Eighteen

Nita had brought reinforcements in the form of her brother the earl, though she was thankfully without the damned tea tray. A man who needed assistance getting to the chamber pot had reason to view the tea tray askance.

“St. Michael, you’re awake.”

“Astute as always, Bellefonte.”

“If you want to continue to make free with my nightshirts, you’d best wake up your manners,” the earl retorted, taking a seat on the bed. The jostling produced only discomfort, not the agony it might have a few days ago.

“I forgot the tea tray,” Nita said.

Bother the damned tray.

“I wouldn’t mind a ginger biscuit or two,” Bellefonte commented, apparently getting comfortable on Tremaine’s bed.

Nita scurried out, though to Tremaine, she looked increasingly worn and worried.

Also dear. Inexpressibly dear.

“I sent Nash off to his uncle,” Bellefonte said, the pretense of genial bonhomie disappearing as Nita left the room. “I’m the magistrate, and I’ve become creative when the need to lay information is upon me—public drunkenness, attempted manslaughter, slander, assault…care to add any more?”

A weight lifted from Tremaine’s shoulders, for Nita should not have to tolerate a weasel living in the same neighborhood. Then too, Nash’s own safety probably required that he bide a distance from Lady Susannah.

“Elsie Nash might have some useful thoughts about the handling of her son’s inheritance,” Tremaine said. “My thanks, and Nash ought to thank you as well. Nita, Elsie Nash, and Addy Chalmers are out of charity with him.”

As was Tremaine. A decent pair of boots cost a pretty penny, but Nita Haddonfield’s good name was worth more than all the sheep in Britain.

“Nita cares for you,” Bellefonte said, scratching his back against the bedpost the way a horse might use a stout tree. “I care for Nita, therefore I’m having a competent physician come around to look you over.”

“Not Horton,” Tremaine said, visions of a dirty scalpel rising from his nightmares. “Nita won’t stand for the insult.”

“I’m not sure what to do about Horton, but he’ll not set a chubby foot on my property, lest Nita be out of charity with me. You’re managing?” Bellefonte inquired with the carefully casual commiseration of a man in blazingly good health for another fellow who hadn’t left his bed to speak of in days.

“I’m planning my apology,” Tremaine said. “Lady Nita saved my leg, if not my life.”

“Never easy, planning an apology. I’ll leave you to it.” Bellefonte patted Tremaine on the knee and rose.

“I could use a footman if you find one free.” Or Tremaine could hobble behind the privacy screen on his own, bashing about like a drunken bullock along the way.

“Nita spikes the tea with laudanum,” Bellefonte said. “That’s why you’re a bit unsteady. The leg will be fine or Nita would have relieved you of it.”

“Good to know.” Also awful to know, because Bellefonte was no longer teasing. Tremaine sank against the pillows, awaiting torture by ginger biscuit and spiked tea. He went back to work planning his apology but was distracted by the disturbing fact that Nita might well have taken a saw to him—a clean, sharp saw—had his injury been of a different nature.

She would have hated the entire ordeal but tended to Tremaine to the best of her ability anyway. When it was Tremaine’s life in jeopardy, he’d relied on Nita to use the very skills he’d expected her to deny others.

A lifetime of apologies might not suffice, though he’d start with one good one and hope for a miracle.

* * *

The fourth day of Tremaine’s convalescence saw a change in Nita’s patient.

“What are you doing out of bed?” she asked.

“Hobbling slowly,” Tremaine retorted. “Impersonating my grandfather when his rheumatism acts up. No wonder wounded soldiers are eager to have at their enemies once more. Marching about is tedious, but a bullet wound is a damned inconvenience.”

A recovering patient was a damned inconvenience too, for as soon as he was hale, Tremaine might well be on his way.

“Please sit,” Nita said, when what she wanted to do was put an arm around Tremaine’s waist and wrestle him back to bed.

“I shall sit on the sofa,” he replied, wobbling off in that direction. George or some other traitorous brother had provided a pair of crutches. Tremaine’s skill with them suggested this treason had been committed at least a day ago.

“You may sit where you please, but you’ll prop your leg up.”

Tremaine looked like he wanted to argue, a sure sign of recovery. His hair was combed, and his dressing gown neatly belted, though his feet were bare.

“I hate being invalided,” he growled, “and hate more that I’ve prevailed on you to tend me.”

As if Nita would allow anybody else near him. “I won’t be tending you much longer. Lord Fairly says your wound is healing beautifully.”

“Nonsense. An unsightly rip in a man’s flesh cannot be beautiful. Would you please sit beside me?”

A rip in a man’s flesh could be gorgeous, when little heat or swelling accompanied it, the scent lacked any hint of putrefaction, and the edges were already beginning to knit.

Nita set a hassock before Tremaine and took a seat beside him rather than argue.

“Nicholas has sent Edward Nash to his uncle,” she said, because somebody ought to let Tremaine know. “I wanted to shoot Edward in the leg and leave him to Horton’s tender mercies.”

That sentiment was hardly to her credit as a healer, though Nita’s sisters, Leah, and Addy shared it with her. Susannah’s quotations were recently all drawn from the Bard’s bloodiest tragedies.

Tremaine took Nita’s hand. “I saw the knife Horton intended to use on me. George was to cut off my muddy boot with it, then pass it over to Horton.”

“I’m surprised you remember that.” Did Tremaine also recall telling Nita that his heart was already in her keeping? For Nita would never forget those words.

A silence took up residence where Nita’s heartfelt confession should be. She held on to Tremaine’s hand and tried to recall how to begin her well-rehearsed speech.

“I was wrong.”

They’d spoken the exact same words at the exact same moment. Tremaine kissed Nita’s knuckles, though he was also trying to hide a puzzled smile.

“Any woman who rescues me from certain butchery or worse, when I’ve castigated her for rescuing others, can be as wrong as she pleases,” he said. “Nita, can you forgive me?”

She leaned into Tremaine’s solid warmth—she was on his good side, not that it mattered.

“There’s nothing to forgive, Tremaine. Nothing.”

Tremaine’s arm came around her shoulders. “I said I would not marry you if you persisted with your medical activities, then I expected you to save my life. How is this not gross arrogance, selfishness, bullheadedness, and a reason to hate a man?”

How was it not entirely understandable—now? But where to start? “My family loves me.”

“I love you too, lass.” A grumpy disclosure, not a declaration.

Nita waited, because the fingers stroking her cheek were as gentle as Tremaine’s tone was rough.

“Dueling is a stupid, reckless, violent exercise in lunacy,” he said, “but it can sort out a man’s priorities. As I marched off the steps in that clearing, I did not think about commerce. I did not consider how to market merino wool most profitably. I did not wish I’d written one last letter to my factors in the Midlands.”

Nita slid her hand inside Tremaine’s dressing gown, needing to feel the beat of his heart beneath her palm.

“I should hope you paid attention to the counting, sir.”

“More than Nash did, apparently, but that’s not relevant. What’s relevant is that memories of you and hope for a future with you filled my heart and my mind as I paced toward my fate. You, Nita Haddonfield. You matter more to me than my fears that you’ll be carried off by some dread disease. If I could have five years with you, or five minutes with you, why would I deny myself that joy?”

“Because you’re not a fool,” she said, kissing his wrist. “I’ve had a change in perspective, Tremaine.”

“As long as you remain in my arms, you may explain this change in perspective.”

“Addy Chalmers brought us word of the duel. Ladies aren’t supposed to know of such things, but we often do. I had my bag in hand and was on my way to the woods when George brought you home.”

“I recall a posse comitatus of your sisters, the countess, and Addy. They wouldn’t have let you go alone.”

“I understand that now,” Nita said. “They want to protect me. My siblings aren’t angry at me for tending others; they are frightened for me. When Addy told us you were to face Nash over a pair of pistols, I was terrified. I could not think; I could not move. I could not even pray coherently, Tremaine. You could have died.”

Nita had been terrified, paralyzed, mute, and horrified, even as she’d silently bargained with the Almighty. Please, keep the man I love safe. How did soldiers’ families deal with that terror day after day, year after year?

How had Nita’s family dealt with it?

“What could possibly daunt your bottomless courage?” Tremaine asked. Was he growing tired?

“I haven’t much courage,” Nita said. “Nicholas says I’m honorable because I help where I can, but I’m not brave, Tremaine. Much about medicine scares me or disgusts me. I can admit that now.”

To him.

“You never appear scared or disgusted. You appear determined and capable. You’re also very pretty.”

He truly was on the mend, thank heavens. “Have you been drinking your tea?”

“No, love. Not after your brother told me you spike it. Tell me more about being afraid, Nita.”

Yes, tell him. Tell him that too, because it made all the difference. “When I snatch up my bag and march off to a sickroom, you are terrified for me. I see that now. I grab my medicinals the way you fellows take up your dueling pistols, and I march off against an opponent who doesn’t wait for the count, who knows no protocol, who kills entire families without even alluding to concepts of honor or reason. You are not being pigheaded or backward or narrow-minded when you ask me to give up seeing patients; you are as frightened as I am.”

As frightened as Nita had been for years.

Tremaine passed Nita a handkerchief. She’d soon have a collection with his initials embroidered on them.

“I love you,” he said, kissing her ear. “I love your kisses and your passion, your polite reserve, your humor, stubbornness, and courage. I want very much to marry you, Nita Haddonfield. If that means I send you off to do battle with the plague itself, I still want to marry you.”

“I don’t want to do battle with the plague,” Nita wailed softly. “I want to marry you, to have great, fat, healthy babies with you, to scold you for letting our children spoil their supper with ginger biscuits.

“But people know I’ll help,” she went on, “or try to help, and Mama told them all I have a gift. So they call upon me when there’s illness or injury in the house, and if I don’t go, who will? Horton is backward and bumbling, and even he senses that his knowledge is badly out-of-date. I can’t leave people to suffer when I might help, but I won’t lose you, Tremaine. I cannot.”

Nita fell silent when she wanted to rant. She could have lost him to Edward Nash’s pride, stubbornness, and shortsightedness. She could not bear it if she lost him to her own.

* * *

Nita was a sweet, warm, tired—and upset—weight against Tremaine’s side. Every time he’d surfaced from his laudanum dreams, she’d been by his bed. Often he’d found her hand in his, and sometimes she’d fallen asleep like that—curled over in her chair by his bed, her hand wrapped around his.

“I quizzed Lord Fairly as he thumped and poked at me.” Tremaine had had commercial dealings with Fairly several years back without ever learning of the man’s medical abilities.

“About sheep?”

“Not about sheep. No titled Englishman knows more about sheep than I do.”

Tremaine had amused her. God willing, he’d amuse Nita often in the coming years.

“Go on, Tremaine. Would you like a ginger biscuit?”

“Please, God, not another ginger biscuit. Fairly is something of an expert on the export of medical treatises and instruments.”

“He’s quite knowledgeable,” Nita said. “Also kind. When I can’t find a reference in English to a disease or herbal remedy, he often has something in his library.”

Fortunately, the estimable Lord Fairly was happily married, else Tremaine might have questioned his generous literary motives.

“Fairly spent his early childhood in Scotland and returned there for some of his medical training. He’s skilled as both a surgeon and a physician, unlike your Dr. Horton.”

Nita shifted so she straddled Tremaine’s lap. “Can you be comfortable like this?”

No, he could not. “Cuddle up, love. My leg is fine and I’ve missed you.”

Nita settled in, and Tremaine forgot what he’d been bleating about—ah, the ever-helpful Lord Fairly.

“I asked Fairly to find us a pair of physicians to open up a practice here in Haddondale. At least one of them must be young and recently educated. The other can be older, provided his training exceeds the theoretical foundation given to most English physicians. Will you interview these fellows, put them through their paces?”

Nita kissed him. “I love you. We need a good midwife too.”

Apology accepted, apparently—proposal as well—and she’d anticipated Tremaine’s very next point.

“Consider it done, madam. You will interview her too.”

Nita tucked herself agreeably closer, such that Tremaine endured a throbbing of the blood in a location other than his wound.

“If only you could find a replacement for Vicar. He delights in carping about a woman’s pain being her just deserts for leading Adam astray. Makes me wonder about the gout he complains of at such length.”

Tremaine saved puzzling over the theology of gout for some other day. “Your brother mentioned Vicar’s increasing age to Fairly, and I heard them discussing an in-law of Fairly’s as a possible replacement. Nita, you do know that under this dressing gown, I’m wearing nothing but a nightshirt?”

She sat up. “You’re injured, Tremaine. You mustn’t overdo.”

At least she was crestfallen to deliver that opinion.

“I must contradict you. Lord Fairly was clear that I should resume normal activities as soon as possible, allowing pain to inform my choices. I’m in pain, Nita. Will you, please, relieve my distress yet again?”

“We’ll marry, won’t we, Tremaine?” She unbelted his robe as she put the question to him. “I’ve been a touch queasy lately, which makes no sense, but I do want to marry you. I’m done battling contagion, Tremaine. Let your physicians duel with that scoundrel. I’ll attend the occasional lying-in, I’m sure, and I can always be counted on to deal with injuries—my goodness.”

A part of Tremaine was showing off its exuberant good health and high spirits.

“I’ve missed you,” he said again. “Might I hope you’ve missed me?”

“Desperately,” Nita said, rising and locking the door. “Do you still have that special license?”

“I assuredly do,” Tremaine replied as Nita resumed her place on his lap, and he got to work on the drawstring of her bodice. “We’ll find a property nearby, and—”

Nita kissed him to silence and then to bliss upon bliss and then to a lovely, sleepy embrace, during which Tremaine considered names for their firstborn, when in the past, he might have counted sheep.

* * *

“The greatest plague ever to bedevil mortal man, the greatest threat to his peace, the most fiendish source of undeserved humility is his brother-in-law, and titled brothers-in-law are the worst of a bad lot.”

Tremaine’s boots thumped across the carpets of Belle Maison’s library, his pace, to Nita’s ear, solid and even, though only weeks ago he’d been brought to bed with a bullet wound.

“Nicholas frets,” Nita said. “It’s his nature. He can’t help it, and marriage and fatherhood have made him worse.”

Impending fatherhood had made Tremaine worse too—also better, at least in terms of tenderness, quiet kisses, caresses, and the pace with which he pursued his commercial activities.

“But why did Bellefonte muster the entire regiment to see us off?” Tremaine groused. He sounded Scottish all the time now. “One likes a bit of dignity about one’s leave-takings.”

Tremaine marched to a halt before a tall window and held out a hand to Nita. “Finally, the last of the recruits arrives.”

“The Holland bulbs along the south-facing garden wall are starting to sprout,” Nita said, for a woman in anticipation of motherhood appreciated new life in all its brave splendor.

She leaned into her husband, wondering how she’d ever managed, how she’d endured, without his love to sustain her.

“Are you certain you want to take this journey with me?” he asked, tucking her against his side. “I’ve wondered how my households ever functioned, how I functioned, without you to take matters in hand.”

This happened frequently—their thoughts ran in tandem, much as Tremaine slept in tandem with Nita.

“We will make a wedding journey of it,” Nita said. “Nicholas has assured me the house we’ve chosen will be entirely refurbished by the time we return. George will steward your acres, and Digby will aid him. I want to meet your grandfather, Tremaine, and he apparently has demanded to meet me.”

Demanding family members no longer bothered Nita as they had prior to her marriage, though she’d been happily busy establishing her household with Tremaine. Nicholas had insisted on a family gathering prior to Tremaine and Nita’s departure for Scotland and points distant, even summoning Beckman and Ethan and all their family.

The last time they’d been together had been the old earl’s funeral, and Nita agreed with Nicholas—better to gather for joy than sorrow. Better to assure Tremaine he’d married not only a loving wife, but also an entire tribe of loving, if bothersome, in-laws.

George and Elsie had come over from Stonebridge, which property George had purchased from Edward for the sum of Edward’s debts. Edward was rumored to be the elderly baronet’s whipping boy, though even the post of charity relation hadn’t lessened Edward’s fondness for gin.

“You’re thinking about him again,” Tremaine said, kissing Nita’s temple. “You’ll upset my son with such unworthy ruminations.”

Nita was carrying a girl. She knew this through some instinct foreign to modern medicine. The Doctors Macallan—a pair of brothers from Aberdeen—laughed at her prediction, but their sister—a trained midwife—pointed out Nita had as much chance of being right as wrong.

The village had no sooner stopped gossiping about Dr. Horton’s retirement than Vicar had announced his decision to join households with a brother living outside Bath. Lord Fairly’s brother-in-law, a fellow named Daniel Banks, was to assume the Haddondale pulpit within the month.

“George and Elsie live the closest and yet they are the last to arrive,” Nita said as George escorted his wife past a flower bed where daffodils still slumbered beneath cold earth. “Why do you suppose that is?”

“Mrs. George Haddonfield has developed delicate digestion of a morning,” Tremaine said. “One is burdened by such confidences in the middle of an otherwise unremarkable game of cards, for no earthly reason I can fathom.”

In other words, Tremaine was overjoyed for George and Elsie, as Nita was.

“Mind your enthusiasm for the topic, Tremaine, or they might name the baby after you.”

As Nita crossed the garden on her husband’s arm, Tremaine peered down at her. “Do you think George might name a boy after me? Bellefonte will be jealous. I rather like the idea, though ‘Tremaine’ might be an awkward name for a girl.”

He was enthralled with the notion, clearly, and when Nita gave birth to a daughter on a lovely autumn morning, Tremaine suggested the child be named Nicolette St. Michael.

The girl’s siblings—of which there was eventually an entire herd—in fact called her Dr. Bo Peep, for Nicky St. Michael, much to her parents’ pride, became highly skilled in treating any and all ailments and injuries commonly suffered by sheep.

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