Fifteen

“Dance with me, Mrs. Nash?” George held out a hand to Elsie, willing her to accept his invitation. Before dropping George back at the assembly rooms, Nita had tasked him to convey news to a worried mother, and George would not fail either woman.

Elsie didn’t immediately take his hand, though George did not withdraw his offer. “You don’t want to be seen dancing with me, Elsie. Dance with me anyway. I promise I’ll not inflict any unwanted kisses on you.”

He’d surprised her—also himself. She placed the tips of her gloved fingers on his palm.

“I’d be honored, Mr. Haddonfield.” Then, as George led her out onto the dance floor, she added softly, “It isn’t want you think.”

The orchestra lumbered through the triple meter introduction to the evening’s second and final waltz.

“What do I think?”

George thought Elsie was too sweet to live in fear of Edward Nash’s next bout of temper, too good to endure the situation she’d been thrust into.

“You think a few wild oats on your part would give me a permanent dislike of a man I’ve known to be nothing but honorable,” Elsie said softly. “You’re very wrong. Edward’s petty tyranny is all that limits my association with you.”

The music began and George moved off with Elsie in his arms. She was smaller than his sisters, more easily led, and entirely feminine.

His goddamned idiot cock took note of that last, his personal sexual weather vane, cheerfully aligning itself with any available breeze. He’d sowed acres of wild oats in places both predictable and unlikely, and had little harvest to show for it.

“Digby is flirting with lung fever,” George said. “Nita isn’t worried, but she mixed up mustard plasters for his chest, ordered willow bark tea to the keep the fever down, and beef tea to ease his throat. I’ve had a word with Vicar. Edward will receive a note tomorrow canceling Digby’s lessons for the week because of Vicar’s gout.”

The choir fund was five pounds richer for Digby’s holiday, affirming once again that Vicar’s view of Christian charity did not match George’s.

“Thank you,” Elsie said. “Please thank Lady Nita for me as well. If I lose Digby, you should fear for Edward’s life.”

They twirled around the room, not with the vigorous pace of the London ballrooms, but in a slower, more lilting tempo suited to ending an evening. George resisted the urge to tuck his partner closer, for Edward was regarding them owlishly from his post by the men’s punch bowl.

“I know what desperation feels like, Elsie, and you cannot give in to despair. You are all Digby has, all that stands between him and Edward’s worst impulses. Digby needs you, and you aren’t without friends. Call on me before you do anything rash, and I’ll not fail you.”

Those words were rash, for George had some personal wealth, but where Elsie and Digby were concerned, he had no authority.

“You must not involve yourself,” Elsie said. “Edward would take it amiss. I thank you for the dance, Mr. Haddonfield.”

The music came to a final cadence. George bowed, Elsie curtsied, and he had no damned choice but to escort the lady to Edward Nash’s side. Nicholas rescued George from having to make small talk with a man who deserved to be horsewhipped.

“George, our ladies are pleading fatigue,” Nicholas said. “Unless you want to walk home, I suggest you accompany me to the livery. Nash, your sister-in-law looks somewhat fatigued as well.”

Nicholas beamed at Elsie, for charming the ladies came as easily to Nicholas as dancing did to George.

“Perhaps we might offer Mrs. Nash a ride home,” George said. “We brought both the carriage and the sleigh, didn’t we?”

George had brought the sleigh, there being no room in the carriage, and by now the sleigh had returned from taking Nita home to Belle Maison.

“We do have two conveyances,” Nicholas replied. “Come along, Mrs. Nash. My countess has missed your company, and your brother-in-law is likely joining the gentlemen removing to the common for a final pint or two.”

Well done, Nicholas.

Nash’s scowl vanished like hoarfrost before the rising sun. “A pint or two? Don’t mind if I do,” he said. “Dancing works up a man’s thirst. Elsie, you’ll accept his lordship’s hospitality. Bellefonte, Mr. Haddonfield, I bid you good evening.”

Nash sauntered off a bit unsteadily, while George offered his arm to Elsie. “Come along, madam. I’ll take you home in the sleigh, and you’ll be spared his lordship’s dubious attempts at flirtation.”

“I take offense at that,” Nick said. “Holy matrimony has only honed a natural talent where my flirtations are concerned. Ask my countess, if you don’t believe me.”

Nick was on his good behavior because the ladies were present. Doubtless George would get a verbal birching for abetting Nita’s early departure.

“Where did Mr. St. Michael get off to?” Elsie asked.

“He declared a need to walk back to Belle Maison,” Nick said. “Something about inferior spirits and a salubrious dose of fresh air. I’d expect a former Scottish shepherd boy to have a harder head, though I well understand an appreciation for fresh air.”

“Mrs. Nash and I are away to the livery,” George said, parting from Nicholas at the cloakroom, where various Haddonfield females were sorting capes, scarves, boots, and muffs. Susannah in particular looked ready to leave.

When George reached the street, Elsie walked along beside him, not hurrying him as a sister might have, but as if she genuinely enjoyed his company.

“Will you soon be traveling again, Mr. Haddonfield?”

“Might you call me George?” And, yes, he was soon to depart for Germany, of all the cold and distant places, and from thence to Poland and possibly Russia.

“If I call you George now, I might slip when Edward’s underfoot. He claims you’re an unwholesome fellow who ought not to be allowed onto the Stonebridge premises.”

“Unless, of course, my escort will free Edward for additional pints of grog. I may be unwholesome on occasion, but I’d never strike a woman. How do you stand him, Elsie?”

A light snow fell, muffling the merriment coming from above the inn and lending the fading ring of sleigh bells and coach harnesses a fairy-tale quality.

“I hate Edward, if you must know,” Elsie said. “He has squandered Penny’s funds. He’s Digby’s guardian though, so I’ve nowhere else to go. I was honestly hoping Lady Susannah’s settlements would put Edward’s finances to rights, even if that will do nothing to restore Digby’s funds.”

Elsie was hanging on then, out of sheer determination, and that realization tore at George.

“I could kill him for you,” George said. “I’m heading off to the Continent this spring. I could simply depart ahead of schedule.”

He was only half joking.

“I’ve considered poisoning him,” Elsie said, and she wasn’t even one-quarter joking. They rounded the corner of the livery, and abruptly the noise and bustle of the assembly’s end was behind them. “Sometimes, I think I’m in a nightmare that will have no end. I have a little money I’ve hidden from Edward, and I think about running away with Digby, taking ship even, but Edward has the law on his side. At least now, I share a roof with my son.”

George didn’t think, he simply took Elsie in his arms. “You are a good mother, Elsie Nash, and I have funds enough to see you safely to Italy or even America. No child should grow up in fear for his health, his future squandered by an uncle with too few scruples and too much pride.”

Worse yet, the bastard was too free with his fists, which also boded ill for Digby’s future.

Elsie leaned against George, let him for one moment have all of her weariness and fear, all of her anger and despair. To hold her felt good, though holding her wasn’t nearly as much comfort as she deserved.

And then she kissed him.

George’s mind manufactured a single thought—kissing Elsie felt good too!—before he began kissing her back.

* * *

When last Tremaine had been intimate with his intended, she’d chided him for not pursuing her to her room, for inflicting on her an occasion of cold feet.

Tremaine’s feet were cold, his nose was an icicle affixed to the front of his face, his ears were no warmer, and his toes were nodding cordially to frostbite. He trudged on, as he’d trudged through many early Highland storms, past the sagging fences of Stonebridge, past Belle Maison’s sheep pastures. In another mile, he’d warm up, and the temptation to walk right past the Belle Maison drive dogged his steps.

Nita had disappeared on George’s arm and not returned, suggesting she’d gone off on one of her medical calls. Elsie Nash’s boy, most likely.

Something contagious, for late winter was contagion’s social season, summer offering a reprise for cholera and typhus.

The Haddonfield carriage team trotted past, though Tremaine doubted the inhabitants had seen him. They’d be tucked up in their cloaks and mufflers, dissecting who had made sheep’s eyes at whom, and whether certain couples were quarreling.

Tremaine considered the matter for a frigid half mile and concluded that, just perhaps, he and Nita were quarreling. Something he’d said in his exchange with Nash hadn’t set well with her ladyship.

Perhaps he ought to have officially acknowledged their engagement rather than danced around it? Surely an announcement was Bellefonte’s to make?

Perhaps Nash deserved a more pointed scolding? Tremaine had certainly wanted to scold Nash more soundly. Thirty paces at dawn would convey Tremaine’s sentiments handily.

Tremaine was still debating what he would have or should have done differently when he let himself into Lady Nita’s room. They were to be married in a very few days, and knocking seemed a bit silly.

Also perilous, for a fellow who knocked was a fellow who could be told to go away.

“Good evening, my lady.” God help him, Nita’s hair was unbound, a shimmering river of golden fire streaming over her shoulders as she sat before the hearth, one bare foot up on a hassock, the other tucked beneath her.

“Hello. You didn’t think to take off your coat?”

Nita wore her blue night robe while Tremaine—foolish of him—still wore his greatcoat, scarf, and gloves.

“I needed assurances that you are well,” Tremaine said, unraveling the scarf from his neck. “You left with George, and he returned without you. I was concerned.”

Worried, angry, sick with an orphaned boy’s unreasonable fear for her welfare.

“I’m sorry. As you can see, I’m yet in excellent health.”

Excellent health. Tremaine loathed that phrase. Unless he missed his guess, Nita was in an excellent temper—or something. He stuffed his gloves in his pocket and hung his greatcoat on one of the bedposts.

“What are you reading?” he asked, taking the poker to the fire, then adding more coals.

“Paracelsus in the original Latin.”

Tremaine had hated Latin, though it had made learning Italian and Spanish easier. After grafting Scots and Gaelic, then English onto his French, Latin had been the outside of too much.

“What does Paracelsus have to say?” Tremaine asked.

As long as Nita wasn’t telling Tremaine to leave, he’d continue to cast lures. A cheering thought befell him: perhaps her monthly had arrived midway through the assembly. That would explain much, despite protestations of excellent health.

“Paracelsus says that washing surgical instruments between each use results in fewer cases of infection and fewer deaths from infection. He said this hundreds of years ago, and yet English medicine still fails to heed his wisdom.”

The sooner Nita gave up her medical pastime, the happier their pillow talk would be.

“Somebody should tell that to the army surgeons,” Tremaine said, taking a seat on Nita’s hassock. “Those who die on the battlefields are often envied by those who are wounded.”

“I have written to Wellington’s personal surgeon,” Nita said, drawing her second foot under her. “He did not favor me with a reply.”

Smart fellow, or Nita would have bombarded him with learned correspondence. Of course, if the smart fellow had paid attention to Nita, fewer lives would be lost in the hospital tents.

The thought of all those miserable, needless deaths only added to Tremaine’s sense of disquiet.

“How’s the lad?” Tremaine asked, gently untucking a slender female foot from under the lady’s fundament.

“Digby? How did you guess?”

“I was once a lad too, and winter was not my favorite season to mind the sheep. Your feet are not cold tonight.”

Tremaine needed to touch some part of Nita, because she’d gone elsewhere, returned to the remote, polite woman he’d first met in a chilly stable at this same hour days ago.

“Digby’s circumstances are poor,” Nita said. “Edward might wish the boy dead.”

While half the shire probably wished Edward would find his eternal reward. “Nash is an idiot, but surely, even Nash wouldn’t wish harm to a mere boy?”

Tremaine’s mother had turned her back on two mere boys, though for the first time, he admitted that in so doing, she’d assured those boys physical safety and a childhood in the care of a loving, if gruff, relative.

“Edward would not admit even to himself a wish to harm Digby,” Nita said, “but the Nash men have always been competitive with each other. Penny Nash married and produced a son while his brothers did not or have not. Why are you here, Tremaine?”

He was there to make love with his intended, to assure himself that all was well between them.

He kissed Nita’s ankle, which bore a slight scent of honeysuckle. “I wanted to waltz with you this evening, but your sister dissuaded me. Did you want our engagement announced after all?”

“No. Shall you come to bed, Tremaine?”

Nita regarded her foot, cradled in his hands. Her brows were knitted, her expression puzzled, as if symptoms would not add up to a diagnosis.

Being married to Nita Haddonfield would involve work, though unraveling the mysteries of her moods and mental processes was work Tremaine would enjoy. She was a challenge—his challenge.

“Let’s to bed,” he said, rising and extending his hand to her. “We must talk about the ideal home in which to raise our family.”

Tremaine was no expert on women, but such a topic ought to catch Nita’s interest. She rose from her perch and went to the vanity, then sat and began plaiting her hair.

“I gather you anticipate getting many offspring with me?” she asked, whipping her hair into three skeins.

Tremaine unknotted his cravat and undid his sleeve buttons. “God willing, it shall be my privilege to give you babies, my lady. I’m not particular about the gender either. A French title is a business convenience, not who I am, so don’t you dare think our daughters will matter less than our sons.”

Nita winced, as if she’d found a knot among her tresses. “Very democratic of you.”

Tremaine sat on the bed to get after his boots, which by rights ought to have been left in the kitchen for a good oiling.

“Very paternal of me. I’m also of the Continental opinion a woman ought to nurse her own children, though I’ll accede to your wishes in this regard.”

Nita turned on her dressing stool. “Did you know the Duchess of Kent refused to use a wet nurse for her little Princess Alexandrina?”

Finally, a spark of interest.

“And you approve, suggesting we’ve found an area of parental agreement even before we’re wed. Did you enjoy the assembly?”

Nita turned back to face her vanity. “One endures the assemblies, for the most part.”

Such was Nita Haddonfield’s lack of guile that she hadn’t accounted for Tremaine being able to read her expression in the vanity’s mirror. Something or someone had upset her badly.

Tremaine pulled his shirt over his head, peeled out of his breeches, and stalked up behind the lady.

He took the ribbon from her fingers and lashed it around the tail of her braid. “You are tired, and in need of cosseting, my lady. Come to bed and pick out names with me. I’m told people in our situation are entitled to silly behavior.” Also lusty behavior, which, according to every shepherd Tremaine had shared a fire with, could cure all manner of megrims and melancholia.

Nita rose when Tremaine would have begun that cosseting with a gentle hug.

“I’ll get the candles if you’ll bank the fire,” she said, starting with a branch on her mantel. One by one she blew out each flame, the shadows in the room gradually converging into darkness.

Tremaine locked the door, scooped coals into the warmer, banked the fire, and ran the warmer over the sheets. He hoped—a dangerous undertaking, hoping—this was the start of a routine they’d share for the next five decades, but Nita’s mood was off, and he still had no idea why.

Maybe that was also part of married life?

Nita unbelted her robe, then drew her nightgown over her head. For a procession of instants, Tremaine beheld his intended by the flickering light of the fading fire. Long, graceful limbs, pale skin, rosy breasts, full hips gently curving into a feminine waist, a thatch of reddish gold curls at the juncture of her thighs.

“I am marrying a beautiful woman.” Inside and out, beautiful in her heart, in her body, in her restless, vigorous mind.

“While you are handsome,” Nita said, climbing onto the mattress, “and deserving of some cosseting yourself. Have your tups continued to recover?”

Tremaine joined her under the covers and she cuddled up along his side, a quietly perfect moment.

“I heard from my man today, and, yes, every one of them is up and about, swilling water like a sailor at his grog and nibbling all the grass hay we leave out for them.”

This time next year, those lads would all be anticipating their first lambs, and perhaps Tremaine would be too.

“Kiss me, Nita Haddonfield. Will you like becoming Nita St. Michael?”

Nita kissed him, a slow, nearly reverent tasting that fueled the desire simmering whenever Tremaine thought of his lady.

“We’ll not get much cuddling done if you keep that up,” he muttered, arranging himself over her and kissing her back. “Though I suppose we can always cuddle later.”

* * *

They could not always cuddle later.

Nita ran her hands over the elegant musculature of Tremaine’s shoulders and back, smoothed her fingers over his fundament, and tried not to cry.

She could not marry a man who dismissed her ability to heal others. Tremaine of all people ought to understand that a meaningful life involved doing what needed to be done, not simply what one was pleased to do.

He was protective of others. Nita admired that about him, admired so much about him, but he would not allow her to be protective too.

“Make love with me, Tremaine.”

He’d once granted her a boon, to be redeemed at the time and place of her choosing. Nita seized this moment, knowing Tremaine might despise her for her selfishness come morning. She was being greedy and probably stupid, but she’d have decades to regret this impulse and to treasure the memory of her foolishness.

Tremaine was a gifted kisser, but at Nita’s words, he moved lower, applying his mouth to her breasts.

“I can’t breathe when you do that,” she whispered, cradling him closer. “I can’t think. I can’t—”

He desisted, and she would have yanked him back to his post, but the sensation of his tongue tracing her ribs skittered along paths already illuminated by desire. His next destination exceeded even what Nita had imagined a man could do with his mouth.

“Do you like this?” he asked, nuzzling her low on her belly. “You taste of flowers even here, you know. Meadow flowers”—he took a wet, slow swipe at her sex—“and lavender”—another swipe, while Nita clutched at the pillows with both fists—“and a hint of honeysuckle.”

A hint of madness, as if Tremaine were trying to change Nita’s mind with pleasures dark and dear.

“Tremaine, you needn’t—”

“Hush, love.” His mouth affixed to a part of her person Nita could name only in Italian. God in heaven, no wonder Nicholas and Leah were stupid with desire and affection for each other.

That was Nita’s last coherent thought before Tremaine drove her through ecstasies undreamed of even in her anatomically enlightened imagination. Fireworks of pleasure lit her up from within, sensation upon sensation followed by emotions without names in any language she knew.

When Tremaine had finished working his mischief, he pillowed his cheek on Nita’s breast.

“Have I pleased you, my lady?”

He’d shocked her with the intimacy and generosity of his attentions.

“You’ve undone me, in so many ways. I hadn’t known… One overhears one’s brothers being crude, but—”

Tremaine traced a finger over Nita’s lips. “There’s more, you know. You can put your mouth on me, use your hands on me. You can ride me, we can mate like sheep, on our knees. I expect this is the purpose of the wedding journey, to see all the sights and wonders lurking between the sheets while the great capitals and courts are thoroughly ignored.”

Oh, Nita would miss him. Miss his dry humor, his lusty male body, his everything.

“Will you make love with me now, Tremaine? As a man makes love with a woman?”

As a husband makes love with his wife?

“You need not ask, you know,” he said. “The two shall become as one flesh, and that means I’m yours for the having. I grow aroused simply watching you braid your hair.”

He was aroused now. Nita could feel him, hard, warm, and unapologetic against her hip. More than physical pleasure, more than an erotic education, what he gave Nita now was a form of marital trust she did not deserve.

“I’m asking, Tremaine. Make love with me.”

The wrongness of what Nita demanded of him blended with the arousal simmering through her to create a combustible mixture of longing and heartbreak. When Tremaine joined their bodies with one slow, deep thrust, Nita came apart again, more intensely than before.

“You just missed Copenhagen,” he teased, subsiding to a slow, rocking rhythm. “Next, we can love our way through Paris and on to Bonn. I do love you, you know. Very much.”

Nita would miss him for the rest of her life. “Enough chatter or we’ll ignore Berlin.”

“Can’t miss Berlin, Geneva, or Rome…”

Tremaine loved Nita until she’d lost every part of her heart, and most of her wits, until she was sore and aching and an entirely different woman from the lady who’d thought to snatch a memory from a soon-to-be-former lover.

“Tremaine, please. Now.”

He understood. He hitched himself over Nita as she pressed her face to his shoulder and endured pleasure that had acquired an edge of hurt exactly fitted to the emotions wracking her.

“Hold me,” Tremaine rasped. “Never let go, not ever.”

He spoke not only as a lover, but also as a man who’d trusted Nita with his heart. When he spent his seed this time, Nita felt the warmth of it deep inside, and she held him as if she’d never let him go.

* * *

Dawn came late in winter, but hunger could wake a man when sunshine was in short supply. Tremaine remained curled around his beloved, sated in ways that had nothing to do with food and everything to do with a special license.

“You’re awake,” Nita murmured, rolling over. “Shall you go?”

Did she want him to go? The door was locked, the maids and footmen not yet stirring.

Tremaine rearranged himself so his arm was around Nita’s shoulders and the glorious warm length of her tucked against his side.

“We never did decide what sort of house we’re to raise all those children in, my lady. Or shall I call you comtesse?” After the night they’d shared, Tremaine was at risk for referring to his intended as lovey, lambie, and even lambie-love. “While you ponder your answer, I’ll tend to the fire.”

The room was chilly, but nothing like the shepherd’s crofts Tremaine had known as a boy. Glorified windbreaks, most of them, with a chimney, the better to lose the fire’s warmth to the howling night air.

Nita watched him stir the ashes, toss on some kindling and then a few coals. Despite the chill, Tremaine hadn’t bothered with clothing, it being a wife’s privilege to admire her spouse’s unclad form as much as she pleased.

And a husband’s privilege to be admired, though Nita’s gaze held anxiety.

“Shall I love you again?” Tremaine asked, rejoining her under the covers. “Whisk you past the pleasures of Athens?”

Nita bundled up next to him. “You shall not. I’m in need of at least three soaking baths. I doubt you’re in much better condition.”

Tremaine was in excellent condition, though a bit sore. “I can be a gentle lover, you know.”

Nita turned her face to his shoulder, as if he’d offered not a tease but a taunt.

“Nita, was I too rough? Be honest.”

She bit him gently. “You were nearly perfect. You even taste good.”

Tremaine heard the nearly, and unease prowled past a morning’s normal complement of desire.

“We never did talk about a house, my lady.”

Again, that lure did not seem to catch Nita’s fancy. She tucked a leg across Tremaine’s thighs and brushed a thumb over his nipple.

“Very well, we shall talk about this house you’re so fascinated with.”

Nita should be fascinated with the dwelling she’d make her own, any woman should be. Tremaine caught her hand in his and kissed her knuckles.

“I prefer comfort to fashion,” he said, “though the two can be found together. I have an extensive collection of art and sculpture, which can go in a gallery rather than a family wing. I also favor spotless kitchens and a comfortable servants’ parlor. As hard as they work, the help should at least have a cozy place to take their tea.”

Nita twitched, a peculiar hitch of her shoulders. “All fine priorities in a family home, but for me, the herbal is the most important room. I like the herbal near the laundry, so I have fresh water. An herbal must also be ventilated and have excellent light. I need enough space that I can have visitors there too, and I need shelves to store recipes and references. I’m very particular about my herbal.”

Unease grew inside Tremaine, because his prospective wife hadn’t mentioned her nursery or her private parlor.

“Why would you need room for people to visit you in your herbal, Nita? You’ll have formal parlors, informal parlors, and very likely your own personal sitting room.”

Not to be confused with the sitting room they’d share, adjacent to their bedroom.

She rolled to her back, her gaze on the blank expanse of ceiling above them.

“Tremaine, when people seek my healing abilities, they are seldom comfortable doing so in a parlor. Particularly if I’m to examine them, the herbal serves better.”

“What are you saying?” An old-fashioned lady of the manor might tend her own family, even her own servants, but not friends or strangers outside the household. Even servants were more properly the responsibility of the housekeeper rather than the lady.

“I danced with Harrison Goodenough at last night’s assembly, Tremaine.”

“The name means nothing.” Panic started flinging fears at Tremaine’s composure: Did Nita’s intended mean nothing to her?

“He’s getting on, but last summer, he had a mishap with his gun and shot himself in the foot.”

That one. “Then he’s a fool, and a lucky fool.”

“He was nearly a dead fool. Dr. Horton wanted to amputate the foot, though the bullet had only grazed the side of it. A great mess and a nasty wound, but no damage to the bones. I saved that foot. I saved a man’s ability to walk unassisted across his own acres, to dance with a woman less than half his age. I very likely saved his life.”

Tremaine’s imagination saw fluttering handkerchiefs, but he kept his tone agreeable.

“You’re proud of that, rightly so, my lady. What does that bit of poulticing and stitching have to do with our household?”

Nita sat up, taking away her warmth and about half of Tremaine’s patience. They’d had a wonderful night, and now she was off on some female flight that made no sense.

“Croup can kill a newborn,” she said. “They’re not even supposed to have croup, but Addy Chalmers lives in straitened circumstances, and Evan has ever been sickly. Had I not responded when Mary sought my aid, wee Annie could be dead.”

Inside Tremaine, something did die. He didn’t give it a name, but it was a close relative of hope and healing, the very gifts Nita spread before any who sought them from her.

“You are telling me that even when we marry, even when your own children fill our nursery, you will continue to tend any and all who have need of you.” Tremaine had called upon negotiating skills to offer that summary, upon the ability to restate in the clearest terms an opponent’s position, usually before he annihilated that position.

Nita left off studying the small blaze lighting the hearth and turned to regard Tremaine. Her braid was ratty, her shoulders bare, and her cheek bore a crease from wrinkled sheets.

“I have a gift, Tremaine St. Michael. I can save lives. I can reduce and eliminate suffering. I’ve worked hard to acquire these skills, and planning your dinner parties or picking out wallpaper for your nursery is not more important than wee Annie’s life. Addy is at the end of her tether. Losing one more child will see the others on the parish and Addy in a pauper’s grave. I can’t have that on my conscience.”

Tremaine climbed out of the bed, barely keeping his voice below a shout. “Has it occurred to you that you are perhaps the reason Evan remains in poor health?”

His question was desperate, but Nita’s life was arguably in the balance along with Tremaine’s sanity and most of his honor. How had he not seen this? How had he not realized that Nita’s sense of responsibility had defined her for too long to be trumped by a recent attraction to a mere husband?

“I haven’t treated Evan,” she said, drawing the covers up under her arms.

“You treated Digby Nash, and he’s ill. Then you lark into the Chalmerses’ household, dispensing sweetness, light, and very likely contagion.”

Tremaine’s reasoning was cruel, also entirely valid.

“I take precautions,” Nita said, reaching for the blue robe draped across the foot of the bed. She couldn’t grab that robe and keep the covers under her chin, so Tremaine tossed it to her.

“You cannot take precautions in a cottage that lacks washing water and strong soap,” he said, yanking his shirt over his head. “You cannot take precautions against the foul miasmas you breathe in. You cannot ever take precautions that will render you as safe as you’d be if you resigned your post as ministering angel to all in need.”

“I cannot and will not let children die when I can help, Tremaine. I cannot allow women to suffer a complaint of the privy parts because they’re too ashamed to seek Horton’s dubious counsel. Where is your Christianity?”

Tremaine jerked on his breeches. “Where is your sense? I don’t begrudge any woman the assistance of a midwife, and I don’t object to your brewing tisanes or mixing powders to ease suffering, but is wee Evan’s runny nose more important than the lives of your own children? I warned you I would not willingly allow my wife to risk her safety, and every sickroom you visit is a battleground, Nita Haddonfield.”

Why hadn’t he seen this issue for the tragedy it was? Nita Haddonfield would likely go on for years saving the lives of neighbors who neither paid her nor respected her for her skill, until one of them afflicted her with an illness even her formidable constitution couldn’t survive.

“I have no children of my own,” she said, “and it appears that will always be the case.”

“That is largely your decision.” Tremaine wanted to snatch up his boots and stomp out of the room, but Nita’s stubbornness was only a small part on her own behalf. “I don’t fault your kindness, my lady, but I cannot abide the notion that you repeatedly put yourself and your loved ones at risk merely for the asking. You risk your life, Nita, for anybody who asks it of you. I offer you happiness and a husband’s rightful protection, and you disdain my suit.”

This was the real tragedy. That Nita Haddonfield would die unnecessarily soon, of consumption, cholera, or typhus. The world—and Tremaine and any children she might have—needed her alive.

“I never foresaw that I might marry,” Nita wailed softly. “Matrimony wasn’t in my plans.”

Tremaine took a seat beside her on the bed, heart breaking, pride in tatters. “Nor in mine. Who will tend you when you fall ill? Dr. Horton?”

Nita apparently hadn’t foreseen this eventuality either, and Tremaine nearly howled with frustration. A heart this pure and determined was a danger to itself, and yet Nita would not allow him to protect her.

“My sisters will look after me.” A desperate hope, based on her uncertain tone.

“They’ll have husbands and children of their own,” Tremaine said, looping an arm around Nita’s shoulders. “I cannot change your mind, can I?”

For to change Nita’s mind would mean he’d changed her heart, and behind all the poise and practicality, Nita Haddonfield was cursed with a tender, generous heart.

Which Tremaine treasured.

A man who seized opportunities when more cautious souls hesitated was also a fellow who occasionally blundered badly.

“Can you provide my neighbors with good health?” Nita asked, her head on his shoulder. “Can you make Horton wash his instruments when he doesn’t even bother to wash his hands? We do not know exactly what causes disease, but Horton cheerfully attributes illness to moral lapses, and suffering to moral atonement. He’s a medical barbarian, and all they have.”

Truly, Nita faced a formidable enemy, as did Tremaine.

“Are you rejecting my offer of marriage, Nita Haddonfield?”

“Are you rejecting my calling as a healer, Tremaine St. Michael?”

Was he? Tremaine stroked a hand down the frayed golden rope of her braid and tried to find an answer that was at least honest.

“I am in want of courage, Nita Haddonfield. As a small boy, I watched the lady who meant everything to me sail away, never to return. Every time you visit a patient suffering from contagious illness, you take that same risk. I lack the fortitude to send you on such voyages at any hour of the day or night, particularly when I know your journeys might bring death home to your own children.”

Or to her husband, though Tremaine wasn’t worried about that fool.

Nita leaned against him more heavily. “You ask an impossible choice of me.”

“The situation we face is not impossible,” Tremaine said, “but simply sad.” Very sad, and while a part of him wanted to argue and rail and do violence to the breakables, another part of him noticed what the small boy had not wanted to admit:

The lady was in tears as she made her choice—bitter, heartrending tears.