Fourteen

Tremaine liked Nita very much; he did not like having a fiancée. Old feelings, of hope and anxiety, pleasure and resentment, came with being engaged.

Also a little madness: What if Nita changed her mind? What if she went to the Chalmers cottage and never came back? What if she rode away, fluttering her handkerchief in farewell, and he never saw her again?

Fortunately, after Tremaine had spent a morning staring at correspondence, Lady Nita came striding across the snowy garden, Lady Kirsten beside her. The noon meal featured servings of good cheer along with the ham and mashed potatoes.

At table, Lady Nita had shown to excellent advantage in a gown of green velvet with a lavender fichu and matching shawl. The smiles she’d aimed at Tremaine had been soft and precious.

The hand she’d stroked over his thigh beneath the table had been pure devilment.

Dinner had been more of the same, the time spent with the ladies afterward even worse, until Tremaine had pled the beginnings of a genuine headache. He’d undressed, washed, and then repaired to bed with a treatise on foot rot that did nothing to soothe his tattered nerves.

When somebody tapped on his door, he snarled his response. “Come in.”

“Tremaine?” Nita slipped around the door, her hair in that single golden braid over her shoulder, her attire again a blue dressing gown and gray wool stockings.

He rose off the bed. “I was expecting a footman with a bucket of coal.” Or perhaps George Haddonfield come to flirt.

Nita locked the door, a definitive little snick of metal on metal that might have been a pistol shot, so loudly did Tremaine hear it.

“I’ve missed you, Tremaine St. Michael.”

She tossed that admission at his figurative, betrothed feet, a challenge and a concession all in one. The demented part of Tremaine that waited for her to abandon him was reassured by her words. The male part of him nearly pounced on her in reply.

“We shared two congenial meals today,” he said, prowling closer, “and sang a recognizable duet after dinner.” He stopped immediately before her. “You can’t possibly be missing me.”

Nita went up on her toes to kiss him, bringing Tremaine a whiff of lavender, lemons, and a different sort of madness altogether. With one hand, she cupped his jaw.

With the other, she gently squeezed his cock. “Tell me you missed me too, Tremaine. We’re engaged. Sentimental talk between us is permitted.”

This woman was not bent on talk. “You should not be here, my dear.” Stay. Please stay.

Another squeeze, marvelously firm. “I agree. I should not be here. You should have come to my room. The corridors are chilly, and my feet are cold.”

As Tremaine’s mouth descended over Nita’s, his instincts tossed out a theory: Nita was also plagued by the fear that their vows would never be spoken, that Tremaine would abandon her to putrid sore throats and cursing Quakers, never to have babies or a family of her own.

When he might have plundered, his kiss instead cherished. “Will you allow us to be married by special license, my lady?”

“Stop negotiating, Tremaine. Nicholas told me he acceded to your terms, now you will accede to mine.”

Nita’s list of terms began with another prodigiously thorough kiss and a few sanity-robbing squeezes.

“That,” she said against his mouth, “is for spending the afternoon with your correspondence.”

Tremaine kissed her back, then scooped her off her cold feet and deposited her on the bed.

“That is for imperiling my limited skill with dinner conversation, Lady Nita. When we’re married, we will sit at opposite ends of a proper table.”

She hauled him closer by virtue of two fists snatching him by the lapels of his night robe. “Not at breakfast we won’t. Not when we’re dining in private. Not when we’re picnicking by the river.”

Tremaine loved her. Loved her courage and boldness, loved her compassion for those less fortunate, loved her ferocious desire for him.

“You will marry me by special license,” Tremaine said, untying the sash of her night robe, “or you will take pity on a poor, defenseless fiancé and leave my bed.”

The sad, lonely, disappointed part of him still expected her to do just that—to tease him to within an inch of his sanity, then flounce off into the night. The rest of him was glad she’d had the presence of mind to lock the door five minutes ago.

“Make love with me, Tremaine. I told Nicholas I’m insisting on a special license so as not to overshadow Della’s come-out this spring.”

Tremaine paused between untying bow number 884 and yanking open bow number 885.

“Do you have another reason for a special license, my lady?”

Nita ran her hand over his hair, the tenor of her caress shifting their discussion from the verbal battledore of mating adults to an exchange between lovers.

“I’m afraid when I wake up tomorrow, I’ll find that I dreamed you,” she said. “You never visited Belle Maison, or if you did, you rode on your way, having bargained Nicholas’s sheep away from him. I’m nobody’s fiancée, I’ll be nobody’s wife. I’m plain, dependable Lady Nita, and always will be.”

Tremaine curled down to press his cheek against Nita’s, and when he should have confided in her about a small boy with a huge heartache, his orphaned courage dodged behind the prudence of a self-sufficient adult male.

“I’m here, Nita. I’m real, and I’m your fiancé. We will marry whenever you please. The license should be delivered on Monday.”

Words were in short supply after that. They undressed each other slowly, between kisses, caresses, smiles, and whispers. Threats alternated with promises until Tremaine was poised over his intended, skin to skin beneath the covers.

“Do you still fear I’m a figment of your dreams, my lady?”

“Part of me will likely always fear that,” she said, her fingers laced with his on the pillow. “Somewhere along the way, between my parents’ funerals and my brothers’ weddings, I lost a part of myself, Tremaine, and you’ve found it for me.”

Nita had lost the courage to hope, and how well Tremaine knew that poverty. Life became a matter of tackling challenges, of focusing always ahead, never behind.

And never inward.

“When shall we be married?” he asked as he began their intimate joining. “We haven’t chosen a property for our own, and that might take some time.”

In Nita’s arms, Tremaine had chosen all the home he’d ever need, and yet he held off the completion of their union.

“I don’t care where we live, Tremaine, provided the place is free of creeping damp and drafts. Stop negotiating.” Nita lunged up with her hips and took the initiative from him.

“Tuesday,” he rasped as he set up a deliberate rhythm despite the desire rioting through him. “Tuesday morning.”

“Early,” she whispered, locking her ankles at the small of his back. “Maybe even Monday evening.”

They were to be wed within the week, and this was not their first anticipation of those vows. Tremaine should have treated his lady to a leisurely coupling, letting anticipation build, exploring her responses and his own.

Urgency rode him mercilessly, robbed him of finesse, and left him desperate. Nita came apart beneath him, keening softly against his throat, shuddering through her pleasure. When her grip on Tremaine’s hands slackened and he was sure she was sated, Tremaine gave himself permission to follow her into satisfaction.

Pleasures stormed through him, dissolving plans, thoughts, and even most of Tremaine’s fears.

But not all. Though it contradicted Tremaine’s most passionate desire, at the last instant he lunged back and spilled his seed between their bodies.

* * *

“Are you nervous?” Della asked.

“Not about another assembly,” Nita replied, slipping a simple gold bracelet that had been her mother’s around the wrist of her right evening glove. Tremaine had told her the previous night that a ring would arrive with the special license. “Are you nervous?”

Della admired herself in the cheval mirror, though she had to tilt it first, for it was angled for Nita’s height.

“Nervous about another interminable evening country-dancing with the same fellows I’ve been dancing with since I put up my hair? Swilling the same tepid punch, nibbling the same stale sandwiches?”

Older sister’s instinct told Nita that Della was nervous, though not about the assembly.

“London is no different, Della. A lot of boredom punctuated by the occasional passable dancer or clever verbal exchange. You look over the fellows, they look you over. The only differences between a London ballroom and the Haddondale assembly rooms are the quality of the tailoring and the fact that, at some point, you’ll be permitted to waltz.”

“The only difference,” Della said, tossing herself onto Nita’s bed, “is that I’ll come home this summer more disenchanted than I am now. I understand why you look after all the sick babies and doughty elders, besides the fact that it keeps Mama’s memory closer for you.”

Nita tugged at her glove beneath the bracelet, for the jewelry had bunched up the leather below her wrist.

“Honor Mama’s memory?” she muttered. “By sending Mr. Clackengeld his headache powders and thumping Dora Angelsey’s chest?” Mama had never set bones, never courted the vicar’s ire with her charity, never read Paracelsus or Galen.

Never tried to revive a baby who’d departed the earthly realm, felt the very heat leaving the infant’s body while the mother sobbed uselessly across a cold, barren cottage.

The dratted bracelet had been a bad idea, for now the clasp was caught on the glove.

“You use Mama’s recipe for your headache powder,” Della said. “Her very recipe in her handwriting. You now ride the horse who used to pull Mama’s gig. That’s a step in the direction of eccentricity, you know. Atlas is a fine fellow, but he’s not saddle stock, and Nicholas only broke him to saddle on a whim.”

Atlas was a fine mount for a tall rider. Mama had doted on him and Mama had loved this stupid gold—

“Get this blasted thing off me,” Nita said, shoving her wrist under Della’s nose. “Atlas was going to waste, and this bracelet is too small for my wrist. You should have it.”

Della scrambled to the edge of the bed and took Nita’s wrist in her hands. “You’re giving me Mama’s bracelet? This was her great-grandmama’s, Nita. Are you sure?”

Great-Grandmama had been the original healer in Nita’s family, a formidable German lady who’d famously advised the present King’s governors on his health many decades ago.

The King had fallen quite ill in later years, nonetheless.

“The bracelet is yours,” Nita said as Della worked the clasp open. “I tend to those Dr. Horton either cannot or will not treat properly. Mama has been gone for years now, and her memory has nothing to do with anything. If you remain lounging on my bed, you’ll wrinkle that dress, Della.”

Della held up the bracelet like a prize pelt. “I’ve loved this bracelet,” she said, draping the length of gold around her wrist. “It’s simple and elegant, and even a debutante might wear it in the evening. Thank you, Nita.”

Nita fastened the clasp for Della, on whom the bracelet was elegantly loose. Della remained sitting on the bed, holding up her arm so the bracelet caught the light of a dozen candles.

“I shouldn’t wrinkle my dress, my brow, my gloves…You tend to babies so you don’t go mad worrying over—heaven spare us!—wrinkles. Silk will wrinkle, but we wear it because it feels divine and is both light and warm, even when wrinkled. You heal people because it warms your heart in a way having a dress free of wrinkles never will.”

Sometimes, caring for the sick warmed Nita’s heart, more often it broke her heart.

George stuck his head into Nita’s room, rapping his knuckles on her door. “Fifteen minutes, you two. Nicholas says he’ll open the dancing with Leah, and he’s already pacing the library. Kirsten and Suze are down there tormenting him while Leah makes a final stop in the nursery.”

“And Mr. St. Michael?” Nita asked, stealing a glance at her image in the mirror. Even saying his name pleased her and banished some of the upset Della’s comment had caused. Nita would soon be Mrs. St. Michael. Very soon.

“St. Michael’s my next stop,” George said, “though may I say, you both look delicious and will be the envy of all, save our sisters, who are also very nicely turned out.”

George withdrew, and Della bounced off the bed. “George should be married. He’s too dear to wander around the Continent pretending he’s debauched.”

Excellent point. “George is not debauched,” Nita said, “but his more unconventional tastes are problematic.”

“Byron had the same tastes,” Della retorted, “and he didn’t depart for the Continent until his creditors took exception to his debts. He married.”

“Byron married miserably by all accounts.” Though Byron was also a father at least twice over. “Shouldn’t you be fetching your boots, Della?”

“I’ll fetch my boots,” Della said, “but you needn’t feel guilty just because you and Mr. St. Michael are besotted while George remains lonely.”

Della was formidable when hurling insights. Nita folded a shawl over her arm and gave Della a one-armed, possibly even dress-wrinkling, hug.

“You’ll make new friends in London,” Nita said, recalling all too well the same false platitudes flung at her as she prepared for her come-out. “And you will always be welcome in my home. Mr. St. Michael is in want of family. I think that’s one reason he’s attracted to me, because I bring a large and loving family to the union.”

“A large and loud family,” Della said, smiling. “You look lovely, Neets. Mr. St. Michael’s regard has brought a sparkle to your eye. I’m envious.”

Della was also sweet, as George was sweet. Della’s envy was a cheerful gift, laughingly tossed into Nita’s lap.

“I love you, Della Haddonfield, and I will miss you when I leave this household.”

Della hugged her back, the embrace leaving Nita unaccountably melancholy. Della skipped off in search of her boots, and Nita grabbed a beaded reticule from the vanity. She was to be married, the plainest, oldest, least romantic of the Haddonfield sisters, and married to a dear, handsome man of means.

Nita could hardly believe her good fortune, despite Tremaine’s assurance that their vows would soon be spoken. He was Nita’s lover already, her friend, and her fiancé.

That he’d denied himself the pleasure of spending his seed in the conjugal act was an indication of his regard for her, surely.

So why did Nita feel as if Tremaine withheld from his prospective wife not the risk of conception, but rather, a piece of his heart?

She took one last look at herself in the mirror, but Della had tilted it so Nita’s reflection was from the shoulders down. Now that Nita had the privacy to study her image, she was vaguely disturbed by what she saw.

“I look like Mama.” The realization brought no joy. From the neck down Nita looked very much like a gaunt, pale, even spectral version of her departed mother. She turned from the mirror, blew out the candles one by one, and prepared to smile and dance her way through yet another local assembly.

* * *

Two violins in close harmony and a wheezy little spinet were small competition for dozens of pairs of dancing feet. The thump and slide of those feet echoed a thumping in Tremaine’s temples.

Nita, however, was luminous in her blue velvet finery, a smiling, sparkling testament to gracious cheer and graceful movement.

And she was soon to be his.

“The winter assemblies always have a desperate quality to them,” Edward Nash observed from Tremaine’s side. “One certainly wishes the rooms had more open windows.”

Alas, one might be tempted to jump from such a window, though Tremaine could identify no specific reason for his irritability other than present company.

“Mr. Nash, greetings. Your sister-in-law is a lovely addition to the assemblage.”

Lovely, but when greeting Elsie Nash, Tremaine had sensed that the woman also suffered anxiety over more than her attire, which was several years out of fashion.

No blackened eyes, though. Tremaine had been relieved to note that Elsie Nash was free of injuries. Nita would likely have called Mr. Nash out otherwise.

“Have you and Bellefonte come to an agreement regarding the merinos?” Nash took a gulp of punch that Tremaine had set aside after one cautious sip.

“Business at a social function, Mr. Nash?” Tremaine countered softly. “Surely we should focus on which lovely lady we’ll lead out next rather than on a herd of sheep?”

Tremaine had been at pains to ensure the sheep were as good as in Nash’s grasping, gloved hands—if that’s where Bellefonte wanted them—despite Nita’s loathing for Edward Nash. Let him take up bargaining with the earl—or with Lady Susannah.

“Bleating sheep, bleating women,” Nash said. “The topics are related. Susannah will see that I have those sheep, I’m sure.”

Lady Susannah, for pity’s sake. “You’re that confident of your suit?”

“The Haddonfield sisters are de trop, Mr. St. Michael,” Nash replied. He probably thought himself sophisticated, but his tone marked him as a petty man. “Bellefonte has an heir in his nursery, and aging aunties are an expense the earl doesn’t need. Susannah knows this.”

No doubt because Nash subtly reminded her of it.

The set was ending, not a moment too soon. Nita curtsied to her partner, some old fellow who’d nearly shot off his own foot the previous summer, if George Haddonfield was to be believed.

“Lady Nita is apparently free for the next dance,” Tremaine said. “You’ll excuse me if I avail myself of her hand.”

“Do I take it you’ve offered for Nita Haddonfield?”

Nash had spoken loudly enough that in the absence of the sawing fiddles and pounding feet, his question caused heads to turn. His complexion was flushed, and the glass in his hand trembled slightly.

Foxed, and in public, no less. This was what came of socializing with the neighbors.

“If I have offered for Lady Nita,” Tremaine said, “and if she has done me the honor of accepting, then Bellefonte will surely announce our engagement soon, won’t he? Perhaps the earl’s reticence is intended to allow others time to contribute their own good news to the general gaiety.” Tremaine would have strode away on that observation—Lady Susannah was to be pitied her choice of swain—except Nash put a hand on Tremaine’s arm.

“You’ll not have those sheep, St. Michael. Take to wife whomever you please, but I’ve made my position on the sheep quite clear.”

Tremaine spared a moment’s pity for the sheep, who had no choice in the matter. “Best of luck then, in all your ventures.”

“You’re the one who’ll need the luck.” Nash’s jollity was forced, and every person in the assembly room would have heard him. “If you marry Lady Nita, she’ll soon bring every foul disease and noxious ailment to your doorstep. Or will you curtail her nonsense, as Bellefonte should have done when he inherited the title?”

Bellefonte was busily studying his drink four yards away, the countess’s hand tucked around his arm rather like a manacle.

Tremaine spoke loudly enough that nobody would mistake his words. No wife of his would suffer the judgment of her inferiors, much less become an object of gossip for having overindulged her charitable impulses.

“Nash, surely you comprehend that if a new husband is conscientious in the prosecution of his duties, the new wife will have no thought for colicky babies or consumptive uncles? Any lady who becomes my countess will have many duties, all of them as pleasurable for her as I can make them, and none of them imperiling her welfare.”

Tremaine shook free of Nash’s clutches and winked at his intended. She no longer needed to tolerate the meddling of such a disgrace, for Tremaine’s words were sincere. A husband was entitled to pamper his wife and to be pampered by her.

Also to protect her. He’d made damned sure Nita understood that very point. Nita smiled slightly, then turned to address her brother George.

Lady Kirsten appeared at Tremaine’s side and aimed a feral smile at him. “Ask me to dance, Mr. St. Michael. Ask me to dance now.”

Apparently, Lady Kirsten wanted a piece of Nash’s hide as well.

Tremaine bowed over her hand. “My lady, may I have the honor?”

She curtsied, the movement having something about it of a duelist’s opening salute. Lady Kirsten danced with an effortless grace few women shared, and yet she wasn’t Nita, whom Tremaine would rather be partnering.

“Don’t look for her,” Lady Kirsten hissed. “Don’t smile that indulgent, besotted smile at her. Don’t frown at me, or I’ll tramp on your idiot foot.”

Her expression bore a cordial regard, her eyes promised murder.

The poor dear was probably jealous. In all modesty, Nita was marrying quite well—Tremaine would resume use of his French title if Nita preferred—and Lady Susannah was at least marrying. Lady Kirsten was doubtless suffering the pangs of impending spinsterhood.

“Have I offended, my lady?”

They turned down the room, the floor being considerably less crowded as a result of the choice of dance. Nita twirled by with her brother George, her smile serene.

“You have offended me, indeed,” Lady Kirsten murmured. “I wish you the joy of your damned sheep.”

A dramatist, then. Every family had one. “Nash is half-seas over, and some banter between the fellows will only cause a little talk. I suggest you aim your criticisms at the good squire, and in Lady Susannah’s hearing. Nash is really not worthy of her.”

Lady Kirsten’s foot came down on Tremaine’s, and though she was wearing slippers, she was no delicate flower.

“Nash is a presuming idiot,” she said. “We’ll find some way to deal with him that doesn’t reflect poorly on Susannah. You, however, are a fool.”

Tremaine executed the figures of the dance with the skill of any man born with both French and Scottish antecedents, while his mind considered Lady Kirsten’s apparent upset. As Nita sashayed around the dance floor, she appeared as gracious and poised as always, chatting with her brother, smiling, and in full possession of her good humor.

Her poise should have reassured Tremaine.

When the music finally came to a close, Tremaine bowed, Lady Kirsten curtsied low, and he led her back to the side of the room. George and Nita joined them as lines formed for another country-dance.

Some merciful soul had cracked open a window, for the room was both warm and fragranced with the exertions of the assemblage.

“Lady Nita, you dance quite well,” Tremaine said. Three siblings exchanged a glance, suggesting Tremaine had accused his beloved of having horns and a tail.

“As do you, Mr. St. Michael,” Nita replied. “George, perhaps you and Kirsten would be good enough to fetch us a glass of punch?”

George hustled off, dragging Kirsten with him.

“Lady Kirsten took exception to my earlier remarks to Nash,” Tremaine said quietly, because wallflowers, dowagers, and gouty old squires were scattered around the room. “I apologize for engaging the fool in repartee, but he was being an idiot.”

“I understand.”

Uncertainty blended with the single sip of cheap punch in Tremaine’s belly. “What do you understand, my lady?”

Her smile was benevolent, her countenance composed. “Edward has visited the punch bowl frequently this evening, and Susannah has ignored him. Some gentlemen deal poorly with having their wishes thwarted.”

“Good for Lady Susannah.” Tremaine assayed a smile in the direction of his fiancée, but her gaze had returned to the dance floor. His uncertainty acquired a hint of irritation as it occurred to him that Nita had the knack of appearing more composed as she became more distraught.

That recollection cheered him not at all.

* * *

How could you?

Nita tapped her toe more or less at random, smiled at whoever glanced her way, and filled her mind with the memory of Annie’s dirty nappies, the scent of boiled cabbage, Fordyce’s sermons, anything to keep from crying.

Tremaine St. Michael expected his wife to sit at home and darn his stockings while children suffered and mothers worried helplessly. The betrayal of his public declaration, the sheer presumption of it, hurt like a dislocated joint.

Worse was the sense of having missed the most important symptoms as she’d examined the patient. Nita had noted Tremaine’s pragmatism, his honor, his generosity, and, yes, his gloriously healthy manly physique.

She’d been fascinated with his kisses and his passion.

She had utterly ignored what defined him, though: a protective instinct that stretched to distant herds of sheep, his horse, families of hungry children, and cousins in the far-off Highlands.

Such a man was not prepared to tolerate the risks Nita took as a healer.

“Punch,” George said, bearing two cups and a brilliant smile. Kirsten had taken herself off, thank goodness, though pity the fellow with whom she next danced.

“Lady Nita.” Tremaine passed Nita a glass, though the last thing Nita wanted was to add tepid, sickly sweet punch to the upset roiling in her belly.

“My thanks.” She touched the cup to her lips without imbibing, and Tremaine appeared to do the same.

Just as he’d appeared to be everything her heart desired.

“Elsie Nash was asking for you, Nita,” George said softly. “She’s frantic about something, unless I miss my guess.”

Tremaine winged his arm.

Nita pretended not to see it. “I won’t be long.” She passed George her cup and hurried away, grateful for an excuse to leave Tremaine’s side. He did not comprehend the hurt he’d done her, and that only made the situation worse.

“Lady Nita, good evening.” Elsie’s smile was brittle, though she was prettily attired in a gown of emerald green. “Are you enjoying the gathering?”

No, Nita was not, and she’d probably never enjoy an assembly again. “Elsie, what’s wrong?”

“Edward would not let me send for you, but Digby is quite ill. Horton will bleed him, and even Penny didn’t favor bleeding a child. I thought if you could stop by—” Elsie paused to smile at the vicar, who tottered past with his missus, dancing being a sure cure for gout, of course.

“You want me to leave the assembly?” Nita was in no mood to deal with an ailing child, but she was happy to leave the gathering, even to once again sneak up the back stairs at Stonebridge. Anything to get free of this place.

“You can return before anybody knows you’ve left.” Elsie waggled her fingers at Della, who looked far too sophisticated as she turned through the figures of the dance. “Edward insists the boy make the trek to the vicarage daily, despite the weather, despite Digby’s cough growing worse. I fear for my son, or I wouldn’t ask.”

Behind Elsie’s fine manners lurked a mother at the breaking point, the same breaking point Addy Chalmers had danced along for years.

Damn Edward Nash, damn all the hale, healthy men who thought their needs trumped anybody else’s.

“Avoid the punch,” Nita said, “and if somebody asks, I sought a moment of fresh air to clear my head. Tell Kirsten to dance with Edward, and then let Della and Leah have a go at him.”

“Thank you, my lady. If there’s ever anything I can do to repay you, you have only to ask.”

Nita returned to George’s side, and that meant once again facing Tremaine. He was painfully attractive in his evening attire, and he danced beautifully. His smile was indulgent and sweet.

Nita longed to be Mrs. Tremaine St. Michael, but did Tremaine honestly believe choosing wallpaper for his formal parlor was more important than a small boy’s life?

“George, I need a moment of your time,” Nita said. “Mr. St. Michael, you’ll excuse us?”

The special, just-for-you smile faltered. “Are you well, my lady?”

“I enjoy excellent health, thank you.” Despite tired feet, an aching heart, a throbbing head, and a crushing bewilderment, Nita yet enjoyed excellent health.

Offer to come with me. Please, offer to come with me, and I’ll hold out hope that we can reconcile our differences. Except that since becoming engaged to her, Tremaine’s public behavior had been punctiliously proper.

“I’ll await your return, then.” He bowed smartly and Nita had no choice but to lead George from the room.

“What in the hell are you doing, Nita Haddonfield?” George asked as he held her cloak for her. “Your absence will be remarked, and Elsie Nash was near tears when she accosted me.”

“I’m near tears too, George, but nobody will remark my absence as long as Mr. St. Michael is standing up with the wallflowers. Take me to Stonebridge, please.”

George cursed colorfully—he was a Haddonfield, through and through—then shrugged into his greatcoat.

“It’s the boy, isn’t it? He’s worsened, and Nash has denied him medical care.”

Nita wrapped a scarf around her neck. “If Edward has denied Digby the tender ministrations of Dr. Horton, then we may hold out hope of the child’s eventual recovery.”

If only Nita could be as sanguine about her own marital prospects.