Arnaud coughed and found something intensely interesting outside the carriage windows. Captain Neville’s face and neck reddened to compete with his regimental uniform.
“George, breathe,” Lydia admonished, and gave him a smart thwack against his back.
Sophie gave Lydia a fond, indulgent smile. “Dr. MacCloud is definitely not a fusty, old anything. He’s been married to the Royal Navy, like these gentlemen.” She swept her hand around to encompass her husband and Captain Neville.
“But why in a rush, overnight?”
Arnaud wisely remained silent, curious as to how his wife would explain Cullen’s precipitous marriage.
“There were, ah, extenuating circumstances.”
“She’s with child?” Lydia sucked in a quick breath, her blue eyes wide.
Now it was Neville’s turn to choke, and Arnaud struggled to control the flame of embarrassment creeping up his own neck.
Sophie leaned across to the seats on the other side of the coach and placed her hand over Lydia’s. “We must not speak of this anywhere outside this carriage.”
“Of course. You know something.” Lydia paused a moment. “The cards. You saw something in the cards.”
“No, no.” Sophie shook her head hard.
“Then how do you know there were ‘extenuating circumstances’?”
“Cullen came to us a week ago to talk about problems he was having with the son of the dead surgeon he replaced.”
Lydia’s head quirked to the side like a small cat, momentarily sidetracked by the sight of a yarn toy. “But what does that have to do with his new wife?”
“Lydia, think. Think what you might do if you suddenly had no family and the only family you’d ever known was your father. Your father who had kept you by his side and taught you everything he knew about medicine. But your father was a physician aboard Royal Navy ships, where growing up as a woman would be a liability. I suspect the choices Willa and her father made were difficult, but seemed the only possible solution at the time.” Sophie leaned back heavily against the squabs. “Now, try to imagine what would happen when that carefully built world collapsed with your father’s death. You live in a world where women are neither allowed to train in, nor practice, medicine. What would you do?”
Lydia had nothing to say in reply, her mouth agape at Sophie’s words.
“But what does that have to do with Dr. MacCloud?” she finally managed.
Arnaud took over. “Cullen had never met Willa before his father used his influence to have him assigned aboard theArethusa. However, both Willa’s deceased mother and her father were well known to his mother’s MacKenzie clan because of the work Dr. Morton and his late wife did twenty years ago during a measles epidemic. So…when Cullen wrote to his Aunt Elspeth complaining about Dr. Morton’s son, ‘Wills,’ she immediately ordered him to join her in London, claiming she was ill.”
“And they made Cullen marry her,” Lydia finished.
“Yes, that’s exactly what happened.” Arnaud sighed and settled back into the cushions next to his wife.
“But Willa is so pretty,” Lydia insisted. “How did Dr. MacCloud ever believe she was a man?”
“That is the mystery,” Neville agreed. Then both men broke out in laughter.
“Why are you laughing at poor Cullen?” Sophie gave Arnaud a sharp jab in the side with her elbow.
“That insufferable swab has left a trail of broken hearts from the Highlands to the west coast of Africa, and bragged about it. Now it’s his fate to face the wrath of one angry woman, in small quarters, for months at sea.”
Cullen had sent one of the young stable grooms back to Dr. Partlow’s home in Peterfield to retrieve Willa’s sea chest. The smile on her face when she saw the chest waiting for her in their dark, cramped cabin was more than enough compensation for all he’d been through to make the stubborn Miss Morton his wife.
He was so intent on absorbing the only joy she’d exhibited since he’d met her, he stumbled and had to catch himself when passing through the tight entry from the surgery.
She reflexively held out a hand to steady him and Cullen blushed furiously. The lass was treating him like a small child, or an old man, when all he wanted was to see that smile again, maybe directed at him. After all, they were well and truly wed, maybe not exactly “truly,” but who was to say they could not at least grow to enjoy each other’s company?
There was a small tap at the bulkhead outside their quarters followed by the ship’s cook leaning through the entry with a tray of tea things. “Thought the two of you could use a bit of tea and a cose.” The man studiously avoided staring at Willa before stuttering as if in afterthought, “Welcome to the ship, Mrs. MacCloud.”
Cullen’s previously cautious optimism thudded to the bottom of his gut. None of the crew would be the slightest bit convinced that the new Mrs. MacCloud was not some iteration of the previous Mr. Morton. What had he, and his family, expected? This woman had nursed most of these men through various illnesses and injuries through the years while she’d worked side-by-side with her father.
“Thank you so much. We appreciate your thoughtfulness.” His wife’s back was ramrod straight and her lips formed a tight smile when she took the tray from the man and placed it on top of her sea chest, now solidly in place at the foot of one of the two narrow bunks. When the man lingered a few minutes longer, she walked to him and patted the hand supporting his bulk against the entryway. “Poppy, those fingers look as though you may have a bit of pain at times,” she said. “I’ll have some balm sent round to the galley.”
