I turned then. Met his eyes. “Then we are equal, you and I.”
There was a moment when I thought he might forget his station altogether and return the challenge in my tone with a strike of his fist. But he did not. Instead, he carefully laid out the towel he had brought, beside the basin.
Looking down, he commented, “That’s three days with no fever.”
“Aye.”
“It’s finished, then. Ye’re better.”
“Aye.”
“Good,” he said, and turned away. “Time ye were gone.”
*
“We must find you a wife while you’re here,” Turnbull’s wife said at breakfast. “No, you may smile, but a bachelor of your age—”
“Of my age? I’m not yet five and thirty. Still a few years younger than your husband, and I hope you will agree he’s hardly ancient.”
With a blush she laid a hand upon her rounded belly, in awareness that it proved the man she’d married was yet virile. But her wit would not be bested. “And my husband was a few years younger than he is now when he met me, so my point stands. What sort of woman do you favor? I have several friends in mind who might do well for you.”
“My dear Mrs. Turnbull—”
“Please do call me Helen.”
MacDougall cut in to serve our morning porridge. He gently set Helen’s bowl down, but set mine down hard, with a glower.
I’d had time while finishing dressing to think on his words without passion, and now that I knew my friend Turnbull was having his own struggles climbing the ranks, I agreed that my being here would only add to the weight Turnbull carried. I could not do that to my friend.
I replied, “My dear Helen, then. You’re very kind, but I’ve been in your care these ten days and I cannot impose on you longer, not now that I’m well.” I glanced at MacDougall, who narrowed his eyes as I told Helen lightly, “’Tis time I was gone.”
She looked at me, surprised. “You will not leave, I hope, until my husband has returned? He’d not forgive me if he learned that you’d been here and gone and he had missed your company.”
No more than I’d miss his, I knew, as I would miss the comforts of this house that I’d been able to explore these past few days since my last fevers had subsided and I had regained my strength.
As stern and forbidding as Caldow’s Land might have appeared from the street on the evening that I had arrived, on the inside it was full of life, the floors above taken by an interesting mix of people I had heard about but not yet met, from the former Latin master to the spinster merchant sisters who together kept the shop below.
The Turnbulls’ dwelling occupied the whole of the first floor, made warm and charming by its painted walls and ceiling beams. We passed most of the day in this front chamber—the long drawing room, with its row of bright windows along the end wall looking out onto the bustle of the Landmarket.
The merchant sisters were already up and at their business. I’d discovered it was common, when we breakfasted, to hear the daily noises of their trade—the muffled movements as they set their wares in place within the alcoves, and the greetings they exchanged with passing customers—but it was rare to hear a footstep at this hour of morning climb the curved stone forestair leading to the front door of the house, and rarer still to hear those footsteps pause within the common stairwell, at the door of Turnbull’s lodgings.
My own attention was then fixed on trying to decide how best to answer Helen, but the footsteps broke my concentration, and the brisk rap at the door that followed made me look, with Helen, at MacDougall, who had crossed now to admit the early caller.
I might not have recognized the gentleman who entered, ducking through the doorway in a practiced movement that both saved his high wig from a knock against the lintel while appearing at the same time to be more or less a bow of greeting, but he was no stranger to the others.
Helen stood and dropped so quickly to a curtsy that my first thought was she might have done her unborn child an injury.
Apparently I wasn’t alone in that thought. Our visitor hastily moved forward, taking her elbow and guiding her back to her seat. “Madam, please. I do fear for your health.”
Helen smiled. “My lord, I am perfectly healthy, I promise you. My doctors assure me it will be at least two months more till I’m brought to bed, and I intend to make use of what liberty I am allowed in that time.” But she stayed in her chair, to appease him, and in a graceful motion of her hand included me. “May I present my husband’s good friend, Sergeant Adam Williamson, who served with him at Toubacanti. Sergeant, may I introduce you to Lord Grange?”