Chapter 8
Eight
Over two years and two months passed.
The urgent letter from Edinburgh came at one of the worst possible times of the year for a country doctor.
Dr. Joseph Murray, the man who had taken Alasdair Andrews off the streets at the age of ten years and arranged for him to undertake the study of medicine at age fourteen, was dying, and Alasdair desperately wished to be at his side.
But it was January, a month when cold and damp laced the air and people were crowded together indoors, when pneumonia and influenza ran rampant.
Alasdair couldn’t possibly leave the environs of Sommerleigh to go to Edinburgh.
As luck would have it, he heard of a physician who had arrived in nearby Tavishbourn to join the well-established practice of an older physician.
But the older doctor had decided, much to the chagrin of his wife, that he was still far too capable to stop practicing, and the younger doctor, anxious to make his name and earn some fees, was left at a loose end.
Alasdair immediately paid a call on the young man and found his medicine sound, his mind good, his way pleasant. An agreement was quickly reached. Dr. Jasper would take over Dr. Andrews’ surgery and his patients until Dr. Andrews could return from Edinburgh.
Alasdair went through his list of patients with the young doctor.
“Naturally, in my surgery, ye will find my own notes, but there are some particularly frail patients I must tell ye about.” Alasdair described the various elderly folk and those children who seemed to always take sick in January.
“And then there is the Lady Drake. This is her third pregnancy. The other two have gone well enough, but this one has been a trial for her. She has had trouble eating and isnae gaining in size as she should. Ye must talk to the countess exactly as ye would another physician. Use exact, scientific language. Her husband, the earl, ye will treat just like any other overly protective and anxious husband. But the lady, she disnae tolerate euphemism and generalities. And she willnae look in yer eyes, but she will remember everything ye say. To a word. For years. That is her way.”
Alasdair paused. “Tonight, I will tell Lord Drake I am leaving and ye will be taking my place. I am nae looking forward to that conversation. But I expect I will be back before the countess is in much danger of delivering.”
The young Dr. Jasper looked aghast. “You deliver babies, Andrews?”
“I always have an experienced midwife with me, but, aye, I have delivered well-nigh onto three hundred babies. Have ye ne’er thought before that a physician should be present at the delivery of a child?
’Tis the time of greatest danger to women, the time when they are most likely to die.
Physicians should be trained in childbirth, should attend on deliveries. ”
Dr. Jasper shook his head. “I will attend the deliveries of your patients since that is your wish, but I am glad of the midwife. I know little of this.”
Alasdair clapped the young doctor on the back. “Mrs. Finch will take charge. She is a good midwife. Just remember, primum non nocere.”
First, do no harm.
The earl’s words to Alasdair were sympathetic and reasonable. Certainly, Alasdair must go see his mentor, the man who had made it possible for him to be a doctor. But Alasdair could see the worry on Thomas’ face.
“If I may, I will see Lady Drake before I go, my lord.”
“She’s been in her aerie all day. She sent me away this afternoon, saying she had to work when she could.”
“Well, if she is working, I widnae want to disturb her. But ’tis a good sign, I would think, that she has turned her mind to Fermat’s conjecture even when she has been ill.”
“Yes,” Thomas grumbled, “but if you leave without seeing Harry, she’ll have my head.” A thought seemed to strike him, and he rubbed his mouth to cover a grin. “We’ll go see her together.”
They climbed the main stairs and then a much smaller staircase, Thomas ahead of Alasdair, taking two steps at a time. They reached a door, and Thomas knocked, and, after a moment or two, Harry opened it.
Alasdair thought Harry looked better than she had on his last visit.
She had some color in her cheeks. A few children’s toys—a little horse on wheels with a string, a doll, some blocks—were scattered on the floor, evidence that young Hypatia and Richard spent time in the room that Lady Drake called her aerie, the place where she undertook her mathematical thinking and writing.
Besides the toys, the room contained a desk, a chair, innumerable books, and piles of paper. And, oddly, a bed.
Harry lay down atop the counterpane of the bed, and Alasdair took her pulse and felt her distended abdomen for movement—aye, a good kick there—and observed the bones in her face.
He was glad to see, despite her poor appetite, she was still not as thin as she had been when she first came to Sommerleigh.
“I am feeling better, Alasdair.” She sat up with the assistance of her husband’s hand. “There is a clear broth Mrs. Haversham makes from our chickens that I am able to drink. And this peculiar and very dry cracker with almost no taste. And the whites of eggs.”
“I am glad Mrs. Haversham has found some things for ye to eat. But I have come to tell ye I am going to Edinburgh tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” Harry said abstractedly, her mind somewhere else already, her eyes on the ceiling. “I hope you travel safely.”
“Thank ye, my lady. I hope to be gone only a fortnight or two—”
Harry clutched Alasdair’s arm.
“Wait. Edinburgh. In Scotland.”
“Aye, my lady—”
Harry rose and went to her desk.
“Tell me the place where you will be, Alasdair. I may wish to write to you.”
Bewildered, Alasdair gave her the name of Dr. Murray’s house in Edinburgh. He considered Harry a good friend, but he could not imagine what she might need to write to him about, not when he expected to be away only two weeks, a month, at the most.
Thomas came up behind his wife as she stood at the desk writing and put his arms around her and began stroking her rounded front, high up, close to her breasts, kissing her neck, and murmuring something to her.
“Tommy,” she said, and her voice caught.
“I will go now. My lord, my lady.” Alasdair bowed and closed the door on the couple.
So that was what the bed in the room was for. The earl had to come to where his wife lived.
Alasdair felt a bit wretched on his way back to his house in the village.
He had known Thomas for seven years and Harry for almost five years, ever since she had married the earl and come to Sommerleigh.
They had become his closest friends, the people he would seek out if ever he needed solace or help.
But, sometimes, the Drakes had a way of making him feel very lonely, indeed.
Even when they did not touch—or even when the earl did not touch his wife since Harry seemed to have an entirely different mode of affection—Alasdair could sense the tenderness and heat between them. The air was fraught with something palpable. Love, he supposed.
Nearly four years ago, he had had a glimpse of what it might be like to have a love like that. It had been during a fleeting exchange between Harry’s half sister Arabella and himself.
Arabella. She had all of Harry’s intelligence but none of her awkwardness. She had drawn him out and put him at ease despite his immediate attraction to her. She had a beguiling girlishness that made him feel—well, more a man of the world than he really was.
Add, shockingly, she had seemed interested in him.
She was exquisite. Masses of golden hair, big, blue eyes, such a small nose, such pink, plump lips—but no, he could not think on those lips. She was of short stature but with a ripe, womanly figure. Those curves were even more dangerous to think on. He groaned.
But after that meeting, nothing. She had been to Sommerleigh the Christmas before he met her, but he had stayed away at that time, occupied with illnesses around the county and not wanting to bring contagion to the house and its guests.
If he had known Arabella was the woman she was, if he had anticipated his feelings towards her, he might have selfishly spent Christmas with the Drake and Lovelock families.
But he did not know or anticipate, and so he did not come.
And she had never visited Sommerleigh again.
He did not see how he could manage a meeting with her in London or in Middlewich. She was the stepdaughter of a duke and one of the wealthiest heiresses in England. Her brothers-in-law were an earl and a viscount.
True, the earl was his friend. But, he told himself, then and now, Alasdair Andrews was just a working man from the county of Caithness. A nothing who had landed on his feet despite his deficiencies.
A jewel of womanhood like Arabella Lovelock would have no use for him.
He had argued and struggled with himself for eighteen months after meeting her, alternatively urging himself to have courage and then chiding himself for presuming he could dare to bother her with his affections.
He had been on the verge of writing to her mother to ask permission to write to Arabella when he received word that all the Lovelock women and their families would be at Sommerleigh for Christmastide.
Christmas of the year eighteen hundred and twenty, just over two years ago.
Thomas had written to Alasdair from London, to tell of the Drakes’ impending return to Sommerleigh and to invite him to all of the festivities at the house.
This was his chance.