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What You Can
All right. So he can’t handle Harbottle, and it unsettles him because she’s pretty much the first woman he’s ever been able to say that about. No, she’s handling him quite readily, and he doesn’t like it. Not one bit.
Maybe he should have gotten some pretty young thing for their secretary. A little blonde slip of a girl, or maybe a redhead like whatsherface, Brompton; someone with big coy eyes and a neat little figure and no thoughts in her head more pressing than landing one of the three extraordinarily eligible bachelors in Skeldale House. He’d been right before, though, about someone like that getting no work done around someone like Tristan. And Tristan, much as he hated to admit it, had been right, too. She might have taken a shine to him–women tended to–and then where would he be? He’d have to string her along. James would’ve wondered if he didn’t.
James... And the same sick swooping feeling hits him when he wonders now, as he did then, if she would’ve fallen for James. He knows Jim would’ve laughed at the idea, as would most of Darrowby; a beautiful young woman fall for the bashful, bumbling Herriot instead of one of the dashing Farnon brothers? But he’s watched Jim–God, how he’s watched Jim–with the farmers’ daughters and the barmaids and the girls in the surgery. He’s seen the softness in their eyes when they look at him, the way they trust him, and the naked affection he inspires in just about everyone he meets. It’s easy to recognize the symptoms of one’s own disease.
And James, alone in that household, would’ve married the silly bint. And gone away.
He knows Jim’s no priest; he’s not even Catholic. Someday, probably soon, he’ll tumble head over heels in love with some wholesome milkmaid and start his own little family. At least, that’s the best case scenario. He might woo a city girl, might go to London or–God forbid–back to Scotland, and that would be the end, save a Christmas card now and then. Either way, there’s really nothing he can do to stop it. But Lord knows he’s not about to help it along. No, he’ll suffer Harbottle gladly, if all it means is six more months before sweet little James finds a sweet little girl somewhere. He’ll slip off to Brawton to satisfy his baser urges, ignore Tristan’s all-too-knowing smirks, and drink in what little time he has with Jim like a man with only days to live. You take what you can get. |