Chapter 2 - Stephen
Stephen held a hand to his nose, but nothing could dampen the smell of the other inhabitants of the post chaise.
His mustache bristled against his hand; his beard itched his throat.
He hadn’t shaved since Samantha had broken their engagement.
He frowned at himself, but it wasn’t his fault he kept thinking of her—the couple across from him were either headed to or from their wedding ceremony, judging by how they whispered and canoodled under her wide bonnet.
Stephen had once been in love like that—or at least he’d thought so. But two weeks after he proposed to Samantha, he’d told her of his intention to stay in India and practice medicine there. She’d balked. She’d wanted to accompany him back to England.
England—where the air was cold, the roads mostly decent, and comforts readily available. She’d envisioned herself as his wife, yes—but as a baroness of a large English manor. Not as nurse to the unwashed masses of Calcutta.
Perhaps it was his own fault—he’d spoken of home so often.
He’d described the herds of deer, the summer picnics on the back lawn—he’d spoken of ice.
In the sweltering crescendo of an Indian summer, how could talk of berry ices not be tempting?
And it seemed that the thrilling thought had translated—to him.
He’d kissed her, heaven help him. Not that she’d been anything but willing. But she was a missionary’s daughter who longed for cold fog. He was a child of England who dreamed of staying in the Indian heat.
After their abrupt parting, within a fortnight she’d married the captain of a schooner and sailed for Italy.
With her departure, Stephen suddenly noticed how his collars chafed with sweat after a day, how his eyes strained in the poor light of the finicky lanterns at night, how thick the swarms of mosquitoes really were. He finally saw India as Samantha had.
A desperate desire to escape had gripped him with an almost panic-inducing intensity.
Stephen finally understood Samantha’s need to flee, and he almost forgave her. He booked passage on the next ship home. Heaven help him.
They’d warned him India would be hard. He’d believed them, but his own determination had been enough to see him through, until the debacle with Samantha.
It was cold comfort that a fresh-faced doctor arrived to take his place only days before Stephen left. Stephen had abdicated everything—his years of notes, his supplies, several linen shirts that would be ill-suited to England.
Under the condemnation of the new Dr. Jules’s judgemental stare, Stephen packed his bag of physician’s tools and a small knapsack and left. He did not know whether he wished the man well, or wished for some misfortune to fall so that Jules might not view Stephen so harshly.
The whole way home, Stephen wondered if he’d ever loved India, or only Samantha.
Certainly without her there, his passion for healing felt hollow.
All the inconveniences that had once felt trivial swarmed him like a flock of street children.
He was a fraud. His ideals—what he’d set out to do—nothing more than wisps of dreams that disappeared in the frothing wake of the ship ushering him back to England.
At the London docks, he’d hired a hackney. He delayed in the city only to visit a tailor and a bootmaker to place orders, then headed straight to the station. From there he took the stagecoach, travelling in increasing discomfort toward Devon.
Stephen could have sent notice he was coming.
He could have hunkered down in a London hotel and waited for his mother to send their coach.
But he’d spent six years in India—certainly he could handle a few days on a hard bench next to the good people of England.
Besides, the entire trip home was a kind of self-imposed punishment for him.
He didn’t deserve comforts—not when he’d abandoned his post so abruptly.
Except, he’d forgotten how much the good people of England stank.
Just like the people of India, actually.
Three months on a ship with nothing but crisp ocean breezes had cleared the memory of body odor from his sinuses.
He’d also forgotten just how many good people of England they crammed into one coach.
And how cranky he got, travelling without proper provisions.
The coach rocked, rapping his head against the window.
Stephen barely refrained from elbowing the woman next to him.
She was a tiny thing but had somehow managed to claim the lion’s share of the bench seat, defending her space with scandalously spread knobby knees beneath worn muslin skirts and elbows that she wielded like vicious, pointy cudgels.
Stephen reconsidered elbowing her—he was certain he could get away with such a thing without being recognized.
He was wearing worn black trousers and a formerly white shirt of dubious quality, and he hadn’t had a proper shave or haircut in months.
He looked as he felt in his heart—a wretched vagabond fleeing self-inflicted disappointment and failure.
An hour later, the stagecoach lurched to a stop. He grasped his belongings and nearly flung himself from the open door in his hurry to be away from people.
The manor was only an hour’s walk if he cut through the fields. Fog hung low over the tall grass—the sun hadn’t quite come out today. The thought of a cool mist brushing his face as he traipsed the familiar paths of his youth was too tempting to pass up.
Stephen picked a hedgerow and started down it. It was only when he got too far from the main road to go back that mud sucked at his boots with every step.
If only Samantha could have seen this side of England, he thought bitterly. Perhaps she might not have been so keen on living here.
The stalks of wheat in the fields nodded their agreement.
Stephen trudged further up the embankment where the ground was passably drier, hunching his shoulders against the chill.
He’d been too long in India—his blood had thinned, and even a mild breeze like the one currently toying with his overlong hair was enough to set him shivering.
Not that his old coat was much help. He’d relegated the thing to the back of his cupboard when he’d arrived in Calcutta. Now it was frayed at the seams, and some insect had feasted holes in the thing.
An hour later, his stomach was lowing like a discontented cow, and he regretted attempting the walk at all.
He should have travelled into town with the rest of the passengers, had a hearty bowl of stew at the inn, and sent a messenger to his house.
He rounded a bend and the slate rooftops of Bertforth House appeared in the distance. He hastened his steps.
It was nearly strawberry season, and if the first crop had been a bit early, cook might have made those delicious glazed tarts. The hope was enough to galvanize him; he hurried down the lane, his boots eventually crunching upon the gravel of the drive.
Not much had changed in his six years’ absence.
The shrubbery was trimmed, the windows gleamed.
Only the color of the shutters had changed slightly—when he’d last stood upon the flagstone steps, they’d been blue.
Now, they were a crisp charcoal. He frowned, realizing the description he’d given his betrothed had been slightly wrong.
The image that had stolen her heart had been partially false.
And Samantha…
She was here—in his house.
Samantha.
His knees locked. Through the wavy glass of the front door, he could see her long brown hair, the pleasant form of her hips, shoulders, and waist. She was humming something, swaying as she…
Was she arranging flowers? In one of his mother’s vases? In his house?
Stephen thrust the door open so hard it slammed back into the wall, rattling the glass in the window panes.
“What are you doing here?” he roared.
She screamed, pitching the vase—flowers and all—at his head.
He ducked. The crystal shattered against the lacquered wall—right where his head had been. She was strong—and not Samantha.
The young lady ran into the nearest room—the front parlor. Mindlessly, he rushed after her, his hands held up in supplication.
“Help!” she screamed, picking up a Limoges clock and chucking it at him. “Vagabond! Miscreant! Intruder!”
The cricket pitchers at Vauxhall didn’t have a thing on this woman.
Stephen barely caught the clock (an anniversary present from his father to his mother the year before he’d passed—his mother would mourn its destruction) before she laid hands on the fire poker and took a mighty swing at his brain box.
“Murder!” she screamed.
“No, wait!” Stephen jerked backwards as the iron hook whistled inches past his nose.
“Help!”
There was a scrambling of footsteps in the hall. Stephen retreated behind the mohair sofa just as his mother darted into the room, her cocked rifle pointed directly at his forehead.
The sight of a gun pointed at one’s head was alarming, even if said gun was wielded by a person who’d never wish one harm.
It was an eight-pound trigger, and accidents happened all the time.
Stephen could be forgiven, then, for his momentary distraction.
A moment that the stranger took by hitting him full-force in the arm with the poker.
“Ow!” he yelped. “Stop it!”
But she raised the poker again, determined to finish him off. Her hair had come loose from its clip and was a riot of ash-tinged brown around her face. Her cheeks were pink with exertion, her straight nose flared in anger.
Beautiful, he thought irrationally, right as she wound up to take another swing.
“Stop!” the baroness cried. “It’s Stephen.”
The strange woman halted her assault and blinked. “Your son?”
“Hello, Mother.” He gripped his bicep firmly, gritting through the pain.
Stephen was lucky she’d hit him with the broadside of the poker, or he’d be in need of stitches.
“That’s him, under all that scruff.” The baroness uncocked her gun and set it on the sideboard.