Two Brides Too Many (22 page)

Morgan refolded his napkin in his lap, buying time to think about her request. He’d done his fair share of presentations in Boston for
various academic groups and charity events. It would do him some good to get out and meet more people in the community, although a women’s luncheon wouldn’t be his first choice. But Hattie had been especially kind to him, and his belongings still took up space in her parlor and attic. “I’d be happy to be the guest for this month’s meeting.”

“That’s wonderful!” Hattie clapped. “Thank you, Doctor. Our members will be so thrilled.”

Morgan reached for his coffee cup. “What did you want me to speak about? I have three or four different topics related to health and medicine I could address.”

“Oh, we don’t want to hear you talk.” The woman tittered. “We want to hear you play.”

Morgan was caught off guard for a moment, but he grinned and nodded. He should have seen it coming. “Next Wednesday, you said?”

“Yes. Wednesday at ten in the morning.”

Morgan made a mental note to add the concert to his calendar, and then realized he’d forgotten to set a time for Sunday’s visit. He leaned toward Kat. “Is five o’clock on Sunday afternoon acceptable? Perhaps we could go for another carriage ride.” He’d said it in a quiet tone, but that didn’t matter. Matchmakers have hypersensitive hearing. Spoons and feet and teacups quieted.

Kat nodded, and her sister pinned her with a furtive glance. “Kat, does he know not to call for you here?”

“Where will you be?” Morgan suddenly feared they may be leaving town.

Kat laid down her spoon. “We’re moving out of the boardinghouse tomorrow.”

“Sad, sad news for me, to be sure.” Hattie shook her head, and her
extra chin wobbled. “Having these girls here has been like having family you like come to stay awhile.”

“You have a house full of boarders arriving tomorrow, and with all the rebuilding going on this spring and summer, you’ll have plenty of company.” Kat turned back toward him. “We’re moving into a place off of Florissant, on Pikes Peak Avenue.”

Morgan was relieved they were staying in Cripple Creek, but he remembered that he’d been up in that area and he hadn’t seen many homes suitable for a woman, especially not one like Kat. “Up where the miners’ shanties are?”

“I didn’t have much choice in the location, as it was Patrick Maloney’s place.”

“You said the man was a scoundrel.” Morgan’s fingers curled around his knife.

“Be that as it may, he was my intended. He promised me a home. He is dead, and the cabin is mine.”

“Please tell me you’re not really planning to move into an abandoned shanty out where proper women would never live.”

Kat scooted her chair back, scraping wood against wood. “You still think I’m not able to be a proper woman?”

Morgan wanted to muzzle his mouth about now, but he couldn’t, not when her safety was in question. “It is unthinkable that you would intentionally place you, your sister, and Rosita in harm’s way.”

“This from a man with plenty of money to do as he well pleases. I’m sorry, sir, but I do not have that luxury.” Kat stood abruptly, and her chair would’ve fallen over if he hadn’t stood as well and set it straight. “You, Dr. Cutshaw, are still a very maddening man.”

And you are an exasperating woman
. “I’m sorry you feel that way.”
He directed his attention toward Nell and Hattie. “I’d best go. I’m working this afternoon. Thank you for the lunch, Miss Hattie, Nell.” He patted Rosita’s head before turning back toward Kat. “Good day.”

Hattie followed him out of the dining room. “I hope we can do it again soon. Come by anytime.” She made his parting sound as if they’d just had a perfectly pleasant luncheon. Where had the woman been the past few minutes?

Nodding, he grabbed his derby from the coat hook near the front door. Nell followed him with a plate of shortbread cookies. “These are for Judson. Will you see that he gets them after you’ve had a couple?”

“I will.”

Nell laid a tea towel over the plate. “Thank you, and don’t worry about Kat.”

“I’m only concerned for her—”

“I know.” Nell’s smile told him that she knew his interest in her sister wasn’t purely professional.

Why did women have to be so complicated?

T
WENTY
-N
INE

K
at and Nell helped Hattie clean up the dining room and kitchen while Rosita sang a song about rabbits.

“Rosita has the right idea, girls.” Hattie passed Kat the last clean plate and dried her hands on her apron. “We have the use of a fine piano, and Nell plays, so I say we should have us a sing-along.”

Kat added the dry plate to the stack on the shelf. “I’m sorry, Hattie, but I’m really not of a mind to sing right now.”

“Of course you aren’t, dear, but sometimes the want-to only shows up after the fact.”

Sighing, Kat hung her apron on the hook and reminded herself that the woman rarely took no for an answer.

“It’d probably help us get our minds off them.” Nell shot her a sly smile from the doorway, and Kat stuck her tongue out at her. Childish to be sure, but Nell deserved it. Good riddance to Dr. Cutshaw and to Nell’s absurd matchmaking. The man was way off center as far as she was concerned. One minute he supported her independent spirit,
encouraging her to write, and the next, he was treating her as if she’d deliberately set out to threaten his manhood.

“Come along, dear.” Hattie tugged her arm. “We need you to sing alto.”

Kat doubted if anything could improve her disposition, but she followed Hattie into the parlor anyway.

Rosita sat on the piano bench beside Nell with HopHop in her lap. Kat stood on one side and Hattie on the other.

Sweet hour of prayer! Sweet hour of prayer!
That calls me from a world of care…

Hattie warbled on the rhymed words—
care
and
prayer
. Kat wouldn’t consider their landlady’s voice that of a songbird, but then she had no grounds to disparage another’s singing. According to all three of her sisters, Kat had the pitch of a crow. Her heart definitely wasn’t into singing right now. Despite Hattie’s attempts to distract her, all Kat could think about was the aggravating man who owned the piano Nell played.

At least Hattie, Nell, and Rosita sang. She tried. If only she could keep her mind from whirring like a train wheel on a wet track.

Suddenly, something sounded terribly wrong, and the singing stopped. “What happened?” said Kat.

“We’d switched songs.” Nell giggled behind her hand.

A wave of warm embarrassment swept all the way to Kat’s scalp. Rosita’s gleeful giggles proved contagious, and laughter echoed off the wallpaper. Soon all four of them cackled and crowed.

When the amusement subsided, Kat looked up into the wet face
of the woman who housed them. “I’m sorry, Miss Hattie. I’ve gone and ruined your solemn, sweet time with the Lord.”

“Don’t be sorry, dear. Laughter is a natural sweetener, and the Lord says it is good medicine for the soul.” She pulled her apron hem to her face and swiped at the happy tears that had formed rivulets in the wrinkles there.

Hattie possessed an ability to sing and dance in the face of sorrow, disappointment, or frustration, and Kat envied her for it.

Morgan stomped up the street toward the hospital. He slipped another cookie out from under the tea towel. Of all the imprudent things a good woman could do, moving into a miner’s cabin had to top the list. And in the midst of men who rarely see women by sunlight. Morgan bristled and bit down hard on the cookie.

Kat Sinclair wasn’t playing fair. But then she hadn’t from the moment he met her. He’d started off at a disadvantage not knowing she was a patient instead of a midwife, and she’d had him off kilter ever since. One minute she was shy and demure, such as when Hattie and Nell left them in the room alone. The next, she was moving into a shack thinking she could conquer the Wild West.

Morgan had taken the long way to work. When he rounded the corner at Eaton, he took the steps to the hospital door two at a time, then yanked it open. He’d see Judson Archer before he started his rounds.

When Morgan knocked on the door and let himself into Judson’s room, he saw that the man had changed out of the hospital gown into denim breeches and was buttoning a broadcloth shirt.

Judson looked at him as if he’d expected to see a bear, his eyebrows raised and his eyes wide. “It
is
you. I was beginning to think I’d have to spring myself from this place.” He studied the plate Morgan held. “But since you brought me dinner.”

“Cookies from Nell.” Morgan set the plate on the bed and Judson lifted the tea towel.

“She sent only two on this big plate?”

“I need to do a follow-up exam before I can sign you out.” Morgan closed the door and went to the washbowl to clean his hands.

“I figured as much.” Judson pulled the back of his breeches down and bent over the bed. “You want to tell me what’s wrong, Doc?”

Morgan studied the puncture wounds. “The irritation is beginning to clear. I don’t see any sign of infection. I don’t see anything wrong, but you’ll be sore for a few days. I’ll sign you out, and then you’re free to go home.”

“That’s good news.” Judson pulled up his pants and buckled his belt. “But I was wondering what was wrong with you. You usually knock, not pound the door, and something happened to your bedside manner. Not to mention my shortbread cookies.” He grabbed both cookies off the plate and bit into one. “Mmm-mmm.”

The man had been robbed and tossed into a patch of cactus, and he’d picked up on Morgan’s foul mood that quick? Morgan pulled a small jar of petroleum jelly from a drawer near the sink.

“You look like you just lost your best friend and you’re mad about it. Given my own recent experience, my guess would be woman trouble.” Judson finished off the first cookie.

Did he dare talk to Nell’s intended about her sister? “It’s complicated.”

“Yep, definitely sounds like a woman.” Judson propped his elbow on the back of a straight chair. “Happy to listen. As long as I don’t have to sit down to do it.” His laughter reminded Morgan of a foghorn on a steamer in Boston Harbor.

“You won’t want to do much of that for a few more days.” Morgan handed Judson the jar. “You’ll want to apply this at least once a day for a week.”

“So you’ve seen Nell?”

“Just came from the boardinghouse.”

“She never wants to see me again, right?”

“Wrong. She sent you cookies, didn’t she?”

“But you saw the look of revulsion on her face last night. She pities me.”

“What I saw was out-and-out surprise and then embarrassment. She was told you’d been robbed, and that’s all she’d been told. Then she walked in and saw you with your pants down, and looking like a pincushion, how would you expect her to react?”

Judson laughed. “Good point.” He shook his head. “But we’re supposed to be solving your woman trouble.”

“Good luck with that.” Morgan heaved a sigh. “I apparently hadn’t learned my lesson. I just said no to a Sinclair sister.”

Judson gasped in a melodramatic manner, his blue eyes wide and his chest puffed out. “Let me guess—you didn’t get away with it either.”

“Not in the least. Kat thinks moving into a dead miner’s cabin up in the hills is a good idea, and I don’t.”

“A dead miner?”

“She came out here to marry a fellow named Maloney.”

“Paddy?”

“Yeah, that’s him. He died in the fire last week. You knew him?”

“We worked for the same mine.” He shook his head. “If Nell had told me who was writing to her sister, I would’ve warned her.”

“Yes, well, now that he’s gone, she’s moving into his cabin. Tomorrow.”

“And taking Nell with her?” He downed the last cookie.

Morgan blew out a long breath. “As far as I know, and the little girl she’s caring for. Why would she go and do such a foolhardy thing?”

Judson’s finger shot up into the air. “I think I know.”

“You do?”

“Simple, really. The same set of endearing traits that sent her sister dashing into my room last night.”

“Pray tell.” Morgan sat down on a wooden chair.