A Lady's Perfect Match: A Historical Regency Romance Book

by Bridget Barton

  When you sleep, in the mountains high, or travel o'er the ocean, seek ye out some peace of mind, and wind it where e'er you're hoping.

  The boy's eyes drifted slowly, reluctantly, shut. Montgomery watched it all like a man entranced, but in his vision he wasn't seeing William's the groundskeeper and little Bobby—he was seeing his father, grave and kind, and his own six-year-old self, falling asleep in Alistair Shaw's arms.

  ***

  "So how long have you been working on the Wells' estate?" Montgomery asked. "I don't remember you, and I spent some of my childhood here."

  "Only a handful of years. I moved shortly after Bobby was born."

  "Ah, that's why. I studied at the Physician's School in London, and then after there followed a few circuit surgeons for practice and experience. I haven't been back here in years."

  The boy had been asleep for hours now, but his breathing was regular and Montgomery was no longer worried that the laudanum would hurt him. Still, he was reluctant to leave this little pocket of the country, smoking a pipe and drinking a bit of stiff coffee alongside Williams' comfortable conversation.

  "The Wells are good people," Williams said. "My former employer made a mess of things on his estate, always partying away the family money and bringing scandal upon scandal upon the family name. Usually a servant can keep his head down and out of such matters, but a groundskeeper such as myself gets a reputation in town working for a house like that. It's good to work for people I can respect."

  Quite suddenly their reverie and conversation was broken by the sound of heavy boots on the wooden walkway outside, and then the doorway was darkened by the silhouette of a familiar form.

  "Brody." Montgomery stood and held a finger to his lips, nodding to the bed. "The boy's sleeping."

  His brother stepped in, squinting his eyes in the dim light, and spoke in a soft voice. "Right, then. So the boy was injured after all—I wondered if you came down here just to escape the party."

  "There was a party?" Williams raised his bushy eyebrows. "I'm sorry to keep you from your social engagement, sir."

  "No need to apologise," Montgomery assured him with a wave of his hand. "I preferred your company anyway."

  Brody gave a quiet laugh and helped himself to one of the seats in the cottage. "Well, you missed another disaster, and I'm sorry to say it was one of Emelia's best."

  Montgomery wasn't going to ask what had happened, but Brody seemed intent on telling the whole tale.

  "There was a rumored feast—I can't be sure, having only seen the after effects of its mauling—spread out in the preparatory room off the kitchen. Do you remember what that room is called? I never can. Anyway, we were all minding our own business, playing badminton and the like, and Emelia suddenly gets called away from the party."

  "I remember. It was shortly before I left."

  "Well, we arrive at the door and find that the entire meal has been consumed by the ravenous hunting dogs of the estate. Emelia left the door open, the crazy lass, and the dogs smelled the boar a mile away."

  Montgomery exchanged a glance with Williams, remembering what he'd said about leaving the dogs unattended when he heard Bobby's cry for help. He knew that the Wells would never hold a man responsible for something that happened while he was tending to his child, but he wanted to avoid any tales spreading all the same.

  "Well, such things happen," he said lamely, cutting off the gamekeeper's explanation.

  "Really?" Brody hid a laugh. "Come, lad. Even Emelia knows that 'such things' only ever happen to her. The girl is infamous for her disastrous parties."

  "Come now," Montgomery chided him. "She's your friend, isn't she?"

  "That's why I can tease her." Brody laughed, a sparkle in his eye. "Emelia knows that I mean well. She was laughing too, once she got over the horror of it all."

  Montgomery never knew what to make of his brother and Emelia Wells' friendship. He'd heard the rumors about them, just as everyone in the county had, but so far had only seen genuine camaraderie on both sides, nothing more. He frowned, thinking of Emelia's hopeful face at the start of the party.

  "She must have been crushed at first."

  "What does it matter if she isn't crushed now?" Brody stood, taking his hat in his hand. "You always take the more morose side of things. But come, brother, I brought your mount down from the stables. We'd best head off in the direction of home before more of our day is left to the Wells'."

  Montgomery nodded and stood. Williams followed suit.

  "Thank you," the gamekeeper said quietly. "For caring for my boy."

  "Of course." Montgomery felt a dull, familiar ache in his chest. "You remind me of someone very special."

  Chapter 5

  Montgomery and Brody's familial estate was not so very far from the Wells' home, so instead of climbing back on their horses they walked, leading the mounts and taking a shortcut through the adjoining property. It was far faster than to loop around to the road, and a familiar route that they'd followed since childhood.

  Montgomery felt a spark of memory as they fell into line with the creek bed: children, laughing and playing among the reeds; games of hide and seek and whispered conversations about faeries and the like.

  He'd grown out of all that so quickly, and sometimes he missed it. The Wells and Shaw families had met via the patriarchs initially: Mr. Shaw was in the mercantile trade before he settled into his position as a chemist, and even after that he often bought products from the Wells merchant company. Mr. Wells was the most respected merchant in the area. He always delivered his products on time, and he offered fair and reasonable prices.

  The families got together when Montgomery was only twelve years old. He still remembered running and playing in the fields with the littler children. Even then, Emelia had a bit of spunk to her, and Hannah had that quiet, subdued attitude of a follower.

  But they were so very small, and the age gap so large, that Montgomery had grown up much more quickly than he ordinarily would have done. He felt his superiority keenly as a teenager, and then when he was man enough to know such superiority was rubbish, it was too late. He was already off to his studies and the like.

  "So why have you come home?" Brody ventured after they'd walked for a time in contented silence. "And when will you be going back to London?"

  "I came home to see mother," Montgomery said automatically. "I want to make certain she's alright."

  "She has me," Brody answered, "and she's fine enough at present. But she misses you, Montgomery, and I won't lie—she'd be thrilled if you'd find a way to stay in the area."

  Montgomery felt a familiar pang of guilt at the words. His mother and father had had a marriage of mutual respect and, at times, even real affection. When Alistair died, Montgomery had seen the brokenness in Caroline Shaw's face. He wanted to be there for her, the way that Brody was, but every part of the county reminded him of the last moments of his father's life.

  "There are too many memories," he said, a little too curtly.

  "Montgomery, you have to let go of this strange responsibility you feel for what happened to our father. Just because you haven't been able to figure out what it was—"

  "I think I'm on the trail of that, actually." Montgomery jumped at the opportunity to shift the conversation from his personal involvement to a subject with which he was more comfortable: medicine. "I know that his symptoms seemed inexplicable, but the more I study the circumstances around his death the more I suspect it was actually an attack of apoplexy, serious enough to block his brain from proper responses." He saw Brody about to speak and rushed on.

  Before you argue that apoplexy is often seen in paralyzing but recoverable doses, allow me to tell you that my research has shown that people can suffer small, minute attacks that go virtually unnoticed. Perhaps father had been experiencing some moments of illness that he didn't tell us about. This is what weakened him. If I had been in the area, perhaps I would have seen some of these attacks before the final apoplectic measures;
perhaps I would have been able to help. A servant said his speech seemed slurred before he fell, and Mother claimed that one side of his face was more relaxed than the other. These are classic apoplectic symptoms."

  "And you think," Brody said slowly, "that if you'd been here in the months before, you would have seen some of these symptoms on a smaller scale?"

  "And been able to help, perhaps. The most common treatment is bloodletting, but I'm uncertain of its legitimacy. A surgeon I studied under in London claimed that instead of removing the poison responsible for apoplectic fits, it just weakens the sufferer."

  "If you aren't sure your presence would have helped," Brody said, stopping alongside the creek to let his horse bend the neck and drink, "than why is it that you insist on torturing yourself? You walk as if under a cloud. You were always a bit too sober for my tastes, but now you have a heaviness about you that you refuse to shake. You're purposefully holding onto our father's death and the circumstances around it as though somehow your remembrance of every finite detail will bring him back."

  Montgomery wanted to talk about something else; anything else. He spun in circles in his own mind over this very issue, without any real resolution, and he didn't know how to share the depth of his feeling with his brother. Brody seemed so confident; so untouched by the knowledge of his own failings.

  "You know why I wasn't at home when he died?" Montgomery said. "I was supposed to be. I don't know if he told you this, but I'd sent Father a letter a week before saying I would ride over in a few days to see him. I was late, though, because I had an opportunity to dissect a cadaver under the leadership of a surgeon. You must know that after the Resurrection Riot all those years ago, any sort of opportunity relating to legal surgery on a corpse is one in a million. I took the chance and went to the surgeon's seminar. I lost myself in a few days of learning and education and discovery, and when I set out to see father I naturally assumed that he would want to hear about it all. I didn't even get your note that he was sick. I just rode towards the house, thinking I would come upon him in the grounds outside or by the sheep pens where he always went to think."

  Brody nodded, remembering.

  "So it wasn't just that I was too late to help him. It was that I was consumed with the study and education of my profession, and I let important matters slide away."

  "He wanted you to do that," Brody said with an unusual air of kindness. "And he was proud of you, as much as it kills me to admit it. He liked that his son was a physician; that you were raised to the position of a gentleman in the county, and that you'd gotten such high marks in your studies."

  "That knowledge is the only thing that keeps me working as a doctor." Montgomery swallowed hard. "I love it, but if I didn't know that he'd loved it too I would only think of all my learning as the monster that kept me away from him."

  They walked on in silence for a bit longer, and then Brody broke the tension, as he always did, with an abrupt sort of laugh. "You know," he said wryly, "this is one of the most honest conversations you and I have ever had. Father would have liked that, at least. He never understood why we couldn't get on better together."

  "Perhaps," Montgomery said with a weak smile, "we could never agree because you were always ignoring me when I told you the best way to do something."

  "And you never admitted I had anything to teach you," Brody said, rolling his eyes. "Even now, I hold a solution to your morose feelings, and you haven't even asked for me to share it."

  Montgomery smiled. "Alright then. I will humor you. What is the overall solution to everything that is plaguing me, Brody? It can't be to bring Father back, I assure you."

  "In a way, it is." Brody cleared his throat. "Because if Father were standing here right now you know what he would tell you. He would say that you ought to let loose all these guilty ties you're hauling about the countryside with you and just live life. Montgomery, you were at a magical party today, and though I understand the setting of a young boy's wounded arm, you still have no excuse for your miserable attitude prior to that distraction. You didn't even look at all the lovely ladies there, or offer to leave Mr. Wells and the judge for even a moment of polite conversation. No, Father would not approve. He would want you to put your doctoring to good use."

  "I am," Montgomery said.

  "Ah, how simple minded you've grown in your old age," Brody teased. "You think the greatest thing you've learned is how to set an arm. Pshaw. The greatest gift medical school gave you is that now any lady in the county would be proud to have you on her arm."

  "Actually," Montgomery said drily, "I've always thought the greatest thing medical school gave me was compassion, and the ability to, on occasion, save lives."

  Brody laughed. "Don't be preachy, it's not a good look on you. I'm serious. You're back here for a bit—you've yet to say how long—and you ought to use the time to find a pretty little wife to take back to the city with you. Then we can be sure of seeing you more often, and I won't be so worried about your gloomy little heart feeling lonely."

  Montgomery shook his head with amusement. "Allow me to get this straight. In my time of utmost need, when you fear that my heart, as you say, is in danger, you would like to lose me in a world of simpering fans and fair beauties? No, brother. I don't think a heart too fragile to deal with Father's death is strong enough to bear up under the attentions of beautiful country maidens."

  The men laughed together, and Montgomery felt the slightest loosening in his chest, as though one cog in the great machine of his grief was popping loose. Brody sometimes seemed immature and dramatic to Montgomery, but he had done what Montgomery had been unable to do the last six months. He'd shifted that burden of grief and guilt ever so slightly away from Montgomery's shoulders. It wasn’t completely, or even mostly, gone, but it was still a start.

  They crested the hill between the two estates and stood for a moment looking down on the home they'd grown up in together. The walls of their father's house were brick and tall, covered in vines on one side and windows on the other. The house seemed so small, and yet still so inviting, where it sat nestled between a small lake and an overgrown orchard.

  Brody started down the embankment with his horse following, but Montgomery lingered for a moment on top of the world, closing his eyes to feel the breeze. When he opened them, he looked back for only a moment and saw the Wells' estate. There were still some small patches of white in the garden where the tables for the luncheon were covered in tablecloths, and he saw a slim figure moving among them—a flash of golden hair and a white muslin gown.

  Everything looked so beautiful from up here; so inviting. It was only as he descended to his house that the memories would come flooding back and drive him away again.

  Chapter 6

  "The Honorable Mr. Brody Wells is here to see you, Miss." A maid popped into Emelia's room with a tray upon which lay the morning paper and a teacup filled with rich tea.

  Emelia was sitting at her dressing table in her nightgown, pinning up her hair into a simple chignon. She looked up in surprise. "What? It's early for visiting." She looked towards the clock and sighed. "It's barely eight. It's not proper until ten, and Brody knows it." She smiled at the maid. Thank you for the tea. Tell Mr. Wells that I will be down in fifteen minutes, and if he dislikes waiting, he can always amend his ways and come at a more appropriate time in the future."

  The maid hid a smile and bustled away. Emelia stood and put on a simple brown calico dress. It was covered with white flowers and trimmed in fine white lace. She liked how simple it was, and how practical.

  After the excitement of the day before, she fully intended to spend the afternoon exploring the property behind her father's estate, walking down to the lake to sink her toes into the cool water, and spreading a blanket on the high hill between the Shaw and Wells properties to catch the breeze and read.

  She plucked a little white flower from the vase beside her bed and tucked it between the strands of the twist at the back of her head, then gathered
up her books and drawing materials, along with a shawl, to make her way downstairs.