“And just how do you know what’s inside one of those novels you make fun of?”
Fergus ignored the question, and Cullen fought an overwhelming urge to push him off onto the side of the narrow roadway and take over the reins. Instead, when he tapped the older man on the shoulder, he obligingly pulled over. They exchanged seats for the last lap of the tedious trip.
Cullen stood in the busy kitchen of Peterfield’s only physician where a kindly young woman watched him closely, tipping her head slightly as if she were weighing his worth.
Miss Annalise Partlow knew more than she was saying. She had a regular army of stair-stepped siblings, all clad in over-long aprons, lined up at a long, battered wooden table, and peeling potatoes. He’d tried to get an accurate count of the Partlow tribe as he’d been ushered through the house toward Annalise’s domain but gave up after passing about six or seven of the little heathens, all shouting and fighting over one thing or another.
After a few minutes of polite conversation, she seemed to come to a conclusion and motioned for him to follow her into her father’s office. The estimable Dr. Partlow apparently was away on rounds of his patients’ homes which, according to his eldest daughter, would go on indefinitely.
She turned and put her forefinger to her lips to signal a whispered exchange. But devil take him if either of them could talk in any mode of voice that would be heard above the din of the small savages racing about the house.
“She sent me a letter.” Miss Partlow breathed in after the stage whisper. The long silence following that revelation reminded Cullen of wild stag hunts in Scotland. Just when you thought you knew where they were headed, they circled back behind you into the woods. He sensed any signs of impatience on his part would send her skittering back to the infernal kitchen full of small potato peelers.
She leaned over her father’s desk and scrawled an address on the back of a scrap of used paper. She handed it to Cullen. “You will make her happy, won’t you?”
Cullen wrinkled his brow. “Not sure I ken what you mean. How would my showing up make her happy?”
Annalise gave him a sour look. “Why else would you come here?” she asked, pointing to the fine carriage outside with Fergus at the reins. “She needs someone to take care of her, and…”
“And what?” Cullen pressed.
“I’m afraid my father played her false.”
Cullen stepped closer, jaw clenched. “What did he do to her?”
Annalise’s face burned crimson. “Nothing, nothing,” she assured him, but her expression said otherwise. “He led her to believe she was coming here as his assistant when actually…”
“Actually what?” Cullen’s voice sharpened.
“Actually, what he wanted was for her to help with the children.” She hung her head.
After Cullen thanked Miss Partlow, he hurried back to the carriage and pulled himself up onto the driver’s seat next to Fergus.
“The lass was’na there.” Fergus stated the obvious. “Where are we bound now?”
Cullen sighed, resigned. “Back the way we came.”
Willa frowned, concentrating on the writhing contortions of the colt about to be born. The young stable boy had nearly fainted when she’d suddenly put her hand up into the animal’s birth canal and motioned frantically for his help.
“No, not me,” he’d stammered, and backed into a corner of the stall, collapsing down onto his heels in the straw. Molly’s heavy stamping and heaving in the stall had left him in obvious terror.
“You have to help keep me steady if one of her contractions squeezes my arm too tightly.”
His small, pinched face paled even more in the low light. She’d lost track of time, somewhere in the wee hours of the morning, of course. All creatures seemed to birth their young in the dead of the night. Young John had sought her out in the loft, shaking her awake.
Molly was one of the huge draft horses drovers used for hauling heavy loads of supplies, like barrels of ale. How she’d come to be in the motherly way, the gods only knew. Of course, Willa knew all about pregnancy and birth. She’d grown up with a father who had trained her in every eventuality a physician might face.
The mystery was why the stable owner had allowed Molly to be exposed to a situation where she would be bred. Keeping the large inventory of horses needed for stables on a coaching line was a very lucrative business. A powerful wheel horse like Molly represented a huge investment.
By the time Molly gave up a fine, well-formed colt and Willa found her cot above the stables, the sun was peeking through the forest of masts in Portsmouth Harbour. She prayed she could get a few hours of sleep before the innkeeper realized she was not at her usual station in the stable. He was not the sort of man who would overlook a late appearance even though said worker had labored through the night.
After a few tense moments of rolling from side to side, trying to get comfortable on the hard cot, she dropped into a deep sleep. The fog-filled dream that immediately claimed her consisted of a Scotsman droning on and on about the proper length of stitches for sewing up a sailor’s wounds.
When she awoke suddenly to straw-dust-filled beams of late sun coming through the loft windows, she at first thought she was still dreaming. Another Scotsman was droning on and on beneath the loft. Willa sat up with a jerk. She wasn’t dreaming.
“Wills—” The bellow from below came from the innkeeper himself. “Get yourself down here before I let you go for laziness.”
She pulled on trousers, a shirt, and jammed a soft-brimmed hat on her head before taking the loft steps two at a time to present herself to the owner. Thank Hera she slept with her breasts bound. Of course, in truth, there was not that much to hide, which made her ongoing charade that much easier to maintain.
