Chapter One
As much as it would disappoint Lady Harmsworth to learn (and cost her a new beaded reticule besides), Lady Abigail Highborn, Countess of Lancaster, was not, in fact, dead.
But at the current moment, there was part of her that wouldn’t have minded if she were.
After all, dead people did not have the problems of the living.
Dead people did not owe debts. Dead people did not have to make their own sandwiches.
Most importantly, dead people did not have to hide .
. . and she was running out of places to go.
When Abigail had fled America for England, she’d known that her husband would eventually follow.
Not right away. She’d left too many false clues behind for that, and it still pleased her to think of all the wild geese he had been chasing while she was busy setting up her new office and her new life an entire ocean away.
But while Stephen was many things—arrogant, hotheaded, stubborn—he wasn’t nearly as dimwitted as he occasionally pretended to be.
Behind those twinkling amber eyes and roguish grin was a sharp, startlingly keen intelligence.
So she’d always known, in the back of her mind, that this day would come.
She just hadn’t anticipated it arriving so quickly.
Peering over her shoulder at the long, dark row of houses behind her, she hastened her step before turning up a private lane that led to a grand manor, its many dormers and dual chimneys covered in a dusting of snow.
The soft yellow glow of candlelight in the windows indicated the occupants of the regal house were still awake and she raised her fist to the front door, pounding once, then twice before trying the knob.
To her surprise, it turned in her hand, and she half stumbled, half fell into the entry hall, leaving a trail of wet snow in her wake.
Her spectacles fogged immediately, a chemical reaction of condensation created when warm air met cold.
Snatching them off her face, she furiously cleaned the circular lenses on the cuff of her sleeve before popping them back on the bridge of her nose just in time to observe the Duchess of Southwick’s expression of shock as she froze at the base of the master staircase.
“Dr. Chadwick?” said the duchess, blinking rapidly.
Her auburn hair, plaited neatly down the middle of her back, as well as the blue silk wrapper draped over her white dressing gown, indicated Abigail had caught the duchess—Mara to her close friends and family—on her way to bed.
“Did we have an appointment I forgot about? Oh my. Did Ambrose send for you? Because I told him—”
“I require your assistance,” Abigail interrupted. “You have to hide me.”
“Hide you?” Frowning, Mara drew her wrapper in closer. “Hide you from what?”
“Not what, whom.” Even though she knew it was illogical for Stephen to be lurking in the doorway, Abigail couldn’t stop herself from glancing over her shoulder yet again.
A movement that had been repeated over and over again ever since she’d learned he was in London.
“My husband. The Earl of Lancaster. He’s here. ”
“I . . .” Mara’s mouth closed. Opened. “I had no idea you were married.”
“It is not customary for a doctor to reveal private details of her life to a patient.”
A smile, half exasperated, half affectionate, flitted across Mara’s countenance. “While that may be true, Dr. Chadwick, surely we’ve become more than just a doctor and patient.” She placed her hands on top of her large belly. “In less than a month, you’re going to deliver my child.”
“Not less,” Abigail said automatically. “Unless your areolas have begun to darken.”
“If you can discuss my areolas, then I am confident we can discuss your husband. This calls for tea, Dr. Chadwick. Do accompany me into the parlor, if you would.”
“Mara?” The Duke of Southwick, a large, imposing man with black hair swept back off his temple and piercing blue eyes that had the ability to make grown men cower, emerged from an adjoining room.
Those eyes narrowed when he saw Abigail, and he immediately went to Mara’s side to place a protective arm around her waist. “What is it? What’s wrong? Why is Dr. Chadwick here?”
“Nothing is wrong.” Mara patted her husband’s hand before neatly escaping his grasp. “The good doctor has merely come for a little chat.”
“A chat? At this hour? Why—”
“There is baby business,” Mara said, cutting him off, “and then there is woman business. This happens to be the latter.”
“Woman business,” the duke repeated, his gaze darting between his wife and his wife’s doctor. A line appeared between his thick, ebony brows as he raised his arms in the air and began a slow backward retreat. “I . . . ah . . . have at it, then. But don’t stay up too late. You need your rest.”
“Of course, my love,” Mara said with the same tender patience a parent might grant a child after being told the same story for the hundredth time. “I’ll be up to bed soon.”
“How is His Grace’s leg?” Abigail asked as she followed the duchess into the parlor. They sat in front of a cozy fireplace in matching chairs upholstered in stripes of green and white. “Has he been doing the stretches that I recommended?”
While Mara was her patient now, she’d initially treated the duke after a dog attack had resulted in a mangled leg.
When the wound became infected, Mara had come to London to fetch Abigail under the recommendation of her most trusted servant, whose friend Abigail had treated the year prior.
She’d demanded that Abigail return with her to Southwick Castle, but Abigail hadn’t dared leave the safety of the city.
Not when it meant potentially exposing her whereabouts to Stephen.
So she’d given Mara a powdered tincture to put on the wound three times a day and had been able to follow up in person when the duke unexpectedly came to London seeking his duchess.
Ill-advised travel, given his condition.
But it seemed when the heart was involved, people had a way of making decisions that were not always in the best interest of their bodies.
Which was, in Abigail’s opinion, laughingly absurd.
Love was . . . love was mist. It was intangible.
Scientifically unproven. Why on earth would someone risk their wellbeing—their very life—in pursuit of it?
Didn’t people realize that they only had one body?
And when it was hurt, when it was broken, when it eventually ceased to function, so too would they.
“Ambrose’s leg pains him slightly after a long ride or when it gets very cold.
He does his stretches when I remind him and grumbles all the while, but that is to be expected.
Would you like tea? I’m going to get us tea.
” With a rather un-duchess-like grunt, Mara heaved herself up from her chair, waddled to the buffet table, and poured two cups of tea from a gold-plated tea set embossed with red roses.
Giving one of the cups to Abigail, she plopped back into her chair with a grateful smile.
“Thank you for not offering to assist me. I cannot lift a quill pen these days without Ambrose sounding the alarm. I am carrying his child, not bedridden with consumption. Now tell me how it is that an American doctor came to be married to a British aristocrat. And did you say . . . the Earl of Lancaster?”
While Abigail did not regularly imbibe in spirits, she did wish her cup contained something stronger than tea when she brought it to her lips and took a sip. “Yes, that is correct.”
“Lord Stephen Highborn, the Earl of Lancaster.”
“Unless there is a different Earl of Lancaster I am unaware of, yes.”
Mara blinked slowly, then gave her head a tiny shake.
“I’m sorry. I must be confused. Kitty was always the one who paid attention to these things, not me.
I thought Lord Lancaster was married to a lady of the ton.
The only daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Hanover, if memory serves. God rest their souls.”
“Yes,” Abigail repeated.
“But that . . . that cannot be you. You’re a doctor.”
“Indeed. However, before I was Dr. Abigail Chadwick, I was Lady Abigail Pratt. When I married Lord Lancaster, I became Lady Abigail Brunswick. Of all three, I prefer Dr. Chadwick the most. It is who I am, and who I intend to remain.” She took another sip of tea.
“Is it warm in here, or is it just me? Room temperature is very important, especially for an expectant mother. You do not want to raise your heartrate.”
Mara stared. “Dr. Chadwick . . . Abigail. I’m going to call you Abigail now, and you’re going to call me Mara, because I think it is safe to assume we’ve gone beyond doctor and patient. Abigail, I need you to tell me how it is you came to be the Countess of Lancaster.”
“It’s a rather boring story, all told.”
The duchess arched a brow. “Somehow, I think I’ll manage to keep my eyes open.”