“Tell me the place where you will be, Alasdair. I may wish to write to you.”
Bewildered, Alasdair gave her the name of Dr. Murray’s house in Edinburgh. He considered Harry a close friend, but he could not imagine what she would write to him regarding, not when he expected to be away only two weeks, a month at the most.
And then Thomas came up behind his wife as she stood at the desk writing and put his arms around her and began stroking her rounded front, high up, close to her breasts, kissing her neck, and murmuring something to her.
“Tommy,” she said, and her voice caught.
“I will go now, my lord, my lady,” Alasdair said.
He closed the door on the couple.
So that was what the bed in the room was for. The earl had to come to where his wife lived.
That night, Alasdair felt a bit wretched on his way back to his house that adjoined his surgery in the village. He had known Thomas for seven years and Harry for almost five years, ever since she had married the earl and come to Sommerleigh. They had become his closest friends, the people he would seek out if ever he needed solace or help.
But the Drakes had a way sometimes of making him feel very lonely indeed.
Even when they did not touch—or, that is, even when the earl did not touch his wife since Harry seemed to have an entirely different mode of affection—Alasdair could sense the tenderness and the heat between them. The air was fraught with something palpable. Love, he supposed.
Nearly four years ago, he had had a glimpse of what it might be like to have a love like that. It had been a fleeting exchange between Harry’s half sister Arabella and himself.
Arabella. She had all of Harry’s intelligence but none of her awkwardness. She had drawn him out and put him at ease, despite his immediate attraction to her. She had had a beguiling girlishness that made him feel—well, more a man of the world than he really was.
And she had been, seemingly and shockingly, interested in him.
Finally, she had been exquisite. Masses of golden hair, big, blue eyes, such a small nose, such pink, plump lips—but no, he could not think on those lips. She was of short stature but with a ripe, womanly figure. That was even more dangerous to think on. He groaned.
And after that meeting, nothing. She had been to Sommerleigh the Christmas before he met her but he had stayed away at that time, occupied with illnesses around the county and not wanting to bring contagion to the house and its guests. If he had known that Arabella was the woman she was, if he had anticipated his feelings toward her, he might have selfishly spent Christmas at the manse. But naturally, he did not know or anticipate and so he did not come. And she had never come to Sommerleigh again.
He did not see how he could manage a meeting with her in London or in Middlewich. She was the stepdaughter of a duke and one of the wealthiest heiresses in England. Her brothers-in-law were an earl and a viscount. True, the earl was his friend. But, he told himself, then and now, he was just a working man. Alasdair Andrews from the county of Caithness. A half-starved orphan with very few words. A nothing who had landed on his feet, despite everything.
A jewel of womanhood like Arabella Lovelock would have no use for him.
He had argued and struggled with himself for eighteen months, alternatively urging himself to have courage and then chiding himself for presuming he could dare to bother her with his affections.
Hethoughthe might have been on the verge of writing to her mother to ask permission to write to Arabella when he heard that all the Lovelock women and their families would be at Sommerleigh for Christmas. Christmas of the year eighteen hundred and twenty, just over two years ago. And Thomas had written to him from London, to tell of the Drakes’ impending return to Sommerleigh and to invite him to all of the festivities at the manse.
This was his chance.
Then he heard that the Viscount and Viscountess Tregaron, both of whom he had never met, would not come for Christmas at Sommerleigh. The eldest of the Lovelock daughters, Mary, was to have twins—the two heartbeats had been heard clearly by a London physician—and the couple instead would travel straight from London to their home in Wales. Better and better. An even more intimate party. It would be just the Duke and Duchess of Middlewich with their young son Sebastian and, most importantly, Arabella. And Thomas and Harry and daughter Hypatia.
He made sure that he had new clothes. He had a green waistcoat made that the tailor had told him was a good match for his eyes. He had already read all the extant works of Mr. Walter Scott, Arabella’s favorite author, but now he stayed up late reading them again. So many of them were concerned with Scotland. That was a good sign surely. Scott’s most recent work, the three volumeIvanhoe,was not set in Scotland, but Alasdair thought this aberration was unlikely to be among Arabella’s favorites. Still, he reread it along with the others, in case that was what she would like to discuss with him.
And then, the first dinner he was invited to, three days before Christmas. He dressed and shaved with care. He was nervous but hopeful.
And Arabella was not there.
He asked. He was compelled to. Driven to. Was Miss Lovelock well? Her mother, the duchess, said yes. Would she not be coming for Christmas? No? She was away? Visiting? Where? The answers he got were vague and unsatisfactory. In fact, the duchess looked distressed and the duke and Thomas looked ominous.
On Christmas Day, he cornered Harry. The other adults were playing with Hypatia and Sebastian and their new Christmas toys in the nursery. He invented a rather stupid question about logarithms and got Harry into the library to have her answer it on paper.
As Harry’s quill raced across the paper, she said offhandedly, “I will have another confinement this year, Alasdair. In June, I believe. I would like you to be present as you were with Hypatia.”
“Certainly.” That accounted for Thomas putting his hand on Harry’s still-flat abdomen several times today. “I am glad for ye and Lord Drake. Perhaps an heir apparent?”
“Perhaps. You will be the first to know, of course.” She finished writing and sprinkled pounce on the paper and blew on it before handing it to him. He did not even pretend to glance at the equations she offered him.
“Harry, where is Arabella? I mean, Miss Lovelock.” He betrayed himself further with every word.
