Page 22 of Libby's London Merchant
“It can’t be too dull here, Miss Ames. Didn’t I hear angry voices below?”
“You did, but it was only one angry voice. It was the squire. Joseph was trespassing again.” Libby giggled. “And the squire never forgives those who trespass against him.”
She was rewarded with a smile from the candy merchant. “I suspect that you must have managed him admirably.”
“I try, sir, but I am running out of ways to placate him.” Libby hitched the chair closer. “You see, Joseph is continually trespassing on his land. He loves the squire’s horses, and strange to tell, they follow him about like Mary’s little lamb.”
Libby wanted to say more, to pour out her troubles to this stranger, but she closed her lips in time and managed an embarrassed laugh. “See here, sir, you should not allow me to burden you with our difficulties. I suppose that wrangles among neighbors are common enough in London, too.”
He smiled slightly as his eyes began to close again.
Libby peered at him. “Oh, I shouldn’t be talking so much.’’
He shook his head. “I enjoy it.”
“I cannot imagine why. We country folk are a decidedly dull lot,” she declared. “But we rarely have captive audiences.” She tucked the blanket up higher and, after only the slightest hesitation, felt his forehead. “Ah, very good! Dr. Cook will be pleased if you are not running a fever in the morning. And I, too,” she added softly as she blew out the candle.
The merchant held out his hand to her as she rose to leave the room and she grasped it.
“You will sleep well, sir, I know you will. And I will see you in the morning.”
Nez did sleep well all night, his thoughts untroubled by dreams or anything more menacing than the deepest reluctance to move. When he woke in the morning, his shoulder ached, but it was a pain he could live with. His right leg was on fire, but he gritted his teeth and slowly moved his ankle, noting with relief that it was still attached.
I seem to have all parts and accessories still assembled, he thought as he opened his eyes and looked about the room, wondering only briefly where he was and then remembering that he had sacrificed considerable dignity and skin the day before on one of Eustace’s whims.
The room was bright with morning sun that streamed in through lacy curtains just now being drawn back by the loveliest woman he had ever seen.
He remembered her from the day before, but he had seen her through such a haze of pain that her beauty had not fully registered in his mind. Now it filled all his senses, and he wondered that such a creature really drew breath.
Her hair was deep brown or black, and curled about her head. She had attempted to twist it into a knot on top of her head, but must have given it up for a bad job. The tendrils curled about and the disordered effect was so endearing that he smiled, despite his aches and pains. He was glad that her hair was not cropped in the current fashion. As he gazed at her in frank admiration, the duke wondered how all that riot of curly brown would look tumbled about her shoulders. The thought stirred him as nothing had in recent memory.
She was a perfect assembly of exquisite parts, from the proud way she carried her head to her elegant deep bosom, to the trimness of her ankles, which just peeked out from under the muslin dress she wore. Her waist was tiny, and he wondered if he could span it with his hands.
As he watched in admiration, she opened the window wide and perched herself on the window ledge, looking out at the morning. She waved to someone below and then clasped her hands together in heartfelt delight at one more summer day. He thought her eyes were blue. Her high-arched eyebrows gave her face an inquiring look. She seemed to the duke the kind of woman who would just naturally look interested in everything about her, because nature had designed her face that way. Even her lips had a natural curl to them.
As she sat so still on the window, her hands clasped together in her lap, something about her spoke of endless, tireless energy, a vitality that made him feel older than old and then suddenly young again.
He sighed. No, he did not sigh; someone else did. The duke, still holding his head still, shifted his eyes to the door, where the doctor stood, his glance fixed on the woman in the window.
Dr. Anthony Cook wore a good suit, but it was rumpled, as though he slept in it. Possibly he had, the duke decided. Perhaps he had spent the night at another bedside. He certainly looked the part. His hair was rumpled, even as his suit. On closer observation, the duke realized that it was curly rather than rumpled. The shade precisely matched his dark eyes in hue, eyes that appeared slightly enlarged behind the gold-rimmed spectacles perched on his nose.
The doctor’s whole face seemed to beam out benevolence and a quiet capability that spoke louder than words. For no real reason, the duke felt sudden envy as he regarded this massive, rumpled, good man. He used the measuring stick on Dr. Cook that he had used on every man for the past year. Could you have kept your men alive at Waterloo? It was a mean thought, and for the first time in a year he wished he had not considered it.
As he surveyed the doctor’s calm, rather placid face, the duke decided that Dr. Cook would have managed very well, indeed. No matter how unprepossessing, the physician appeared to be a man with enormous reservoirs of strength. It showed in his face.
And my strength is almost gone, thought the duke.
There was more to the doctor’s expression as it rested on the charming young lady in the window. Libby? Was that her name? Never had the duke seen so powerful a glance of love cast in anyone’s direction, and the scope of it almost took his breath away.
The duke enjoyed a tiny moment of superiority and resisted the desire to call out to the besotted physician in the bored voice he reserved for London parties: “Doctor, oh, dear doctor, don’t you know that love is decidedly unfashionable? One dallies, one plays about, one pretends, but one does not love. That sort of nonsense is not seen in the best circles these days. Did no one tell you that we are living in an epoch of cynicism right now?”
He said no such thing, but merely enjoyed the spectacle of a man in love staring at the totally oblivious object of his admiration. It delighted the duke, then it enervated him, then made him envious.
Poor sod, he thought. The only way someone as tame as you could possibly win this prize would be by incredible subterfuge or unthinkable default.
At the thought he shifted himself and groaned as the sheet rubbed against the gauze on his leg.
The involuntary murmur from the candy merchant recalled Libby to the moment. “Oh, you poor man,” she said as she hurried to his bedside, her eyes filled with concern.
