“Good day . . . Lord Sandwich.”
His loud bark of laughter bounced off the door when she closed it and startled a horse in the street behind him. He startedto sink his hands into the pockets of his greatcoat, remembered that Abigail was still wearing it, and put them behind his back instead as he set off toward his own hotel whistling a merry tune.
Chapter Four
What was shedoing?
It was a question that echoed repeatedly through Abigail’s mind the next morning as she slowly and carefully chose her bridal attire.
There wasn’t much of a selection in her small traveling trunk. She hadn’t planned to stay more than a day, two at the most if things had gone her way and she’d been invited to tour the college. She certainly hadn’t planned—or packed—for awedding. But in medicine, as in life, a good doctor knew how to make adjustments to their patient’s care when a new symptom revealed itself.
And her blue dress with white chenille trim would do nicely.
A few pins scraped along the sides of her scalp to hold her unruly curls in place, her mother’s brooch fastened to her throat with a length of black velvet ribbon, and she was ready. Not to be a wife. Her mind was still spinning at the implications of whatthatparticular duty entailed. But she was ready to learn from some of the finest medical practitioners in the entire world, and if the only means she had to do that was by marrying a man of great wealth and social influence, then she was prepared to sacrifice her independence for being permitted to attend a scholarly institution that would otherwise be above her reach.
People married for less important things all the time, she conveyed to her solemn reflection in the cracked mirror hanging on the wall beside a potted fern that looked as she felt; dry, wilted, and a bit bewildered at how it had ended up here.
Like love, for instance.
At least she would be gaining something of great significance from a betrothal contract that had been drawn up without her knowledge or consent. A contract, she was well aware, that her mother had crossed an ocean to escape so that her daughter’s life might turn out differently than her own: forced to marry a man who had treated her with callous contempt only to have her child consigned to the same fate before she even gave birth.
The Duchess of Hanover had chosen to forsake her title and all of the accoutrements that had accompanied it in exchange for personal freedom. She had snuck from her home in the dead of the night with a babe on her breast, had boarded a ship bound for unknown shores, and had raised that babe, on her own, in a small village that had only known her as Mrs. Victoria Pratt, a widowed seamstress. She had traded a life of surplus for a life of struggle, but she hadn’t regretted it. Not a single moment. And that shehadtold Abigail between rasping breaths as the consumption had gradually filled her lungs with fluid.
What would she think of her daughter now if she knew what Abigail was about to do? Would she be disappointed, or would she understand? Would she beg her to reconsider, or would she stand beside her in the church? Would she tell Abigail to run, as she had done, or would she approve of Stephen?
Would she even, with time, come to... like him?
Abigail thought thatshemight.
After their kiss, she thought she might come to like him a great deal.
Unconsciously, her fingers drifted across her bottom lip and her vision glazed as she recalled the sheer heat of his mouthpressed to hers. The way her knees, which were, under normal circumstances, quite reliable and stout, had gone weak and fluttery. Or how her heart had threatened to pound right out of her chest, even though sheknewsuch a thing was medically impossible.
A human heart was responsible for pumping blood through the body.
It was an organ.
A combination of muscle and tissue.
As such, it did not feel emotion.
It certainly didnotfall in love.
And yet . . .
The sharp strike of iron shoes on stone in the early morning quiet drew her to the window, and her stomach clenched when she saw the black carriage pulled by two matching horses stop beneath it, their breaths forming plumes of smoke in the frosty air.
Stephen was here.
She walked down the stairs to meet him at the front door with measured steps, her composed countenance concealing the riotous upheaval of emotions that were clawing away inside of her.
Hope.
Trepidation.
Excitement.
Doubt.
