Chapter Eight

Jake Frost needed no more encouragement. After a splash of cold water, he dressed and packed his bag rapidly. Hang Captain Baldwin anyway. He could ring his stupid bell until someone came, but it wouldn’t be Surgeon Frost.

He scribbled a note for the captain, assuring him that he didn’t need the services of a physician or surgeon. He pushed it under Baldwin’s door and vowed never to waste another moment of his life thinking about him.

Satchel in hand, his surgical kit slung over his shoulder, he crept quietly down the stairs in his stockinged feet, then put on his shoes in the foyer. He had one irrational moment when he feared that if he opened the door, all manner of alarms and booby-traps would activate themselves and trap him here forever. Nonsense.

Larch took his grip from him and they hurried across the sleeping meadow. He looked back at their obvious tracks in the snow and shrugged. The Baldwins could think what they liked.

“She was so quiet-like last night after they came back. She usually is, after a visit to the captain, but this time was different,” Larch said as they hurried. “It was worse.”

“Did she say where she was going?”

“Oh, no. She asked me where to meet the mail coach in Brierton.” He sighed. “She was pretty offhand about it, like someone might ask about the weather, but I should have told someone.”

“You told me,” Jake said. “That was enough.”

“She told me she stole some money from the bookroom.”

G ood girl , he thought, but you probably didn’t take enough .

They parted company at the crossroads, Larch to hurry home before he was missed. Jake moved at a trot now, the kind of quick step reminiscent of his army days across Spain, when even the surgical teams did their share of skulking and dodging on foot.

Brierton was stirring to life as the sun rose. In the two miles from the estate to the crossroads, Jake formed a plan. It was a small plan and hopefully not subject to much scrutiny. Maybe it was stupid. Time would tell. He asked for pen and paper in the public house where others waited for the mail coach. The innkeep was helpful and asked no questions. Jake thanked his lucky stars that he had wrapped the man’s sprained ankle only a week ago, when he saw him wincing in pain on one of Jake’s visits to Brierton and the apothecary.

He wrote carefully and in block letters, and stuffed in a few bills that he knew would suffice. He addressed it and gave significantly more money to the innkeep, directing him to give it to the post rider for a fast delivery.

Now came the important task, where failure or success meant everything. When it was his turn, Jake asked the agent, “Do you remember a pretty little lady late last night? She probably kept her head down.”

To Jake’s relief, the agent nodded. “I remember her because I doubt she had ever been on a mail coach. Soft voice? Something sweet about her?”

“The very one,” Jake said. “Where did she go?”

The agent fixed a stern look on him. “You’re not an irate husband, are you?”

“I’m an army surgeon. She needs me.”

Whether that was true or not, time would also tell, but it was enough for the ticket agent. Jakes reckoned that if anything good came from nearly six years of hard slogging, it was an air of command.

“She had enough to get her to Carlisle, so that was that.” The agent leaned on the counter. “I hope she had someone waiting there for her, because it took her last farthing.”

I vy, what were you thinking? he asked himself as he bought a ticket to Carlisle. Jake could picture her running from her probable fate like a frightened animal. How will I find her? was his next thought.

That matter became simple, too. He wondered for a small moment if there really was some truth to myths about extra goodness during the Christmas season. How did he know? War had burned away all of his expectations…maybe. He took a deep breath, right there in the smoke-filled public room and sensed something else. What, he couldn’t have said, but it felt, oddly enough, like a gift.

This was no time to moon about. “I hope I can find her,” he said as he took the chit from the innkeep who managed the mail coach stop, too.

“Might be easier than you think, sir. A rider came through not long ago. There’s even more snow north of the border. As of a few hours ago anyway, everyone is stuck in Carlisle.”

Carlisle was hours away. “Oh, please God,” he asked the cold air outside the inn. “Keep her stuck there.” He shook his head at his own folly. What a stupid prayer. He followed it with another one even more idiotic. “See here, Lord, sir, I am not a time waster. Let’s do this for Ivy Pritchard.”

They started off at a spanking pace, changing horses in the usual places, under the control of an experienced coachman. His stomach tied into knots, his head aching, Jake maintained his silence, keeping his eyes resolutely shut so no one would bother him.

It didn’t work. Before they changed horses again and stopped for a late afternoon meal, he held a restless child on his lap to relieve a tired mother who nursed a newborn. He surprised himself by remembering and retelling stories his nanny had told him about trolls under bridges, and princesses in distress, who had probably never considered running away to Carlisle, but were waiting complacently for a knight to save them. The little one finally settled back against him with a contented sigh, which made him wonder if he actually would make a good father someday. More food for thought, which seemed to be all he was snacking on, these days.

L et it snow, let it snow, let it snow , Jake thought as they pushed on, only to stop ten miles short of Carlisle in Penrith. Wasn’t the Lord listening ? Well, of course not. Jake was an amateur at entreating the Almighty, and the Lord must know it.

The young mother burst into tears, which meant Jake had to hold her young daughter tight when she started to cry, too.

It came out that she was to meet her parents in Carlisle. “My man died at Mount Sinjin,” she said, after Jake handed her his last handkerchief for a good nose blow and eye wipe. “I’m going to me parents in Dumfries.”

Mont St. Jean. Jake thought of the squares forming and reforming to drive off the French finally, thanks to British grit, Wellington, and the timely arrival of the Prussians. Carrying the young girl, he led the widow with her baby inside the inn and paid too much money for a room and board for them for the night. She protested until he shushed her gently. “I was at Sinjin, too, and saw the bravest men. Rest here. Your folks will see you in Carlisle tomorrow. Don’t argue with me.”

She didn’t and he felt better about his own disappointment at reaching Carlisle. Maybe it was time to talk to the coachman.

He found him in the public room, exhausted and nursing a tankard of ale. Jake sat beside him and wasted not a minute. “Do you think anyone will try to get through tonight?” he asked, after ordering the man another pint.

“Aye, lad, I do. It’ll be a slow trot, but there is a laird in a post chaise as impatient as you are. Over there.”

Jake nodded and looked across the noisy room full of complainers. God, since you’ve been so charitable so far, let it be someone in need of my professional services , he thought. What would it hurt?

There were several possible lairds, but it became obvious who the likely man was. An overstuffed fellow sat with his leg elevated on the next chair. To dither, or not to dither? Army experience had taught him that Scots liked their conversation plain, with no bark on it. He cleared his throat and plunged in.

“Sir, the coachman over there tells me that you are eager to continue to Carlisle,” he said.

“I am, laddie. And?”

Well, that was stringent. Before Jake could reply, his companion jostled the chair and the laird let out a bellow, then unleased a pithy string of impenetrable curse words. My, but the Scots had a knack.

Jake knew an opening when he heard one. “Sir, I am a surgeon recently released from army duty.” He looked at the leg, as if examining it, even though an examination wasn’t necessary. “It appears you are suffering from the gout. A recent flair up?”

“Aye, laddie. I want to get home to me own bed, and not potter about here in Penrith.”

“Understandable. You know, I could wrap that tighter. If we could procure a hot water bottle of some sort…It wouldn’t stop the pain, but it would alleviate it.”

“Anything, anything,” the laird said.

Jake worked fast, the only way he knew how to practice medicine. In minutes, the leg was bound tight. On his command, the innkeeper produced an iron pig wrapped in a towel.

The traveler sighed in immediate relief. “How can I pay ye?”

“Let me travel with you, if you’re going on ahead,” Jake said promptly. “I can adjust the wrapping if needs be.”

“It’ll be slow-going,” the laird warned.

“At least it’ll be going.”

Now that his pain was slightly minimized, the laird proved to be a canny fellow. “Laddie, you’re either on the run from the law or an irate woman.”

Jake laughed. His mum had told him years ago that Christmas was a magic time. She hadn’t mentioned that could also be humorous. “Neither, sir. I’m looking for a lady who ran away from an unfortunate situation.”

The laird eyed him with a penetrating glance that reminded him forcefully of his bones professor at the University of Edinburgh. “Will she be glad to see ye or nae?”

“Glad, I hope.”

He held his breath while the scrutiny continued. He wondered briefly whether his brains had dribbled out of his head after meeting Ivy Pritchard, or if, after all his unending labors of the past years, fortune decided to smile, should he choose to shed a layer of cynicism.

He so chose. “I’m in love.”

The laird let out a shout of laughter this time, and not a bellow of pain. He clapped Jake’s shoulder with a hard blow that threatened his wind.

“Let’s go!”