Harlequin Historical November 2015, Box Set 2 of 2 Page 8

  “Why, Zane, isn’t that mistletoe I see over the barn door?”

  “It is. Pretty, isn’t it? Deadly poison, though. I’d stay away from it.”

  He broke away and went to meet Winifred, just coming across the room toward him. She smiled up into his face.

  “Oh, I’ve had such a good time,” she said. “I didn’t expect to enjoy myself at all. I met so many nice people. Did you know Sarah Rose is getting married next June? And Seth Ruben just bought the lumber company?”

  Zane draped her long black coat about her shoulders. “Yes, I did, and no, I didn’t.” He shrugged into his overcoat. “Wait here, Winifred. I’ll bring the buggy around.”

  And don’t talk to any more single men.

  Chapter Eight

  Winifred waited for Zane to come in the back door from the barn. Sam had left a lantern burning low in the entry hall, and there wasn’t a sound in the house but the crackle of the fireplace in the dining room, which sent out a comforting heat after the chilly ride home. Winifred slipped off her coat and hung it away in the closet.

  She was warming her hands at the hearth when Zane tramped in. “Come over by the fire,” she invited.

  He dropped his heavy coat over the banister. “Everyone asleep?”

  “Yes, even Rosemarie, I think. At least I don’t hear her crying.”

  He set the lantern on the stairway and joined her in front of the fireplace. “I watched you tonight,” he said.

  “I know. I wondered why.”

  “I wondered myself,” he confessed.

  Their eyes met. Very slowly, Zane reached out his hands and turned her toward him, then cupped her face between his hands and tipped her mouth up to meet his.

  Her eyes closed when their lips met and stayed closed while his mouth moved gently over hers. When he raised his head she caught his hands in her own and lifted them away from her face.

  “Zane,” she whispered. “This is wrong.”

  “No,” he said, his voice quiet. “It isn’t wrong. Premature, maybe. Maybe not wise. But not wrong.”

  “I—”

  “Go on up to bed, Winifred.” He turned her toward the stairs. “Take the lamp.”

  For a long time after Winifred climbed the stairs Zane sat in his office in the dark, a glass of brandy at his elbow, his head in his hands. When the hall clock chimed three, he shoved the brandy aside and rose.

  Moonlight flooded the hallway and he made his way up the stairs without lighting a candle, walked softly past Winifred’s closed door and flung himself fully clothed across his bed.

  * * *

  Winifred was not asleep. How could she possibly sleep after such a night? And Zane’s kiss...what had possessed him to do such an impulsive thing? Perhaps it was the hard cider he’d consumed?

  Each time she closed her eyes she saw his face, grave and calm. But his eyes—oh, Lord, his eyes! In their shadowed depths she saw pain and acceptance and loneliness. And hunger.

  Well, of course. He was a man, like any other man, was he not? He needed a woman.

  But not Darla Bledsoe.

  And not me.

  She rolled over and then heard a soft cry. Not Rosemarie, who wailed at a different pitch when she was hungry or wet. This was stifled sobbing that drifted from the guest bedroom next to hers.

  Yan Li. She sprang out of bed and tiptoed next door, tapped once and walked in. The girl was sitting on the bed, her knees drawn up, her face buried in her hands. Winifred sank down beside her, reached out her arms and drew her close.

  “There, now,” she crooned. “It’s all right. Everything will be all right.”

  She knew Sam’s bride couldn’t tell her what was wrong, so she just smoothed her hand over the thick black hair and rocked the shaking girl.

  After a long while Yan Li lifted her head and tried to smile. But in the moon’s light Winifred could see her mouth tremble and her cheeks glistened as fat tears rolled down and dripped onto her neck.

  “Yan Li, watch my hand.” Winifred forked two fingers and walked them across the quilt. With her other hand she formed another set of legs and moved them until they mashed together. Then she looked at Yan Li with a question.

  “Is that it? You do not want to marry Wing Sam?”

  The girl caught on instantly. She formed her own set of legs and brushed Winifred’s left hand aside, then walked her fingers around and around the remaining set of legs. She looked up expectantly.

  “Of course,” Winifred said. “You like Wing Sam. It is the thought of marriage that frightens you. And you have no mother to calm your fears.”

  She laid her free hand over the girl’s fingers and nodded. “It will be all right, Yan Li. I promise.” She hugged the slim form, gently pressed her down onto the pillow and smoothed her damp cheek. “It will be all right,” she whispered.

  * * *

  Halfway through breakfast the following morning, the doorbell clanged. Zane threw his napkin down onto the dining table and rose. “Jupiter, it’s Christmas Day. Nobody gets sick on Christmas Day.”

  But it was not a patient. Before him in the doorway stood Leah MacAllister.

  “I rode in from the ranch this morning because last night at the dance Winifred asked me to come for your houseboy, Sam’s sake. You see, I speak Chinese.”

  Zane knew Leah MacAllister was half-Chinese, the niece of the bakery owner Uncle Charlie, whose fan-tan losses had partly paid for Yan Li’s passage to Portland.

  “Come in, Leah.” He took her coat and wool scarf and gloves just as Winifred stepped into the hallway.

  “Oh, Leah, thank you for coming into town on Christmas morning. I was right, we do need you.”

  The two women brushed past Zane and he sat down to finish his breakfast, listening to the women’s voices in the kitchen speaking the same strange-sounding language Sam did until Winifred joined him. A smile played around her mouth and she shot him a significant look from across the table.

  “Was I not clever to ask Leah MacAllister to come? Poor Yan Li has no one to calm her wedding jitters, certainly not Sam.”

  Zane could only nod. The unspoken bond between women sometimes amazed him.

  Winifred smiled. “There are times when a woman wants to confide in another woman. Cissy used to confide in me until—”

  She broke off.

  “Until she met me,” Zane supplied. “She often said how much she missed you.”

  “But she never wrote,” Winifred said in surprise.

  “She was afraid to. She felt you were angry with her.”

  Winifred looked away. “I was angry,” she said quietly. “I could not understand how she could throw away her musical career, and mine along with it. I was very angry.”

  “Are you still angry?”

  “I was for a long time. Cissy and I were the Von Dannen sisters, duo piano artists. After she ran away with you, I had to become a soloist. It was a difficult transition.”

  “And now?”

  She looked into his eyes. “Now I am beginning to understand how she could give it all up. She fell in love with you, and when that happened, I no longer mattered.”

  A peal of girlish laughter sounded from the kitchen. A moment later Sam poked his head into the dining room. “Wedding two o’clock, Boss. You come?”

  Zane snorted. “Of course I will come, Sam. It isn’t every day a man gets married.”

  Sam grinned and disappeared into the kitchen.

  “Or a woman,” Winifred added. “Just think how Yan Li must feel this morning.”

  “Scared to death,” Zane acknowledged. “I’ll wager Sam is, too. I’m going to hitch up the buggy so Sam can drive Yan Li to the church. I can walk. It’s just down the hill.”

  “Wait,” Winifred cried. “I shipped a wed
ding gift for Sam from St. Louis. Did it arrive?”

  “It did. It fits nicely on the new double bed I gave them. Sam’s bed was too narrow for—” He swallowed and Winifred released a bubble of laughter.

  “Why, Dr. Dougherty, you’re blushing!”

  “I am not blushing,” he insisted.

  Winifred choked back a challenge. Perhaps Zane would not appreciate her teasing. She wondered how he had withstood Cissy’s penchant for teasing, something Winifred clearly recalled from their girlhood. But of course Zane had loved Cissy, and she supposed a man in love would put up with a great deal.

  Zane left for the barn. Then tall, russet-haired Thad MacAllister arrived to accompany Leah to the church. Sam appeared in a new yellow knee-length tunic embroidered in black, and Yan Li stood shyly at his side in her mother’s red wedding robe and the shimmery red headdress Leah had brought for her to wear.

  The young Chinese girl looked so radiant Winifred’s eyes filled with tears. Sam looked at his bride as if he’d been hit over the head with a chunk of firewood. He bowed low before his bride, then took her hand and led her out the front door to the waiting buggy.

  “Reminds me of when I married Leah,” Thad MacAllister said to her. “I was struck dumb at the sight of her.” Out of the corner of her eye Winifred saw the tall rancher whisper something to his wife and press his lips to her forehead.

  Something leaped in Winifred’s chest. Zane had said something like that about Cissy. She was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen.

  Suddenly she felt left out. Something wondrous that other people experienced had passed her by. She had seen admiration in a man’s eyes, but she had never seen the kind of awe she noted on Sam’s face.

  Resolutely she put Sam and Yan Li and Zane and Cissy out of her mind, closed the front door and went upstairs to tend to Rosemarie.

  * * *

  At the church altar, Sam and Yan Li joined hands and faced the shiny-faced pastor, Reverend Pollock, who stood with the Bible spread open in his hands. Leah MacAllister stood at Yan Li’s left, quietly translating the minister’s words.

  Zane watched the ceremony with both joy and sadness. He was happy for Sam; at the same time he remembered with a dart of pain reciting those same vows with Celeste just three years before, and his chest ached. He still missed her. He would always miss her.

  And her sister, Winifred? He could not bring himself to think of Winifred at this moment.

  What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder...

  So long as you both shall live.

  It was over, and Sam and Yan Li stood hand in hand, accepting congratulations and wishes for long life. Zane shook Sam’s hand and brushed a kiss across Yan Li’s pale cheek.

  Tonight would be her wedding night. He decided he would leave the house for a while. He wanted to take Winifred somewhere, anywhere, but he didn’t suppose they could both leave. On a man’s wedding night he shouldn’t hear a baby crying in an upstairs bedroom and he shouldn’t be expected to care for it.

  When the newlywed couple had signed the register and slipped away, Zane took off himself on a long walk that ended up at the hospital, where he stayed until past midnight. On his walk back up the hill to the house he noticed it was snowing.

  Winifred had wheeled the bassinet into her bedroom and was soothing a fussy Rosemarie with a lullaby when Zane came up the stairs.

  “She’s teething,” he said from the open doorway. “Give her something cold to chew on.”

  “What ‘something’?”

  “An icicle. I’ll bring up a bowlful.”

  A few minutes later he presented a china bowl of icicles and pulled a handkerchief from his vest pocket. “Tie some snow in the corner and let her suck on it.”

  “Tell me about the wedding,” she asked as she knotted the fabric.

  When he didn’t answer, she looked up. “Was the ceremony nice?”

  “Yes, it was. You know what a wedding is like—people cry.”

  “No, I do not know,” she said carefully. “I have never been to a wedding.”

  Zane said nothing for a long moment, just looked at her. “After the ceremony I went to the hospital.”

  His eyes looked tired, and his collar was undone. He was a good man. Cissy might have rushed into marriage, but she had been fortunate in her choice. Zane was caring and dedicated. Conscientious.

  And extremely handsome, she admitted. Is that what Cissy saw that night when they met? She could not have seen below the surface then, seen beneath his personable good looks to the man underneath. There had not been enough time between the recital at the medical college that night and secretly marrying him. But surely committed love relationships were not built on such ephemeral things as a pink chiffon gown and a handsome face.

  Or were they? She studied him, trying to see what Cissy had really seen. It seemed to make him uncomfortable because he stood looking down at her for a long minute. “You have never attended a wedding?”

  “No. Professional musicians rarely get married.”

  “I see.” He stood a moment longer, then turned away. “Good night, Winifred.”

  He disappeared down the darkened hallway to his own bedroom. She tried very hard not to hear his movements through the wall as she replaced Rosemarie’s now-warm teething cloth with a cold one.

  The next morning Winifred brought a still fussy Rosemarie downstairs for her morning bottle and some warm applesauce Sam had prepared, then took her place at the dining room table across from a preoccupied Zane.

  “Sleep all right?” he asked.

  “Y-yes. The baby woke only once and dropped right off again when I rocked the bassinet and hummed a song.”

  “I didn’t sleep. Too quiet.”

  Winifred stared at him. “You missed Rosemarie?”

  “I did.” He sent her an apologetic look. “Maybe I’m a possessive father.”

  Winifred laughed. “You’re devoted, Zane. Not possessive.”

  He studied his plate. “When you love someone, you grow to be possessive.”

  Sam stepped in with a platter of pancakes and the coffeepot. The small rounded cakes were artfully topped with dollops of orange marmalade. “Oh, Sam, how nice.”

  “Yan Li make,” he said proudly. “Cook good.” The houseboy set down the coffeepot and levered a spatula under the pancakes, sliding six onto her plate.

  A happy squeal erupted from the kitchen. “Also feed baby,” Sam explained. He set the platter down in front of Zane and filled his coffee cup just as the front doorbell sounded.

  Zane sighed and pushed back his chair. Then Winifred heard the door open and Zane’s surprised voice.

  “Darla, what—?”

  Winifred’s hand froze on her fork.

  “Oh, Zane, I’ve hurt myself.”

  “Come in and sit here in the chair. Tell me what happened?”

  “It’s my foot. My toe, actually. I—I dropped something and it hit my toe.”

  “What did you drop?”

  “The cookie jar.”

  Sam paused in the act of pouring Winifred’s coffee and caught her eye. His black eyes twinkled.

  “I’ll just remove your shoe,” Zane said in a patient tone. “Now roll down your stocking.”

  A long silence ensued. Sam lifted the coffeepot, but Winifred shook her head and put her finger to her lips. He nodded and stood motionless beside the table.

  “Your little toe is red and swollen,” Zane said. “Probably broken.”

  “Oh.” She moaned dramatically. “Should you bandage it or something?”

  “There’s no need. It will heal on its own. Try to stay off it for a few days.”

  “But—”

  “I’ll give you some powdered willow bark to add to your tea. You can pick
up more at the mercantile. By the way, how did you get up here to the house?”

  “I...well, I walked.”

  Zane expelled a breath loud enough to be heard in the dining room. “I’ll drive you home in the buggy. Put your shoe back on and wait here.”

  “Oh, by the way, Zane, I’m having a social at my house tomorrow after—”

  “Can’t make it,” he said shortly. “Hospital duty.”

  He came through the dining room looking flushed and angry. A moment later the back door slammed.

  “Boss miss breakfast,” Sam whispered.

  “He’s a conscientious doctor.” Winifred spoke quietly so Darla wouldn’t hear.

  “Lady trick Boss,” the houseboy muttered. He poured her cup full and tipped Zane’s pancakes back onto the platter.

  Winifred sipped her coffee and thought about Darla Bledsoe. She didn’t like the woman, but she had to admire her brash persistence. She knew from her women friends at the conservatory that many a man had succumbed to less.

  But not Zane. He was not simple-minded in that way. And besides, she told herself, apparently Zane did not even like Darla. But what if he were...desperate?

  What made a man desperate? she wondered suddenly. Didn’t people marry because they cared about each other? Because they loved each other? Cissy had swept Zane off his feet and she had fallen instantly in love with him.

  Is that how it happened? Pink chiffon and penetrating deep blue eyes? Surely relationships were not built on such ephemeral things, a pink chiffon gown and a handsome face.

  Or were they?

  She finished her coffee and stepped into the kitchen while Sam gathered up the dishes. Yan Li looked up from the spoonful of applesauce she was offering to Rosemarie and smiled. Goodness, the girl positively glowed this morning!

  Winifred quickly made the fingers of both hands into make-believe legs as she had the previous night and walked them toward each other, close enough to touch. Then she sent Yan Li a questioning look. “Is everything all right with you and Sam?”

  Yan Li reached her hand out, mashed Winifred’s fingers together and blushed scarlet. Then she dropped her head.