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He dropped his head into a loose-necked nod.
“Missy?”
Winifred stared at the man across the table from her. It was obvious he was only half-awake.
“Missy, you like eggs?”
“What? Oh, yes, thank you.” She turned toward the Chinese man for an instant, then swung her gaze back to the doctor. His head was tipped back against the high ladder-back chair, his eyes closed, his breathing slow and even. Good Lord, the man was sound asleep!
“Up all night,” Sam murmured. “Babies come slow.” He moved the coffee cup away from the doctor’s hand and tiptoed into the kitchen.
Winifred stared at Nathaniel Dougherty. She could not tell him what she had come all the way from St. Louis to say. Not while he was this tired.
In a few moments, Sam slid a plate of scrambled eggs in front of her, motioned for her to eat, then laid one long finger across his lips to signal silence. She nodded, picked up her fork and quietly devoured the perfectly cooked eggs.
She studied the plate of toast at her elbow and lifted a slice to her mouth but could not bring herself to take a single bite. The crunching sound might wake him.
He slept on, his breathing guttural, his chest rising and falling. Winifred drank her coffee in silence and watched him. Her throat felt tight each time she swallowed.
A faint wail floated from the floor above and suddenly the doctor jerked awake and bolted for the stairway.
Sam shot into the dining room and shook his head at the empty chair. “I feed baby. Doctor must sleep.” On silent black slippers he padded up the stairs after the doctor.
Winifred couldn’t help smiling at the houseboy’s retreating back. Sam was obviously devoted to Dr. Dougherty. Perhaps he had also been devoted to Cissy. As for the doctor...
Well, she had to admit she had been prepared not to like Nathaniel Dougherty. But since breakfast, a tiny niggle of doubt had lodged in her brain.
“Missy like read book?”
Sam’s voice brought her bolt upright, and her coffee cup clanked onto the saucer.
The houseboy’s black eyes snapped with delight. “Baby sleep. Doctor sleep. Maybe you read book? We have library.”
“Why, yes.” She needed something to do with herself until she could speak with Rosemarie’s father. A book was just the answer.
“You come see book room,” Sam invited. “Fine books. You come. Bring coffee.”
Winifred followed him through the wide entry hall and past a set of sliding pocket doors into a large parlor lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Sam swept one arm in an expansive circle. “Here many fine books. You choose.”
But she had spied the dark cherrywood grand piano in the corner and her breath stopped. Cissy’s piano! She had forgotten how beautiful the instrument was, the wood polished to a gleaming burgundy color, the upholstered bench carved to match the ornate piano legs. It looked untouched, as if Cissy had just finished playing and left the room only a moment before. Her eyes filled with tears.
“Doctor’s favorite books here, lady’s books there.” Sam pointed to the shelf behind the piano.
Cissy’s music books. Mostly familiar worn volumes—Brahms. Mozart. Beethoven. The corners of some pages were turned down. The ache in her heart flared into rage. How could she? How had she dared?
Winifred set the cup and saucer on a side table and began to thumb through the Brahms as Sam glided away. Yes, the waltzes, the intermezzos they both loved, all arranged for four hands.
Abruptly she slapped the volume shut. Oh, Cissy. Cissy.
She couldn’t look at the music any longer. Instead she moved to the doctor’s book collection and ran her hand over the leather-bound volumes. She selected a volume of Wordsworth. Next to it, Milton’s Paradise Lost caught her eye. “How prophetic,” she murmured. A stab of bitterness knifed through her.
We had it all, Cissy, everything we had dreamed of. And you threw it away for this man. Why?
She fled into the hallway. “Sam?” she called. “I am going out for a walk.”
She heard no answer, but it didn’t matter. She opened the front door and the heat hit her like a fist. Just as she was about to give up the idea, Sam appeared with a wide-brimmed straw hat in one hand. Cissy’s hat. A wide pink ribbon banded the crown, and her heart caught. Winifred never wore pink. The Chinese man offered it without a word.
She tied it beneath her chin and stepped out onto the porch, then resolutely marched down the front steps, past the hospital and on down the tree-lined street toward town.
It wasn’t much of a main street. A single mercantile with bushel baskets of apples and squash out in front; the Smoke River sheriff’s office; a scruffy-looking barber shop; Uncle Charlie’s bakery, with a large, many-paned window through which she glimpsed a glass case of cakes and cookies.
Next door to the bakery hung a sign with large block letters printed in royal blue: Verena Forester, Dressmaker. A handsome challis morning dress was displayed in the window, and she hesitated. But no. She did not plan to be here long enough to warrant adding to her wardrobe.
By the time she reached the Smoke River Hotel, she was wilting and dizzy from the heat. A young man with a silver badge on his plaid shirt glanced at her as she passed, then doubled back and fell into step beside her.
“You all right, ma’am? Look kinda, well, peaked. I thought maybe you’d—”
“I am quite all right. Just a bit... Is it always this hot here in the summer?”
“Usually much worse. Oh, ’scuse me, ma’am.” He tipped his hat. “I’m Sandy Boggs, the deputy sheriff. Sheriff’s at the hospital with his wife. Had twins this morning. Kin I escort you some place?”
She nodded. “A place with cold lemonade, perhaps?”
“That’d be right here, ma’am. Restaurant’s next to the hotel.” He tipped his hat again and strode off down the street.
Inside the restaurant Winifred sank down at a table and fanned herself with Cissy’s hat. Without even asking, the waitress brought a large glass of cold water and plunked it at her elbow.
“Must be from somewheres else, I’d guess,” the plump woman said. “Otherwise you’d be used to it. The heat, I mean.”
“St. Louis,” Winifred volunteered. “Would you have any lemonade?”
“Got gallons of it, ma’am. ’Spect we’ll need to make another batch or two before noon. Never been this hot in August.” The woman whipped a pad and pencil from her checked apron pocket. “You want anything else?”
Oh, yes. She wanted a great deal. “No, thank you. Wait! Where is the cemetery?”
“The graveyard, ya mean? Top of the hill.” She gestured a thick arm in the opposite direction from the doctor’s house.
Winifred drank two glasses of excellent cold lemonade, then donned her hat and started up the other hill. Thank goodness she hadn’t laced her corset tight this morning. She didn’t fancy fainting twice in Dr. Dougherty’s entrance hall.
At the top of the rise she spied a neatly fenced area with leafy green trees and chiseled headstones. A spreading oak shaded the area, and she sank down on the thick grass beneath it to catch her breath.
At the sight of the mound of fresh dirt indicating a recent burial, she closed her eyes tight and began to cry. She thought she would be over these bouts of weeping she’d fought this past month; perhaps she would never get over Cissy’s death.
Maybe not, but now there was Rosemarie. And, she acknowledged, swiping tears off her cheeks, Rosemarie was the reason she had come.
Chapter Three (#ulink_a5511247-e228-5329-846b-8435d3ebfade)
A handful of yellow roses lay on top of Cissy’s grave. Winifred’s heart squeezed at the sight. Dr. Dougherty must have paid an early morning visit after delivering the sheriff’s twins. She swallowed a hiccupped sob. Even in death, her sister was fortunate.
She still resented Nathaniel Dougherty’s sweeping Cissy off to this rough, uncivilized place, but a small part of her ached at the man’s obvious sorrow. She knew how devastating it was to lose someone you loved; it must be doubly so if you had pledged to share your life with that person.
She sank down beside the grave site and struggled to compose her thoughts. You knew I would come, didn’t you, Cissy? Was your husband so crushed by your loss that he could not tell me of your death until after the funeral?
She yanked up shoots of the green grass poking up from the earth beside her and crushed them in her palm. I would have come, Cissy. You know I would.
She removed the straw hat and bowed her head. The angle of the sun shifted and she felt its rays warm her shoulders and then burn slowly through the light muslin shirtwaist she wore. She did not care. She rolled the sleeves up to her elbows and stayed where she was beside her sister’s grave.
She tried to stop feeling, stop thinking. Instead, she steadily shredded the grass under her hand and stared at those yellow roses. They were beginning to wilt in the sunshine.
Suddenly a chill swept through her. How strange loss could be. When Mama was killed, Papa straightened his shoulders and went back to his desk at the bank. He had provided for Cissy and herself, sent them to private schools and later to the music conservatory. They had maids and cooks and tutors, but the hole in their hearts yawned like a chasm. Papa bore it best. He never wept, as she and Cissy had.
Remembering those black days, she turned her face up to the sun and lost track of time.
* * *
“Ah, glad you back, missy. Doctor go see boy who have chicken spots.”
“You mean chicken pox?”
“Ah. ‘Pox,’” he pronounced carefully. “Learn new English word. Make stew for your supper. Tonight I play fan-tan with friend Ming Cha. You stay here with baby?”
“Me? But I know noth—”
“Not hard, missy. I show.”
Sam demonstrated how to heat the nippled bottle of milk and sprinkle some on her wrist to check the temperature, and then, with a wide grin that showed his elusive dimple, he was gone.
Oh, well. How hard could it be to feed a month-old baby?
Besides, she must learn these things if she wanted to bring her plan to fruition.
She dawdled over her stew and the fluffy dumpling Sam had added, listening for Rosemarie’s hungry cry from upstairs and praying desperately for the doctor’s return.
But Dr. Dougherty did not return. When Rosemarie’s faint wail rose, Winifred heated the milk as Sam had shown her and flew up the stairs to feed her precious niece. By the time she opened the door to the doctor’s bedroom where the baby lay in the ruffled wicker bassinet, Rosemarie had worked up to quite a lusty yell.
“There, there, little one,” Winifred crooned. She set the warmed milk on the book-cluttered nightstand and lifted the child into her arms. A sopping wet diaper plastered itself against the front of her shirtwaist and instantly she held the baby away from her. Oh, dear. She would have to exchange the wet garment for a dry one; but how, exactly, did one accomplish this? Sam had left no instructions concerning wet diapers.
She riffled through the handsome walnut chest of drawers until she found clean diapers, then laid Rosemarie on the doctor’s bed and studied how the safety pins were arranged. Rosemarie screamed and grew red in the face, and Winifred began to perspire.
She unpinned the soaked garment, prodded the ceramic chamber pot out from under the bassinet with her foot and dropped in the diaper. It landed with a splat and Winifred heaved a sigh of relief. Then she pinned the dry garment onto the now-squirming infant, praying she would not prick the soft skin. Then she stuck the rubber nipple into Rosemarie’s open mouth.
Instant silence. Thank the Lord! The blue-green eyes popped open and gazed into Winifred’s face as the level of milk in the bottle steadily diminished. The baby sucked greedily while she hovered over her, mesmerized by the whole process. Perhaps it wasn’t that difficult to care for an infant.
Long before the bottle was empty, Rosemarie fell asleep. Winifred cuddled her against one shoulder and settled into the rocking chair by the window. Not difficult at all, she mused. In fact, she felt exactly like she did after a successful concert—tired and proud and happy.
* * *
Zane stepped quietly into his bedroom and stopped short. Winifred sat in the rocker, asleep, with a slumbering Rosemarie nestled against her shoulder. Very gently he lifted his daughter into his arms, felt her diaper—dry—and laid her in the bassinet beside his bed. Then he stood staring down at Celeste’s sister.
How different this woman was from his wife. Celeste had been petite, golden-blonde and frail-looking. Winifred had dark hair. And whereas Celeste had been slim to the point of boyishness, Winifred’s breasts under the white shirtwaist were lushly curved.
She slept quietly, her breath pulling softly in and out without a hint of the asthma that had plagued Celeste in the summer months. His wife had been pretty, extremely pretty; but Winifred’s bone structure approached real beauty. He could not help wondering how far the differences between the two sisters went. Was Winifred—? He caught himself. He wouldn’t allow his mind to go there. He recognized that he was desperately unhappy. Lonely. Hungry, even. Not for physical release but for emotional comfort. And, yes, he supposed, some plain old body hunger was involved. It amazed him that his spirit could feel so broken and his physical self could still feel normal. Or almost normal.
Since Celeste’s death he hadn’t felt a twinge of interest in food or riding or swimming or reading or any of the things that had sustained him through the long, dry months of her pregnancy. He supposed he would come back to life eventually; for the time being, it was a blessing to feel nothing.
He reached out and touched Winifred’s wrist and she jerked upright with a little cry. “Oh, it’s you.”
Zane surprised himself with a chuckle. “Who were you expecting?”
She surged out of the rocker. “The baby! Where is—?”
“Sleeping,” Zane replied.
She took a single step forward and her knees gave way. Zane snagged one arm around her shoulder to steady her. “Easy, there. Foot go to sleep?”
“What? Oh, no, I...” She swerved toward the bassinet. “I feel somewhat unsteady, and my head is pounding like it does when I have a migraine.”
Zane tightened his grip and steered her through the doorway and down the short hallway to the guest bedroom. Her skin was hot. Even through the shirtwaist he could feel she was over-warm. He shot a glance to her flushed face.
“Winifred, undress and get into bed. I’ll bring up something to cool you down.”
When he returned, she was stretched out under the top sheet, her eyes shut. “What’s wrong with me? Am I ill?”
“You’re sun-sick. Got a bad sunburn on your face and arms. Here, drink this.” He leaned over, slipped his arm behind her to raise her shoulders and held a glass to her lips.
“What is it?”
“Water, mostly. You’re dehydrated. What did you do today to get this sunburned?”
She sipped obligingly, then grasped the glass with both hands and gulped down four huge swallows. “I went to visit Cissy’s grave. I must have sat there for longer than I thought.”
Zane said nothing. Her next statement drove the breath from his lungs.
“I saw your roses. It was a lovely gesture.”
“What roses?”
“The yellow ones you left on her grave.”
“But I did not—”
Even in the semidarkness he could see her eyes widen. She finished the water. “Then who did?”
He set the glass aside and slid her shoulders down onto the pillow. “I have something for your sunburn.” Carefully he unrolled the three napkins he’d soaked in water and witch hazel; one he laid directly over her face and with the other two he wrapped her forearms. “I’m afraid you’re going to hurt some tomorrow. Your skin is pretty badly burned.”
“It was worth it,” she said on a sigh. “I said goodbye to Cissy.”
Zane flinched. He still couldn’t face seeing Celeste’s grave. Maybe he never would.
