Carla Kelly (14 page)

He looked sideways at the doctor. The notion was far from ridiculous. A man would have to be chipped from stone or carved of wood not to be drawn to Libby Ames, of this Nez had no doubt. But did Libby Ames return the doctor’s feelings? Never. She had even laughed at Anthony Cook behind his back and told the chocolate merchant in that artless way of hers that she and the doctor would never suit.

And so he would leave the matter. The duke looked up then from his own silent contemplation of the road and turned around. Both of them, deep in their personal musings, had continued some distance beyond the gates of the doctor’s estate.

Nez laughed softly and put his hand on the doctor’s arm to stop him. To the duke’s amazement, Anthony Cook tensed and made a fist, as if he were about to turn on him. The duke drew back, startled, and the two men stared at each other.

The moment passed quickly. The doctor took a deep breath and rubbed his eyes. “Dear me, I must be more tired than I imagined. This pace I have been keeping of late begins to remind me of the worst days of my training in Edinburgh, when working straight through for seventy-two hours was not unknown.”

If the doctor could recover so well, so could he. “Doctor . . . Oh, dash it all, surely I can call you Anthony. You would greatly benefit from having a driver. Then you could nod off in safety between calls.”

“It is a thought.”

You could also use a wife, the duke thought, but it isn’t going to be Libby Ames. He smiled at the doctor. “Sir, retrace your steps and go to bed.”

To his relief, the doctor grinned. “I should think of these things myself. Good day to you, sir.”

If Cook’s smile hadn’t reached as far as his eyes, the duke chose to overlook that fact. With a wave of his hand, Nez continued down the road, hands deep in pockets again, whistling to himself. When Libby returned from the gypsies, he would put the question to her. He looked back at the doctor, who was met inside the gates by his horse. The animal nudged him down the lane and the duke felt another twinge of sadness. Poor fellow. Too bad he will not win this one. He is deserving of all good fortune.

But not
that
much good fortune, he thought, and smiled in spite of his philanthropic regard for Dr. Cook.

***

Libby would never have admitted her disappointment over the gypsies to anyone. When Lydia—with much gyration of face and obvious disdain—had told her about them last winter, Libby had taken her cousin’s unflattering description with a grain of salt and had resolved to see them for herself before she passed judgment.

She remembered gypsies from her years in Spain, those inhabitants of the caves of Granada, with their proud eyes, their arrogant carriage, and the magic way they stamped the earth with their feet and stirred the soul. She recalled the time Papa had taken her—without Mama knowing—to have her fortune told. Libby remembered sitting on his lap, her eyes wide, her mouth open, as the woman with gold hooped earrings and an improbable beauty mark had predicted wealth, love, and leisure to enjoy them.

These gypsies of Kent were nothing like she remembered. The sullen-eyed man had snatched away her pots to be mended, as if she would change her mind at the last minute, and Joseph had gone off happily enough to look at the horses. She had been left to sit on a log and wait in solitude, a stranger among those with nothing but suspicion in their eyes, when anyone bothered to glance her way.

It was a small encampment, with only two wagons once painted extravagantly but now shabby, the paint chipped and flaking. There were no older women about, only a young one with small children. The little ones were ragged beyond any poverty she could remember from Spain. They crouched on their haunches watching her, until their mama called them away, and they vanished as silently as they had come.

Libby amused herself watching a small baby in the distance, slung in a blanket in the low branches of a tree. The wind blew, the tree moved, and the little one raised its hand to the leaves dancing overhead. The baby chortled, and Libby smiled, wishing she had leave to come closer to look at the child. Instead, she sat where she was, her hands folded primly in her lap.

Nesbitt Duke. She thought of their kiss in the orchard, her cheeks growing pink again at the mere memory. Last night, as he started down the stairs, she had been sure he would kiss her again, if Joseph had not burst in the door with his news of the gypsies.

A kiss from a gentleman, especially one as handsome as the chocolate merchant, was not an everyday occurrence. She had been kissed before by some of Papa’s officers and the sensation had always been a pleasing one, but never before had she wanted to follow any of those men to their rooms.

She sat up straighter. Her thoughts were leading her down paths better left untrod for the moment, no matter how enticing they were. Better not think about how much she wanted Nesbitt Duke, for that was what it boiled down to.

Libby admitted to an unwillingness to consider the subject, even in the privacy of her own brain. She had schooled herself since Papa’s death and the realization of her own poverty that there would likely never be anyone willing to engage her affections on a permanent basis. Her long experience with the army had taught her that men needed dowries more than they needed pretty faces.

And here was Mr. Nesbitt Duke, as handsome a man as she could remember, dumped on her doorstep. It seemed to Libby as though kindly providence had chosen to intervene in the planned course of her life, and she was never one to disregard providence.

“Well, Mr. Duke, if you can overlook my complete lack of fortune, I can likely disregard your less-then-genteel background,” she whispered as she watched the baby.

That they would suit well together, Libby had no doubt. She had no experience with men, but some instinct told her that she could make this man happy and he would never look elsewhere for company. She would welcome him home from each chocolate excursion, and he would never want to be anywhere but with her. She knew this as fervently as she knew there was a Trinity and that the sun would rise and set and rise again.

She sighed again and smiled to herself. Lydia would declare this turn of events better than a novel from the lending library. In recent months, they had spent nights crowded in the same bed, giggling over the lads of the county and their bumbling efforts at romance.

Even as soon as she had that thought, she dismissed it, and felt her cheeks grow pink again. She did not want to giggle and speculate about Nesbitt Duke, or make foolish wagers with her cousin. She wanted to think about him in private and not subject her feelings to Lydia’s well-meant but foolish imaginings. There was only one person with whom she could discuss her feelings, and that was with Mr. Duke himself.

Libby stood up, in a pelter to be off, looking about for Joseph. A little wind had picked up and the leaves were rustling louder now, turning over and showing the underside of their green veins. She frowned and glanced at the sky. She could smell the storm coming, that musty, earthy odor that set cattle lowing and kittens searching about for shelter.

There was Joseph at last, coming slowly toward her across an empty field. The gypsies had tethered their horses in the distance, and squatting in the dust, gesturing to one another, they were grouped about the animals. Joseph looked back once, twice, as if he wanted to stay with them and absorb their strange Rom language, even though he could not understand it, because he knew the subject was horses.

Libby lost sight of him for a moment as he entered a copse of birch trees, and then she saw him again. He had stopped, and she sighed in exasperation. As she watched in growing curiosity, he straightened up suddenly and stripped off his nankeen jacket, spreading it over something or someone she could not see, not even as she stood on tiptoe.

He gestured toward her then, short, urgent motions of his arm that started her walking toward him and then running as he knelt down again and disappeared from her line of sight.

At least it wasn’t likely to be one of the squire’s horses, she thought grimly as she hurried toward her brother. And he will befriend every wounded thing and then look at her askance in that mild, vaguely reproachful way of his if she attempted to disrupt his philanthropy. The hot words that rose in her throat subsided as she took a deep breath and hurried on, wishing that her stays were not laced so tight. That was Joseph, and there wasn’t any changing him. He would never comprehend her agitation.

Libby came close to the copse as the rain began, a drop at a time, and then many drops pelting down. She sniffed appreciatively again and then stopped suddenly at the edge of the thicket, her mouth open in astonishment.

A young girl sat on the ground, her hands clutching Joseph’s thin jacket around her. Her right leg—bird-bone-thin and muddy—was twisted at an odd angle.

“Marime,”
called a woman from behind Libby.

Libby snatched her hand back. It was the gypsy woman who had hung the baby in the tree. The child was clutched in her arms now, wet.

Libby got to her feet. “We were only trying to help,” she began.

“Marime,”
the woman said again, her voice more emphatic. She jabbed the air with her finger, motioning Libby away, as the silver bangles on her arms rattled. “Unclean!”

Libby stamped her foot and the woman retreated with her baby to the trees, as if afraid to come closer. Libby stared at her hard for a moment and the gypsy put her hands to her face, covering her eyes.

Libby sighed and turned back to the young girl, who was whimpering now even as she tried to draw closer to Libby as the rain pelted down.

“Dear me,” Libby said, and put her arm around the girl. “It appears that we could use some help.” She looked up at her brother, who hovered close by, his eyes on the woman in the trees. “Joseph, hurry and run to Dr. Cook’s house.”

He shook his head. “The squire will beat me if he sees me. I don’t think I would like that.”

Libby gritted her teeth to keep from shouting. “My dear, you’ll have to chance it. This girl needs a physician. Only look how strangely her leg appears. I wonder, do you suppose she fell out of that tree?”

Joseph looked at the tree that swayed in the wind, the leaves turning over in agitation. “I know that it is a tree I would have fallen out of.”

Libby resisted the urge to shout at him, to hurry him along. Angry words would only confuse him. “You probably would have, my dear,” she agreed. “And now I really think you should run for Dr. Cook.”

He looked over his shoulder again at the gypsy woman, who had set her baby down and was rocking back and forth in agitation, keening a low tune that raised the hairs on Libby’s arms. “If they do not want us, they won’t want the doctor.”

He was right, of course. Libby stamped her foot. “Do it anyway, Joe. We need Dr. Cook.”

Without another word but several backward glances, Joseph started across the field on a run. Libby returned to the girl, who only stared at her out of pain-filled eyes and tried to move her leg.

Libby touched the child’s arm and the gypsy woman threw the first stone. Libby sucked in her breath and whirled around as the rock landed against her skirts.

“Unclean,” the woman shouted, and threw another stone. This one landed short of the mark. Libby released her hold on the young girl and the woman put her arm down.

“So that’s how it is?” Libby murmured out loud. She looked at the little girl, who huddled close but did not touch her. “Usually it is not so hard to do a good deed for someone, my dear. If that is your mother, she does not perfectly understand my intentions.”

Libby brushed the tangle of hair from the girl’s eyes and was rewarded with a handful of pebbles thrown harder against her skirts. Pointedly, she turned her back on the woman in the trees and looked toward the direction Joseph had disappeared.

Hurry up, Joe, she thought. And for goodness’ sake, bring the doctor.

11

EACH minute seemed like an hour as Libby waited for Joseph to return with Dr. Cook. Libby shivered in the rain, wishing she could hold the girl closer to her. Another attempt had resulted in a rock that nearly struck the little girl. After that, Libby folded her hands in her lap, gritted her teeth, and speculated on the perversity of human nature.

The girl had settled down to an occasional whimper. She would catch her breath and sob out loud and try to move her leg. Her mother stayed where she was in the trees, unwilling to leave her child, even to run to the gypsy encampment, where the men watched their horses.

Perhaps I should be grateful for that, Libby thought, shivering at the unwelcome idea of stones thrown by men. She kept her hands to herself and willed the doctor to hurry.

And then he was coming over the little rise and down toward her. He appeared in no great hurry and Libby felt a rush of irritation. She started to stay something to hurry him along when she looked at the trees again and noticed that the woman was running back and forth in greater agitation, calling to her daughter.

The doctor stood still, coming no closer. He squatted on his haunches and Libby let out a sigh of great exasperation.

“Dr. Cook, I need you,” she said, her voice raised in agitation.

To her further dismay, he put his finger to his lips. “Hush, Miss Ames. We have a delicate situation here.”

She shook her head at the understatement. “I am sure this girl has a broken leg. Can’t you do something for her?”

“I wish to God I could. If I touch her, that woman will run for the men and we will be in for it.” He held up his hand to ward off Libby’s hot words. “Hush, now! There is some strange taboo about a man looking upon a woman’s legs, even one as young as this.” The doctor regarded the little girl, who watched him with wary eyes and edged closer to Libby, the lesser of two evils.

“Surely you can do something.”

“My dear, I have been frustrated for years by gypsies,” he said. “I have watched them die when I could have saved them, and I have watched them driven from town to town because they are so strange.” He sighed and looked at the woman in the trees. “She is like a mother bird, trying to attract our attention away from the nest. It makes me shudder to think what treatment in our good British towns compels people to behave this way.”

He sat in silence in the driving rain, as if trying to make up his mind. “Well, Libby, are you game for a stoning? I am not, but let us try something. Pull up her skirt so I can see her leg.”

Libby did as he said, pointing to the place below the child’s knee where the leg bent at an odd angle. A shower of pebbles struck her on the cheek.

The doctor started forward, his face red. “I won’t do it. Libby, get away from her.”

“No. I couldn’t possibly leave her,” she said.

He sat another long minute until the woman in the trees was calmer. “Well, then, my dear Miss Ames. Hold the inside of her leg steady and push slowly and carefully against it from the opposite side. It looks to me like a mere greenstick break. You should feel it click into place.”

Without thinking about anything except the task before her, Libby hunched her shoulders to protect her head as much as she could, took a deep breath, and did as Dr. Cook told her. She shut her mind to the terror of something more than pebbles thrown her way, disregarded the fear of what would happen if she couldn’t hear a click and the bone remained as displaced as ever, steeled herself to do something so serious that she knew nothing about.

To her overwhelming relief, the bone offered no resistance but straightened exactly as the doctor had said it would. She looked up at him gratefully and then smiled to feel the tiny click as the bone came together. The child stopped whimpering. Libby hugged her and then let go quickly as the rocks rained down.

To her surprise, in another moment the doctor was beside her. He pushed her to one side and whipped out two splints. “She’ll run for the men now, Libby, but we dare not leave it like this. Get the bandage out of my pocket while I position these splints. Joseph told me what to expect, bless him, so I brought these. Ah, very good.”

Libby pulled out the bandage and unrolled it in a trice. While she held the splints in place, he expertly bound the leg, spent a swift second in examination of his handiwork, and then jerked Libby to her feet.

“Ready for a footrace, my dear?” he asked as he pulled her out of the little depression. “The interests of medicine are strangely served upon occasion. Oh, God, here they come.”

He grabbed her hand and set off running. Libby looked back once to see the men chasing after them, some of them carrying sticks, others rocks. The sight, softened as it was by the hazy rain, still made her pick up her skirts, throw gentility to the wind, and race for the fence.

The doctor panted along beside her. “I could be a gentleman’s son and give up all this,” he said between gasps.

The stones pelted around them. “What, and lead a boring life? Ow!” she exclaimed as a stone struck her back.

The doctor tightened his grip on her hand and ran faster. They were at the hedgerow that ran alongside the road. A wagon filled with animal fodder lumbered by.

The farmer, still grasping the reins, had raised up off the wagon seat to watch the unusual sight of Holyoke Green’s portly physician squeezing his considerable bulk through the hedgerow and tugging Miss Elizabeth Ames along behind him. He grinned in appreciation of Miss Ames’ tidy ankles and well-shaped knees as the doctor threw her into the wagon, jumped in after her, and commanded him to drive for all he was worth.

Libby heaved a sigh that came all the way from her toenails, and leaned back against the hay. She shook her skirts down around her ankles again. To her mind, the wagon wasn’t going any faster, but the gypsies had stopped at the fence. They threw a few more stones and made some strange gestures with their hands, but came no closer.

“H’mm, we have likely been cursed with boils or piles, Miss Ames,” said the doctor as he took off his glasses, wiped the rain from them with the wet corner of his shirt tail that had worked itself loose, and put them back on.

Libby laughed. “You can’t talk about piles and call me Miss Ames. My name is Libby.”

The doctor joined in her laughter, even as he had the good graces to blush. “I suppose I can’t, Libby.” He raised up on his knees. “Thank you, Farmer Hartley.”

The farmer touched his hand to his hat and chuckled. “Will you charge me less now, sir?”

“You and all your descendants,” the doctor declared, “right down into the twentieth century. I will put it in my will. Make it an act of Parliament.”

“Very well, sir. Done. I am going in the wrong direction for you, though.”

“Any direction away from the gypsies is fine with us,” Libby said. She started in surprise as the doctor began to unbutton the back of her dress. “Doctor!”

“Be quiet,” he said. “H’mm. The rock broke the skin. Quit fidgeting! Surely you are not a worse patient than our Mr. Duke. I probably have a gum plaster somewhere for that.”

He kept his hand on her bare shoulder while he fished in his pockets. In another moment he put the dressing over the little wound. “You can take it off tonight. Be sure to wash the cut well.” He buttoned up her dress again. “And stay away from the gypsies.”

Libby nodded, sober again. “What will the gypsies do to the little girl?”

The doctor was silent a long moment. “I do not know. I hope they will leave the splint on, but I don’t know that they will. If she will only be allowed to stay off that leg for a month, it will likely heal. Children are amazingly resilient.”

To her amazement, Libby burst into tears. Without a word and with no apparent discomfort at the aspect of a watery female, the doctor put his arm around her and held her tight. She burrowed close to him and sobbed into his soaking wet jacket.

“Did anyone ever tell you that you are a remarkable young woman?” he asked finally, his voice gentle and close to her ear.

Libby shook her head. “I don’t believe the subject ever came up before,” she sobbed.

“Strange,” he murmured. “What is the matter with the men of Kent?”

“Nothing,” she wailed, and he threw back his head, laughed, and then kissed her.

Elizabeth Ames amazed herself by letting him. She clung to him with all her strength, kissed him back, and then gasped and sat up straight.

“Doctor, I can’t imagine what you must think of me,” she whispered, her eyes on the farmer’s back. Farmer Hartley’s shoulders were shaking, and she almost wished herself back with the gypsies.

Completely unrepentant, Dr. Cook loosened his grip but did not let go of her. “Well, a year ago I thought you were the most beautiful woman in the world. When I finally met you, I learned that you were also intelligent. Now I suspect that you are endowed with supreme good taste in men.”

“I don’t do that every day,” was all she could think to say in the face of his own good humor, and then blushed when she remembered her trip to the orchard with Mr. Duke only yesterday.

“I never suspected that you did,” he replied as he got off the wagon and held out his arms to her.

The rain pelted down. She let him take her properly by the arm and walk her along the road. The humor of the situation overcame her overloaded scruples, and she laughed in spite of her embarrassment.

“We look like two escapees from a lunatic asylum,” she said as he turned her way, a question in his eyes, when she laughed.

“I wouldn’t know, Miss Ames,” he said. “I think you look quite fine. A bit wet, maybe a little muddy.” He paused and took her by the shoulders. “In fact, the sight is so awe-inspiring that I am compelled to ask you to marry me.”

She stared at him, charmed because it was her first real proposal and dismayed because she could only turn him down. “Sir, we would never suit.”

He took his hands off her shoulders and continued ambling along. “Oh, I think we would suit famously.”

“I think not,” Libby replied, her eyes straight ahead of her on the road. What would Lydia say? she thought as she walked in silence beside the doctor. She would laugh and laugh if I ever told her that our bumbling Dr. Cook had declared himself. This conversation will go no further. Good heavens, he must be crazy to think that I would ever marry him.

Libby held out her hand to the doctor and he took it between his own. “Sir, let us be friends. I don’t love you.”

Her words sounded dreadful, spoken out loud. She regretted them the instant she said them, but there was no remedy for that. He had to know that the whole idea was absurd.

To her acute embarrassment, the doctor regarded her thoughtfully in silence. He shook her hand finally and continued down the road, speaking more to himself than to her. “Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.” He turned to her again and bowed. “We will pretend this conversation never happened and carry on as before, Miss Ames.”

“Very well, Dr. Cook,” she agreed, and wondered why she felt vaguely let down.

And then she was acutely aware of the fact that her sodden dress clung to her in disgraceful folds, her hair was tumbled around her shoulders and dripping rain, and her face was smudged with mud.

“Oh, dear, I am a fright,” she said, too embarrassed to look at the doctor.

“Yes, you are,” he agreed. “I suppose now I have seen you at your worst.”

The way he said it, so serious and with just that hint of a twinkle in his eyes, made her laugh. Obviously he had reconsidered his foolish proposal. “You’re not much better,” she joked.

He grinned back, ran his long fingers through his sopping hair, and then smoothed his lapels as elegantly as if he stood in a ballroom, dressed in his best. “Miss Ames, that takes no effort at all. I’ve never been burdened with high good looks, so the contrast is less remarkable in me than in you.”

They continued in companionable silence toward the house, which appeared out of the haze and the misty rain.

“You’re a great gun, Miss Ames,” he said finally. “I don’t know one woman in a hundred who would have come through like you did.”

She shook her head. “I must differ, Anthony,” she said as the image of the young girl rose before her eyes again. “I don’t suppose there is a woman alive who wouldn’t have done what I did. Poor child.” She looked up at him in confusion again. “I am so rude! Do you mind that I have called you Anthony?”

He grabbed her by the elbows, picked her up, and smacked a wet kiss on her muddy forehead before setting her down again. “You goose! Even if we are destined to be no more than friends, you may call your friends by their first name, Libby. I intend to.” He patted her cheek. “And I promise not to kiss you again. It just seemed like a good idea.”

“You and your good ideas,” she declared.

As they neared the house, she thought of Joseph for the first time. “Did he really summon you, Anthony? I was afraid he would not. He is so afraid of your father.”

Anthony chuckled, “A most interesting reflection, now that you mention it. I was just about to lie down—I was up all night, Libby—when I happened to glance out the window. There was Joseph, pacing up and down in front of the gate, as if he could not quite decide what to do. I waved to him, and he called to me, and you can guess the rest.”

“Thank goodness,” she said, and gave his hand a squeeze.

They walked in silence to Holyoke Green. Libby wondered how Candlow would receive her in all her mud. If there was a merciful providence, Aunt Crabtree would be lying down, recovering from the exhaustion of an afternoon of solitaire. She was only grateful that Mama—a high stickler if ever there was one—would not be standing in the entry, tapping her foot.

Libby thought of the chocolate merchant then and hoped that he was involved somewhere in the house and would miss her less-than-auspicious entrance. Mr. Duke, if only you had rescued me from the gypsies, I think I would have accepted your proposal.

She glanced at the doctor and blushed. Anthony, she thought, I could never marry you.

It was time to let him go on his way. “I shall sneak in the side door,” she said. “With any luck, I shall avoid everyone.”