Carla Kelly (9 page)

“I thought it a rather drab one, myself, Miss Ames,” he said without thinking, and then attempted a recovery. “But of course, I would bow to your obviously superior knowledge of men’s clothing, but I don’t bend too well right now, especially in a nightshirt. Only give me a day or two.”

“And so we shall,” Libby said. She blushed for no discernible reason and turned with relief at a familiar knock on the door.

“Dr. Cook, do come in,” she said.

Dr. Cook, looking no less rumpled than he had the night before, came into the room, peering at them over his spectacles. He gazed at Libby in admiration for a moment and then remembered the object of his visit and turned to his patient.

“Hold up your hand, sir,” he asked, and nodded in approval.

“Much steadier, Mr. Duke, much steadier.” He observed the toast crumbs on the merchant’s sheet and eyed the teapot. “What, no oatmeal?”

“Not now, and not ever, Doctor,” said Nesbitt Duke. “I’d rather sip my own phlegm.”

Libby laughed out loud and then put her hand over her mouth.

“Oatmeal does have that quality about it,” the good doctor agreed. “Possibly that is why the Scots are so dour.”

“I am certain of it, sir,” replied the merchant. He pulled back the sheet and exposed his legs. “I think I will mend rapidly, Doctor.”

Dr. Cook smiled, pushed his glasses up higher on his nose, and poked and prodded. “Not a pretty sight, Mr. Duke, and destined to scar, but then, how often are your limbs bared to view, anyway?”

The duke shrugged. “Since I don’t swim with the Brighton crowd, I think it a matter of concern to me alone.”

After another careful perusal, the doctor replaced the sheet. He put his hands in his pockets and went to the window. “I don’t suppose we have any real reason to keep you here, sir.”

Libby sighed and the little sound seemed to fill the room. He needs longer than this, Dr. Cook, she pleaded silently with the physician’s broad back. How is he to stay off the bottle if he is turned out into the world again so soon? Oh, please.

She looked at the chocolate merchant, who folded his hands across his lap and appeared to be deep in thought. When he said nothing, Dr. Cook turned to him.

“Really, sir, it is your decision. We cannot force you to stay here against your will. As much as I would like to,” he added softly.

“Why?” asked the duke. “What possible interest can you have in me?” His tone was not belligerent. It was a serious question. He regarded the doctor with real interest.

Dr. Anthony Cook removed his spectacles and polished them with the tail of his coat. “Dear me, lad,” he replied, as if startled anyone would ask such a foolish question. “How can you ask such a question? I care. That is all. Libby—Miss Ames—does, too.”

The merchant looked from Libby to the doctor. She held her breath as Benedict appeared to waver.

“But you don’t even know me.”

“Hardly matters, Mr. Duke,” the doctor said brusquely. “If you were the archbishop of Canterbury or a peer of the realm, it would make no difference to me.”

“No liquor?” the duke asked, his voice soft.

“None, lad. Not a drop. Not even a whiff.”

The chocolate merchant sighed and sank lower in his pillows. “The issue is settled, then, sir,” he declared. “Besides that, no one seems to know where my pants are.” He gestured toward Libby. “And we care what the neighbors think, don’t we, my dear Miss Ames? I am yours, sir, and yours, Miss Ames. Do your best.”

“Oh, I shall,” Libby declared.

7

SHE was as good as her word. Without a complaint or murmur, Libby Ames set about her task of stitching the Duke of Knaresborough’s broken body and spirit back together. Somehow she seemed to sense that there were deeper wounds that she could not salve away with Dr. Cook’s marvelous “Mystic Soother,” a balm he had concocted during his Edinburgh days and used on everything from tooth canker to saddle sore.

Morning and night, she smoothed on the balm, humming softly to herself, completely unmindful that young ladies as gently born as she usually didn’t set eyes on hairy masculine legs until marriage. The duke mentioned something about that to her once and she just laughed.

“I suppose you are shocked, Mr. Duke,” she agreed, wiping her hands on her apron and placing one layer of gauze over the worst of his gouges. “I spent too many years with Wellington’s army to let a little thing like that bother me.”

He was aghast, and his face showed it. “Surely you didn’t tend the battlefield wounded?” he asked, irritated with himself that his voice came out in such an undignified squeak.

She stared at him in equal surprise. “And was I to stand by, wring my hands, and faint when there was so much to be done, Mr. Duke? ’Tis no wonder you didn’t last in the army beyond Waterloo.” She was silent a moment, her face set as she finished her gentle task and covered his legs with the sheet again. “Oh, forgive me,” she said at last, “but that was unkind.” She stood up straight and looked him right in the eye. “It was some small way that I could help. That’s it, simply put, sir. I never begrudged a moment of it.”

He could tell from the conviction in her voice that she did not, and he had the sudden, heartening thought that there probably wasn’t anything horrible that she had not seen and dealt with. And how have you managed to survive so unscathed? he asked her, but only silently. He hadn’t the courage to put his thoughts into words, because they would only mean more questions he wasn’t prepared to answer.

“We could have used you at Waterloo,” he said finally.

Her eyes clouded over and she sat down on the bed, almost without realizing it. He shifted himself obligingly to give her more room.

“I would have been there, too—at least in Brussels, Mama and I—if Papa had not died in Toulouse,” she said.

Her voice was calm, composed, and he sensed, more than heard, the great sorrow behind her words. He took her hand and held it for a brief moment.

“What happened to your father?” he asked.

“It was camp fever,” she replied. “Imagine how strange, Mr. Duke. He had soldiered all through Spain for years and years with scarcely a scratch, and here we were at peace at last, and on our way into Paris itself . . .”

Her voice stopped and she remained in silent contemplation, swallowing hard several times, until she could speak. He wanted to reach for her hands again, but she had placed them out of his reach.

“He had a sore throat and a mild fever one night, and then next afternoon he was dead,” Libby continued. “I don’t understand it, not at all.” She made a gesture of dismissal, as if to brush away the memory. “I wanted to ask Dr. Cook about it, how a man so healthy could die so fast, but there isn’t much purpose to that now, is there?”

It was a question requiring no answer. She sat another moment in silence, in that perfect, self-contained repose that seemed as much a part of her as her boundless energy. She sighed, and Nez felt an almost overpowering urge to pull her close to him. He stayed where he was, propped up against his pillows, hands clasped together, and allowed her that moment of calm grief.

“And so we came home to Kent,” she said at last, and the spell was broken. “And we lived happily ever after.”

He looked at Libby quickly, worried for some hint of bitterness in her voice or face, but saw none. She smiled at him then and reached forward suddenly to poke his chest. “And don’t be so gloomy. I’m not entirely sure that peace would have been entirely to Papa’s liking.”

“My God, but you are a brave soul,” he said, not meaning to, but not stopping the words.

She smiled again. “You’re a goose, Mr. Candy Merchant. We Ames always take life on whatever terms it is offered to us, sir. There is nothing heroic about that. Our experiences have made us practical. You may ask my cousin, sir, and so she will say. I am a dull dog indeed.”

He laughed and she poked him again.

“Very good, sir! You have not done that before.” She sprang to her feet then, her energy restored, her mind clear, and poured him a glass of water. “Now, sir, Dr. Cook said you were to drink at least four cups of water before luncheon, so be quick about it, else I shall have a great peal rung over me when he arrives this afternoon.”

He made a face, but accepted the goblet. “I will float away, Miss Ames. Does the good doctor believe in nothing but water and oatmeal?”

She considered his quiz of a question a moment in that mock-serious way that he was finding so endearing. “As to that, I do not know. I am never sick. It is Dr. Cook’s great despair, although he is vehement in denial. He so loves to fiddle with the sick.”

He would have liked for her to have stayed close by and jollied him some more, but she was at the window, pulling wide the draperies and raising the window sash to let in the summer. She took a deep breath. “Don’t you just love it, Mr. Duke?” she asked.

As a matter of fact, he did. Nesbitt Duke, candy merchant for Copley’s Chocolatier, decided that he could easily lie there all day and admire her beauty. But she was gesturing toward the window, where the June breeze played with the curtain. “Not me, silly. Take a deep breath. It’s good for you,” she challenged, and then grinned at him. “Better than oatmeal.”

“If you say, ‘It is good for you’ one more time, I will throw my pillow at you,” he muttered.

“Good for you,” she whispered softly, and then shrieked when he hauled back and heaved his pillow at her. Libby danced out of reach and the last thing he saw was the wave of her hand as she skipped out the door.

With one pillow gone and feeling sleepily disinclined to get out of bed and retrieve it, the duke resigned himself to a nap. He folded his hands carefully across his middle and lay there listening to his brain tick and feeling Dr. Cook’s Mystick Soother working its magic on his legs. He thought for a moment about a drink, rolling a phantom wine about in his mouth and then swallowing. There was no pleasure in it, but old habits die hard, he was discovering.

The agony of his withdrawal from alcohol had lasted for several days, and when he could make some sense of things again, he could only wonder at first at the intensity of the pain. Did I drink that much? he asked himself several times. Oh, surely not. After two days of enforced abstinence, he was compelled to admit that the answer to that question was an emphatic yes.

He didn’t surrender gracefully to his sudden removal from Blue Ruin, malt, and whiskey, but his own rudeness wasn’t borne home to him until the afternoon when, his head throbbing and his stomach heaving, he swore at some commonplace tidbit of news or gossip—he couldn’t remember what—that Libby had brought his way. She had delivered it in her usual lighthearted fashion and had gasped out loud when he swore at her.

He regretted the words the moment he said them because they were so rude, some detritus from army life that he never would have uttered, drunk or sober, in a woman’s presence. He inwardly cursed his impulsive tongue.

She fell silent and turned pale at the vulgarity he had uttered. The silence lay thick about the room. As he watched, in sick disgust at himself, she had come closer, until her face was just inches from his.

“Grow up, Mr. Duke,” she said, speaking the words slowly and distinctly so there could be no mistaking her meaning. “Grow up.”

He had not complained since that awful afternoon. She had never referred to his rudeness again, but he liked to remind himself of it in moments of quiet as further guarantee that he would never repeat such impetuosity.

And then he turned to his favorite task of late: calling Libby Ames to mind and cataloging her great beauty in his brain, storing away the facts in a calm, rational manner so he could recite them to Eustace in the future.

“Eustace, she is a beauty like none I have ever seen, or you either, and how many years have we been dangling after the choicest morsels on the marriage mart? I hesitate to recall. Libby Ames is just tall enough, and just shapely enough in all the appropriate places. A trimmer ankle I have never gazed upon, and I have seen a few, mind you. But I cannot adequately explain her graceful ways. You will have to see them for yourself.”

That consideration never failed to irk him, however momentarily. “Eustace, I hope you never set eyes on this paragon. She is much too good for such a fop as you.”

And she was, of this the duke had no doubt. Truly, how could he describe Libby Ames’ gentle movements, her exquisite poise, particularly when contrasted—as it so often was—with the bumbling charm of Dr. Anthony Cook. Libby Ames made the clumsy physician look much better than he was. The duke had decided, after a moment’s thought, that she would make any man appear a far superior being than reality would dictate. That was Libby Ames’ particular gift to the world.

She would even make me look good, he thought as he closed his eyes. Eustace, there are some things in life you are destined never to know. With any luck at all, you will never focus your glims upon Miss Ames, no matter how illustrious her fortune, or by virtue of whatever scheme your papa and her papa concocted so many years ago.

And then the duke would sleep, peaceful, undisturbed sleep, carried beyond dreams by the memory of Libby Ames’ beautiful face.

When he woke, later in the afternoon, his leg paining him, she would be there in his room, her chair pulled up close to the bed, busy at needlework, her tongue between her teeth in concentration, or gazing off into space, thinking her own thoughts. If his face showed any of the pain he felt, her hand would be resting on his arm, her warm grasp better than whiskey.

“Where do you go all morning?” he complained once when his legs were particularly painful and he wanted gin more than he wanted breath. “It seemed to me that you can’t wait to dash out of here each morning.”

He hadn’t thought he was a whiner by nature, but the duke was also discovering that he wasn’t much of a patient, either.

Libby put her hands on her hips and shook her head in mock exasperation. “Are we feeling left out?” she asked. “Abandoned? Cast upon the muddy beach of life?”

“Cut it out,” he growled, and then winked.

“My days are busier than you think,” Libby said. “I find myself compelled to fabricate another story about the progress of your illness to Aunt Crabtree.”

The duke nodded, appreciative of the effect of culebra fever on his system. “Am I getting better?” he teased.

“Indeed you are, sir,” she replied with aplomb. “Soon you will be well enough for whist with Aunt Crabtree.”

He made a face. “I dislike cards, but if that is the sacrifice I must make in order to be completely cured of this loathsome disease, I will chance it.”

“Sir, you are all condescension.”

He took her by the hand. “Seriously, my dear, what occupies you? I wouldn’t mind a few more hours of your time.”

She withdrew her hand. “It is scarcely mysterious. I snatch what remains of my time to go into the orchard and paint.”

Encouraged by his look of interest, she continued. “I’m not very good, but I did promise myself at the start of summer that I would get much better.”

“And have you?” he asked, his pique forgotten.

“You may judge that for yourself,” she replied as she pulled up his sheet from the end of the bed to expose his knees. “I shall ask Dr. Cook this afternoon if he thinks a little orchard air would be good for you tomorrow.”

That he, the Duke of Knaresborough—who had experienced all of life’s pleasures and most of its extravagances—should be so thrilled by the thought of a toddle in the orchard, would have astounded him only a week ago. He lay there, gritting his teeth as she carefully removed the gauze, eager for a glimpse of the orchard, that elysian field.

“Yes, put it to Dr. Cook, by all means,” he said as she patted on the Mystick Soother. His comic demon took possession. “He can visit me there in safety. Nothing to trip over,” he said, and was rewarded with Libby’s smothered laugh.

And soon it was Dr. Cook’s turn. His arrival was generally heralded by Candlow, who had such a gleam in his eye that Benedict could only wonder what the good doctor had stumbled over, fallen into, or run up against on his perilous journey from the front hallway to the upstairs guest room. And bedbound as he was, the duke took a certain unholy glee in the doctor’s meanderings.

Libby Ames would greet Dr. Cook with that same brilliant smile that she bestowed on everyone—now why did that make him grumpy—and withdraw from the room, allowing privacy for doctor and patient.

Dr. Cook would begin by feeling his pulse. This particular afternoon, Anthony Cook felt the duke’s wrist, frowned, and then chuckled to himself.

“My pulse amuses you?” the duke couldn’t resist asking.

“No. I do believe that in future I will take it just before I leave your room, and not just as I enter it. Miss Ames does make one’s heart beat faster, doesn’t she?”

The two men smiled at each other in perfect accord.

The doctor proceeded with his examination, even to the point of making him rotate his shoulder several times.

“Do have a care with that in future, lad,” the doctor said. “I am discovering that there is no guarantee of eternal youth, after age thirty.”

Usually at this point, Dr. Cook would comment on his eating habits, as faithfully reported to him by Candlow or Libby, remind him to drink water, water, and more water, and then take his leave.

This day was different. The doctor went to the window and rattled the keys in his pocket, prelude, the duke already knew, to some bit of business. “Have you had a drink in the past week?” he asked finally.

The duke snorted and hunkered himself lower on the pillows. “And how would I engineer that, I ask?”