“I—.” The expression on Captain Still’s face said he had a lot more to say but was tamping the words down. He finally uttered, “Godspeed, lad,” and shook the young man’s hand.
The young physician’s assistant turned to leave the cabin and picked up a bag leaning next to his sea chest in the companionway. He dreaded the next part of the journey like a condemned prisoner’s last walk from Old Bailey to a hanging outside Newgate.
Shoulders squared, Wills hoisted his sea chest to one shoulder and walked away from the docks toward the streets of Portsmouth to find a hackney cab for hire.
A few miles out of Portsmouth, Cullen soon discovered Heracles did not quite live up to his illustrious name, but was a decent road companion all the same. The moody beast had been moving at a canter for awhile, but suddenly slowed, whipped his head around, and stopped.
Cullen slewed forward and then pulled hard on the reins.What the devil?Heracles pranced sideways and snorted. Suddenly, a fox strutted across the road with three kits in parade behind her. After waiting what seemed an eternity for the little family to slip into the thick underbrush of the Hawthorn hedge, Heracles finally deigned to move on.
“What kind of Greek hero are you?” Cullen leaned forward and in spite of his annoyance at the delay, couldn’t help rubbing his stubborn mount’s neck. He shook his head and urged the animal back to a respectable trot. He knew the tower of St. Peter’s could not be far. He’d been on the road for over two hours. Once he spied the church, the Peterfield Inn would be his next stop. He and his unpredictable mount needed a short respite from the road, and their own crotchety company.
When at last the coaching inn courtyard hove into view, Cullen slid down from Heracles’s considerable back and handed him off to a groom just as the post coach from Portsmouth rolled to a stop. He’d considered taking the coach, which would go all the way to London, but had decided instead to hire mounts along the way, to clear his head before facing his aunt. And riding solo would save him a number of hours, versus taking a mail coach.
The horn sounded before the coach rumbled into the courtyard, and there was a flurry of activity as travelers dismounted. A young woman and her mother exited the coach deep into a loud argument about whether they would eat in the tavern, or hire a private room. A ridiculous hat laden with fake fruit and flowers balanced atop the young woman’s brassy blonde curls while her mother’s face was barely visible beneath a bonnet with side flaps so large, surely the woman lacked sufficient peripheral vision to safely navigate the few steps into the inn.
Cullen hesitated a bit longer to allow the crowd of travelers time to alight and find their way inside. He was still observing the comical, squabbling mother and daughter when he nearly missed the last person off one of the outside seats on the coach.
She wore a drab, outdated traveling dress and reminded him a bit of a forlorn crow. Tall for a woman, she took long, deliberate strides and seemed oblivious of her unfashionably short skirts, showing a bit of stocking above the tops of her sensible walking boots.
The woman stopped short of the door to the inn and waited while one of the inn’s servant boys in the courtyard retrieved her luggage from the boot of the stagecoach. She directed him to a carriage on the street outside the inn where the driver took the small trunk, a sea chest in fact, and stowed it behind his seat.
When she walked by Cullen, he snatched a glimpse of extraordinary gray eyes. In a passing moment so brief, he later would wonder if he’d imagined it, he thought he saw a glimmer of recognition flash before she lowered her eyes beneath impossibly thick, soot-dark lashes. And then she was gone.
Willa settled into the hard, uncomfortable squabs of the hack cab Dr. Partlow had hired for her. She cautioned the flutter of hope in her stomach against expecting too much, but she’d latched onto the letter he’d sent like a lifeline. She’d read over and over the few lines in his spare, cramped penmanship inviting her to leave the ship and join him in Peterfield as an assistant in his practice.
She’d opened her plain gray reticule several times during the stagecoach journey to touch the folded piece of paper. She’d met Dr. Partlow only once, when he’d invited her and her father to join him for tea at an inn in Portsmouth a few years before.
He was a bit younger than her father, but the two of them had talked for hours, mostly ignoring her presence. And now she had no idea what to expect, but she suspected working with him could be no worse than continuing the charade of appearing to be a man while tolerating the new Scottish surgeon.
She’d had an epiphany of sorts when she began to wonder what her life would look like in two years, or five. She doubted she could fake her way into medical studies at Edinburgh, but did not have the heart to go on with the half life of assistant to a high-in-the-instep Scotsman who looked down on her lack of official education. Her experiences at sea were at least equal to what he’d seen, and she’d had to deal with injuries and illnesses on a much larger ship than those of the African Squadron.
Although her father had doted on her and protected her ever since the death of her mother, he’d assumed she would always stay by his side and be his silent, obedient assistant, invisible to the rest of the world. During his final days, he’d even suggested she go to Dr. Partlow for help in the event of his own demise.
And now, she had the invitation. He’d initiated the contact. She opened her reticule again and fingered the single page of the letter. He knew her worth. She could not practice as a physician on her own, but she could become a valuable partner for his practice. They could help each other. She was not coming to him as a poor orphan. She could earn her keep.
Just then, the driver guided the pair of grays into a long drive lined with sturdy oaks. The branches swelled and met in a heavy green arch above them, with a bit of light filtering through from the cloudy skies. In a small corner of her heart, Willa wished for a little more from life. If only the sun would burn through the clouds. She took a deep breath and accepted the driver’s offer of assistance to help her to the ground. He left her chest next to the gate and headed back toward town.
The front door of the house exploded open and a mass of children raced toward her. She tried a quick count and stopped at six. Her heart sank, and she had a moment of dizziness when she realized two of the girls in her original count each had a smaller child clinging to her.
One small boy pushed forward and tilted his chin belligerently. He narrowed his eyes and accused, “You’re our new governess. You’ll be gone in a few weeks just like all the rest.” He turned and stomped back toward the house.
One of the rosy-cheeked, older girls in an apron came close and gave a clumsy bow after placing a toddler on the ground. “Don’t listen to him. He doesn’t like anyone. I’m Annalise. I’ll show you your room.”
“I’m here to see Dr. Partlow. There must be some mistake. I am not a governess. I’m a physician’s assistant. Is the doctor at home?”
The young woman gave her a pitying glance and scooped up the wayward toddler. Willa could not discern the gender of the small child because of the trailing, outsized dress.
“Papa is gone. He’s always gone. You can wait in the parlor. I’ll send in some tea, because you will wait a very long time.”
“Where is your mother?”
“She’s dead,” Annalise said, and headed back toward the house, balancing the child on her hip. “She died when he was born.” The girl pointed at the little one she carried.
“I’m so sorry. Was she ill?”
“No. She was exhausted. She just gave up.”
The girl looked back one last time toward Willa’s sea chest sitting unceremoniously by the front gate where the hired driver had deposited it. “My brother, James, will be out in a bit to get your chest and take it up to your room in the attic.”
