With Every Breath
Authors: Elizabeth Camden
© 2014 by Dorothy Mays
Published by Bethany House Publishers
11400 Hampshire Avenue South
Bloomington, Minnesota 55438
Bethany House Publishers is a division of
Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan
Ebook edition created 2014
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4412-6414-5
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version of the Bible.
This is a work of historical reconstruction; the appearances of certain historical figures are therefore inevitable. All other characters, however, are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Cover design by John Hamilton Design
For Jane and John Auchter,
my first readers and the best of parents
You gave me a foundation of love, faith, and inspiration.
I will be forever grateful.
Contents
Prologue
W
ASHINGTON
, D.C.—1879
T
here was only one thing Kate Norton loved more than winning, and that was winning against Trevor McDonough.
Trevor had been her nemesis since the day he arrived at their private academy four years ago. They’d both earned perfect grades throughout school, and for the first time in the history of the academy, there was a tie for valedictorian. Today’s grueling academic challenge was the tiebreaker, and a college scholarship rested on the results.
With forty spectators crammed into the classroom, it was warm and crowded, made worse by Kate’s tight corset and high-collared blouse. She and Trevor stood at the head of the class as they battled in the spelling portion of the test, which had been dragging on for a mind-numbing forty minutes, and most of the audience was surely hoping either she or Trevor would stumble soon. Kate’s father sat in the front row, mopping his brow and looking ready to faint, for Trevor was already ahead in today’s competition. This morning he’d won the biology, chemistry, and physics tests, while Kate had won calculus and history. Only spelling and trigonometry remained, and she had to win
both if she had a prayer of going to college. Attention turned to Trevor as the headmaster read the next word.
“Mr. McDonough, please spell
abstemious
,” the headmaster said. “Abstemious is defined as ‘practicing an unusually high level of self-restraint with a lack of joy.’ ”
Oh, the irony
.
Trevor McDonough was the most abstemious person ever born. Kate glanced at him. He stood tall, brooding, and gangly, a swath of black hair tumbling over his forehead and obscuring the sullen darkness of his eyes.
In the front row, Kate’s little brother fidgeted and clung to her father’s leg. “Hang in there, Tick,” she whispered to her six-year-old brother. His real name was Timothy, but the joyfully eager way he clung to everyone had earned him the nickname.
Trevor swallowed hard and asked for the word to be repeated. She had a natural advantage over Trevor in spelling. When he first came to their school, his Scottish accent was so heavy it tricked him into spelling mistakes. He learned quickly, though. Over the years he’d scrutinized the way others spoke and trained himself to speak without a trace of his old accent. She held her breath while Trevor took a stab at the word.
And misspelled it. A jolt of anticipation surged through her.
All she had to do was spell
abstemious
correctly and she would win the spelling test. Tension ratcheted higher. There were forty people gathered on her side of the classroom: her family, her friends from school, and a bunch of people who lived at her family’s boardinghouse. Even the postman and the milkman were here to root for her.
On Trevor’s side there was but a single person: the coachman who drove him to school each day. Wearing a navy frock coat with gold braids and shiny black boots, the coachman was the best-dressed person in the room.
Trevor had all the advantages stacked on his side. He lived in a mansion and had the best of everything. She didn’t know what happened to his parents, but his guardian was a rich senator from Maryland. Trevor probably had his dinner delivered on a silver platter, while Kate spent her evenings juggling serving trays and waiting on the thirty people who lived at the boardinghouse.
“Miss Norton, you must now spell
abstemious
.”
She closed her eyes.
Please . . .
She spelled the word perfectly, and the crowd burst into cheers as she was declared the winner. Her father vaulted out of his seat and swept her into a bear hug. The school’s janitor grinned and clapped her on the back. Tears pricked behind her eyes, and it was hard to breathe.
She mustn’t get carried away. She still had to win the trigonometry contest before she would be declared the valedictorian. The next twenty minutes would determine if Kate would go to college or stay working at the boardinghouse.
Not that there was anything wrong with working in a boardinghouse, but she had such dreams. . . .
“You will have twenty minutes to complete the trigonometry equations,” the headmaster announced. “The winner of this test will be declared valedictorian and receive a full scholarship for college.”
Two chalkboards with squeaky wheels were rolled into the room, both filled with identical equations. She and Trevor darted to the boards and began tackling the equations at the headmaster’s prompting. The only sound in the classroom was the mad clicking of chalk on the slate surface. Kate’s mind worked faster than her fingers as she processed the complex stream of mathematical equations, but beside her Trevor wrote just as fast.
Her all-consuming battle with Trevor McDonough began the first day he arrived at their school four years ago. Like a vulture,
he immediately spotted her as his only real academic competition. It didn’t matter the subject, they competed. Grades were the major thing, but they competed over stupid things too. Who could skip a stone farther. Who could memorize more lines of poetry or hold their breath longer.
The heavy coil of Kate’s red hair began sliding down the side of her head, but she couldn’t falter now. She needed to complete the equations with a perfect score, and then a college scholarship was hers. Her hand began to shake as she sped toward the end of the final equation.
“Time!” the headmaster called out. He held a stopwatch in his hand and waited for both of them to set their chalk on the trays.
Kate shoved her hair back and glanced at Trevor’s equations while he did the same to hers. His black eyes showed no emotion as he scanned her work. Their trigonometry equations looked like ancient hieroglyphics to the untrained eye, yet Kate immediately spotted the two areas where she and Trevor diverged in their methods.
“Please stand back while I score the tests,” the headmaster said, the answer key held in his hand. Who was right? She had taken a longer path to arrive at the same destination, but Trevor’s work looked tighter, more eloquent.
She glanced at her family in the front row. Her mother had the fingers on both hands crossed, but her father looked ready to start weeping from the stress.
The headmaster finished assessing their work and stepped to the front of the room, a hint of unease in his eyes. Papa came to stand behind her, her mother on the other side.
“It has been a pleasure to have two such academically gifted students over the past four years,” the headmaster began. “No matter what their futures hold, I am certain both will enrich our community and go on to great things. However, the school
can only endow one student’s college education per year. This year, that honor will go to Mr. Trevor McDonough.”
The oxygen was sucked out of the room. She felt hot, then dizzy as her father pulled her into a tight hug. “It’s okay, baby girl,” he murmured, but there was heartbreak in his voice.
It wouldn’t be okay. She was going to spend the rest of her life hauling laundry and washing dishes in the boardinghouse. She glared over her father’s shoulder at Trevor. He didn’t even need this scholarship! He wore a gold watch that probably cost more than her parents earned in a year. The principal walked over to shake Trevor’s hand, but no one else did.
The air grew thick as people crowded her, hugging and patting her on the shoulder. She had to think of something to say. She had to pretend that all her wild hopes and ambitions weren’t collapsing as she stood there. She forced a smile. “I’ll be all right,” she said, trying to mean it. Tick nudged through the crowd, his spindly arms reaching out to hug Kate’s hips.
“Did you win?” his childish voice chirped as he looked up at her expectantly.
What was she supposed to say? It felt as if she’d let the entire neighborhood down, not just her baby brother, who thought she could do no wrong.
Her mother pulled Tick away. “Hush now,” she soothed.
From the corner of her eye, she noticed Trevor leaving the room, the coachman walking a few steps behind him.
“Go congratulate him,” her father said. Kate pulled back to see if he was serious. Tired, weary, with grief welling in his eyes, her father nodded. “I know it may be hard for you, but it’s the right thing to do. Go shake Trevor’s hand and wish him well.”
She’d rather stick her hand into a vat of acid. She wished she’d never laid eyes on that joyless, awful boy. Other than being smart, there wasn’t a single redeeming feature in Trevor
McDonough’s entire being. Straightening her shoulders, she followed Trevor out the door and down the hall into the cool spring air. The late afternoon sun was shining, and the sky was a crystalline blue. But the cloudless day only made her feel worse.
“Congratulations, Trevor.”
He paused, his face frozen in its typical expressionless stare. His black eyes looked like lumps of coal on his chalky-white face. He finally stepped forward and shook her hand. “Thanks,” he muttered before turning away to climb inside the coach. It was lacquered in glossy maroon paint with velvet seats inside.
She watched the horse-drawn carriage roll away, a cloud of dust kicking up from its wheels. No matter how much she disliked him, there was no doubt Trevor McDonough would go on to a dazzling future. He was rich, privileged, and brilliant. Trevor didn’t
need
that scholarship, but how strange that when she shook his hand, he was trembling like a mouse trapped in a corner.
She refused to feel sorry for him. He could have made friends if he had tried. If he wasn’t so gloomy and hadn’t gone out of his way to rebuff every person who tried to be nice to him, he wouldn’t have been so ostracized.
To the bottom of her soul, Kate hoped she had just seen the last of the horrible Trevor McDonough.
1
T
WELVE
Y
EARS
L
ATER
W
ASHINGTON
, D.C.—1891
K
ate held the letter in her hands. She’d read it so many times over the past week, the words were engraved in her mind, yet she still couldn’t understand why a world-renowned doctor would have singled her out to apply for a prestigious position at Washington Memorial Hospital.