When Lady Innocent Met Dr. Scandalous (The May Flowers Book 5)

by Merry Farmer

  “Thank heavens you did,” Natalia shouted back to him, even though the steamboat had come close enough that shouting wasn’t necessary. “Get me out of here at once, Lord Malcolm. I want to go home.”

  “Go home?” Lord Malcolm pulled himself up to his full, imperious height, glancing between Natalia and Linus as the boat came to a stop. “I’ll say you’re going home, all right. And you’ll deserve what you get once you’re there.”

  “I don’t care,” Natalia said, striding to the end of the dock and glancing across the distance to the boat as if attempting to determine how she would climb aboard. “I’ll take any punishment you want to give me as long as this nightmare can end.”

  “Nightmare?” Lord Malcolm continued to flinch with indignation at the situation. “The only nightmare is that you would stoop so low to get what you want.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Natalia snapped, gaping up at Lord Malcolm.

  When Lord Malcolm glared in his direction, an uncomfortable sense of where the situation was heading hit Linus.

  “You knew that the only way I would consent to this ill-advised marriage was if you landed yourself in a situation that you could not recover from,” Lord Malcolm told Natalia. “You knew that my hands would be tied if we found you had spent intimate time alone with Townsend.”

  “Whatever are you talking about?” Anxiety pinched Natalia’s face as she glanced from Lord Malcolm to Linus.

  “Well, I can’t very well let you behave as if this whole incident never happened, can I?” Lord Malcolm said. “If you return to London unwed, it will be ruin for you, and likely for the rest of us as well. Very clever, sir,” he said to Linus.

  “I can assure you that none of this was my idea,” Linus said, feeling lame even as he said it. “We had no intention of ending up alone together on this island. It was pure accident.”

  “I just bet it was,” Lord Malcolm said in a dark voice.

  “Lord Malcolm!” Natalia gasped as the pieces fell together in her mind. “Are you implying that Dr. Townsend and I deliberately set sail for this island so that we would be discovered together and forced to wed, no matter your and Mama’s objections to the match?”

  Lord Malcolm answered her with, “Don’t play the fool with me, child. You’re terrible at it.”

  Natalia’s mouth dropped open and her face lost its color. “That’s not what happened at all. Dr. Townsend is correct, this was all an accident. The lifeboat we were conversing in was untied and set adrift by a gang of mischievous scamps. We didn’t come here deliberately.”

  “A likely story,” Lord Malcolm scoffed. “Now, gather your things and get aboard this ship at once. We’re going to the nearest port where I can send for a special license for the two of you to be married as quickly as possible.”

  Natalia squeaked in alarm. “But I don’t want to marry Dr. Townsend, Lord Malcolm. You and Mama were right all along. He would make a terrible match for me.”

  Linus crossed his arms and frowned at her, but didn’t say a word. He knew already that there was no point in arguing. He and Natalia would end up married as soon as Lord Malcolm could make the arrangements, no matter what either of them wanted.

  “A terrible match?” Lord Malcolm snorted. “You should have thought of that before you canoodled with him.”

  “But I didn’t—” Natalia let her shoulders drop as a look of pure guilt spread across her face. She glanced toward Linus with equal parts resentment and sheepishness.

  “There’s no point in denying what’s been written boldly on both of your faces for months now,” Lord Malcolm said, moving toward the side of the boat. During the whole argument, the steamboat’s crew had been maneuvering closer to the dock. They’d finally brought the vessel close enough for a few of the crewmen to hop down and secure the boat to the dock, even though the dock was far too small for such a vessel.

  “We can probably hoist them right up into the boat,” one of the crewmen called up to the captain.

  “Aye, get it done, then,” the unseen captain called back.

  “Gather your things and get aboard this ship at once,” Lord Malcolm ordered both Natalia and Linus. “Before I have to come down there and haul you over the side myself.”

  “We were in the middle of doing laundry,” Linus said, trying not to growl with resentment. “We shouldn’t leave the cottage in the condition it’s in right now.”

  “I don’t care if you leave the cottage looking as though wildcats have torn it to shreds,” Lord Malcolm fired back at him. “Get your things and join me at once.”

  “You’re such a tyrant,” Natalia complained, lifting her skirts and marching up the dock, away from the steamboat. “You cannot force me to do anything I do not want to do.”

  As she passed Linus—who turned to head back to the cottage—he murmured, “You know that he can force you and he will.”

  Natalia shot him a nasty sideways look with a stubborn, “Humph.”

  Linus wanted to sigh and shake his head as he followed her back to the cottage, but even that was an exercise in pointlessness. Lord Malcolm had them right where he wanted them, right where they themselves had wanted to be twenty-four hours before. All Linus could do was gather up as much of their things as he could in the cottage while putting as much back where it belonged as possible and submit to Lord Malcolm’s will.

  Natalia remained stubbornly silent as she shoved her damp and likely destroyed clothes that had been infiltrated with salt water back into her traveling bag. Linus did his best to help her, but she wasn’t in the mood for help. In the end, all he could do was follow her down to the steamboat and help her aboard as much as she would let him before climbing aboard himself.

  “Are we going back to London?” Natalia asked Lord Malcolm as the steamboat’s crew steered the vessel away from the island and back toward the east.

  Lord Malcolm huffed a laugh. “Certainly not. First, we’re going to Liverpool to catch another ferry, and then we’re heading on to Dublin to join up with Lord O’Shea and the others.” He glanced to where Linus had taken a weary seat on a bench closer to the center of the steamboat. “And then we’re going to have a nice, long talk about what I expect of the both of you.”

  Linus nodded in understanding, then remained strategically quiet for the rest of the trip. Perhaps as punishment or perhaps because Lord Malcolm simply wasn’t thinking about what would be most convenient for them, he didn’t give Linus or Natalia any time to change into fresh clothes once they made it to Liverpool. He rushed them off of the steamboat, paying its crew handsomely, and onto the first ferry departing for Dublin. Linus and Natalia stank from physical labor and being out in the sun without proper baths, they looked as bedraggled as refugees, and their spirits were dampened in every possible way.

  It was nearly midnight by the time they landed in Dublin and Lord Malcolm marched them off to a dockside inn where Fergus and Henrietta were staying as they waited.

  “What in God’s name possessed you to row off like that?” Fergus accosted Linus as soon as they were face to face.

  “It wasn’t our intention,” Linus explained, sighing as he did.

  “Those boys admitted to jettisoning the lifeboat,” Henrietta said softly, resting a hand on Fergus’s shoulder. She glanced up to Linus, then on to Natalia as they stood in the inn’s lobby, like criminals who had just been dragged into jail. “I believe you didn’t intend for this to happen.”

  “At least someone does,” Natalia huffed. She tilted up her chin in exhausted indignation when Lord Malcolm glared at her from the inn’s front desk, where he was securing rooms for them all. “I just want to bathe and sleep and forget this whole thing happened.”

  Linus was on the verge of agreeing—whether it would annoy Natalia further or not—when he spotted his father and Lady Darlington walking into the inn, arm in arm. Lady Phoebe followed them, looking wan and anxious, but it was the broad smile on Lady Darlington’s face that filled Linus with dread.

  “My boy!
” his father declared as soon as he spotted him in the dim lobby. “You’ve been rescued.”

  “Thank the Lord for bringing you back to us,” Lady Darlington added before Linus could whisk his father to the side to explain what had happened in private. “You were right, Horace,” she went on, hugging his father’s arm. “We prayed with all our might and the good and loving Lord rescued them.”

  “So I’m the good and loving Lord now?” Lord Malcolm said with a wry grin as he turned away from the front desk, several keys in his hands.

  Lady Darlington stopped short at the sight of Lord Malcolm. “Heavens, Lord Malcolm Campbell. Whatever are you doing here?”

  “I could ask you the same thing,” Lord Malcolm said.

  Linus stepped forward. “Father, I really do need to speak with you in private,” he said, trying to impress upon the man with a look how vital it was that they remove themselves from the others.

  His father ignored him, smiling at Lord Malcolm instead. “Lady Darlington and I are on the verge of forming a whole new community of religious love,” he said with a proud smile, turning to Linus with an avaricious light in his eyes. “We’ve been discussing it and making plans the whole time you two have been missing. I am delighted to say that all plans are in place now. All we need to do is search for a suitable plot of land to build our community and invite more hungry souls in search of solace to join us.”

  Linus blinked at his father and shook his head to make certain he’d heard him properly. “You’re starting the whole thing up again?”

  “Yes, son, and it is well past time,” his father answered.

  “We settled it just now, over supper and a glorious evening,” Lady Darlington went on, beaming. “Ireland is the perfect place to establish a loving community of Christ.”

  Behind her, Lady Phoebe looked as though she’d just been sentenced to be burned at the stake. She glanced across the lobby to Natalia, pleading with her eyes for Natalia to do something. But Natalia looked as though she were ready to fall asleep on her feet.

  “Can I please have one of those keys?” she asked Lord Malcolm with a weepy sigh. “I just want to sleep.”

  Lord Malcolm crossed silently to her, handing her a key. “I’ve told them to bring a bath up as well. And by the look of things, you’ll need new clothes to dress in by morning.”

  “She can borrow something of mine,” Henrietta said, then swayed closer to Fergus. “We should be getting to bed as well.”

  “Yes, everyone needs to go to bed,” Lord Malcolm announced to the room. “Except me. I’ll be forcing some telegraph operator out of bed so that he can send a message to Westminster to prepare and send a special license for these two miscreants right away.”

  The room went silent and all eyes focused on Linus and Natalia. Linus met them all with stoicism. Natalia burst into tears.

  “I don’t want to think about this right now,” she wept, marching past Linus without a sideways look as she headed for the stairs leading to the inn’s rooms. “I just want to sleep.”

  “You’ll have to think about it in the morning,” Lord Malcolm told her as she fled up the stairs. He then glanced to Linus. “We’ll all have to think about it.”

  Linus nodded. It was all he could do. Without even trying, he’d ended up in a trap he wouldn’t be able to get out of, and he had no idea what to expect next.

  Chapter 13

  Rain set in overnight that lasted through the entire train journey from Dublin to Fergus’s estate near Ballymena. Dunegard Castle was everything Linus had expected it would be and then some. In other words, it was an old, grand, outdated structure in need of every sort of repair that overlooked the craggy Irish landscape and sea.

  “It seems just the sort of place for one to brood about one’s fate,” he told Natalia as he helped her down from the carriage they had traveled across rough terrain in for the past several hours.

  She sent him a scathing look as she alighted. Her ire was undercut by the fact that she slipped on the wet flagstones of the drive, spilling into his arms. Linus caught her and held her close until she regained her balance. His heart thumped against his ribs at the sensation of her body against his. It didn’t matter what sort of disagreement they’d had or how prolonged their fight looked as though it was going to be, she felt right in his arms.

  “None of that,” Lord Malcolm grumbled as he stepped out of the carriage behind Natalia. “Not until we get the special license, that is.”

  “Is it even legal to marry with a special license from Westminster in Ireland?” Natalia huffed, pushing away from Linus. She did so with just enough hesitation to leave Linus with the hope that they could work out their differences.

  “If not,” Lord Malcolm said, marching past them toward the castle’s entrance, where a bevy of Fergus’s servants were rushing about, greeting the new arrivals and making sure everyone stayed warm and dry, “I’ll obtain whatever license is needed for an Irish marriage.”

  Natalia glared at Lord Malcolm’s back as he passed her. Linus didn’t bother. His mind had already moved on to a hundred other concerns. Like how he was supposed to provide an adequate household and position for Natalia once they were married.

  Even those thoughts took a back seat as his father, Lady Darlington, and Lady Phoebe climbed down from the carriage that pulled up behind the one he, Natalia, and Lord Malcolm had been riding in. His father alighted with a cheeky grin and a laugh, then turned to help Lady Darlington down.

  “My dear Maudie,” he said, grasping her hand tightly as she stepped out of the carriage, “you are a wit of the highest order.”

  Linus winced. Not only were they on a first-name basis, his father was using a nickname. Linus hated the fact that his father had managed to talk Fergus and Henrietta into letting him stay at Dunegard Castle, along with Lady Darlington and Lady Phoebe. Fergus seemed to think it would be funny to watch them all make fools of themselves, but Fergus didn’t know the half of it.

  Lady Darlington laughed as well. “It is easy to be a wit when one has as delightful an audience as you, Horace.”

  The two of them proceeded up to the house, leaving Lady Phoebe to climb down from the carriage herself. Linus did the gentlemanly thing and strode to help her.

  “Thank you,” Lady Phoebe smiled weakly at him.

  “Just let me know if there is any further help I can give you,” Linus said, returning her smile just as feebly.

  Lady Phoebe shook her head. “I’m afraid the situation is beyond help, Dr. Townsend.”

  Linus frowned, hoping that wasn’t true. He escorted Lady Phoebe on to the house, but was surprised to find Natalia waiting for him just inside the doorway, looking as though she might castrate him at the first opportunity she got.

  “Why are you escorting her and not me?” she whispered once Lady Phoebe continued on into the house.

  Linus’s brow shot up as he studied her. “I thought you were furious with me and never wanted to see me again.”

  Natalia let out an impatient sound, her face pinched in irritation. A moment later, that irritation dissolved and her shoulders dropped. “I’m tired,” she said, rubbing her temples. “It has been a trying last few days.”

  “It most certainly has,” Linus agreed on a sigh, walking deeper into the castle’s front hall with her.

  “I am certain I’ll be able to grasp the situation we find ourselves in much better after a restful night’s sleep,” Natalia went on.

  “I’m sure we both will.”

  Whether she did or not, Linus didn’t get a chance to find out. By the time he awoke the next day, cleaned himself up, and made his way downstairs, Fergus needed his attention more than breakfast and socializing did.

  “It was the damn journey and the damp,” Fergus complained with a grimace as Linus helped him from his chair to a chaise in a room with several windows, facing the sea, that would have been sunny and cozy, if the skies hadn’t been overcast. “I feel as stiff as a rusted thresher.”

  �
��I’m not surprised,” Linus said.

  Once he had Fergus settled on the chaise, he began the process he’d developed of stretching and flexing Fergus’s legs in an effort to loosen his muscles and improve circulation. The exercises went on in near silence for several minutes as Linus tried his best to concentrate on his work. There were too many other things on his mind, though.

  “Is it true that Lord Malcolm found you and Lady Natalia in bed when he invaded your island?” Fergus asked at length.

  Linus glanced up from where he had been concentrating on Fergus’s legs only to find the man grinning as if the whole thing were a joke.

  “No,” he said. “He came across Natalia in a snit because she thinks I’m trying to drag her down from her aristocratic upbringing.”

  For some reason, that made Fergus laugh. “And what are you doing?” he asked.

  Linus frowned. “I’m not trying to do anything,” he said. “It was only ever my wish to marry Natalia and to establish a normal sort of life for her.”

  Humor and knowing sparkled in Fergus’s single remaining eye. “And what does a normal sort of life mean to you?”

  Linus let out a breath and switched to stretching Fergus’s other leg. “A simple home filled with love. A place to come home to and rest every night. Children.” He shrugged.

  Fergus shook his head. “It’s a lovely domestic picture, but if that’s the sort of normal you wanted, you shouldn’t have fallen in love with a nobleman’s daughter.”

  “I can see that now,” Linus said, a little too much irony in his voice. “But it’s too late. Lord Malcolm will see the two of us married if it’s the last thing he does.”

  “As well he should,” Fergus said with a nod.

  Linus raised an eyebrow at him. “So you agree with Lord Malcolm’s decision to force a marriage that Natalia no longer wants?”

  Fergus laughed again, surprising Linus. “Natalia is young and impetuous. I’d say she doesn’t know what she wants, but she would likely poke my other eye out if I did.”