Linda Lael Miller Bundle (21 page)

It occurred to her then that she could be blissfully happy in this era, for all its shortcomings. On some level, she had always yearned for a simpler, though certainly not easier, life and a man like Jonathan.

Elisabeth hurried along, the soft petals billowing around her like fog in a dream, and finally reached the grassy bank.

The place was different and yet the same, and she stood in exactly the spot where she’d spread her blanket to eat lunch and read. The covered bridge towered nearby, but its plank walls were new, and the smell of freshly sawed wood mingled with the aromas of spring grass and the fertile earth.

In order to protect her dress from green smudges, Elisabeth sat on a boulder overlooking the stream instead of on the ground. She removed the hat and set it beside her, then lifted her arms to her hair, winding it into a French knot at the back of her head even though she had no pins to hold it. Her reflection smiled back at her from the crystal-bright waters of the creek, looking delightfully Victorian.

A clatter on the road made her lift her head, her hands still cupped at her nape, and she watched wide-eyed as a large stagecoach, drawn by eight mismatched horses, rattled onto the bridge. The driver touched his hat brim in a friendly way when the coach reappeared, and Elisabeth waved, laughing. It was like playing a part in a movie.

And then the wind picked up suddenly, making the leaves of the birch and willow trees whisper and lifting Elisabeth’s borrowed hat right off the rock. She made a lunge, and both she and the bonnet went straight into the creek.

With a howl of dismay, Elisabeth felt the slippery pebbles on the bottom of the icy stream give way beneath the soles of her sneakers. As the luscious hat floated merrily away, she tumbled forward and landed in the water with a splash.

Jonathan was standing on the bank when she floundered her way back to shore, her lovely dress clinging revealingly to her form, and though he offered his hand, Elisabeth ignored it.

“What are you doing?” she sputtered furiously, her teeth already chattering, her hair hanging in dripping tendrils around her face. “Following me?”

He grinned and shrugged. “I saw you walking this way, and I thought you might be planning to hitch a ride on the afternoon stage. It seems you’ve been swimming instead.”

Elisabeth glared at him and crossed her arms over her breasts. Because of the unexpected dip in the creek, her nipples were plainly visible beneath the fabric. “It isn’t funny,” she retorted, near tears. “This is the prettiest dress I’ve ever had, and now it’s ruined!”

He removed his suitcoat and laid it over her shoulders. “I suppose it is,” he allowed. “But there are other dresses in the world.”

“Not like this one,” Elisabeth said despairingly.

Jonathan’s arm tightened briefly around her before falling to his side. “That’s what you think,” he countered. “Go through the trunks again. If you don’t find anything you like, I’ll
buy
you another dress.”

Elisabeth gave him a sidelong look, shivering inside his coat as they walked toward the orchard and the house beyond. No one needed to tell her that nineteenth-century country doctors didn’t make a lot of money; many of Jonathan’s patients probably paid him in chickens and squash from the garden. “Did this dress belong to your wife?” she ventured to ask, already knowing the answer, never guessing how much she would regret the question until it was too late to call it back.

Jonathan’s jawline tightened, then relaxed again. He did not look at her, but at the orchard burgeoning with flowers. “Yes,” he finally replied.

“Doesn’t it bother you to see another woman wearing her things?”

He rubbed his chin, then thrust both hands into the pockets of his plain, practical black trousers. “No,” he answered flatly.

Elisabeth thought of the two graves inside the little fence, back in modern-day Pine River, and her heart ached with genuine grief to think of Jonathan and Trista lying there. At the same time, she wondered why Jonathan’s mate wasn’t buried in the family plot. “Did she die, Jonathan? Your wife?”

They had reached the grove of apple trees, and petals clung to the hem of Elisabeth’s spoiled dress. Jonathan’s hands knotted into fists in his trouser pockets. “As far as Trista and I are concerned,” he replied some moments later, “yes.”

Pressing him took all Elisabeth’s courage, for she could sense the controlled rage inside him. And yet she had to know if she was feeling all these crazy emotions for another woman’s husband. “She left you?”

“Yes.”

“Then, technically, you’re a married man.”

Jonathan’s eyes sliced to Elisabeth’s face and the expression she saw in them brought color pulsing to her cheeks. “Technically?” He chuckled, but there wasn’t a trace of humor in the sound. “An odd word. No, Elisabeth, I’m not the rogue you think I am. When it became clear that Barbara didn’t plan to return, I went to Olympia and petitioned the legislature for a divorce. It was granted.”

“All of this must have been very difficult for Trista,” Elisabeth observed, wondering why Barbara Fortner hadn’t taken her daughter along when she left. Perhaps Jonathan had prevented that by some legal means, or maybe the woman had doubted her own ability to support a child in such a predominantly male world.

The house was within sight now, and twilight was beginning to fall over the fragrant orchard. Elisabeth felt a tug in her heart as they walked toward the glow of lantern light in the kitchen windows. She knew she’d been homesick for this time, this place, this man at her side, all of her life.

He shocked her with his reply to her remark about the effect the divorce had had on Trista. “My daughter believes her mother died in an accident in Boston, while visiting her family, and I don’t want anyone telling her differently. Since the Everses have disinherited their daughter, I don’t think there’s any danger that they’ll betray the secret.”

Elisabeth stopped to stare at him, even though it was chilly and her wet dress was clinging to her skin. “But it’s a lie.”

“Sometimes a lie is kinder than the truth.” Having spoken these words, Jonathan picked up his stride and Elisabeth was forced to follow him into the kitchen or stand in the yard until she caught her death.

Inside, Jonathan turned the wicks up in the lamps so that the flames burned brightly, then he opened a door in the stove and began shoving in wood from the box beside it. Elisabeth huddled nearby, gratefully soaking up the warmth.

“A lie is never better than the truth,” she said, having finally worked up the courage to contradict him so bluntly. He was bull stubborn in his opinions; Rue would have said he was surely a Republican.

He wrenched a blue enamel pot from the back of the stove, carried it to the sink and used the hand pump to fill it with water. Then he set the pot on to heat. “You’ll be wanting tea,” he remarked, completely ignoring her statement. “I’ll go and find you a dressing gown.”

Elisabeth drew closer to the stove, wanting the heat to reach the marrow of her bones. She had stopped shivering, at least, when Jonathan returned with a long flannel nightgown and a heavy blue corduroy robe to go over it.

“You can change in the pantry,” he said, shoving the garments at Elisabeth without meeting her eyes.

She took them and went into the little room—where the washer and drier were kept in her time—and stripped in the darkness. The virginal nightgown felt blissfully warm against her clammy, goose-pimpled skin.

She was tying the belt on the robe when she came out of the pantry to find Jonathan pouring hot water into a squat, practical-looking brown teapot. “I’d be happy to cook supper,” she said, wanting to be useful and, more than that, to belong in this kitchen, if only for an hour.

“Good,” he said with a sigh, going to the wall of cupboards for mugs, which he carried back to the table. “Trista doesn’t cook, and Ellen—that’s our housekeeper—tends to be undependable on occasion. She was here earlier, but she wandered off and probably won’t be back until tomorrow.”

Elisabeth opened the icebox she’d discovered the first night and squatted to look inside it. Two large brook trout stared at her from a platter, and she carried them to the counter nearest the stove. “Did you catch these fish?” she asked, mostly because it gave her a soft, bittersweet sensation to be cooking and chatting idly with Jonathan.

He poured tea into the cups and went to the base of the back stairs to call Trista down. Evidently, she’d dutifully returned to her room after Miss Calderberry left.

“They were given to me,” he answered presently, “in payment for a nerve tonic.”

Elisabeth found a skillet in the pantry, along with jars of preserved vegetables and fruit. She selected a pint of sliced carrots and one of stewed pears, and carried them into the kitchen. By this time, Trista was setting the table with Blue Willow dishes, and Jonathan was nowhere in sight.

“He went out to the barn to feed the animals,” Trista offered without being asked.

Elisabeth smiled. “Did you enjoy your piano lesson?”

“No,” Trista answered. “How come your hair is all wet and straggly like that?”

Elisabeth put the trout into the skillet, minus their heads. “I fell into the creek,” she replied. “Is there any bread?”

Trista went to a maple box on the far counter and removed a loaf wrapped in a checkered dish towel. She set it on a plate, then brought a bowl of butter from the icebox. “I fell in the creek once,” she confided. “I was only two, and I think maybe I would have drowned if my mama hadn’t pulled me right out.”

Elisabeth felt a small pull in the tenderest part of her soul. “It’s a good thing she was around,” she said gently, remembering a small tombstone with Trista’s name carved into it. She had to look away to hide sudden tears that burned hot along her lashes.

“Maybe you could play the piano for us, after supper,” Trista said.

Subtly, Elisabeth dried her eyes with the soft sleeve of the wrapper Jonathan had brought to her. Like the spoiled dress, it smelled faintly of lavender. “I haven’t touched a keyboard in weeks, so I’m probably out of practice,” she said with a cheerful sniffle. She took her first sip of the tea Jonathan had made for her and found it strong and sweet.

Trista laughed. “You couldn’t sound worse than I do, no matter how long it’s been since you’ve practiced.”

Elisabeth laughed, too, and hugged the little girl. Through the window, she saw Jonathan moving toward the house in the last dim light of day. In that moment, she was as warm as if the noontime sun had been shining unrestrained on her bare skin.

She dished up the fish and the preserved carrots while Jonathan washed at the sink, then they all sat down at the table.

Elisabeth was touched when Trista offered a short grace, asking God to take special care that her mama was happy in heaven. At this, Elisabeth opened her eyes for an accusing peek at Jonathan and found him staring defiantly back at her, his jawline set.

When the prayer was over, Jonathan immediately cut three perfect slices from the loaf of bread and moved one to his plate.

“Don’t you have any cows?” Elisabeth asked. She’d noticed that Jonathan hadn’t carried in a bucket of fresh milk, the way farmers did in books and movies.

He shook his head. “Don’t need one,” he replied. “I get all the butter and cream we can use from my patients.”

“Do any of them give you money?” Elisabeth inquired, careful not to let so much as a trace of irony slip into her tone.

Still, Jonathan’s look was quick and sharp. “We manage,” he replied crisply.

After that, Trista carried the conversation, chattering cheerfully about the upcoming spelling bee at school and how she’d be sure to win it because she had so much time to practice her words. When supper was over, she and Elisabeth washed the dishes while Jonathan put on his suitcoat—it had been drying on the back of a chair near the stove—and reached for his medical bag.

“I won’t be long,” he said, addressing his words to Trista. “I want to check and see if Mrs. Taber is any closer to delivering that baby.”

Trista nodded and hung up the dish towel neatly over the handle on the oven door, but Elisabeth followed Jonathan outside.

“You mean you’re leaving your daughter all alone here, with a total stranger?” she demanded, her hands on her hips.

Jonathan took a lantern from the wall of the back porch and lit it after striking a wooden match. “You’re not a stranger,” he said. “You and I are old friends, though I admit I don’t remember exactly where we met.” He bent to kiss her lightly on the cheek. “In case I don’t see you before morning, good night, Lizzie.”

L
izzie.

Being called by that name made Elisabeth sway on her feet. She grasped at the railing beside the porch steps to steady herself.

Jonathan didn’t notice her reaction, which was probably just as well because Elisabeth was in no condition to offer more explanations. She watched, stricken, as he strode toward the barn, the lantern in one hand, his medical bag in the other.

The moment he disappeared from sight, Elisabeth sank to the steps and just sat there, trembling, her hands over her face. Dear God in heaven, why hadn’t she guessed? Why hadn’t she known that
she
was the woman accused of setting the fire that probably killed Jonathan and Trista?

“Elisabeth?” Trista’s voice was small and full of concern. “Is something the matter?”

Elisabeth drew in a deep breath and made herself speak in a normal tone of voice. “No, sweetheart,” she lied, “everything is just fine.”

The child hovered in the doorway behind her. “Are you going to play for me?” she asked hopefully. “I’m still in trouble, but I know Papa wouldn’t mind my staying downstairs for just one song.”

Elisabeth rose from the step, feeling chilly even in the warm robe and nightgown Jonathan had brought her. What a scandal her state of dress would cause in Victorian Pine River, she thought in a wild effort to distract herself. But there was no forgetting—if she didn’t do something to change history, two people she already cherished would die tragically and she would be blamed for their deaths.

“One song,” she answered sadly, taking Trista’s hand and holding it tightly in her own.

“Elisabeth played a boogie,” Trista told her father the next morning as she ate the oatmeal Ellen had made for her. Jonathan frowned, and the housekeeper stiffened slightly in disapproval, her shoulders going rigid under her cambric dress.

“A what?” His head ached; deception did not come naturally to him. And he knew Ellen hadn’t believed his story about his late wife’s sister arriving suddenly for a visit.

“Land sakes,” muttered Ellen, slamming the fire door after shoving another stick of wood into the stove.

“A boogie-woogie,” Trista clarified, and it was clear from her shining face that she enjoyed just saying the word.

Just then, Elisabeth came somewhat shyly down the back stairs and Jonathan’s sensible heart skittered over two full beats when he saw her. She’d pinned her hair up in back, but it still made soft, taffy-colored curls around her face, and she was wearing a blue-and-white-flowered dress he didn’t remember seeing on Barbara.

She smiled as she advanced toward the kitchen table, where Trista had set a place for her. “Good morning.”

Remembering his manners, Jonathan rose and stood until Elisabeth was seated. “Ellen,” he said, “This is my—sister-in-law, Miss Elisabeth McCartney. Elisabeth, our housekeeper, Ellen Harwood.”

Ellen, a plain girl with a freckled face and frizzy red-brown hair, nodded grudgingly but didn’t return Elisabeth’s soft hello.

Jonathan waited until Ellen had gone upstairs to clean to ask, “What in the devil is a boogie-woogie?”

Elisabeth and Trista looked at each other and laughed. “Just a lively song,” Elisabeth answered.

“A
very
lively song,” Trista confirmed.

Jonathan sighed, pushed back his plate and pulled his watch from his vest pocket to flip open the case. He should have been gone an hour already, but he’d waited for a glimpse of Elisabeth, needing the swelling warmth that filled his bruised, stubborn heart when he looked at her. He could admit that to himself, if not out loud to her. “If you’re ready, Trista, I’ll drop you off at the schoolhouse on my way into town.”

His daughter cast a sidelong glance at their strange but undeniably lovely guest. “I thought I’d walk this morning, Papa,” Trista answered. “Elisabeth wants to see where I go to school.”

Jonathan narrowed his eyes as he regarded Elisabeth, silently issuing warnings he could not say in front of Trista. “I’m sure she wouldn’t be foolish enough to wander too far afield and get herself lost.”

“I’m sure she wouldn’t,” Elisabeth said wryly, watching him with those blue-green eyes of hers. Their beauty always startled him, caught him off guard.

Jonathan left the table, then, and took his suitcoat from the peg beside the back door. Trista was ready with his medical bag, looking up at him earnestly. “Don’t worry, Papa,” she confided in a stage whisper. “I’ll take very good care of Elisabeth.”

He bent to kiss the top of her head, then tugged lightly at one of her dark pigtails. “I’m sure you will,” he replied. After one more lingering look at Elisabeth, he left the house to begin his rounds.

Elisabeth marveled as she walked along, Trista’s hand in hers. In the twentieth century, this road was a paved highway, following a slightly different course and lined with telephone poles. It was so quiet that she could hear the whisper of the creek on the other side of the birch, cedar and Douglas fir trees that crowded its edges.

A wagon loaded with hay clattered by, drawn by two weary-looking horses, and Elisabeth stared after it. By then, she’d given up the idea that this experience was any kind of hallucination, but she still hadn’t gotten used to the sights and sounds of a century she’d thought was gone forever.

Trista gazed up at her speculatively. “Where did you go when you went away before?”

“Back to my own house,” Elisabeth replied after careful thought.

“Are you going to stay with Papa and me from now on?”

Elisabeth had to avert her eyes, thinking of the fire. She’d spent most of the night tossing and turning, trying to come up with some way to evade fate. For all she knew, it could not be changed.

Again, she took her time answering. “Not forever,” she said softly.

Trista’s strong little fingers tightened around Elisabeth’s. “I don’t want you to go.”

In that moment, Elisabeth realized that she didn’t want to leave…ever. For all its hard realities, she felt that she belonged in this time, with these people. Indeed, it was her other life, back in twentieth-century Washington state, that seemed like a dream now. “Let’s just take things one day at a time, Trista,” she told the child.

They rounded a wide bend in the road and there was the brick schoolhouse—nothing but a ruin in Elisabeth’s day—with glistening windows and a sturdy shake roof. The bell rang in the tower while a slender woman with dark hair and bright blue eyes pulled exuberantly on the rope.

Elisabeth stood stock-still. “It’s wonderful,” she whispered.

Trista laughed. “It’s only a schoolhouse,” she said indulgently. “Do you want to meet my teacher, Miss Bishop?” The child gazed up at Elisabeth, gray eyes dancing, and dropped her voice to a confidential whisper. “She’s sweet on the blacksmith, and Ellen says she probably won’t last out the term!”

Elisabeth smiled and shook her head. “It’s time for class to start, so I’ll meet Miss Bishop later.”

Trista nodded and hurried off to join the other children surging up the steps and through the open doorway of the schoolhouse. A few of them looked back over their shoulders at Elisabeth, freckled faces puzzled.

She stood outside, listening, until the laughter and noise faded away. Being a teacher herself, she relished the familiar sounds.

The weather was bright and sunny, and Elisabeth had no particular desire to go back to Jonathan’s house and face that sullen housekeeper, so she continued on toward town. As she neared the outskirts, the metallic squeal of a steam-powered saw met her ears and her step quickened. Even though she was scared—her situation gave new meaning to the hackneyed term “a fish out of water”—she was driven by a crazy kind of curiosity that wouldn’t allow her to turn back.

Her first glimpse of the town stunned her, even though she’d thought she was prepared. The main street seemed to be composed of equal measures of mud and manure, and the weathered buildings clustered alongside were like something out of a
Bonanza
rerun. Any minute now, Hoss and Little Joe were sure to come ambling out through the swinging doors of the Silver Lady Saloon….

There were horses and wagons everywhere, and the noisy machinery in the sawmill screeched as logs from the timber-choked countryside were fed through its blades. Elisabeth wandered past a forge worked by a man wearing a heavy black apron. and she sidestepped two lumberjacks who came out of the general store to stand in the middle of the sidewalk, leering.

When she saw Jonathan’s shingle up ahead, jutting out from the wall of a small, unpainted building, she hurried toward it. There was a blackboard on the wall beside the door, with the word
In
scrawled on it in white chalk. Elisabeth smiled as she opened the door.

A giant man in oiled trousers and a bloody flannel shirt sat on the end of an old-fashioned examining table. Jonathan was winding a clean bandage around the patient’s arm, but he paused, seeing Elisabeth, took off his gold-rimmed spectacles and tucked them into his shirt pocket.

A tender whirlwind spun in her heart and then her stomach.

“Is there a problem?” he asked.

Elisabeth was feeling a little queasy, due to the sight and smell of blood. She groped for a chair and sank into the only seat available—the hard wooden one behind Jonathan’s cluttered desk. “No,” she answered. “I was just exploring Pine River.”

The lumberjack smiled at her, revealing gaps between his crooked, tobacco-stained teeth. “This must be the lady you’ve been hidin’ away out at your place, Doc,” he said.

Jonathan gave his patient an annoyed glance and finished tying off the bandage. “I haven’t been hiding anything,” he replied. “And don’t go telling the whole damn town I have, Ivan, or I’ll sew your mouth shut, just like I did your arm.”

Ivan stood and produced a coin from the pocket of his filthy trousers, but even as he paid Jonathan, he kept his eyes on Elisabeth. “Good day to you, ma’am,” he said, and then he reluctantly left the office.

Jonathan began cleaning up the mess Ivan and his blood had made. “Coming here was probably not the most intelligent thing you ever did,” he observed presently.

Elisabeth’s attention had strayed to the calendar page on the wall. April 17, 1892. It was incredible. “I was curious,” she said distractedly, thinking of a documentary she’d watched on public television recently. “In a few more months—August, if I remember correctly—a woman in Fall River, Massachusetts, will be accused of murdering her father and stepmother with an ax. Her name is Lizzie Borden. She’ll be acquitted of the crime because of a lack of evidence.”

His gaze held both pity and irritation. “Is that supposed to have some kind of significance—the fact that she has the same first name as you do?”

A chill went through Elisabeth; she hadn’t thought of that. “No. Besides, nobody ever calls me Lizzie.”

“I do,” Jonathan answered flatly, pouring water into a clean basin and beginning to wash his hands.

“I’m glad to see that you’re taking antisepsis seriously,” Elisabeth said, as much to change the subject as anything. She still had that jittery feeling that being around Jonathan invariably gave her. “Most disease is caused by germs, you know.”

Jonathan leaned forward slightly and rounded his eyes. “No,” he said, pretending to be surprised.

“I guess maybe you’ve figured that out already,” Elisabeth conceded, folding her hands in her lap.

“Thank you for that,” he answered, drying his hands on a thin, white towel and laying it aside.

Just then, the door opened and a tall man wearing a cowboy hat and a battered, lightweight woolen coat strode in. He needed a shave, and carried a rifle in his right hand, holding it with such ease that it seemed a part of him. When he glanced curiously at Elisabeth, she saw that his eyes were a piercing turquoise blue. Pinned to his coat was a shiny nickel-plated badge in the shape of a star.

Wow,
Elisabeth thought.
A real, live lawman.

“’Morning, Farley,” Jonathan said. “That boil still bothering you?”

Farley actually flushed underneath that macho five-o’clock shadow of his. “Now, Jon,” he complained in his low drawl, “there was no need to mention that in front of the lady. It’s personal-like.”

Elisabeth averted her face for a moment so the marshal wouldn’t see that she was smiling.

“Sorry,” Jonathan said, but Elisabeth heard the amusement in his voice even if Farley didn’t. He gave her a pointed look. “The lady is just leaving. Let’s get on with it.”

Elisabeth nodded and bolted out of her chair. They wouldn’t have to tell her twice—the last thing she wanted to do was watch Jonathan lance a boil on some private part of the marshal’s body. “Goodbye,” she said from the doorway. “And it was very nice to meet you, Mr. Farley.”

“Just Farley,” rumbled the marshal.

“Whatever,” Elisabeth answered, ducking out and closing the door. There was something summarial in the way Jonathan pulled the shades on both windows.

Since her senses were strained from all the new things she was trying to take in, Elisabeth was getting tired. She walked back through town, nodding politely to the women who stared at her from the wooden sidewalks and pointed, and she hoped she hadn’t ruined Jonathan’s practice by marching so boldly into town and walking right into his office.

Reaching Jonathan’s house, she found Ellen in the backyard. She’d hung a rug over the clothesline and was beating it with a broom.

Elisabeth smiled in a friendly way. “Hello,” she called.

“If you want anything to eat,” the housekeeper retorted, “you’ll just have to fix it yourself!”

With a shrug, Elisabeth went inside and helped herself to a piece of bread, spreading it liberally with butter and strawberry jam. Then she found a blanket, helped herself to a book from Jonathan’s collection in the parlor and set out for her favorite spot beside the creek.

She supposed Janet was probably getting worried, if she’d tried to call, and the Buzbee sisters would be concerned, too, if they went more than a few days without seeing her. She spread the blanket on the ground and sat down, tucking her skirts carefully around her.