The Bargain

by Mary Jo Putney

  “Perhaps I did,” Jocelyn said with surprise.

  Sally hugged her hard. “Thank you for everything. Wish me luck, and not a word to David unless I am successful!”

  Chapter 20

  Sally was supposed to meet Ian at his consulting rooms that evening, but she wasn’t surprised when there was no response to the bell. Probably he’d been called to a patient. She let herself in with the key he’d given her, her hands unsteady. He trusted her to enter and work on the accounts, but that was no guarantee that he’d even notice her enhanced appearance. Yet if this didn’t work, she had no idea what would.

  The reception room looked much better than on her first visit. Sally had arranged for one of Ian’s patients to come and clean regularly. With several children and little money, the woman had been delighted to barter her labor in return for care and medicines when her brood needed them. Ian would have treated the children for nothing, but now the woman could keep her pride.

  On the desk was a note in his surgeon’s hasty scrawl. I’ve been called out to an emergency. Don’t know how long I shall be, but will understand if you don’t wish to wait. Sorry! Ian.

  She smiled fondly. The words sounded just like him.

  Willing to wait, she sat at the desk and pulled out the ledger. While she admired his willingness to treat charity cases for free, she saw no reason why his more prosperous patients shouldn’t pay their bills.

  It was a mixed blessing that Ian had a small independent income from his family. The money kept him from bankruptcy, but also permitted him to ignore his business. The man definitely needed a keeper, she decided. The trick was to convince him that she was the best one for the position.

  After she finished writing invoices for overdue bills, she checked the examining room to see if anything needed to be done. She was always amused by the contrast between his jumbled reception room and the impeccable neatness of his surgery.

  A quick glance indicated that all was in order, except for a heel of bread lying by the ceramic jug where he kept his nasty Russian dressing mixture. She lifted the lid and peered inside. Vile the stuff might be, but it had helped David and countless others. It looked a bit hungry. Probably Ian had been interrupted just before he could feed it.

  She tore the bread into pieces and added it to the jar. Unknown to Ian, she’d also taken a sample home. The principle was the same as for yeast, where women cultured the same strain for generations, daughters taking a sample of their mother’s yeasty bread dough to their new homes when they married.

  Might yeast be the ingredient that made Ian’s mixture so potent? Perhaps, though the smell was different from the yeast she was used to. Maybe that was because it was Russian. At any rate, if something happened to this original mixture, her daughter brew would be available for his patients.

  She was adding water to the jug when she heard the outer door open. “Ian?” she called. “I’m back here.”

  He entered, a grin on his face as he saw what she was doing. “Is there another woman in England who would give such tender care to a mess of moldy bread?”

  She turned so that he could see the peach dress in all its glory. His smile faded, and he stared at her as if she’d just crawled out from under a rock.

  Chilled at his reaction, she stammered, “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing.” A muscle in his jaw worked. “Except that it has just struck me how very improper it is for a young lady to come here alone. I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to realize. After all, I was raised as a gentleman, even if I have fallen from that standard.”

  “Since when has visiting a doctor been scandalous behavior?” Sally said, trying to conceal her anxiety under a light tone.

  “But you aren’t here as a patient. You’re a young, attractive woman. This could ruin your reputation. What if your employers took exception to your seeing a man without any chaperon? You could lose your position.”

  “The Launcestons are very liberal and have the radical view that employees are entitled to some privacy. They trust me never to do anything detrimental to the children,” she said stiffly. “Besides, I’ll be giving notice soon. With Lady Jocelyn’s annuity, I have no need to continue as a governess.”

  He set his medical bag on the table, not looking at her. “All the more reason for you to take care of your reputation. I never should have allowed you to come here.”

  Hand shaking, Sally set the lid on the bread jug. “Are you saying that you don’t wish to see me again? I . . . I had thought we were friends.” Despite her best efforts, she couldn’t keep a quaver from her voice. Ian had never said she was attractive before, just as it had never occurred to him that there was anything improper about her presence. Dear God, but she never would have changed her style if she had known it might drive him away.

  His voice softened. “We have been friends, and I shall miss you a great deal.” The Scots burr was becoming very noticeable. “But my office and Bart’s and the tavern are no places for you. How often have I kept you waiting? Three times out of four?”

  The question was rhetorical; they both knew the answer. Medical work was unpredictable, and more often than not an emergency or an unexpected number of patients would delay him. “I’m not sure which is worse, having you wait for me in a tavern or meeting me here privately,” he continued. “Neither is right for a lady.”

  His blue eyes were troubled, and she had the horrible feeling that his attack of nobility would take him away from her forever. Desperate, she blurted out, “There is a time-honored method for a man and woman to be together with complete respectability. It’s called marriage.”

  She froze, utterly aghast at what she had said.

  Ian stared at her. “Sally, have you just proposed to me?”

  She nodded mutely, her face hot with embarrassment.

  Unable to face her, he crossed to the window and stared into Harley Street, where the oncoming dusk cast long shadows. He should have known something like this would happen, with her heart so open and ready to give love. He had known, and had refused to think of the consequences. It had meant so much to have Sally’s companionship that he had denied, even to himself, how much more she had become.

  “I had a wife once,” he said abruptly, pain tight in his chest. It had been years since he’d spoken of his marriage, but time had made it no easier.

  Behind him, Sally said quietly, “Tell me about her.”

  “Elise and I were childhood playmates. She was the loveliest creature, delicate as a fairy.” It was becoming dark enough outside to see his own haunted reflection in the window glass. He’d been a mere boy when he’d married. A lifetime ago.

  “I had always known I should study medicine. It was a calling as strong as a priest’s. I read books, cared for injured animals, traveled with the local physician on his rounds. But medicine is not the occupation of a gentleman. Elise was a lady, and deserved better. We married after I finished at Cambridge, and lived in Edinburgh, where I had taken a government post.” He drew a deep, shuddering breath. “Four months after the wedding, Elise fell down the stairs of our little house. She seemed unhurt at first, but that afternoon she collapsed. A hemorrhage of the brain. She died twelve hours later.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Sally said, her voice soft with compassion. “How ghastly for you and the rest of her family.”

  He sensed her close behind him, knew the sympathy he would see in her eyes, and wasn’t sure he could bear it. She was so good, so true, and believed that he was, too. “I don’t know if any surgeon in the world could have saved Elise. Certainly I could do nothing.” Steeling himself, he turned to face Sally. “But I do know that if I hadn’t married her, if I had trusted my deepest instincts and studied medicine instead of taking a wife, Elise would not have died. She would have chosen a different path. Married a better man and had bonnie bairns and been happy. She . . . she was born to be happy.”

  Sally shook her head in disagreement. “You’re too hard on yourself, Ian. You can’t
know what Elise’s fate would have been if you hadn’t married. Loving you, she might have chosen four months as your wife over a lifetime without you.”

  “I can’t know about her fate,” he agreed, bitterness in his voice. “But I do know that I used her ill by choosing love over my calling. After her death, I studied medicine and surgery with a vengeance. I sailed all over the world, became an army surgeon, learning and practicing everywhere. Sometimes I think doctors do very little good, but there are times when I know I made a difference. That is what my life has been about: making a difference. Not marriage, not money, not ambition as most men know it.”

  “Has it also been about loneliness?” Her voice was very gentle.

  He wanted to bury himself in the softness of her hair, find solace in the warmth of her spirit. Instead, he must reveal how very unnoble he was, the sins he had committed despite the scourge of his Presbyterian conscience. “Of course I have been lonely. Sometimes there have been women who have been grateful for what I have done for them, or for their loved ones, and who have wanted to express their gratitude in a very personal way. Most of the time I have refused. As I have said, I was raised as a gentleman. But other times . . . I am only a man, with a man’s weakness.”

  Her expression showed that she understood what he was saying, yet she didn’t turn away in revulsion. “And with a man’s strengths. Don’t forget that, Ian.”

  Driven to bluntness, he said harshly, “You are grateful that I helped your brother. Don’t make the mistake of confusing gratitude with love.”

  Surprisingly, she smiled. “Give me credit for some sense, Ian. Of course I’m grateful for what you did. I’d have happily given you every penny I ever possessed to save David.” She reached out and laid her hand on his arm. “But gratitude would not have made me love you as I do. Love was inspired by what you are—the good, the bad, and even the foolish, which is what you’re being now.”

  He jerked away from her touch, trying to maintain a scientist’s detachment about his body’s reactions, but his voice was rough when he replied, “I’d make the very devil of a husband, Sally. I become absorbed in what I’m doing and forget the time. I have no financial sense whatsoever and will never earn more than a modest living. I get irritable and bark at everyone, and I think about my work sixteen hours a day.”

  “I’m perfectly aware of how important your work is to you and would never interfere with that,” she said crisply. “Look at me, Ian. I’m tough and practical, not a fragile plant in need of special attention. Work as late as you like, as long as you eventually come home to me. And I’ll work beside you, because my talents will free you to spend more time doing what you do best.”

  Impossible to argue with that. Since she had started quietly organizing his life, he’d been both happier and a better doctor. The prospect of a lifetime spent with her companionship and strength was almost unbearably tempting.

  Perhaps seeing the conflict in his eyes, she said quietly, “I love you as you are and haven’t the least desire to change you. I am simply making a modest proposal: you will continue to be in charge of saving the world, and I will be in charge of saving you.”

  He had to laugh despite the ache of emotion. “Sally, you minx, haven’t you heard anything I’ve said?”

  “I’ve heard every word.” She stared up at him, challenging him to match her honesty and vulnerability. “The one thing you haven’t said is that you don’t care for me.”

  “Of course I care for you!” he retorted, wondering how she could doubt that. “When we’re together, I’m relaxed and happy as I haven’t been since I was a bairn. You . . . you fill up holes in me that have been empty so long I had forgot what it felt like not to have them.”

  No longer able to resist his need to touch her, he traced the delicate lines of her face, the firm jaw and silken skin, the provocative softness of her lips. “And when I look at you, I think of what a wondrous and beautiful creation the female body is, in a way that has nothing to do with my profession,” he said quietly. “I hadn’t dared put a name to my feelings, but since you deserve the truth, I have no choice but to say that I love you.”

  With a smile that transformed her small face to heart-stopping beauty, she whispered, “Since we seem to be in agreement, why don’t we do something about it?”

  With a burst of gladness, Ian Kinlock surrendered to his fate, wrapping his arms around her in an embrace that nearly lifted her from her feet. Small she was, but every ounce was choice. “Ah, Sally, sweetheart, you’re a Welsh witch. I thought I was too old and crusty to fall in love again. Then you swept into Bart’s looking for the mad surgeon, so adorable I could hardly keep my hands off you. And so brave, helping me with your brother’s surgery even though you were white as a Scottish sheet. I kept thinking how lucky your brother was to have earned such loyalty. I just hope to God you don’t live to regret this.”

  Adorable? Sally thought about that for a moment; it wasn’t a word she had ever associated with herself, but she liked it. She liked it very well. “I won’t. You may think of your work sixteen hours a day, but that still leaves eight hours for me, and I don’t expect that you’ll be sleeping for all of them.”

  He burst out laughing, his face boyish under the white hair. “No, I don’t suppose I shall, not with you around to keep me from my rest.”

  He bent his head to hers in a kiss that began in tenderness, and rapidly developed into a hunger of both body and soul. For a long, long time they stood in front of the window, making a spectacle of themselves for anyone who might be passing by in Harley Street. Dizzily it occurred to Sally that of course one would expect a doctor to kiss with great skill, since his knowledge of anatomy was profound.

  She would have cheerfully gone upstairs to his rooms, but he finally released her, his white hair disordered where she had buried her fingers, and his breathing ragged. “I owe you a dinner, lass. Then we shall go to Cromarty House to break the news to your brother. I have no intention of asking his permission, because if he has any sense at all, he would refuse it.”

  “He’ll be glad to have me off his hands before I dwindle into a maiden aunt.” She fluttered her lashes outrageously, feeling giddy and desirable, because the man she loved also loved and desired her. “Shall I draw up a lineage chart for your mother’s approval? I am not without respectable connections, and I’ll have five hundred pounds a year.”

  “The annuity is that much?” Ian asked with interest as he escorted her to the door. “If you’d told me you were a wealthy woman, I would have proposed earlier.”

  “I proposed to you, remember? And don’t worry, by the time I have your office in hand, you’ll be making quite a good living. After all, aren’t you the finest physician and surgeon in London?”

  On the steps outside the door he stopped and brushed her cheek with the back of one strong hand. “Not the finest, perhaps,” he said, his voice very tender and Scottish. “But certainly the luckiest.”

  Regardless of who might be watching, Miss Sarah Lancaster, former prim governess, pulled her fiancé’s head down and kissed him with great thoroughness.

  Chapter 21

  David felt as if he was living in an enchanted bubble, untroubled by the normal cares of the world. He and Jocelyn spent most of their waking hours together, and every day he wanted her more. After visiting the Physic Garden, they began making regular expeditions around London. They hadn’t gone out together socially, though. It was easier not to have to explain their relationship.

  The hard part was concealing his attraction. Jocelyn was a delightful companion, except on the few occasions he’d shown some sign of interest. Her withdrawal was always swift and complete. She tended to avoid even the most casual of touches, such as being helped from her carriage. Perhaps she sensed his desire and wanted no part of it.

  But enchanted bubbles must eventually burst. It was mid-August and summer was at its heady best. All too soon the birds would be flying south, the beau monde would return to London, and Joce
lyn would formally file for an annulment. Intuitively he felt that if he didn’t change her mind by then, it would be too late. He would lose what he’d never truly had, despite her obvious pleasure in his company.

  The day was warm, so they were lunching in the gazebo at the bottom of the garden. Both had brought books, and they might end up spending the entire afternoon with no more company than Isis, who sat with her paws demurely tucked in front of her, her gaze alert for any bird foolish enough to venture into her range.

  “More coffee, David?”

  “Please.”

  He watched as she poured for each of them, wishing he could lean forward and kiss her graceful nape, visible under the casually twisted richness of her hair. As he recovered his strength, it was becoming increasingly difficult to conceal such thoughts.

  Better to think about how Sally and Ian Kinlock had announced the news of their engagement. David had been amazed. How had Sally managed to fall in love and captivate an admirable husband under his very nose without him noticing?

  Jocelyn hadn’t been surprised, though. With a smile that reminded him of Isis, she’d ordered champagne, and they’d toasted the betrothal. He wouldn’t have believed that the intense surgeon could ever be so relaxed, but clearly love had worked magic on both Sally and Ian. He’d been envious as well as genuinely pleased for the happy couple.

  Pulling his gaze away from Jocelyn, he remarked, “Not only will Kinlock make Sally a worthy husband, but I keep thinking how convenient it will be to have a good doctor in the family.”

  She laughed. “I’ve thought of that. May I borrow him if needed?”

  He looked away at the reminder that Jocelyn didn’t intend to remain part of the Lancaster family. His gaze fell on Dudley, who was approaching with a tall, serious-faced man who looked as if he might be something important in the City. The butler looked disapproving, but then, he usually did.