Carla Kelly (27 page)

Without a word, she passed the note to her mother. “Do you think he will come?”

“I know he will try, my dear.”

Libby went into the sitting room, restlessly fluffing the pillows on the sofas, arranging the chairs, and straightening pictures that were already plumb with the room. She sat down, folded her hands in her lap, and waited.

Soon she heard the curricle in the front drive, followed by a brisk knock. In another moment, Candlow stood at the door to the sitting room.

“Miss Ames, the Duke of Knaresborough,” he said, his face utterly unreadable as he stood aside to let Benedict Nesbitt pass.

The duke paused a moment in the doorway and then came forward swiftly, hands outstretched, a smile on his face that brightened the whole room. He stopped in front of her, bowed, raised her to her feet, and kissed her hand.

“I was going to ask how you did, but it’s perfectly obvious, Libby,” he said. “You do well.” He touched her cheek.

It was a shock to see him so elegantly dressed. She remembered the sober suit of the London merchant, and then her father’s shabby pants and shirts that he had worn during his convalescence. The peer who stood before her with a question in his eyes was slap up to the mark, a credit to his tailor and bootmaker.

He wore the clothes of a country gentleman, and they hung to perfection on his frame, buckskins and buff coat, with gleaming boots tasseled and without a blemish. His neckcloth was an ornament of mathematical precision. As Libby admired his splendor, the thought crossed her mind that Anthony would never have the time or patience to devote so much effort to his person. The duke smelled of some mysterious fragrance that caused her mouth to water. His hair was curled without a strand out of place. He could have come directly from Bond Street without a single detour. He was all that was correct.

“I am well enough,” she said when the silence threatened to swallow her whole. “Please be seated, sir.”

He shook his head and strode instead to the fireplace, where he rested his elegant shoulders against the mantelpiece. I wonder, she thought as she watched him, does he think he appears to better advantage there?

He stood there a moment and then came back to sit beside her. She moved away slightly to make room, and a look close to pain crossed his face.

“What I did was unforgivable, Libby Ames,” he said quietly, looking her in the eye. “I hope and trust that you can forgive.”

“I think probably the least said about it, the better,” Libby replied honestly. “I am certainly willing to let the whole thing go, if that will assuage whatever feelings of regret you have.”

“It’s more than that, Libby,” he said, moving closer and taking her by the hand.

“I don’t think it can be,” she replied, pulling back her hand.

He took her hand again and held it more tightly. “I own I was foolish beyond measure, but for the Lord’s sake, Libby, why are you rushing into this impetuous marriage?”

“Well, I . . .” she began, and stopped, unable to think of any reason beyond the fact that she was hurt and Anthony had asked her.

“At any rate, my dear, I am only grateful that I chanced upon Lydia only the other day in London. I have been spending time at my estate in Yorkshire.” He smiled and looked down at his hand and hers. “Thinking and planning, dear heart—and not drinking, I might add.”

“I am so glad for that,” Libby said. “We had been wondering.”

“We?” His smile turned hard for a moment. “Well, I saw Lydia, and tumbled among all the news about furniture and draperies and modistes was the little item that you were to be married. I knew I had to make it here in time to stop you.”

Libby shook off his hand and leapt to her feet. “I have no intention of stopping anything,” she said. “What are you planning to do?” she asked, her voice rising. “Add a hunting box in the Cotswolds, or . . . or a castle in some lonely outpost, to sweeten the pot? Do you think I have any intention of reconsidering your offer? Sir, you delude yourself.”

He made his way back to the fireplace, to stand there with his hands deep in his pockets, his back to her. “I was thinking rather along other lines, Miss Ames,” he said, his voice quiet so she had to strain forward to hear him. “I was rather hoping you would entertain the notion of marrying me.”

He turned around then and watched the confusion on her face with something close to glee.

Her mind a muddle, she opened her mouth to reply when she caught a glimpse from the window of a man on horseback leaping the fence. She ran to watch as he threw himself from the lathered animal and pounded on the door.

In another moment she heard Candlow hurrying down the hall. She threw open the door. “Candlow, what is it?”

“Miss Ames, Preston here tells me that one of the oasting houses in Fairbourne has caught fire. I am to send over whatever servants we have to help with the bucket crew.”

“Oh, by all means, Candlow. We will come, too.”

The duke look at her in surprise. “I do not think that is necessary, Libby. What good can we do?”

She looked beyond the duke to the butler. “Candlow, was anyone hurt?”

“There are several burned, miss, and some of them children.”

Fairbourne was not far from the Casey holdings. All the neighborhood children picked in the hop gardens during the harvest. She felt an icy hand run its fingers down her back. She grabbed the duke by his lapels.

“You will drive me to Fairbourne,” she ordered, “and if you do not, I will go anyway, so suit yourself, my lord.”

He took her hand as she ran down the hallway. Mama met them at the entrance, a question in her eyes. Tears glistened on her lashes as Libby explained the urgency and hurried down the front steps, impatient to be off.

The duke helped her into the curricle, unable to hide his distaste. “I do not understand what good you will do there,” he said as he spoke to the horses and jumped them off at a trot.

“I have become amazingly proficient in these matters,” she said, her eyes looking straight ahead at the smoke rising over the trees.

“Have you ever seen burns before, Libby? I thought not. Let us reconsider.”

“No,” she said quietly.

Others hurrying before them had knocked down the fence that blocked the shortest way to Fairbourne. He expertly turned the curricle toward the smoke.

“I wanted to speak to you before now, Libby, but I did not have the courage,” he murmured as they sped along the road. “The thought of the rest of my life without you is insupportable, and . . . Libby, you’re not listening to a word I am saying.”

“What?” she asked, her eyes on the smoke. Twin plumes rose above the trees. “It must be two oasting houses,” she said. The pungent smell of roasting hops became a gagging, bitter haze that burned the eyes and left them coughing.

Rearing and plunging, the horse would go no closer. Libby leapt from the curricle while the wheels were still turning; she waved a hand at the duke and ran ahead. She put her hand to her nose and gasped as the hot breath of the fire blew her way, bearing with it the overpowering stench of hops and the smell of burning flesh.

She heard the duke somewhere behind her, calling her name, but she ran closer, searching for them among the pickers who had gathered to watch. And then she saw them, Louis, Russell, and Brian and the others, standing with Maud by the hop bines. Libby counted quickly and said a prayer of gratitude.

Libby rubbed her eyes and shouted to Maud. “Where is he?”

“Oh, miss, where do you think? In there.”

The oast house was still burning, but a fire brigade snaked its way to the cooling room and onto the roof, where men with blackened faces passed buckets. Libby ducked between the women and children and ran closer, peering through the choking haze that had settled over the entire hop garden.

There they were, Joseph and Anthony, struggling to pull someone from the cooling room next to the blazing kiln. Anthony’s jacket was on fire. She grabbed up a bucket and ran into the smoking room, pouring the water on him and then tugging his coat off.

He looked around in surprise as his smoldering jacket came away in her hands. “Libby, get out of here,” he shouted.

“I will not,” she shouted back, grabbing up another bucket and pouring its contents over Anthony and Joseph until they were both drenched and in less danger from the bits of flaming hops that popped around them.

By then others had joined them, pouring water on the cooling-room floor to keep it from lighting. Two pickers, shielding their eyes with their hands, rushed closer to the kiln to drag out the last man.

Libby turned away, her hand to her mouth, as Anthony grabbed her and pulled her close to him. “Take this one out,” he said distinctly in her ear. “You and Joseph. I’ll help with the other.”

Gagging at the smell of burning flesh, she grasped the man under the armpits while Joseph, his eyes huge in his blackened face, took the man under the knees. Staggering from the weight, they carried him from the cooling room and set him on the ground, where Libby took a full bucket from Maud Casey and poured it over the man’s leg.

“I can help,” said a quiet voice at her elbow. She turned to see the duke with a bucket.

“Take it in there,” she said, pointing to the cooling room. “The doctor needs it.”

He ran inside and in another moment came out with a child overcome by smoke. Anthony walked alongside him, breathing into the child’s mouth as they stumbled out together, arms around each other. The duke laid the child down and Anthony continued, breathing and then pausing and then breathing again.

The man with the burned leg moaned and tried to shift himself. Libby rested her hand on his chest and brushed the hair back from his eyes. His heartbeat was rapid, but steady.

In another moment, the child was crying and struggling to rise. Anthony sat back and pulled the boy into a sitting position, looking him over swiftly for further injury and then moving aside as the boy’s mother, sobbing and calling his name, gathered her son into her arms.

Anthony crawled over to where she sat, hugging the man in her lap. Silently she pushed the spectacles back up on the doctor’s nose and he looked up in gratitude. Joseph was there with the doctor’s bag, handing him a pair of scissors. Without a word, Anthony cut away the man’s trousers and stared at the leg. He sat there in silence until she wanted to scream, and then he patted the man on the chest.”

“Your name, sir?” he asked.

“Tommy Lilburn, from Cratchmore,” the man gasped. He reached up and grabbed the doctor’s shirt. “Are you going to have to cut it off?”

“Not unless you are wild about being a one-legged beggar, Tommy,” said the doctor. “I think I can do you a much better turn than that. It’ll be painful, though.”

Sweat broke out on the man’s face. He nodded as tears of gratitude welled up in his eyes and streaked down his smoke-blackened face.

Anthony patted him. “Good lad. You’ll be fine.” He called to two hop-pickers, who came closer, their faces pasty under a layer of smoke.

“Take him on a board to the nearest house. I’ll be with you in a moment.” He held the man’s hand, fingers on his pulse, as the hop-pickers ripped the door off the cooling room and brought it back. Lips tight together as the man cried out, Anthony gentled him onto the board and nodded to the pickers.

“What are you going to do?” Libby asked as the crowd parted for the bearers and the wounded man.

“Just clean it up. It’s not as bad as he thinks, thank the Lord, but he’ll have a few painful days.”

She took his hand. “I can help.”

Anthony touched her cheek. “You would, wouldn’t you? I don’t ask it. What you can do is sit with that man over there until his family gets here for him. Just hold his hand.”

“No,” said the duke, pulling her away and putting his arm around her.

Libby leaned against him, grateful for his shoulder.

“She shouldn’t even be here,” said the duke. “This is no place for a lady. What’s the matter with you, anyway?”

Anthony looked at them. His glance went from the duke to Libby, and his eyes, red from the smoke, seemed suddenly to fill with despair.

“I do ask her help,” he said.

“By God, it’s the last thing you’re going to ask of this lady,” said Benedict.

“Is it?” Anthony asked, and then his attention was claimed by a woman clutching his arm. “Maybe I have asked too much.”

“No, I don’t . . .” Libby began, but the duke only tightened his hold on her.

“I think you have, Dr. Cook.”

The two men looked at each other through the haze of the now-smoldering oasting house. Then the doctor turned to grab up his bag. Libby shrugged off the duke’s arm and hurried to the man who lay quiet on the cooling-room floor. She hesitated and looked at Anthony, wanting with all her heart to follow him.

He knelt by her, but said nothing.

“Anthony, I . . .”

He tried to smile and failed. “I wish I showed to better advantage, Libby, against that paragon, but I suppose that is not the issue now, is it?”

“You don’t . . .”

He did not hear her. “Sometimes when you have done everything you can, you just have to sit back and let nature take its course. That’s another rule of medicine. I suppose it’s a rule of life, too. I’m sorry, Elizabeth.”

His words sounded so final. “Will I see you tonight at dinner?” she asked, her voice unsteady.

“I think not,” he replied. “No sense in flogging this dead horse.”

He got up and started after the hop-pickers, looking back at her as if he did not expect to see her again. He started to say something, but shook his head and turned away.

20

LIBBY watched him go. The duke knelt beside her, his face set, as she sat by the man on the floor. In a few moments, his wife arrived, her hands smelling of washing soap. She helped him to his feet—scolding her man about taking her away from the washboard—and bore him away from the dispersing crowd.

The fire was out now and a slight breeze cooled them, clearing out the smoke. Both oasting houses connecting to the cooling room were blackened cones. As she watched, the far one crumbled in on itself with a crash, sending up a plume of ash that set them coughing again.

“Come away, Libby,” urged the duke.

Maud Casey hugged her and brushed off the front of her dress with a bit of sacking. “Miss Ames, you’ll become as ramshackle as we are if you stay around here much longer.”

Libby managed a brief smile. She did not look down at the ruin of her dress, but allowed the duke, his arm about her waist, to lead her away.

In another moment he had lifted her into his curricle. “I remember fires like that at Waterloo,” the duke said as they started back toward Holyoke Green. “The smell washes out, but you never forget it. Libby, you don’t belong in a place like this.”

“Perhaps I don’t,” she agreed, her voice dull as she remembered the look in Anthony Cook’s eyes as he turned away from her to follow his patient.

She started to tremble. Without a word, the duke pulled off his jacket and pulled it tight around her shoulders. His arm went around her waist again as he drove carefully down the road.

“Cry off, my darling,” he said at last. “All you’ll ever have here is hard work and worry.”

She started to say something, but the duke was just warming to his subject.

“I can give you everything you want, my dear. You have only to ask and it will be yours, plus my name, of course,” he added scrupulously.

She forced a smile. “Of course,” she echoed. “Tell me what I will have, Nez.”

“I have a beautiful town house on Clarges Street, my love,” he said. “You may have your pick of estates for the summer and fall, but I prefer the one in Yorkshire.”

“I am sure it is lovely,” she said absently, her mind on the doctor.

“Oh, it is! And if you should wish to jaunter over to Paris, now that the monster is on St. Helena, we can do that in a trice, my dear. You have only to ask. I can give you anything.”

Libby sat up straighter, listening to him with all her heart for the first time. “Anything?” she asked.

“Anything,” he declared firmly.

She turned in the seat to face him. “Nez, tell me honestly. Have you ever had a mistress before? One? More than one?”

Startled, he allowed the horses to break their stride. He slowed the animals to a walk and then stopped the curricle. She watched the flush spread up his face.

“Well, yes, I have. They were pleasant connections which, I need hardly add, have been severed. When we are married, you need never fear such an entanglement again.”

“Oh, really? Suppose you tire of me? You seem to be somewhat fickle, my lord duke,” she said softly, twisting her hair about her finger.

He took her hand and kissed it, grimacing at the smell of smoke about her. “My dear, I am yours to command. I can give you anything.” He laughed, sure of himself. “Even Copley’s chocolates.”

She laughed too, because he expected it, and took another long look at him. He was disheveled and dirty now, as she was, but everything that a woman would sigh for. Think hard, Libby, she told herself.

“Anything,” the duke repeated, nonplussed by the look in her eyes.

She shook her head and sighed. “No, you cannot give me anything I want, Nez. I received a much better offer on the Brighton Promenade from Dr. Cook, and I think I will take what he offered me.”

The duke looked at her in amazement and started to laugh. When she did not join in, he sobered. “I admire the doctor. I owe him so much, my dear. But what on earth can he possibly have to offer that I cannot give?”

“Only this, sir: his whole self.”

As he sat in stunned silence, she let herself down from the curricle, folded his jacket, and handed it to him. “It’s a flattering offer you have finally made me, Nez, but I still do not think we will suit.”

“I don’t understand.”

She smiled up at the duke. “You probably would never understand, my lord.”

“I realize Dr. Cook is an admirable human being,” the duke stammered, “but surely you cannot love him.”

She ducked under the fence that separated the Cook estate from Holyoke Green. “How odd this is,” she said. “I do love him, sir. I can only thank you for pointing this out to me. Good day, your grace. Pleasant journey.”

He called to her several more times, riding his curricle back and forth along the fence in mounting frustration before he snapped the whip over his horses and disappeared in a roar of gravel. She leaned her arms on the fence and watched him go. Do be careful on that rough stretch in front of my home, she thought. I do not think Mama would tend you with my sure touch, and I will be too busy tomorrow.

She listened to the crack of the whip and the sound of horses trotting. She listened harder, a frown on her face, even as she started to run. He was driving much too fast. He was out of sight now over the little rise, but she closed her eyes.

In another moment she heard it, the curricle sliding across gravel, the horses whinnying. Libby slid under the fence again and up the slope, standing still in surprise and then bursting into laughter at the sight below.

Nez sat cross-legged atop the curricle, which had slid onto its side and slightly into the ditch. The horses, ears laid back, struggled in the traces, but a quick glance told her that nothing was seriously wrong. She stood there in the road, hands on her hips, until the duke looked back and saw her.

When she did not run forward, he placed his hands elaborately on his chest, flopped backward, and slid off the curricle into the ditch.

In another moment, she heard him laughing. “Well, give me a hand at least, you heartless wench. I seem to have wedged myself into this ditch, Miss Ames. Miss Libby Ames, is it? I don’t want to get it wrong this time.”

She came around the curricle and he held up his hands to her. “This is the damnedest road, Miss Ames. I wonder that anyone has escaped with his life on it.”

“Anthony rides it all the time, day and night, rain and fog, and we know how clumsy he is.”

The duke fumbled with his waistcoat and raised his quizzing glass to his eye, staring her down. “He obviously has more lives than a cat, and more good fortune than he deserves, damn his carcass.”

The curricle was only tipped partway into the ditch. While Libby kept the horses company, the duke managed to push it onto the road again. He walked around the curricle several times, surveying the damage, shaking his head. He stopped in front of her finally.

“This was all I meant to do the first time,” he said. “Ah, well, I suppose I must take my name off the lists and retire from Kent. Do you really love him, Libby, I mean, really?”

“I do, Nez.”

“I think it will take a bit of coaxing to get him back, my dear,” he said, and his voice was apologetic. “We seem to have hit him when his resistance was low, and no wonder.”

“I can manage it,” she said, and held out her hand.

“I don’t doubt that for a minute,” he replied softly. “Libby, I—”

“Goodbye, Nez. Don’t make yourself a stranger if you should ever choose to come this way again.”

He shook her hand, but did not release it. “I will be back to see you two.” He raised his eyebrows. “Of course, I could still threaten to take up the bottle again if you don’t marry me.”

Libby kissed his cheek. “But you won’t, my dear.”

“No, I won’t. I couldn’t.” He sighed and released her hand. “Do you love me just a little bit?”

“Just a little bit,” she agreed. “But I love the doctor much more. Only think how comfortable I am about to make his life.”

The duke groaned. “That is precisely what I do not wish to think about.” He climbed back onto his curricle and tipped his hat to her. “Good day, you minx. God keep you both.”

In a frame of mind that belied her dismal appearance, Libby strolled back to the house, humming to herself. She knew that Anthony would not come to dinner. He would likely send a polite little note saying that he had told the vicar, and that he wished her well in her new venture.

Well, sir, we shall see, she thought as she mounted the front steps two at a time and burst into the house.

Mama gasped in horror at the sight of her. She took in the stained and bloody dress and Libby’s blackened face and arms, walking about her several times and then hugging her tight.

Libby hugged her back. “It was dreadful, Mama.” She clung to her mother, thinking how much she would miss her in the coming days, but taking comfort in the knowledge that Mama would only be a field away.

“Where is the duke?” Mama asked finally.

“I sent him on his way, Mama,” Libby said, and patted her mother’s cheek. “Now, what would I do with a duke? This one didn’t wear too well in a crisis, and he is a bit shopworn for me, I fear.” She tugged at her hair, smelling the singed ends. “Oh, dear! And Anthony Cook has cried off. I wouldn’t expect him for dinner. Tell me, can I find a bath, and soon?”

She sat in the bathwater, humming to herself, dribbling the sponge over the little places on her arms where the hops had burned her, hopeful that they would not show under her wedding gown. Her hair had been singed up the back and she would have to take the scissors to it.

She was still sitting in her bathwater when Uncle Ames arrived from London. Mama must have spent some time with him in the sitting room, because by the time she was dressed and downstairs again, he was drinking sherry thoughtfully.

“Puss, what are you up to?” he asked. “I already sent a wedding gift to Dr. Cook. Figured that under the terms of that abominable trust of my father’s, I had better not give any of it to you.”

She sat down next to her uncle. “You are a dear, sir.”

“It’s not nearly enough,” he said gruffly, and smiled when she kissed his cheek. “Perhaps if you put it in the funds, it might be the bare bones of a hospital someday.”

“What an excellent notion, Uncle William,” she said, her voice serene. “We can add to it over the years.”

Mama stood up and paced the room. “You are sitting there so calm. You have this day driven away the duke and your other prospect has changed his mind, and you sit there smelling of April and May. If I do not grow distracted with you, then I am an unnatural parent.”

Libby laughed. “Mama, trust me. Candlow is lurking about in the hall, ready to announce dinner, and it is getting late. When dinner is over, I fear I am destined to come down with a fearsome case of . . . of something. It will require a hasty note next door. Put all your emotions into that note, Mama.” She jumped to her feet, kissed her uncle on the cheek, and danced from the room. “Do your best, Mama. I think I am getting sick already.”

After a leisurely dinner that tried her mother to the outmost limits, Libby went upstairs and straightened her bedroom. She finished packing her clothes and boxed the books. She opened the wardrobe for another look at her wedding dress and sighed with delight, shaking out the material and listening to the rustle of the taffeta. Mama will be so pleased as I crackle down the aisle tomorrow.

A look through her bureau turned up a nightgown of ecru lace so impractical that she had stuck it in the back of the drawer years ago and forgotten about it. In another moment, she was out of her clothes and into the gown. She looked at herself in the mirror, blushed, and then laughed.

The bed was softer than she remembered, and she realized it had been so long since she had enjoyed a peaceful night’s rest. Likely there would be none in the future, either. There would be a husband to love as well as time permitted, and children to tend, and people knocking at all hours of the night. She put her hands behind her head. If it gets too uncontrollable, I can kidnap Anthony every so often and drag him to Brighton for a day or two. I doubt we’ll ever get up to London.

Ah! She heard the sound of something crashing over in the front hall and put her hand to her mouth, her eyes merry. Footsteps pounded up the stairs. Taking them two at a time, are we, Doctor? she thought as Dr. Cook opened the door and came into her room.

“I came as fast as I could, Elizabeth,” he said, and he was out of breath.

He had washed and changed, but his eyes were still red from the oast fire. He carried his black bag and he was giving her the professional eye.

He put the bag on the end of the bed and came closer. “Your mother said you were fearsome sick, Elizabeth. Where does it hurt?”

She patted the bed and he sat down. She pointed to her breast. “Right here. I think there is something wrong with my heart.”

He stared at her, vastly suspicious. “There’s nothing wrong with your heart, Elizabeth Ames.”

“Oh, but there is,” she insisted.

“Oh, very well,” he said, and rested his head against her bosom. “I do not know what the duke will think of this, Libby. He will call me out,” he grumbled, his voice muffled by her gown.

“I sent the duke away, my dear Doctor,” she said, and rested her hands lightly on his hair. “Oh, and look, you have singed your hair.”

He tensed, but did not raise his head from her breast. “You did what?”

“The duke promised me marriage and the moon and stars. I sent him away because you made me a better offer in Brighton. Now, are we going to do this thing tomorrow or not?”

Her fingers were twined in his hair now. He removed his spectacles and set them on the floor beside the bed, but still remained where he was. He kissed her breast once and then again more thoroughly, and reapplied his ear to her heart.

“Egad, woman, this is serious,” he said, sitting up at last. “I’ve never felt such a racing heartbeat. Let me check that again. There’s a good pulse in the neck.”

Her arms tightened around Anthony as he kissed her throat and then laid his head on her breast again. “Confirmed. You are in serious trouble. Elizabeth, I love you.”

He was silent for a long while. She felt his eyelids close against her breast and she started to chuckle.