come back the following day.

Are they intimidated by me? Or are they underestimating me? It matters not. I came here to help, and that is what I shall do.

"The Northcutt family overseas this area, do they not?" Benjamin asked her as they reached the inn. "Should we take a moment to go and present ourselves to them? You're related to them by marriage, aye?"

"Through Diana, as you know," Phoebe said, sighing quietly. "But...aye. Mayhap I should take a moment to see them. The lordship passed away from the plague, after all."

"It's strange, though," Benjamin said. "That Lord Northcutt succumbed to illness, but his widow, sister, and son are not ill."

"It is very curious."

Benjamin held the door open for Phoebe and they entered the inn together, but the keeper raced over to them holding out an envelope. The man bent his head and presented the letter to Phoebe. "Miss Benton, this letter arrived for you just before you came back."

A letter? Phoebe's brow rose and she accepted the letter from the innkeeper. "Thank you, good sir."

"Is it a letter from home?" Benjamin asked. He led Phoebe to the empty sitting and they sat together. "Your father, Phoebe—"

"This isn't Rosamund's handwriting," Phoebe gently interjected, though she interrupted her cousin mostly because she did not like the direction of where the conversation was going. "I do not know this handwriting at all." She quickly opened the envelope and pulled out a single page.

"Mayhap it was Lord Northcutt then?" Benjamin said. "We saw him earlier after all."

"It is not," Phoebe said, her eyes quickly roaming the page. She frowned deeply at the words. "This is a summons from this town's Magister. He wishes that we have supper with him tonight."

"Ah, supper?" Benjamin's brow furrowed in confusion. "Why would he wish to have supper with us?"

"Mayhap the physicians complained about me and he has invited me to dinner to "warn" me off." She folded the letter and set it aside. She didn't like that the letter made her feel uneasy.

"I wonder if Lord Northcutt has been invited to this supper as well?" Benjamin mused. After a moment though he shook his head. "I will not complain about a free meal. I will put on one of my better coats for this supper."

"Why has this man invited us for supper?" Phoebe mused aloud. She leaned her head into her hand and looked at the folded letter. "And where has he been during this crisis?"

He is a Magister, but I haven't seen him about town. And unlike Mister Rafe he did not make an appearance at the clinic. Yet he invites us to dine with him? Where is this man's priorities?

*

Rafe fixed his coat for the umpteenth time and sighed heavily. "I do not like this," he admitted aloud.

"What is there to like about it?" Elisa said, her tone dull as she nursed a brandy. "The Magister invited you to supper with him, after he has not visited us since my brother's death!"

"Please, Elisa," Siobhán said quietly, gently taking the goblet from her sister-in-law's hand. She looked upon Rafe with a sullen gaze. "What have the physicians said about the Plague?"