The Doctor Takes a Wife Page 15

  Sarah laughed. “I like your appreciation for our Texas weather, Yankee doctor. Let’s see if you’re still so enthusiastic about Texas summers.”

  It was an unspoken acknowledgment, he thought, that he had come to stay. Her amusement lit her entire face.

  Then her expression sobered. “Nolan, have you seen Ada around town?”

  He nodded. “In the mercantile, just today. She was dressed in mourning—not the loose garments she’d been wearing lately.”

  Nolan saw the spark of hope light her eyes. “Did you speak to her? Are you saying she’s returned to her right mind?”

  He hated to douse that spark. “Yes, I spoke to her. I asked her how she’d been feeling lately, and she announced that the influenza had caused her to lose our baby, though she knew I’d be relieved to hear it.”

  “Oh, Nolan!” she cried, putting out an impulsive hand to touch his arm in sympathy. “Did anyone hear her?”

  “Only the three ladies gossiping by the pickle barrel. I don’t think I’ve met them. They gave me scandalized looks as I departed.”

  “Surely Mrs. Patterson set them straight after you left,” she declared with a confidence he was far from feeling. “I know she was one of others who realized Ada’s stories were moonshine from the start.”

  He sighed. “I don’t know if Mrs. Patterson even heard them. She seemed more than a little absentminded when I paid for my purchases. She even called me Doc Harkey.”

  Sarah remembered Mr. Patterson had been one of the influenza victims. “The poor woman. She and her husband were married for thirty years.”

  The clock on the mantel chimed nine times, and Nolan rose. “It’s late. I’d better go.”

  “I’ll walk you to the door.”

  He had hoped she’d say that. “Do you think you’d feel strong enough to go to church with me on Sunday?” he asked, when they reached the shadowy vestibule.

  Her face lit with pleasure. “Oh, Nolan, are they holding services again?”

  “I told the reverend I thought it’d be safe by then. He told me to tell you not to worry about the music just yet—we can sing without the piano this week.” He couldn’t imagine a better way to start attending church again than with her sitting in the pew next to him.

  “I have three days to gather my strength, then,” she said with a grin, for it was Wednesday evening. “Shall I meet you there?”

  “No, I thought I’d pick you up, and then we’d have dinner in the hotel and perhaps go for a buggy ride afterward, weather permitting. We can look for more signs that spring is on its way.”

  Her eyes sparkled, though he wasn’t sure if it was at the prospect of escaping the indoors, returning to church or spending time with him. He hoped it was at least a combination of the three.

  “I can hardly wait,” he said, meaning it. At church, the town of Simpson Creek would finally see them as a courting couple. Perhaps that meadow west of the creek would be the perfect setting for their first kiss.

  “Oh, Nolan, neither can I!” she exclaimed, and before he knew what she was about, stood on her tiptoes and kissed him.

  Ah well, if his Sarah decreed their first kiss should be now, who was he to want to postpone it till Sunday? He returned her kiss with enthusiasm, savoring the honey sweetness of her mouth.

  When they drew apart at last, he looked down at her and said, “Good night, sweet Sarah.”

  “Until Sunday,” she whispered.

  She dreamed of Jesse that night, her fiancé who’d never returned from the war.

  She faced the gaunt, hollow-eyed figure in the ragged gray remnants of a uniform.

  “It’s time,” she told him. “I loved you, but now I have to go on.” She was relieved to realize she didn’t feel guilty.

  That was what it meant to fall in love again, she realized. Now that she loved Nolan, her love for Jesse Holt was relegated to a memory, a reality that was no more, just as his time on earth was no more.

  Sarah woke at dawn the next day, conscious of a bubbling energy surging through her. It was high time, she thought, that she began baking again. She could barely suppress a happy hum until a sleepy-looking Prissy entered the kitchen and poured a cup of coffee.

  “Being in love agrees with you,” Prissy observed with a wry smile. “It’s about time.” Sarah had told her about the plans for Sunday, and while she hadn’t spoken about the kiss, she thought her friend may well have guessed, judging by the knowing look in her eyes.

  “Now, don’t overdo it,” Prissy said an hour later, as she was leaving to check on her father. “Remember, Nolan told us about the danger of a relapse.”

  “I’m fine,” Sarah told her. “A little baking will hardly exhaust me.” She wouldn’t tell Prissy that she meant to deliver them, too.

  By noon, she had dropped off her first armload of baked goods at the hotel restaurant, and was planning to return to the cottage just long enough to pick up several pies for the mercantile, which lay in the opposite direction.

  Coming out of the hotel, Sarah ignored the lone cowboy lounging in front of the Simpson Creek Saloon. Probably suffering from spring fever, she mused absently, for the day was warm enough to be March rather than February. Perhaps he’d been given an errand in town, and he was lingering, reluctant to return to his duties…

  “Sarah?” The voice came from the direction of the solitary cowboy.

  She stared, transfixed, into the lean, beard-shadowed face of Jesse Holt.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  For a moment she forgot to breathe. It couldn’t be. It was what she had prayed for for so long. She took a step forward, another, then stopped, expecting the figure in front of her to dissolve into nothingness as he had done in her dream last night. She’d been ill, and she’d dreamed about Jesse. Perhaps that was why she was now transferring Jesse’s features, Jesse’s voice, onto the figure on the bench. If she just waited for a moment and blinked a few times, surely he would fade away again.

  Her mind had played tricks on her like this before, when the war was newly over and she had begun to realize that the continued lack of letters and his failure to return meant Jesse was really dead. She’d seen his face in every dark-haired, dark-eyed stranger, and thought for a few precious heartbeats it was Jesse, until a closer look disappointed her each time.

  But this hallucination had risen to his feet, his heavy canvas duster flapping in the breeze. He moved slowly forward, pulling off his hat, as if he too were in a dream.

  “Sarah Matthews, is that you?” the man repeated again, using Jesse’s beloved slow drawl. “Don’t you know me, Sarah-girl?”

  “Jesse? Jesse Holt?”

  A smile spread across the lean, beard-stubbled cheeks. Jesse’s smile. “The very same.”

  She tried nonetheless to hold on to the reality she had known for almost a year now. “You can’t be Jesse, mister. Jesse Holt is dead. Jesse never came back from the war.”

  The stranger masquerading as Jesse had the grace to look ashamed. Taking his eyes off her face, he stared at the line he was toeing in the mud in the street.

  “Yes, well, I’m sorry about that. I never meant to make you wait that long. I can tell you’re surprised to see me. How are you, Goldilocks?”

  She had never liked this nickname Jesse had given her, but his use of it established beyond all doubt that the man walking toward her, so near now that she could almost reach out and touch him, was really her long-lost fiancé Jesse Holt.

  “Where have you been?”

  She was surprised at the surge of anger she felt within her, and she could tell by the way his eyes widened, then narrowed, that he was, too, for he lost his confident grin for a moment. But then he found it again.

  “Well, now, I’ll tell you all about that, Goldilocks, I promise I will. What are you doing in town? I thought I’d find you out on your pa’s ranch. As a matter of fact I was just waitin’ for my horse to have a shoe replaced down at livery yonder, and then I was goin’ to ride out and surprise you.” He
must have remembered his unshaven face, for he added, “Though I ’spose I should’ve made a stop at the barbershop first.”

  She remained speechless, and he tried another tack, maybe thinking she needed more reassurance that he was no imposter. “How’s your pa? And that sweet sister of yours—Milly, isn’t that her name? Is she bossy as ever?”

  “Our father’s passed on. Milly’s married and she and her husband live on the ranch,” she said stiffly.

  “I’m sorry about your father,” he said. “So Milly’s got the ranch. What about you? You—you’re not married, are you?” He lost that perfect assurance for just a moment.

  “No, I’m not married,” she said. “I’m living with Prissy Gilmore in a cottage on the grounds of the mayor’s house.” She didn’t jerk her head backward to indicate it; Jesse had grown up in Simpson Creek just as she had and he would remember where the mayor’s grand house stood.

  He blinked, and looked as if he’d like to ask why. “Don’t that beat all?” he said at last. The wind ruffled his hair at that moment. “Hey, you must be gettin’ cold, aren’t you?” He looked around him as if deciding something. “Why don’t you invite me in for a cup of coffee and I’ll tell you what I’ve been doing since the war’s been over?”

  She stiffened. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.

  Prissy’s not there right now.” She assumed Prissy had not returned from checking on her father, but she wouldn’t have invited him even if she had been certain Prissy was there. Too many months had gone by, and now he had appeared without a word of warning, out of the blue. Later, she promised herself, she’d examine why the thought of Jesse in her house no longer appealed to her. Once, she knew, she would have invited him in and been glad that Prissy’s absence gave them the privacy to exchange a kiss or two.

  He chuckled, rubbing the back of his neck as he glanced behind him at the saloon. “And I reckon it wouldn’t be fittin’ to invite a lady into the saloon, either, to tell you my tale. Say, does the hotel still have that restaurant? Let me buy you dinner.”

  “No thank you, I’m not hungry,” she said. It was the truth. Her stomach was churning.

  “Coffee, then. You can keep me company while I eat. I’ve been on the trail since mornin’, and I’m hungry enough to eat a longhorn steer, hide, horn, hoofs and beller.”

  Even as she smiled automatically at his joke, she decided he deserved to be heard out, at the very least. They’d once been engaged to marry, after all. And sitting together in a public place was certainly better than inside the cottage.

  “All right,” she said, and led the way back into the hotel.

  Jesse drank a swallow of coffee to wash down the mouthful of roast beef he had chewed. “Right after we were taken prisoner, we were sent to Camp Chase in Columbus, Ohio. We figured we could escape from there and then it’d only be ’bout a hundred miles to the Kentucky border, but before we could do that, they transferred us to Johnson’s Island in Lake Erie.”

  “Was it awful there?” Sarah asked. “We heard horrible things about Libby Prison….”

  He shook his head. “Not so bad, except in the winter, when those winds came whistlin’ outa Canada. We about froze our Southern hides off. Then in September of ’64, a bunch of us tried to seize one of the boats that made stops at the islands, and pretty near got away with it too, but we found out we’d been betrayed and had to hightail it to Canada instead.”

  “You’ve been in Canada since the year before the war ended?” Sarah cried, unable to hide her indignation. “Why didn’t you make your way back to the South, or at least write me from Canada?”

  “Now, don’t go soundin’ all righteous, Sarah,” he said with a flash of irritation as he speared another hunk of beef. “We had good reason to lay low. There were spies swarmin’ all over northern Ohio and southern Canada lookin’ for us, and the war was goin’ bad. Someone might’ve intercepted my letter. We figured there was no use bein’ cannon fodder in a lost cause and decided t’ wait out the war where it was safe.”

  While other boys in gray kept dying. “Well then, where have you been since then? The war was over last April.”

  He sat back, studying her, grinning. “You look good, Sarah.”

  She recognized a dodge when she heard it. And what nonsense. Her mirror had told her only this morning how pale and thin she looked after her battle with influenza, but then Jesse Holt always had been a silver-tongued rascal.

  “Livin’ away from that bossy sister must agree with you,” he said with a wink. “I’m glad I didn’t have to ride out there and argue my way past that dragon. She never did like me, you know.”

  No, she hadn’t known that, but it was just like Milly to have left her sister to make up her own mind. Sarah bit back the impulse to defend her sister and kept waiting, unwilling to be distracted.

  The waiter returned to their table. “More coffee, folks?”

  Sarah shook her head. Jesse said, “Sure, and we’ll have some of that chocolate cake when we’re finished. We’re celebratin’, you see.

  “Where have we been, you asked,” Jesse said, after the waiter had gone. “Well, while we were in Canada, we worked here and there, did a little a’ this and a little a’ that, to keep food in our bellies….”

  “‘We’?”

  “Me and the boys from Johnson’s Island who escaped together. Some of ’em were officers, some enlisted, but once we got outta that prison, we were equals. An’ we figured it was time to get even with those Blue Bellies that put us in that blasted cold prison. So we’ve been makin’ our way back t’ Texas, stoppin’ t’ make life miserable for the Yankees whenever we could.” He winked. “We’ve found it can be mighty profitable, mighty profitable indeed. And quite amusin’.”

  Mystified, she stared at him. “Jesse, whatever do you mean?”

  He smiled that lazy smile again. “A little raiding, a holdup or two of stages bringin’ the payroll to those blasted Federal troops who got no business occupyin’ our fair state, a bit a’ rustlin’ of carpetbagger cattle…”

  Sarah felt her jaw drop. “You’re an outlaw?”

  He laughed. “Nah, nothin’ like that, Sarah. I told you, we’re only harrassin’ Yankees. We don’t bother honest Southerners. High time we made up for all those years those b—those Yankees stole from us.”

  While she was still staring at him, her mind reeling at what he was so proudly telling her, he reached out and seized her hand, which had been clutching her coffee cup, and leaned across the table, his eyes intense.

  “Sarah, they stole those years from us, from you an’ me. If they hadn’t tried t’ bully the South, you an’ me’d be married for three or four years with a passel a’ kids. With your pa dead, I could’ve taken over the ranch and we’d have been sittin’ pretty, yes siree. You know that’s what would’ve happened.”

  Yes, they’d have married, she thought, but she was no longer sure she would have been happy. She pulled her hand away from his slowly, trying not to seem as if she was repelled by his touch.

  “Jesse, the war is over,” she said. “The other men from Simpson Creek who survived came home and took up their lives again.”

  “Aw, Sarah, we were cooped up for so long, we were just havin’ some fun before we settled down,” he protested. “You always used to like havin’ fun, so I figured you’d understand.”

  She felt her temper spark. “Jesse, I wore mourning for you. Your poor mother died thinking she’d see you in Heaven. You couldn’t have written to say you were alive?”

  Finally, he had the grace to look ashamed. “You know I never was much for book learnin’,” he said. “I think I gave that schoolmarm we had—what was her name? Miss Russell?—most of her gray hairs. But I never meant to make you sad, Sarah, honey.”

  He looked at her with puppy-dog eyes, a look that used to melt her heart. “I’m here to make it up to you, Sarah. Run away with me, and we’ll get married, and I’ll introduce you to th’ boys. We’ll have a fine life—you’ll see. A
couple of ’em are married, too, or they have lady friends here ’n’ there that ride along with us from time to time.”

  She couldn’t believe her ears. “You think I’d even consider leaving with you to live an outlaw’s life, always on the run?”

  “Aw, Sarah, we have a grand time, livin’ high off the hog. We’re free to do whatever we want, whenever we want. We eat the best food, drink the best wine—our ladies are drippin’ in jewelry and fancy clothes. But I’m willin’ to leave it all if you insist.”

  “‘Leave it all’?”

  “Sure. That’s how much I love you, sweetheart. If you don’t want to live free as a bird, I’ll come back and have that ranch with you. We’ll let Milly stay there, too, of course, but it ain’t fittin’ for no lady to be runnin’ a ranch anyway.”

  “I told you, Milly’s married now,” she managed to say, in the midst of the temper that was threatening to boil over into angry words. “I think her husband might take exception to that idea.”

  “We’ll buy him out, then,” he said grandly. “They can go find some other ranch. I know you always set great store by that old place.”

  She was conscious of the handful of other diners in the restaurant, and remembered again that her mother said ladies did not make a scene in public.

  She folded her hands in her lap and looked away. “I’m sorry, Jesse. I loved you, and I prayed every night during the war for your return, but now—”

  He straightened. “Loved me? You don’t love me any more? There’s someone else, isn’t there?” he demanded, his narrowed eyes twin smoldering fires.

  She looked away from his glare. She didn’t want to tell him about Nolan, didn’t want to hear his reaction to the news that his former fiancée was in love with one of the very Yankees he hated so much, especially since she and Nolan hadn’t even had the chance to explore their new feelings for one another yet. But she wouldn’t lie, not about the relationship that had come to mean so much to her. She just wouldn’t say any more than she had to.