Page 48 of Libby's London Merchant
The moment passed quickly. The doctor took a deep breath and rubbed his eyes. “Dear me, I must be more tired than I imagined. This pace I have been keeping of late begins to remind me of the worst days of my training in Edinburgh, when working straight through for seventy-two hours was not unknown.”
If the doctor could recover so well, so could he. “Doctor ... Oh, dash it all, surely I can call you Anthony. You would greatly benefit from having a driver. Then you could nod off in safety between calls.”
“It is a thought.”
You could also use a wife, the duke thought, but it isn’t going to be Libby Ames. He smiled at the doctor. “Sir, retrace your steps and go to bed.”
To his relief, the doctor grinned. “I should think of these things myself. Good day to you, sir.”
If Cook’s smile hadn’t reached as far as his eyes, the duke chose to overlook that fact. With a wave of his hand, Nez continued down the road, hands deep in pockets again, whistling to himself. When Libby returned from the gypsies, he would put the question to her. He looked back at the doctor, who was met inside the gates by his horse. The animal nudged him down the lane and the duke felt another twinge of sadness. Poor fellow. Too bad he will not win this one. He is deserving of all good fortune.
But not that much good fortune, he thought, and smiled in spite of his philanthropic regard for Dr. Cook.
Libby would never have admitted her disappointment over the gypsies to anyone. When Lydia—with much gyration of face and obvious disdain—had told her about them last winter, Libby had taken her cousin’s unflattering description with a grain of salt and had resolved to see them for herself before she passed judgment.
She remembered gypsies from her years in Spain, those inhabitants of the caves of Granada, with their proud eyes, their arrogant carriage, and the magic way they stamped the earth with their feet and stirred the soul. She recalled the time Papa had taken her—without Mama knowing—to have her fortune told. Libby remembered sitting on his lap, her eyes wide, her mouth open, as the woman with gold-hooped earrings and an improbable beauty mark had predicted wealth, love, and leisure to enjoy them.
These gypsies of Kent were nothing like she remembered. The sullen-eyed man had snatched away her pots to be mended, as if she would change her mind at the last minute, and Joseph had gone off happily enough to look at the horses. She had been left to sit on a log and wait in solitude, a stranger among those with nothing but suspicion in their eyes, when anyone bothered to glance her way.
It was a small encampment, with only two wagons once painted extravagantly but now shabby, the paint chipped and flaking. There were no older women about, only a young one with small children. The little ones were ragged beyond any poverty she could remember from Spain.They crouched on their haunches watching her, until their mama called them away, and they vanished as silently as they had come.
Libby amused herself watching a small baby in the distance, slung in a blanket in the low branches of a tree. The wind blew, the tree moved, and. the little one raised its hand to the leaves dancing overhead. The baby chortled, and Libby smiled, wishing she had leave to come closer to look at the child. Instead, she sat where she was, her hands folded primly in her lap.
Nesbitt Duke. She thought of their kiss in the orchard, her cheeks growing pink again at the mere memory. Last night, as he started down the stairs, she had been sure he would kiss her again, if Joseph had not burst in the door with his news of the gypsies.
A kiss from a gentleman, especially one as handsome as the merchant, was not an everyday occurrence. She had been kissed before by some of Papa’s officers and the sensation had always been a pleasing one, but never before had she wanted to follow any of those men to their rooms.
She sat up straighter. Her thoughts were leading her down paths better left untrod for the moment, no matter how enticing they were. Better not think about how much she wanted Nesbitt Duke, for that was what it boiled down to.
Libby admitted to an unwillingness to consider the subject, even in the privacy of her own brain. She had schooled herself since Papa’s death and the realization of her own poverty that there would likely never be anyone willing to engage her affections on a permanent basis. Her long experience with the army had taught her that men needed dowries more than they needed pretty faces.
And here was Mr. Nesbitt Duke, as handsome a man as she could remember, dumped on her doorstep. It seemed to Libby as though kindly providence had chosen to intervene in the planned course of her life, and she was never one to disregard providence.
“Well, Mr. Duke, if you can overlook my complete lack of fortune, I can likely disregard your less-then-genteel background,” she whispered as she watched the baby.
That they would suit well together, Libby had no doubt. She had no experience with men, but some instinct told her that she could make this man happy and he would never look elsewhere for company. She would welcome him home from each confectionary excursion, and he would never want to be anywhere but with her. She knew this as fervently as she knew there was a Trinity and that the sun would rise and set and rise again.
She smiled to herself. Her cousin Lydia would declare this turn of events better than a novel from the lending library. In recent months, they had spent nights crowded in the same bed, giggling over the lads of the shire and their bumbling efforts at romance.
Even as soon as she had that thought, she dismissed it, and felt her cheeks grow pink again. She did not want to giggle and speculate about Nesbitt Duke, or make foolish wagers with her cousin. She wanted to think about him in private and not subject her feelings to Lydia’s well-meant but foolish imaginings. There was only one person with whom she could discuss her feelings, and that was with Mr. Duke himself.
Libby stood up, in a pelter to be off, looking about for Joseph. A little wind had picked up, and the leaves were rustling louder now, turning over and showing the underside of their green veins. She frowned and glanced at the sky. She could smell the storm coming, that musty, earthy odor that set cattle lowing and kittens searching about for shelter.
There was Joseph at last, coming slowly toward her across an empty field. The gypsies had tethered their horses in the distance, and squatting in the dust, gesturing to one another, they were grouped about the animals. Joseph looked back once, twice, as if he wanted to stay with them and absorb their strange Romany language, even though he could not understand it, because he knew the subject was horses.
Libby lost sight of him for a moment as he entered a copse of birch trees, and then she saw him again. He had stopped, and she sighed in exasperation. As she watched in growing curiosity, he straightened up suddenly and stripped off his nankeen jacket, spreading it over something or someone she could not see, not even as she stood on tiptoe.
He gestured toward her then, short, urgent motions of his arm that started her walking toward him and then running as he knelt down again and disappeared from her line of sight.
At least it wasn’t likely to be one of the squire’s horses, she thought grimly as she hurried toward her brother. And he will befriend every wounded thing and then look at her askance in that mild, vaguely reproachful way of his if she attempted to disrupt his philanthropy. The hot words that rose in her throat subsided as she took a deep breath and hurried on, wishing that her stays were not laced so tight. That was Joseph, and there wasn’t any changing him. He would never comprehend her agitation.
Libby came close to the copse as the rain began, a drop at a time, and then many drops pelting down. She sniffed appreciatively again and then stopped suddenly at the edge of the thicket, her mouth open in astonishment.
A young girl sat on the ground, her hands clutching Joseph’s thin jacket around her. Her right leg—bird-bone-thin and muddy—was twisted at an odd angle.
“Marime, ” called a woman from behind Libby.
Libby snatched her hand back. It was the gypsy woman who had hung the baby in the tree. The child was clutched in her arms now, wet.
