“She’s skinny,” Horton said, the term an insult. “Don’t have to be a physician to see she needs more meat on her bones. Bellefonte should take her in hand, but the old earl was indulgent of his womenfolk. Never a good idea to allow the females a loose rein.”
Nita might have stepped around to the jakes, but Tremaine suspected her departure had had other motivations.
“Is Lady Nita medically competent?” Tremaine knew she was, Tremaine’s sheep knew she was, Addy Chalmers’s youngest child knew it best of all.
What Nita Haddonfield lacked was a sense of her own value.
“She reads books,” Horton said, scraping his remaining potatoes into a heap. “I’ll give her that, and she was her mother’s right hand. I don’t begrudge women the company of their own kind at a lying-in, provided a physician is on hand to oversee matters. Lady Nita would have it otherwise.”
In other words, Nita provided poorer families an alternative to paying for Horton’s services at birthings.
“Then you would have attended Addy Chalmers had she asked for you?” Tremaine asked.
A forkful of carrot hovered before the doctor’s mouth. “Mr. St. Michael, you will think me devoid of Christian charity when I say I would have made no haste whatsoever to attend that birth had the Chalmers woman had the temerity to engage my services. She cannot provide for her young and refuses to abide by the rules of decent society. To bring another child into that household is to perpetuate a problem that has no happy solution. Lady Nita insists on prolonging the misery of all concerned.”
Her ladyship prolonged the children’s lives too. “Many would agree with you,” Tremaine said, finishing his ale. Perhaps even the Earl of Bellefonte agreed with the physician.
Addy Chalmers’s children were not the results of immaculate conceptions, though. If Addy and the children were to be condemned out of hand, the fathers ought to bear some shame as well.
The carrots met the same fate as the rest of the doctor’s cottage pie.
“You’d best be on your way, Mr. St. Michael. Lady Nita has no doubt been accosted by old Clackengeld, who complains of bilious digestion when what he needs is a good purge and a bleeding or three. He’s usually lurking at the livery and knows better than to trouble me with his ailments.”
Tremaine dropped a few coins on the table, snatched a cinnamon biscuit before the doctor could inhale them all, and picked up the scarf Lady Nita had left draped over the back of her chair.
“I’ll heed your suggestion,” Tremaine said, “and be about my business. A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Dr. Horton.”
Horton saluted with his pint, and as Tremaine departed from the common, the physician was helping himself to the food remaining on Lady Nita’s plate.
Tremaine spotted her ladyship with the horses, across the street from the inn. She looked chilly, and she’d managed to get one side of her hem wet.
“You have a habit of leaving necessary items of apparel where they’ll do you no good,” Tremaine said, wrapping the scarf about Lady Nita’s ears and neck. “Did Horton upset your digestion?”
Her ladyship’s expression was serene, as smooth as the inn’s windows, which reflected the gray winter sky and gave away nothing of the roaring hearths and bustling custom within.
Insight struck, like the cold gust of wind that sent a dusting of snow swirling across the square: the more composed Lady Nita appeared, the greater her upset.
“Dr. Horton is much respected,” she said. “Shall we go?”
“You don’t respect him,” Tremaine replied, tugging on Atlas’s girth, then taking it up one hole. “I don’t particularly like him.”
Lady Nita relaxed fractionally at Tremaine’s observation.
“He’s old-fashioned to a fault,” she said, “and refuses to consider any medical advance that didn’t originate in England, preferably with some colleague he studied beside when German George was on the throne.”
Tremaine had traveled enough on the Continent to understand Nita’s frustration. English medicine was considered backward by Continental physicians, and yet men like Horton toiled away in every shire in the realm, doing the best they could with a science that was far from exact.
“Up you go, my lady. What’s in the sacks?” For two sacks were tied over Altas’s withers.
“I went around to the kitchen and bought a few things for the Chalmerses.” Lady Nita stepped into Tremaine’s hands and was up on her horse without Tremaine having to exert himself.
Her ladyship wasn’t skinny—Tremaine had reason to know this—but she was fit, and she didn’t lace herself too tightly to draw breath.
He rather liked that about her, though he did not look forward to this call upon the wretched of the parish.
Tremaine swung into a cold saddle and let the shock reverberate through his system for a moment. To combat that unpleasantness, he summoned the memory of Lady Nita’s soft warmth pressed against him in her nightclothes.
“Is Horton capable?” Tremaine asked as the horses shuffled away from the square.
“In some matters,” Lady Nita conceded. “He insists on bleeding a woman when she’s expecting, though if you talk to women who’ve carried a number of times or to midwives, they’ll tell you they don’t favor it. Many physicians on the Continent refuse to bleed a pregnant woman, saying it weakens her when she’s most in need of her strength. The diet Horton prescribes for an expectant mother wouldn’t sustain a rambunctious child.”
In this, Lady Nita’s sentiments echoed Grandpapa’s, who’d favored hearty fare for children and expectant mothers, contrary to prevailing English medical wisdom.
About which Tremaine did not particularly care.
Though Lady Nita had spared a thought for Tremaine’s sheep, about whom he did care, for healthy sheep were profitable sheep.
Tremaine also cared about the Chalmers family—inconvenient though the sentiment was—as evidenced by his relief that a plume of smoke rose from the chimney, and the wood piled on the porch remained abundant.
“I can stay with the horses,” Tremaine said when he’d assisted Lady Nita to dismount. Her hem, formerly damp, was now frozen stiff, and yet Tremaine could not recall a puddle into which she might have stepped.
“Nonsense. The horses will stand obediently enough,” Lady Nita said, handing Tremaine the sacks she’d brought from the inn. “The children will want to see you.”
Tremaine did not want to see them. “We ought not to stay for long, lest your brother worry.”
Lady Nita turned toward the cottage, shoulders square. “Nicholas has greater concerns than whether I tarry for five minutes on my way home from a social call.”
Like whether to consign his sister Susannah to a lifetime in a household where women fell down steps. On that rankling notion, Tremaine followed Lady Nita up the rickety porch stairs and wondered what fool had implied he’d be willing to accompany her ladyship on this outing.
Lady Nita rapped on the door and waited, while Tremaine stood behind her, holding sacks of provisions and pondering the doctor’s philosophy. Was it kinder to let this family starve or freeze today? Kinder to see the children into the poorhouse, where their lives would shortly end?
Addy Chalmers opened the door, the baby at her shoulder swaddled in a clean shawl, a tiny knitted cap on the infant’s head.
“Lady Nita, Mr. St. Michael, welcome.” Addy looked tired but sober, and the cottage was as neat as such a space could be, also not too cold, though Tremaine kept his coat on.
Nothing short of the Second Coming would relieve the place of the stench of boiled cabbage.
“Addy, children, hello,” Lady Nita said, sounding genuinely glad to see them. “I think the baby has grown already.”
The ladies were off, rhapsodizing about the infant, disappearing into the sleeping alcove while Tremaine was left to investigate the sacks.
“I can hold your horse again,” said the girl…Mary? “Or ride him for you.”
“Thank you, but
I must decline that kind offer,” Tremaine replied. “Lady Nita and I can stay only a moment. I do believe there’s cottage pie in this sack, still warm, and bread and butter, along with cold milk and a few butter biscuits. What shall we do with it?”
“Eat it,” said the youngest boy, whose nose ran ever so copiously.
Tremaine passed Mary a handkerchief. “Please see to your brother. Why don’t we start with bread and butter, and save the cottage pie for your supper?”
Keen disappointment registered on four little faces, replaced by eager anticipation when Tremaine cut thick hunks of warm bread and slathered each one with butter.
And still, the ladies remained talking softly behind the curtain.
“Who can show me some letters?” Tremaine asked, because no toys were in evidence, and the only book looked to be a Book of Common Prayer perched on the mantel.
“We haven’t paper,” Mary said. “I can write my name, though. On paper. We have a pencil. Mama knows where it is.”
Tremaine fell back on strategies he’d learned around the shepherds’ campfires.
“Paper is an extravagance—a luxury,” he said. “We need only our minds and a fire in the hearth.”
He took a seat, cross-legged, on a floor even colder than his saddle had been and was soon ringed with children. While they watched, he spread a layer of ash over the hearthstones and used a stick of kindling to draw a large letter M in the ashes.
“Look familiar?” he asked the girl.
“M, for Mary!” she said, her expression suggesting Tremaine had put the entire French language into her keeping. “Do another!”
They had worked nearly through the alphabet—A is for apple, B is for butter, C is for cockles—when the ladies rejoined them. Nita’s expression was quietly pleased, the baby was drowsing on the mother’s shoulder, and Addy looked…in need of a long nap.
As new mothers should look.
“I hadn’t thought to use the ashes,” Addy said. “We certainly have enough of those, and the boys want to learn their letters.” She kissed the baby’s cheek, expression puzzled. “Thank you. For the food as well.”
“You are welcome,” Tremaine said, coming to his feet and resisting the urge to dust off his backside. “I’d never realized one can learn the alphabet by visiting an imaginary pantry. Lady Nita, shall we be on our way?”
The youngest boy was again in need of the handkerchief, while Tremaine needed to be anywhere else. He’d wanted Lady Nita’s company for the trip to Stonebridge, but he hadn’t anticipated that she’d tarry long here at the cottage.
“It is time we were leaving,” she said, readjusting the scarf around her neck. She paused, her gaze on the little fellow docilely tolerating his sister’s ministrations with the handkerchief.
The child had weak lungs. Evan was his name. He’d outgrown his trousers a year ago, and the coat he wore like a night robe was fastened with twine.
Lady Nita’s eyes held a question, about little boys and scarves, about kindness and the poorhouse. Tremaine nodded slightly, and her ladyship wrapped a beautiful blue lamb’s wool scarf about the neck of a wretched boy.
“I’ll want to hear letters should I visit again,” Tremaine said very sternly, though he’d paid his last voluntary call on this household. “And I’ll expect that baby to have doubled in size.”
He bolted for the door with as much dignity as he could muster—precious little—and Lady Nita caught him by the hand before they were down the porch steps.
“Mr. St. Michael.” She drew him closer, until her arms were around Tremaine’s middle, and his had somehow found their way around her too. “You are so very dear.”
The words melted an old anxiety in Tremaine. He could tolerate being dear, to Lady Nita anyway, better than he could tolerate the stench of cabbage, dirt, and despair. He rested his chin on her crown, fortifying himself for trotting about in the cold without benefit of his favorite scarf.
“You looked after my sheep,” he said.
“You looked after mine, sir. Teaching the children their letters that way was brilliant. Those are bright children. They’ll be reading their Book of Common Prayer by Beltane.”
Ironic that the only book in that house should be from the Church. Tremaine stepped back, because a chilly ride yet awaited them.
“The mother can read?”
“Addy had a genteel upbringing. Some local fellow got her in trouble, her family turned their backs on her, and the rest is a cautionary tale. I’ve told her about vinegar and sponges, but they don’t work for everybody.”
Lady Nita pulled on her gloves, as if such a topic were unremarkable for the proper daughter of a peer. Would Horton have bothered to tell a soiled dove about vinegar and sponges? Did he even know? Had Lady Nita’s mother been the one to pass along knowledge decent women weren’t supposed to have?
And was Tremaine the only soul in Christendom affronted that Lady Nita should be burdened with these concerns?
“Do you ever think the Chalmers family would be better off in the poorhouse?” Tremaine asked.
Lady Nita fairly bounced down the steps, the visit having apparently restored her energy as cottage pie and ale could not.
“Tell me, Mr. St. Michael, would the merino sheep be better off with Edward Nash? Would you leave your tups in his care?”
Tremaine boosted Lady Nita into the saddle for the fourth time that day and did not dignify her question with a reply, for a gentleman did not argue with a lady. Lady Nita looked after this family and after others. She did not question the responsibility or attempt to shirk it, even when she ought to.
Who looked after her? Somebody clearly needed to, lest illness or nervous exhaustion carry her off. If Tremaine offered to take up that post, would she make a habit of tucking herself close to him and finding him very dear?
Eight
“Lovey, I don’t trust Mr. St. Michael.” Nicholas Haddonfield snuggled up to his countess and pillowed his cheek on her breast. Nick’s siblings knew better than to comment if they thought it unusual that the earl and his countess retired to their rooms after the midday meal.
How did women always manage to smell so good? Leah’s scent was lily of the valley with other notes. Sweet, kind, lovely notes that Nicholas would die to protect.
“You are not in the habit of allowing men you distrust to gallivant about with your sisters,” Leah observed.
Sweet, kind, lovely—also practical, that was Nick’s countess, even before she’d become the mother of his heir.
“I trust Nita,” Nick allowed, “and I know the effect frigid air can have on a man’s base urges. St. Michael lurks in the social undergrowth, like a wolf studying a henhouse from downwind. I wish I knew what he was truly about.”
Leah traced Nick’s eyebrows with her fingertips, which made Nick want to close his eyes and groan like a horse being groomed in that one particular spot that rolling on the ground and acting like a horse never quite attended to.
“Are you falling sleep, Nicholas?”
“I am composing a letter in my head to Beckman. Nita and George should pay Beckman a visit, if the weather ever breaks.”
“If the flu season starts, you mean. Why not send your entire horde of siblings?”
The idea was tempting, which was no credit to Nick’s familial loyalty.
“I love my brothers and sisters,” he said, “but since the baby showed up…” Since the baby had arrived, Nick never had time alone with his wife.
“You worry more,” Leah said. “You worry in a whole new way, and you were a prodigiously talented worrier before his lordship arrived.”
The little Viscount Reston was healthy as a shoat, with a full complement of Haddonfield blond hair and marvelously merry blue eyes—most of the time. The boy enjoyed marvelously healthy lungs too.
“Am I too heavy?” Nick asked.
“You are too anxious. What aren’t you telling me, Nicholas?”
Nick mentally rummaged around among his cares and wo
es, put aside his curiosity about Tremaine St. Michael, and lit upon his most recently acquired problem.
“Edward Nash mentioned something about Addy Chalmers when last I spoke with him.”
Leah’s fingertip paused on the bridge of Nick’s nose. “When he attempted to wheedle coin and sheep from you, under the guise of asking permission to pay his addresses to Susannah?”
“I don’t like it any more than you do,” Nick said, shifting to crouch over his countess. “But Susannah fancies him and she hasn’t fancied any other fellow, so what’s to be done? When Nash assured me the baronetcy came with a tidy income, I thought he was acknowledging that Susannah’s dowry was of no moment. Then he turns around and hints about the sheep, between broader hints about Addy Chalmers.”
Leah kissed Nick’s nose, a now-see-here sort of kiss. “What did Edward say about Addy? He’s caused you to frown, and I prefer my earl smiling.”
“Nash asked me how long I intend to tolerate a fallen woman raising up her brood of bastards under my very nose.”
“Oh, dear.”
Bastards were a sensitive topic among the Haddonfields, and not only because Nick’s older half brother Ethan bore that dubious distinction.
Nick brushed Leah’s dark hair back off her forehead. Since having the baby, her hair had become different—thicker, softer, more kissable.
“What sort of ‘oh, dear’ was that?” he asked, kissing her brow.
“Oh, dear, Edward has appointed himself the moral magistrate of the shire. What business is it of his if you’ve reduced Addy’s rent?”
Reduced it to nothing, while allowing her boys to poach game and firewood from the Belle Maison home wood.
“You’d have me tolerate sin among our tenants, lovey?”
Leah turned her face away, presenting Nick with an ear to kiss instead, but it wasn’t an ear-kissing moment.
“You’ve never been a hypocrite, Nicholas. I love that about you.”
Such were the Countess of Bellefonte’s charms that she could scold while murmuring endearments.
Nick flopped to his back, because his sweet, kind, lovely, practical countess was also the lodestar of his honor. Around them the house was quiet, as if waiting for spring and weary of winter.
Tremaine's True Love Page 13