“Doyou tire?” she asked with a laugh.
“A wee bit in the evenings.” He shrugged, continuing to brush Galahad’s flank.
Lottie knew this. He never complained, but he elevated his leg after dinner and massaged his thigh muscles, grunting occasionally as if in pain.
“I am cautious and careful with my injury,” Alex continued. “As long as the bone remains well-supported, it will continue to heal whether I lie abed or make myself useful.”
“You are like Cox’s timepiece—a perpetual motion machine. Always moving, never at rest.”
As if proving her point, he didnotpause. Instead, he continued to brush Galahad’s coat, hopping and leaning on one crutch.
“I shall go mad if I sit,” he said, voice quiet. “Besides, as Galahad was involved in my injury, I did not want to wait to confront him.” Alex raised his head and looked at her. “I’m sure the servants or Dr. Smithson or someone has given ye a synopsis of my family’s history.”
“Not as such, actually,” she replied, dredging up what little she had heard over the past weeks. “Just that your family owned a large stud farm in Scotland and that Galahad came from there.”
She said nothing about the other rumors she had heard the steward whisper to the butler, something about Dr. Whitaker’s brother and a tragic incident.
But she sensed the history lingering there, in the air between them.
Alex continued grooming. “When ye train horses, the first thing ye have tae learn is how tae fall without breaking your neck. The second is how to get right back on the horse, no matter what has occurred. I cannae get on Galahad quite yet—” He stood upright and waved the brush at his leg in its brace. “—and so I’m settling for tending to him instead. Besides, Galahad is a welcome bit of home.”
Alex set down the brush. Galahad nudged Alex’s pocket. With a smile, Alex withdrew several sugar cubes, offering them to the horse.
“So Galahad is allowed sugar but not yourself.” Lottie shook her head.
“Something of the like.” Alex gave Galahad one last pat and reached for his second crutch, hobbling his way over to her.
Questions crowded Lottie’s tongue as he unlatched the door and stepped out.
You only speak of your sister. What happened to the rest of your family, particularly your brother?
What drives you to never sit still?
Why won’t you eat sugar?
She suspected that the answers would reveal painful wounds, deeply gouged and perhaps still festering.
Hence his silence.
And hers in questioning him about it.
But the more she came to know him, the more she wished to ask.
Lottie watched as he set the brush in the tack room, his body swinging easily on his crutches to return to her.
Instead of poking directly at his pain, she asked, “Why are you a doctor in Edinburgh and not the owner of a prosperous horse farm? You have an obvious affinity for horses.”
Very well, it was still obliquely related to hertruequestions.
A lady had to try, after all.
“My father often asked me that exact thing. ‘Why medicine? Why cannae ye be content with horses?’” He snorted. “The honest answer is the simplest—medicine fascinates me in a way that horses never have. I love animals and wished my family every success with their endeavors. But Ian, my older brother, was always destined to inherit the estate and stables. I would only ever be a hired hand. I didnae want that for my future. And so, I enrolled at university.”
They fell into step, moving out of the stables and toward the parterre garden without either of them needing to direct the other.
Lottie tucked her hands into her muff and buried her face into the collar of her cloak. Alex appeared less affected by the cold—though his nose was decidedly red—looking out over the bare trees and brown earth.
“And your father supported you attending university?”
