Chapter 32
Thirty-Two
Despite the melting snow, Alasdair and Arabella—along with Paterson and Ewen McEwen—could not yet leave the Morpeth estate.
Alasdair felt obliged to wait until another doctor arrived.
The baron seemed largely out of danger, but Alasdair pointed out that the whole surgery had been a risky experiment with a fortunate outcome.
“It could so easily have gone wrong,” he said. “It might still go wrong.”
Lord Morpeth continued to have pain, but the fever did not return, and he was able to eat.
Even though Alasdair was the only one of their party with a professional obligation to stay, he was the one most anxious to leave.
He had a wedding to get to and get through.
He wanted to be husband and wife and to feel free to give Arabella the redheaded babies she longed for.
And he thought he might very much like to spend inside her instead of on the sheets, which he had continued to do, despite knowing it was not ideal.
Because now that he had had the ecstasy of coupling with Arabella, he could not give it up. But he also wanted a baby that came nine or more months after a wedding.
Arabella said she didn’t care and urged him to spend inside her.
“I’m ready, Alasdair.”
Though the temptation was great and there were some very narrow margins in his timings, he found himself caring.
After what Arabella had been through with her scandal, he wanted the calendar of their child’s birth to be perfect.
And he knew Arabella had resented that her mother’s confinement had come only three months after wedding the Duke of Middlewich.
“Ye are marrying a poor boy from Bailebrae,” Alasdair said, brushing his lips over her tiny pink ear. “I dinnae want people to say ye had to marry me, mo leannan, my beloved.”
“But I do have to marry you,” she said, purring. “Because I love you.”
He kissed her then, deeply, slowly.
“When the roads are finally clear, let us get to Sommerleigh,” Arabella said many minutes later, her arms around his neck, “and be married there. Once we are there, we need only purchase a license and wait seven days. Or we could have less expense with three weeks of banns.”
He growled. “We are getting the seven-day license. I dinnae care about the cost.”
And despite it being the morning and both of them having already dressed for the day and the breakfast waiting for them, he seized her and kissed her and discovered the pleasure of holding her and penetrating her in an upright position against the wall of the room in broad daylight where he could see every twitch of pleasure that danced across her face.
As he waited for the snow to clear, Alasdair found himself retiring to bed earlier and earlier each night because Arabella joined him there.
He also found his long fingers could afford her a great deal of pleasure.
And the long winter nights meant he accumulated what he thought of as a great deal of experience very quickly.
Very little time was spent in sleep when there were hours of lovemaking to be had.
“Now,” Arabella said to him one night as she ran her fingers through the copper hair on his chest before moving on to the auburn hair on his head. “I know why my mother needed so many naps.”
Arabella said she really must leave the bed and have several hours a day in public view.
“If only to make you hungry for me again,” she said teasingly even though he assured her that his appetite for her would never be sated.
Arabella spent her time away from the bed with Rebecca, trudging through the slowly melting snow-covered gardens or sitting in the drawing room and giggling.
During those times, when the blood flow was finally directed away from his cock and towards his brain, Alasdair had some thoughts about Lady Morpeth’s condition and what could be causing it.
He now had the books and the periodicals he had brought on his trip from Dr. Murray’s library, and he pored over them, looking for hints.
However, they did not provide him with the information he sought.
He needed to rely largely on his memory for the unusual cases he had read about during his training and his subsequent career.
Finally, the likely diagnosis came to him when he remembered Lady Morpeth said sometimes her vision had a yellow tint.
And he was struck with horror.
He asked the butler Andrews to make up an excuse to prevent anyone else coming into Lady Morpeth’s bedchamber. Alasdair went to the room, knocked, entered, found her alone, and asked her a question.
She looked confused but answered, “No, Dr. Andrews.”
He smiled. “That is good news, Lady Morpeth.”
He escorted Lady Morpeth into Lord Morpeth’s room and asked the footman who was there to leave.
The footman, having been ordered to play backgammon with Lord Morpeth so that he would be entertained sufficiently to stay in bed voluntarily, was happy to exit.
Lord Morpeth was bad-tempered while being confined to bed whether he lost or won.
Lady Morpeth settled herself in the footman’s chair by the bed and reached out and held Morpeth’s hand.
“My lady,” Alasdair began. “I believe ye have been suffering from foxglove or digitalis poisoning. That is the cause of yer long-term illness. I still think ye may be pregnant, but the interference in yer courses may be due to the foxglove. I cannae say with certainty.”
Lady Morpeth gasped.
Morpeth’s brows were drawn together, and he looked murderous.
“But how might I be poisoned?” Lady Morpeth asked. “I don’t take digitalis. I have never taken it.”
“Just minutes ago, I asked ye if yer symptoms ever improved when yer husband was weeks from home, and ye denied it.
So, to my mind, that eliminates Lord Morpeth as the cause of yer illness.
The most likely person at fault is Nurse Gastrell.
She is the logical person to administer the poison.
Through yer skin, perhaps. Is there some herbal ointment Nurse Gastrell uses for ye?
“Yes.”
The strong, clean smell of rosemary in her room. Likely the dried foxglove had been mixed in with it.
“Why would she do this evil?” Morpeth rumbled.
“Sometimes,” Alasdair spoke carefully, “people benefit from keeping someone ill. If Lady Morpeth were to become well, Nurse Gastrell might lose her position. So perhaps she keeps Lady Morpeth ill. Alive, but ill. I dinnae ken if it can be proven. I do recommend she be confined to her own room until the magistrate can come to the house.”
On Lord Morpeth’s orders it was done, and it must be said Lady Morpeth’s health improved as soon as she was no longer under the care of Nurse Gastrell.
The snow finally melted enough for both another physician and the magistrate to be sent for.
Arabella was happy for Alasdair’s sake. She knew, despite his excellent care of Giles, that he was uncomfortable taking hospitality from the baron.
Arabella herself did not care; she only wanted to be where Alasdair was.
Paterson would continue to drive Arabella and Alasdair south to Sommerleigh. But Ewen MacEwen said he was going to stay at the estate. He had been offered a job as a stable boy by the head groom.
“But ’tis just for a short time. Horses and coaches are the past. I have a mind to get into railroads and steam locomotives. There’s a man named Robert Stephenson in Newcastle. Once I earn a little money, I am going to go work for him.”
Arabella had no doubt it was true.
On the morning of Arabella’s and Alasdair’s departure, Rebecca stood in the stable yard and hugged Arabella. “I am so happy for you.”
Arabella slid the ring from her finger and handed it back to Rebecca. Then she held her friend’s face in her hands.
“I can’t wait for you to find your happiness, too, Rebecca. Please promise me you will come visit us in Sommerleigh. You can stay with me and the doctor once we are married.”
Rebecca promised to come and quickly retreated into the house, not looking back at the carriage that contained so much happiness.
Finally, they were moving, headed south.
Arabella looked around the snug confines of the carriage. “This is the place where you first kissed me.”
“I’m of a mind to have Paterson sell us the carriage,” Alasdair said.
“That’s not necessary.” She took off his gloves and began kissing his palms and his fingers. “If you must know, it was your hands that first attracted me.”
“Nae my dimples?”
“I didn’t see your dimples until the very end of our first meeting.
Your dimples made me decide I must marry you.
But I fell in lust with your hands. I remember you were not wearing gloves, and you took my hand and—oh, your fingers, so long and strong and gentle, and that very little bit of copper hair on the back of your wrists here.
” She rubbed her cheek on the back of his hand as if she were a cat.
Alasdair grunted, making a show of still not believing, she thought, so she might continue to play with his hands.
“There were many nights that year I touched myself in my bed, imagining my hands were your hands, Dr. Andrews.”
He shook his head. “I cannae believe that.”
“You must tell me if you hate that I wanted you because of the wanting or because it’s you, Alasdair.”
“I hate neither. I love both of those things. I hate that it could have been my hands all along but for my cowardice.”
She smiled. He was learning not to say he was sorry. “And now it will always and only be your hands.”
“Ye are the woman of my heart.”
“You are a brave man to have me.”
He kissed her. As always, under the pressure of his mouth, she melted. All the hunger, the care, the tenderness, and the unyielding tenacity of her Alasdair were present in his kiss., and she surrendered to it completely.
But after minutes of heat and softness and tongues and lips and the mingling of breath and wetness, she suddenly had a terrible thought. She stopped kissing him and pulled away. He opened his eyes.
“Alasdair.” There was a clutching at her chest.
“Aye?”
She gulped. “I cannot believe I have been so foolish. I am not yet one and twenty. My birthday is still a month away. We will have to go to Middlewich or London and have my mother’s consent to be married.”
“Do ye think she will oppose us?”
“I . . . don’t know,” Arabella faltered. “I have treated her very badly. I am sure she likes you because of what you did for Harry. I am not so sure she likes me. Or trusts me.”
“Of course, she does. Ye are her daughter.”
“You must promise me.” She clutched the lapel of his coat. She felt she might suffocate.
“What, my love?”
“You must promise still to marry me even if we have to wait.”
He wrapped his arms around her. “Aye, nae a one can stop me.”
“You mustn’t leave me. We mustn’t be separated.”
“I will ne’er leave ye.”
“When we get to Middlewich or London, whichever place she is, you will go to her to ask her, and I will stay away, hidden somewhere. If she gives her permission, we must be wed first so she cannot take me away from you before we are married.”
“She widnae do that, Arabella. Ye have turned her into a witch in yer head. But I willnae have ye anxious on the matter.”
Alasdair released her and rapped on the roof of the carriage and the coach stopped. He buttoned his coat and got out.
Arabella buttoned up her own coat and strained her ears, but she could not hear what Alasdair said to Paterson.
After a few minutes, Alasdair got back in the carriage and stooped down and picked her up and turned around and sat back down again so she was lying across his lap, her shoulders supported by one arm as he leaned over her and kissed her mouth while his other hand unbuttoned the coat she had just buttoned.
He began touching her breasts through her dress.
“What did you say to Paterson? Did you tell him to go to Middlewich instead of Sommerleigh?” she asked when he paused for a breath.
“Do ye like what I am doing with my hand now, Arabella?” He was very delicately shifting the material of her dress over her nipple with the lightest of rubs.
Arabella shuddered and nodded. and he bent his head to hers again.
But he had not answered her, and she could feel the carriage swaying, turning.
She broke the kiss. “What are we doing?”
He grinned. Those dimples. He was teasing her. She cursed inwardly that she had taught him anything about flirtation. Where was her plain-speaking Scottish doctor when she needed him?
He must have seen something in her eyes because he relented. A bit.
“We are turning around.”
Arabella sat up. “What?”
“I decided I couldnae wait to find out if yer mother would consent. And if she didnae, I couldnae wait a month. It would drive me mad.”
“But why turn around?”
“We’re going back to Scotland.”
“Why?”
“Because in Scotland there isnae need for a license or banns or permission from yer mother. I am going to marry ye today, Mrs. Andrews, and then I am going to bed ye today, Mrs. Andrews, and give ye the beginning of a redheaded baby, and the issue will be decided.”