Meg was pushing the paper thin slices of ham around her plate.
“Aren’t you hungry?”
“No.” She pressed her lips together. “I don’t feel quite the thing.”
She was pale—actually a little green.
“Would you prefer to leave now?”
She nodded. “If you—and your mother and Miss Witherspoon—don’t mind.”
“Of course not. Mother and Miss Witherspoon are traveling in a separate carriage in any event, so you and I can leave whenever it suits you. Are your bags ready? Do you have anything left to pack?”
She pressed her lips together again and shook her head. He stood.
“If you will excuse us, Mis—my wife would like to leave.”
“What, before the toasts?” Westbrooke grinned. “I have an excellent one prepared especially for you, Parks.”
That was definitely a treat to be missed. He took Meg’s arm and helped her to stand. “So sorry. We really must get on the road.”
“I’ve already had Meg’s luggage loaded onto the carriage, Parker-Roth.” Knightsdale grinned. “And I’ve sent the announcement off to all the papers.”
“My thanks.” Parks looked at Meg as she hugged her father, her step-mother, her sister, Knightsdale’s nieces, and Lady Westbrooke goodbye. Her color was definitely not good. Perhaps once she was in the quiet of the carriage, she would improve.
“Take care of my daughter, sir.”
He took Reverend Peterson’s hand. “I will try my best.”
“That’s all we can ask.” Reverend Peterson smiled. “Meg does have a mind of her own, you know.”
That was an understatement. “I’ve noticed.”
Reverend Peterson laughed.
All the ladies were crying as Parks led his wife down the front stairs to the waiting coach.
“Be sure to write, Meg,” Lady Knightsdale said.
“Often,” Lady Westbrooke said.
Miss Peterson—Meg—just waved and let him help her into the carriage. Once he saw she was settled, he knocked on the roof, and Ned gave the horses their office to start. The carriage pulled away.
They were alone.
Miss Peterson stared at her hands clasped tightly in her lap. He shifted in his seat. It was going to be a very long trip to the Priory, but at least there was one subject he could address immediately.
“You know, I cannot keep calling you Miss Peterson.”
She nodded.
“Should I call you Margaret? Or would you prefer Meg? I noticed your family calls you Meg.” He was chattering. He stopped.
“M-Meg is fine.”
Well, at least she’d said something.
“And you must call me John.”
She nodded. “J-John…”
“Yes?” Her voice was so low and strained.
“John, I think…I’m…” She swallowed. “I’m g-going to be sic—”
Unfortunately he had not packed a chamber pot. He offered her the only receptacle he could think of—his best high-crowned beaver. He snatched it off his head and handed it to her just in time to spare the carriage floor.
Chapter 19
“Welcome to the Priory, Miss—um…” Mr. Park—John’s father grinned. “Well, you’re Mrs. Parker-Roth now, but that’s going to get dashed confusing—and as you’ll soon learn, this house is confusing enough. What do you want me to call you?”
“Everyone calls me Meg, sir.” She felt as if she were looking at her Mr. Parker-Roth, just thirty years older. Except for the eye color—this man had blue eyes while his son had green—the gray hair, and the lines around the eyes and mouth, the two men could have been twins.
Physically twins. Their temperaments appeared to be as different as night and day. She glanced around the small, cramped office. She could not picture her Mr. Parker-Roth in such a disordered environment. Books were shoved every which way on the shelves and stacked in piles on the floor. Some—victims of gravity or an incautious foot—cascaded under chairs. Papers littered every horizontal surface, and she feared she saw a corner of toast peeking out from a mound of used blotting paper.
Her eyes came back to her host. He wore a dark, loose garment that might once have been blue, but was now mostly gray with an ancient ink stain on the breast. His fingers, long and well-manicured, were also ink stained, much like Papa’s.
“What should I call you?”
He shrugged. “Whatever you like. John calls me Father; the rest call me Da”—he grinned again, his eyes behind his spectacles crinkling with amusement—“when they aren’t calling me something worse.”
“I see.” He was much too informal to fit “Father.” It would have to be “Da.” “I suppose I’ll—”
“Damn and blast!” A very pregnant woman shoved open the door. She stopped abruptly on the threshold. “Oh, sorry.” She grinned. “You must be John’s new wife.”
“Yes. I’m Meg Pe—” No, she wasn’t Meg Peterson any longer. She repressed a sigh. This would take some getting used to. “I’m Meg.”
The woman stuck out her hand and Meg grasped it. “I’m John’s sister, Jane.” She patted her belly. “The married one.”
“The very short-tempered one,” Mr. Parker-Roth said.
Jane laughed and pushed a pile of papers off a chair so she could sit.
“You’d be short-tempered, too, Da, if you looked like a snake that’s swallowed a goat.”
“I would be more than short-tempered. I would be dumbfounded—and that doesn’t begin to describe what your mother’s reaction would be.”
Jane snorted. “Very funny.” She turned to Meg. “Men! Trust me, if they were the ones condemned to carry babies in their bellies for nine months”—she shifted in the chair—“most of the time on their bladders, they’d keep their breeches buttoned.”
Mr. Parker-Roth held up an ink-stained hand. “Jane, please, let’s not send Meg screaming from the house yet.”
Jane shrugged. “She’s married, isn’t she?”
“Barely.”
“That’s right.” Jane grinned at Meg. “Shot the cat, didn’t you? And now John’s upstairs puking his guts out, and Mama and Agatha have collapsed in their beds.” She frowned. “I’d better not get sick. To be retching and breeding at this stage would be beyond terrible.”
“Yes. I hope you don’t fall ill.” Meg looked at Mr. Parker-Roth. “I am very sorry. My nephews were sick when I left. I must have gotten it from them.”
He chuckled. “Puked in John’s hat, MacGill said.”
Would she ever recover from the embarrassment? “There was nothing else at hand.” She swallowed. “Your son was quite the gentleman.”
Jane hooted. “I wager he was. Lord, I’d love to have seen John holding a hatful of vomit.”
“It was not amusing.”
“No, I suppose not.” Jane was still grinning. “John must really be in love.”
Meg did not have the courage to tell them the real story. Perhaps when…John…had recovered, he would tell his family the particulars of their marriage. Or Mrs. Parker-Roth would tell her husband. There had not been time for that. They’d arrived not even half an hour ago. John had bolted for his room; his mother and Miss Witherspoon, still slightly green around the gills, had tottered off to lie down and recoup their strength. At least the women were almost recovered from the malady.
The bemused butler had led Meg here.
“Did you have a reason for bursting in, Jane?”
Jane shrugged again. “Not really.”
“Just wanted to deliver your daily tirade on Motton’s absence?”
“Right.” She looked at Meg. “Viscount Motton is my husband—my missing husband. He is off attending his dying aunt in Dorset.”
“The aunt who cannot die quickly enough for Jane’s tastes.”
“I am not so unfeeling.” Jane frowned. “However, she will die whether he is there or not.”
“Just as this baby will be born whether he is here or not.”
> “But it is his baby! This”—she touched her stomach—“is at least partly his fault. If I have to be here, he should, too.”
Mr. Parker-Roth rolled his eyes. “We can hope Motton’s aunt is thoughtful enough to expire promptly. Meanwhile, do you suppose you could show Meg up to the yellow bedroom? I’m sure Claybourne has already had her things taken up.”
“All right. It’s better than sitting here moaning.”
“Definitely, especially as I would like to return to my sonnet.” Mr. Parker-Roth smiled at Meg. “Don’t let Jane alarm you. Her bark is definitely worse than her bite.”
Jane heaved herself out of her chair. “Unless your name is Viscount Motton.”
Meg followed Jane out of the room. They started up the stairs, but Jane had to stop every few feet and rest.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes, I’m fine.”
Meg put her hand on Jane’s arm. “Certainly someone else could show me to my room.”
“No, no, Da is right. It’s better for me to be doing something other than moping around.” She smiled, though Meg thought her effort was slightly strained. “And Da really did want to get back to his poetry. I assume John has told you all about our odd family?”
A reasonable assumption, if theirs had been a normal courtship. “No, not really.”
Jane grabbed her side.
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Yes, it’s just a stitch. I’ve been getting them for the last few days. There’s just not enough room inside me for this baby anymore.” She held onto the banister and breathed deeply.
“When is the baby due?”
“Not for another month—and first babies always come late.” She took another breath and let it out slowly. “That’s better.” She continued up the stairs. “So John didn’t tell you about our family?”
“No.”
She smiled down at Meg from two steps above. “A whirlwind courtship? Never thought John was so impassioned!”
Meg smiled weakly. “It’s, um, a little complicated.”
Jane looked as if she might press the issue, but apparently thought better of it. She turned back to climb another step.
“About our family—I prefer to think of us as adventurous or eccentric rather than odd. The one who’s odd, really, is John. To use a horticultural simile, John is like a topiary…pig in the middle of a forest. We think he’s a changeling.”
John, a topiary pig? How absurd! “What do you mean?”
“Haven’t you noticed? He is so very orderly and proper.” Jane grinned, one eyebrow flying up to meet her hairline. “Or maybe he hasn’t been so very proper with you?”
Meg flushed. She was not going to discuss John’s impropriety with his sister. “And the rest of you are not proper? Your mother seems perfectly unexceptional.”
“She can behave in company—well, we all can—but she’s an artist.” Jane laughed. “Wait until you see her studio before you decide how proper she is. Da is a poet—you saw how properly he dresses. Mama makes him clean up for company, but no matter what he puts on, it still looks…not improper so much as disheveled. John is never disheveled.” She waggled her eyebrows. “Is he?”
Meg ignored her. “John is the oldest?”
“Yes. Stephen’s next—he’s two years younger than John. He roams the world, collecting plants for John and doing Lord knows what else. I think he’s a pirate. I’m twenty-five”—she patted her belly—“and I had to get married. Nicholas, who’s at Oxford when he isn’t being sent down for some prank, is twenty-one. Juliana’s sixteen and a scientist—she’s often blowing up things. And Lucy is fourteen and wishes to write the sequel to Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.”
They finally reached the top of the stairs. Jane turned right, and Meg followed her down a long corridor hung with unpleasantly graphic hunting paintings.
“Ugly, aren’t they? Mama has to avert her eyes, but Da thinks they’re funny. One of his ancestors must have been an avid huntsman—or just an atrocious judge of art.”
Meg averted her eyes as well. “Will I meet Juliana and Lucy tonight?”
“Oh, no. They’ve been sent off to visit Aunt Reliham. Mama felt their presence would be too upsetting to someone in my delicate condition.”
“I see.”
“Eventually you will. Here’s your room.”
They had almost reached the end of the corridor. There was one more door beyond the one they’d stopped at.
“And that is…?” Meg was almost certain she knew the answer, but she wished to hear her suspicions confirmed.
“John’s room, of course.” Jane grinned. “Don’t worry—there’s a connecting door. You’ll be able to—oh.”
Jane bent over, leaning against the wall next to an unfortunate depiction of a dead fox. “Ohh…I-I think…I think perhaps f-first babies do not always come l-late.”
Death would be welcome.
Parks curled into a ball on his bed. Thank God the Priory had not been another hundred yards down the road. He would never have made it.
“Are ye gonna let me help ye out of yer clothes now?”
He grunted. Was Mac crazy? Even opening his eyes was too much movement.
“Ye’ll be more comfortable in yer nightclothes.”
“Shut up. Go away.”
“All right. I’ve brought ye a nice clean bowl in case ye need it.”
God, surely there was nothing left in his aching gut! He opened one eye and found a large ceramic bowl in front of his nose. It was close enough he could identify the decorative figures as painted blue pigs without his spectacles.
He closed his eye and grunted again.
“I’ll be back later.” Mac draped a blanket over him. “Maybe ye’ll sleep a bit and be in a better temper then.”
He heard Mac’s footsteps cross the floor, and the door open and shut.
He let out a shuddering breath. He was alone at last, free to suffer without an audience. If Meg’s and the other ladies’ experience of the disease was any guide, he need only endure another twelve hours of intense discomfort before he began to recover. He put his cheek against the cool ceramic bowl and waited for time to pass.
He must have dozed because he startled when he heard footsteps again. His stomach twisted.
If he lay very still perhaps he would not be sick again.
“Go away, Mac. You can strip me bare if you want, but not now.”
“I’m not Mac,” a female voice said. “Would you like me to get him?”
“What?” He sat up quickly—a very big mistake. Fortunately the bowl was still at hand. He emptied what little remained in his stomach and then heaved helplessly for a few more minutes.
“I’m so sorry,” Meg said.
She stood by his bed—by his heaving, weak body. Why in God’s name didn’t she have the decency to leave?
He flopped back on his pillows, and she picked up the bowl full of vomit and took it away.
He was going to die of embarrassment before he died of this bloody illness. He closed his eyes. God, let him die now.
God wasn’t listening. He heard Meg’s footsteps returning.
“I’m so sorry I’ve made you ill.”
“It’s not your fault.” Perhaps if he kept his eyes closed she would leave.
“Yes, it is.”
He heard the sound of chair legs sliding over the carpet. He sighed and opened his eyes. Clearly, she was not leaving anytime soon.
She handed him a clean bowl. “And I ruined your good hat, too.”
He took the bowl from her and put it on the bed within reach. “Don’t give it another thought.”
Meg plucked at her skirt. “If I had not gone to the Horticultural Society meeting, you would not have been obliged to wed me.”
How many times were they going to have this conversation?
“Stop blaming yourself. As I have already told you, our marriage is not your fault.” Nor, obviously, was it her wis
h. Did she want a title that much? Her only chance now was if he died young.
His stomach clenched and he moved the basin closer. The way he felt at the moment, he’d happily oblige her.
“That is very kind of you to say, but, well…”
His glare must have impressed her, because she stopped and shrugged. “I didn’t come here to argue with you. Your mother sent me to tell you Jane has had a son.”
“Really?” He inched up on his pillow. “That was fast.” He must have slept longer than he’d thought. Mac had pulled the curtains before he’d left, so he had no idea what time it was. “She and the baby are well?”
Meg grinned. “Very well. And it was not so fast. After talking to Jane’s maid, your mother thinks Jane has been in labor for the last few days. Still, hard labor was quick, and the best news is Lord Motton arrived at the same time as the midwife, a good twenty minutes before his son was born.”
“That’s fortunate. Jane might have castra—cared if he’d missed the event.”
Meg grinned. “He seems—they both seem—very happy.”
Something besides nausea stabbed at his gut.
What was the matter with him? Well, he knew what was the matter—this mawkishness must be related to his illness. He’d never felt this—God!—weepy over a baby’s birth before. He certainly remembered Lucy’s and Juliana’s babyhoods well enough to know infants were noisy, messy, inconvenient creatures.
He shifted on the pillows as his gut clenched again.
Westbrooke seemed uncommonly fond of his child.
Of course he was. The man needed an heir and had been uncertain as to his abilities in that department. He must be very relieved to have the job done.
He didn’t have those concerns. And to be truthful, doing anything more strenuous than breathing at the moment was out of the question.
“You shouldn’t be trying to sleep in all your clothes. Shall I help you—”
“No!”
She looked offended at his vehemence. Was she crazy? He was not going to let her strip him when he still felt like he might puke at any moment.
She flushed. “We are married. Wives are supposed to care for their husbands.”
“Thank you for the offer, but I would prefer you send MacGill in to help me.”
The Naked Gentleman Page 26
