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“We’ll see.” He helped Alex to stand and shed his pantaloons, then assisted him to the bed.
“Hmm,” Raine said as he examined the scar, then moved the leg about as he expertly palpated tendons and ligaments. He wasn’t quite so loquacious now, limiting his remarks to that same wordless sound all doctors make. Alex recalled making it himself more times than he could count. Usually when he didn’t want to say what he was thinking.
After a few pertinent questions regarding the treatment, both by the doctors and what Alex had attempted since, Raine stood away. “Well, that’s that.”
“That’s what?” He made himself ask, knowing the answer.
The doctor ran a hand over his balding pate and shook his head. “You have read all the ancient texts, I’ll wager. And while some insist positive thoughts can affect the outcome of infirmities, no amount of wishful thinking will let you flex that knee at will. It’ll buckle on you every time you put weight on it. I don’t need to tell you that.”
“I will walk,” Alex said mulishly as he grabbed his pants to dress.
“Never said you wouldn’t do that,” Raine argued. “Only that the knee won’t work. It is fair wrecked and nothing can fix it.”
Alex managed to push himself to a standing position and held on to the metal footboard. “Thank you for the opinion,” he said with no sincerity and held out his hand.
Raine shook it firmly. “Good luck to you, son.” He hesitated a second, then asked, “Where were you trained?”
“Royal College of Physicians at Edinburgh.”
“Excellent training then. War is hell, eh? May I ask why you went and why, when there is so much to be learned from battle wounds, you did not practice your art there?”
“Personal reasons.”
“You Scots are a dour lot and that’s a fact. You be good to that girl,” he said, and waited for Alex to nod. Then he was gone.
Alex glared down at his leg. He supposed he had accepted the truth somewhere inside him long before now.
He spent the better part of half an hour struggling to get his boots back on. One success at a time, he decided. He sat there on the bed in sartorial splendor until Michael came to fetch him.
Alex refused to get in the chair. “Find me two forked tree limbs, anything to serve, will you? I have got to be on my feet.” The compulsion was so great it wouldn’t be denied.
Michael rushed out, so eager to please it made Alex dizzy. He was gone for quite a while and was running when he returned. “Look!” he exclaimed, holding out a pair of crutches. “Amalie’s idea! I went to get her unused ones to make a pattern, but I think we can use these. See what she suggested? Won’t they work for now?”
Alex considered the odd-looking things. They obviously were made for a woman. The fittings for the armpits were quite small and very heavily padded with soft pink fabric. On the bottom tip of each, Michael had extended the length at least a foot by forcing on two long metal pipes.
“I dismantled the waterflow from the roof cistern,” Michael proudly informed him with a thump to one of the cylinders.
“I’m sure your father will thank you for that,” Alex said with a wry frown.
“C’mon, try ‘em out!”
Tentatively, Alex took them and placed them just so. After a few awkward attempts at balancing, he got the hang of it. The pads were too small, the handholds too narrow and his left leg swung uselessly, slightly bent at the knee. But as he took his first real steps around that small chamber without hopping and grabbing on to the furniture, Alex felt freer than he had for months. “I must see that sister of yours and thank her,” he said with a huge grin.
“Aye, Cap’n!” Michael crowed. “Follow me!”
She was waiting in the hall beside the large curved staircase and was seated in a chair almost identical, save for size, to the one he had just abandoned, hopefully forever.
“You look patently ridiculous lunging about on those pipe-rigged contraptions, Napier,” she said before he could even greet her.
“And you look entirely too comfortable riding around in that thing,” he replied, frowning at her chair. “But not for long.”
He swung the crutches forward and heaved himself closer. Then again, and once more until he reached her side.
“From my heart, I thank you.” Bracing himself carefully, Alex leaned down, reached for her hand to kiss it. But she raised her face as he did it and kissed him soundly on the mouth. Such a sweet mouth it was, too. Eager and soft, tasting of berries and cream and…
Her chair rolled backward under his weight. Alex tumbled back and landed flat on the floor, spread-eagled and helpless as an upturned tortoise. The clang of metal pipe bouncing on marble echoed through the cavernous hall.
“Napier! Sir, are you hurt?” she cried, leaning sideways in an attempt to touch him.
He turned his head and groaned. “Ow, run fetch me a compress, quick!”
To his great surprise, she very nearly did. Elbows up and hands gripping the arms of her chair, she rose several inches from the seat before she remembered and dropped back with a groan.
Arms outstretched and flat on the floor, Alex laughed with delight. “You nearly did it!”
“Wretch!” she shouted down at him. And rolled right over his fingers.
“Ow!” he cried, this time for real, clutching his hand and curling up to a sitting position.
Michael and the doctor rushed to him and helped him up. But Amalie did nothing save sit there frozen, both hands covering her mouth, her bright eyes wide.
“Fat lot of good those sticks will do me one-handed!” he snapped.
She had the grace to look sorry even if she wouldn’t speak. He let Michael and Dr. Raine help him back to the small room off the hall and sit him down again on the bed. He tried to flex his fingers, but they were already swelling.
Raine examined them carefully, bending them anyway. “Not broken, just bruised. Good thing the girl’s not hefty!”
She was a small mite, thank goodness. He could only imagine the damage if she were of any greater size.
“Amie didn’t mean to do it,” Michael assured him.
“Mmm-hmm, the gentlest of souls, I know,” Alex cracked. “Go and tell her I’ll survive. Can’t have her grieving over a minor injury.”
Raine chuckled. “That chit will lead you a merry chase, on wheels or no, I’ll wager. Better put your good foot down at the outset, m’boy.”
“On her neck,” Alex muttered, nodding.
Now he was back to the chair again, the makeshift crutches broken and useless, the fingers of one hand nearly so. “Go on. See about her,” he told Raine. “I’ll be fine.”
Two hours later, he and Amalie found themselves alone again, trapped in their chairs within the library, staring at the fire.
“I hate this place,” Amalie said finally. “Read every volume in here at least three times.”
“Anything I despise, it’s an overeducated woman,” Alex said.
She glared at him. “You don’t say!”
He smiled. “I did say, but I didn’t really mean it. You should be happy your family’s wealthy enough to afford books. What if this had happened to you and you were mired in some drafty cottage, knitting for pennies, wondering whether your next meal would be more than porridge?”
She shrugged one shoulder. “I am an ingrate, I know. And I had vowed to be more pleasant today. Now here I have damaged your fingers, given poor old Raine the back of my head and bemoaned my fate.” Her sigh was forlorn. “Not a good beginning.”
“Start again,” Alex suggested.
She offered him a sweet smile that appeared sincere. “All right. Tell me about your life. No, about your son. Is he very bright?”
“I don’t know,” Alex admitted. “I only saw him as a babe. He won’t know me, of course.”
“He’ll probably adore you right away,” she told him. “Boys admire soldiers. He won’t understand anything other than the romance of war, not the reality.”
“And I suppose you think you do?”
She cocked her head and studied him. “Somewhat. War hardens men. It sorely troubles boys like Michael. Then there is the useless loss of life on both sides of the conflict. None of that is good.”
Alex thought she had a pretty good grasp on it. “Ideals aside, war is hell on everybody, even the side that wins.”
“That’s as may be, but he will admire you all the same. We should bring your son here,” she suggested. “There is much to entertain him. I would like to know him and I expect you would, as well.”
“I doubt that would be possible. His grandmother blames me for his mother’s death so he’s most likely set against me, too. It’s true. I couldn’t save my wife.”
Sympathy shone from her remarkable eyes. “I’m certain you did all you could for her.”
Alex nodded slowly. “But it was not enough, and at the time, my guilt and grief were so great, I could think of nothing else.”
“So you went to war. Tell me, did you have a thought of dying to punish yourself?”
“Something of that sort, in the beginning, I suppose. Olivia was so dear to me. We grew up neighbors, shared so much, our parents were the best of friends. When mine passed during the influenza outbreak, I was only seventeen. The MacTavishes were a great consolation to me. It was always assumed that Olivia and I would marry, so as soon as I finished my studies, we did.”
“You loved her,” Amalie said softly.
“Of course. She died in childbirth. Her mother took the babe. Said I owed her the child because I let hers die. Her demand seemed justified to my muddled mind, but in the six years since, I’ve realized how wrongheaded we both were.”
He cleared his throat and stared out the window. “Now it would be cruel to him, as well as her, to take him back and perhaps not a wise thing in any event. I want my son, but ask myself if I would ever be able to do him justice as a father.”
He looked up at her then. “Raine agrees with the other doctors. I will have no use of the leg.”
“So you believe it now?” she asked. “Then I’m sorry you saw him. The death of hope hurts as much as the injury, doesn’t it?”
“Not quite. At least not in my case. Maybe in the back of my mind I had already accepted it to some degree. But crutches gave me a feeling of more control. In time, a cane should do. I can live with that.”
“You believe me a slacker,” she accused. “I have tried, Napier. Truly tried. I wish to walk.”
“But for some reason you have convinced yourself you cannot. You almost did it, though,” he reminded her. “You almost came out of that chair.”
She didn’t show anger as he expected. Instead, she offered him a steady look of warning. “Take me as I am or I won’t have you. So there’s your way out of this.”
So she thought. Alex knew nothing short of his immediate death would cancel his obligation. It was highly probable that no one other than her brother and parents would ever hear of their inadvertent indiscretion, but servants gossiped. Word, especially scandal, spread like a case of plague. She could be ruined for life if the tale got out.
Like it or not, they would have to marry.
Chapter Four
Michael left the next day for London and had stayed away for a week. Alex tried to be patient, but all day, every day, he kept an ear tuned for the sound of the coach returning. After carefully measuring Alex’s height and hands, the lad had set off, determined to acquire the best pair of crutches he could have made. Perhaps Michael felt that Alex’s saving his life outweighed the fact that his sister had been compromised. In any event, Michael still seemed to feel obliged to help and Alex was grateful for that.
The weather had proved foul, cold and damp, keeping Alex and the rest of the family near the fire. The old manse looked grand indeed, but boasted numerous drafts round the windows and doors. Heat immediately sought the high ceilings and left the occupants hovering near the fire.
Amalie’s parents sat with them in the front parlor this afternoon. Her mother sighed and put down her knitting. “Why not play for us, dear?” she asked Amalie.
“Reading,” Amalie replied, lifting her novel a few inches off her lap for emphasis.
“Come now,” the baron insisted. “Put that book away and show your intended how accomplished you are.”
She gave an inelegant little snort and turned a page.
“Can you not play well?” Alex asked with mock sympathy, daring her to take up the challenge. “Tuneless, are you? Well, I suppose that makes no difference.”
She rolled her eyes, sighed and tossed the book on a side table, not even bothering to mark her place. “Oh, very well. Give me a push,” she said to her da.
The baron laughed as he hopped up and wheeled her to the pianoforte. She shot Alex a haughty look and put her fingers to the keys. After an ostentatious prelude and an operatic trill, she changed tempo, holding his gaze as she dropped her voice to a sultry contralto and sang.
“Young Cock Robin rode to Town,
His one intent to marry.
When he got there, his friend did swear
The ladies turned up wary.
He then commenced to jump a fence
And seek out one less scary,
Who gave him drink and with a winnnnkk…
Invited him to tarry!”
Alex tried to stifle his laughter as the baron leaped to yank her away from the pianoforte and her mother collapsed in her chair, fanning herself with a handkerchief.
Amidst their apologies to him and fervent remonstrances to their wayward offspring, Alex heard loudest of all Amalie’s deep frustration and anger.
He believed her. She had tried. It was not stubbornness that prevented her recovery. It was not her parents’ over-indulgence. Her only weapons against her helpless situation were contrariness and dark humor. He knew, because he used those very weapons himself.
He wanted to…what? Commiserate with her? But how, so that she wouldn’t see it as sympathy? That was worse than taunting her, wasn’t it? It would be to him. He started to applaud, but the sound of a carriage outside in the dooryard interrupted him.
The baron ran to the window. “Michael’s back. Everyone stay where it’s warm. I’ll go out to meet him.”
The wait seemed interminable. Alex kept exchanging looks with Amalie, both ignoring her mother who rattled on endlessly about her daughter’s inappropriate behavior.
The door to the parlor opened, commanding immediate attention. Michael stood there holding out the new crutches, smiling like a cream-fed cat. And then he stepped aside.
