Tremaine's True Love (34 page)

“I’ve seen an infected toenail carry a man off,” Nita said, speaking around a lump of fear that was her constant affliction of late. “It wasn’t a peaceful death either. Not for the patient, not for his family.”

“And not for you,” Nicholas replied. He’d accosted Nita outside Tremaine’s room, and all Nita wanted was to get back to her patient’s side.

“Nicholas, if you lecture me now on the inappropriateness of my medical endeavors, I will kick you where it hurts.” Though Nita was too tired and heartsick to kick anybody very hard, and in fairness, Nicholas himself had shown her that maneuver when she’d turned twelve.

“What if we have a civil discussion?” Nick countered, taking the tea tray from Nita and setting it on the sideboard across the corridor. “What if you allow the head of your family and your dearest, sweetest brother a moment of your time? St. Michael won’t be dancing down the lane anytime soon, Nita, and you haven’t shown up at a meal for three days.”

“You are my nosiest and most bothersome brother.”

Nick was also the largest, strongest Haddonfield, and when he settled his arms around Nita, she could do nothing but accept his embrace.

“How is the patient?” he asked.

Nicholas always smelled good, though since his marriage, his scent bore an undernote of lily of the valley. Leah’s influence, no doubt.

“Resting quietly.” Nita gave Nick the medical euphemism for “as well as can be expected,” but it was also the truth. Tremaine seemed to realize that rest was an ally, or perhaps years of racketing about in pursuit of trade had worn him out in ways that didn’t show.

Nick steered Nita to a window seat at the end of the corridor. The chill of a winter afternoon rolled off the glass at her back, while Nick wedged his warmth against her side.

“What does resting quietly mean, Nita?”

“It means, so far, infection hasn’t set in, though a bullet wound can fester slowly, depending on its depth and where it strikes. If the bone is shattered, then significant damage is done to the surrounding tissue, and—”

Nick kissed her forehead. “Have a care for my luncheon, Sister. Will St. Michael come right?”

“I don’t know,” Nita said. The fear was in her belly too, like a wasting disease. Mostly, the fear was in her heart. “I
never
know. I think the patient is fading, and then for no reason, they’re up and about, begging for a strong cup of tea and wishing me to perdition. I think surely, surely, another patient is mending well, and they slip away in the middle of a morning.”

Nick’s arm settled around Nita’s shoulders, a comforting weight. “Shall I ask Fairly to have a look at him?”

Nick was asking, not ordering, demanding, fussing, or complaining. He’d charged into the kitchen as Nita had examined the wound to Tremaine’s leg, turned white as new-fallen snow, and abruptly quit the room. Since then, he’d been quiet, his expression considering rather than put-upon.

And Nick had made an excellent suggestion.

David, Viscount Fairly, was a neighbor who lived two hours’ ride across the shire. Fairly was also a physician trained in Scotland, where the best and most forward-thinking practices were taught. Nobody had dared suggest consulting with Horton—Nita would soundly kick any who mentioned
that
name—but Fairly was a different resource entirely.

“A fine notion,” Nita said, the fear easing marginally. “Please have the viscount pay a call. I know he doesn’t practice, but we’ve had a few discussions, and he doesn’t reject my ideas simply because of my gender.”

“A man of sense, is our David. I am a man of sense too.”

Nick was a man of heart.

“Whatever you’re about to say, Nicholas, just say it. I’m too tired to shout at you and too worried to indulge in verbal fisticuffs.”

“Glad to know it, because my countess has gone several rounds with me lately, and I did not emerge victorious. Here is what I need to say: I am proud of you, Nita Haddonfield, for the convictions you put ahead of your own comfort and convenience, for your courage, for your ferocious appetite for knowledge. St. Michael will soon be back on his mettle, hatching schemes regarding my sheep and speaking in that execrable poetic dialect for the amusement of all. His good health is exclusively your accomplishment.”

“The good Lord alone—” Nita said, trying to rise.

Nick gently pulled her back to his side. “The good Lord and my dear sister. You think I strut about here, dandling my heir and plaguing my sisters, but I’ve also done some listening and some nosing about the village. Horton is a disgrace, and nobody uses him if they can help it. They all turn to you, the wealthy, the poor, the hopeless, and you never turn them down. Do you know what we call this behavior?”

“Stupid,” Nita said. “You’ve called it dangerous, mutton-headed, headstrong—”

Nick had shouted those words and more at her, and while Nita needed to return to Tremaine’s side, Nick would not let her go until he’d said his fraternal piece.

“All very true,” Nick said, “but it’s also
honorable
, Bernita mine. To look after those who can’t look after themselves, to attend to duty rather than convenience. You have reminded me of what honor requires, and I’m grateful.”

That last word—
grateful
—wasn’t one Nita heard very often. “Is that an apology?”

Nick removed his arm. “Not quite, and this is where my countess and I differ. Shall we look in on your patient?”

Nita shot to her feet, then grasped Nick’s arm to steady herself.

“You need to eat something,” Nick groused. “Something more than tea and ginger biscuits.”

“I do, but about this apology?”

“I’m not apologizing for worrying over your safety and health, Nita. I can’t help myself. I worry about those whom I love, and you are among that number. You always will be. If that’s a kicking offense, then have at me. Where I do apologize is for failing to respect your abilities and the passion with which you share them. For that, I apologize heartily.”

This conversation—a conversation, not an argument—was important. The part of Nita that loved Nicholas knew that. The rest of her dreaded what she’d find when they entered Tremaine’s room. He had been resting quietly when she’d left him only moments earlier, and yet he might be fevered or worse upon her return.

She worried for Tremaine, despite all sense to the contrary, as Nick worried about her—
as
her
entire
family
had
worried
about
her
for
years
.

“I worry,” Nita said, hand on the latch. “God knows I worry. I cannot blame you for the same trait.” Nita could, rather, commiserate with Nick for the helplessness and anxiety that caring produced.

“He’ll be fine,” Nick said, opening the door. “Bothersome, scheming, and he talks funny, but St. Michael will be fine.”

Nita had brought reinforcements in the form of her brother the earl, though she was thankfully without the damned tea tray. A man who needed assistance getting to the chamber pot had reason to view the tea tray askance.

“St. Michael, you’re awake.”

“Astute as always, Bellefonte.”

“If you want to continue to make free with my nightshirts, you’d best wake up your manners,” the earl retorted, taking a seat on the bed. The jostling produced only discomfort, not the agony it might have a few days ago.

“I forgot the tea tray,” Nita said.

Bother
the
damned
tray
.

“I wouldn’t mind a ginger biscuit or two,” Bellefonte commented, apparently getting comfortable on Tremaine’s bed.

Nita scurried out, though to Tremaine, she looked increasingly worn and worried.

Also dear. Inexpressibly dear.

“I sent Nash off to his uncle,” Bellefonte said, the pretense of genial bonhomie disappearing as Nita left the room. “I’m the magistrate, and I’ve become creative when the need to lay information is upon me—public drunkenness, attempted manslaughter, slander, assault…care to add any more?”

A weight lifted from Tremaine’s shoulders, for Nita should not have to tolerate a weasel living in the same neighborhood. Then too, Nash’s own safety probably required that he bide a distance from Lady Susannah.

“Elsie Nash might have some useful thoughts about the handling of her son’s inheritance,” Tremaine said. “My thanks, and Nash ought to thank you as well. Nita, Elsie Nash, and Addy Chalmers are out of charity with him.”

As was Tremaine. A decent pair of boots cost a pretty penny, but Nita Haddonfield’s good name was worth more than all the sheep in Britain.

“Nita cares for
you
,” Bellefonte said, scratching his back against the bedpost the way a horse might use a stout tree. “I care for Nita, therefore I’m having a competent physician come around to look you over.”

“Not Horton,” Tremaine said, visions of a dirty scalpel rising from his nightmares. “Nita won’t stand for the insult.”

“I’m not sure what to do about Horton, but he’ll not set a chubby foot on my property, lest Nita be out of charity with me. You’re managing?” Bellefonte inquired with the carefully casual commiseration of a man in blazingly good health for another fellow who hadn’t left his bed to speak of in days.

“I’m planning my apology,” Tremaine said. “Lady Nita saved my leg, if not my life.”

“Never easy, planning an apology. I’ll leave you to it.” Bellefonte patted Tremaine on the knee and rose.

“I could use a footman if you find one free.” Or Tremaine could hobble behind the privacy screen on his own, bashing about like a drunken bullock along the way.

“Nita spikes the tea with laudanum,” Bellefonte said. “That’s why you’re a bit unsteady. The leg will be fine or Nita would have relieved you of it.”

“Good to know.” Also awful to know, because Bellefonte was no longer teasing. Tremaine sank against the pillows, awaiting torture by ginger biscuit and spiked tea. He went back to work planning his apology but was distracted by the disturbing fact that Nita might well have taken a saw to him—a clean, sharp saw—had his injury been of a different nature.

She would have hated the entire ordeal but tended to Tremaine to the best of her ability anyway. When it was Tremaine’s life in jeopardy, he’d relied on Nita to use the very skills he’d expected her to deny others.

A lifetime of apologies might not suffice, though he’d start with one good one and hope for a miracle.

* * *

The fourth day of Tremaine’s convalescence saw a change in Nita’s patient.

“What are you doing out of bed?” she asked.

“Hobbling slowly,” Tremaine retorted. “Impersonating my grandfather when his rheumatism acts up. No wonder wounded soldiers are eager to have at their enemies once more. Marching about is tedious, but a bullet wound is a damned inconvenience.”

A recovering patient was a damned inconvenience too, for as soon as he was hale, Tremaine might well be on his way.

“Please sit,” Nita said, when what she wanted to do was put an arm around Tremaine’s waist and wrestle him back to bed.

“I shall sit on the sofa,” he replied, wobbling off in that direction. George or some other traitorous brother had provided a pair of crutches. Tremaine’s skill with them suggested this treason had been committed at least a day ago.

“You may sit where you please, but you’ll prop your leg up.”

Tremaine looked like he wanted to argue, a sure sign of recovery. His hair was combed, and his dressing gown neatly belted, though his feet were bare.

“I hate being invalided,” he growled, “and hate more that I’ve prevailed on you to tend me.”

As if Nita would allow anybody else near him. “I won’t be tending you much longer. Lord Fairly says your wound is healing beautifully.”

“Nonsense. An unsightly rip in a man’s flesh cannot be beautiful. Would you please sit beside me?”

A rip in a man’s flesh could be gorgeous, when little heat or swelling accompanied it, the scent lacked any hint of putrefaction, and the edges were already beginning to knit.

Nita set a hassock before Tremaine and took a seat beside him rather than argue.

“Nicholas has sent Edward Nash to his uncle,” she said, because somebody ought to let Tremaine know. “I wanted to shoot Edward in the leg and leave him to Horton’s tender mercies.”

That sentiment was hardly to her credit as a healer, though Nita’s sisters, Leah, and Addy shared it with her. Susannah’s quotations were recently all drawn from the Bard’s bloodiest tragedies.

Tremaine took Nita’s hand. “I saw the knife Horton intended to use on me. George was to cut off my muddy boot with it, then pass it over to Horton.”

“I’m surprised you remember that.” Did Tremaine also recall telling Nita that his heart was already in her keeping? For Nita would never forget those words.

A silence took up residence where Nita’s heartfelt confession should be. She held on to Tremaine’s hand and tried to recall how to begin her well-rehearsed speech.

“I was wrong.”

They’d spoken the exact same words at the exact same moment. Tremaine kissed Nita’s knuckles, though he was also trying to hide a puzzled smile.

“Any woman who rescues me from certain butchery or worse, when I’ve castigated her for rescuing others, can be as wrong as she pleases,” he said. “Nita, can you forgive me?”

She leaned into Tremaine’s solid warmth—she was on his good side, not that it mattered.

“There’s nothing to forgive, Tremaine. Nothing.”

Tremaine’s arm came around her shoulders. “I said I would not marry you if you persisted with your medical activities, then I expected you to save my life. How is this not gross arrogance, selfishness, bullheadedness, and a reason to hate a man?”

How was it not entirely understandable—now? But where to start? “My family loves me.”

“I love you too, lass.” A grumpy disclosure, not a declaration.

Nita waited, because the fingers stroking her cheek were as gentle as Tremaine’s tone was rough.

“Dueling is a stupid, reckless, violent exercise in lunacy,” he said, “but it can sort out a man’s priorities. As I marched off the steps in that clearing, I did not think about commerce. I did not consider how to market merino wool most profitably. I did not wish I’d written one last letter to my factors in the Midlands.”

Nita slid her hand inside Tremaine’s dressing gown, needing to feel the beat of his heart beneath her palm.

“I should hope you paid attention to the counting, sir.”

“More than Nash did, apparently, but that’s not relevant. What’s relevant is that memories of you and hope for a future with you filled my heart and my mind as I paced toward my fate. You, Nita Haddonfield. You matter more to me than my fears that you’ll be carried off by some dread disease. If I could have five years with you, or five minutes with you,
why
would
I
deny
myself
that
joy
?”

“Because you’re not a fool,” she said, kissing his wrist. “I’ve had a change in perspective, Tremaine.”

“As long as you remain in my arms, you may explain this change in perspective.”

“Addy Chalmers brought us word of the duel. Ladies aren’t supposed to know of such things, but we often do. I had my bag in hand and was on my way to the woods when George brought you home.”

“I recall a
posse
comitatus
of your sisters, the countess, and Addy. They wouldn’t have let you go alone.”

“I understand that now,” Nita said. “They want to protect me. My siblings aren’t angry at me for tending others; they are frightened for me. When Addy told us you were to face Nash over a pair of pistols, I was terrified. I could not think; I could not move. I could not even pray coherently, Tremaine.
You
could
have
died.
”

Nita had been terrified, paralyzed, mute, and horrified, even as she’d silently bargained with the Almighty.
Please, keep the man I love safe.
How did soldiers’ families deal with that terror day after day, year after year?

How
had
Nita’s family dealt with it?

“What could possibly daunt your bottomless courage?” Tremaine asked. Was he growing tired?

“I haven’t much courage,” Nita said. “Nicholas says I’m honorable because I help where I can, but I’m not brave, Tremaine. Much about medicine scares me or disgusts me. I can admit that now.”

To him.

“You never appear scared or disgusted. You appear determined and capable. You’re also very pretty.”

He truly was on the mend, thank heavens. “Have you been drinking your tea?”

“No, love. Not after your brother told me you spike it. Tell me more about being afraid, Nita.”

Yes, tell him
. Tell him that too, because it made all the difference. “When I snatch up my bag and march off to a sickroom, you are
terrified
for me. I see that now. I grab my medicinals the way you fellows take up your dueling pistols, and I march off against an opponent who doesn’t wait for the count, who knows no protocol, who kills entire families without even alluding to concepts of honor or reason. You are not being pigheaded or backward or narrow-minded when you ask me to give up seeing patients; you are as frightened as I am.”

As frightened as Nita had been for years.

Tremaine passed Nita a handkerchief. She’d soon have a collection with his initials embroidered on them.

“I love you,” he said, kissing her ear. “I love your kisses and your passion, your polite reserve, your humor, stubbornness, and courage. I want very much to marry you, Nita Haddonfield. If that means I send you off to do battle with the plague itself, I still want to marry you.”

“I
don’t
want to do battle with the plague,” Nita wailed softly. “I want to marry you, to have great, fat, healthy babies with you, to scold you for letting our children spoil their supper with ginger biscuits.

“But people know I’ll help,” she went on, “or try to help, and Mama told them all I have a gift. So they call upon me when there’s illness or injury in the house, and if I don’t go, who will? Horton is backward and bumbling, and even he senses that his knowledge is badly out-of-date. I can’t leave people to suffer when I might help, but I won’t lose you, Tremaine. I cannot.”

Nita fell silent when she wanted to rant. She could have lost him to Edward Nash’s pride, stubbornness, and shortsightedness. She could not bear it if she lost him to her own.

* * *

Nita was a sweet, warm, tired—and
upset
—weight against Tremaine’s side. Every time he’d surfaced from his laudanum dreams, she’d been by his bed. Often he’d found her hand in his, and sometimes she’d fallen asleep like that—curled over in her chair by his bed, her hand wrapped around his.

“I quizzed Lord Fairly as he thumped and poked at me.” Tremaine had had commercial dealings with Fairly several years back without ever learning of the man’s medical abilities.

“About sheep?”

“Not about sheep. No titled Englishman knows more about sheep than I do.”

Tremaine had amused her. God willing, he’d amuse Nita often in the coming years.

“Go on, Tremaine. Would you like a ginger biscuit?”

“Please, God, not another ginger biscuit. Fairly is something of an expert on the export of medical treatises and instruments.”

“He’s quite knowledgeable,” Nita said. “Also kind. When I can’t find a reference in English to a disease or herbal remedy, he often has something in his library.”

Fortunately, the estimable Lord Fairly was happily married, else Tremaine might have questioned his generous literary motives.

“Fairly spent his early childhood in Scotland and returned there for some of his medical training. He’s skilled as both a surgeon and a physician, unlike your Dr. Horton.”

Nita shifted so she straddled Tremaine’s lap. “Can you be comfortable like this?”

No, he could
not.
“Cuddle up, love. My leg is fine and I’ve missed you.”

Nita settled in, and Tremaine forgot what he’d been bleating about—ah, the ever-helpful Lord Fairly.

“I asked Fairly to find us a pair of physicians to open up a practice here in Haddondale. At least one of them must be young and recently educated. The other can be older, provided his training exceeds the theoretical foundation given to most English physicians. Will you interview these fellows, put them through their paces?”

Nita kissed him. “I love you. We need a good midwife too.”