Sarah, I've just caught up with your last updates and I'm so glad you are feeling better now you're off medication! Sometimes all the side effects are just too much to bear. I'd suggest tumeric in addition to the other herbs: you could use it when cooking vegetables or legumes, provided you remember to also add black pepper and some oil (extra virgin olive oil, sunflower seeds oil, etc.) because they're both necessary for the body to assimilate tumeric. I make some sort of tumeric tea (with no tea in it) infusing half a teaspoon of tumeric, ground ginger, cinnamon, black pepper and a drop of extra virgin olive oil in a cup of hot water: I drink it every day and it helps considerably with any inflammation in the body, from sore throat to pain in the joints to pneumonia - I know it helped me with those! Of course, pharmacies sell tumeric in pills, which is even more practical. Have I persuaded you yet?
On a brighter note, I'm loving this story! I think it must be partly because of its time setting: this one you're writing about is just another world, so very different from what it would be years later. Even the places are mostly new: gaming hells and high society are giving me a taste of something new and unknown, the royal court (or, better yet, the Carlton House set), and I had never read about it before.
Toby and Mary are so adorable together! What I was seething about the whole time was Mary's father disinterest in her: how can he say he loves her mother and then do nothing for their love child but leaving her at the mercy of his own cruel wife? I hope Toby's revelations had the scales fall from his eyes, because he didn't seem a complete ogre of a father - he cares, in his own way.
Thanks for these lovely chapters, Sarah. My best wishes for your health!
