Page 6 of The Nabob's Designing Daughter
The coach rattled, pitching them sideways through a turn. Edme squeaked and grabbed the hand strap.
A goodhearted lass, but the silliest of the Beecham children, Edme had grown into a pert young lady with sparkling amber eyes and fiery hair much like his own late mother’s. He might have flirted with her himself, except that she—and more importantly her brother William—were like family to him, and Errol valued his life. Though initially reluctant to put her into the care of Mrs. MacDonal, William had given in. This trip to the Highlands would remove her from the temptations of one of his new clerks. She’d have the fun of a Yuletide house party, and then perhaps a chance for an even longer stay with Edme’s cousin, Ann Strachney.
He shifted in his seat. No one had said whether Ann would be at Castle Kinmarty, and he wasn’t quite sure that he wanted to see her. He’d thought far too much about her since that last awkward parting. She’d called him out on his rudeness, and he’d deserved it.
“Almost there.” Edme’s seatmate, Mrs. MacDonal, sent Errol a blue-eyed wink that made him start.
Women flirted with him, had done so since his voice started changing. But he shook off the possibility that Mrs. MacDonal was doing so. After all, this attractive wealthy widow and cousin to the Duchess of Kinmarty had been both friendly and commanding at their first meeting when she appeared for tea with Mrs. Beecham, and again later when he visited her to consult about travel arrangements at the inn where she was staying. His instincts about women, honed by his youth in his father’s coaching inn, were seldom wrong. She had no carnal interest in him.
Besides, her Indian manservant, a strapping, silent, beturbaned man who served as footman, groom, and majordomo, had hovered nearby during those discussions, allaying any hint of impropriety. At least any impropriety involving Errol.
Today, the man accompanied the coach astride a fine piece of horseflesh. Errol wished to blazes he was also riding alongside the coach on the other side, despite the frigid December weather.
“I, for one, will be glad to arrive,” Mrs. MacDonal said. “Minny will have tea for us, and a glass of the Kinmarty whisky, if you’re inclined to partake of something stronger.”
Minny was Mrs. MacDonal’s pet name for her cousin, the Duchess of Kinmarty.
“If she hasn’t already gone into labor.” She tightened the strings on her outlandishly large bonnet bedecked with feathers the same color as her startlingly blue eyes. “I’m so happy we shared a common destination, Doctor, and that we were able to convey you to Kinmarty more expeditiously and in greater comfort than the public coach.”
“You haven’t been very good company, Errol.” Edme said.
The whole trip was upending his life. A house party? In December? In the Highlands? And a hostess ready to go into labor? It was madness.
Having just finished four grueling but invigorating years of study in Edinburgh, he’d been in London, preparing to leave his inn room for a meeting with the senior members of a practice he hoped to join. And then two letters had arrived, both forwarded from Edinburgh. One from a solicitor named Henderson, a man he’d met two years before, setting a meeting with him a few weeks hence at Castle Kinmarty to discuss two matters of business.
Castle Kinmarty was in the Highlands, and he had no plans to journey there. He would write Mr. Henderson and tell him to convey the information in a letter.
The haughty tone of the letter poked at his pride. He’d come from lowly roots, grandson of an Afro-Caribbean laborer who’d found his way to Edinburgh and son of an innkeeper and his Highlander wife. Both his parents had died too young, and Errol wouldn’t have made his way this far without help, first from his father’s friend, Eleazar Beecham, and then, upon Beecham’s death, from a second benefactor.
Before his father’s death, he’d dealt with inn visitors, worked in Beecham’s business, and studied hard. When he’d mastered his Greek, and especially his Latin, he’d gone off to study chemistry—always useful when dealing with textiles—until one day he’d stumbled into Professor Monro’s anatomy lecture.
Now he was a qualified physician and trained surgeon, from the premier school of medicine in all of Britain, perhaps all of the world.
Still fuming, he’d opened the second letter, this one from the Duke of Kinmarty, and it was a plum assignment indeed, lifting his mood. Summoned, he was, to deliver the duke’s firstborn and heir—with luck the child would indeed be male, and of course healthy. Surely, the practice would welcome him back once the child was safely delivered. They could not turn down a physician summoned by a duke.
The coach came around a bend and the outline of a building loomed.
Edme gasped. “Is that it?”
“Indeed it is,” Mrs. MacDonal said. “Castle Kinmarty. My husband and the duke spent many happy times here.”
“Itisold,” Edme said. “Ann described it so, but I scarce believed her.”
“Centuries old. And it’s true, rather dilapidated in places, but we are making repairs.”
Ann again. She’d asked him to write, and he had, and she hadn’t replied to his letter.
The coach made a turn, and he ducked his head to peer out. Kinmarty was as magnificent as Edinburgh Castle. A central tower stood between wings lined with windows. Precious candlelight glimmered through them in the twilight. Kinmarty appeared to be a prosperous residence for the duke and his wife.
Quite remote though, and far from other medical resources. And in a building this old, sanitation would likely be suspect. Was the water sound? Home to tend to his sick grandmother and make peace with his wretched grandfather, his mother had succumbed to a fever contracted in a Highland castle not so very far from here.
“What of the more modern amenities?” he asked. “Fresh water and so forth?”
He wracked his brain trying to remember if there’d been any reports of fever in the Highlands this year. While making his clinical rounds, he’d attended more than one birth. Childbirth might be a risky business in the best of circumstances, much depending on the mother’s health and anatomy. With luck, the duchess would be built for childbearing and the local midwife, if one should appear, would be competent and not an interfering fool.
As the carriage slowed, he shook off the worries and watched as Mrs. MacDonal’s manservant leapt from his mount, handed over his reins, and nudged the duke’s liveried footman out of the way. Mrs. MacDonal beamed at the dark-eyed man as he helped her out and escorted her to the door.
Edme’s eyes went wide, her mouth dropped open, and she sent him a curious look. For all that she’d grown up with worldly brothers in a vibrant and cosmopolitan household, Edme could be an innocent goose.
