Chapter 14
Fourteen
Alasdair did not know what to make of his new scarf.
He had no notion of the Andrews family wearing the Ross tartan.
That had not been part of his childhood.
His father had died when he was but one year of age.
His aunt who had raised him from age four had been his mother’s sister.
He had never known any members of his father’s family.
Arabella had bought the tartan, knowing it was for his father’s clan. And she planned to make a dress from it. To wear herself, he presumed.
But perhaps she just liked this shade of green.
Alasdair sat backwards in the carriage, facing Arabella and Maggie.
He did not have to make much conversation with Arabella on this first day as they headed south on the road towards Inverness because Mrs. Maggie Gunn was full of questions for him.
Where were his people from? Really? She did not remember any Andrews in Bailebrae.
And surely he and she were of an age? Oh, his mother’s sister and her husband?
The uncle was a Mowat? Yes, maybe she did remember some farmer by that name up by Bailebrae. But it had been long ago.
And his schooling and training? Edinburgh? And why had he not come back to the Highlands?
“We are in as much need of a good doctor as the people of England, sir,” Maggie said.
Arabella interjected, “Maggie, you must leave Dr. Andrews alone. If he had never left Scotland, he would not have saved my sister’s life.”
Alasdair could feel the heat on his face. “I didnae save her life. Her husband and Sommerleigh and she herself did that. But as to why I didnae return . . . Bailebrae was just a place of deprivation. For me. Perhaps I was nae brave enough, and for that, I am sorry.”
“Brave enough!” Arabella leaned forward. “You were in the navy, were you not?”
“Aye.”
“On a ship that came under fire from the French many times?”
“Aye.” He wondered at her knowing his history.
Arabella sat back and looked at Maggie. “I should think that brave enough for anyone. There is no reason for the doctor to apologize.”
“Perhaps traveling to a place ye have ne’er been before, where ye have nae friends, and making a life for yerself,” Alasdair said, “perhaps that is brave, too.”
Arabella looked down at her gloved hands in her lap.
“Well, she has friends now,” Maggie huffed.
“Aye,” Alasdair said.
Arabella looked up and fixed her eyes on Alasdair’s. “I count Dr. Andrews as among my friends. I hope I am not wrong in that, Doctor?”
He choked. “Aye, I mean, nae, Miss Lovelock. Ye are nae wrong.”
Near the end of the day, the two women slept, their arms linked together, Maggie slumping onto the much-smaller Arabella’s shoulder.
Arabella’s head was down, her chin on her chest, her face hidden by her woolen bonnet.
Alasdair could see the stout Mrs. Gunn’s head and arm were helping keep Arabella in place as the carriage bumped along the roads rutted by winter mud.
If he were sitting next to Arabella and, for some reason, he might be allowed to do what he wished, he would put his arms around her entirely and lock her in his clasp so she could not lurch off the seat. He would keep her from flying off.
He shifted in his own seat. Foolishness. He would never have license to do what he wished. Not with her.
He attempted to read a letter in a medical periodical about a bladder stone surgery. He leaned forward, his forearms on his thighs, head down, trying to make sense of the words.
The air in the carriage suddenly felt alive and prickling, as it might be before a thunderstorm. His skin tingled.
He looked up.
Arabella’s eyes were open, and she was looking at him.
A smile curved her lips.
Suddenly, the world seemed a very good place to Alasdair. She was as wonderful and lovely as ever. She was unmarried. He was brave. She was with him. Happiness was within reach.
Then some worry in her face, the smile was gone, and she closed her eyes.
The world again became a place of uncertainty, of death and disease. Of endings. It became the world Alasdair had always known.
Arabella had been jolted awake by a rut in the road.
She opened her eyes and saw Alasdair reading, leaning forward, his hat off, the top of his head just a few feet from her.
Those waves of shiny auburn hair. She wanted to put her hands in that hair, lace her fingers into it, pull his head up and look at his eyes, his mouth, his dimples, his face.
That face she had seen so briefly and imagined for so long.
What would it be like to be sitting on the other side of the carriage with him?
To feel his leg next to hers, his arm next to hers.
She would let him read, she would not disturb him, but perhaps she would put her arm under his elbow and rest her forearm on his and her fingers would touch the skin of his wrist. The wrist that led to one of his devastating hands.
And then she might slide her hand off his wrist and to the inside of his leg and she would feel the muscle of his leg under his trousers.
Then she could slide her hand upwards and make him moan as she touched his length.
He looked up just then and held her gaze. He smiled, and she saw his dimples, so she smiled back and could feel the slickness and the throb and the ache under her skirts.
Then she remembered he didn’t want her.
Even before she had been a wanton and a scandal, he had not wanted her. He had done nothing to seek her out or find her. Even now, he was only here at the behest of her sister.
And, besides, she was not fit for the love of a man like him.
After her hard work of the last two years, how disheartening to discover she was the same foolish, needing creature, wet between the legs, aching for him.
She shut her eyes and shut him out.
At the coaching inn that night, she was quiet and pushed her stew around in her bowl.
“Miss Lovelock,” Alasdair said. “Ye didnae eat. Are ye ill?”
“This mutton in the stew has too much fat left on it,” Maggie grumbled. “’Tis nae wonder ye didnae like it, miss. Shall I ask for some broth for ye? Do ye want my bread?”
“No,” Arabella said and attempted a smile. “I am merely tired. I am sure my appetite will be better in the morning. Neither of you are to worry.”
She brought a spoonful of the stew to her lips, but when Alasdair and Maggie looked away, she traded bowls with Ewen MacEwen so he could have her full one and she could have his empty one. Ewen was untroubled by this and started eating her stew without a word.
She could not fathom eating when her heart hurt so badly.
She wondered at herself being so happy just yesterday when Alasdair had come to her cottage.
Yesterday, it had been enough that he had been there in the same room with her and he had let her put her cheek to his.
And that she could wrap his scarf around her face and put her nose and her mouth on it and breathe him in.
And that Harry had mentioned in her letter how Dr. Andrews remained unmarried.
But now she wanted more.
She wanted him to want her.
She was becoming a child all over again. Sick to her stomach with desire. Resentful when thwarted. Greedy and clinging.
This had been a mistake. She should have stayed in Dunburn, where she had learned restraint and put her energies to good purpose. Where she had become someone as far from her mother as possible.
In the middle of her sleepless night, the most painful of realizations wracked her mind.
She was such a dolt. A numpty.
Everything she had done in the last two years was for him. Well, no, not for him, but for some idea of him.
She had refashioned herself into a woman she thought he might like. He had not wanted her when she was a novel-reading stylish young lady of the ton. So she had become a hard-working schoolmistress in the Highlands.
It had not been scheming or deliberate. Hadn’t she tried to shut away her thoughts of him as much as she could?
But he had been at the back of her mind, all along. Even as she had considered marrying Boyd and the good she might do as his wife, she had thought, And Alasdair would like it if we kept the privies from draining into the river.
She had done this—made her life in Dunburn—all for him.
And he still had not shown any special interest in her. And she still had nothing for herself.
The next day in the carriage, Arabella made sure she was bright and cheerful.
She engaged Maggie in a discussion of the scenery outside the window of the coach and told her about Sommerleigh.
She asked Alasdair about his medical reading and about Harry and Thomas and her niece Hypatia.
And her nephew Richard, whom she had never met.
And what of her half brother Sebastian, Marquess of Daventry, the Middlewich heir?
He was three and a half now. He probably did not remember his sister.
And any news of Mary and her family? Of course, she knew of Mary’s twin sons and her daughter because of letters. But any more recent news?
She kept her pain at bay with a stream of chatter.
Maggie grumbled about how Arabella should have told her they were going to the house of an earl.
And her sisters were a countess and a viscountess?
And her brother would someday be a duke?
Aye, she could see why Arabella did not make this widely known in the village, but why had she not told Maggie so she could have packed her best bombazine?
North of the Firth of Forth and Edinburgh, they stopped at the village of Strathlochirn at the request of Maggie.
Her sister lived here with a husband and children.
The coaching inn, Maggie said, was said to be a good one.
The rest of the party settled in their rooms, and Maggie walked to her sister’s cottage.
But as Arabella was sitting down to dinner in the chair Alasdair had pulled out for her, Maggie came rushing into the public house, her face wet with tears, her breath coming in big gasps. Arabella stood and seized Maggie’s hands.
“Maggie, what is the matter? You’re distressed. Is your sister not well?”
“Oh, Miss Lovelock,” Maggie said and broke into a sob.
Arabella whisked her upstairs to her room. Maggie sat on the edge of the bed, and Arabella knelt in front of her and held her hands as she cried.
Eventually, Maggie was able to choke out that her sister’s husband had abandoned her and their four children just a week earlier. Her sister had no idea where the gowk had gone, but he had told her he was leaving and she would never hear from him again.
“Oh, dear,” Arabella said. She sat down next to Maggie on the bed and put an arm around her shoulders. “Oh, dear.”
Maggie took a handkerchief from her reticule and blew her nose. “She is so desperate, Miss Lovelock. So scared.”
“You must stay with her, Maggie. You can help her, and I will pay your wages ahead. I have plenty of money with me for the journey, and I will give you enough so you and she need not worry.”
“Oh, nae, Miss Lovelock.” Maggie was aghast. “I cannae do that. Ye need me.”
“Your sister needs you more.”
“But widnae be proper for ye . . . for ye . . .”
“For me to travel with two men and a boy? And one of the men, a family friend? I traveled alone with just a coachman when I came north two years ago.”
“’Twas nae proper, neither.”
Arabella stood. Her hands went into fists at her sides. Her face got hot, and she knew it had flushed red.
“You know what isn’t proper, Maggie? A husband abandoning his wife and his children!”
“Aye,” Maggie whispered, looking shocked by Arabella’s vehemence.
Arabella had never spoken this way in front of her.
Maggie had never seen Arabella angry because Arabella had worked very hard to control her temper over the last two years.
To model mildness and modesty for her students. And for the absent Alasdair.
But, now, knowing how pointless her own program of reform had been, Arabella was liberated. All that restraint and to what end? The doctor had not shown up at her doorstep because of Arabella’s virtue, but because her sister had sent him.
She might as well voice her fury. She truly had nothing to lose.
“If folk spent more time worrying about things that really mattered instead of appearances, everyone’s lives would be a great deal better. What’s important is that your sister is frightened and alone. She needs to feed four children. She needs turf for the fire. She needs you.”
“Aye.”
Arabella took a deep breath. Her next words were quieter.
“I hope you know I am not vexed at you, Maggie. I am angry at your sister’s husband and your sister’s situation.
I am sorry I spoke in such a harsh manner.
But,” she sat down next to Maggie again, “my reputation cannot be any more ruined than it already is. Have no worries on that score. And I will be safe with the doctor.”
As Maggie wiped her nose and thanked her, Arabella asked herself the unanswerable question.
But will the doctor be safe with me?