Page 77 of Libby's London Merchant
Libby handed her the doctor’s spectacles. “He wanted someone to take this to him upstairs, and one other thing. ” She went to the desk and picked up the book there, turning it over in her hands. “’Anomalies of the Brain,” she read out loud. “A little light reading for the doctor.”
Mrs. Manwaring accepted the heavy volume doubtfully. “’T’would make a wondrous fine napkin press,” she said as she flipped through the pages. “Only think how many flower keepsakes we could press there, Miss Ames.”
Libby smiled. “Dr. Cook would be sorely disappointed if we pressed flowers in his medical books, I fear.”
The new housekeeper rested the book on her hip. “It will do him good to have a little daughter someday who does precisely that, Miss Ames. Flowers in all these books,” she said, waving her hand at the whole expanse of the bookcase.
Libby watched her in delight, her own discomfort momentarily set aside. “Mrs. Manwaring, I am sure you are right, but as for now, I recommend a vase of flowers on the doctor’s desk in the morning. Think how it will cheer him.”
“You pick the flowers, Miss Ames, and I will find the vase,” Mrs. Manwaring said, starting for the door.
“I would, but I am off to Brighton tomorrow with my brother,” Libby replied, wishing that the thought of a seaside vacation would not bring on that heaviness behind her eyelids.
“Very well, miss, I will see that is it done. Don’t you worry about anything. We will take excellent care of your doctor.”
“Oh, he’s not my doctor,” Libby said quietly.
She walked back to Holyoke Green, having refused the loan of the gig. She wanted to walk off some of the agitation she felt and the curious sense of loss that dampened her spirits. Surely Anthony had known that she would gladly have come every day to sit with his father and take some of this complex burden off his shoulders. He had only to ask, but he had chosen not to. I thought we were friends, she thought, and wasn’t that what friends did foreach other? And aren’t we engaged?
Libby thought again about his unusual proposal and felt herself growing cross. If you are such a patient man, then why send me away? she reasoned. Surely we could get to know each other better if I were close at hand.
Ah, well, you said that you would write, she concluded to herself as she walked slowly along the road. And when you do, I will answer your letters promptly, so you will know that I care.
“How much do I care?” she asked out loud, standing in the middle of the road, looking back at the Cook estate. “I wish I knew.”
Joseph was awake when she returned, Aunt Crabtree sitting with him, deep in her game of Patience again. Her brother had taken the bandage off and was admiring Dr. Cook’s even stitches in the mirror, turning his head this way and that. Libby kissed him and examined the wound, noting with relief that there was very little swelling left. The redness was nearly gone.
She held out Dr. Cook’s prescription and he read it slowly, mouthing the words. “Does this mean that we are to go to Brighton?” he asked.
“Dr. Cook decrees it,” she said with a smile that she did not feel. “Mama will cry and scold us both, and then she will see that you sit in the sun until your stitches are ready to come out.”
“Like she used to do with Papa when he was wounded,” he said. “I remember that. Do you know, Libby, I think she enjoys that sort of thing.”
“I am certain of it,” Libby replied in round tones. “She will be delighted to see you this way.”
Aunt Crabtree looked up from her cards. “She will likely haul me over the coals.” She shuddered delicately. “My brother will hear from me if she does. ‘A peaceful summer with an unexceptionable niece,’ indeed!”
They caught the mail coach in Holyoke the next morning in the dark. Only the direst of threats kept Joseph from climbing to the roof to sit with the other young men, and he pointedly turned away from her and closed his eyes as soon as they started.
The coach traveled past Holyoke Green and the Cook estate. A light burned in the squire’s room. In her mind, Libby could see Anthony sitting there, his eyes and heart on his father.
“You must attend,” she whispered out loud, and hunched herself farther into the corner, wanting solitude. Something told her that he would not write. He had sent her away until the hops harvest, when everyone in Holyoke would be too busy for social calls. And then winter would come, with its freezing cold blowing in from the Channel and the rains that swept the lands and made her restless. Lydia would likely be married and gone by then, or at least in London.
The doctor would change his mind and look elsewhere. He would never make her an improper offer, of this she was certain, but when he had time for reflection, calm reason would take over and he would renege. She didn’t know whether to be glad or sorry.
“And all because I know you will not write,” she said to the window of the mail coach. Her words fogged the glass until she could no longer see Dr. Cook’s manor or the road Nez Benedict, a.k.a. London merchant, had traveled away on.
17
“Really, my dear boy, if we had known you would be such quelling company, we could have arranged for you to run alongside the carriage and bark at the wheels.”
The duke looked up from silent contemplation of his hands into Eustace Wiltmore’s vacuous face. He wondered why he had never noticed before how Eustace’s voice grated like fingernails on slate, or that irritating way he had of ending each sentence with a little raise of his eyebrows.
Lydia touched the duke and batted her eyelashes at him. “I think he is contemplating the narrowness of his escape, are you not, your grace?”
He turned his gaze upon Lydia, wishing that he had a quizzing glass to stare her up and down. “I have you to thank for so much,” he murmured, hoping that Lydia Ames would have the good sense to let it lie there.
She did not. “Eustace, my love, he looks as Friday-faced as Libby. She did not think it a funny joke, either.”
