Chapter 19
Nineteen
Arabella yawned as she went up the stairs on Alasdair’s arm.
She hadn’t minded Alasdair interrupting her talk with Juliana and Rebecca since she had been about to doze off in the warm room after drinking a glass of rum punch on an empty stomach.
And she would see her friends tomorrow. It was wonderful.
“I understand your luggage is with your abandoned carriage, of course,” the butler said as he led them up the stairs. “If the snow stops tomorrow, we will send someone out to recover it. Until that time, we will endeavor to supply whatever you need.”
At the top of the stairs, the butler took a right turn and went to a door and opened it. The chamber behind the door was a lovely boudoir with a big bed that looked like a piece of soft heaven to Arabella right now.
“Lady Rebecca Dalrymple says she wants her lady’s maid to attend on you tonight, Mrs. Andrews.”
“Goodness.” Arabella laughed. “I don’t need a lady’s maid. I just need a nightdress and some warm water. And a hairbrush for the morning.”
The butler bowed. “I will send the lady’s maid along with those items.” He stepped outside the room and waited.
Alasdair hesitated by the door. “Goodnight, Mrs. Andrews.”
She turned. How handsome and kind and not-stupid he was, and how glad she was that he was with her. How she wished they really were married.
“Goodnight, Alasdair. And thank you.”
He closed the door.
The butler had walked a dozen yards down the hall before Alasdair caught up with him.
“Excuse me,” Alasdair said. “I dinnae ken yer name, forgive me.”
The butler stopped and turned to him. “It is Andrews.”
“Oh, I see. Aye. A good name. Are ye a Scot?”
“My great-grandfather was, Doctor.”
“Will ye show me to my room?”
“Down this way, in the other wing.”
Alasdair considered.
“Nae, thank ye.” He turned and started walking back. “I’ll sleep with my wife tonight.”
He rapped on her door and heard her say, “Come in.”
He opened the door to see she was sitting on the edge of the bed. It looked like she might have fallen asleep sitting up and had only come back awake at his knock.
“What is it, Alasdair?” she said with her eyelids half-mast, her head nodding.
He closed the door behind him. “I’m sorry, but I’m going to sleep here tonight, Miss Lovelock. I dinnae feel comfortable leaving ye alone in this house owned by that man.”
“You’re going to sleep here?” she said, suddenly looking very wide awake.
“Dinnae be alarmed,” he said. “I will sleep on the floor or in a chair.”
“You will not.”
“Aye, I will.”
“You most certainly will not!”
A knock came, and it was Lady Rebecca Dalrymple’s lady’s maid with hot water and a nightdress and a hair brush.
Alasdair excused himself and waited in the hallway, hovering until the maid left. Then he knocked and re-entered. He must make it clear he only wished to protect her. She was safe with him.
Arabella was standing in the middle of the room in bare feet and a white nightdress that was much too big for her, with her golden hair twisted into a thick plait. Her face was flushed and shiny, and he knew she must have just washed it.
She stamped one foot. “You will not sleep on the floor or in a chair when there is a perfectly good bed to be had.”
She pointed at the bed. Her bed.
Oh. Oh. She did not distrust him. She had not objected to him sleeping in the room with her. She had been concerned only for his comfort.
Well, she should distrust him. In so many ways, she was still an innocent. Did she not understand men? And she was his responsibility.
“A perfectly good bed that ye should be in right now. ’Tis far too cold for ye to be out of bed in just,” he swallowed, “a nightdress.”
“Is that a doctor’s order?”
“I—pardon me?”
“I said,” she smiled, “is that a doctor’s order or is that a husband’s order, Dr. Andrews?”
“I suppose ’tis nae one or the other.”
She lost her smile and looked almost sad. She used both hands to lift up her long nightdress and walked to the bed and climbed in using the bed stairs, still having to hop a bit at the end. She stayed sitting up but pulled the covers over her legs.
“I thought you might flirt with me a little, Alasdair.”
“I am sorry. I dinnae ken how to.”
Her smile came back. “I will teach you. I am very good at it. Or, at least, I used to be.”
There were brief daggers of light in his field of vision again as he thought of the hypothetical other men with whom she might have flirted. And the very real one downstairs with whom she almost certainly had. He took a breath and attempted to calm himself.
“So if I were to flirt with ye, what would be the right answer to yer question?”
A knock again and it was a footman and two chambermaids.
The footman carried a large tray with several covered dishes.
He put it down on a table by the fire and bowed and left.
The two chambermaids were giggling quite a bit, clearly amused by a husband in his wife’s room, and they carried more hot water and towels and a nightshirt and a banyan for Alasdair.
“Whose are these?” he said suspiciously. He did not want to wear Morpeth’s clothes and not just because they would have reminded him how big the man was.
Both chambermaids giggled, and one said, “They belong to Andrews, I mean our Andrews, the butler Andrews, that is to say, Dr. Andrews.” After curtsying, the maids beat a hasty retreat.
Alasdair put the nightshirt and the banyan down on a chair and went to the table. He started lifting covers from dishes.
“What would ye like to eat? Cake and two different tarts. A cream soup of some kind, codfish, I think. And roast pheasant with potatoes. And some beef. And some pickles. What would ye like, Miss Lovelock?”
There was no answer.
He looked over. Arabella had fallen asleep, sitting up against the pillows in the bed.
He covered the dishes. He went to the bed and, through the covers, he tugged on her legs so she now lay flat with her head on a pillow. He pulled the counterpane up to her chin. She did not move.
He went over to the fire and looked at it for a long time.
Eventually, he took off his tailcoat, and, as he went to unbutton his waistcoat, he felt a bit of wool there.
The bright-green tartan scarf Arabella had made for him.
He took it out and held it to his face. It was soft against his jaw, his nose, his mouth.
There was no scent of her on it; there never had been.
But the fact that she had made it for him and its softness—he couldn’t help thinking how all parts of his face had touched all parts of her face in the carriage.
And the piece of wool itself. She had chosen it some time ago, knowing it was meant for someone of his name.
He still did not know what to make of that. He was afraid of construing something hopeful and romantic from something that might be merely coincidence. Or fondness for a color.
He laid the scarf down and finished taking off his waistcoat and his shirt, then his boots and stockings.
He went to the basin and poured the warm water into it and washed his face, his upper half, and, finally, his feet.
He toweled himself dry quickly and went and put the scarf around his neck and donned the nightshirt and the banyan and sat down in a wing chair by the fire.
He would leave his trousers on. In fact, he might have to put his thick stockings back on. It was cold.
“Cake, please.”
He jumped. He turned his head, and Arabella was lying in the bed, in the same position he had put her in, only with her eyes open.
“Only cake?” He wondered how long she had been awake and was glad he had never completely undressed.
“Well, that’s all I remember you saying.” She sat up, and dozens of tendrils of her hair had escaped the plait and surrounded her head like a golden nimbus. “Why don’t you bring it all over here, and we’ll have a picnic?”
He brought the large tray over carefully and put it down on the center of the bed.
Arabella patted the mattress next to her.
He chose instead to sit at the foot of the bed, on the other side from her. He took all the covers off the dishes.
“What appeals to ye, Miss Lovelock?”
She scooted down and over a little bit so she was only partly sitting up.
“Oh, it all looks lovely. I’ll have some of everything.”
But then she made no move to pick up a fork or a plate.
“I am so tired,” she said and yawned.
“Ye have to eat something.”
“Yes,” she said and laid her head back on the pillows and looked at him through her half-mast lashes.
A slow dawning.
“Is this flirtation?” he said.
Arabella sighed. “Not yet. I am flirting with you, but it only becomes flirtation when you flirt back.”
“And I would flirt back by . . . ?”
“Perhaps by offering to feed me.”
“Feed ye?”
“Yes, because I am so tired, you would feed me. Like I’m a baby bird in a nest.”
“Have ye ever had other men feed ye?”
“Alasdair!” She sat bolt upright. “I would never!” He could tell she was furious.
“But,” he said weakly, “ye said ye were good at flirting. How did ye become good at it if ye didnae practice it?”
She tossed her head. “Some things come to some people naturally.”
“I see.” He could not think of a single thing that came to him naturally. Hadn’t he put his head down and worked hard at everything his whole life?
“Like kissing. You are a natural kisser, Alasdair. Even your first kiss yesterday . . . oh, it was wonderful.”
He colored. “I, uh, I think ye are only saying that because I am now yer husband.”
She smiled. “That’s it. Very good. That’s flirtation.”
“I see,” he said. But he didn’t really. Had she been sincere about his kissing? “Shall I feed ye now?”
“Yes, please. You’ll see. It will be fun.”
It was fun. It made him laugh. It made her laugh. He and Arabella on a bed. His spooning up bites for her to eat and having a reason to stare at her pink lips. Her insistence he take a bite for every bite she took.
They had eaten the soup, the cake, the beef, one of the tarts, and he was tearing bites of pheasant off the carcass for her to eat from his fingers.
“So what was the right answer?” he said. “Ye ne’er told me. For flirtation. Doctor’s orders or husband’s orders?”
She smiled. “Do you really not know?”
“Nae, I dinnae.” He tore off a small piece of pheasant and put it in her mouth and thrilled to the sensation of her taking his hand in her two small ones and carefully licking the juices from his fingers.
“The right answer,” she licked his thumb, “is,” she licked his index finger, “either one,” and she licked his middle finger.
He could hear his own breath becoming heavy, feel his blood rushing places where it shouldn’t.
She released his hand. “If you had said husband’s orders, then we could have had a delightful exchange about how you weren’t really my husband, but maybe,” she gave him a sidelong look, “you wanted to be, and what you might do to me if you were. And if you had said doctor’s orders, then we could have had you examine me. Maybe. Under the nightdress.”
He throbbed.
She paused for a moment and laughed. “Do you know, Alasdair, four years ago, just after we met, that was my fondest wish. That I would become ill or pretend to be ill and you would come and examine me.”
“Ye must ne’er wish to be ill.”
“No, of course not, it was just foolishness, I didn’t really wish to be ill, I just wished . . . for you.”
He lunged forward and kissed her. He was still holding the plate of pheasant, so it was awkward, but she put her hands in his hair and held him there.
When the kiss was over, he returned to his seated position at the far end of the bed.
He had pressed his body against hers during the kiss and had felt her softness, her curves, her warmth under the nightdress.
The temptation to keep kissing her, to lie down beside her, to run his hands all over her body was very strong.
To give her a version of the examination she had once longed for.
“Is flirtation,” he said and then cleared his throat. “Is flirtation the same thing as romance?”
“No,” she said. “And you prove that.”
“How is that?”
“You are terrible at flirtation, but I suspect you have a gift for romance.”
“I see.”
“And that,” she said, “is far preferable to the opposite case.”
An hour later, they had eaten all the food off the tray.
Arabella was lying back and groaning and saying she was exceedingly full and why had she thought eating the second tart a good idea?
Alasdair understood this was a rhetorical question and did not answer.
He removed the tray to the table and lowered the wicks on the lamps and went and sat in the wing chair and put on his stockings.
Then he took his tailcoat and draped it over himself.
The room was dark except for the glowing embers of the grate.
“You’re very far away, Dr. Andrews.”
“Aye. I saw ye have a ring on yer left hand now.”
“Yes, Rebecca noticed I had no ring and gave me one. I don’t think she will share our secret with anyone else.”
“She is a good and true friend, then?”
“Yes.” A silence. “Are you really going to sleep in that chair?”
“Aye.”
“Is there anything I could say that might convince you to come into the bed?”
“Nae.”
“But I have thought of something. A text in support of my cause. If two lie together, then they have heat: but how can one be warm alone? Ecclesiastes.”
He couldn’t help himself. “Did my cousin— Did Boyd Cormack say that to ye?”
“Dr. Andrews, you must not always be so suspicious of me.”
“I’m sorry. ’Tis nae ye I’m suspicious of.”
“I forgive you. A little jealousy can add to the excitement of flirtation. But only a little. It’s like whisky for me. A little goes a long way. Too much is tiresome.”
He noticed she had not answered his question. He mustered his memory.
“God will nae suffer ye to be tempted beyond what ye are able. Corinthians. Good night, Miss Lovelock.”
“Good night, Alasdair.” And the sound of a body shifting on a bed.
It was cold. He should have looked earlier for an extra blanket or rug to cover himself. But he didn’t want to get up now and disturb her with his movement. Then a much more urgent thought occurred to him, and he got up from the chair and locked the door.