Page 42 of The Nabob's Designing Daughter
“Abuse?” Strachney cried. “That drunken apothecary could do the job better. This one’s poking harder on purpose.”
“Father. Errol is doing his best. If he doesn’t remove the bits and pieces from the wound they’ll fester.”
Father swore a vile oath about Errol’s parentage.
The duke took her hand and rubbed it between his own. “Men don’t handle pain well, Ann. Your father is worse than most. With so much rot pouring from your mouth, Strachney, the wound may fester anyway.”
“I’ll do my very best to save you,” Errol said. “Though God knows why I should.”
As he worked, her father’s voice grew hoarser with each bellow and insult. She tried to shut them out, as Errol seemed able to do, but she found herself giving into the duke’s gentle tugging, edging her away from the bed, until another arm came around her shoulder.
“Come into my parlor,” Mrs. MacDonal said. “You may cry on my shoulder if you wish.”
She glanced back at Errol and found him watching her. Pain flashed briefly in his dark eyes, quickly shuttered. He nodded and went back to his work, as if nothing had happened.
She straightened her shoulders and linked arms with Mrs. MacDonal. “I have no intentions of weeping.”
“Not even out of anger?”
“Perhaps that. But I’ll go and drink tea and wait to hear whether my father dies today.”
“Or to see whether Errol kills him or not?”
“I’d kill them both if I was that sort of woman.”
A servant arrived with the tea tray, and they waited until he left.
“If he dies, will you stay at Glenthistle?”
“I don’t know.” Tears sprang to her eyes, unbidden, as she thought about living in the great house near Kinmarty, all alone. Her aunt wouldn’t join her; she wouldn’t want to leave Edinburgh where her sons ran the business and she cared for her younger children.
Buthow could she leave the tenants, and the local people? They needed her.
She’d dreamed of a year, and maybe more, in the Highlands with Errol. Perhaps working side-by-side. Wondering if maybe someday, he could care for her.
Oh, his kisses proved he cared for her. He just wouldn’t stay.
If her father lived, she could marry the marquess, but that way lay even deeper loneliness. If Father died, she wouldn’t have to marry anyone.
Oh, but she didn’t care about being an heiress.
“I would like to stay, but to live at Glenthistle all alone?” She shuddered.
“And what of Errol.”
She shook her head. “I released him from his commitment today.”
“Would that be the commitment to spend a year in Kinmarty, or were there other promises made?”
She felt heat rising into her cheeks.
“No. No other promises. He’s my cousin’s friend, not mine.”
“I think that you are not being entirely honest, Ann. I think that you love him, and that he cares for you as well.”
The memory of that kiss, the feelings it stirred, swamped her. Some men could steal kisses as easily as shaking one’s hand. It didn’t mean anything to them. She made herself shrug. “He doesn’t. And if I do, I shall recover.” The marquess’s booming voice came through the closed door and Ann shuddered again. “Not by going meekly to the altar with someone else, though.”
“You would like to choose your own husband? How very modern.”
