The young woman unfolded from his chair. “I am a frippery sort of creature with no practical skills. Though I can carry a lot of things if I need to. My specialties are stacks of books, heaps of laundry, and children of small to middling size.”
Freddie considered. “In that case, I’ve an idea. If you two have no objection, I shall put you to work tomorrow.”
The pair locked eyes. An entire conversation seemed to pass between them in a single glance. For the first time this afternoon, Freddie felt as though he were witness to something too personal for discussion.
“We’ve no objection,” said the man.
“Very well.” Pleased, Freddie pulled open the study door again. “The butler will show you to a room.” Once more, he studied them. “You do look travel-worn. Settle in, and I will have a supper sent up later.”
This would be entertaining, housing guests so suspicious of each other. Maybe life in Northumberland didn’t have to be lonely after all.
* * *
“You are shivering,” Hugo pointed out.
Curse the man. He noticed all the wrong things. “That’s because the room is cold,” Georgette said.
It wasn’t, though. It was lovely and warm, with a cheerful fire in the hearth, a desk at one side, and a dressing room at the other. A carpet on the floor and a woven tapestry on the wall softened the dark wood paneling, and a large bed stood in the center of the room.
A single. Large. Bed.
Not again.
For the past week, night by night, Hugo and Georgette had made do. If they caught up to Jenks, they had to pose as the married Crowes; if he was nowhere around when they stopped for the night, they introduced themselves as siblings and took separate chambers.
Those nights were infinitely easier for Georgette. She could bid Hugo a proper good-night without questioning her every movement, every word she spoke or left unsaid. There was no way to misunderstand good night, even in one’s own mind.
Otherwise, there were innumerable ways to talk oneself into a state of confused . . . oh, better call it infatuation. That was as good a word as any for the feeling digging its claws into Georgette. It was a nuisance, this feeling that made her pleased to look upon him and made her wish for him when he wasn’t there. A desire to be close to him, to touch him.
Such feelings were bound, always, with fear. Fear that in the morning she’d awake and he’d have gone—or even that she’d smile at him sometime, and he would turn away and retreat behind a book. All the better to learn something he hadn’t known before, as if that pursuit were worthwhile in itself.
As if she were not.
If the driver, Seckington, wondered at the true state of affairs between Hugo and Georgette, he was paid well enough to keep such questions to himself. Already he was on his way back to Northampton with a purse considerably fuller, leaving Hugo’s lighter.
And she and Hugo were alone together again, with one room and one bed. Georgette hardly knew where to look. She couldn’t look at the bed; she couldn’t look at Hugo. She settled on staring defiantly at the tapestry hanging opposite the fireplace.
Taller than Georgette, and as wide as she could stretch out her arms, it showed a forest. But not a sweet fairy-tale forest; no, this one was dark and patterned and detailed and vivid. In front, a cut-off stump stretched up one lone remaining twig. The earth foamed like water about the trees, blue green and angry.
A bird was perched at the edge of the stump, looking down at the heaving earth. The only other living creature was a paler, smaller, bird, but maybe braver for all that, for it was perched upon a roll of land at the base of a tree. Its wings were outstretched for balance; its head was turned toward the brighter bird. The other bird seemed not to know it was there.
All this bird did was look, and look, and try to spread its wings. Fool of a bird. It could fly off at any moment if it would only stop trying to catch the notice of the first.
“This is awkward, being put into the same chamber,” said Hugo, not sounding the slightest bit awkward.
Georgette turned from the foolish bird to face him where he stood by the fireplace. “You never mean that when you say it, but it is awkward. I was willing to throw myself on the mercy of a stranger, but I must stop at deceiving him.”
“What are we to do, then? Tell our kind host that he was mistaken? If we are honest with him about who we are, you’ll have to marry me.”
Her mouth fell open. “No.”
“It’s true.”
“No,” she said again. The words were too heavy for Georgette’s ears to take them in right away. She looked at him, heart overfull of unfinished feelings.
He looked back at her, a look longer than those Georgette was used to. She could not read his expression. Hugo was frank, sometimes painfully so, but that did not mean he told her everything.
“I suppose,” Georgette ventured, “that this is no more nor less than our nights spent as the Crowes in coaching inns. Isn’t it? And so—so we needn’t be forced into anything.”
Yes, and each of those nights had left her more puzzled, less able to sleep. Did she want . . . him? What did she want of him? He had never done more than hold her hand, and she had lived on the memory of that for nearly a week.
“I could sleep in the dressing room,” Hugo decided. He took up his valise and moved it into the adjoining space, a narrow cubby off the chamber. “Ah. This is smaller than I thought it was. All right, I could tell our host that you snore and I can’t stay in the same chamber with you.”
“I don’t snore.”
“You don’t. Much. But wouldn’t it be wiser—that is, more comfortable to have your own space?”
“It would for you, certainly. You deserve to have a bed of your own.” Bed. One word. Three letters. A perfectly ordinary item of furniture.
Yet as her lips shaped the word, the sound of it awoke parts of her body that she knew ladies ought to silence. Bed, bed. According to manuals of etiquette, ladies ought not to think of bed; ought not to wonder about the activities carried out there. Ladies were calm and innocent and desired to remain so.
If this was true, Georgette had ceased being a lady as soon as she climbed into a mail coach with Lord Hugo Starling.
Hugo retreated into the dressing area and picked up his valise. “I’ll see to my move, then. Better to impose on your new uncle Freddie than to impose on you.”
“You wouldn’t impose.”
“I try my best not to.” He set his free hand on the mantel, as if bracing himself. “But remember that I never claimed to be perfect.”
No, she had claimed that for him. And after a week in his company, experiencing the best and worst of England’s coaching inns, the roughest and smoothest and muddiest and dustiest of roads, she would not take back that claim.
“Well—off you go, then,” she blurted. “Good night. Not that it’s night, but you must be tired. And we needn’t join Sir Frederic for supper. So—I’ll see you in the morning?” Impulsively, she stepped close to him and wrapped her arms about his chest.
It was meant to be a good-night hug, such as family members sometimes shared. But her belly brushed his, and his frame was solid and strong within her embrace, and suddenly it wasn’t familial at all. The touch was fire, and she shivered again, then tipped her face upward.
He looked right into her eyes. They were so close now. Close enough that their noses might touch, their lashes might brush. It seemed impossible that they should not kiss. It seemed impossible that they should be apart now, having seen each other so closely.
Hugo let his valise fall heavily to the floor. His hands came about her, gentle as they slid up her back, then took hold of her shoulders.
Georgette rose to her toes, then pressed a kiss to the ridge of his cheekbone. His eyes closed like a man too close to the sun. He breathed in deeply, like a man getting air after suffocating.
Neither was a flattering comparison. But when he trailed gentle fingertips down the side of her face, pressing a ki
ss to her temple that was neither chaste nor lustful, something bloomed within her. It was as if her body awoke there, under the pressure of his lips, and she turned toward his touch.
He shook free and stepped back. “Good night,” he said. His breathing was ragged, but no more so than her own.
“Must you be a gentleman again?”
“One of us must,” he said. And he picked up his valise and the leather case of his hospital plans and left the room, closing her in alone.
Pulling in a shuddery breath, she sat on the edge of the bed. The birds woven into the tapestry flaunted themselves before her, one unaware, both trapped. She eyed the paler one, then sighed. “If you had known what was wise, little bird, you’d have flown away when you had the chance.”
Chapter Nine
The following morning after breakfast, Hugo discovered what Sir Frederic had meant by I shall put you to work: the largest parlor of Raeburn Hall was turned into a tiny hospital for the baronet’s tenants. Bedsheets covered the costly carpets peeking out at the edges of the room. A dozen wooden chairs had been brought in—from the attics, considering the state of them. A folding screen of incongruous costliness divided the room. Behind it, several tea tables clustered, holding every sort of gauze and tincture to be found in the house.
“A place to meet with patients, if you need it, and a few medicines,” said Sir Frederic. He surveyed the room with a look of satisfaction. “Ah, and here come the maids with clean linens and towels. I don’t know what you might use them for, but they are the sort of thing doctors always seem to want.”
The effect, as a whole, was tidy and pleasing. And the patients would come to him, as he’d wanted in his own hospital. Maximum care, minimum waste of time and effort.
“Thank you,” he said to his host. “I welcome the opportunity to practice medicine in this way.”
“You probably won’t be paid much. But I’ll leave that to you and your patients to work out.” With a clap on Hugo’s shoulder, the baronet left the parlor.
Georgette walked in carrying a can of hot water, followed by a maid doing the same. “You can set that down, thanks,” she told the young woman. “It must be twenty pounds if it’s an ounce.” Turning to Hugo, she smiled. “Hullo, Doctor. How did you sleep?”
“Perfectly well, with no snoring to wake me.” In truth, he’d tossed and turned and wondered whether he’d overstepped a line—or not stepped far enough. When he finally drifted off, the endless June daylight of northern England woke him at half four.
Georgette looked fresh in white muslin, her pinned-up hair emphasizing the elegant line of her neck and shoulders. She was clean and pretty, and he could not wish for her to become otherwise. “You’d best leave now,” Hugo advised. “Before the people arrive who need medical care. There might be blood and . . .” Vomit. Cursing. Gangrene. “. . . I don’t know what sorts of other things.”
“Infections? Ears full of spiders? Worst of all, tears? You’re right, I’m far too fragile and ladylike to offer any help whatsoever. I’d best be going.” In her free hand, she took up the handle of the other hot-water can. With effortless ease, she carried the two behind the folding screen. When she emerged without them, she thumbed her nose at him.
Hugo raised his gaze to heaven. “Fine,” he said. “If you wish to help, that would be acceptable.”
“Always so melodramatic,” she said. “You really must try to control your enthusiastic words.”
By ten o’clock, the parlor held two dozen people of all ages. Some looked ill, some might be no more than curious. Where to start?
A little boy rested his head on his mother’s shoulder, dull-eyed and coughing. Pneumonia? Hugo’s fingers went cold. He flexed them, quieting himself, then told the mother, “I’ll see your son first.”
They settled into chairs behind the folding screen. When given the chance to examine the boy more closely, Hugo realized his breathing was not labored. Thank God. He wore the ordinary childhood smells of sweat and dirt, not the sickly sweetness of an infection that had taken hold.
“This is a throat complaint,” he told the boy’s mother, who introduced herself as Mrs. Worrall. “It does not appear putrid. He will recover on his own, but you can improve his comfort with a tea of licorice root and peppermint. Give it to him as often as he likes.”
Rather than being grateful, as Hugo expected, Mrs. Worrall put her hands on her hips. “And how am I to get licorice root, Doctor? Or peppermint? If it doesn’t grow on me man’s land, I can’t have it. It’s too dear at the apothecary’s.”
“Ah . . .” Hugo hadn’t considered that. In his private London hospital, he intended that donations would cover the costs of care for those unable to pay. It was the right thing to do, after all. But he had not considered what to do if the physicians hadn’t access to the materials they needed.
Georgette peered around the edge of the screen. “I couldn’t help but hear, especially since neither of you made any effort to be quiet. Doctor, we’ve plenty of hot water. Is there something else I could make a tea with, for the boy to drink right now?”
Doctor, she had called him, with a little wink. Once again, he had the unsettling delight of being treated as her coconspirator.
“Yes, Mrs. Crowe,” he replied without betraying a flicker of the pleasure he took in her words. “Hot water with plentiful honey in it will ease the boy’s symptoms too.”
For the first time, the little boy picked up his head. “Honey? I like that.” His brown eyes blinked, curious.
“Then you shall have it,” said Georgette.
“Doctor, we haven’t ready money since we’re paid in farm goods, but I’ll bring you a rye loaf,” said Mrs. Worrall. “I make them fine and light, better than what you ever got from a bakery.”
The offer took Hugo aback, but he recognized it as a significant payment from this woman. “That sounds very nice. I look forward to a treat.”
Georgette extended a hand. “Mrs. Worrall, if you and Davey will come with me to these tables? Doctor, the next patient is belligerent. I should like him to go last because of that, but he was belligerent about that, too.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t get on with him better, then,” Hugo said.
“Oh, we got along quite well. We’re already old friends.” With that, she guided the woman and boy—whose names she had somehow overheard and remembered—toward the hot-water cans and tea tables at the edge of the screen. To make a tea of honey, presumably. To send some home with Mrs. Worrall too, he hoped.
Hugo had not worked much with aides to doctors, though he knew nuns had once commonly performed medical services. Until the Tudors had crushed Catholicism wherever it sprang forth, that is. Some women still trained informally as aides—nurses, they were called—since they could not become doctors. The academic world, in its questionable wisdom, had closed its doors to fully half the population of England.
A woman such as Georgette Frost would be capable of learning whatever she put her mind to, and likely much that she didn’t. Hugo caught her notice as she finished pouring out a cupful of steaming water.
“Thank you,” he said.
“I’m only helping you because you begged me,” she said. “Not because I want to.”
His brows lifted. “Do you mean the opposite of that?”
“Maybe.” Her smile trembled, then fled, and on she went with her work.
When Hugo went back behind the examination screen, the farm laborer from yesterday was standing there. He’d removed his coat and dropped it to the floor, and was now shrugging out of his braces and tugging his shirt free of his breeches.
“So you’re belligerent, are you?” Hugo wiped his hands with a clean towel.
“No, I’m Keeling,” the man said. “One of the baronet’s hinds.”
“Never mind,” said Hugo. If Georgette had truly been bothered by the man, she wouldn’t have called him an old friend. “What’s the trouble?”
The man lifted his shirt on one side, exposing a r
aw, ragged red path through the flesh over his ribs.
Hugo bent closer, studying it. It looked like a bullet wound, but not a fresh one; the skin had scabbed over. “How did you come by this injury?” He straightened, dampening another towel in the second can of hot water.
“By a bullet,” said Keeling. Which was exactly the sort of literal but unhelpful answer Hugo would have given if he didn’t want to answer a question. He had to admire it.
He pressed at the wound with the towel, gently cleansing the skin of Keeling’s side. Once it was wiped as clean as it could be, Hugo took another look. “It ought to have been stitched right away. I’m afraid I can’t do anything to close the wound for you now.”
Keeling let his shirt fall. “What kind of doctor are you?”
“Not the magical kind.” Despite what he’d told Georgette once as part of a story. “It looks like you’ve avoided infection thus far, so you’ll finish healing without complication. You’ll have a scar, but it won’t be obvious.”
“A scar?” Keeling’s sun-bleached brows lifted. “A proper one?”
“I suppose. It’ll be a big one.”
“Right. That’s dead canny. Thank you.” From the pleased look Keeling wore, Hugo guessed that “dead canny” was a statement of approval.
“Don’t thank me. Thank the person who shot at you.”
Keeling put his braces and coat back on, then leaned in close. “Listen.” He lowered his voice. “Don’t tell no one where this came from. But it’s good for a man to be paid for his work, like.” Grabbing Hugo’s hand, he pressed something into it—then strode away.
Hugo unfolded his fist. “Shit,” he muttered. Keeling had given him a bit of gold.
It wasn’t a coin, but it was the amount of gold that might be in a coin if that coin had been melted down.
“Shit,” he said again.
Yes, they had followed a trail of gold and gossip to Northumberland—but Hugo had never really believed the latter would lead to the former.
He rubbed a hand across his eyes, then opened them. Yes, it was gold. Gold in his hand.
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