“I was lately in the employment of Lord and Lady Pomfrey. Governess to their three sons.”
Her pelisse swallowed her slight frame and she looked as if a strong wind might carry her off. He wondered if she were stronger than she appeared. As stubborn as her chin implied. If he decided to hire her, she’d have to be. The fact that she stood in his study showed a certain strength and determination of character that he usually found lacking in the opposite sex.
“Yes. Yes.” He waved an impatient hand over her letters of recommendation before him on his desk. “Since you are here, I assume you read my advertisement.”
“Yes.”
He came around his desk and pulled at the cuffs of his brown frock coat. He knew that he was considered tall and unfashionably built from many long hours of physical labor spent both on his estates in Devon and on his ship, the Louisa. “Then you are aware that if an occasion arises that requires travel, I expect to take my daughter with me.” He wasn’t certain, but he thought he detected a spark in those serious eyes looking back, as if the thought of travel excited her.
“Yes, your grace.”
Clare wrote several more pages before she paused in her writing of The Dangerous Duke, the third book in her governess series. At nine A.M. she reached for the telephone. She’d lain awake most of the night, dreading this call. The thing she dreaded most, more than packing up the few reminders of Lonny, was calling Dr. Linden’s office.
She punched the seven numbers, and when the receptionist picked up, she said, “I need to make an appointment, please.”
“Are you a patient of Dr. Linden?”
“Yes. My name is Clare Wingate.”
“Do you need to see the doctor, or do you need an appointment with Dana, the nurse practitioner?”
She wasn’t sure. She’d never done this before. She opened her mouth to just spit it out. To just say it. Her throat got dry and she swallowed. “I don’t know.”
“I see that you had your yearly exam in April. Do you suspect that you’re pregnant?”
“No…no. I…I recently found something out. I caught my…well, I discovered my boyfriend…I mean my former boyfriend has been unfaithful.” She took a deep breath and placed her free hand on her throat. Beneath her fingers her pulse pounded. This was crazy. Why was she having such a hard time? “So…I need to be tested for…you know. HIV.” Nervous laugher escaped her dry throat. “I mean, I don’t think it’s likely, but I have to know for sure. He said he cheated just the one time and used protection, but can you really trust a cheater?” Good lord. She’d gone from stammering to rambling. “As soon as possible, please.”
“Let me look.” From the other end of the line several taps on a keyboard, and then, “We’ll get you in as soon as possible. I have a cancellation with Dana on Thursday. Is four-thirty okay?”
Thursday. Three days. It was an eternity. “That’s fine.” Silence filled the line, and Clare forced herself to ask, “How long will it take?”
“The test? Not long. You’ll have the results before you leave the office.”
When she hung up the phone, she leaned back in her chair and stared straight ahead at her computer screen. She’d told the receptionist the truth. She really didn’t believe Lonny had exposed her to anything, but she was an adult and had to know for sure one way or the other. Her fiancé had been unfaithful, and if she’d caught him in the closet with a woman, she would have made the call too. Cheating was cheating. And despite what Sebastian had said, the fact that she didn’t have male “equipment” didn’t make it easier.
Her forehead felt tight and she raised her hands and massaged her temples. It wasn’t even ten A.M. and she had a massive headache. Her life was a mess and it was all Lonny’s fault. She had to get tested for something that could take her life, and she wasn’t the one who’d messed around. She was monogamous. Always. She didn’t hop into bed with…
Sebastian.
Her hands fell to her lap. She had to tell Sebastian. The thought made her throbbing temples just about burst. She didn’t know if they’d used a condom, and she had to tell him.
Or not. More than likely the test would be negative. She should wait to say anything until she found out the results herself. She probably wouldn’t have to tell him at all. What were the chances he’d have sex with someone else between now and Thursday? A vison of him dropping his towel entered her head.
Very likely, she concluded, and reached for a bottle of aspirin she kept in her desk drawer.
Four
My recorder beside my yellow legal pad, I look across the table at the man I know only as Smith. Around me locals chat and laugh, but it all feels forced as they keep a watchful eye on me and Smith. If I didn’t know better, if the language around me was peppered with Arabic and scented with cumin, I would think I was in Baghdad sitting across from a fanatic named Mohammed. The inner beast shines just as bright in deep brown eyes as blue. Both men…
Sebastian reread what he’d written and scrubbed his face with his hands. What he’d written wasn’t so much bad as it wasn’t right. He returned his hands to the keyboard of his laptop and with a few strokes deleted what he’d written.
He stood and sent the kitchen chair sliding across the hardwood floor. He didn’t understand it. He had his notes, an outline in his head, and a good workable nut graf. All he had to do was sit down and write a decent lead. “Fuck!” Something that felt a lot like fear bit the back of his throat and chewed its way down to his stomach. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”
“Is there a problem?”
He took a deep breath and let it out as he turned and looked at his father standing just inside the back doorway. “No. No problem.” Not any that he’d admit out loud, anyway. He’d get the lead paragraph. He would. He’d just never faced this kind of problem before, but he’d work it out. He moved to the refrigerator, reached inside and pulled out a carton of orange juice. He would have preferred a beer, but it wasn’t even noon. The day he started drinking in the morning was the day he knew he had to truly worry about himself.
He lifted the carton to his mouth and took several long swallows. The cool juice hit the back of his throat and washed away the taste of panic in his mouth. He raised his gaze from the end of the carton to a wooden duck resting on top of the refrigerator. The brass plate identified the duck as an American wigeon. A Carolina wood duck and northern pintail rested above the fireplace in the living room. There were various wooden birds about the house, and Sebastian wondered when the old man had become so fascinated with ducks. He lowered the juice and glanced at his father, who was watching him from beneath the brim of his hat. “Do you need help with anything?” Sebastian asked.
“If you have a moment, you could give me a hand moving something for Mrs. Wingate. But I hate to interrupt you when you’re hard at work.”
He would give his left nut to be hard at work instead of writing and deleting the lead paragraph over and over. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and returned the carton to the refrigerator. “What does she want moved?” he asked, and shut the door.
“A sideboard.”
He didn’t know what the hell a sideboard was, but it sounded heavy. Like something to take his mind off his looming deadline and his inability to string together three cohesive sentences.