Chapter 16 #2
Why had she said that? And in that way. She might have said it coyly, and it would have been seductive. Instead, she had been cutting. She had cast something up to him that was shameful to him. She had injured him. She had been cruel. She had not known she could be that. How terrible lust was.
But he was exasperating. Did he want her or didn’t he?
“I would like nothing more than to have the privilege of calling ye by yer given name,” he said, “but I willnae. I will continue to call ye Miss Lovelock. I have nae earned Arabella, yet.” He visibly gulped when he said her name.
“My lack of control disnae mean we are true intimates. And I dinnae have yer aversion to the romantic.”
Her resentment spilled over. “I am spoiled, Dr. Andrews, or have you not heard? There is no romance left for me.”
He answered her in a different voice. A voice she had never heard from him. A strong and sure voice. An assertive and commanding voice that brooked no opposition. This must be how he spoke as a physician. How he might speak when he ordered a headstrong patient to stay in bed.
“Ye are nae spoiled or ruined or damaged or blemished or marred or any of the other idiotic euphemisms that are bandied about in regards to a woman’s virginity. Ye are perfectly ye, still.”
Her own hurt dissipated as he spoke. He was not rejecting her, just her headlong foolishness and her impatience.
And the desire that had been washing over her body was gone, replaced by something else. Some deeper want. One that had been with her ever since she could remember, even as a small child. Some want that could only be assuaged by her mother or her father or her sisters.
The want to be both understood and loved, together, at the same time.
He went on, “And ye are nae the only party here. I am one and thirty. I have waited thirty-one years to have a woman in my arms. I want that woman to be ye and have wanted that for almost four years. But can I be blamed for wanting romance, as well?” His tone became bitter.
“’Twould be the only thing that would warrant the wait.
The possibility of love. Otherwise, I could have been with a lonely widow or a tuppenny whore, long ago. ”
The possibility of love.
She buttoned her coat. She turned and put her hands out towards him, and there was a moment when she thought he would flinch away from her, but he did not.
She buttoned his coat and let her hand rest for a moment on his lapel—the lapel she had clung to when he first walked into her cottage in Dunburn.
When she thought she could keep him with her just by holding on to his coat.
Then she moved to the seat opposite him and put on her gloves.
The possibility of love.
Yes, here he was. The not-stupid man.
She was the one who should be ashamed. He was a man who had cherished an ideal for a long time. But he was wise enough to have no care what others thought of his ideal.
He wanted her. He had shown that. He had said that. What was her hurry, after all?
“You are quite right, Dr. Andrews. You deserve romance.”
“Ye do, too, Miss Lovelock.”
Her voice trembled, and she hated herself for it. “I don’t deserve you, Dr. Andrews.”
“That is,” he took a deep breath, “the single most erroneous statement I have ever heard.”
They sat in silence, looking at each other.
“You exaggerate, Dr. Andrews.”
“I dinnae, Miss Lovelock.” He was very serious.
“Open, Sesame,” she whispered.
He smiled.
Her heart melted. Perhaps she had not made an irrevocable mess of everything.
The light inside the carriage changed. It grew dark.
She looked out the window at swirling snow.
It clearly had been falling for some time as it lay thickly on the side of the road.
And it was falling very heavily now. The wind was gusting.
It was hard to see more than ten feet out the carriage window.
Alasdair slid over and joined her in looking out the window.
He made a low whistle and said, “Stay on this side of the carriage.” He moved back across the seat and opened the opposite carriage door. He stood so half his body was outside in the falling snow.
She could hear him shouting to Paterson, but she could not hear what he said or Paterson’s answer.
He pulled himself back inside the carriage and closed the door.
She was shivering now. Alasdair sat next to her and put both arms around her and rested his chin on top of her head.
“Ye were right. The carriage will likely have to stop soon.”
Her teeth chattered. “Dr. Andrews. You do not have to hold me.”
“On the contrary,” he said and unbuttoned his coat and pulled her onto his lap and into his chest and wrapped his coat around her.
“Because of yer small size, ye have a greater surface area-to-volume ratio than I do, therefore ye shed heat more quickly and are more likely to get chilled. Our bodies together will effectively decrease our surface area-to-volume ratios and thus conserve our heat.”
She could not get close enough to him, and she felt like she wanted to burrow into his waistcoat. “Now you sound like Harry.”
“And besides,” he said and hesitated.
“Besides what?” she asked, her voice muffled by his chest.
“Caught in a snowstorm? Romantic, maybe?”
“Definitely.” The shivers were abating. “Unless you are cold.”
“Shall I kiss ye then to warm ye?”
She stopped shivering.
He still wanted to kiss her.
“Yes,” she said and turned up her face.
He kissed her lips. And in his kiss, there was none of the fervor of the previous day or the previous hour. It was all tenderness.
But the want and the need and the ache that had consumed her in the carriage today returned at the touch of his lips. She almost took her arms from around his body and out of the warm cocoon he had made for her and put them up to his neck to pull his mouth and tongue down to hers.
But she refrained from doing so.
She realized she had already done to him, in a way, what Giles Fortescue had done to her.
She had used his affection for her and her own greater experience—slight though it was, it was still greater than his—to push him too quickly into new intimacy.
She had only paid attention to her own clutching need.
And that had led to his embarrassment and their first—could she call it this? —disagreement.
There would be a time, she hoped, when she might be able to show him her desire, but this was not that time.
She would be patient. As Boyd Cormack had advised her to be. Of course, it had not been in this area that he had anticipated she would need her patience with Alasdair.
That thought amused her, and her mouth curled into a smile under his kiss.
He must have felt some change in her lips because he pulled his head back to look at her face.
“Ye are smiling,” he said with a touch of relief.
“Yes,” she said. “I am happy.”
The carriage came to a stop.
Alasdair and Arabella extricated themselves from each other, and Alasdair buttoned up his coat, put on his hat and gloves, rewrapped his tartan scarf, and got out of the carriage.
Within minutes, he had come back in, the cold and the wind and the snow coming with him.
“We are going to have to abandon the carriage. The snow is too high, and the horses cannae pull the weight of the carriage through the snow.”
“But the horses—”
“Paterson and Ewen are taking the harnesses off now. We will have to lead the horses. Paterson had already turned the carriage down a drive and thinks it leads to a house. We will hope that we’ll find someplace warm soon. We will have to leave all the luggage, but ye may bring yer little reticule.”
“Yes,” she said.
Arabella already felt very cold within the confines of the carriage. Alasdair must have sensed that because he reached out and took from her neck the brown scarf and rewrapped it around her so it covered her entire lower face and went up over her bonnet. He made a snug knot.
“Hold fast to my hand,” he said. “’Tis hard to see.”
He opened the carriage door and went out and turned and handed her down. She stepped out into the wind and snow.
She stood in a drift that came up over her knees. Her hand in his, they picked their way to the front of the carriage. Paterson and Ewen had almost finished unharnessing the four horses.
Alasdair spoke to Paterson, and once the horses were unharnessed, they started moving forward.
She had not known walking could be so difficult. The snow clung to her dress so even as she lifted each leg as high as she could to make forward progress, she was pulled down. Only half a dozen steps and she was tired.
And so very cold. The wind was cutting and fierce.
But she was not wet. The insulation provided by her thick woolen stockings kept the snow that clung there from melting with her body heat. The wetness would come afterwards, when they got somewhere warm.
It was hard to believe there might be somewhere in the world that was warm.
Everything was very white. The air seemed solid at times, there was so much snow in it.
She could not see where they were going, but that did not bother her as much as it should have.
She only had the strength to pay attention to each individual step.
She held her reticule in one hand and kept her other hand in Alasdair’s.
His other hand was on the bridle of one of the horses.
She knew Paterson and Ewen—each holding a horse’s bridle with one hand and sharing the bridle of the lead horse between them—were ahead of them because sometimes she managed to step into Ewen’s leg holes in the snow and that helped her.
Alasdair turned to her every third step or so. She assumed he was checking on her, making sure she was all right. At first, she tried to smile at him, to reassure him, but then she realized he couldn’t see her smile through the scarf. So she just tried to keep up with him and not tug at his arm.
Her legs were very, very tired.
Alasdair cursed his stupidity.