Linda Lael Miller Bundle (26 page)

When Elisabeth saw Trista coming slowly down the road from the schoolhouse, her head lowered, she smoothed her sateen skirts and stood. She met the child at the gate with a smile.

“Your papa is back from his travels,” she said.

The transformation in Trista stirred Elisabeth’s heart. The little girl fairly glowed, and a renewed energy seemed to make her taller and stronger in an instant. With a little cry of joy, Trista flung herself into Elisabeth’s arms.

Elisabeth held the child, near tears. Over the past eight trying days, she’d seen the depths of the bond this child had with her father. To separate them permanently by sending Trista to Barbara, so far in the future, was no longer an option.

“I thought maybe he’d stay away forever, like Mama,” Trista confided as the two of them went through the gate together.

Elisabeth had known what Trista was thinking, of course, but there hadn’t been much she could do to reassure the uneasy child. She squeezed Trista’s shoulders. “He’ll be home for supper—if there isn’t a baby ready to be born somewhere.”

Ellen, in the meantime, had finished shelling the peas and returned to the kitchen, where she was just putting a chicken into the oven to roast. She sniffed again when she saw Elisabeth.

“I don’t imagine I’ll be needed around here much longer,” she said to no one in particular.

So that was it, Elisabeth reflected. Ellen’s tendency to be unkind probably stemmed from her fear of losing her job, now that the doctor’s sister-in-law seemed to be a permanent fixture in the house. The problem was really so obvious, but Elisabeth had been too worried about Jonathan’s disappearance into the twentieth century to notice.

Even now, Elisabeth couldn’t reassure the woman because she didn’t know what Jonathan thought about the whole matter. He had talked about marriage, and he could well expect Elisabeth to take on all the duties Ellen was handling then. He might have been more progressive than most men of his era, but he wouldn’t be taking up the suffrage cause anytime soon.

“I’ll let Jon—the doctor know you’re concerned,” Elisabeth finally said, and Ellen paused and looked back at her in mild surprise. “And for what it’s worth, I think you do a very good job.”

Ellen blinked at that. Clearly, she’d had Elisabeth tagged as an enemy and didn’t know how to relate to her as a friend. “I’d be obliged,” Ellen allowed at last. “The family depends on me, and if there ain’t going to be a place for me here, I need to be finding another position.”

Elisabeth nodded and went back into the house to look about. Lord knew, there weren’t any labor-saving devices, and she’d never been all that crazy about housework, but the idea of being a wife to Jonathan filled her with a strange, sweet vigor. Maybe she
was
crazy, she thought with a crooked little smile, because she really wanted to live out this life fate had handed to her.

Twilight had already fallen when Jonathan returned, and the kitchen was filled with the succulent aroma of roasting chicken and the cheery glow of lantern light. Trista was working out her fractions while Elisabeth mashed the potatoes.

The moment she heard her father’s buggy in the yard, Trista tossed down her schoolwork and bolted for the back door, her face flushed and wreathed in smiles.

Elisabeth watched with her heart in her throat as the child launched herself from the back step into Jonathan’s arms, shrieking, “Papa!”

He laughed and caught her easily, planting a noisy kiss on her forehead. “Hello, sweetheart,” he said. There was a suspicious glimmer in his eyes, and his voice was a little hoarse.

Trista’s small arms tightened around his neck. “I missed you so much!” she cried, hugging him tightly.

Jonathan returned the child’s embrace, told her he loved her and set her back on the steps. Only then did Elisabeth notice how tired he looked.

“I imagine your patients missed you, too,” she said as he followed Trista into the house and set his bag in the customary place. One of the greatest sources of Elisabeth’s anxiety, during Jonathan’s absence, was the fact that people had constantly come by looking for him. It hadn’t been easy, knowing patients who needed his professional attention were being left to their own devices.

He sighed, and Elisabeth could see the strain in his face and in the set of his shoulders. “There are times,” he said, “when I think being a coal miner would be easier.”

Although she wanted to touch him, to take him into her arms and offer comfort, Elisabeth was painfully aware that she didn’t have that option—not with Trista in the room.

It was bad enough that they’d lied to the child, telling her Elisabeth was Barbara’s sister. For the past week, Trista had been begging for stories of the childhood Elisabeth had supposedly shared with her mother.

“Sit down, Jon,” Elisabeth said quietly, letting her hands rest on his tense shoulders for a moment after he sank into a chair at the kitchen table.

Trista, delighted that her father was home, rushed to get his coffee mug, but it was Elisabeth who filled it from the heavy enamel pot on the stove.

The evening passed pleasantly—by some miracle, no one came to call Jonathan away—and after Trista had been settled in bed, he came into the kitchen and began drying dishes as Elisabeth washed them.

That reminded her of Ellen’s concerns. “You need to have a talk with your housekeeper,” she said. “She wants to look for another job if you’re planning to let her go.”

Jonathan frowned. “Isn’t her work satisfactory?”

Elisabeth couldn’t help smiling, seeing this rugged doctor standing there with an embroidered dishtowel in his hands. “Her work is fine. But you have given the community—and me, I might add—the impression that I might be staying around here permanently.” She paused, blushing because the topic was a sensitive one. “I mean, if I’m to be your wife….”

He put down the towel and the cup he’d been drying and turned Elisabeth to face him. Her hands were dripping suds and water, and she dried them absently on her apron.

His expression was wry. “I’m not as destitute as you seem to think,” he said. “I had an inheritance from my father and I invested it wisely, so I can afford to keep a housekeeper
and
a wife.”

Elisabeth flushed anew; she hadn’t meant to imply that he was a pauper.

Her reaction made Jonathan laugh, but she saw love in his eyes. “My sweet Lizzie—first and foremost, I want you to be a wife and partner to me. And I hope you’ll be a mother to Trista. But running a house is a lot of work, and you’re going to need Ellen to help you.” He tilted his head to one side, studying her more soberly now. “Does this mean you’re going to agree to marry me?”

Elisabeth sighed. The motion left her partially deflated, like a balloon the day after a party. There was still the specter of the fire looming over them, and the question had to be resolved. “That depends, Jonathan,” she said, grieving when he took his hands away from her shoulders. “You’ve been over the threshold now, you’ve experienced what I have. I guess it all distills down to one question—do you believe me now?”

She saw his guard go up, and her disappointment was so keen and so sudden that it made her knees go weak.

Jonathan shoved one hand through his dark, rumpled hair. “Lizzie…”

“You
saw
it, Jonathan!” she cried in a ragged whisper as panic pooled around her like tidewater, threatening to suck her under. “Damn it,
you were there!
”

“I imagined it,” he said, and his face was suddenly hard, his eyes cold and distant.

Elisabeth strode over to the sidetable where his medical bag awaited and snapped it open, taking out the prescription bottle and holding it up. “What about this, Jonathan? Did you imagine this?”

He approached her, took the vial from her hands and dropped it back into the bag. “I experienced
something,
” he said, “but that’s all I’m prepared to admit. The human mind is capable of incredible things—it could all have been some sort of elaborate illusion.”

Elisabeth was shaking. Jonathan was the most important person in her topsy-turvy universe, and he didn’t believe her. She felt she would go mad if she couldn’t make him understand. “Are you saying we both had the same hallucination, Jon? Isn’t that a little farfetched?”

Again, Jonathan raked the fingers of one hand through his hair. “No more than believing that people can actually travel back and forth between centuries,” he argued, making an effort to keep his voice down for Trista’s sake. “Lizzie, the past is gone, and the future doesn’t exist yet. All we have is
this moment.
”

Elisabeth was in no mood for an esoteric discussion. For eight days she’d been mourning Jonathan, worrying about him, trying to reassure his daughter and his patients. She was emotionally exhausted and she wanted a hot bath and some sleep.

“I’d like the kitchen to myself now, if you don’t mind,” she said wearily, lifting the lid on the hot-water reservoir to check the supply inside. “I need a bath.”

Jonathan’s eyes lighted with humor and love. “I’d be happy to help you.”

Elisabeth glared at him. “Yes, I imagine you would,” she said, “but I don’t happen to want your company just now, Dr. Fortner. As far as I’m concerned, you’re an imbecile and I’d just as soon you kept your distance.”

He smiled and lingered even after Elisabeth had dragged the big tin bathtub in from the combination pantry and storage room. His arms were folded across his chest. It was obvious that he was stifling a laugh.

Elisabeth brought out the biggest kettle in the kitchen, slammed it down in the sink and began pumping icy well water into it. It was amazing, she thought furiously, that she wanted to stay in this backward time with this backward man, when she could have hot and cold running water and probably a Democrat with an M.B.A. if she just returned to the 1990s. She lugged the heavy kettle to the stove and set it on the surface with a ringing thump.

When she turned to face Jonathan, her hands were on her hips and her jaw was jutting out obstinately. “I wouldn’t give a flying
damn
whether you believed me or not,” she breathed, “if it weren’t for the fact that your life is hanging in the balance—and so is Trista’s! Half of this house is going to burn in the third week in June, and they’re not going to find a trace of you or your daughter. What they are going to do is try
me
for your murders!”

It hurt that the concern she saw in his face was so obviously for her sanity and not for his safety and Trista’s. “Lizzie, there are doctors back in Boston and New York—men who know more than I do. They might be able to—”

“Just get out of here,” Elisabeth spat out, tensing up like a cat doused in ice water, “and let me take my bath in peace.”

Instead, Jonathan brought out more kettles and filled them at the pump, then set them on the stove. “You took care of me when I needed you,” he said finally, his voice low, his expression brooking no opposition, “and I’m going to do what I have to do to take care of you, Lizzie. I love you.”

Elisabeth had never been so confused. He’d said the words she most wanted to hear, but it also sounded as though he was planning to pack her off to the nearest loony bin the first chance he got. “If you love me,” she said evenly, “then trust me, Jon. You didn’t believe your own eyes and ears and…well…I’m all out of ways to convince you.”

He sat her down in a chair, then fed more wood to the fire so her bathwater would heat faster. He didn’t look at her when he spoke. “There isn’t going to be a fire, Lizzie—you’ll see. The third week of June will come and go, just like it always does.”

She stared at his back. “You’re going to pretend it didn’t happen, aren’t you?” she said in a thick whisper. “Jonathan, you were gone for
eight days.
How do you explain that—as a memory lapse?”

Heat began to surge audibly through the pots of water simmering on the stove. “Frankly,” he answered, “I’m beginning to question
my
sanity.”

F
rantic pounding at the front door roused Elisabeth from a sound, dreamless sleep. She reached for the robe she’d left lying across the foot of the bed and hurried into the hallway, where she saw Jonathan leaving his room. He was buttoning his shirt as he descended the stairs.

She remembered the proprieties of the century and held back, sitting on one of the high steps and gripping a banister post with one hand.

“It’s my little Alice,” a man’s voice burst out after Jonathan opened the door. “She can’t breathe right, Doc!”

“Just let me get my bag,” Jonathan answered with grim resignation. A few moments later, he was gone, rattling away into the night in the visitor’s wagon.

Elisabeth remained on the stairway, even though it was chilly and her exhausted body yearned for sleep. She was still sitting there, huddled in her nightgown and robe when Jonathan returned several hours later.

He lit a lamp in the entryway and started upstairs, halting when he saw Elisabeth.

“What happened?” she asked, wondering if she was going to be in this kind of suspense every time Jonathan was summoned out on a night call. “Is the little girl…”

Jonathan sighed raggedly and shook his head. “Diphtheria,” he said.

Elisabeth’s knowledge of old-fashioned diseases was limited, but she’d heard and read enough about this one to know it was deadly. And very contagious. “Is there anything I can do to help?” she asked lamely, knowing there wasn’t.

He advanced toward her, and his smile was rueful and sad. “Just be Lizzie,” he said hoarsely.

They went back to their separate beds then, but it wasn’t long before someone else came to fetch the doctor for
their
sick child. When Elisabeth finally gave up on sleeping somewhere around dawn and got up, Jonathan had still not returned.

She built up the kitchen fire and put coffee on to brew. And then she waited. This, she supposed, would be an integral part of being the wife of a nineteenth-century country doctor—if, indeed, destiny allowed her to marry Jonathan at all.

Sipping coffee, her feet resting on the warm, chrome footrail on the front of the stove, Elisabeth thought of her old life with Ian. It was like a half-remembered dream now, but once, that relationship had been the focal point of her existence.

Tilting her head back and closing her eyes, Elisabeth sighed and contemplated the hole her leaving would rend in that other world. Her disappearence would make one or two local newscasts, but after a while, she’d just be another nameless statistic, a person the police couldn’t find.

Ian would cock an eyebrow, say it was all a pity and call his lawyer to see if he and the new wife had any claim on Elisabeth’s belongings.

Her father would suffer, but he had his career and Traci and the new baby. In the long run, he’d be fine.

Janet and Elisabeth’s other friends in Seattle would probably be up in arms for a time, bugging the police and speculating among themselves, but they all had their own lives. Eventually, they’d go back to living them, and it would be as though Elisabeth had died.

Rue, of course, was an entirely different matter. She would come home from her travels, read the letter Elisabeth had written about her first experience with the threshold and be on the next plane for Seattle. Within an hour of landing, she’d be right here in this house, looking for any trace of her cousin, following up every lead, making the police wish they’d never heard of Elisabeth McCartney.

So close,
Elisabeth thought, imagining Rue in these very rooms, her throat thickening with emotion,
and yet so far.

The sound of Trista coming down the steps roused Elisabeth from her thoughts.

“What are you doing up so early?” Elisabeth asked, taking the child onto her lap.

Trista snuggled close. Although she was wearing a pinafore, black ribbed stockings and plain shoes with pointy toes, her dark hair hadn’t been brushed or braided, and she was still warm and flushed from sleep. She yawned. “I kept hearing people knock on the door. Is Papa out?”

Elisabeth nodded, noting with a start that Trista’s forehead felt hot against her cheek.
God, no,
she thought, pressing her palms to either side of the child’s face.
No!
She made herself speak in an even tone of voice. “He’s been gone for several hours,” she said. “Trista—do you feel well?”

“My throat’s sore,” she said, “and my chest hurts.”

Tears of alarm sprang to Elisabeth’s eyes, but she forced them back. This was no time to lose her head. “Were you sick during the night?” She tightened her arms around the child, as if preparing to resist some giant, unseen hand that might wrench her away.

Trista looked up at Elisabeth. “I wanted to get into bed with you,” she said shyly.

Elisabeth bit her lip and made herself speak calmly. “Well, I think we’d better forget about school and make you a nice, comfortable bed right here by the stove. We’ll read stories and I’ll play the piano for you. How would that be?”

A tremor ran through the small body in Elisabeth’s arms. “I have to go to school,” Trista protested. “There’s a spelling bee today, and you know how hard I’ve been practicing.”

There was an element of the frantic in the quick kiss Elisabeth planted on Trista’s temple. “It would be my guess that there won’t be any school today, sweetheart. And it’s possible, you know, to practice too hard. Sometimes, you have to just do your best and then stand back and let things happen.”

Trista sighed. “I
would
like to have a bed in the kitchen and hear stories,” she confessed.

“Then let’s get started,” Elisabeth said with false cheer as she set Trista in a chair and automatically felt the child’s face for fever again. “You stay right there,” she ordered, waggling a finger. “And don’t you dare think of even
one
spelling word!”

Trista laughed, but the sound was dispirited.

Elisabeth dragged a leather-upholstered Roman couch from Jonathan’s study to the kitchen and set it as close to the stove as she dared. Then she hurried upstairs and collected Trista’s nightgown and the linens from her bed.

By the time Jonathan came through the back door, looking hollow eyed and weary to the very center of his soul, his daughter was reclining on the couch, listening to Elisabeth read from
Gulliver’s Travels.
The expression on his face as he made the obvious deduction was terrible to see.

Immediately, he came to his daughter’s bedside, touched her warm face, examined her ears and throat. Then his eyes linked with Elisabeth’s, over Trista’s head, and she knew it might not matter that there was going to be a fire the third week in June. Not to this little girl, anyway.

They went into Jonathan’s study to talk.

“Diphtheria?” Elisabeth whispered, praying he’d say Trista just had the flu or common cold. But then, those maladies weren’t so harmless in the nineteenth century, either. There were so many medical perils at this time that a child would never encounter in Elisabeth’s.

Jonathan was standing at one of the windows, gazing past the lace curtain at the new, bright, blue-and-gold day. He shook his head. “It’s a virus I’ve never seen before—and there seems to be an epidemic.”

Elisabeth’s fingers were entwined in the fabric of her skirts. “Isn’t there anything we can do?”

He shrugged miserably. “Give them quinine, force liquids….”

She went and stood behind him, drawn by his pain and the need to ease it. She rested her hands on his tense shoulders. “And then?”

“And then they’ll probably die,” he said, walking away from her so swiftly that her hands fell to her sides.

“Jon, the penicillin—there wouldn’t be enough for all the children, but Trista…” Her sentence fell away, unfinished, when Jonathan walked out of the study and let the door close crisply behind him. Without uttering a word, he’d told Elisabeth he had neither the time nor the patience for what he considered delusions.

He’d left his bag on his cluttered desk in the corner. Elisabeth opened it and rummaged through until she’d found the bottle of penicillin tablets. Removing the lid, she carefully tipped the pills into her palm and counted them.

Ten.

She scooped the medicine back into its bottle and dropped it into her pocket.

Jonathan was stoking the fire in the kitchen stove when Elisabeth joined him, while Trista watched listlessly from the improvised bed. Elisabeth could see the child’s chest rise and fall unevenly as breathing became more difficult for her.

Elisabeth began pumping water into pots and kettles and carrying them to the stove, and soon the windows were frosted with steam and the air was dense and hot.

“Let me take her over the threshold, Jon,” Elisabeth pleaded in a whisper when Trista had slipped into a fitful sleep an hour later. “There are hospitals and modern drugs…”

He glowered at her. “For God’s sake, don’t start that nonsense now!”

“You must have seen the cars going by on the road. It’s a much more advanced society! Jonathan, I can help Trista—I know I can!”

“Not another word,” he warned, and his gray eyes looked as cold as the creek in January.

“The medicine, then—”

The back door opened and Ellen came in, looking flushed and worried. When her gaze fell on Trista, however, the high color seeped from her face. “I’m sorry I couldn’t come sooner, but it’s the grippe—we’ve got it at our place, and Seenie’s so hot, you can hardly stand to touch her!”

Jonathan’s eyes strayed to Trista for a moment, but skirted Elisabeth completely. “I’ll be there in few minutes,” he said.

Ellen hovered near the door, looking as though she might faint with relief, but Elisabeth felt nothing but frustration and despair.

“I’ll get your bag,” she said to Jonathan, and disappeared into the study.

When she returned, the doctor had already gone outside to hitch up his horse and buggy. Elisabeth gave the bag to Ellen, but there seemed to be no reassuring words to offer. A look passed between the two women, and then Ellen hurried outside to ride back to her family’s farm with Jonathan.

Throughout the afternoon, Elisabeth kept the stove going at full tilt, refilling the kettles and pots as their contents evaporated. The curtains, the tablecloth, Trista’s bedclothes—everything in the room was moist.

Elisabeth found fresh sheets and blankets and a clean nightgown for Trista. The child hardly stirred as the changes were made. Her breathing was a labored rattle, and her flesh was hot as a stove lid.

Elisabeth knelt beside the couch, her head resting lightly on Trista’s little chest, her eyes squeezed shut against tears of grief and helplessness. This, too, was part of being a Victorian woman—watching a beloved child slip toward death because there were no medicines, no real hospitals. Now, she realized that she’d taken the vaccinations and medical advances of her own time for granted, never guessing how deadly a simple virus could be.

Presently, Elisabeth felt the pharmacy bottle pressing against her hip and reached into her pocket for it, turning it in her fingers. She was no doctor—in fact, she had virtually no medical knowledge at all, except for the sketchy first-aid training she’d been required to take to get her teaching certificate. But she knew that penicillin was a two-edged sword.

For most people, it was perfectly safe and downright magical in its curative powers. For others, however, it was a deadly poison, and if Trista had an adverse reaction, there would be nothing Elisabeth could do to help. On the other hand, an infection was raging inside the child’s body. She probably wouldn’t live another forty-eight hours if someone didn’t intercede.

Resolutely, Elisabeth got to her feet and went to the sink. A bucket of cold water sat beside it, pumped earlier, and Elisabeth filled a glass and carried it back to Trista’s bedside.

“Trista,” she said firmly.

The child’s eyes rolled open, but Trista didn’t seem to recognize Elisabeth. She made a strangled, moaning sound.

The prescription bottle recommended two tablets every four hours, but that was an adult dose. Frowning, Elisabeth took one pill and set it on Trista’s tongue. Then, holding her own breath, she gave the little girl water.

For a few moments, while Trista sputtered and coughed, it seemed she wouldn’t be able to hold the pill down, but finally she settled back against the curved end of the couch and closed her eyes. Elisabeth sensed that the child’s sleep was deeper and more comfortable this time, but she was so frightened and tense, she didn’t dare leave the kitchen.

She was sitting beside Trista’s bed, holding the little girl’s hand, when the back door opened and Jonathan dragged in. “Light cases,” he said, referring, Elisabeth hoped, to the children in Ellen’s sizable family. “They’ll probably be all right.” He was at his daughter’s side by then, setting his bag on the table, taking out his stethoscope and putting the earpiece in place. He frowned as he listened to Trista’s lungs and heart.

Elisabeth wanted to tell him about the penicillin, but she was afraid. Jonathan was not exactly in a philosophical state of mind, and he wouldn’t be receptive to updates on twentieth-century medicine. “You need some rest and something to eat,” she said.

He smiled grimly as he straightened, pulling off the stethoscope and tossing it back into his bag. “This is a novelty, having somebody worry about me,” he said. “I think I like it.”

“Sit,” Elisabeth ordered wearily, rising and pressing him into the chair where she’d been keeping her vigil over Trista. She poured stout coffee for him, adding sugar and cream because he liked it that way, and then went to the icebox for eggs she’d gathered herself the day before and the leftovers from a baked ham.

Jonathan’s gaze rested on his daughter’s flushed face. “She hasn’t been out of my thoughts for five minutes all day,” he said with a sigh. “I didn’t want to leave her, but you were here, and the others—”

Elisabeth stopped to lay a hand on his shoulder. “I know, Jon,” she said softly. She found an onion and spices in the pantry and, minutes later, an omelette was bubbling in a pan on the stove.

“Her breathing seems a little easier,” Jonathan commented when Elisabeth dished up the egg concoction and brought it to the table for him.