A Rogue by Night, page 4
One could not tell what one didn’t know.
Harland retreated back to the table and busied himself tidying tools. Miss Wright’s surgical kit was still laid out on the surface of the battered wooden sideboard that was shoved against the wall. He ran his finger over the long, flat leather case that could be rolled up and tied for quick storage. Along the top edge, the initials KW had been etched into the leather. Secured along the length was an impressive set of instruments. Bone saws, knives, forceps, scalpels, clamps, probes. Tools of the trade and all things that a surgeon wouldn’t go anywhere without. His own field kit was almost identical, though Miss Wright’s was more complete. He wondered if she was as capable with the bone saws as she was with her needles.
“Why did you do that?” Miss Wright had come up behind him.
“I beg your pardon?” He kept his eyes on her instruments, stalling. Pretending he wasn’t sure what she was referring to.
“Why did you help hide Matthew?”
Because I know him to be a good man and a better smuggler. Because I rely on him, even if he doesn’t know it.
He would say none of that.
“No one should be hanged for the crime of climbing out a lover’s window.” Harland withdrew his fingers from the leather case and turned to look at Miss Wright.
Her expression was hard. “Do you think I am a half-wit, my lord?”
“No.”
“Then have the decency to answer my question with something better than that.”
“Why does it matter?”
“You’re a lord. Your loyalty should lie with the crown and its agents. And yet you protected my brother. Why?” Her distrust was blatant.
“Because your father needs him.” Harland had to give her something believable.
Her expression didn’t change.
“My job is to heal people, not judge them, Miss Wright.” He crossed his arms. “I am a doctor before I am anything else.”
The lines around her mouth tightened. “Of course.”
It was clear she didn’t believe his last statement. For some reason that bothered him more than it should.
She tilted her head slightly. “Woman parts.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I was recalling your doctorly use of medical terms.”
Harland almost scowled but caught himself in time. “I wasn’t speaking to medical students.”
“Good thing. You would have been asked to leave the theater.”
“I spoke a language soldiers could understand. Because in my experience, references to woman parts, coupled with copious amounts of blood, make most men falter.”
“But not you.”
“I am a doctor. It will take more than that to make me falter.”
“Of course.” Again, her skepticism was clear. He’d faced plenty of doubt before. Learned not to rise or react to it long ago. Why he found Miss Wright’s lack of confidence in his abilities so vexing was vexing in itself.
“He can’t stay here.”
Harland realized that she was no longer looking at him and instead was gazing at her brother.
“No,” he agreed. The subject of his medical aptitude had seemingly been set aside for more pressing matters.
“The soldiers will be back again. The storm will keep them under their toadstools for a little while and will make a barn burning difficult, but they’ll come back looking for him.”
“Yes.”
“They knew who he was.” She sounded troubled.
“He must have been recognized.” Or betrayed. The latter made Harland’s blood run cold. If someone had tipped the soldiers off about tonight, if someone had knowledge of Matthew Wright and the brandy he had sought to recover, then there was no telling what else they knew.
Miss Wright’s suspicious gaze shifted back to him, and Harland could feel the weight of it. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being studied and examined. Measured, somehow.
“Matthew can’t ride,” she said abruptly.
“I agree. I am hoping that your family owns a cart of some sort.” Harland didn’t need to hope. He knew very well Paul and Matthew owned a long cart. A cart with a false bottom, large enough to hide tubs of brandy or bolts of silk. Or an injured man. “I’d prefer not to move him, but I think it’s best if I take him with me when I leave.”
Miss Wright’s brows shot nearly to her hairline. “Take him with you? Where?”
Even given everything that had just transpired, everything he had done, she didn’t even try to temper her distrust.
“To Avondale.”
“Avondale? The Earl of Rivers’s estate?” she asked incredulously.
“Yes. It’s where I’m staying.” He had no idea if she would know that or not. “I’ll be able to keep an eye on that wound, and he’ll be safe there.”
“Why?”
“The Earl of Rivers is, coincidentally, married to my youngest sister—”
“No, I mean why would you continue to hide my brother?” She took a step closer, so close that he could feel the warmth of her presence, smell the faint scent of her soap even under the sharper tones of blood and brandy. This close, in the soft light, he could see that her irises were edged in a darker blue, flecks of gold dancing in the turquoise sea. It was suddenly hard to draw a full breath, and he wondered how many men had drowned in the depths of her captivating eyes.
“Because I can.” That explanation was all that came to him. He was having a hard time thinking. He was generally a very accomplished liar, but his usually nimble mind was strangely sluggish.
“I don’t believe you.” At least she was being honest now.
Harland looked down at the pile of bloody towels in his hands. He would not leave Matthew Wright here because the soldiers would be back. And if Matthew was here when they returned, they would clap him in irons and drag him away and leave him in a dank cell. They would torture and starve him until he either died or until he told them what they wanted to hear. Things that might expose others. Things that might ultimately expose himself.
Neither option was acceptable.
Harland chose his words carefully. “All I know,” he started slowly, “is that your brother is a good man. A good man who doesn’t deserve to be punished for doing what he needs to do to support his family.” That was not a lie. That was the truth. Harland knew that better than anyone. Because he had lived that truth for far too many years.
He was still living it.
Chapter 3
Katherine’s father had instantly agreed to the Lord Doctor’s proposal to transport Matthew to Avondale. Offered Strathmore the use of the old wagon that still languished behind the barn and had escaped the soldiers’ attention due to the timely rain. Led him outside and showed him the hidden compartment that existed beneath the boards. Helped line the space with blankets and settle her brother among them before replacing the wide planks above. Held the Lord Doctor’s horse while the baron unsaddled it and then deftly harnessed the animal with only a single candle to combat the dark.
Katherine had no idea what to make of any of it. A peer of the realm should at the very least question the disclosure of hidden compartments in farm wagons. A London lord should not be able to harness and hitch a horse that smoothly, in the dark, no less. But then again, a baron should never be a doctor, and a doctor should never be a baron. This entire night had been turned on its head long before Harland Hayward heaved his medical bag up onto the rough seat of a country cart and prepared to climb up after it, for the sole purpose of transporting a wounded Dover smuggler to a fine country manor.
She didn’t understand it, she didn’t like it, and she certainly didn’t trust anything about the entire situation. She didn’t trust him. Hayward. Or Strathmore. Or whatever the hell he called himself.
The Lord Doctor took the lantern from her father and reached up, securing it on the hook mounted at the front of the wagon. Katherine saw him glance at the sky, and though it had stopped raining, the air was still heavy with the promise of more, the moon and stars still concealed by clouds.
“I’ll go as quickly as I can,” he said to her father. “And get him settled and resting properly. It’s probably best if you don’t come to Avondale in the coming days. I do not wish to lead the captain or any of his men to your son in the event that they are watching you.”
“Aye,” her father agreed.
The Lord Doctor sounded like a bloody spy.
“I’m going with you.” She was not letting her brother leave here alone under the care of a baron with dubious medical experience. A baron she didn’t trust, even if her father did.
The Lord Doctor paused, his hand on the edge of the wagon, his face obscured by shadows. “That is not necessary.”
“No? And if you’re stopped? If the soldiers who just retreated did not retreat as far as you’d like to think, how are you going to explain yourself? They would have seen your horse when they arrived. It was not attached to an empty cart then. You need a patient, remember?”
The Lord Doctor’s hand dropped. “There is no need to put you in danger.”
“But putting me on my back with your hand up my skirts for an armed audience was quite safe?” She stopped, recognizing that she was being unfair. And offensive. No matter how she felt about the baron, his actions, as inexplicable as they might be, had probably saved her brother’s life.
Her father grumbled a sound of deserved displeasure. “We owe Dr. Hayward our gratitude, Kate, not—”
“It’s all right.” The baron didn’t sound offended at all.
Idly, Katherine wondered what it would take to truly provoke this seemingly unprovokable man.
She stepped closer to the wagon, looking up at the Lord Doctor, and tried for a more conciliatory tone. “My presence will just ensure Matthew gets to Avondale safely if we’re stopped and challenged. I can return here in the morning, after I’ve been miraculously cured, of course.” And after she saw to the continued treatment of Matthew’s wound. Because when it came to medical expertise, a title most certainly did not give the Lord Doctor any degree of competence.
Strathmore considered her before nodding. “Fine.”
Katherine had expected more of an argument.
Her father unwrapped the woolen blanket that he still had around his shoulders and extended it to Katherine. “Take this for the ride. You’ll need it.”
Katherine hesitated. “Will you be all right here—”
“Stop fussing,” her father said. “’Tis not I who was sewn back together tonight. I don’t need you to hover over me like a helpless chick. I’ll be fine. Go with Dr. Hayward.”
She reached for the blanket, fumbling slightly in the darkness.
“Come, Miss Wright, before the skies open up again.” The baron was holding his hand out to her in the pool of lantern light.
She nodded, and for the second time that night, moved to put her hand in his.
* * *
Katherine studied the Lord Doctor out of the corner of her eye, his handsome profile in stark relief from the lantern light that bounced and swayed as they rolled over the uneven roads. The skies had held their rain, though the ground was pockmarked with puddles, pools of reflected lantern light glittering against the velvet darkness as they passed. To her right, the surf crashed against the base of the cliffs far below, the stiff breeze carrying a briny tang along with a decided chill.
She had offered to lie in the back, to make it more realistic if they were stopped, but the Lord Doctor had shaken his head. “I have the utmost confidence in your acting abilities, Miss Wright,” he had said, again in that imperturbable manner. “I trust, should the need arise, that you will channel your best insensible self, slumped against my supportive side. In the meantime, I think you’ll find the bench warmer and more comfortable.”
He wasn’t wrong. But he wasn’t right either. Sitting this close to him, she was indeed warm. Very, very warm. But very, very uncomfortable.
Because sitting next to him was making her breath catch at odd moments. It was making her inhale the scent of him—rain-dampened wool laced with brandy and something richer, sending her pulse into strange rhythms. It was making her overly aware of the feel of his thighs and his hip where they pressed against hers as the wagon swayed. And it was making her fixate on his hands again.
Gilded with golden lantern light, there was a quiet efficiency to the movements of those hands and fingers as he guided the gelding over the darkened roads. Soothing, encouraging, gentle. Corrective only when necessary, giving the horse the time and space to find its own way in the darkness.
She tried not to recall how those hands had felt on her skin. How those fingers had rested against the bare length of her leg, communicating with the same steady surety. They hadn’t faltered as the captain had barged into the cottage, nor had they faltered when he’d stood between her and an army that would see her arrested if only for her familial connections.
“I’m sorry,” she said into the night.
He glanced at her. “For what?”
“For the way I spoke to you when we left. It was ungrateful.” She still didn’t trust him, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t be gracious, at the very least. Until, that was, he gave her a reason not to be.
“Your apology is not necessary, Miss Wright.”
“It is necessary. Your quick thinking is why my brother is safely hidden away and not dangling at the end of a rope or already rotting in a prison cell as we speak.”
He turned his attention back to the road. “My quick thinking put you in a terrible position, and you handled it with a courage not often found, Miss Wright.”
For some incomprehensible reason, Katherine’s face heated. She did not want his compliments. Certainly not if they made her blush.
“How long have you been a doctor?” she asked, attempting to redirect the conversation.
“Ten years.”
“You went to medical school?”
“Yes. In London.” His answer was short.
“Hmph.”
“You don’t believe that either?”
“I didn’t say that.”
He kept his eyes on the road ahead.
“You told the captain that you were an army surgeon in France and Belgium. Were you really there, on those fields? Or were you making that up?” She winced at the slightly hostile manner in which that had come out, despite her intention to be civil. But service like that was not something that should ever be an empty boast. Service like that was built on suffering and horrors that few could imagine and even fewer had experienced firsthand.
He turned to look at her, his expression unreadable in the shadows. “Would it matter to you if I was making it up?” It sounded almost defensive, a departure from his usual inscrutable demeanor.
Katherine absorbed that. “Yes.”
He exhaled as he faced forward again. “Why?”
She didn’t need to pursue this. She probably shouldn’t pursue this. There were plenty of other topics that could fill the minutes. Like the weather. Or the tides. Or just plain silence would be fine too. “I want to know the truth.”
“Will you even believe me?”
“Whether I believe you or not matters?” This was a circular conversation.
“Yes.”
A slow heat curled into Katherine’s chest like smoke. It shouldn’t matter that he cared what she thought. She would not allow it to matter. Because that sort of thing worked both ways. And she had no interest in caring about this Lord Doctor. What he had done with his life up to this point should be irrelevant to her.
“Yes, I was there,” he said quietly. “Until the very end.”
She stared out in the direction of the sea, a yawning abyss of inky black. Irrelevant or not, caring or not, she did, however, acknowledge that she may have vastly misjudged this man. And vastly underestimated him. “Why did you serve with—”
“Why did you become a surgeon?” He didn’t let her finish her question.
Katherine looked down at her hands and reminded herself that she didn’t care why he’d left his pampered life to become a field surgeon. It didn’t matter that he had evaded answering her question by asking one of his own.
Her head came up. He had asked why she had become a surgeon. Not a midwife or a healer. Specifically a surgeon. As if he already knew what she had done with her life up until this point. And found it relevant.
“I’m not a surgeon,” she said with a shrug, aiming for carelessness. “Or a doctor, for that matter. I’m a midwife. Or maybe a healer who gets summoned when a real doctor is not available. Or affordable.”
The baron made an unintelligible sound. “That was not a midwife I saw treating her brother in that cottage tonight.”
Katherine wondered if he was mocking her with his comment. “I am not a surgeon. Can never be a surgeon. Because, as you so adroitly stated earlier, I have woman parts.” There was certainly a mocking tone to her answer.
“Ah, yes. Your woman parts. The bits that make every female hysterical and unable to understand manly things like medicine.”
Katherine picked up a loose piece of straw that lay beside her on the bench and curled it around her fingers. “It’s not funny.”
“No, it’s not. My sisters will be the first to tell you the same.”
“I don’t think you really understand.”
“I might understand more than you think.”
“I doubt that.” The withered stalk tore in two, and she tossed the pieces away into the darkness.
“Tell me, Miss Wright, when we first met, you doubted my medical capabilities. I suspect you still do.” There was no accusation or belligerence in his tone, just a quiet resignation. He adjusted his grip on the reins. “Why?”
He was asking a rhetorical question that they both already knew the answer to.
A baron should never be a doctor, and a doctor should never be a baron.
“Your lack of confidence in my abilities is the reason you insisted on accompanying your brother to Avondale,” he continued in the same quiet way.
Katherine didn’t bother to deny it.
“While I cannot pretend to know exactly how it feels to be a woman battling the prejudices of society, I can tell you what it feels like to be a man born to a title who is not to be trusted with a vocation outside of cards and horses, mistresses and money. In some ways, Miss Wright, we are not so different.”
Harland retreated back to the table and busied himself tidying tools. Miss Wright’s surgical kit was still laid out on the surface of the battered wooden sideboard that was shoved against the wall. He ran his finger over the long, flat leather case that could be rolled up and tied for quick storage. Along the top edge, the initials KW had been etched into the leather. Secured along the length was an impressive set of instruments. Bone saws, knives, forceps, scalpels, clamps, probes. Tools of the trade and all things that a surgeon wouldn’t go anywhere without. His own field kit was almost identical, though Miss Wright’s was more complete. He wondered if she was as capable with the bone saws as she was with her needles.
“Why did you do that?” Miss Wright had come up behind him.
“I beg your pardon?” He kept his eyes on her instruments, stalling. Pretending he wasn’t sure what she was referring to.
“Why did you help hide Matthew?”
Because I know him to be a good man and a better smuggler. Because I rely on him, even if he doesn’t know it.
He would say none of that.
“No one should be hanged for the crime of climbing out a lover’s window.” Harland withdrew his fingers from the leather case and turned to look at Miss Wright.
Her expression was hard. “Do you think I am a half-wit, my lord?”
“No.”
“Then have the decency to answer my question with something better than that.”
“Why does it matter?”
“You’re a lord. Your loyalty should lie with the crown and its agents. And yet you protected my brother. Why?” Her distrust was blatant.
“Because your father needs him.” Harland had to give her something believable.
Her expression didn’t change.
“My job is to heal people, not judge them, Miss Wright.” He crossed his arms. “I am a doctor before I am anything else.”
The lines around her mouth tightened. “Of course.”
It was clear she didn’t believe his last statement. For some reason that bothered him more than it should.
She tilted her head slightly. “Woman parts.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I was recalling your doctorly use of medical terms.”
Harland almost scowled but caught himself in time. “I wasn’t speaking to medical students.”
“Good thing. You would have been asked to leave the theater.”
“I spoke a language soldiers could understand. Because in my experience, references to woman parts, coupled with copious amounts of blood, make most men falter.”
“But not you.”
“I am a doctor. It will take more than that to make me falter.”
“Of course.” Again, her skepticism was clear. He’d faced plenty of doubt before. Learned not to rise or react to it long ago. Why he found Miss Wright’s lack of confidence in his abilities so vexing was vexing in itself.
“He can’t stay here.”
Harland realized that she was no longer looking at him and instead was gazing at her brother.
“No,” he agreed. The subject of his medical aptitude had seemingly been set aside for more pressing matters.
“The soldiers will be back again. The storm will keep them under their toadstools for a little while and will make a barn burning difficult, but they’ll come back looking for him.”
“Yes.”
“They knew who he was.” She sounded troubled.
“He must have been recognized.” Or betrayed. The latter made Harland’s blood run cold. If someone had tipped the soldiers off about tonight, if someone had knowledge of Matthew Wright and the brandy he had sought to recover, then there was no telling what else they knew.
Miss Wright’s suspicious gaze shifted back to him, and Harland could feel the weight of it. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being studied and examined. Measured, somehow.
“Matthew can’t ride,” she said abruptly.
“I agree. I am hoping that your family owns a cart of some sort.” Harland didn’t need to hope. He knew very well Paul and Matthew owned a long cart. A cart with a false bottom, large enough to hide tubs of brandy or bolts of silk. Or an injured man. “I’d prefer not to move him, but I think it’s best if I take him with me when I leave.”
Miss Wright’s brows shot nearly to her hairline. “Take him with you? Where?”
Even given everything that had just transpired, everything he had done, she didn’t even try to temper her distrust.
“To Avondale.”
“Avondale? The Earl of Rivers’s estate?” she asked incredulously.
“Yes. It’s where I’m staying.” He had no idea if she would know that or not. “I’ll be able to keep an eye on that wound, and he’ll be safe there.”
“Why?”
“The Earl of Rivers is, coincidentally, married to my youngest sister—”
“No, I mean why would you continue to hide my brother?” She took a step closer, so close that he could feel the warmth of her presence, smell the faint scent of her soap even under the sharper tones of blood and brandy. This close, in the soft light, he could see that her irises were edged in a darker blue, flecks of gold dancing in the turquoise sea. It was suddenly hard to draw a full breath, and he wondered how many men had drowned in the depths of her captivating eyes.
“Because I can.” That explanation was all that came to him. He was having a hard time thinking. He was generally a very accomplished liar, but his usually nimble mind was strangely sluggish.
“I don’t believe you.” At least she was being honest now.
Harland looked down at the pile of bloody towels in his hands. He would not leave Matthew Wright here because the soldiers would be back. And if Matthew was here when they returned, they would clap him in irons and drag him away and leave him in a dank cell. They would torture and starve him until he either died or until he told them what they wanted to hear. Things that might expose others. Things that might ultimately expose himself.
Neither option was acceptable.
Harland chose his words carefully. “All I know,” he started slowly, “is that your brother is a good man. A good man who doesn’t deserve to be punished for doing what he needs to do to support his family.” That was not a lie. That was the truth. Harland knew that better than anyone. Because he had lived that truth for far too many years.
He was still living it.
Chapter 3
Katherine’s father had instantly agreed to the Lord Doctor’s proposal to transport Matthew to Avondale. Offered Strathmore the use of the old wagon that still languished behind the barn and had escaped the soldiers’ attention due to the timely rain. Led him outside and showed him the hidden compartment that existed beneath the boards. Helped line the space with blankets and settle her brother among them before replacing the wide planks above. Held the Lord Doctor’s horse while the baron unsaddled it and then deftly harnessed the animal with only a single candle to combat the dark.
Katherine had no idea what to make of any of it. A peer of the realm should at the very least question the disclosure of hidden compartments in farm wagons. A London lord should not be able to harness and hitch a horse that smoothly, in the dark, no less. But then again, a baron should never be a doctor, and a doctor should never be a baron. This entire night had been turned on its head long before Harland Hayward heaved his medical bag up onto the rough seat of a country cart and prepared to climb up after it, for the sole purpose of transporting a wounded Dover smuggler to a fine country manor.
She didn’t understand it, she didn’t like it, and she certainly didn’t trust anything about the entire situation. She didn’t trust him. Hayward. Or Strathmore. Or whatever the hell he called himself.
The Lord Doctor took the lantern from her father and reached up, securing it on the hook mounted at the front of the wagon. Katherine saw him glance at the sky, and though it had stopped raining, the air was still heavy with the promise of more, the moon and stars still concealed by clouds.
“I’ll go as quickly as I can,” he said to her father. “And get him settled and resting properly. It’s probably best if you don’t come to Avondale in the coming days. I do not wish to lead the captain or any of his men to your son in the event that they are watching you.”
“Aye,” her father agreed.
The Lord Doctor sounded like a bloody spy.
“I’m going with you.” She was not letting her brother leave here alone under the care of a baron with dubious medical experience. A baron she didn’t trust, even if her father did.
The Lord Doctor paused, his hand on the edge of the wagon, his face obscured by shadows. “That is not necessary.”
“No? And if you’re stopped? If the soldiers who just retreated did not retreat as far as you’d like to think, how are you going to explain yourself? They would have seen your horse when they arrived. It was not attached to an empty cart then. You need a patient, remember?”
The Lord Doctor’s hand dropped. “There is no need to put you in danger.”
“But putting me on my back with your hand up my skirts for an armed audience was quite safe?” She stopped, recognizing that she was being unfair. And offensive. No matter how she felt about the baron, his actions, as inexplicable as they might be, had probably saved her brother’s life.
Her father grumbled a sound of deserved displeasure. “We owe Dr. Hayward our gratitude, Kate, not—”
“It’s all right.” The baron didn’t sound offended at all.
Idly, Katherine wondered what it would take to truly provoke this seemingly unprovokable man.
She stepped closer to the wagon, looking up at the Lord Doctor, and tried for a more conciliatory tone. “My presence will just ensure Matthew gets to Avondale safely if we’re stopped and challenged. I can return here in the morning, after I’ve been miraculously cured, of course.” And after she saw to the continued treatment of Matthew’s wound. Because when it came to medical expertise, a title most certainly did not give the Lord Doctor any degree of competence.
Strathmore considered her before nodding. “Fine.”
Katherine had expected more of an argument.
Her father unwrapped the woolen blanket that he still had around his shoulders and extended it to Katherine. “Take this for the ride. You’ll need it.”
Katherine hesitated. “Will you be all right here—”
“Stop fussing,” her father said. “’Tis not I who was sewn back together tonight. I don’t need you to hover over me like a helpless chick. I’ll be fine. Go with Dr. Hayward.”
She reached for the blanket, fumbling slightly in the darkness.
“Come, Miss Wright, before the skies open up again.” The baron was holding his hand out to her in the pool of lantern light.
She nodded, and for the second time that night, moved to put her hand in his.
* * *
Katherine studied the Lord Doctor out of the corner of her eye, his handsome profile in stark relief from the lantern light that bounced and swayed as they rolled over the uneven roads. The skies had held their rain, though the ground was pockmarked with puddles, pools of reflected lantern light glittering against the velvet darkness as they passed. To her right, the surf crashed against the base of the cliffs far below, the stiff breeze carrying a briny tang along with a decided chill.
She had offered to lie in the back, to make it more realistic if they were stopped, but the Lord Doctor had shaken his head. “I have the utmost confidence in your acting abilities, Miss Wright,” he had said, again in that imperturbable manner. “I trust, should the need arise, that you will channel your best insensible self, slumped against my supportive side. In the meantime, I think you’ll find the bench warmer and more comfortable.”
He wasn’t wrong. But he wasn’t right either. Sitting this close to him, she was indeed warm. Very, very warm. But very, very uncomfortable.
Because sitting next to him was making her breath catch at odd moments. It was making her inhale the scent of him—rain-dampened wool laced with brandy and something richer, sending her pulse into strange rhythms. It was making her overly aware of the feel of his thighs and his hip where they pressed against hers as the wagon swayed. And it was making her fixate on his hands again.
Gilded with golden lantern light, there was a quiet efficiency to the movements of those hands and fingers as he guided the gelding over the darkened roads. Soothing, encouraging, gentle. Corrective only when necessary, giving the horse the time and space to find its own way in the darkness.
She tried not to recall how those hands had felt on her skin. How those fingers had rested against the bare length of her leg, communicating with the same steady surety. They hadn’t faltered as the captain had barged into the cottage, nor had they faltered when he’d stood between her and an army that would see her arrested if only for her familial connections.
“I’m sorry,” she said into the night.
He glanced at her. “For what?”
“For the way I spoke to you when we left. It was ungrateful.” She still didn’t trust him, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t be gracious, at the very least. Until, that was, he gave her a reason not to be.
“Your apology is not necessary, Miss Wright.”
“It is necessary. Your quick thinking is why my brother is safely hidden away and not dangling at the end of a rope or already rotting in a prison cell as we speak.”
He turned his attention back to the road. “My quick thinking put you in a terrible position, and you handled it with a courage not often found, Miss Wright.”
For some incomprehensible reason, Katherine’s face heated. She did not want his compliments. Certainly not if they made her blush.
“How long have you been a doctor?” she asked, attempting to redirect the conversation.
“Ten years.”
“You went to medical school?”
“Yes. In London.” His answer was short.
“Hmph.”
“You don’t believe that either?”
“I didn’t say that.”
He kept his eyes on the road ahead.
“You told the captain that you were an army surgeon in France and Belgium. Were you really there, on those fields? Or were you making that up?” She winced at the slightly hostile manner in which that had come out, despite her intention to be civil. But service like that was not something that should ever be an empty boast. Service like that was built on suffering and horrors that few could imagine and even fewer had experienced firsthand.
He turned to look at her, his expression unreadable in the shadows. “Would it matter to you if I was making it up?” It sounded almost defensive, a departure from his usual inscrutable demeanor.
Katherine absorbed that. “Yes.”
He exhaled as he faced forward again. “Why?”
She didn’t need to pursue this. She probably shouldn’t pursue this. There were plenty of other topics that could fill the minutes. Like the weather. Or the tides. Or just plain silence would be fine too. “I want to know the truth.”
“Will you even believe me?”
“Whether I believe you or not matters?” This was a circular conversation.
“Yes.”
A slow heat curled into Katherine’s chest like smoke. It shouldn’t matter that he cared what she thought. She would not allow it to matter. Because that sort of thing worked both ways. And she had no interest in caring about this Lord Doctor. What he had done with his life up to this point should be irrelevant to her.
“Yes, I was there,” he said quietly. “Until the very end.”
She stared out in the direction of the sea, a yawning abyss of inky black. Irrelevant or not, caring or not, she did, however, acknowledge that she may have vastly misjudged this man. And vastly underestimated him. “Why did you serve with—”
“Why did you become a surgeon?” He didn’t let her finish her question.
Katherine looked down at her hands and reminded herself that she didn’t care why he’d left his pampered life to become a field surgeon. It didn’t matter that he had evaded answering her question by asking one of his own.
Her head came up. He had asked why she had become a surgeon. Not a midwife or a healer. Specifically a surgeon. As if he already knew what she had done with her life up until this point. And found it relevant.
“I’m not a surgeon,” she said with a shrug, aiming for carelessness. “Or a doctor, for that matter. I’m a midwife. Or maybe a healer who gets summoned when a real doctor is not available. Or affordable.”
The baron made an unintelligible sound. “That was not a midwife I saw treating her brother in that cottage tonight.”
Katherine wondered if he was mocking her with his comment. “I am not a surgeon. Can never be a surgeon. Because, as you so adroitly stated earlier, I have woman parts.” There was certainly a mocking tone to her answer.
“Ah, yes. Your woman parts. The bits that make every female hysterical and unable to understand manly things like medicine.”
Katherine picked up a loose piece of straw that lay beside her on the bench and curled it around her fingers. “It’s not funny.”
“No, it’s not. My sisters will be the first to tell you the same.”
“I don’t think you really understand.”
“I might understand more than you think.”
“I doubt that.” The withered stalk tore in two, and she tossed the pieces away into the darkness.
“Tell me, Miss Wright, when we first met, you doubted my medical capabilities. I suspect you still do.” There was no accusation or belligerence in his tone, just a quiet resignation. He adjusted his grip on the reins. “Why?”
He was asking a rhetorical question that they both already knew the answer to.
A baron should never be a doctor, and a doctor should never be a baron.
“Your lack of confidence in my abilities is the reason you insisted on accompanying your brother to Avondale,” he continued in the same quiet way.
Katherine didn’t bother to deny it.
“While I cannot pretend to know exactly how it feels to be a woman battling the prejudices of society, I can tell you what it feels like to be a man born to a title who is not to be trusted with a vocation outside of cards and horses, mistresses and money. In some ways, Miss Wright, we are not so different.”
