Page 11 of The Lady's Last Mistake
Grant closed the logbook. “How did you know I went out?”
Miss Hannah Matthews only attended emergency calls with him during daylight hours, and only when she was at Thornton House, which was usually four times every week.
“Your bag is missing a tincture of Peruvian bark,” she answered.
“Ah. Yes, of course.” Had his mind not been boiled down to suet, he would have been able to deduce her reasoning for himself. “I was summoned for a fever patient.”
In any other situation, he would have imparted much more about it to his assistant. As his late wife’s younger sister, Hannah was family. And Grant was the only family she had left. Their mother died in childbirth when Hannah was just three. Their father then left her and Sarah to be raised by their grandmother, who’d passed away shortly before Sarah became his wife. Hannah had been just eighteen when Sarah died and was suddenly entirely dependent upon her brother-in-law. Unfortunately, he’d become an utter wreck. Knowing this, his eldest brother, Lawrence, and his wife, Mary, had taken in Hannah. Over time, she began to express an interest in Grant’s work, and then, had offered to assist him when he needed another pair of hands.
Mary had been adamantly against it, saying the young lady should be getting married, notworking—and with a physician, at that. It was beyond the pale! However, neither Hannah nor Grant had felt the need to regard Mary’s complaints, shrill as they’d been, and she’d happily stayed on the fringes of the marriage mart while assisting Grant.Hannah was steady and serious and had a methodical sort of behavior that suited a clinic. He trusted her with all aspects of his patient logbook.
But now there was Lady Cassandra to think about. Something of which he’d already been doing too much of over the last week. He would be bathing, or reading, or eating, and on one occasion, even listening to a patient’s heart rhythm through his stethoscope, when he’d realize he was not paying attention to what was going on around him. Instead, he’d be thinking about that damned closet in Lady Dutton’s house. Cassie’s heaving breaths, her palms against his chest. Her thigh tangling between his, her smell of apricots. He couldn’t seem to stop his mind from reliving those several minutes. Or from imagining what other things could have happened, had he not fought his body’s desire for her.
But it was just base lust. Had it been any woman shoved against him in that closet, he would have felt the same, he was sure of it. Probably even Lady Brookfield with her mole.
“The tincture should help,” Hannah said, interrupting his increasingly cluttered thoughts. “Unless this fever is as serious as the other cases we’ve seen.”
After their first fever patient had stumbled into the free clinic, Grant had insisted that Hannah keep her distance for a time. He was ultimately responsible for her and didn’t want her to take ill. But she’d ignored his request and continued to join him.
“I fear it is.”
He’d planned to wait until at least noon to return to the disguised location but now felt an increased sense of urgency. If he found Cassie in that room again, he’d wring her insolent neck.
Goodwin, his butler, appeared in the surgery entrance, and in his usual measured tone, announced a caller. “Lord James Thornton is here, my lord. I’ve shown him into the study.”
Grant groaned and scrubbed his fingers through his hair. Two years his senior, James was closest to him in age, and by far his favorite brother. However, he never called this early in the day unless it had something to do with their father. The marquess’s most recent complaints that his youngest and least preferred son was not carrying his weight when it came to providing the family title with its future heir had fallen to the back of his mind since last evening at Hope House.
“I’ll return shortly,” he said to Hannah, who only sealed her lips to bite back a smirk. She didn’t yet know of the marquess’s ultimatum, but she was perfectly aware that Grant was the black sheep of the family and was regularly hauled over the coals for his infractions.
He entered his study to find his brother seated at his desk, arms folded behind his head, and muddy riding boots up on the blotter.
“Ah, baby brother.” A grin stretched James’s face into the mischievous expression he wore when he knew he was being a pest.
“Get your shite-covered boots off my desk.” Grant swiped them off, and James sat forward, laughing. “I take it you’re here with some new decree from our loving father.”
“Maybe I’ve just dropped in after my morning ride to say hello,” he replied, standing up from the chair.
“I am not in the mood, James.” Grant grabbed the decanter of single malt he kept on his desk, intending to pourhimself a drink. But then slammed the stopper back in. It was too damned early, and he needed to return to Hope House.
“I can see that.” James turned serious, something he could manage to do from time to time if he truly tried. “What has happened?”
Nothing having to do with Cassie Sinclair could be uttered, of course. So, Grant turned to the next most aggravating thing. “Is the marquess’s order that I find a new wife and issue a son not reason enough?”
“Plenty, I suppose.” James moved toward the leather Chesterfield. He fell backward onto the cushions and stretched out his legs again.
“Eight children,” Grant said. “Three sired by Lawrence, three by Harold, and two by you, and none of them could be a boy? What is wrong with the lot of you?”
He would not include their younger sister in his satirized scathing. She was heartbroken that she hadn’t conceived after three years of marriage, and besides, Penelope already received enough grief about it from their father.
James raised a brow, and as Grant had always been able to do, he read his brother’s thoughts easily. He was thinking of the child that Grant had sired himself. The one who’d never drawn breath. Also a girl. But James knew better than to mention her.
“Perhaps we are all cursed to sire females,” he said instead. He was being facetious. He adored his little girls, Letitia and Vivian.
“That is far too fatalistic an attitude for the marquess,” Grant replied, eyeing the decanter once more. He turned his back to it and faced his brother. “When is the new one due to arrive again? Next month?”
It was the one last glittering hope Grant clung to: that James’s wife, currently in confinement, would give birth to a boy. The boy their father had slowly become obsessed with receiving. The fact that primogeniture would safely see the Lindstrom title bestowed upon at least one of his four sons wasn’t enough for the old tyrant. With no male offspring amongst those four sons, the title would eventually be shunted off to the next male heir. Some distant cousin or nephew, all of whom may as well have been common laborers for how Lord Lindstrom spoke of them.
“About a month, yes,” James answered, but his tone held a warning, one he’d already illuminated before: that Grant should not hinge all his hope on the child being male. But it seemed his optimism had a mind of its own. Should Vera have a boy at the start of the new year, Grant would be off the hook.
