He dropped to his knees beside them, the curls of his peruke swinging forward.
Margaret opened her eyes at the movement, met the doctor’s gaze, and promptly recoiled in horror, a startled shriek on her tongue.
Definitely not a hallucination then.
“Who thebloody hellis this?!” Margaret screeched, reaching for Lottie’s hand and attempting to scrabble backwards. Her cumbersome body resisted, barely moving.
Ah, yes.
Lottie had noted the rather illuminating expanse of her older sister’s vocabulary over the past several hours.
“He’s the doctor, dearest,” Lottie explained, silently praying she was correct.
The doctor directed Danny to set his armful of linens on the carriage blanket beside Margaret and the bucket of water beside it. The footman bowed and beat a hasty retreat, heading back to the horses.
Pulling off his black riding gloves, the doctor opened his case, retrieving a small amber-colored jar.
He was young. Even through the face paint, Lottie would hazard the man had not seen a day above thirty.
That said, he radiated competence. He situated a few more jars and then pulled out a pocket watch.
Margaret shrank from him, yanking her wrist out of his hold as he attempted to monitor her pulse.
“I don’t want this doctor, Lottie.” Her eyes turned pleading. “You must find me another one.”
“Now, Margaret—”
“I have waited too long for this child to have it delivered by a . . . a . . . foppishlothario.” Margaret grabbed Lottie’s hand. “Can you imagine Frank’s horror?”
The good doctor’s face devolved into pure granite as Margaret spoke—the expression utterly incongruous with his absurd attire.
“I assure ye, this is my idea of a nightmare, as well.” The doctor’s tone was starkly dry.
The mole-patch on his right cheek slipped downwards, as if finally ascertaining that it was far too frivolous for his stern face.
The doctor startled and swiped at the patch—much like one might swat a mosquito—smearing a bright streak of rouge down to his jaw. He stared at the pink staining his fingers, as if both perplexed and horrified. Lottie had seen that look before on her cousin Gabriel’s face after one too many glasses of brandy.
It was the expression of a man with regrets.
But the blush climbing the doctor’s neck implied that he was not immune to embarrassment.
“I was led to believe your situation was more dire than it appears at present,” he continued. “But now that I am here, I promise that ye and your unborn babe are in capable hands, Mrs. . . .” His voice trailed off, waiting for Margaret to provide her name.
“LadyFrank Fulton,” Margaret said, emphasizing her title.
Lottie knew her sister to be kind and generous, but she was perhaps slightly less so with those she viewed as being beneath her.
The doctor did not blink at her tone.
“Lady Frank, my apologies. I gather that we both have a tale to tell.” The doctor pulled a cloth from his case and proceeded to wipe the rouge from his hands with jerking motions. “For yourself, it will be how a finely-bred lady ended up here, atop carriage blankets beneath a tree, ready to give birth—”
Margaret groaned again, eyes closing in pain and turning Lottie’s fingers purple with the strain of her grip.
“—and for myself, it will be how I arrived dressed as ye see. This isnotmy habitual apparel.” He waved a hand up and down to indicate his old-fashioned dress, eyes rolling in frustration. “I ken that this entire situation appears untoward. But a wee bairn cares naught for propriety and will come into this world in the manner it chooses. We must merely make do with the hand God has dealt us.”
Lottie smiled.
It might have been the exhaustion and stress clouding her thinking, but Lottie decided then and there she liked Doctor King Louis the XIV.
