Chapter 20
Twenty
Despite having a good deal of practice sleeping in a chair, Alasdair slept fitfully.
Finally, he heard some stirrings in the house.
In the darkened room, Arabella continued to breathe deeply, evenly.
He crossed to the windows and twitched the curtains aside.
The sun was up, but the morning was a gray one.
Snow still fell. He crossed back to his chair and dressed himself in the dark. Then he sat and waited.
Just as he was about to drop off into a doze again, he heard Arabella stir.
“Alasdair?”
“Aye?”
“Is it morning?”
“Aye.”
“Would you light a lamp or open the curtains so I can see you?”
He crossed back to the window and opened the curtains. The weak light filtered in. He turned back to her.
She was sitting up in the bed, her hair a wild, golden mass around her head. “Is it still snowing?”
“Aye,” he said and smiled at the sight of her. She was heartbreakingly beautiful.
“Come sit next to me.” She patted the mattress. He saw she had his brown scarf next to her.
He crossed to the bed and hovered for a moment before sitting down next to her.
There was a warm, sweet scent around the bed. It was the smell he had come to think of as Arabella’s.
The bedcovers were at her waist. The nightdress was the only thing shielding her breasts from his eyes, and he thought he could see a shadow of her areolas and her nipples under the thin fabric. But he wasn’t sure.
“Am I so frightening, Alasdair?” She reached out and straightened the tartan scarf at his neck.
“Nae,” he said and forced himself to look at her face. “But ye do have the mane of a lion this morning.”
“Yes,” she said but made no move to arrange her hair. “I always have in the morning. My lady’s maids have always despaired of me and my hair.”
He permitted himself to touch her hair as a reward for not spending the night in her bed, for not touching her breasts now. He stroked a tendril, pulling on it gently so it straightened and then releasing it so it curled back again.
“Yer hair is like an alive thing.” He brushed another tendril near her temple with his fingers.
“Yes, you will see it is quite untamable,” she said and turned her face into his hand and kissed his palm.
Her lips on that sensitive place. Warm. A small lick of a soft tongue. His cock throbbed, and he thought of ripping off the covers and her nightdress, baring her entirely to his eyes, his hands, his body.
After a moment, he withdrew his hand and got up from the bed.
A fortuitous knock and a rattle of the knob of the locked door.
“’Twill be yer friend’s lady’s maid,” he said. “I will leave ye.”
Her eyes looked hurt, so he added, “I look forward to breakfasting with ye, Miss Lovelock. Do ye think it will cause a scandal if I feed ye at the table?”
“Certainly,” she said and laughed. “But I hope you will do it anyway.”
At the breakfast table, Alasdair made a very good breakfast of ham, toast, smoked haddock, black pudding, porridge, tea. There were no eggs, he was informed by the butler Andrews.
“The chickens do not seem to like the snow, Doctor.”
“Thank ye, by the way,” Alasdair said under his breath, “for the nightshirt and banyan.”
“You are welcome, sir. I thought we might be of a size.” He bowed and went to refill the marquess’ teacup.
Alasdair was afraid to look at Arabella eating porridge, worried the sight of her lips sliding over a spoon would elicit in him the same savage and possessive desire that her kiss on his palm had.
Instead, he looked at Morpeth throughout the meal.
The baron was a big, tall man. Alasdair was just over six feet, but Lord Morpeth must be at least three inches taller. And he possessed a massive chest and shoulders. Alasdair flashed on Ewen saying Highlanders had Viking blood. Morpeth had the body of a Viking—a conqueror, a pillager, a rapist.
But Lord Morpeth was no Viking in his coloring. His overly long hair was near-black, and his eyes were just as dark. There was mat of thick hair on the backs of his large hands, and his jaw last night had been shadowed, a sure sign his valet’s razor could not keep up with his beard.
Alasdair hated his red hair more than ever.
And Lord Morpeth was . . . what was the word? Oh, yes, brooding. Probably couldn’t tell a joke to save his life. Definitely couldn’t save a life. Probably modeled himself after that other baron—what was his name? The mad poet? Byron, that was it. Lord Byron. Morpeth was a Visigoth Lord Byron.
No wonder women couldn’t resist him.
It was a tedious morning. There were cards, books, idle chat. Alasdair partook in none. The sight of the Swintons playing whist was so familiar to him, but he still could not place where or when he might have met them before.
He paced the halls, climbed the stairs up and down, but did not like to get too far away from Arabella. She was his sun, and he was a comet in a highly eccentric orbit around her. She sat in the drawing room and talked for hours with her friends.
He did not know what there could be to talk about.
It had only been two years or so since Arabella had last seen her friends.
He had had thirteen years separation from his schoolmates, but, at Dr. Murray’s funeral, he had found five minutes was more than adequate to discuss the events of the intervening years.
He noticed Lady Lyndmouth hovered around Lord Morpeth in much the same way he circled Arabella. Not directly engaging the baron’s attention but not moving too far away from him either. Always in the periphery.
The snow continued to fall, but the wind did not blow.
Maybe tomorrow he and Paterson would be able to get to the carriage and retrieve Arabella’s trunk.
Having her dresses was likely important to her.
The borrowed nightdress had been fine—he sucked in his breath at thinking of her in the nightdress, how he had pressed briefly against her body last night when he had kissed her in the bed and how he had wanted to rip it away this morning—but she was too small to borrow the dresses of her friends.
But he could remedy that for her. He longed to do something. For her.
Arabella did not enjoy her breakfast. Alasdair did not feed her as he had teased he might. He sat several seats away from her. He conversed politely with Sir Timothy and Mr. Swinton. He did not even look at her.
There had never been such a long morning. Alasdair barely paid her any attention. He was preoccupied, fretting, constantly walking. He probably had never had a day of idleness like this in his life, and he had no idea what to do with himself. His medical journals were all in the carriage.
In one morning, she had caught up on an entire two years of gossip.
She still loved Juliana and Rebecca, but to talk to them for so long was wearing when what she really longed to do was to shut herself away with Alasdair, run her fingers through his hair, and continue the kissing from the carriage.
Being in a warm house with fewer thick garments might make certain things possible that had not been before.
At one point, she and Juliana got up and linked their arms and walked the halls and the stairs of the house to get some exercise. Rebecca stayed in the drawing room, looking at an illustrated book with Lady Lyndmouth.
“I wish you so much happiness, Juliana. You married Sir Timothy, after all, just as you said you would.”
“Yes, and I had a dozen new dresses for all the parties before and after the wedding, and once I was married, so many new jewels. And you, Arabella?”
“Me?”
Juliana hugged her arm closely. “We are married women now, so you can tell me. Is your Scottish doctor all that you thought he would be?”
“He is,” Arabella said slowly, afraid Juliana might ask questions she could not answer. “He is and more.”
“Well, he is spying on us.”
Arabella turned and could see Alasdair, down the hall, staring intently at a painting.
“He doesn’t let you get too far away from him,” said Juliana and led Arabella up the stairs. “He is quite attentive.”
“Yes.”
“And deliciously handsome. I know, of course, what happened to you two years ago and why you disappeared,” Juliana said.
“Sir Timothy told me. Rebecca does not know. It has been hard to keep it from her and the rest of my sisters. They all wanted to know why you had left London. But Mama and Papa said, of course, none of them could know. It wouldn’t be right for them to hear that kind of salacious gossip when they were not yet married.
Mama and Papa now think it was a mistake they ever let us girls be friends with you.
Since your mother was an actress before. They said bad blood will out.”
They were at the top of the stairs. Arabella dropped Juliana’s arm and opened her mouth to defend her mother, herself, her blood. But she could not. After all, Juliana was just echoing Arabella’s own most private thoughts on the matter.
Juliana continued down the upstairs hall. “But I think the doctor gives you an excellent sort of excuse.”
Arabella was forced to follow. “What do you mean by that?”
“Well, one would not expect a physician’s wife to move in society. Your marriage explains your absence. But I must know,” she lowered her voice, “was he the one who ruined you?”
Arabella’s mind churned. She had long tried not to think about her scandal and what details might be known. Because of the Pluckers and her initials and the tokens pinned to the wall in her stepfather’s club. But she was glad Juliana did not know who had lain with her.
But she would not let anyone think ill of Alasdair. Better she be thought promiscuous than Alasdair be falsely accused of doing what Giles had done.
“No, it wasn’t him.”
“And yet he married you. You are so lucky, Arabella.”
“I don’t feel lucky.”