His long stride carried him forcefully to his aunt’s current residence. He’d barely knocked on the elegant front door than it was flung open and there stood his aunt’s guard, Fergus.
“What?” he stood by helplessly while the man flung himself forward and embraced Cullen like a strong old bear, thumping him hard on the back.
He straightened quickly. “Please don’t blame Elspeth. You’ve brought this on yourself.” With that cryptic pronouncement, he turned and hurried back the long hall toward the family sitting room.
Cullen could not fathom what was so monumental that everyone had got themselves into such a fash. Furthermore, where the hell had all the servants gone?
He followed his aunt’s old retainer and guard more slowly, and when he entered the front sitting room, he found his aunt with her usually rosy, vibrant complexion, ensconced in a comfortable chair by a warm fire with a blanket tucked around her legs. The laugh lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth had deepened a bit since he’d been gone, but other than that, she seemed the same healthy woman he’d seen two years before on one of his infrequent leaves home.
She remained silent, her expression stern, and pointed to the chair across from her.
Once he’d settled in, she poured him a steaming cup of tea and leaned back into the overstuffed chair.
Cullen took several long draughts of tea before speaking. “Now, will one of you please explain why I’ve ridden hard for two days because of a summons to see my sick aunt? Because, unless you’ve forgotten, I am a trained physician, and clearly, both of you look to be in the pink.”
Fergus had the good grace to redden, but Cullen’s aunt continued to give him one of her hard looks. The kind of look she’d usually reserved for nasty transgressions in his childhood, like the time he’d turned loose a prize pen of ponies, because he’d wanted them to be “free.”
Finally, Elspeth MacKenzie spoke. Her Highland lilt hardened. “I could not trust to send ye a letter with this kind of news, and heaven knows we don’t want it to be part of neighborhood gossip. Which is why we gave the servants the morning off.”
Cullen’s blood turned as cold as the waters of the deep loch on the MacKenzie lands.
“Dr. Morton is well known to our clan. He’s done us many favors over the years.”
“But what—?” Cullen interrupted her lecture.
She cut him short. “He did not have a son.”
Cullen mulled her words, confounded.
“Then who—”
“You’ve been sharing a cabin with Willa Morton, not Wills.”
Cullen exploded in rage. “Of all the muddle-headed—”
His aunt cut him off again. “None of that matters. What matters is what’s to be done now.”
He lifted his face to her, his mouth open.
“Don’t look so befuddled. You know your duty.”
Cullen shook his head. “How was I to know?”
His aunt made a “Pah” sound. “What red-blooded Highlander would not know he slept in the same room with a woman?”
“But you weren’t there. You don’t know how this, this so-called woman dressed. She dressed like a man, talked like a man… Why, she even assisted in a complicated surgery on a lad who fell from the rigging and did a damned fine job of it.” He shook his head again. “I thought she was a man. Hell, I’ve been trying to convince him, er her, for weeks he, she, should leave the ship and go study at Edinburgh so he, she, could set up his own practice.” Cullen leaned over and buried his face in his hands. “Her own practice.”
“But that’s the rub. Even though she has the skills to become a physician, she canna. She’s a woman. She has no family. You know what you have to do.”
Cullen looked up at his aunt and stared as if he were seeing her for the first time. “Me? What have I done to condemn myself to life with a woman I barely know? She’s bad enough as a lad - sullen, unhappy, challenging me all the time.”
“Try to put yourself in her situation. She’s just lost her father, she has no home, she obviously has the experience and talent for healing, and suddenly, she has to answer to a grumpy Scot like you.” His aunt’s accusing stare unnerved him.
“Will you at least give me some time to think this over?”
“We canna wait until someone who knows the Mortons spreads the gossip that will ruin her. You have until early tomorrow.” She rose and headed for the door. Fergus, who had been standing near the door, quickly opened it before she sailed through.
In the wake of her curt dismissal, Cullen stood and tried to stop her. “But why—”
Fergus cut him short with a thump of his arm against Cullen’s mid-section. “Yer aunt made herself perfectly clear. I heard her and I’m way older than you, ye wee bastard.”
Cullen stepped aside from Fergus’s warning, disbelief in his eyes.
The expression on the older man’s face softened a bit. “D’ye still drink good Highland whisky?”
Cullen’s eyes widened, and he gave Fergus an incredulous look.
Fergus clapped him on the shoulder and led the way down the back staircase to the lower level kitchen.
Once they were seated at Cook’s rough plank table with a loaf of crusty bread still warm from the oven, Fergus produced a dark brown glass bottle sealed with a cork stamped with the clan’s arms.
“Marriage, Fergus?” After Cullen had drunk several small glasses of the deep amber liquid, he was in the mood to argue his predicament. “I spend two weeks with a lad who’s actually a lass, and that’s my fault? That’s reason enough to spend the rest of my life with someone tall enough and scrawny enough to pass for something she’s not?” With each question, his voice rose higher.
Finally, Fergus laid a calm, but iron-grip of a hand over his arm once he’d stopped waving it about.
“Cullen, mo crideau, before you fash yourself into apoplexy, let me tell you a story.” The silver-haired clansman leaned back against the wall and stretched his long legs out beneath the table. Cook’s cat joined him on the bench and began to purr before sliding with sly stealth onto his lap. He adjusted the pleats on his kilt to accommodate the plump feline and pulled a pipe and tobacco from his jacket.
“You know how remote the MacKenzie Clan lands are. Twenty years ago, we had only one physician to serve all of our families. But then one winter measles swept through our villages, and old Dr. MacKenzie was one of the first to die. We sent a call to Edinburgh for a physician, and they sent Dr. Morton. When he came, he brought his wife and wee daughter.
“It was a terrible time. Many of the clan died, but the Mortons stayed until the danger passed. He and his child were fine, but his wife, who nursed our clansmen right by his side, caught the disease, and the fever took her down.”
“Why don’t I don’t remember any of that?”
“Your da came and took ye away to school.”
“Why didn’t he help the clan?”
“Because his practice in London was way too important for him to see to his dead wife’s barbaric relations in the Highlands.”
The bitterness in the old man’s voice caught Cullen by surprise.
“So, ye see, Miss Willa Morton is all alone in the world with no one ta protect her because her father answered the call ta save the clan families - yer people - all those years ago.”
Chapter Five
Hours after the hall clock chimed midnight, Cullen still stared at the ceiling medallion in his grandfather’s former bedchamber. How many times, he wondered, had the old man lain in this same position, puzzling out the weighty concerns of the clan?
He imagined there had been many situations where the elder Cullen MacKenzie had had to put the clan above his own needs and pursuits. Cullen’s grandmother had been a plain-spoken, stoic woman from one of the island clans. His grandfather had arranged their marriage in order to keep peace in the far northwest of the Highlands.
He’d been a loving patriarch to Cullen’s mother, sisters, and brothers as well as his grandmother
and the rest of the clan. But everyone knew he’d loved Annie McCullough until the day he died. She’d never married but had remained at the home of her clansmen. Each year at the Highland games when the clans gathered, young Cullen could see how the two of them sought each other’s glances whenever they happened to meet.
Finally, at about two in the morning, Cullen rolled over and gave in to a weary, deep sleep. The only dream to interrupt his slumber was a small tiger cat with huge gray, accusing eyes. She’d been abandoned in front of a harbor-front tavern and had fallen in behind him when he left the establishment. Every time she swatted her tiny claws at his boots, he pushed her away. But still she followed in his steps.
He awoke with a start, beads of sweat rolling down his face. When he threw aside the quilt, Cook’s gray tabby sprang to the floor with an angry yowl.
“Sorry, Puss,” he mumbled. “Thought you were someone else.”
Cullen joined his Aunt Elspeth and Fergus for breakfast in the elegant townhouse dining room. He heaped his plate high from the sideboard with ham, coddled eggs, and oat cakes.
When he finally took a seat at the table, his aunt’s stare seemed to eat up all the air in the room. He raised a brow and returned her unblinking regard.
She broke the silence first. “I might have known. You’ve inherited Marianne MacKenzie’s stubborn streak.” She shifted forward in her straight-backed chair. “In the name of all that’s holy, what have you decided, you vexing excuse for a Highlander?”
“Was there ever any doubt of what I would do?” Cullen took a long swallow of water from the crystal glass filled by one of his aunt’s footmen.
His aunt sagged back with a sigh. “You’re sure this is what you want to do?”
He raised a brow again. “All I can promise is I will ask Willa Morton to be my wife.” Cullen put down his glass. “If the female version of Wills Morton is as inflexible as the alleged young man I left in my surgery in Portsmouth, then I have no idea of how she, or he, may react.”
“Furthermore, who knows what the protocol would be for solemnizing an engagement with a young woman dressed as a man? The sailors aboard the Arethusa will be gossiping about this charade for a very long time to come.”
His aunt’s gaze turned more intense. “I would hope you would discuss the situation with the captain and take her away from the ship as Mr. Morton before returning perhaps with your wife, the former Miss Morton?”
Cullen snorted. “Ye think a ship full of sailors would accept such a wild tale?”
“Why not? You could say the young man is going to Edinburgh, but his twin sister, Willa, has agreed to be your wife.”
Fergus waved his pipe in the air. “And she could always stay here or back in the Highlands until ye return, if she doesn’t fancy yer company for years on end. It doesna have to be a marriage in truth. Ye could give her yer name and the clan’s protection only.”
Both Cullen and his aunt stared at Fergus as if he’d grown an extra head.
“If I give a woman my name, she’ll be my wife in every sense of the word. She will stay by my side. Those are my terms.” Cullen pounded the table. “And besides, she’s a damned good physician’s assistant. Her talents would be wasted here.”
His aunt and Fergus exchanged odd smiles, making him wonder if he’d been manipulated. Again.
“When you bring her back here, we’ll invite all the clan, we’ll have a huge wedding breakfast…”
Cullen stopped his aunt’s excited chatter. “When I finally overtake the elusive Miss Morton, I will have a special license in hand, and we will make haste to the nearest parson.”
His aunt gave him a sorrowful look. “But I was so looking forward to a clan wedding. We haven’t had one in years.”
Cullen gave both of them a pointed look. “Perhaps you two could quit pretending you’re just the current laird’s sister and her bodyguard. That would make a fine clan wedding.”
The murderous stare his aunt threw him made him think what she really wanted to do was pitch some of the clan silver at his head. Fergus said nothing, but his face reddened to such a hue, Cullen feared he might fall into a fit of apoplexy.
Cullen raised his water in a mock toast. “Here’s to a speedy return to my bride-to-be.”
Willa patiently mixed the elixirs and powders Dr. Partlow prescribed for his patients. She held each bottle up to the sun streaming through his office window to make sure the ingredients were up to the correct amounts. She held up two at a time, for ease of comparing levels.
Suddenly, the doctor’s greedy hands were at her waist, taking advantage of both of her hands being occupied. She cringed inwardly. This cat-and-mouse game with Peterfield’s most respected physician would not end well. She had to find another position before she ran out of ways to evade his advances.
She whirled suddenly, knocking out of his grasp.
He flinched and stepped away. “I’m embarrassed for your late father, Miss Morton. He would be so ashamed of your behavior since I’ve taken you into my household.”
“Why?” Willa moved farther away and picked up two more empty bottles, ignoring his flushed face.
“Your attempts at seduction have been shameless. I fear for your reputation if word of how you’ve cavorted in front of my children becomes public knowledge.”
Willa straightened to her full height and moved closer to the doctor. “I will not give credence to your petty fantasies, sir, but know this. If you continue to ply my person with unwanted advances, I cannot be responsible for what might happen should you ever happen to close your eyes in sleep again.”
He drew back, a look of horror on his face, and turned, nearly falling in his haste to run out the office door. That settled her resolve. She had to leave immediately.
It was time. She had to face her denial. Evenings in the Partlow household had been pure hell. After helping Annalise prepare tea for the children before sending them off to bed, she’d at first spent the later hours avoiding the infernal man before often pleading a headache, or cramps, and heading to her attic prison early.
When one evening he’d suggested a game of chess, she’d pleaded ignorance and allowed him to believe she was ignorant of the moves. He of course had no idea she and her father had used chess to while away the hours aboard ship when they were not busy with patients.
In the last few nights, she’d let him win just enough to believe she was a beginner, but trounced him a few times so that his ego made him insist on a game every night. Thus, she’d discovered a way to keep him occupied through the hours before bed.
He’d cajoled and wheedled endlessly about how she was deliberately straining his manhood when she could relieve all his pent-up passion and become a true partner in his medical practice. Since Willa had spent the majority of her life being accepted as a man, she’d heard a little of the chatter amongst sailors about all the wiles they used to seduce unsuspecting women. She had not been taken in by the doctor’s obviously false promises. Although Willa had no idea where she’d go next, she had no choice but to leave immediately. She was fairly certain he’d obsess so much about her threat that he would not suspect she’d leave so soon.
Back in her barren little aerie, she packed a few belongings into a tattered old bag abandoned in a corner of the attic and tossed it through the open window into the apple orchard below.
She would have to send for her sea chest once she found suitable lodgings. After she made her way down the steep attic steps, she picked up a basket while passing through the kitchen where Annalise sat at the battered wood table peeling a huge bowl of potatoes.
“Where are you going?” The look in the eldest Partlow daughter’s eyes revealed more than her words.
“Apples,” Willa said. “I’ll make a dessert this afternoon.”
Annalise said nothing but abandoned the pile of potatoes and hurried to Willa’s side. She enfolded Willa in a tight embrace and when she let her go, there were tears in the girl’s eyes. “Please write,” she mouthed in
a whisper before returning to the potatoes.
Willa walked out into a beautiful late summer day and exchanged the empty apple basket for the battered cloth bag in the orchard.
Cullen had reluctantly accepted the offer of his Aunt Elspeth’s elegant carriage. He’d argued he could travel more quickly by horseback. She’d argued that he could at least offer his bride a more elegant way to marry than arriving by rented hack, or on foot, to the church for her wedding.
Both his aunt and Fergus had also been adamant that he would accompany Cullen as a witness for the clan. Cullen hadn’t even pledged his troth yet, and already he felt like a noose was tightening at his throat before the inevitable drop to oblivion.
He was about to marry a woman, posing as a man, whom he barely knew. Of course, he’d known Wills Morton for weeks. When he ticked off in his mind the things he did know, he realized his future bride was stubborn, never shy about telling him he was wrong, and, oh yes, she was a hell of a surgeon’s assistant when blood and gore were flowing.
“Your Aunt Elspeth was right.”
“What?” Cullen snapped out of his thoughts.
“Ye should be thankful she made me come along to drive this rig. Else ye’d have driven off the road into the brook back there.”
“What?”
“The clan sends ye to Edinburgh for a proper education, and that’s all ye can say? ‘What?’”
“I’m sorry, Fergus. It’s just…”
“Just that ye’re about to be leg-shackled to a creature ye know less about than one of yer patients?”
“No. I mean maybe, well, yes.” He leaned down and brushed a clod of mud from one of his Hessians. “Marriage has never been something I’ve thought about. I mean, I thought I’d just stay in the King’s Navy and keep patching up injured men, treating their clap…”
Pride of Duty (Men of the Squadron Book 2) Page 4