Chapter Nine

They went – Laird Cowan, Surgeon Frost, and the laird’s dour servant, who had the look of one who had never suffered a fool gladly, and didn’t intend to begin now. By the time they arrived in Carlisle, the sun was up, the servant asleep, the laird yawning, and the surgeon ready to bite his nails down to his wrists.

Once in Carlisle, that last bastion of England before the rough and tumble of Scotland, Jake admitted to no idea how to play this next hand. Maybe Ivy had resources in Scotland that neither he nor Larch the under footman were aware of. Maybe she wanted nothing to do with men in general or him in particular. Maybe she wanted to find a household that needed a nanny or a governess and be left alone. He didn’t know her well, but Ivy Pritchard seemed to be a resourceful lady.

Was she even in Carlisle? “Time’s a’wasting, laddie,” Cowan said. “It appears some of the Scotland-bound coaches have been getting through, now that the snow has stopped.”

Jake hesitated at the open door of the post chaise. The laird gave him a little push with his good foot. “All she can do is say no,” he said. “I’ll follow.”

I s that where I am? Jake asked himself as he shouldered his medical pouch and picked up his bag again. I barely know her.

His closed off, calloused, infinitely weary heart suggested––just suggested, mind you – that maybe the test would be a glimpse of her. He girded his loins, squared his shoulders, and went into the public room where mail coach riders waited.

He didn’t see Ivy at first. He saw irate, exhausted travelers milling around. Then his shuttered, calloused heart knew precisely where to look, and there she was.

She sat in a corner, her face averted from the others. The room seemed to bulge with people in all stages of irritation and desperation, but Ivy’s corner looked quiet, simply because she was there, exerting no influence, making no scene, just creating calm. As he watched her, he felt his shoulders lowering again, and his too-busy mind slowing down. It was then he realized that Ivy was a sea of serenity and he an exhausted mariner. He probably needed her more than she needed him, even if she was destitute at the moment and out of ideas.

I have ideas , he thought . Quite a few. He lost all fear as a beguiling idea propelled him to her quiet corner. He sat down beside her. She started, turned to see who had invaded her space, and to his tired heart’s delight, melted against him, wordless. His arm went around her as though it belonged there.

Neither of them said anything for a long moment. Then, “All I knew to do was run.”

He could tell Ivy had more to say before he thrust in his oar, so he squeezed her shoulder gently. That was all the encouragement she needed. “They sat me down and told me I was going to marry Captain Baldwin when his father returned.”

“I gather you weren’t too impressed,” he ventured finally, after another silence, followed by the agent announcing another mail coach leaving for all towns west along Solway Firth.

“Papa told me once that the Baldwins lived beyond their means and would need resuscitation. Such a marriage had been everyone’s plan for four years.” She turned in his grip to look him in the eyes. “George Baldwin was even less impressed. He wouldn’t look at me. I…I think he felt sorry for himself.”

“You have described my least favorite patient. Ever.”

“I don’t know that I ever met a full-blown hypochondriac before.” She said it so candidly that he couldn’t help smiling. “He acts like he’s in constant pain, but he is a constant pain.”

“The more fool he,” Jake said, and kissed her, pretty certain that no one would notice, even though there were travelers all around them. Her lips were so soft. She ended the kiss first, as if wanting to look at him and assure herself that he really meant it.

He really meant it. He kissed her again. Her hand went to his neck this time and he was in heaven. He looked around eventually, noticing that the room was clearing out and they were now obvious. Two older ladies smiled at them.

“Oh, dear, we’re making a scene,” Ivy whispered.

“I know. It’s grand,” he replied, which made her rosy up and laugh.

“What made you…”

“I panicked.” She looked down at her hands, the quiet woman again, but only for a moment this time. “No matter what happened to me in Scotland, I knew I didn’t want a life of humiliation. Twenty-four years was enough.”

Her quiet words struck something deep inside Jake Frost that he didn’t know existed until that moment in a posting house in frozen-solid Carlisle. He had forgotten that people who weren’t at war fought their own battles, too. Here was this kind and quiet woman with the least-important defect imaginable, waylaid from childhood by shallow people who should have known better. Wonder of wonders––maybe it was the season––she saw something in him. She saw a better man than he knew he was, and she was going to make him even better.

“Ivy Pritchard, I haven’t known you long, to be sure, but I am pretty certain that I love you,” he said, matching the softness of her voice with his own. “You’re kind; you’re lovely. I was so consumed with disliking George Baldwin – I still can’t stand him – that I had decided that nothing in Yorkshire was going to please me. What a sorry specimen I am.”

“Kindly don’t be so hard on yourself.”

“It’s nothing that can’t be remedied,” he said, his forehead against hers now. “It might not be the smartest thing you ever do, but it will be the smartest thing I ever do, if you consent to marry an unemployed surgeon of no particular background who hasn’t the foggiest notion what to do, now that peace has broken out.” He took her by the shoulders for a better look. “And look, this ill-mannered lout proposed to you in a posting house.”

She looked at him expectantly. “When was that?”

Sheesh, what an idiot this poor woman was hoping to marry. “Ah! I should formally propose, eh? Will you marry me, Ivy Pritchard? I love you and I will always take care of you and our children.”

Maybe a hopeful husband wasn’t supposed to be so brazen as to speak of the baser side of the bargain, but he was a surgeon and he understood the visceral side of life. Yes, children. He knew how they started and arrived. From her blush, he suspected she did, too.

“I will marry you because I love you,” she told him. “I doubt my father will settle any money on you, though.”

“I can bear up under the strain,” he teased, convinced right down to his stockinged feet that he had just made the best decision of his life.

“Well, laddie, there you are and isn’t she a pretty lass!”

Jake looked up from contemplation of his future bride to see Laird Cowan leaning on his servant and a cane. “Laird Cowan, this is Miss Ivy Pritchard, who had just consented to marry me. Ivy, Laird Cowan kindly let me ride to Carlisle with him. I believe the roads are still blocked to the south.”

“Aye, they are.” Cowan looked them over. “What would you say to continuing the journey a little longer to Lockerbie? My holdings are there. You’ll both have time to think things through. My bonny lassie will make a fuss over you both, and you can doctor my foot again, if you please.”

“My pleasure. If Lockerbie has an apothecary, I will concoct a nasty-tasting brew that might help, as well.” Did he dare? Certainly. “I might also suggest a plain diet that will alleviate some of your suffering.”

“Och, laddie, belt-tightening waits until after Christmas!”

Ivy’s hand on his shoulder, Jake tightened the bandage again. He and the coachman helped the laird back into the post chaise, Ivy following with her bandbox. They sat close together, Ivy’s head against his shoulder, as the driver picked his way through darkening Carlisle and soon to the border.

When they passed through Gretna Green, equally dark, Laird Cowan hollered for the coachman to pause. He gestured with his cane and tapped on the window. “If ye have mind, we can return in a day or two and the blacksmith can marry you across the anvil. Interested?”

So it happened that two days later, Christmas Eve, Jacob Frost and Ivy Pritchard, accompanied by the required two witnesses––Laird and Lady Cowan––held hands across the anvil that, since 1754, had seen many such marriages. Dressed in sober black with a colorful Gracie plaid, the blacksmith pronounced them man and wife in the Church of Scotland, after declaring, “I’ll jine ye twa as one, in the heat of the moment,” which made Ivy blush and squeeze Jake’s hand tighter.

After they kissed as man and wife, the blacksmith brought his hammer down and made the anvil ring, to the delight of the Cowans and the Frosts. After payment of the ritual guinea, Laird Cowan furnished the also-required “wee dram.” (Jake Frost could only stare in wonder at Laird Cowan’s enthusiasm for wee drams and know he would be a terrible patient for the treatment of gout. At least Cowan was no hypochondriac.)

Then it was back to Lockerbie and a roomful of Jardines, Dicksons, Cowans, and Lauries to dance and drink and then walk the streets with other carolers. Hands still held fast, the Frosts walked with them until they fell back and ducked into a quiet inn. Jake had made his plans earlier on a walk. The smiling landlord found them a third-floor room away from noise.

They did their own celebrating. In the morning, Jake spent luxurious minutes admiring his beautiful wife as she slept. When she woke and stretched, he kissed her heartily and they celebrated some more.

By mid-morning, they were roused by every church bell in Lockerbie, ushering in the birth of the Christ Child. Jake was content to hold his wife, admire the freckles on her bare shoulders, and think about the future. Maybe it was time for a pronouncement. He was a new husband. Did they make pronouncements?

“Ivy, my lovely and bounteous wife–– she giggled at that––“what now?”

She thought a moment. “I am hungry. Perhaps some food?”

“Yes, indeed. I was thinking a little farther afield, you know, now that I am a husband and a responsible, reliable sort.”

“I love you in spite of that,” she teased, which meant hair-ruffling, a smooch, and other details.

“As I was saying,” he continued an hour later. “I am obviously putty in your hands, so you choose our next move. Where should I set up a practice?”

He thought for a moment that he had made a terrible misstep. Her face grew solemn, maybe even sad.

“But, my love, that’s a decision,” she pointed out. “I don’t know how to choose anything because I never had a choice. Do women make decisions?”

“You could have chosen not to marry me,” he pointed out. “I suspect the Cowans would have found you respectable work here in Lockerbie. Really. Choose. I also suspect that my plans to set up a practice in Yorkshire would be, er, scotched by the Baldwins and Pritchards, should I be so audacious. The word is probably already spreading far and wide that I am a bounder.”

She consider the matter, burrowing closer. “I can decide where we live?”

“Why not? I know you’re bright. You married me, didn’t you?”The Frosts both chuckled over that. Ivy said nothing for a while, but he was already coming to understand her silence. Other than running away, he doubted she had done a foolish, impulsive thing in her life.

“Baltimore,” she said finally. “I get chilblains ever winter and I am tired of that. My cousin will give us advice, once we’re there.” She rose up on one elbow and looked at him closely. “Is such a move too expensive?”

It was a consideration. As he frowned over the matter, that peculiar essence that seemed to be governing everything this Christmas, when a Babe was born who would help the blind to see, the lame to walk, and idiots to succeed, continued to nudge him along. War had rendered him blind to goodness. While he would never tolerate the Captain Baldwins of the world, he was beginning to understand goodness. Maybe the Lord did work in mysterious ways.

“Bear with me a moment,” he told Ivy.

Jake Frost––a changing man if not an entirely changed one––got up and padded across the room in all his bare splendor to open his trunk. He took out the brown-wrapped package and handed it to her. He tugged a blanket around his shoulders because the room was cold. Surely Baltimore would be warmer.

She took out the Gutenberg Bible and gasped. “Where…where…how…”

“A spoil of war from Spain. I can sell it in London for a substantial sum, I believe,” he told her. “Enough to get us established in the place of your choosing. Merry Christmas. Baltimore, it is. Hopefully the locals will have forgotten that not too many years ago, the British army burned their capitol.”

She clutched the Bible to bare breasts. “Are we certifiably crazy?”

“No. We’re in love.” He set aside the book he had saved from other looters in Badajoz and gathered her close, marveling at unexpected goodness.

Heavenly peace, indeed.