Sharon Sobel (16 page)

“Lady Larkspur, may I present Mrs. Bottles and Mr. Hill to you? They are temporary residents at the hospital, of course, but are both so helpful to me here, I may never declare them well enough to leave.”

“You know I will do my job whether I live here or not, Master Benedict.” The old lady laughed. But then, it seemed, she enjoyed her own joke too much, for the laughter turned into spasms of coughing. Mr. Queensman did not seem particularly upset, but massaged her gently on the back and offered her his own linen handkerchief. Lark noticed blood staining the fine fabric and winced.

“You need not concern yourself, my pretty lady,” Mrs. Bottles told Lark reassuringly as she recovered. “These fits come and go, and are much improved since Master Benedict brought me here. I never thought to find him waiting upon me, and mean to enjoy it as much as possible!”

Lark looked curiously at Mr. Queensman and was amused by his sheepish expression.

“Mrs. Bottles was employed by my family at Seagate for over forty years,” he explained, “until her condition made it impossible for her to continue. She moved in with her daughter in Dover, but a houseful of grandchildren did not encourage the sort of rest she needed.”

“Still, I loved being with the babes. That is why you can often find me with the children here at the hospital, tending to them and doing what I can. I always loved children. Why, my happiest days were when Master Benedict and his sisters were all at home, carrying on so from morning to night. I remember when—”

“I am sure Lady Larkspur is not interested in our childhood exploits, Mrs. Bottles,” Mr. Queensman said too quickly.

“Not at all, sir,” Lark intervened, smiling wickedly. “I am sure Master Benedict must have been a regular tyrant to his sisters. He seems so experienced in the business.”

“Master Benedict?” Mrs. Bottles looked befuddled. “Nay, if anything, it was young Juliet who carried the whip. Indeed, your gentleman was of a gentler spirit, always bringing home injured birds and animals and asking for leftovers from the kitchen so he might feed them. It surprised no one when he took up medicine.”

“How very noble in character,” Lark said loftily, but she admitted, to herself, the truth of it. “Nevertheless, Mr. Queensman is not my gentleman at all. I am no more than a patient, like yourself, Mrs. Bottles.”

The woman looked quickly to her hero for confirmation, and Mr. Queensman nodded. But Mrs. Bottles looked singularly unconvinced and turned back to gaze upon Lark.

“What precisely ails you, my lady?” she asked, narrowing her eyes.

“Lady Larkspur suffers from a broken heart,” Mr. Queensman said solemnly.

Mrs. Bottles sucked in her breath, but aside from that, the room seemed so quiet Lark thought she could hear the thumping of the aforesaid heart. How absurd it seemed in the very telling, how trivial her ruse proved next to the very serious ailments of all the others in Mr. Queensman’s care! What would any of them give to have her health, her means and her future!

“Did you have anything to do with this, young man?” intoned a stern voice. Lark looked around her at the empty room before she realized Mr. Hill had spoken at last. He looked at least as old as Mrs. Bottles and slightly off balance. Several minutes passed before Lark realized he had but one leg.

“I plead my innocence, sir,” Mr. Queensman said respectfully, as if addressing a schoolmaster. “I did no more than share a dance with the girl, wherein she rebuked me heartily for intruding on another’s territory. But so little did the scoundrel deserve it—he ran off on the very night. Lady Lark has scarcely been the same since.”

“And are you destined to be the one to mend her heart?” Mrs. Bottles asked with the candor of old age.

Lark thought Ben Queensman blushed under his tan. Whatever he expected by these introductions, he surely did not plan for a personal inquisition. Lark smiled at the sight of his discomfort.

“I regret I am not, sir. Again, I would be intruding into another’s territory. My cousin, Lord Raeborn, claims the lady you see before you. I am charged only with protecting his interests.”

Mr. Hill tapped long fingers on the deck of cards.

“Raeborn? Are you not his heir, Master Ben? Will you not gain his titles and estates if he does not marry?”

“Your memory is excellent, Mr. Hill,” Ben Queensman said, “would that your health were as assured.”

Mr. Hill grunted a response. “But you will explain to me how you came to be the one to protect the single obstacle in the way of your inheritance. If the lady recovers sufficiently to marry Raeborn, your hopes may be dashed.”

Mr. Queensman’s bright blue eyes seemed to darken, and he gave the appearance of being deep in thought. Yet, Lark realized, if either of these two knew him as well as she, they must know he had already considered every angle of the situation.

“I have invested very little in such hopes, Mr. Hill, for my cousin could have acted a hundred times to depose them. I have my father’s estate and already live as comfortably as I could want. But as to the larger issue, the one seeming such a contradiction in your eyes, I can only say I will not intrude on my cousin’s interests. It is a matter of honor, sir.”

Lark looked up at Ben Queensman’s face, reading the quiet determination there, and finally comprehended the ironies of the circumstances she herself had wrought. How devotedly she had once flung her expectations to one who ultimately proved to be without honor. And how now— she
finally admitted to herself—she found herself desiring another man whose honor was too great to offer her anything but pain in return. Already having a tantalizing glimpse of what might lie beneath the cool, solid facade of Ben Queensman’s honor made her regret it all the more.

“Your father would have been very proud of you, my boy.” Mr. Hill spoke first, and his dark eyes gleamed with moisture.

“You appear to be very familiar with Mr. Queensman’s family, Mr. Hill,” observed Lark. “Did you also live on the estate?”

“I worked in the gardens at Seagate for nearly fifty years, my lady. So I would remain today if Master Ben would have me.”

“You make it sound as if I have cast you out, Mr. Hill. But would I not be censored by all the countryside if I still had you trimming the branches in the orchard?” Mr. Queensman clasped the old man’s shoulder warmly. “Besides which, I am not sure we can spare you from the garden here at the hospital.”

“They are very lovely. I often sit on the veranda at Knighton’s and admire them,” Lark said quickly.

“Lady Larkspur is fortuitously named, you see. She is a bit of a botanist herself. Her specialty is thorny roses,” Mr. Queensman said, sounding very sincere.

“I am rather more interested in herbs,” Lark corrected him with a withering look. “Perhaps you would like a strong cup of tansy tea, Mr. Queensman?”

“Oh, dear, no, my lady!” Mr. Hill cried out and put his hand protectively over Mr. Queensman’s. “Too strong a dose of tansy can kill a man!”

To Lark’s surprise, Mr. Queensman laughed out loud.

“I believe the lady might have something of the sort in mind,” he said. “It is why I felt it important for her to meet the two of you, so she understands I have two protectors.”

As the two elderly retainers looked critically at Lark, undoubtedly wondering how their darling boy could expose himself to such risk, Mr. Queensman leaned over her chair and once again lifted her into his arms. Over her shoulder, he clearly made some sign to the pair, for Lark heard Mrs. Bottles giggle. Aside from that, they remained silent as he carried her from the room.

“Why did you have me meet Mrs. Bottles and Mr. Hill?” Lark asked. “Did you feel you needed additional praise to recommend your character to me? Or did you merely desire to bolster your defenses? For all you say, you certainly cannot imagine you have anything to fear from me.”

He looked down at her, his face so close, that his lips could have caught hers in an instant.

“Sometimes I think I have a good deal to fear,” he said softly.

“Do you imagine me the vessel by which your lordly expectations might be supplanted?”

The muscle of his jaw tensed, making him look very severe.

“I believe you know me better than that. When I say I do not anticipate anything to come my way from Lord Raeborn, I sincerely mean it.”

“And therefore you would not regret my marrying him?”

He said nothing as he carried her out onto a narrow terrace overlooking the sea. Lark glanced over his shoulder and realized they were not in the line of view of Knighton’s veranda, nor of anything else. Before them lay nothing but the broad expanse of the water and a few playful gulls gliding over its surface. The same wind on which they soared whipped about her skirts, caressing her legs.

“You do not answer me, Mr. Queensman,” Lark urged, emboldened by his silence.

“I think you already know the answer, my lady. I would regret it very much.”

Lark looked into his face, hoping to meet his eyes. But they avoided hers, looking out to sea and narrowing against the reflecting sun.

Abandoning sense and all propriety, consumed by a desire so intense she dared not imagine what name to call it, Lark put her hand to his face and caressed the fine line of his jaw. Feeling it tremble, and knowing he would only speak to discourage her wanton display, she moved one finger to his lips so she might seal any protest within.

But suddenly she felt herself being lowered, and caught herself around his neck as she slipped out of his grasp. Beneath her thin slippers, her toes met the hard stone of the terrace, warm and supportive beneath her.

Still she held on to him, pulling his great height to meet her
more diminutive one and relishing the unaccustomed sensation of feeling the full length of his lean body pressed against hers. She arched her back, stretching her cramped muscles, and therefore encouraged him in a way she only partly understood.

She heard Ben’s sudden intake of breath, and, in bracing herself for a rebuke, instead faced an assault of another sort.

His lips, smooth and warm, covered and caressed hers and made her respond in a manner neither practiced nor ladylike. She dared to open her mouth, wanting to taste more of the salty sea and of him, and he seized advantage of her vulnerability by plundering her with his tongue. His hands moved to her hips and pulled her against him; feeling his hard desire, she opened her eyes in astonishment.

He waited for her, watched her, though his lips did not leave hers. But in the bright blue depths of his gaze she saw the answers to questions she knew not how to articulate, and the unbidden longing she had only glimpsed before. Never before, in all the flirtations that had passed for love, had she known anything so achingly intense and so real.

Just as she thought her lungs would burst, Ben allowed her to take great gasping breaths as his lips began to wander over other parts of her body. She started to twist away, but he held her fast and caressed her nose and forehead and ears, exposing moist spots to the wind when he abandoned them. Tickled by sensation, she cried out with pleasure.

He stopped suddenly and held her apart from him as he looked into her face.

“Am I hurting you?” he asked.

Lark raised her brows, thinking a physician ought to know better than most men what effect he might be having on her.

“Yes. Most dreadfully,” she gasped. “Please do it again.”

His mouth twisted, making her wonder at his own pain. But then, seizing advantage of their several inches of separation, he bowed down and found the erratic pulse beating in her neck, pressing his lips against it to soothe its course. He traveled a light, quick path across her collarbone and down to the soft, untouched flesh of her breast.

“Dear, dear Ben.” Lark felt herself sinking, her legs truly incapable of holding her. “This is impossible.”

Without his lips leaving her body, he caught her as she fell and held her aloft in his arms again.

“And yet it is,” she thought she heard him say against her aching heart.

“
S
omething happened to you at Mr. Queensman’s hospital, did it not?” Janet Tavish asked, looking up from a note that had been waiting for her when she awoke in the morning. Lark thought it might have come from Matthew Warren.

“If you mean did I come away with a greater appreciation of the nobility of the medical profession, you are correct. I am giving thought to the prospect of returning to the hospital and giving of my time to the children who live there. Certainly there is something I might do.”

“How very charitable of you, my dear friend. But no, you misunderstand me. I am proud but not surprised you should be so affected. Yet you seem to be affected in other ways.”

“Whatever do you mean?” Lark asked and quickly looked down at her own letter in her lap.

Janet laughed. “Why, your eyes are bright, and your skin is positively glowing. There is a transcendence about you I can hardly explain and certainly have never witnessed in all the years I have known you. You have not even the excuse of a brisk swim in the sea, my dear.”

“Perhaps I am flushed by a fever,” Lark said quickly.

“Tell it to others, if you may, but save your breath with me. If it is a fever, I daresay it is one of the heart.”

“Janet!”

Janet Tavish lifted her small hand in protest and smiled. “I am neither stupid nor blind, my friend. And even if I were, I could hardly miss the look in Mr. Queensman’s eyes when he talks to you, nor the way in which he waits upon your every word. You are accustomed to making conquests, but I have never before known a man deserving of you.”

“You forget my circumstances, Janet. And his. I must despise him.”

But in her heart, she knew it was already too late to sound
even remotely convincing in her often-repeated declaration. She did not despise him. She could only curse her own recklessness for settling on a course from which they could not escape with any degree of honor or dignity.

“And it is your hatred that has bestowed such radiance. A pity it does not work on several spinsters of our acquaintance. Think how they would be made beautiful by the exercise.”