“I know what they say, but I will be walking, make no mistake,” Alex insisted. He said it often and worked like the devil to make it so. It had been almost six weeks and he could feel his progress.
“You’ll see the best doctor in England when we get there,” Michael promised. “What do these leeches here know? You’ll be dancing by year’s end, I warrant.”
Alex grunted in assent. The new year was almost four months away. Surely by then…
Michael sat up, the flimsy cot creaking beneath him. “Until then, I could really use your talent with a pen. I’ll be doing my memoirs, y’see.”
Alex laughed out loud. “All twenty-two years of ‘em or just the important parts?”
Michael chuckled sheepishly at himself. It was one of the main things Alex liked about Harlowe. A man who could laugh at his own folly had learned the secret of survival. Sometimes laughter was the only defense a man had left.
It was late October when they finally arrived in London. Michael promptly and without a qualm sold his commission. Alex grudgingly followed suit. Though convinced he eventually would walk again, he also realized his army days were a thing of the past. He’d had enough of it and then some.
He admitted to himself that this visit was a delaying tactic. It was high time he faced what he must and set the past to rights, but he needed a few more weeks to prepare, to ease back into civilization and become human again.
Alex had not asked, but he wondered what Michael’s family, especially his father, the second Baron Harlowe, would think of the eldest son bringing home a Scot for a house pet. Not much, he reckoned, but it was to be a short visit anyway.
The day was wicked cold and sent a chill right through his bones as their carriage rocked over the twenty miles to Balmsley, the Harlowe family seat.
Alex thought of the fancy wheeled Bath chair Michael had insisted he purchase from a London maker. They had stayed nearly a week while it was modified so that Alex could wheel it himself. Odd they were not made that way to begin with, but Michael’s idea to set the seat back a bit and give access to the big wheels was brilliant. It tended to tip over backward if he wasn’t careful, but it did give him a small measure of independence. Of course it was merely a short-term necessity. It could be sold when he no longer needed it.
No crutches could be found to accommodate his height of well over six feet, but that could be remedied as soon as they got where they were going. He’d whittle them himself if need be.
Michael had grown unusually quiet as they rode. Alex knew he must be planning his strategy for explaining the unusual guest he had in tow.
If the family resented Scots enough to order him gone, at least he could afford to travel. His back pay amounted to more than he had figured and the fee he received from his captaincy was substantial. He could live on that for a while.
If all else failed, he could apply to his uncle for some sort of clerical work with the city commission in Edinburgh, he supposed. Whether it would be forthcoming was another matter altogether. They’d never got on well in the best of circumstances. Uncle William had resented Alex donning the Blackwatch and serving under the English flag. Called it running away and Alex guessed it was, but he knew naught else to do. The only thing he had trained for, he could no longer do.
“There!” Michael cried, pointing out the window. “See Balmsley’s towers above those trees?”
Alex sighed. “A castle, is it?”
“No! No, only a manor house. But it is big, isn’t it! I love the place. Who would have thought I’d miss it so much?” He shook his fair head in disbelief. “I was so bloody eager to get away. But Father will be damned glad to see me now, see if he ain’t! Glad to have you there, too, I’ll wager, since you saved my sorry hide. I’m all he’s got to carry on, y’see. Amalie’s just a girl.”
“How old is your sister?”
“Twenty-four,” Michael answered absently, his gaze still glued to the manor house looming closer every minute as the coach rolled down the long tree-lined drive.
“Two years older than you? Is that a fact? All this time I thought she was a child the way you spoke of her.”
“She is. Women never grow up.”
Alex shook his head and rolled his eyes. “Ah, Harlowe, but you do have a great lot to learn.”
His words went unheeded as the coach drew up in front of the enormous red sandstone edifice that boasted double-arched doors of stout dark oak. Even as he watched, one portal flew open and a short, white-haired gent dashed out to meet them. Hatless, his brocade waist-coat unbuttoned and his neckcloth loose and flapping in the stiff breeze, he shouted, “Michael!”
With a crow of delight, Michael threw open the coach door, hopped down and embraced the older fellow. They danced around like fools, slapping each other on the back. A rider had been sent ahead from Hartlepool to announce their arrival, but surely this could not be the baron himself.
Alex sat waiting like a piece of the baggage, watching through the open coach door until the excited Michael finally recalled he was there.
“Oh, Father, I’ve brought Captain Napier. Alex saved my life. Sorely wounded himself, he rolled right off his cot and stanched my bleeding until they could sew me back up.” Michael carefully patted his shoulder where the bullet had struck him and passed through. “He’s welcome, is he not, sir?”
The older man nodded, tears in the light blue eyes so like his son’s. He hurried forward and stretched out a trembling hand. Though his Adam’s apple worked up and down, he seemed speechless.
Alex gripped the much smaller hand and shook it firmly. “At your service, milord.”
Michael shouted for two footmen who came to take down the bags and Bath chair lashed to the coach’s roof. They brought the wheeled contraption around to the door of the coach. Alex had already levered himself off the seat and gripped either side of the coach’s door frame while he balanced on his good leg. The other hung there, useless and aching like mad.
The two brutes assisted him down and set him in the chair. “Devilish awkward,” he said in an aside to the baron, who stood wide-eyed and openmouthed, obviously not expecting a cripple. “Temporary condition,” Alex assured him, forcing a smile.
“Yes, yes, of course,” Baron Harlowe answered rather absently, then perked up. “Well, let’s get you two inside and thaw you out, eh?” He shivered to make his point.
“Matil…da!” the man shouted the instant they entered the double doors. “Our Michael’s home! Hurry down!” He turned to his son. “She’s primping. You know your mother!” He winked at Alex and confided in a stage whisper. “Ladies have to look their best, eh?”
One of the footmen wheeled him from the chilly entrance hall into a good-size library. Books covered the walls on three sides, all the way from the waist-high wainscoting to the carved molding that graced the ceiling. Large, high-backed, overstuffed chairs sat in a grouping facing a huge fireplace with an elegant oak mantelpiece. A roaring fire burned in the grate, shedding its warmth like a blessing on all who entered.
He closed his eyes and inhaled the scent of burning wood, lemon oil and leather. When he opened them again, his chair had been rolled near the hearth. The footman had parked it there before departing.
In the chair closest to the blaze and right next to his own sat the most beautiful woman Alex had ever seen in his life. He felt as though something—the unexpected heat from the fire or perhaps the very sight of her—had sucked the breath right out of his lungs.
Michael was speaking, but his words might as well have been Greek. The winter sun shone through the window behind the lass, gilding the fine golden curls wound up with bright red ribbons. He could swear angels played harps to augment the