He drew back, a look of horror on his face, and turned, nearly falling in his haste to run out the office door. That settled her resolve. She had to leave immediately.
It was time. She had to face her denial. Evenings in the Partlow household had been pure hell. After helping Annalise prepare tea for the children before sending them off to bed, she’d at first spent the later hours avoiding the infernal man before often pleading a headache, or cramps, and heading to her attic prison early.
When one evening he’d suggested a game of chess, she’d pleaded ignorance and allowed him to believe she was ignorant of the moves. He of course had no idea she and her father had used chess to while away the hours aboard ship when they were not busy with patients.
In the last few nights, she’d let him win just enough to believe she was a beginner, but trounced him a few times so that his ego made him insist on a game every night. Thus, she’d discovered a way to keep him occupied through the hours before bed.
He’d cajoled and wheedled endlessly about how she was deliberately straining his manhood when she could relieve all his pent-up passion and become a true partner in his medical practice. Since Willa had spent the majority of her life being accepted as a man, she’d heard a little of the chatter amongst sailors about all the wiles they used to seduce unsuspecting women. She had not been taken in by the doctor’s obviously false promises. Although Willa had no idea where she’d go next, she had no choice but to leave immediately. She was fairly certain he’d obsess so much about her threat that he would not suspect she’d leave so soon.
Back in her barren little aerie, she packed a few belongings into a tattered old bag abandoned in a corner of the attic and tossed it through the open window into the apple orchard below.
She would have to send for her sea chest once she found suitable lodgings. After she made her way down the steep attic steps, she picked up a basket while passing through the kitchen where Annalise sat at the battered wood table peeling a huge bowl of potatoes.
“Where are you going?” The look in the eldest Partlow daughter’s eyes revealed more than her words.
“Apples,” Willa said. “I’ll make a dessert this afternoon.”
Annalise said nothing but abandoned the pile of potatoes and hurried to Willa’s side. She enfolded Willa in a tight embrace and when she let her go, there were tears in the girl’s eyes. “Please write,” she mouthed in a whisper before returning to the potatoes.
Willa walked out into a beautiful late summer day and exchanged the empty apple basket for the battered cloth bag in the orchard.
Cullen had reluctantly accepted the offer of his Aunt Elspeth’s elegant carriage. He’d argued he could travel more quickly by horseback. She’d argued that he could at least offer his bride a more elegant way to marry than arriving by rented hack, or on foot, to the church for her wedding.
Both his aunt and Fergus had also been adamant that he would accompany Cullen as a witness for the clan. Cullen hadn’t even pledged his troth yet, and already he felt like a noose was tightening at his throat before the inevitable drop to oblivion.
He was about to marry a woman, posing as a man, whom he barely knew. Of course, he’d known Wills Morton for weeks. When he ticked off in his mind the things he did know, he realized his future bride was stubborn, never shy about telling him he was wrong, and, oh yes, she was a hell of a surgeon’s assistant when blood and gore were flowing.
“Your Aunt Elspeth was right.”
“What?” Cullen snapped out of his thoughts.
“Ye should be thankful she made me come along to drive this rig. Else ye’d have driven off the road into the brook back there.”
“What?”
“The clan sends ye to Edinburgh for a proper education, and that’s all ye can say? ‘What?’”
“I’m sorry, Fergus. It’s just…”
“Just that ye’re about to be leg-shackled to a creature ye know less about than one of yer patients?”
“No. I mean maybe, well, yes.” He leaned down and brushed a clod of mud from one of his Hessians. “Marriage has never been something I’ve thought about. I mean, I thought I’d just stay in the King’s Navy and keep patching up injured men, treating their clap…”
Fergus nearly dropped the reins to Aunt Elspeth’s high-spirited grays. “Ye do like the gels, don’t ye?”
Cullen flashed his clansman an ugly frown.
“Of course ye do. Never mind I brought up the possibility. Ye’re a sailor.” Fergus gave the grays a slight flick of the whip. “I see now. She’s got a face as homely as one of the grays?”
“No.” Cullen practically shouted. And then a hot flush spread up his neck to his face. “That is, I suppose. I really don’t know. I’ve only known the lass as a lad, young Wills.” He pulled at the cravat choking his breathing atop the spotless, new white shirt his aunt had insisted he wear, since they wouldn’t stop until he ran down the elusive Miss Morton.
“Well, he must be a pretty boy at least, then,” Fergus supplied helpfully.
“I don’t normally decide whether or not a lad is ‘pretty.’” He shook his head, hard. No matter what he said or did, this swirl of nonsense would not have a happy ending.
Fergus grinned and urged the grays into a faster canter.
Willa still had enough money to board the post stage in Peterfield, and that was where she headed after fleeing the Partlow house. However, the way her brain sped from one thought to the next, and her hand holding the worn carpet bag shook like a stray bit of wheat in the wind made her slow to a stop in front of the tea shop.
