The Artist and the Rake (The Merry Misfits of Bath 4)

She screamed.

“Oh God, are the pains that bad?” Lizbeth asked, looking quite pale.

“No.” Addie placed her hand on her chest. “The two of you scared me to death. Whatever is wrong?”

“Wrong!” Marcus shouted and waved his hands around like a man demented. “You’re having a baby, Grayson is nowhere to be found, we don’t know who your doctor is, and bloody hell, I am not the one who should be doing this.”

“Calm down, Marcus.” Addie placed her hands on her stomach and closed her eyes. She grimaced and they all held their breath until she opened her eyes. “My doctor is Dr. Stevens,” she panted, “and Grayson is probably either at his club or with Carter at his office.”

“Why the devil didn’t you say so.” Marcus turned on his heel and left the room.

He thundered down the steps and raced to the carriage. He came to an abrupt stop and leaned his forehead against it, pounding the side of the vehicle with his fist. “Where the bloody hell is Dr. Stevens?”

The driver shouted from the seat on top of the carriage. “I know where he is, Mr. Mallory. Jump in and I will have you there in no time.”

Once the carriage left, Marcus took a deep breath and willed his heart to calm down. He would find the doctor, drag him back to Berkshire’s house, then find the father in all this mess and drink the biggest glass of brandy he could find.

They stopped in front of a tidy clapboard house in a well-kept middle-class neighborhood. Marcus bounded out the door and up the steps, pounding on the front door. “Dr. Stevens!”

A young woman opened the door, her eyes wide. She was dressed in a worn, not too clean dress. Strands of chestnut hair fell around her shoulders, loosened from the topknot she apparently had fixed that morning. “Whatever is going on?”

“I need Dr. Stevens.”

“How can I help you?”

Marcus sighed. Absolutely nothing was going right. He took a deep breath and tried to get across to this woman, who was obviously a maid, that he was in dire need of Dr. Stevens. “My dear woman, I just said I need Dr. Stevens.”

“Yes. I heard you. Quite clearly, in fact. That is precisely why I asked you how I can help.”

“You can help by fetching Dr. Stevens. He is doctor for my sister, Lady Berkshire and she is about to give birth. Now please hurry.”

The woman turned her back on him and hurried down the corridor. “I will be right with you.”

Marcus felt like banging his head on the wall. Did this simpleton not understand he wanted her to fetch Dr. Stevens, not run off telling him she would be right back?

He paced in the entrance hall mumbling to himself. He was about to search every room until he found the blasted doctor when the maid returned, shrugging into her coat with one arm. In her other hand she carried a medical bag. “Are you Dr. Steven’s assistant, then?”

“No.” She grinned at him. “I am Dr. Stevens.”

Marcus stood, staring at her when she passed him by and hurried down the steps, his mouth agape. She was Dr. Stevens?

Once she arrived at the carriage, she turned to him. “Are you coming, mister-whoever-you-are since you did not introduce yourself?”

As if in a trance, Marcus followed the woman down the steps and climbed into the carriage. Once the door closed, the driver immediately steered the carriage into the traffic.

“You are a woman.”

“Yes.” She looked out the window.

“You are a doctor?”

“Right again.”

“Does Lady Berkshire know this?”

“That I am her doctor?” She grinned. “I believe so.”

“Ah, but does she know that you are a woman?”