by Carrie Lomax
Undaunted, Harper placed her right hand over her heart and continued to speak as if the unsavory implication in the earl’s question could be avoided.
“For each patient, I develop customized treatments to promote recovery or manage the worst symptoms, in hopes of enabling our patients to lead some degree of productive lives. My work is to determine whether the patient is capable of improvement and then plan for the extent of the intervention necessary to restore the patient to health.”
The earl nodded. “Impressive. What happens when your plan doesn’t work?”
“Then I adjust and look for another solution better-suited to the patient. It is a process, and it takes time. You will see improvements, but they may be frustratingly incremental. There may be setbacks.” She shrugged. “We cannot know what will happen until I begin to try.”
The earl tapped his finger against his jaw. “Miss Forsythe. I’ll ask you one more time. Why should I trust you—a woman—with my son’s care, when I might have any doctor in England?”
Harper glanced at the rows of bookshelves behind the desk near the window. Row upon row of gilt-spined books. Far more suitable to study than jars of pickled brains. What did the earl want to hear, that would make him let her stay?
“I will share an example with you, in confidence, I trust. One of our residents suffered from severe melancholia after the sudden deaths of his parents. Through my intervention, he came to terms with his loss. He is now married with a family of his own.” She placed her empty tea cup on the tray. “I am very proud of the work I do, your lordship. I heal people. I help them reclaim their lives.”
“I see.” The earl lapsed into silence for a moment, studying her. “You do understand, Miss Forsythe, the problem of allowing a young, unmarried woman to work in close confines with my son? How damaging it would be to your reputation, both professional and personal, if something were to happen between you and Edward?”
Harper laughed. “Your lordship, Edward would be my patient. As you say, the risk is all on me. You will not find a doctor with higher professional standards, and that is because of my sex, not despite it.”
The earl absorbed this. “If anything untoward happens, I will turn you out of the house immediately.”
Affront stiffened her back. “Would you say anything like this to a male doctor treating your adult daughter?”
“It would not even occur to me,” the earl confessed.
“Then we shan’t discuss it further. Think of me as a man who happens to be wearing skirts, if that helps.”
There was a long moment of silence as the earl considered this.
“It doesn’t.”
A moment of withering awkwardness passed, until the earl tugged a velvet rope suspended on the wall. The door instantly opened to reveal a waiting servant. The earl gave quiet instructions, and the footman left.
“Since you are here, I suppose it is worth taking the time to introduce you to Edward. He shall join us momentarily. Allow me to give you a brief overview of his behavior since his return.”
“Please do.”
Much of what the earl described Harper had already gleaned from the newspapers she had read. His English was quite good, for example, given that it had gone unused for nearly half his life. Yet Harper needed to know what was holding the newly returned heir back from claiming his rightful place. Surely not his language proficiency.
The earl paused, looking embarrassed. “Edward is prone to leaving off his clothing. We finally got him to wear trousers consistently just this week.”
Harper nodded. “An abhorrence of clothing is a common affliction among the mentally distressed. I am accustomed to the sight of nudity, both male and female. Many of our patients were kept in poor conditions and arrive at the asylum malnourished, riddled with vermin or wasted from disease. I imagine that your son is in a similar state.”
There was a long silence.
Harper held her body very still as she tried to figure out what she might have said wrong. She had already invited the earl to think of her as a man in skirts. That had not been her most adroit choice of words.
“I’ll let you judge Edward’s physical condition for yourself,” the earl said at last.
The study door swung open. A liveried servant appeared, trailed by a very tall, exceptionally well-built man clad in a rumpled, ill-fitting jacket. The man was missing both cravat and waistcoat. His shirt gaped open, exposing a smooth, strong neck and the curve of sharply delineated muscles.
An ugly raised scar about an inch wide ringed the man’s strong neck. It was not a fresh wound, but neither was it long healed.
Harper’s mind raced to reconcile this living specimen of masculine perfection with the pathetic, broken shell she had expected. Air whooshed out of her lungs as if Miller, her nemesis, had punched her in the solar plexus.
The news reports hadn’t exaggerated. If anything, they had understated the vitality of this man. The descriptions had included every negative adjective under the sun—savage, filthy, animal. Not once had the words most gorgeous man in the known universe appeared anywhere in print. Were the reporters blind?
They were probably all men. All they saw was threat and dirt.
Whereas Harper was struck with the unshakable notion that kissing this man would not prompt her to throw a fistful of horse dung at him. She forced her gaze to his bare feet while the earl explained her presence in a tone and with words that one might use with a small child. Edward regarded her curiously for several moments, as if his father was of no more importance than a fly.
“You’re a woman,” he said finally, his voice rich and a bit hoarse, presumably from the injury to his throat. It resonated along Harper’s spine, her body an instrument of his breath.
Couldn’t you have been ugly, or arrogant like your brother?
“Yes. I am a woman doctor.” She swallowed, feeling the heat of the earl’s scrutiny. “Miss Harper Forsythe. I am a doctor of the mind, and I am here to help ease your reentry into society. Welcome home, Edward. I understand that you have been on quite the adventure.”
“I don’t need a doctor. I am not sick.” He cocked his head in puzzlement. The son was unmistakably the father’s offspring. There were echoes of the unlikable younger brother in the square of Edward’s jaw and the line of his mouth.
Harper could not take her eyes from the raw, pink wound. Someone had roped him about the neck. She looked at her hands, folded in her lap, wanting to wrap her fingers around the throat of whomever had done that to him and squeeze.
“Do you use straitjackets?” he demanded in that unearthly voice.
Harper blinked.
“Never. Our patients are mostly men and women whose families can no longer care for them safely at home. They are not dangerous.” A prickle of sweat trailed down the small of her back. Someone must have forced this magnificent man into a straitjacket, or he wouldn’t have asked.
“Why, that is more conversation that we have heard from him in a week!” The earl sat forward in his seat, positively beaming with optimism.
Edward scowled and fell silent. He glanced at the vine pattern in the carpet, then back at her with unnerving frankness. His eyes were a mournful shade of blue, the color of morning glories twining up the gates of the asylum.
Harper tried to breathe. I cannot let him unsettle me. The feeling will pass.
Edward rose silently and padded, catlike, to the window. Harper’s eyebrows shot up as he shrugged out of his jacket. It fell to the ground in a heap. The man was, if possible, even more impressive clad only in loose-fitting shirt and trousers.
“Oh, Edward, not the window. Not again,” the earl begged, overturning his tea cup and saucer as he scrambled to stand. The young lord swung one leg over the sill and disappeared.
“No!” Harper shouted, knocking her chair askew as she rushed up from her seat. “There is no need for suici—”
“You get used to it,” Lord Briarcliff said wearily.
Harper peered out
the window and gasped. The damnable man was climbing the wall, wedging his fingers into the carved façade and pulling himself up by his fingers and toes. Edward was as wild as his moniker.
“Incredible,” she breathed.
“Unfortunately, this happens every day. He likes the roof and spends a great deal of time up there. The façade provides the most direct access.”
“He wouldn’t have grown up here at Briarcliff,” Harper mused, thinking back on their earlier conversation. “He doesn’t know his way around.”
“No. We visited once, when he was a small child. It is a confusing place, with several additions constructed over the centuries.”
Harper closed the heavy casement window and slid the bolt home. “Which way to the roof?”
Chapter 3
A footman opened the door to the rooftop, momentarily blinding Harper with late-afternoon sunlight. She picked her way carefully from the bulkhead onto the roof.
“There’s a walkway that runs around the perimeter. Careful as you go. It gets slippery, on account of the moss what grows after it rains.”
Harper edged one toe out onto the walkway. There was a low parapet wall on either side. It barely reached her mid-thigh. Still, it seemed safe enough.
The house was not a square. Extensions had been added over time with Gothic windows and attic dormers. Steep ladders connected sections of the rooftop walkway where it dropped ten feet to accommodate different heights. One addition stretched away to the west, where the setting sun was just at the right angle to keep Harper squinting. She picked her way carefully along to the midway point before spotting Edward’s hunched form perched at the very end of a small circular roof at the rear of the manor house.
“Lord Northcote,” she called out, waving. He gave no indication of hearing her. She would have to pick her way down the metal rungs of the ladder to get to him.
Since there was no rush, Harper exhaled and looked out at the horizon. Below lay a charming patchwork of fields, farms, and forests. In the distance, a small creek glinted as it wound through gently rolling hills. The view was as bucolic and calming as a painting.
She had thought Dr. Patton’s asylum expansive. This building dwarfed the house she had once believed grand. If there were borders to the estate, Harper could not discern them. Briarcliff stretched into the distance, a limitless paradise spread at the feet of its brooding future master.
Harper retraced her steps. She made her way toward the circular roof, watching for the spots of mossy dampness growing on the stone. Looking out at the landscape was pleasant, but a single glance at the ground below made her dizzy. The four-story structure felt a great deal taller from above than it did looking up from the ground.
Rounding the corner, she spotted the earl’s son still sitting motionless, his skin bronzed like a statue’s in the late-day sun.
She pulled her skirts aside and picked her way awkwardly down to the level below. “Forgive my intrusion, your lordship.”
His shaggy head jerked around to glare at her over his shoulder. With one fluid motion, he sprang from where he was perched.
Harper gasped. The big man landed with a thud on another section of rooftop below. Staying low to channel forward momentum, he pulled himself up the slanted roof and disappeared over the other side.
How the devil did he climb about so easily?
Not a shadow flickered. It was as if he had never been there. Harper couldn’t afford to set the precedent that he could simply ignore her, even if that meant she had to clamber over the entire rooftop in her traveling outfit.
Her future depended upon pinning him down long enough to talk.
Turning a corner, she caught sight of him moving quickly over the largest section of rooftop, over the main part of the house near the imposing front entrance. Harper lunged back up the steep ladder, her nerves alive to the danger as she closed in on her quarry.
* * *
The scuffling sounds of hard shoes on slate rooftops preceded the arrival of her shadow by at least a minute. Her silhouette crept over him like a cool, sheltering cloud. Curiosity got the better of Edward. This time he stayed put, settled on his haunches and ready to spring away if the strange woman proved overly intrusive.
“Good afternoon. May I join you?” she asked, a little breathless. Her voice was soothingly rich, like a fading note from a cello.
Edward was still considering her request when she took it upon herself to perch on the low wall beside him. He turned fractionally to glare at her, then leapt away. The lady doctor was invading the one place he found any solace. If she wanted to talk, she could bloody well chase him around the roof until nightfall. Or until she fell off. That was her choice, not his.
* * *
Harper watched him go. Was he truly a wronghead? Edward had understood what she’d said. Either way, the certainty that she was the one to help this man had lodged in her breast.
The feeling was more than selfish ambition. Harper recalled the last time she had had this clear sense of purpose: at fifteen, when she had persuaded Dr. Patton to take her on as an apprentice. Harper had known with pure certainty that she wanted to heal people. She had seen firsthand how calm, compassionate care could heal hearts and minds. She wanted that power, and the good doctor had taught her to use the techniques he had developed to great effect. Harper was determined to have a great effect upon Lord Edward Northcote.
He appeared equally determined to avoid her at any cost.
As Harper made her way over the rooftop as quickly as she dared, the man settled himself at the far end of the roof. Again, he crouched down, staring southwest into the setting sun. Soon it would be too dark to go chasing him around the rooftop.
Harper watched him, thinking. If one traveled south and west long enough, one would reach the sea. Sail long enough and you would reach the Americas. Edward was fixated upon his past. Why?
This time, Harper approached him as slowly as she might a wild animal.
“Your lordship,” she began clearly, from several feet away.
“Go away.”
“Why?”
“Because I told you to.” Not once did Edward turn to look at her.
“Your ability to move about up here is remarkable.” Perhaps flattery would open a door.
He grunted.
“Easier without shoes.”
Harper glanced down at her worn, but recently shined, boots. They offered little in the way of traction.
“I suppose so.” She swung one leg over the parapet wall and glanced down. It was a long, rough fall. Several rows of snow brackets poked up toward the end of the roof’s edge. Amazing that he’d managed not to slice his foot on the sharp metal.
“Don’t slip.”
Harper glanced sideways at him. “I suppose I can’t count on you to catch me?”
“I’m nothing but a savage,” he declared, savagely.
“That is untrue. You are an English lord. A gentleman.”
It was the wrong thing to say. Lord Edward rose to his considerable height and glared down at her. Harper’s peered up at him with widening eyes, acutely embarrassed and awestruck. She must look so foolish in her traveling costume, perched on a rooftop with her hair coming unpinned and red-faced from chasing this deranged man.
“You are more than either of those things,” she continued with a confidence that she didn’t feel. She glanced away. “You keep staring in the direction of your former home. Southwest. In the general direction of Brazil.”
He stared at her, but this time he stayed.
“May I sit?” she asked. Her legs weren’t altogether steady, and the wild lord’s admonition not to fall had made her heart beat erratically.
Edward grunted. Choosing to interpret this as permission, Harper swung her other leg over the little wall and perched her posterior uncomfortably on the stone while bracing her feet for balance. Looking down she noticed a decorative pattern among the tilework.
“Is there someone or something you left behind?�
�
“‘Left behind’ implies I had some choice in leaving.”
“The wound on your neck,” she guessed, suppressing a shudder.
He nodded, once. “My captors dragged me out of the jungle by the neck. Like an animal.”
Harper inhaled sharply. She had seen cruelty before, usually at the hands of family members straining to cope with difficult relatives. One woman had arrived at the asylum with manacles embedded deep into her wrists and ankles. She’d been chained since childhood, hidden in a cellar and discovered only when her captors had died. Harper added the brutality of a rope around the neck to her lengthy catalog of human cruelty.
“You are not an animal,” Harper replied softly.
She was quiet for a moment, watching him as she searched for something to say, and found herself absorbed in his sharp profile. The line of his nose sat at just the perfect angle. Thick brows above the hollows of his eyes were punctuated by feathery lashes hovering above the sharp slash of his cheekbones.
From stillness he launched into movement. Edward was gone before Harper could protest. She tried to follow, tripping over her skirts in her haste. Off-balance, her foot slipped on damp slate. In an instant Harper had toppled over the wall and was sliding down the pretty tiled roof. Screwing her eyes shut, she braced for her body to break on the flagstones below.
It didn’t.
With a rip and a shudder Harper slid to a halt inches from the gutter. Fabric tangled with the metal snow guards and stone, jerking her to a halt so quickly that Harper’s teeth rattled in her head.
“Thank God,” she gasped, never mind that the good Lord had seen fit to suspend her at an angle, face up, forty feet or more above the ground. She scrabbled futilely for something, anything, to hold onto. All she found were more snow guards. One that she had rolled over, bruising her back, came away in her hand.
“Help!” she yelled. “Edward, someone, anyone, please! Help!”
The only response was the sound of her cries echoing against flagstones. Well. Perhaps the blasted man was more a savage than a gentleman after all. Harper contorted herself, trying to sit up. Considering that she wore a corset like any good Englishwoman, this quickly proved to be an impossible feat. Whomever had invented ladies’ undergarments hadn’t given much thought to the need for female agility in the face of certain death. She called out again, and this time, the desperate echo of her plea bouncing off slate tile into nothingness.
