Chapter Six

One day passed, and then another. Jake found himself looking out the window often, wondering how Miss Pritchard fared, and thinking about her wish to run away. As much as he might complain about the hand fate had dealt him and so many men of his generation, he had all his faculties, all his hair, and money enough from unspent salaries and a little inherited money to truly do what he wanted, within reason.

What did he want? He was thirty and well-trained. It was time to think about a wife, and children, and somewhere to enjoy both. On a whim, he went to the library at Summer’s Edge, which boasted a librarian, even. It was a magnificent room, with books lining all the walls, and shelves rising ten feet toward the ceiling, with a clever ladder on wheels to access the higher shelves.

He decided quickly that no one came to the library often, because the librarian was overjoyed almost to the point of tears to see someone, anyone. Jake knew the man would probably collapse and die if he told him that he had picked up a Bible printed by J. Guttenberg, just lying on the floor in a ruined manor in Badajoz after that final siege. It was a massive thing, but he quickly stowed it with his medical kit and it trundled along in the baggage cart from battle to battle. Even now, carefully wrapped in brown paper, the Bible occupied a safe spot in his campaign trunk.

His conscience only bothered him briefly after he took it. He had seen pages torn from other rare books and used in privies. A Guttenberg Bible deserved a better fate. It was his little secret.

He had another errand in this library. He told the librarian what––or rather, who––he was looking for. The man produced the book of English rulers, after clambering up the ladder on wheels and whizzing along at breakneck speed. In mere moments, he turned to the requested page and handed it to Jake with a flourish.

Precisely. He hadn’t been wrong. He knew he was observant. “Would you let me show this page to Miss Pritchard after dinner this evening?” he asked. “The Pritchards are coming here tonight. Could I leave it here on the table?”

“Certainly, sir,” the librarian said, after a loving, almost reverent, look at the book. “I don’t think anyone has opened this in a hundred years. Are you, er, of Plantagenet origins?”

“Not I,” Jake declared. “I hope to become a simple country doctor as soon as my duty to Captain Baldwin is discharged.”

Perhaps the librarian sensed a kindred spirit. Who knows what a chap thought when no one ever came into his library? Jake could probably have wagered a fortune that George Baldwin had never crossed the threshold. Or maybe the librarian liked to gossip.

“I believe the plan tonight is for the Pritchards and the Baldwins to settle up those marriage papers.” He shook his head. “I hear she is a mousy thing with a facial defect of some sort.”

“Actually, she’s quite lovely,” Jake heard himself saying, and meaning every syllable, because it was true. “She has an eyelid that droops a little, but what is that to anyone?” He tapped the page with its two kings. “She is obviously in august company.”

The librarian frowned. “ I heard she was missing an eye.” He giggled. “Sort of like Cyclops.”

Y ou, sir, are an idiot , Jake thought, angered. His heart broke a little around the edges as he wondered how many rumors had come Ivy’s way. “It’s nothing like that,” he said, then, “Don’t spread such nonsense about.”

“It’s what people in the district say,” the librarian said.

“They are wrong!”

Jake stewed about the matter all afternoon, when he wasn’t tending to Captain Baldwin’s imaginary ailments, which now included a weak heart, perhaps in imitation of his mother. He tossed his head from side to side and moaned when Jake assured him that his heart rhythm was steady and he was sound as a roast.

When Baldwin was finally sound asleep, convinced that Jake’s useless potion had done its job, the doctor went to the window again, wanting to cross that meadow, knock on Ivy’s door, and sit down with someone possessed of sense and wit.

“Why the hell not?” he said finally and wrapped his surgeon’s cloak around him. “Going for a walk,” he told the butler. “If Captain Baldwin wakes up before I return, assure him that I will return before he shuffles off his mortal coil. No, no. Tell him to practice deep breathing and have a glass of sherry.”

As it turned, he didn’t need to knock on Ivy’s door, because she was outside said door, trying to figure out how to hang a monster wreath.

“You’re a little short for that,” he said as he came up the walk.

She turned around in surprise, smiled at him, and Jake––exhausted, weary, cynical Surg. – knew he was a no-hoper. He remembered a drunken session years ago with other single officers, when the topic turned to how a man knew he was in love. There was one attempt, something along the lines of, “You’ll know when it happens, m’boy.” Too much whisky had put some to sleep, and the others were too fuddled to even attempt a partial answer. He had his answer today. For the first time in his fraught, harried, busy life, he understood love. It stood before him trying to wrestle with a Christmas wreath.

He was still some distance off. “I never want to leave you,” he said softly. “Never.”

She leaned forward and put her hand to her ear.

“This is a job for someone taller,” he said, too shy to repeat it. “Just tell me precisely where you want it.”

She did, and stepped aside as he stood beside her and hung the wreath. He took a deep breath of the pine boughs and holly and ivy twined inside. How many Christmases had found him laboring away in hospitals or tents, or God help him, a blanket held over him and a wounded soldier in the rain? This Christmas was different.

No artillery shells rained down, no desperately poor Spanish women held out their hands for whatever food he could toss from the baggage cart before an officer stopped him. Here was a doorstep on a quiet estate in North Yorkshire, and a pretty lady stood beside him.

“This was just what I needed, Miss Pritchard,” he said, when he wanted to say much more, then, “It’s nice to be useful.”

A man of science, he was not a fellow to indulge in fantasy of any shape or variety and yet he did precisely that, imagining that Ivy Pritchard was really Ivy Frost, and he could open that door to their house, usher her inside, and shut the world out.

This would never do. He had only vague plans. Captain Baldwin, damn the man, had firm plans and a prior claim. He frowned. “I was just out for a walk,” he said. “I get tired of silly people next door. Glad to be of service.” He tipped his hat to her and stepped down. “I’d better get back. I believe you and your parents are coming to Summer’s Edge this evening.”

He could have sworn a little of her sparkle dimmed. “Yes, we are. Papa wants to sign some papers, and Mama is determined to set a wedding date.”

Dash it all. Even though he had not one single claim on events between these two families, this wasn’t what he wanted. He was a surgeon, yes, but a man currently without employment, and someone certainly not of the same rank and prestige.

“I’ll…I’ll see you this evening?” Ivy asked. She sounded uncertain, perhaps even a little afraid, as if what to come was going to be an ordeal. What was he thinking?

“I never miss a meal, Miss Pritchard.”

Coward.