Suddenly, she sat upright. Alan! She’d completely forgotten that she was to meet him at four o’clock yesterday. She’d been so worried about Houston, about how her sister had made a fool of herself over those rings, and then the call from Lee had come, and she’d sensed he was just asking her to go with him out of a sense of duty. She had never dreamed that she’d be away all night.
Susan came to tell her that the family would be leaving for church soon after breakfast and that Mr. Gates had requested that she go with them. Blair hopped out of bed and hurriedly dressed. Perhaps Alan would be at church and she could explain that she’d been away working.
Alan was there, three pews ahead of them, and no matter what Blair did, he wouldn’t look around after his initial glance. To make her feel worse, he was sitting next to Mr. Westfield and Nina. After church, Blair managed to get near him for a few minutes in the little yard outside the building.
“So, you were out with Westfield,” Alan began the moment they were alone. His eyes were angry.
Blair stiffened in spite of her good intentions to be humble. “I believe you were the one to agree to a competition, not me, and part of the arrangement was that I not refuse Leander’s invitations.”
“All night?” He managed to look down his nose at her even though they were nearly the same height.
Blair at once felt defensive. “We were working, and we got caught in the midst of a range war and Leander says that—.”
“Spare me his words of wisdom. I have to go now. I have other plans.”
“Other plans? But I thought maybe this afternoon—.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow. That is, if you think you’ll be home.” With that, he turned on his heel and left her standing there.
Nina Westfield came by to tell her that Lee had to work at the hospital the rest of the day. Blair climbed into the carriage with her mother and stepfather and was only vaguely aware that Houston wasn’t with them.
At home, Opal was fussing about the dining room, arranging flowers on the table, setting it with the best tall silver candelabra.
“Are you expecting company?” Blair asked idly.
“Yes, dear, he’s coming.”
“Who is?”
“Houston’s Kane. Oh, Blair, he is such a lovely man. I just know you’re going to love him.”
Minutes later, the door opened and Houston came in leading her big millionaire by the arm, as if he were a prize piece of game that she’d just bagged. Blair had first seen him earlier in church, and she admitted that he was good-looking —not as handsome as Leander, or even Alan—but more than presentable, if you liked that overly muscular type.
“If you’ll sit here, Mr. Taggert, next to Houston and across from Blair,” Opal was saying.
For a moment, everyone just sat there looking at their plates or about the room, no one saying anything.
“I hope that you like roast beef,” Mr. Gates said as he began to carve the big piece of meat.
“I’m sure to like it better’n what I usually get, that is, until Houston here hired me a cook.”
“And who did you hire, Houston?” Opal said, with a bit of ice in her voice, reminding her daughter that lately she’d been leaving the house, and been gone for hours, with no one knowing where she was.
“Mrs. Murchison, while the Conrads are in Europe. Sir, Mr. Taggert might have some suggestions for investments,” she said to Mr. Gates.
From then on, Blair thought, there was no stopping the man. He was like an elephant in the midst of a flock of chickens. When Mr. Gates asked him about railroad stock, Taggert raised his fist and bellowed that railroads were dying, that the whole country was covered with railroads and there was no more decent money to be made in them—“only a few hundred thousand or so.” His fist came down on the table and everything—including the people—jumped.
Compared to Taggert’s temper and loudness, Gates was a kitten. Taggert brooked no disagreement whatever; he was right about everything, and he talked in terms of millions of dollars as if they were grains of sand.
And if his bellowing and arrogance weren’t enough, his manners were appalling. He cut his slice of roast with the side of his fork, and when it went sliding across the table toward Blair, he didn’t even pause in telling Gates how to run the brewery as he pulled the meat back onto his plate and kept on eating. Ignoring the three vegetables that were served, he piled about two pounds of mashed potatoes onto his plate and emptied the gravy boat on top of the white mountain. Before he was finished, he’d eaten one half of the ten-pound roast. He knocked over Houston’s teacup, but she just smiled at him and motioned for the maid to bring a cloth. He drank six glasses of iced tea before Blair saw Susan secretly pouring his glass from a separate pitcher. Blair then realized that Houston had arranged for Taggert to drink dark beer with ice in it. He talked with his mouth full and twice had food on his chin. Houston, as if he were a child, touched his hand, then his napkin, which was still folded beside his plate.
After a while, Blair stopped trying to eat. She didn’t like food flying toward her or the silverware jumping or the way that loud, overbearing man monopolized the conversation. Conversation ha! He might as well have been giving a speech.
The worst part was the way Houston, her mother and Gates hung on his every word. You would have thought his words were gold. And perhaps they were, Blair thought with disgust. She’d never thought much about money, but perhaps money was all-important to other people. It certainly seemed to be so important to Houston that she was willing to subject herself to this awful, hideous man for the rest of her life.
Blair grabbed the candelabra before it fell over, as Taggert reached for more gravy. Cook must have made it in a wheelbarrow, she thought.
Just then, Taggert paused long enough in his proposal of allowing Gates to buy in on a land sale to glance at Blair. Suddenly, he stopped talking altogether and pushed back his chair.
“Honey, we better be goin’ if you wanta get to the park while it’s still light.”
Heaven help, Blair thought, that he should have manners enough to ask if anyone else was finished eating. He was ready to leave, and he autocratically demanded that Houston leave with him. Dutifully, Houston followed him.
“Why, Lee,” Opal said with a smile, twisting her neck around to look up at him, making the little oak rocker creak. “I didn’t hear you come in.” She took a closer look at him. “You look happier than you did a few days ago. Has something happened?” There was a hint of an I-told-you-so look on Opal’s face.
Lee gave her a quick peck on the cheek before sitting down in the chair next to her on the back porch. He was tossing a big red apple back and forth in his hands. “Maybe it’s not that I want your daughter, it’s that I want you for a mother-in-law.”
Opal kept on sewing. “So, today, you think there’s a chance that you’ll get my daughter. If I remember correctly, the last time we talked, you were sure you could never win her. Has anything changed?”
“Changed? Only the entire world.” He bit into his apple with gusto. “I’m going to win. I’m not only going to win, but it’s going to be by a landslide. That poor kid Hunter doesn’t have a chance.”
“I take it you’ve found the key to Blair’s heart, and it isn’t flowers and candy.”
Leander smiled, as much to himself as to her. “I’m going to court her with what she really likes: gunshot wounds, blood poisonings, respiratory infections, amputations, and whatever else I can find for her. She’ll probably love spring roundup around here.”
Opal looked horrified. “It sounds dreadful. Must it be so drastic?”
“As far as I can tell, the worse the going is, the better she likes it. As long as somebody’s there to make sure she doesn’t get in over her head, she’ll be fine.”
“And you’ll be the one to take care of her?”
Leander rose. “For the rest of her life. I believe that’s the sound of my loved one now. You’ll see, in less than a week, she’ll be runni
ng down the aisle to me.”
“Lee?”
He paused.
“And what about St. Joseph’s?”
He winked at her. “I will do my best to never let her find out. I want her to turn them down. Who are they to say that she can’t work for them?”
“She’s a good doctor, isn’t she?” Opal beamed with pride.
“Not bad,” Lee said, chuckling, walking back into the house. “Not bad for a woman.”
Blair met Leander in the parlor. Yesterday had turned out to be awful. Alan had not called, she’d heard nothing from Lee, and all day, she’d worried about Houston and that awful man she was selling herself to. So it was with some trepidation that she met Lee now. Was he going to be the doctor Lee or the one who insulted her at every turn?
“You wanted to see me?” she asked cautiously.
Leander wore an expression that she’d never seen before, one of almost shyness. “I came to talk to you, that is, if you don’t mind listening to me.”
“Of course not,” she said. “Why should I mind talking with you?” She sat down on a red brocade chair.
Leander had his hat in hand, threatening to twist it into shreds, and when Blair motioned for him to sit, he merely shook his head no.
“It’s not easy to say what I’ve come to say. It’s not easy to admit defeat, especially in something that has come to mean so much to me as the winning of you for my wife.”
Blair started to say something, but he put his hand up. “No, let me say what I must without interruptions. It’s hard for me, but it has to be said because it’s all that I can think about.”
He walked to the window, still twisting his hat in his hands. She’d never seen him nervous before.
“Saturday, the day we spent together as doctors, was a monumental day in my life. Until that day, I would have wagered anything that I owned that a woman couldn’t be a good doctor, but you proved me wrong. On that day, you showed me that a woman can not only be a good doctor, but might even become better than most men.”
“Thank you,” Blair said, and a small thrill of pleasure ran through her at his words.
He turned back to face her. “And that’s why I’m giving up the race.”
“The race?”
“The competition, then, whatever you call it. I realized yesterday, while I was working alone in the hospital, that I had changed after the day we spent together. You see, I’ve always worked alone, but on that day when we worked together…Well, it was like everything that I’d imagined and more. We fit together so well, so rhythmically, almost like lovers.” He stopped and looked at her. “I meant that allegorically, of course.”
“Of course,” she mumbled. “I’m not sure that I understand any of this.”
“Don’t you see? I may have lost a wife, but what I’ve gained is a colleague! I might treat a woman with little or no respect, might trick her to show that her friend is such a Willie boy that he can’t row, swim or even ride a horse, but I could never, never do that to a fellow doctor whom I’ve learned to respect and even admire.”
Blair was silent for a moment. There was something wrong in what he was saying about Alan, but his words of praise were too sweet to cause her to quibble over details. “Are you saying that you no longer want to marry me?”
“I’m saying that I respect you, and you’ve said that you want to marry Alan Hunter, and I now know that I cannot stand in your way. You and I are equals in the medical profession, and I cannot further humiliate a fellow doctor in the manner that I have in the past few days. Therefore, you are no longer held captive here. You may leave with the man you love at any time, and I can assure you that I’ll do everything in my power to keep Gates from letting anyone know about your loss of…of chastity.”
Blair stood. “I’m not sure that I understand. I’m free to go? You aren’t blackmailing me any longer, and you won’t cause Alan further embarrassment? And you’re doing all this because you believe that I’m a good doctor?”
“That’s exactly right. It took me a while to come to my senses, but I have. What kind of marriage could we have if it was based purely on lust? Of course, we do have a mutual attraction to one another, and perhaps that one night was extraordinary, but that isn’t a basis for marriage. What you and Alan have is real, that you can spend time together and talk, that you have mutual interests, and I’m sure that you have the same…ah, reactions to his touch that you have to mine. Maybe you two have made love several times in the last few days, for all I know.”
“I beg your pardon!”
Leander hung his head again. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to insult you again. I always seem to put my foot in my mouth around you. Now, you’ll never listen to what else I have to say.”
“I’ll listen,” she said. “Tell me the rest of it.” She was feeling strangely let down. Of course, the fact that he respected her as a doctor was wonderful, but at the same time she wanted something else, and she didn’t know what it was.
When he looked back at her, his eyes were glowing intensely. “I know you want to get back to Pennsylvania, and I don’t blame you, but working with you was such a joy and a pleasure and, since I know that I’ll never have the chance again because I’m sure that you’ll never want to come back to Chandler after what’s happened in the last few days, I’d really like to ask if I could have the honor of working with you for the next few days. My father has agreed to persuade the board to allow you into the hospital under my care, and you and I can work together until after Houston’s wedding. Oh, Blair, I could show you my plans for the women’s clinic. I’ve never shown them to anyone before, and I’d really like to share them. Maybe you’d even help me plan it—if you had time, that is.”
Blair walked to the far side of the room. She didn’t think that she’d ever enjoyed anything as much as she’d enjoyed that day with Leander, and if they were no longer engaged, perhaps Houston would not feel that she had to marry that man Taggert and—.
“And Alan can work with us. Gosh, if he’s half as good as you are…Is he?”
Blair came back to the present and realized with a bit of guilt that she hadn’t even thought of Alan. “You mean, is he as good as I am? I guess so. Of course he is! Although I don’t think he’s had the opportunity to work with doctors as I have. I mean, I was very lucky. My Uncle Henry is quite well respected, and ever since I was little more than a child, I’ve assisted in surgery and helped with emergency cases and had the opportunity to assist many eminent men, but—.” She stopped. “Of course, Alan is an excellent doctor,” she said firmly.
“I’m sure he is, and I’m sure it’ll be a joy working with both of you. By the way, did Alan take that exam for St. Joseph’s Hospital?”
“Yes, but he didn’t—.”
“Didn’t what?”
Her mouth was set in a firm line. “They only accepted the six highest scorers.”
“I see. Well, perhaps it was a bad day for him. May I come for you tomorrow morning at six? Until then, my library is always open to a fellow colleague.” He quickly kissed her hand and then was gone.
Chapter 14
Blair was dressed and ready to leave at five thirty the next morning. She sat on the edge of her bed and puzzled over what to do. Should she wait downstairs or would he come through the window again as he’d done last time?
When the downstairs clock chimed six, she opened her door and thought she heard the front door. She flew down the stairs and got there just as a sleepy Susan was opening the door to Leander.
“Good morning,” he said, smiling. “Ready to go?”
She nodded in answer.
“You can’t go, Miss Blair-Houston. You haven’t had anything to eat and Cook doesn’t have breakfast ready yet. You’ll have to wait until she gets dressed.”
“Have you eaten?” she asked Lee.
“It seems as though I haven’t eaten in days,” he answered, smiling back at her, and again she was impressed by how good-looking he was, with those green ey
es. And for some reason, she was reminded of the night they’d spent together. It was odd that she should think of that now, because she hadn’t remembered it in days. Perhaps it was that now he wasn’t trying to enrage her.
“Come into the kitchen and I’ll fix you some breakfast. Even I know how to fry eggs and bacon. Mr. Gates’s meal will probably be late and the entire household’ll catch it, but we’ll not be here to hear what he has to say.”
A half hour later, Lee leaned back from the big oak kitchen table and wiped his mouth. “Blair, I had no idea that you could cook. It seems too much to hope for in a woman, one who can cook, a woman who can be a man’s friend, a colleague,” his eyes and voice lowered, “a lover.” With a sigh, he looked back at her. “I swore to myself that I wasn’t going to be a sore loser, that I was going to give up gracefully.” He gave her a sweet little-boy smile. “You’ll have to forgive me if I forget sometimes.”
“Yes, of course,” she said nervously and realized that she was once again thinking of that night together. That night, when she’d been free to kiss him, when his hands…
“They aren’t clean?”
“I beg your pardon?” she said, coming back to the present.
“You were staring at my hands and I wondered if maybe something was wrong with them.”
“I…Are you ready to go?”
“Whenever you are,” he said, rising and pulling back her chair.
Blair smiled at him and thought of that ill-mannered man Houston said she planned to marry and thought that there was no comparison between him and Lee.
On the way to the hospital, he asked her about Alan and she told him that he was to meet them at the infirmary. He did, looking sleepy and a bit sullen at seeing Leander and Blair arriving together.
The day was a hard, long one. It seemed that every patient was Lee’s sole responsibility, and the three of them had to do the work of a dozen people. At one o’clock, four men who’d been hurt when the end of a tunnel of the Inexpressible Mine had collapsed were brought in. Two of them were dead, one had a broken leg, but the fourth man was hovering between life and death.