Fletcher's Woman (5 page)

Unexpectedly, Mr. Wilkes reached out and closed his hand over both of hers. “I gather that you and your father haven't been quite so prosperous,” he said softly.

Tears trembled in Rachel's eyes as she looked at him. “No,” she answered brokenly. “No, we haven't.”

He tossed the cheroot out, through the open window. “Your fortunes are about to change, Urchin. Believe me.”

Rachel stared at him, all too aware of the hopelessness of her situation in life. “I hardly think so, Mr. Wilkes,” she replied. “My father is a lumberjack and my husband, when I find one, will no doubt be a lumberjack, too.”

The brown eyes were speculative now, and slightly guarded. “Perhaps not,” he said.

But Rachel's mind had shifted back, to the misery and lacks she'd experienced in Tent Town and all its many counterparts in all the other timber towns. Once, she had viewed such places with resignation; now, knowing how different her life might have been, had her mother cared for her, she felt aching resentment.

She pulled Mr. Wilkes's coat more tightly around her shoulders and sank into a comer of the carriage seat, closing her eyes. A sudden desire to sleep overwhelmed her, and she gave in.

Jonas forced himself to concentrate on the passing countryside, even though he knew every inch of it. The coach had left Providence behind, and there were open fields on both sides of the road, choked with the green-and-yellow violence of Scotch broom.

There was within him a need to stare openly at the bedraggled waif huddled across from him, to memorize the delicate shape of her neck, the curve of her breasts, the gentle rounding of her thighs. He dared not touch her—not yet, not after the scene with Griffin Fletcher that morning, in Fanny Harper's cottage—but he was consumed by the need to possess her. If
he allowed himself to look too closely, or for too long, his resolve to keep his distance and win her trust might not hold against the oceanic onrush of hunger he felt whenever his eyes touched her.

The soft meter of her breathing told him that she had fallen asleep, and he smiled. Something very much like tenderness welled up inside him, and he braced himself against it.

Rachel was different from all the others; he had known that from the first moment. And because she was different, she was dangerous; she could so easily seize power over him, even enslave him.

No other woman—ever—had presented such a threat.

The carriage made a sharp and sudden turn, jolting Jonas out of his pensive mood. Wheels rattled on the cobblestone drive leading up to the main house, and after a moment of intense preparation, he dared to glance in Rachel's direction. She stirred, groaned softly.

The sound made Jonas's groin ache.

When the clatter ceased and the carriage lurched to a stop, he rose from the seat and opened the door. With a soft, half-smile on his face, he lifted Rachel McKinnon into his arms and carried her, like a child, across the sweeping, marble-pillared porch and through the great double doors the driver had opened.

Rachel awakened just as they crossed the threshhold, her marvelous orchid eyes wide and dazed and sleepy. After a moment, the realization of improper intimacy struck her with a visible impact. She stiffened in Jonas's arms and cried, “Put me down!”

Jonas did not want to release her, ever. Just holding her in that innocent, awkward fashion had stirred depths of need and desire in him far beyond what he had feared. It was all he could do to keep from carrying her up the sweeping staircase to his bedroom and losing himself, without regard for the consequences, in her sweetness and fire.

And there was fire inside her, all right. Jonas could feel it searing the edges of his soul even as he set her back on her feet and executed a courtly half-bow.

She was more than dangerous. She was deadly.

“As you wish,” he said, in a voice he didn't even recognize.

Rachel looked like an exotic bird, half-drowned, feathers ruffled. “Just because I came here to take a bath, Mr. Wilkes,” she sputtered, “Well—t-that doesn't mean that I'm—that I—”

Jonas was still struggling against the wild, agonizing desire that possessed him, but he smiled. “Of course,” he said.

She relaxed a little, did not clutch his coat so tightly around herself. Slowly, her eyes darkened by awe, she began to take in her surroundings—the entry hall, with its black-and-white marble floor, cathedral ceilings, and carved teakwood walls. The dancing pastel colors cast by the crystal chandelier flashed, like sparks, in the dark purple depths of her gaze.

Jonas was entirely bewitched, and might have remained frozen in the spell if his housekeeper, Mrs. Hammond, hadn't appeared in the parlor doorway and stared at Rachel in surprise.

With a flourish, Jonas gestured toward his rain-soaked guest. “As you can see, the young lady is in desperate need of a bath. See that she has one, please.”

The housekeeper's mouth tightened, grew white around the lips. “Jonas Wilkes—”

But Jonas was already striding out of the house again. He sprinted across the wide porch and stepped out into the roaring deluge.

Then, laughing, he thrust his arms out wide and lifted his face to the rain.

Fanny Harper writhed wildly on the bed, tossing her head back and forth, pleading incoherently for the mercy of God.

Griffin Fletcher sighed and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt as Fanny's terrified husband brought scalding water to pour from a tin bucket into the china basin on the washstand.

Fanny screamed again, once more begged the intercession of heaven.

Purposely, Griffin dismissed the most recent confrontation with Jonas from his mind, turning his concentration to the task at hand.

“Can't you make her quit hurtin' like that, Doc?” Sam Harper whispered hoarsely, paling beneath the patchy brown
and white stubble of his beard. Sam was a young man, by rights—maybe thirty-five at most—but he looked old, stooped. It was the grueling work in the woods and the lack of proper food; together, they robbed men of their youth and stamina.

Griffin shook his head and began to scrub his hands and forearms with the harsh lye soap he carried in his bag.

Harper drew nearer, his eyes reflecting the same savage pain that tore at his wife. “You could give her laudanum!” he challenged, in a raspy undertone.

Griffin stopped scouring his hands and glared at the man beside him. He was careful to keep his voice low and even, so Fanny wouldn't hear. “If I do that, the baby could fall asleep in the birth canal and smother. Besides, you know damned well I wouldn't let her suffer like that if I had a choice!”

Fanny shrieked again, and doom thundered in the sound. Overhead, the endless rain hammered at the roof.

Subdued now to a state of mute horror, Sam Harper fled the room, pulling the door shut behind him. A moment later, another door slammed in the distance.

Griffin approached the bed and tossed back the gnarled, sweat-dampened blankets that covered Fanny. Gently, by the flickering light of a kerosene lantern burning on the bedside table, he examined her.

Tears coursed down the woman's face, but she did her best to lie still, to endure. But the dignity was gone from her bearing and, with it, the delicate, flowerlike beauty that had probably gotten her into this situation in the first place.

“Soon?” she pleaded, biting back another scream.

“Soon,” Griffin promised, in a soft voice.

The pain seized Fanny again; this time, Griffin guided her groping hands to the iron bedstead over her head. She gripped it, knuckles white, as the twisting, protruding knot that was her stomach convulsed violently.

Griffin waited with her, breathed in rhythm with her, wishing there were some way to ease the pain.

“I wisht I could die,” she said. Her pale blue eyes were wild, glazed with effort and agony.

Under other circumstances, Griffin would have been insulted by the statement, even outraged. To him, death was a relentless enemy, a monster to be battled tirelessly but never courted. “No,” he said, gently.

The baby boy was born five minutes later, and like all the Harper infants before it, the child was dead before it slipped
from Fanny's exhausted body into Griffin's hands. The breath he forced into its tiny lungs did not revive it.

Still, he washed the child gently and wrapped it in a blanket. Rage hammered at the back of his throat as he set the small body aside, and he struggled against a primitive need to overturn furniture and hurl books and bric-a-brac in every direction.

“This one?” asked Fanny, with a sort of hopeless desperation rattling in her voice.

Griffin ached in every tissue and fiber of his being. The rage had passed, leaving helpless, unspeakable grief in its wake. “I'm sorry, Fanny,” he answered.

“The babe weren't Sam's,” the woman confessed, her feverish eyes fixed sightlessly on the ceiling. Her thick, reddish brown hair lay in twisted strands on the pillow, and damp tendrils clung to her waxen cheeks.

Griffin again washed his hands in the small supply of fresh, lukewarm water that remained and dried them on a thin, scratchy towel. Then he poured laudanum into a tablespoon and held it to Fanny's taut lips.

She swallowed the medicine gratefully, in several doses, and then turned her head away, toward the wall. Above, the incessant rain beat out a melancholy refrain on the shingled roof. “It's God's vengeance,” she mourned. “God made my baby die because I'm bad.”

Griffin examined Fanny again, frowning distractedly. There was too much bleeding. “You're not ‘bad,' Fanny, and I doubt that God had anything to do with this, one way or the other.”

Fanny became calm—frighteningly calm. “It's my sin what made Him wrathful.”

Griffin took a steel needle from his bag and held it to the dancing flame in the lamp. When it had cooled, he threaded it with catgut and began to repair the tear in Fanny's flesh.

God. They always talked about God, lauding Him when things went right, bemoaning their own human nature when things went wrong. If there was a God—and, secretly, because of the order and symmetry apparent in the universe itself, Griffin suspected that there was—He was totally disinterested in mankind. He'd long since gone on to more promising enterprises, probably tossing a benevolent. “You're on your own!” over His shoulder as He went.

“Just rest, Fanny,” Griffin said.

But Fanny began to weep softly, even though she could not
feel the bite of the steel needle. “The baby weren't Sam's!” she insisted.

Griffin glanced at the pitiable bundle lying on the chest at the foot of the bed. His heart twisted for the undersized infant boy who would never play tag with a sparkling tide or feel the sun on his face.

“I'm a doctor, Fanny,” he snapped. “Not a priest.”

“T-that man—he's a devil. We all think that he's a man, but he ain't! He's the devil's own.”

Griffin had even less interest in the devil than he did in God. “Jonas?” he sighed, as he tied off the stitches and permitted himself to recall the resemblance in the child's still little face.

Fanny nodded, and her sniffling became a soft, hideous wail. “Damn him—damn that man!”

Griffin, keeping his peace, felt profound relief as his patient slipped into a fitful, restless sleep. Even that, he thought, was preferable to her reality.

Griffin half-stumbled from the room to find hot water steaming on the cookstove in the kitchen and once again washed his hands. The flesh between his fingers and on his palms was raw from the biting strength of the special soap, and the water stung.

He helped himself to a mug of coffee from the blue enamel pot brewing at the rear of the stove and went back to the small, neat parlor, where a hopeful little fire blazed, crimson and orange, on the stone hearth.

Jonas. Always Jonas.

One shoulder braced against the sturdy mantle, Griffin sipped the strong, stale coffee thoughtfully. He wondered whether the warning he'd given Jonas—to stay away from Becky's daughter—had found its mark.

With Jonas, it was always hard to tell.

Fanny's labor had demanded all his attention then, and there had been no time to impress Jonas with his sincerity in the matter. There was never enough time.

Griffin drank the last of his coffee and took the cup back to the kitchen. There, he set it in the cast iron sink and pumped clear water into it until it overflowed.

All the conveniences, he thought. Jonas provided his women with all the conveniences.

His mind, snagged on the child in the other room, thrust him into a swirling current of hatred and frustration. He swore under his breath.

The cottage door opened as Griffin was reaching for his coat.

Sam Harper stood just inside the house, rainwater pooling silver around his worn boots. He stared at Griffin, trying to read his face. Beside him, the Reverend Winfield Hollister waited in calm silence, a tall, spare man with gentle eyes and an even, unblemished complexion.

Griffin's voice sounded hoarse and unsteady in his own ears. He'd seen death so many times; why couldn't he learn to accept it?

“The baby died,” he said.

Field Hollister laid one hand on Harper's shoulder, but he didn't speak. That was one of the things Griffin liked best about his friend, that he knew when to talk and when to keep still. Usually.

“And Fanny?” pleaded Harper. “What about Fanny?”

Griffin searched the ceiling for a moment, wishing that he could lie or even just evade the truth somehow. “She's alive,” he said, at last. “But she's lost too much blood, and she's weak.”

The lumberman stumbled blindly across the room and into the small bedroom. The place of his betrayal.

“You did your best,” ventured Field.

Griffin's sigh was ragged. “Yeah.”

The minister folded his hands. “Fanny isn't going to survive this, is she?”

Griffin shook his head, and tension clasped the nape of his neck in a steel grip. Because he needed something to do, he consulted the watch he carried in his vest pocket. It seemed incredible that it was only nine o'clock in the morning.