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current favorite—and I am determined
to support her during that ordeal.”
    Jed drew his breath in sharply. “Has Miss Elsie been
ill again?”
    “Oh, Jed, she is practically never well.” Sera’s
expression turned suddenly tragic, and she made a little convulsive
movement with one hand, clutching her shawl. “Her symptoms are so
many and so varied, you would almost suppose she was
shamming—though I am convinced she is
not
—and with every new physician who attends her,
poor Elsie develops a new complaint.”
    Jed stuck his hands back into his pockets and made a
rude but expressive noise at the back of his throat. “Every new
quack, it sounds like to me.”
    Sera nodded sadly. “Yes, I fear you are right. And I
have tried to convince Cousin Clothilde—however, you know how
stubborn she can be! She says . . . well, she says a good many
cruel and condescending things about my birth and my prospects
which do not seem to address the subject at all. I haven’t
convinced her yet, Jedidiah, but I assure you that I mean to keep
on trying until I do.”
    Jed took his hands out of his pockets, folded his
arms, and scowled most horribly. “Seems to me your Cousin Clothilde
takes a considerable pleasure in quacking Miss Elsie. Seems to me
there must be some doctors in Thornburg who know what they’re
about.
    “I believe there must be, but Cousin Clothilde will
have nothing to do with them,” Sera admitted. “She only seems to
care for stupid fads and promised miracles. And the Duchess of
Zar-Wildungen encourages her.
    “I can only suppose that the Duchess means well—so
sweet and generous as she is,” Sera added, with another sigh. “But
from what I have heard of him, I can’t help thinking that this new
doctor of hers—this Dr. Mirabolo—is bound to be immeasurably worse
than any of the rest.”

 
    Chapter
5
    In which Elsie Vorder suffers in Mind and Body.
     
    Dr. Mirabolo was a fashionable physician who had
gained a reputation treating fashionable women for fashionable
complaints, by soaking them in tubs of saltwater, applying leeches
to the soles of their feet, and by exposing them to the “healing
influences” of large chunks of magnetized iron. In order to receive
those treatments, it was necessary to seek the doctor at his
consulting rooms in a narrow building on Venary Lane, an
establishment he had modestly dubbed the Temple of the Healing
Arts. The “temple,” as Sera soon discovered, was really a
second-story suite, sandwiched in between a music school and a
fencing academy. It could only be reached by climbing a long flight
of steep stairs.
    “If Dr. Mirabolo were in the habit of treating the
truly ill and not an assortment of hypochondriacs and hysterics—it
seems likely he would rent other rooms, no matter what the
expense,” Sera whispered in Elsie’s ear, as she supported her up
the stairs.
    She glanced back over her shoulder, at Elsie’s
mother, who, huffing and puffing and leaning heavily on Jarl
Skogsrå’s arm, followed behind them. “As it is, I suppose many of
his patients derive considerable benefit from the exercise.”
    Elsie giggled a little breathlessly. “Poor Mama. I
don’t think she had any idea what was in store for her.”
    By the time they reached the doctor’s gilded
reception room, Elsie and her mother were both on the point of
collapse, and Jarl Skogsrå’s limp was more pronounced than ever.
Nevertheless (and with an elaborate show of courtesy), he found a
fragile-looking chair for Elsie to sit on, sent a servant after a
sturdier seat to accommodate Mistress Vorder, and pulled up another
frail, gold-painted chair and offered it to Sera.
    This unexpected attention on the part of the Jarl,
Sera barely noticed. She was too occupied with Elsie’s fan and vial
of hartshorn as well as trying to attract the eye of a
somber-looking serving man, who was offering tea in shell-like
china cups to a sallow matron in plum-colored satin and her three
spindly, blue-haired