How many physicians could there be in Peterfield? Probably only one. That was the plus side of the ledger. The negative side? He and Fergus were on the Portsmouth-to-London road again with another set of fresh horses.
They’d pitched in to help the lads hooking up the traces at the inn. The one obstinate swab had kept a hat pulled down over his eyes and mumbled when spoken to. He couldn’t seem to grasp the importance of working side-by-side with Cullen, Fergus, and the other, small lad. He’d kept working the far side of the team, constantly moving and making it impossible for conversation.
They bowled along at a good clip back toward Peterfield, and Fergus, inexplicably, had a broad smile on his face.
“Why are you so happy?”
“We’ve almost finished the quest, laddie. I feel like I’m in one of those gothic novels your aunt hides beneath the pillows in the family sitting room.”
“And just how do you know what’s inside one of those novels you make fun of?”
Fergus ignored the question, and Cullen fought an overwhelming urge to push him off onto the side of the narrow roadway and take over the reins. Instead, when he tapped the older man on the shoulder, he obligingly pulled over. They exchanged seats for the last lap of the tedious trip.
Cullen stood in the busy kitchen of Peterfield’s only physician where a kindly young woman watched him closely, tipping her head slightly as if she were weighing his worth.
Miss Annalise Partlow knew more than she was saying. She had a regular army of stair-stepped siblings, all clad in over-long aprons, lined up at a long, battered wooden table, and peeling potatoes. He’d tried to get an accurate count of the Partlow tribe as he’d been ushered through the house toward Annalise’s domain but gave up after passing about six or seven of the little heathens, all shouting and fighting over one thing or another.
After a few minutes of polite conversation, she seemed to come to a conclusion and motioned for him to follow her into her father’s office. The estimable Dr. Partlow apparently was away on rounds of his patients’ homes which, according to his eldest daughter, would go on indefinitely.
She turned and put her forefinger to her lips to signal a whispered exchange. But devil take him if either of them could talk in any mode of voice that would be heard above the din of the small savages racing about the house.
“She sent me a letter.” Miss Partlow breathed in after the stage whisper. The long silence following that revelation reminded Cullen of wild stag hunts in Scotland. Just when you thought you knew where they were headed, they circled back behind you into the woods. He sensed any signs of impatience on his part would send her skittering back to the infernal kitchen full of small potato peelers.
She leaned over her father’s desk and scrawled an address on the back of a scrap of used paper. She handed it to Cullen. “You will make her happy, won’t you?”
Cullen wrinkled his brow. “Not sure I ken what you mean. How would my showing up make her happy?”
Annalise gave him a sour look. “Why else would you come here?” she asked, pointing to the fine carriage outside with Fergus at the reins. “She needs someone to take care of her, and…”
“And what?” Cullen pressed.
“I’m afraid my father played her false.”
Cullen stepped closer, jaw clenched. “What did he do to her?”
Annalise’s face burned crimson. “Nothing, nothing,” she assured him, but her expression said otherwise. “He led her to believe she was coming here as his assistant when actually…”
“Actually what?” Cullen’s voice sharpened.
“Actually, what he wanted was for her to help with the children.” She hung her head.
After Cullen thanked Miss Partlow, he hurried back to the carriage and pulled himself up onto the driver’s seat next to Fergus.
“The lass was’na there.” Fergus stated the obvious. “Where are we bound now?”
Cullen sighed, resigned. “Back the way we came.”
Willa frowned, concentrating on the writhing contortions of the colt about to be born. The young stable boy had nearly fainted when she’d suddenly put her hand up into the animal’s birth canal and motioned frantically for his help.
“No, not me,” he’d stammered, and backed into a corner of the stall, collapsing down onto his heels in the straw. Molly’s heavy stamping and heaving in the stall had left him in obvious terror.
“You have to help keep me steady if one of her contractions squeezes my arm too tightly.”
His small, pinched face paled even more in the low light. She’d lost track of time, somewhere in the wee hours of the morning, of course. All creatures seemed to birth their young in the dead of the night. Young John had sought her out in the loft, shaking her awake.
Molly was one of the huge draft horses drovers used for hauling heavy loads of supplies, like barrels of ale. How she’d come to be in the motherly way, the gods only knew. Of course, Willa knew all about pregnancy and birth. She’d grown up with a father who had trained her in every eventuality a physician might face.
The mystery was why the stable owner had allowed Molly to be exposed to a situation where she would be bred. Keeping the large inventory of horses needed for stables on a coaching line was a very lucrative business. A powerful wheel horse like Molly represented a huge investment.
By the time Molly gave up a fine, well-formed colt and Willa found her cot above the stables, the sun was peeking through the forest of masts in Portsmouth Harbour. She prayed she could get a few hours of sleep before the innkeeper realized she was not at her usual station in the stable. He was not the sort of man who would overlook a late appearance even though said worker had labored through the night.
After a few tense moments of rolling from side to side, trying to get comfortable on the hard cot, she dropped into a deep sleep. The fog-filled dream that immediately claimed her consisted of a Scotsman droning on and on about the proper length of stitches for sewing up a sailor’s wounds.
When she awoke suddenly to straw-dust-filled beams of late sun coming through the loft windows, she at first thought she was still dreaming. Another Scotsman was droning on and on beneath the loft. Willa sat up with a jerk. She wasn’t dreaming.
“Wills—” The bellow from below came from the innkeeper himself. “Get yourself down here before I let you go for laziness.”
She pulled on trousers, a shirt, and jammed a soft-brimmed hat on her head before taking the loft steps two at a time to present herself to the owner. Thank Hera she slept with her breasts bound. Of course, in truth, there was not that much to hide, which made her ongoing charade that much easier to maintain.
This time the same two Scotsmen who had demanded a fast team the day before had returned. The older man had a face like a gloomy sky lined with striated, black storm clouds. The younger man had a face like… His face was one she knew well.
His was a deeply tanned face, weathered from years of shipboard service. The lines around his mouth looked as if smiles came more easily than frowns. A long, patrician nose missed handsome by an inch with obvious signs of being broken at least once. His tall frame and broad shoulders bespoke a strenuous life.
Her father had had shoulders like that. During bloody battles at sea, this man would hoist broken sailors over his shoulders and take them down to the surgery, where the floors were covered with sand to keep the surgeons and their mates from slipping in the blood.
Her thoughts caught her by surprise. In the short time she’d served with Dr. MacCloud, she’d resented, yes, maybe even hated, his presumption to replace her father as the Arethusa’s surgeon and physician. She had no idea she’d been cataloging to memory the many quirks and planes of his face.
Cullen would always remember the moment when Willa gave up. The moment the light faded in those glorious gray eyes. The dark brows normally raised in skepticism at something he’d said or done? Now they’d fallen, and he wished to God he knew how to get back that light and her arrogant, questioning looks.
They’d stood in the shade of the stable, arguing for nearly an hour while Fergus stood by, stoic and uncharacteristically quiet.
“Do ye not see my point, woman?” Cullen gave an angry swipe at the sweat gathering on his forehead.
“You don’t have a point. This is my life. I have to follow my heart.” Willa’s voice remained calm, but she tapped a tell-tale, nervous tattoo with the toe of one of her dust-covered boots.
Cullen hesitated, watching the innkeeper’s wife out of the corner of his eye. She walked into the courtyard from a nearby orchard he knew well. She held up two corners of her white, starched apron with the center below her waist weighed down and bulging with fat red apples. He followed her progress with side looks until she threw him a sly glance and disappeared through the back entrance to the inn. Nearby church bells chimed the hour. He was running out of time.
Cullen finally dealt the death blow of reason, ticking off on the fingers of one hand all the arguments in favor of Willa’s consent to marry him.
“One - you have no family. My clan would be your family and protect you for as long as you live, no matter what happens to me. We owe your family a huge debt for your father coming to help us through a terrible time of illness ten years ago. That scourge took your mother’s life when you were still a babe.
“Two - yes, you will be secure once your father’s estate is settled, but anyone else you might marry would seek to take control of your fortune. The MacCloud clan is happy to set aside whatever you bring to the marriage for you alone, and your children.”
When Willa visibly flinched at the mention of children, Cullen chose to ignore her revulsion. “And three,” he continued, undeterred, “you are one of the most gifted physician’s assistants I’ve ever worked beside. You can neither continue with that work as Willa Morton nor can you legally obtain training as a physician.”
“What say you?” he finally finished. “Will you, Willa Morton, marry me, Cullen MacCloud, and forsake all others as long as we both live?”
She hesitated a telling moment. “Yes,” she finally said, drawing the word out like it came from a painful place deep inside. And that was when Willa’s light faded.
Cullen pulled a document from inside his coat. “I procured a special license from Doctor’s Commons in London after my aunt, Miss Elspeth MacKenzie, spoke with your father’s solicitor. He signed his permission as your guardian.”
“Are you telling me all of this was a foregone conclusion? No one doubted my compliance?”
Cullen’s temper flared. “Do ye think I fancy leg-shackling myself to a woman I barely know?” The stench of horse manure being mucked out of the barn onto straw-lined carts brought him back to reality.
By now, a circle of grooms and stable boys stood around them, gawking and hanging on every word.
Fergus took a firm grip on both of the combatants’ arms and pulled them toward their carriage being held by two boys from the stable. “Before ye come to blows, why do we not find a quiet inn where we can all have a wee dram and get to know each other better?”
Once inside the carriage, Cullen’s soon-to-be bride shook off his helping hand and shoved onto the seat across from him. As they rolled from the inn’s courtyard out onto the streets of Portsmouth, she turned and stared out the carriage window, ignoring him.
Cullen did not usually drink himself into insensibility, but he was ready to make an exception. The “wee dram” he and Fergus had ordered burned its way down his throat entirely too quickly.
Willa had refused the offer of spirits. They’d sat in the private dining room in The Dolphin Inn Fergus had procured for them and chewed through a supper of cold ham and potatoes washed down with a passable Madeira.
Cullen did not want to dwell on the vision of his aunt’s grizzled bodyguard banging on the door of a dressmaker’s shop which was where Fergus had gone to find a dress for Willa. He’d also procured a chamber at the inn where Wills could transform into Willa with privacy. He’d coaxed and bribed the innkeeper’s wife into helping her. After that, they would have to find a clergyman and ply him with enough coin to perform sudden, unexpected nuptials in the dark of the night.
After the wedding, Cullen had no idea what he’d do next. He was making up his battle plans on the run. With the resentment emanating from his intended, he assumed a blissful, conjugal night at the inn was out of the question.
He wished there were some way he could make the situation more bearable for poor Willa. And then he remembered. He had friends in Portsmouth. Friends who would come straight away if they knew how desperate his situation was.
He motioned toward the innkeeper. Once supplied with pen and paper, he scrawled a long, frantic message, which one of the stable boys was sent to deliver to the cottage on Arundel Street.
Willa had never worn such a fine gown, even when she was younger, before she joined her father aboard the Arethusa. She circled slowly at the direction of the innkeeper’s wife and the seamstress who had joined them with the gown at Fergus’s insistence.
After soaking in a tub of hot, soapy water, she’d exchanged the dust-encrusted boots from her work at the stable for satin slippers and fine silk stockings. The dress was a simple, high-waisted, light lavender silk with a deep hem embroidered thickly with violets. The puffed sleeves were obviously for a plumper woman, and her two helpers worked quickly to tuck in the excess fabric.
The breath hitched in her throat as she worried about what Dr. MacCloud expected from her.
The seamstress stared up and took a number of pins from her mouth. “What a fine family of men you’re marrying into. Such kindly gentlemen.”
Willa flushed. Did the two women suspect the turmoil swirling through her brain?
“Are the two of ye childhood friends?” the innkeeper’s wife asked.
Willa’s mouth dropped open. There was no way to explain her predicament in a rational way. The two women had seen the male attire she’d been wearing when she arrived at the inn.
After a few moments in thought, she spun a tale. “Yes, our families have known each other since I was a babe. The decision to marry was sudden because Dr. MacCloud’s ship is leaving soon for a posting off Africa. I,” she paused for a stuttering instant. “My father recently died, and I was staying with friends on a nearby farm. I had no time to change before…”
“Before what?” The seamstress’s eyes were wide in thrall to the romantic story.
Willa forced a smile. “Why, before the man I’m to marry showed up to bring me here.”
“Tis wonderful to be swept away by such a fine, tall man. Have ye always loved each other?” The innkeeper’s wife was clearly taken with Willa’s half-truths, not to mention the Highland wit and charm the MacCloud men seemed to spread everywhere they went.
The two women fitted the dress perfectly to Willa’s slender figure and lovingly pulled her now-dry, lavender-scented curls into a careful twist and pulled a few tendrils to fall loose below her ears.
“No one will notice you’ve bobbed your hair now.” The innkeeper’s wife twisted the last tendril with a hot iron and then stepped back to assess the effect. “He’ll be glad he came for ye before his ship sailed.” She turned Willa by the shoulders and headed her toward the staircase down to the waiting Scots.
Dr. Cullen MacCloud. The name felt bitter in her mouth, but for the rest of her life, she would be Willa MacCloud.
Once she rounded the staircase and saw the two men waiting anxiously below, she straightened her back and resolved never to let Dr. MacCloud know how terrified and unhappy she was in this moment. She would do her best, but she did not love the man standing before her.
“You are beautiful, Willa Morton,” he said, and produced a small, velvet box from within his jacket. Mr. MacKenzie was in full Highland dress, but Cullen wore his dark blue Royal Navy uniform. She was taken aback by the two Scotsmen whose presence seemed to fill the room.
When she opened the tiny box, the ring inside was a smoky quartz cabochon, surround
ed by tiny diamonds and rubies. Her eyes flew to Cullen’s. “Why?”
“It’s a betrothal ring, my mother’s.” Cullen slid the ring onto a finger on her left hand, and then grew quiet. He clasped his hand over hers for a few silent moments before saying, “It matches your eyes.”
She blinked in confusion. Willa fought against feeling anything for this man.
A quick, sneak look at the other two women confirmed her suspicions. These soon-to-be kinsmen would sweep any woman off her feet. Unfortunately, all that male pulchritude was wasted on Willa. She wanted nothing to do with someone who forced his way into her carefully built life to make her conform to his version of what she ought to be.
The next few hours swam by as if she were wandering through a thick fog. She dutifully responded to the questions asked by the vicar, and back at The Dolphin, ate a small slice of cake and drank a glass of watered wine in response to a toast by Fergus MacKenzie. His toast was in Gaelic, but Cullen explained it was simply an ancient wish for long life and happiness.
When the time finally came to retire, she struggled to keep her eyes open, remembering barely twenty-four hours before, she’d helped bring a huge, gangling colt into the world.
Chapter Eight
Cullen helped her loosen the long line of tiny buttons down the back of her wedding gown before she went behind a screen in the corner of their room to change into the cotton nightdress the seamstress had provided along with the wedding dress. The woman for whom the nightwear had originally been ordered was apparently much shorter than Willa. The deep bottom ruffle swung well above her ankles. She hid her feet with their long, slender toes in the satin slippers she’d worn to her fated sentence to become the wife of the man now waiting on the other side of the curtain. The man she was sure expected to make her his wife in fact.
“Please extinguish the candles.” She crossed her fingers in the hope he would allow her to get through what happened next in blessed darkness. He remained silent, but all the candles went dark.
Pride of Duty (Men of the Squadron Book 2) Page 6
