Page 65 of Tremaine's True Love
Perhaps Kirsten would take on that task herself. Nicholas, like every Haddonfield, could be an idiot.
“We should go in,” Nita said, popping to her feet and clutching her bag of herbs and medicinals.
“Sit down, Nita Haddonfield. I’ve been wanting to ask you about Mr. St. Michael. Are you trifling with him?”
Nita did sit, setting her bag aside. “I would not know how or why to trifle with any man. Lest you forget, Norton Nash attempted to trifle with me. Are you interested in Mr. St. Michael?”
On the topic of Mr. St. Michael, Nita was apparently willing to converse, though her question had been carefully tendered.
“Thank you, no,” Kirsten said, though if she hadn’t given up on marriage entirely, he might have been worth a look. “He’s not biddable. He’s been allowed to racket about without the guiding hand of a sensible woman for too long. He fancies you, though.”
Nita, like Susannah, was blessed with all the dishonesty Kirsten needed and didn’t have. Nita could appear calm when she was enraged or intrigued. She could be polite when she was furious, and she could also apparently pretend disinterest when she’d lost her heart—an enviable talent.
“Mr. St. Michael fancies Nicholas’s herd of Spanish sheep,” Nita said.
Though sometimes, Nita used that talent to deceive herself.
“I’ve corresponded not only with Beckman,” Kirsten said, “but with his Sara, to whom Mr. St. Michael was a brother-in-law for a time. Your Mr. St. Michael is wallowing in filthy lucre, Nita. He’d do.” The highest praise Kirsten could offer, because only the best would serve for her siblings.
Edward Nash fell far short of her standards, a situation she’d yet to find a solution for.
Across the garden, the grooms had led the horses into the stable. Not another human soul was in sight, though a furry black cat trotted along the top of a stone wall bordering the knot garden.
“Mr. St. Michael has offered for me,” Nita said oh-so calmly.
“Youaretrifling with him. Nita, I am proud of you.” A light tone was hard to maintain, but to shout about good offers being rarer than handsome, eligible dukes guaranteed some sibling or servant would take notice of this discussion.
The medical calls were taking a toll on Nita, and on the entire family, in fact. Nita had been plump as a younger woman, sturdy and rounded. She was nearly gaunt now, and her mouth was grim far more often than it was merry.
Addy Chalmers had an unfortunate fondness for gin. Had Nita acquired an unfortunate fondness for misery?
“I am trying not to make a mistake, Kirsten. I have made mistakes in the past. Mr. St. Michael is a good man, he’d provide well, and he’s said we could bide here in Haddondale.”
St. Michael was also a shrewd man, then. Nita would look much more favorably on the suit of a gentleman who’d offer her proximity to her family—and her patients.
“And yet you hesitate,” Kirsten said, “and claim you are being sensible. Why can’t you be sensible about sick babies? Leave them to those professionally trained to deal with them, Nita, or to those who conceive them. Nicholas will be in a much better humor if you do.”
Kirsten would be in a better humor too, because then no one would have to worry that Nita’s next sniffle could turn into her last.
“If you should fall ill, Kirsten, shall we summon Dr. Horton?”
Nita might as well have offered Kirsten a plate of boiled cabbage. “I will die before I let that old man near my sickroom.”
“Many do.”
And there, in three syllables, Nita presented an argument Nicholas himself could not entirely gainsay. Horton was old-fashioned and regarded suffering, particularly the suffering of women, children, and the poor, as either God’s will or penance for past or future wickedness.
Convenient theology indeed, when a physician was incapable of rendering aid.
“What does Mr. St. Michael say about your disappearing at all hours to treat the unwell and infirm?” Kirsten asked.
Nita set her bag in her lap. “He has come with me more than once on a call to the Chalmers family, and when I told him how to deal with his ailing sheep, he listened to me—and he thanked me.”
Shrewd, indeed, but diagnosing sheep or dandling a newborn presented far less risk than entering a household in the grip of influenza, which Nita had often done.
Kirsten would thrash St. Michael if he abetted Nita’s folly to that degree.
“Most self-respecting men would expect you to stay home and look after your own family, Nita. Most worthy men would consider themselves failing in their duty to protect you if they allowed you to deal with sickness outside of your own household. Nicholas berates himself for this very shortcoming constantly.”
