Chapter 34 #2
Sebastian looked at his mother and then at Arabella and then back again at his mother.
“He thinks I’m like you, Mama.” Arabella laughed.
“Yes,” Catherine said and smiled.
There was a quiet moment, and James broke into it with the suggestion they all walk back up the road to the carriage and ride to Sommerleigh together.
This they did, and Sebastian sat comfortably on his sister Arabella’s lap all the way there.
The Viscount and Viscountess Tregaron arrived the next day, and Alasdair agreed with Arabella that it was very hard to imagine David Vaughan whimpering.
He also expressed to Arabella privately that he, Alasdair, felt immense gratitude towards the viscount.
After all, he was the reason Alasdair had broadened his horizons about what wives did and did not do.
Arabella said this was rather unfair, and she or Mary really deserved the credit. After all, they did all the work.
The two-year-old identical twin boys Morgan and Owen and the six-month old baby girl Gwenllian had traveled to Sommerleigh with Mary and David.
“My lord, which of the boys is the heir?” Alasdair asked. “Which is the eldest?”
“In private, I hope you will call me Tregaron, as Middlewich and Drake do. Or David, as our wives do. I’ll tell you the truth, Andrews,” the viscount leaned forward, “I don’t know.”
It took a moment for Alasdair to recover from the warmth he felt in his chest when David had said our wives. He still wasn’t used to that.
“Uh, aye, Tregaron, does yer wife ken which boy is the heir?”
David leaned back into his perfect posture and winked. “She does, but she’s not telling.”
Mary heard this last bit and stuck her tongue out at her husband and took her children upstairs to the nursery and asked Arabella to come with her.
That night, as Alasdair toyed with Arabella’s hair while she lay on top of him in their bedchamber in their house in the village, her cheek on his chest, he asked her if Mary had told her which boy was the heir.
“No.” Arabella raised her head to rest her chin on his sternum and look him in the eye. “We talked about truly important things.”
“Like what?”
“Like you.”
Alasdair could feel the heat in his face.
“I do wonder why you only blush from the neck up, Alasdair. I’ll tell you what Mary said.
I’m sure she wouldn’t mind. First, she told me she had written a letter to Inverness in response to my letter to her, asking if I should marry Boyd.
The letter said, without question, I should not marry without love.
And then today, while she was nursing Gwenllian, she said she could tell I was in love with a good man. ”
Alasdair noted Arabella was blushing now as well, but her pink extended to her upper chest and perhaps even her bosom, but he couldn’t see her lovely breasts at this moment as they were pressed into his upper abdomen.
Alasdair wanted to investigate the extent of her blush, so he held her to him and rolled over and placed her on her back and went up on his elbow next to her.
Yes, the pink of her blush was fading, but it definitely tinted the tops of her breasts.
He cupped one of those breasts now and teased a nipple with his thumb.
“And what did ye say back to her?” His voice was suddenly raspy.
“I told Mary she was wrong.”
Alasdair stilled his thumb.
“I told her I was in love with the best man.”
Alasdair felt his wife’s arms around his neck, her lips on his, a leg wrapping his waist, and he thought it wise to prove to her, once again, that he really was the best not-stupid man.
The next afternoon, Catherine sought Alasdair out in the library at Sommerleigh. Arabella was with Mary in the nursery with the children. Harry was in her aerie. Thomas, James, and David had gone out to shoot some wild hare.
Alasdair had declined to join them and was feeling rather proud that he had not felt he must go.
But he might go some other time. It might be interesting to go shooting with a set of lords, and Lord Tregaron was said to be a crack shot, and he, Alasdair, might learn something from the viscount.
However, today he was tired as Arabella had woken him early and in quite a demanding way that had set his blood coursing and kept him from going back to sleep.
So he was drowsy. And he had not yet resumed his medical duties in the village, so he could indulge in an afternoon nap. This was part of his honeymoon, after all. He was sitting in a chair in the library and dozing when Catherine came in.
“Dr. Andrews.”
He started awake and stood and bowed. “Yer Grace.”
Catherine sat opposite his chair and gestured for him to resume his seat.
“I really think,” she said, “we had better find something for you to call me besides Your Grace. I’d like you to call me Catherine.”
He inclined his head in agreement.
She went on. “And may I call you Alasdair?”
“Aye, Yer—Catherine.”
“I hear we have a great deal in common. We both grew up on farms. We both made our ways to big cities when we were young and alone and somehow survived and found our professions.”
“Aye, that is true.”
She spread her hands out on her lap and looked down at them. “I want you to know I am very happy that you and Arabella are married.”
“Thank ye.”
“I did not want you to think otherwise.”
“Nae.”
The case clock ticked in the otherwise silent room.
“And you are all that I would hope for her.”
He looked at her carefully. She appeared sincere.
“I just— I just still have a hard time remembering she is a woman and not a girl. You will have a daughter, yourself, one day, Dr. Andrews, and you will understand.”
“Alasdair.”
“Pardon?”
He cleared his throat. “Ye said ye would call me Alasdair.”
“Yes, I did, didn’t I?” She smiled but only briefly before her face became serious again. “I wonder if you might tell me why Arabella never wrote to me.”
“I cannae. But I will tell ye that yer daughter, whom we both love, disnae like to return to the past. She disnae like regret.”
“Yes.” Catherine bit her lip. “Yes. She wants to move forward.”
“Nae, she has moved forward. In fact, she has moved all of us forward.”
Catherine was silent again. Then she stood, and he stood, as well, and she took his hands.
“I am very sorry for disturbing you, Alasdair.”
“Ye didnae disturb me, Catherine. I am always happy to talk about my favorite thing in all the world. Yer daughter.”
“Yes.” She squeezed both of his hands tightly and turned, her skirts whirling, to leave the library.
That night at dinner, he was happy to see Catherine smiled a great deal and laughed more easily than the night before, and there was no trace of tension or worry in the looks she gave Arabella, only affection.
After dinner, over port in the dining room with the other men, James first told Alasdair how he envied him his time in the navy and then leaned forwards and said to him in a confiding tone, “I don’t know what you said to my wife this afternoon, but thank you, Andrews.”
Alasdair mumbled something noncommittal, but Thomas had overheard what James had said. “Yes, Alasdair is the chief luller of wives. He invariably soothes Harry. It’s the physician’s touch. I can’t think but that he will never have any problem with his own wife.”
Alasdair shook his head, thinking of Arabella’s temper. There would be disagreements in the future, how could there not be? But he trusted he and Arabella would be able to kiss these out.
And that night, in their house, even though there were no disagreements pending, Alasdair found Arabella entirely amenable to the idea of kissing.