Tremaine took Nita’s hand. “I saw the knife Horton intended to use on me. George was to cut off my muddy boot with it, then pass it over to Horton.”
“I’m surprised you remember that.” Did Tremaine also recall telling Nita that his heart was already in her keeping? For Nita would never forget those words.
A silence took up residence where Nita’s heartfelt confession should be. She held on to Tremaine’s hand and tried to recall how to begin her well-rehearsed speech.
“I was wrong.”
They’d spoken the exact same words at the exact same moment. Tremaine kissed Nita’s knuckles, though he was also trying to hide a puzzled smile.
“Any woman who rescues me from certain butchery or worse, when I’ve castigated her for rescuing others, can be as wrong as she pleases,” he said. “Nita, can you forgive me?”
She leaned into Tremaine’s solid warmth—she was on his good side, not that it mattered.
“There’s nothing to forgive, Tremaine. Nothing.”
Tremaine’s arm came around her shoulders. “I said I would not marry you if you persisted with your medical activities, then I expected you to save my life. How is this not gross arrogance, selfishness, bullheadedness, and a reason to hate a man?”
How was it not entirely understandable—now? But where to start? “My family loves me.”
“I love you too, lass.” A grumpy disclosure, not a declaration.
Nita waited, because the fingers stroking her cheek were as gentle as Tremaine’s tone was rough.
“Dueling is a stupid, reckless, violent exercise in lunacy,” he said, “but it can sort out a man’s priorities. As I marched off the steps in that clearing, I did not think about commerce. I did not consider how to market merino wool most profitably. I did not wish I’d written one last letter to my factors in the Midlands.”
Nita slid her hand inside Tremaine’s dressing gown, needing to feel the beat of his heart beneath her palm.
“I should hope you paid attention to the counting, sir.”
“More than Nash did, apparently, but that’s not relevant. What’s relevant is that memories of you and hope for a future with you filled my heart and my mind as I paced toward my fate. You, Nita Haddonfield. You matter more to me than my fears that you’ll be carried off by some dread disease. If I could have five years with you, or five minutes with you, why would I deny myself that joy?”
“Because you’re not a fool,” she said, kissing his wrist. “I’ve had a change in perspective, Tremaine.”
“As long as you remain in my arms, you may explain this change in perspective.”
“Addy Chalmers brought us word of the duel. Ladies aren’t supposed to know of such things, but we often do. I had my bag in hand and was on my way to the woods when George brought you home.”
“I recall a posse comitatus of your sisters, the countess, and Addy. They wouldn’t have let you go alone.”
“I understand that now,” Nita said. “They want to protect me. My siblings aren’t angry at me for tending others; they are frightened for me. When Addy told us you were to face Nash over a pair of pistols, I was terrified. I could not think; I could not move. I could not even pray coherently, Tremaine. You could have died.”
Nita had been terrified, paralyzed, mute, and horrified, even as she’d silently bargained with the Almighty. Please, keep the man I love safe. How did soldiers’ families deal with that terror day after day, year after year?
How had Nita’s family dealt with it?
“What could possibly daunt your bottomless courage?” Tremaine asked. Was he growing tired?
“I haven’t much courage,” Nita said. “Nicholas says I’m honorable because I help where I can, but I’m not brave, Tremaine. Much about medicine scares me or disgusts me. I can admit that now.”
To him.
“You never appear scared or disgusted. You appear determined and capable. You’re also very pretty.”
He truly was on the mend, thank heavens. “Have you been drinking your tea?”
“No, love. Not after your brother told me you spike it. Tell me more about being afraid, Nita.”
Yes, tell him. Tell him that too, because it made all the difference. “When I snatch up my bag and march off to a sickroom, you are terrified for me. I see that now. I grab my medicinals the way you fellows take up your dueling pistols, and I march off against an opponent who doesn’t wait for the count, who knows no protocol, who kills entire families without even alluding to concepts of honor or reason. You are not being pigheaded or backward or narrow-minded when you ask me to give up seeing patients; you are as frightened as I am.”
As frightened as Nita had been for years.
Tremaine passed Nita a handkerchief. She’d soon have a collection with his initials embroidered on them.
“I love you,” he said, kissing her ear. “I love your kisses and your passion, your polite reserve, your humor, stubbornness, and courage. I want very much to marry you, Nita Haddonfield. If that means I send you off to do battle with the plague itself, I still want to marry you.”
“I don’t want to do battle with the plague,” Nita wailed softly. “I want to marry you, to have great, fat, healthy babies with you, to scold you for letting our children spoil their supper with ginger biscuits.
“But people know I’ll help,” she went on, “or try to help, and Mama told them all I have a gift. So they call upon me when there’s illness or injury in the house, and if I don’t go, who will? Horton is backward and bumbling, and even he senses that his knowledge is badly out-of-date. I can’t leave people to suffer when I might help, but I won’t lose you, Tremaine. I cannot.”
Nita fell silent when she wanted to rant. She could have lost him to Edward Nash’s pride, stubbornness, and shortsightedness. She could not bear it if she lost him to her own.
* * *
Nita was a sweet, warm, tired—and upset—weight against Tremaine’s side. Every time he’d surfaced from his laudanum dreams, she’d been by his bed. Often he’d found her hand in his, and sometimes she’d fallen asleep like that—curled over in her chair by his bed, her hand wrapped around his.
“I quizzed Lord Fairly as he thumped and poked at me.” Tremaine had had commercial dealings with Fairly several years back without ever learning of the man’s medical abilities.
“About sheep?”
“Not about sheep. No titled Englishman knows more about sheep than I do.”
Tremaine had amused her. God willing, he’d amuse Nita often in the coming years.
“Go on, Tremaine. Would you like a ginger biscuit?”
“Please, God, not another ginger biscuit. Fairly is something of an expert on the export of medical treatises and instruments.”
“He’s quite knowledgeable,” Nita said. “Also kind. When I can’t find a reference in English to a disease or herbal remedy, he often has something in his library.”
Fortunately, the estimable Lord Fairly was happily married, else Tremaine might have questioned his generous literary motives.
“Fairly spent his early childhood in Scotland and returned there for some of his medical training. He’s skilled as both a surgeon and a physician, unlike your Dr. Horton.”
Nita shifted so she straddled Tremaine’s lap. “Can you be comfortable like this?”
No, he could not. “Cuddle up, love. My leg is fine and I’ve missed you.”
Nita settled in, and Tremaine forgot what he’d been bleating about—ah, the ever-helpful Lord Fairly.
“I asked Fairly to find us a pair of physicians to open up a practice here in Haddondale. At least one of them must be young and recently educated. The other can be older, provided his training exceeds the theoretical foundation given to most English physicians. Will you interview these fellows, put them through their paces?”
Nita kissed him. “I love you. We need a good midwife too.”
Apology accepted, apparently—proposal as well—and she’d anticipated Tremaine’s very
next point.
“Consider it done, madam. You will interview her too.”
Nita tucked herself agreeably closer, such that Tremaine endured a throbbing of the blood in a location other than his wound.
“If only you could find a replacement for Vicar. He delights in carping about a woman’s pain being her just deserts for leading Adam astray. Makes me wonder about the gout he complains of at such length.”
Tremaine saved puzzling over the theology of gout for some other day. “Your brother mentioned Vicar’s increasing age to Fairly, and I heard them discussing an in-law of Fairly’s as a possible replacement. Nita, you do know that under this dressing gown, I’m wearing nothing but a nightshirt?”
She sat up. “You’re injured, Tremaine. You mustn’t overdo.”
At least she was crestfallen to deliver that opinion.
“I must contradict you. Lord Fairly was clear that I should resume normal activities as soon as possible, allowing pain to inform my choices. I’m in pain, Nita. Will you, please, relieve my distress yet again?”
“We’ll marry, won’t we, Tremaine?” She unbelted his robe as she put the question to him. “I’ve been a touch queasy lately, which makes no sense, but I do want to marry you. I’m done battling contagion, Tremaine. Let your physicians duel with that scoundrel. I’ll attend the occasional lying-in, I’m sure, and I can always be counted on to deal with injuries—my goodness.”
A part of Tremaine was showing off its exuberant good health and high spirits.
“I’ve missed you,” he said again. “Might I hope you’ve missed me?”
“Desperately,” Nita said, rising and locking the door. “Do you still have that special license?”
“I assuredly do,” Tremaine replied as Nita resumed her place on his lap, and he got to work on the drawstring of her bodice. “We’ll find a property nearby, and—”
Nita kissed him to silence and then to bliss upon bliss and then to a lovely, sleepy embrace, during which Tremaine considered names for their firstborn, when in the past, he might have counted sheep.
* * *
“The greatest plague ever to bedevil mortal man, the greatest threat to his peace, the most fiendish source of undeserved humility is his brother-in-law, and titled brothers-in-law are the worst of a bad lot.”
Tremaine’s boots thumped across the carpets of Belle Maison’s library, his pace, to Nita’s ear, solid and even, though only weeks ago he’d been brought to bed with a bullet wound.
“Nicholas frets,” Nita said. “It’s his nature. He can’t help it, and marriage and fatherhood have made him worse.”
Impending fatherhood had made Tremaine worse too—also better, at least in terms of tenderness, quiet kisses, caresses, and the pace with which he pursued his commercial activities.
“But why did Bellefonte muster the entire regiment to see us off?” Tremaine groused. He sounded Scottish all the time now. “One likes a bit of dignity about one’s leave-takings.”
Tremaine marched to a halt before a tall window and held out a hand to Nita. “Finally, the last of the recruits arrives.”
“The Holland bulbs along the south-facing garden wall are starting to sprout,” Nita said, for a woman in anticipation of motherhood appreciated new life in all its brave splendor.
She leaned into her husband, wondering how she’d ever managed, how she’d endured, without his love to sustain her.
“Are you certain you want to take this journey with me?” he asked, tucking her against his side. “I’ve wondered how my households ever functioned, how I functioned, without you to take matters in hand.”
This happened frequently—their thoughts ran in tandem, much as Tremaine slept in tandem with Nita.
“We will make a wedding journey of it,” Nita said. “Nicholas has assured me the house we’ve chosen will be entirely refurbished by the time we return. George will steward your acres, and Digby will aid him. I want to meet your grandfather, Tremaine, and he apparently has demanded to meet me.”
Demanding family members no longer bothered Nita as they had prior to her marriage, though she’d been happily busy establishing her household with Tremaine. Nicholas had insisted on a family gathering prior to Tremaine and Nita’s departure for Scotland and points distant, even summoning Beckman and Ethan and all their family.
The last time they’d been together had been the old earl’s funeral, and Nita agreed with Nicholas—better to gather for joy than sorrow. Better to assure Tremaine he’d married not only a loving wife, but also an entire tribe of loving, if bothersome, in-laws.
George and Elsie had come over from Stonebridge, which property George had purchased from Edward for the sum of Edward’s debts. Edward was rumored to be the elderly baronet’s whipping boy, though even the post of charity relation hadn’t lessened Edward’s fondness for gin.
“You’re thinking about him again,” Tremaine said, kissing Nita’s temple. “You’ll upset my son with such unworthy ruminations.”
Nita was carrying a girl. She knew this through some instinct foreign to modern medicine. The Doctors Macallan—a pair of brothers from Aberdeen—laughed at her prediction, but their sister—a trained midwife—pointed out Nita had as much chance of being right as wrong.
The village had no sooner stopped gossiping about Dr. Horton’s retirement than Vicar had announced his decision to join households with a brother living outside Bath. Lord Fairly’s brother-in-law, a fellow named Daniel Banks, was to assume the Haddondale pulpit within the month.
“George and Elsie live the closest and yet they are the last to arrive,” Nita said as George escorted his wife past a flower bed where daffodils still slumbered beneath cold earth. “Why do you suppose that is?”
“Mrs. George Haddonfield has developed delicate digestion of a morning,” Tremaine said. “One is burdened by such confidences in the middle of an otherwise unremarkable game of cards, for no earthly reason I can fathom.”
In other words, Tremaine was overjoyed for George and Elsie, as Nita was.
“Mind your enthusiasm for the topic, Tremaine, or they might name the baby after you.”
As Nita crossed the garden on her husband’s arm, Tremaine peered down at her. “Do you think George might name a boy after me? Bellefonte will be jealous. I rather like the idea, though ‘Tremaine’ might be an awkward name for a girl.”
He was enthralled with the notion, clearly, and when Nita gave birth to a daughter on a lovely autumn morning, Tremaine suggested the child be named Nicolette St. Michael.
The girl’s siblings—of which there was eventually an entire herd—in fact called her Dr. Bo Peep, for Nicky St. Michael, much to her parents’ pride, became highly skilled in treating any and all ailments and injuries commonly suffered by sheep.
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Daniel’s True Desire
“Why must all and sundry entertain themselves by telling me falsehoods?”
Daniel Banks’s teeth chattered as he put that conundrum to his horse, who had come to a halt, head down, sides heaving, before the only building in sight.
“‘Ye can’t miss it,’” Daniel quoted to himself. “The only lane that turns off to the left half a mile west of the village.”
This was not Belle Maison, the family seat of the Earl of Bellefonte. Daniel had listened carefully to the directions given to him by the good folk at the Queen’s Harebell. They’d sent him, in the middle of a roaring snowstorm, to a mean, weathered cottage, albeit one with a light in its single window.
“I’ll be but a moment,” Daniel promised his gelding.
Daniel’s boots hit the snowy ground and agony shot up limbs too long exposed to the cold. He stood for a moment, waiting for the pain to fade, concocting silent ep
ithets when he ought to have been murmuring the Twenty-Third Psalm.
“Halloo, the house!” he called, thumping up three snowy steps. The porch sheltered a small hoard of split, oak firewood. Somebody within burned that oak, for the frigid air held the comforting tang of smoke.
The wind abated once Daniel ducked under the porch’s overhang, though he did not tarry to appreciate the beauty of an early spring storm. He needed a fire, some victuals, and proper directions, though only the directions mattered.
A man of God was supposed to welcome hardships, and Daniel did, mostly because his store of silent, colorful language was becoming impressive.
He raised a gloved fist to knock on the door. “Halloo, the—!”
The door opened, Daniel’s sleeve was snatched into a tight grasp, and he was yanked into the warmth of the cottage so quickly he nearly bumped his head on the lintel.
“I said I’d be home by dark,” his captor muttered, “and full dark is yet another hour away. I was hoping this infernal snow would slow down.” The woman fell silent, for Daniel’s sleeve was in a young lady’s grip. “You’re not George.”
Alas for me. “The Reverend Daniel Banks, at your service, madam. I lost my way and need directions to Belle Maison, the Bellefonte estate. Apologies for intruding upon your afternoon.”
Though, might Daniel please intrude until at least his feet and ears thawed? Beelzebub was a substantial horse who grew a prodigious winter coat. He’d tolerate the elements well enough for a short time.
While Daniel was cold, tired, famished, and viewed his upcoming visit to the earl’s grand house as a penance at best.
“Your gloves are frozen,” the lady noted, tugging one of those gloves from Daniel’s hand. “What could you be thinking, sir?” She went after his scarf next, unwinding it from his head, though she had to go up on her toes. She appropriated his second glove and shook the lot, sending pellets of ice in all directions.
What had he been thinking? Lately, Daniel avoided the near occasion of thinking. Better that way, all around.
“You needn’t go to any trouble,” Daniel said, though the warmth of the cottage was heavenly. A kettle steamed on the pot swing, and the scent of cinnamon—a luxury—filled the otherwise humble space. Somebody had made the dwelling comfy, with a rocking chair by the fire, fragrant beeswax candles in the sconces, and braided rugs covering a plank floor.
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