Page 35 of Libby's London Merchant
“Miss Ames, you are a managing female with no scruples about wrapping both of us around your little finger,” the doctor said, while the duke stared at him.
Libby merely laughed at both of them. “Dr. Cook, you know I never have anything like that in mind,” she protested.
The doctor bowed again and waved his hand to the duke. “She is incorrigible, but not without heart. Good luck to you both.” He sighed, remembering the task before him. “Adieu. Mrs.Wentworth is probably even now waiting to make a mockery of my obstetrical skills.” He shook his head. “Delivering babies for these farm women is rather like having someone behind you telling you how to steer your gig.” He closed the door behind him.
The duke look at Libby, who had gone delightfully pink at the doctor’s words. “A most interesting man, Miss Ames.” He looked at her a moment until he was sure he had her attention. “He’s in love with you, of course.”
His heart went out to her, so adorably confused did she look at his statement “Mr. Duke, that is absurd!” Libby pulled some dead leaves from the plant that balanced so precariously on the window ledge. Her agitated motions piqued his own interest.
“It’s not so absurd, Miss Ames,” he argued.
Libby grabbed the plant from the window and plunked it back down on the floor. “The doctor and I would never suit, sir,” she said properly, and then ruined the effect by making a face, “Besides, sir, Squire Cook is looking for a much better match for his only child, and so the squire told me so himself only last week.”
The duke lay back against the pillows, finding it difficult to imagine what possible defect an alliance with Libby Ames presented. Good God, he thought, Eustace tells me the Ames are as heavily laden as Croesus. This squire must be high in the instep indeed.
“This is a strange place, Miss Ames,” he said finally, at a loss. “I cannot understand the squire, then.”
Libby’s face grew serious. “Perhaps you do not know everything about us, sir.”
“Perhaps I do not, Miss Ames,” he was forced to agree.
His words must have put a crimp in her nose, because she did not visit him after dinner as she usually did, laughing and making fun of the clumsy way he played Patience, or reading to him from one book or another, it didn’t matter which. That he had embarrassed her was obvious. He had thought she would make light of his words. Instead, it was as though his words about the squire, lightly spoken, had reminded Libby Ames of . . . what? He did not know.
I wonder, Libby Ames, do you really love that buffoon of a doctor, he thought as he lay in restful peace in the silent room. The idea was so absurd that he laughed out loud, rolled over, and composed himself for sleep.
He was dozing off at last when there came a timid knock at the door. He knew at once that it was not Libby, but he raised up on his elbow, curious.
“Come,” he said.
Joseph entered the room, and he carried Copley’s missing sample case.
As a sample case, it was almost unrecognizable. The shining leather box with its cunning drawers lined with watered silk was dull from mud and rain, and what looked like as thorough an encounter with the road’s gravel as his own accident. The drawers were all smashed to one side, as if the case had been struck at full speed by an army of carts. Some drawers sagged out, some sank in, and the rest were gone.
The duke sat up as Joseph came closer. “It appears that my sample case has fallen on hard times,” he said at last when Joseph did not seem disposed to fill the silence with words of his own. “Ah, well. So it goes.”
Joseph blinked in surprise at his flippant words. To the duke’s horror, tears welled in the young man’s eyes and he began to cry silently. Nez flung back his bedclothes and stood up, taking Joseph by the arm and guiding him to a chair.
“See here, lad, it’s not so bad,” he said in a rallying tone. “Honestly, Joseph,” he said, his voice less reassuring, when Joseph continued to sob, clutching the sample case to him and caressing its battered sides.
The duke’s feeling of helplessness subsided as quickly as it had come, and it was replaced by a new emotion—or at least, one that he had not felt for so long that it seemed new. He felt sorry for someone besides himself.
In another moment, his arm went around Joseph’s shoulders. “It doesn’t matter, lad, truly it doesn’t.”
Joseph stopped crying and wiped his eyes with his sleeve. “But how will you earn a living?” he asked at last. “I am worried for you.”
It was the duke’s turn to struggle with himself as he tried to remember the last time anyone had worried about him to the point of tears. He couldn’t recall such a moment, if there had ever been one, and here was this young man, practically a stranger, this moonling, worried about how he, the Duke of Knaresborough, would find bread for his table, now that his means of livelihood was gone. Benedict Nesbitt was touched to the quick.
In silence he rubbed the boy’s neck until the tears stopped, and then he offered the handkerchief from his night table. “Blow, lad,” he ordered.
Joseph did as he said, and then looked away in embarrassment. “Libby said I was not to trouble you with this, but I know you are concerned about your sample case.”
Benedict Nesbitt had not given it a thought since he had heaved it in the gig and beat a hasty retreat from London, but the duke would have allowed the Grand Inquisitor himself to yank out his tongue and use it for bait before he would have ever admitted this fact to Joseph, who cared very much.
“Well, yes, indeed, I was worried about it and wondered what had become of it. How good of you to find it, Joseph.”
The boy smiled then and relaxed. He allowed the duke to take the case off his lap and set it on the floor.
“I knew you would be wanting it, especially after Libby said you were a merchant and that you surely had a sample case about somewhere. I looked and looked until I found it.”
