Читать книгу Regency Christmas Gifts - Carla Kelly - Страница 9

Amalie had recovered from her mirth enough to notice the muscle ticking in the Scottish captain’s jaw. He played well at hiding his anger and kept his wits about him. Knowing firsthand how difficult that was, she admired it enormously.

He was a handsome fellow. More than that, really. He seemed imbued with strength of character, if she was not mistaken, and was certainly blessed with a ready sense of humor. He had remained congenial even though she had purposely offended him with her questions to see how he would react. She had seen compassion and understanding, rather than pity, in those deep green eyes of his. Of course, he would know what pity was like and must hate it, too.

If she could enlist his aid, she meant to teach that misguided brother of hers a lesson or two. Didn’t she have enough to endure without putting up with Michael’s machinations?

Feigning a short fit of coughing, she motioned across the room to where decanters were set out with brandy and sherry. As she knew he would, Michael dashed over to pour her a glass. Her father followed to get one of his own, another predictable occurrence.

While they were occupied, Amalie leaned closer to the captain, her hand hiding a whisper. “Play this out with me. Father will have Michael’s head on a plate.”

He gave her a doubtful look, then an infinitesimal nod.

Michael brought her brandy by mistake and she gulped it down, hissing delicately at the bite. She cleared her throat. “You will never guess what has happened!”

Her brother smiled in question, looking from her to the captain and back again.

Amalie reached over and held out her hand to their guest. There was nothing for him to do but take it in his. “Captain Napier has agreed to take me off the shelf.”

Her father choked on his brandy. Michael looked non-plussed with the precipitous success of his scheme. The Scot held his smile. But she could hear his teeth grind. She bared her own teeth at him. “Isn’t it wonderful? Love at first sight.”

“Here now! What’s this?” Her father had regained his voice. “He only got here a few moments ago. You don’t even know the fellow!”

Amalie turned her lips down in a pout and made the lower one tremble. “But Michael brought him for me all the way from the peninsula. I like him and I want to keep him.”

Her father blanched perfectly white and even Michael looked appalled at the swiftness of her decision.

She pressed on. “I’ve already promised him my whole inheritance from Grandmama, half the estate when we inherit, and—best of all—he’s bringing me his three natural children to raise for my own. Their mothers won’t mind, he says, for we can install them somewhere in the village.”

Her father gaped.

She went on, fabricating to her heart’s content. “Since we can live right here with you, there should be plenty of help with little ones. Please, please, Father, don’t say no. Mother will be delighted with grandchildren!”

In fact, Mother was so disinterested in children, she had paid only scant attention to her own. She was not even down here now, welcoming the one who had just survived a war.

The Scot squeezed her hand until she felt the knuckles grind together. Her father sputtered helplessly. Michael’s eyes were wide, panicked, darting from her to their father. This was too entertaining.

Michael rushed to suggest, “Amie, perhaps you should consider—”

“What, brother? What’s to mull over that you haven’t thought out?” she demanded, trying to retain a cheerful tone. “Surely you considered every detail when choosing him? How much more suitable could he be, I ask you?” She flung out her free hand as if to present the man as the greatest prize imaginable. “Just look at him!”

“Just look at us,” the Scot echoed, surprising her. “Matching bookends.”

The underlying tone of his voice warned her to cease before he lost his temper completely. But Michael’s face was a study in scarlet perplexity and their father was now eyeing her brother with an urge to throttle. She added one more little plea. “Please, Papa?”

At length, her father dragged his attention from the errant Michael and fastened it on her. Suddenly his face softened and his tight lips relaxed into a sad smile of sympathy. No, pure pity.

Oh, dear! Amalie’s heart stuttered. Don’t say it, Father! Do not! Her silent plea went unheard. She had overplayed her hand.

“Of course, my darling girl. You may have anything your heart desires. You deserve it.”

The Scot leveled her with a glare that promised retribution for this attack of insanity. She bit her lip and wrinkled her nose at him, but she had a feeling a look of apology would not be sufficient in this case.

Michael dusted his hands together. “Well, glad that’s settled! I shall go and fetch Mother.”

Oh, no!

“Wait!” Amalie cried, throwing out her hand as if she could grasp his coat. He stopped and turned, eyebrows raised in innocent query.

She bit her lip, her glance skipping from him, to her father and finally to their guest. “Please.” Her voice almost a whisper, she lowered her eyes and sighed. “This was only a jest meant to lesson you in meddling, Michael.”

But that wasn’t the worst of the matter. “Captain Napier, I do apologize for abusing your good nature in such an abominable way.”

Her father’s color returned. He rocked heel to toe for a few seconds, then hesitantly asked the captain, “Did she make up that part about the children and your…The mothers?”

The Scot lowered his face to his hand and pinched the bridge of his nose. He shook his head slowly as if at a loss in dealing with Bedlamites. “A fabrication, to be sure,” he said. “I do have one son, but he’s quite legitimate.”

“Legitimate?” Michael croaked, clutching his chest. “Never say it! You’re married?”

Captain Napier glanced up swiftly, still shaking his head. “No. My wife…passed away.”

Widowed. Amalie felt terrible. “Do say you forgive me, sir. This was a horribly thoughtless thing for me to do. I had no idea…”

“I know,” the captain said, not looking at her, but at the floor. “I’ll have a brandy now if it’s convenient.”

They’d forgotten to offer him a drink! Michael and her father almost collided in their haste to reach the decanter.

Napier graced her with a dangerous look of warning as he spoke in a dark whisper, “If I were not confined to this chair, I would take you over my knee.”

She bobbed her head up and down, noting how his deep green eyes glinted and his expressive lips turned up just a bit at the corners. It was in no way a smile. More like exasperation.

“I’ve confessed, sir,” she told him earnestly. “What more could you ask of me?”

His lips firmed. His nostrils flared ever so slightly with an indrawn breath. Then he spoke. “I’d ask if you’re lying about everything. I happened to notice you just moved your feet.”

Alex had felt an overpowering need to lash out, to hurt someone, just because he’d been humiliated. Now, brandy in hand, his temper cooled somewhat, he hated whatever had possessed him.

She hadn’t answered his cruel question, but he had not expected she would. If she was pretending, it was certainly no business of his. And if she wasn’t, he had gained her enmity for life.

Just because she had moved her feet did not mean she was capable of walking. What had he been thinking? He could move his, too, but still could not depend on that left leg to support him.

Michael had taken a chair across from him and now appeared to be searching his mind for a way to explain his sister’s strange behavior.

The baron had left the room—glad to get away, Alex imagined—and had gone to fetch the baroness. He wondered if she were as daft as the rest of the family.

“Has Dr. Raine been down from London recently, Amie? Is there any improvement in your condition?” Michael asked his sister.

“No change,” she said, her tone defensive. “He should be here the day after tomorrow for his monthly visit.”

Michael gave a resigned nod, then addressed Alex. “I should like him to see you, too, when he comes. See what he thinks. Raine is the best available. Father saw to that when Amie was injured.”

That was all Alex needed, another opinion, when he was clinging so desperately to the only positive one thus far. His own. “Thank you, but—”

“Don’t bother refusing,” Michael warned. “You know I shall only wear you down.”

Alex gave it up. He would talk to the doctor to placate Michael. Nothing more than a conversation. No examinations. No arguments.

“If you insist, I’ll see him.”

Michael jumped up and headed for the door. “Wonderful! I’ll bring his letters of recommendation from Father’s study.”

“What’s the worst Raine could tell you, hmm?” Amalie asked.

Alex turned on her, his anger flaring anew. “You’ve the devil of a tongue on you, you know that? If you’ve any feeling in that backside of yours, it ought to be made use of!”

“That’s the second time you’ve suggested such,” she retorted with a moue of feigned fright. “You’d cane a poor cripple?”

“Leave off,” he growled. “This sniping serves no purpose.”

She tossed him an insincere smile. “Oh, but it does, Captain. It serves to distract us.”

He leveled her with a glare. “You are a spoiled, self-indulgent excuse for a lady if I ever met one. Is that all you do all day? Sit around throwing verbal darts at anyone who wanders by?”

She inclined her head as if considering the question in new light. “I suppose I do. It passes the time. That’s bad of me, I know.”

“Have you even tried to stand?” he asked, surprising himself with his own directness.

Her humor, black as it was, fled on the instant. “Yes, of course I have.” Her voice sounded so small.

“You make me want to kick myself,” he muttered.

“Now there’s a picture!”

Alex smiled in spite of himself. He just didn’t know what to make of this person. He began to suspect she harbored exactly the same frustrations he did, only she had endured them longer. And she seemed to have lost her hope, something he was terribly afraid of doing himself. He suddenly realized a deep-seated need to help this girl despite the fact that she nettled him so mercilessly.

“So, tell me of this doctor of yours,” he said by way of turning the subject.

“Oh, Raine’s pleasant enough when you say what he wants to hear, I suppose. He’s not overly fond of me, as you might imagine.”

“He expects too much of you, eh?” Alex guessed.

She slipped into a thoughtful mood, laying her brittleness aside for the nonce. “Yes, he does. He brought this Amazon with him not long after he began treating me. Magda, she’s called. Frightful woman. She pummels and stretches my limbs unmercifully each day. Twice! It’s quite painful.”

“I see. Then you do have feeling in your…limbs.” He smiled again. Legs were not mentioned in polite company. He should have remembered that earlier. Neither were backsides.

“Tremendous feeling,” she admitted with a grimace. “Though no action at all.” Her curiosity got the better of her. “You?”

“I work the muscles as often as I can now that the bone’s healed. Hurts less now than it did.”

“Truly?” Her interest aroused, she queried further. “How can you do that alone?”

“Have to,” he explained patiently. “You see, if the muscles atrophy—and I suspect that’s why your Amazon is so avid in her task—there’s no chance you’ll ever regain the strength to use them.”

“Mine must have atrophied then,” she said in a quiet voice, as though speaking to herself. “They’re of no use whatsoever. Perhaps Dr. Raine and Magda began too late with me.”

“Let me see,” he demanded, his former training over-ruling any thought to impropriety.

Her eyes rounded with shock. “Sir! How dare you suggest such a thing?”

Alex scoffed. “Spare me the hysterics. I’m a trained physician. It’s not as if I’ve never seen a woman’s legs before. Lift your skirts.” Meanwhile, he busied himself with the wheels of his chair, arcing them so that he faced her, knee to knee.

“You’re a doctor?” she asked, frowning. “Seriously?”

Alex finished lifting her skirts halfway up her thighs, employing the swiftness and businesslike manner imperative in examining a female patient. “Not so seriously these days, but I trust I can still recognize a withered limb when I see one.” His gaze traveled over the smooth ivory skin of her legs while his hands judged the amount of slackness of tendon and muscle beneath it.

“Quadriceps femoris seems firm,” he muttered, reaching beneath her leg. She jumped and made a little sound. “That hurt?”

“No,” she said breathlessly, then bit her lip.

“Good. Facia lata seems a bit lax to me. Flex it.”

She gasped. “Flex what?”

“Your leg!” he ordered impatiently. “Try to lift it.”

Suddenly she yelped and punched at his shoulder frantically with her fists.

“What’s this?” Michael shouted. “What are you doing?”

Alex groaned, snatched his hands away and jerked down her skirts.

“He’s a doctor!” Amalie cried. “He was only—”

“I know what he was doing!” Michael thundered. “Captain, if you were not…incapacitated, I should call you out on the instant!”

Alex grabbed the wheels of his chair and rolled himself backward, no small task given the thickness of the carpet. “Settle your feathers, Harlowe. You know I’m no threat to—” He broke off when he looked over at Michael and saw the baron standing beside him, sagging under the inert weight of a woman Alex supposed was the baroness. She had fainted dead away.

“He is a doctor!” Amalie wailed. Alex didn’t blame her at all. He felt like wailing himself.

“They’ll have to marry now,” her father declared in a woebegone tone.

“Milord…” Alex let his words trail away, knowing it was no use. No matter that he couldn’t manage a seduction right now if his life depended upon it or that the idea had not even occurred to him. He had thoroughly compromised Miss Amalie Harlowe beyond all redemption in the eyes of her parents and her brother. He’d been squarely caught with his hands up her skirts. And, since he had never confessed his former profession to Michael, any claim of purely medical interest under those ruffles would never be believed.

Even if he sent for his license to prove it, he still had no excuse. The lady had a physician already and no reason at all to be soliciting the opinion of one who had given up the practice.

He bit the bullet he knew he was expected to bite, and looked Amalie straight in the eye. “Miss Harlowe, I was just on the point of asking you. Would you kindly do me the honor of becoming my wife?”

She stared at him as if he’d grown horns. “You are mad, sir!”

Alex had to agree. “Assuredly, but I shouldn’t think that would be an impediment you would notice much around here. So, will you, then?”

She dropped her gaze to her lap, then stared pointedly at his, her thoughts so apparent and well focused on any future attempt at consummation, she might as well have spoken them aloud.

Then she raised her head, looked him straight in the eye and shrugged one dispirited shoulder. “Why not?”