But it had.
The carriage pulled up in front of the house. The duke got to the door before the coachman could climb down. A very tall, thin man in a dark coat stepped out. He took one look at the man who served as footman and bowed. “Your Grace, I assume.”
Napier inserted himself. “This be Dr. Chalmers, Your Grace.”
While Dr. Chalmers ingratiated himself with Brentworth, Davina pulled Napier aside. “Where did you find him?”
“At his club. I was told he is among the best.”
“By whom?”
“The best hotel. I asked who they call when they’ve someone of note who needs a physician. His name was given to me.”
“Was he drinking at that club?” She gave Dr. Chalmers a critical inspection.
“Might have been. But I was told that him half-foxed was better than all those who care for the king. Oh, and it seems he knows of you.”
“I am sure I have never met him.”
“Well, that is what he said when I mentioned you were tending the woman.”
Dr. Chalmers and the duke walked over. Brentworth introduced him.
“I was just telling His Grace that I know Sir Cornelius Ingram, who told me about you. He speaks highly of your late father, and your own medical interests.” Dr. Chalmers’s smile, indulgent but hardly approving, implied what he thought about women in medicine. “I am relieved to know that if you were here, no harm was done. Now, Your Grace, if your man could bring in my case, I will see the patient.”
Davina walked beside him toward the house. “I allowed no bleeding. No surgeon.” She waited to hear how he reacted to that. If he thought her decision wrong, and wanted to bleed Louisa, he would be on his way back to Newcastle at once.
“She was fortunate you were here to stop it. Barbaric custom.”
Davina immediately had more confidence in Dr. Chalmers, half-foxed though he may be. “When we arrived at first I thought it might be cholera, but there had been no excessive purging. She had refused help and care, so she had not taken enough fluids. I have mainly just endeavored to have her drink, and wiped her body with water so it would cool a little.”
“What made you think of cholera?”
“Sunken eyes. Dry sweats. Very dry skin, wrinkled, on her hands.”
“Ah. You know it well, then.”
“I have had it.”
He turned and eyed her head. “But did not have someone as enlightened as yourself at your bedside, I see.”
She fingered her hair. “Nor would he listen to me when I told him it was pointless.”
Dr. Chalmers followed her into the house. “Well, if we shaved heads completely it might cool them down a little. But just cropping hair—it makes no sense. Now, where is the woman?”
Louisa’s husband had come in after Brentworth. “I’ll take you to her.”
Davina sorely wanted to go up those stairs with them. Instead, she watched the dark at the top of the stairs swallow both men.
Which left her alone with Brentworth. She turned to face him, and immediately memories of that kiss returned. It was there between them, like a veil that changed how she saw him. She wondered if he was going to apologize.
“It appears he approved of your care,” he said.
No apology. “It reassured me that he did.”
“Reassured your confidence in your care, or in him?”
She had to laugh. “In him. Louisa should get the best care available, for what it is worth.”
“That is not very encouraging.”
She sat down, finally. Her whole body groaned with relief. “We are all rather helpless with maladies like this. We don’t know what causes them and can do little else but pray and try not to make matters worse. We are still almost uncivilized when it comes to medicine.”
He smiled. “We, you keep saying. You think of yourself as a doctor.”
“I am painfully aware of my limitations in training and gender. The we referred to my father and me. I helped him when he went into the countryside to try to make a difference there, and I learned much in doing so, but I will never be allowed to learn all he did.”
He thought about that. “It seems a waste to me.”
“That is a remarkably open-minded thing to say. I think so too. How sad that we had to send a duke’s carriage to a city in order to find a physician for Louisa.” She looked around the sitting room. It was nicely appointed but not generously so. “Her husband does well enough, but I do not think he can afford Dr. Chalmers’s fee, especially because he came all this way.”
“I sent for Chalmers. I am responsible for his fee.”
Just then, the doctor in question came out of Louisa’s chamber and began down the stairs. He looked at Mr. Bowman, who followed him. “Is your well water good?”
“It is.”
“Then get me several clean pails of it. Warm the water—not hot, warm—and bring them up. I will need you to help me with your strength, so compose yourself. She is not entirely unconscious, and if you are not becalmed, she will notice. We don’t want anything to agitate her.”
“I could help,” Brentworth said.
Dr. Chalmers advanced into the room. “No, Your Grace, you cannot. Nor can the lady. What I am about to do is indelicate in the extreme, and I daresay if either of you are there, it will only make a bad situation worse.” He turned to Davina. “It is good you noticed her dehydration at once. The coachman mentioned it, so I brought something that might help. A clyster syringe is normally used to administer medicine, but it can also be a way to get water into a person. A lot of it, quickly. The body will absorb far more this way than spoonfuls by mouth.”
Davina knew that. She had been debating how to create a makeshift clyster if necessary. In ancient times, they used cleansed animal bladders. She doubted Mr. Bowman had any of those around.
Brentworth appeared impassive. If he knew what a clyster was, he was not showing it. However, he did not offer to assist the doctor again.
“Once the water is ready we will proceed.” Dr. Chalmers removed his frock coat while he spoke. “I will sit with her tonight. I expect the crisis to happen before morning and the final result to be apparent, one way or another.” He turned to Davina. “You most likely kept her alive. Know that, no matter how it ends. Now, I advise you to get some sleep. You are of no use to anyone if you become ill too.”
“I will take you back to your house,” Brentworth said.
“I really should stay—”
“No. There is nothing for you to do here. Come with me now.”
She did not want to go. It felt like an abandonment of the family. Yet, as she stood, she noticed that Mr. Bowman was busy in the kitchen warming the water and talking to his son. There was a point where helping became intrusion, and she might have reached it.
Back in the carriage, exhaustion settled on her like a damp blanket. She gazed out at the last light and tried to ignore that she sat across from a man who had kissed her today. A very nice kiss. Under other circumstances, if it had not been a kiss of pity, really, she might become girlish about it.
* * *
She slept at once. Her head nodded and she was gone from the world. Eric was both relieved and disappointed. Mostly the latter.
When he kissed her, he had realized that kiss had been a long time coming. Langford had seen that at once, but then, Langford had a special instinct when it came to sensual matters.
He watched her now, barely visible in the rising moon’s glow and the vague light from the swinging coach lamp in front. The qualities that impressed him were invisible now, with her vibrant eyes closed and her expressive face stilled. The self-confidence that had gone into that chamber to aid a woman she had not seen since girlhood—anyone who saw it would believe at once she would make a difference. As soon as she closed that chamber door, both father and son had displayed improved spirits.
He readjusted himself so he could stretch out his legs. He was tired too, even if he had done nothing all day but pace. He should have gone
with Napier. He had not even considered doing so. He supposed he had thought he might be needed if Louisa passed. Not by Mr. Bowman and the boy, but by Davina. The way she had wept in the garden, not with grief but with regret and frustration, said he had been right.
Not that he had any idea how he might help her. Not by kissing her; that was certain. That had been an impulse and a mistake. So often, those two things went together. Tomorrow, or the next day, or sometime in the future, he would have to speak of that with her. He was not sure what he would say.
Something emerged in me that I have buried for years and I was not myself. He would sound like a fool if he said that, true though it might be. Nor did he mind that he had succumbed to impulse. To passion. To recklessness. After ten years of controlling that part of himself, he had reveled in its victory over his better sense. But for her sleeping, he might have done so again here, in the dark. Instead, he rode in silence, listening to her calm, deep breaths, while memories pressed on him of how destructive true passion could be.
He had Napier stop in the village as they rode through, and sent him to a tavern to buy a basket of hot food and some wine. Davina dozed through it all. When they reached her house, he needed to jostle her awake and enjoyed that brief touch more than he should.
She blinked and straightened, then looked out the window. “We are here so soon?”
“You were sound asleep.”
She wiped her eyes. “What is that?” She pointed to the basket.
“Food from the tavern. I cannot promise it is any good, but it should still be hot enough. You have not eaten all day.”
“Nor have you.”
“I will dine when I return to Newcastle.”
“That is a long way. We can share what is in there.”
He should decline and start on that long way. He didn’t.
He carried the basket into the house. She found a flint and lit a lamp, then led him back to the kitchen.
“I hope this will do. The dining room is not clean.” She found another lamp and lit it, then knelt and built up the fire a bit in the hearth.
The basket contained hen stew with potatoes in a crock, some bread and a decent bottle of red wine. She saw the last and pawed through a drawer until she discovered a corkscrew.
They sat to the simple fare and he poured some wine. The stew tasted wonderful. He had been hungrier than he realized.
“Perhaps we should give some to your coachman.”
“He ate at the tavern while they prepared the basket. He is probably napping now.”
She ate heartily, then sat back and looked at him. A private smile turned up her lips.
“What?” he asked.
“I am noticing that even after a day in which you climbed a roof and spent hours in a rustic farmhouse, you still look like a duke. Your cravat is all but unblemished and I could cut this bread with your collar. All of this after you did for yourself in the morning. Do dukes have a dispensation from showing the effects of life?” She set her chin on her fist and propped her elbow on the table and examined him more. “Perhaps it is not your dress that does it, though. Even rumpled, you would still look like Brentworth.”
It did not sound like a compliment. “Thank you.”
“Are you insulted?”
“I can hardly be insulted about looking like myself.”
She began to respond but stilled. She looked down at her plate, then at the wineglass, then finally at him. “Aren’t you going to say something about the garden?”
Brave woman. Right to the heart of the matter, with no nonsense. “Yes. As a gentleman, I am bound to apologize, which I now do.”
“Somehow that does not sound like an apology. You hardly sound sorry.”
“That is because I am not sorry. Unless you felt importuned, in which case I am abjectly sorry. Did you?” Just how brave are you? If she said yes, he would accept that and retreat totally. He had known many women, however, and his experience said she had not minded that kiss and embrace.
She thought about her answer before giving it. “If I am honest, I was not importuned. However, considering who we are to each other, it might be best if we forgot it happened.”
“I understand. You are correct, of course.” He stood. “Now I must leave. Tomorrow, I will come for you before noon, after fetching Dr. Chalmers and sending him home. Once I have come for you, we will see your friend, then continue on to Edinburgh.”
“I intended to take the mail coach.”
“I will bring you. I will ride up with Napier.”
She stood to escort him out. “All the way to Newcastle, then back here for Dr. Chalmers, then back to Newcastle, then back here. Yesterday, I would have said you and Mr. Napier could stay here, but not only is it not fitting for you, we probably should not—that is, after what happened—but if we are to forget it—”
“I could not stay.” He ventured a small caress of her face. “The truth is, Miss MacCallum, while we agreed it would be best to forget about that kiss, I will not.”
He left then, while a primitive voice in his essence thundered, Stay, you idiot. Stay.
Chapter Fourteen
Davina carried a bowl of soup up to Louisa. Back in the kitchen, a fowl roasted for the midday meal. The apron she wore bore the stains of a morning of domestic labor, undertaken gladly because her friend had survived the crisis and greeted the dawn cool to the touch.
Brentworth had sent Dr. Chalmers back to Newcastle. He sat now in an armchair reading a book he had taken from his baggage before the carriage left. He seemed lost in it, which suited Davina. She had work to do. She also had grown more aware of him than she liked, so the retreat of his presence in any way relieved her.
She propped Louisa up, making small talk, and began feeding her the soup. Her mind dwelled on other things. That kiss had most definitely been a mistake if the duke would not forget it. It had been one even if he blotted it out of his mind. How did one remain an enemy of a man with whom you had shared an intimacy like that?
“What are you thinking about?” Louisa asked. “Something serious.”
“I am just contemplating my return to Edinburgh. I have been in London a month now, and it will be good to see old friends.” She smiled. “Not as old as you, of course.”
Louisa reached out and squeezed her hand. “I am sorry I did not write. Your letters came to me, even after I married and moved here. I thought it so kind that you paid the postage so I would not need to.”
“Why did you not reply?”
Louisa shrugged. “Once I married, there was always work to do, especially after our son was born. You wrote of such a grand life, too. I had so little to say in comparison.”
“Hardly a grand life.”
“You were in the city, and your father was at the university, and you wrote about people who sounded grand to me. Friends who were knights and such. And now—Neil told me that a duke brought you here. A duke, Davina. Neil says he sits below even as we talk now, in this house. I’m almost glad I am too sick to meet him. I would not begin to know what to say.”
“He is just like any other person. It is only a title.” But he wasn’t like any other person, and Louisa would probably be more tongue-tied than she guessed. With this particular duke, most people were.
“Give him my thanks for the physician and for allowing you to stay with me, but do not allow him to see me.” She reached instinctively for her hair, which needed a good washing. That made her look at Davina’s hair too. “Did that happen because you were ill too?”
“It did. Be happy I am too enlightened, or you would have woken this morning with a crop worse than the king’s.”
“I expect it is easier to care for. I rather like the way it looks.”
“I am impatient for it to grow. I can manage to appear normal now, but four months ago it stuck out every which way.” She spooned more soup. “Eat.”
“I can do it myself now.”
“I know, but it gives me pleasure to serve you while I can
. We will leave after our meal, and you will probably insist on believing you are healed when you should rest another few days.”
She had spent the morning cooking, and she explained what she had prepared so Louisa might indeed rest. They reminisced for half an hour, then Louisa drifted to sleep and Davina returned to the kitchen to finish preparations for the meal.
They all sat together, boy, farmer, duke and herself. Brentworth drew Mr. Bowman into a conversation about land management and new farming techniques. He had removed his coat when the farmer did, and sat in shirtsleeves and waistcoat, still looking most ducal but also more approachable than he normally did. He seemed to be going out of his way to make Mr. Bowman at ease with the most unexpected guest at the table.
Then he began the words of taking his leave. Davina returned to Louisa to say goodbye. Mr. Bowman walked out to the carriage with them.
True to his word, Brentworth settled her inside, then climbed up beside Napier. Was that relief she saw on Mr. Bowman’s face?
“They are traveling alone together, Louisa. He didn’t ride inside with her, though, so it is possible it isn’t what it seems.”
“Davina is not like that, like what you are implying.”
“He is a duke, my dear. I could hardly blame her if she allowed liberties. Better than her have, from the telling of it. He is unmarried, and even if he had a wife he probably keeps a woman besides. It isn’t like it is for such as us.”
Of course, he might share more with Louisa. He might mention that while in the barn, he had seen the duke and Davina kissing in the garden.
Her face warmed at the thought he might have. That was how oblivious that kiss had made her. She had not even wondered, for an entire day, if anyone had seen.
* * *
Traveling in a duke’s coach on a long journey turned out to be an experience in luxury. Not only did she have the entire inside to herself but also she sat on a velvet cushion and peered out through silk drapes. The equipage surpassed the mail coaches in function as well as appointments. Instead of being jostled, she barely felt the road. At stops, she took as long as she needed instead of worrying about regaining her seat in minutes. At the first one, Mr. Napier came out of the coaching inn with two baskets of food and placed one beside her.
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