Coming Home for Christmas (18 page)

O
lympia woke up a few hours later, making little mewing sounds practically in his ear, until he realized that, at some point in their slumber, he had wrapped his arm around Frannie and she was close to his chest, the baby nestled against his neck and hers.

Will lay there with Frannie and Olympia in his arms, enjoying her newborn fragrance. Medicine could often be a smelly proposition the deeper one delved, but newborns always compensated, with that unique fragrance.

“Frannie, Olympia is hungry,” he whispered finally.

Frannie stretched and snuggled closer, her eyes still closed. She opened them wide a second later, when she realized where she was. “I should apologize,” she began, then stopped. “No. This seemed like a good idea a few hours ago and it still does. Call me common.”

“You're not,” he replied. “I could have gone back to the dining room and finished that bottle of Scotch—oh, believe me, I could have. But I didn't want to.”

Frannie sat up in the berth with Olympia in her arms,
which had the effect of pulling the blankets off his body. Will grabbed for them, shrugged and reached for his trousers instead. “Don't mind me,” he murmured, as he buttoned up.

“You called her Olympia,” Frannie said. “Goodness, when did you name her?”

“A few hours ago, when the two of you were sleeping,” he said as he pulled on his uniform jacket. “The gods were smiling.”

Frannie grinned at him. “And you were a little tiddly.” She kissed the baby. “It's a good name for a Greek goddess, which she is. I like it.” And then she was all business. “What are we going to do about the menu?”

He had done this before. In a minute he had mixed some of the condensed milk with the boiled water. While Frannie changed Olympia's diaper—a napkin from the dining car—he found the kitchen, corralled a yawning cook and soon had the milk lukewarm in a pan of water.

The two of them sat cross-legged and knee to knee in his berth—Olympia squalling now—and he used the eye dropper. “Put your little finger in her mouth while I drip in the milk,” Will said. “I want her to learn about her sucking reflex. This will work until we find a baby bottle.”
Maybe we'll find an orphanage, too,
he thought, then dismissed the idea at once. He didn't find it appealing. He could think about it later.

Frannie's doubts about the procedure amused Will, who knew by experience not to underestimate a hungry baby, even one as new as the little morsel in her arms. She relaxed as Olympia quickly adapted to the situation, then nudged Will with her bare foot.

“I think you're pretty good, Captain,” she whispered.

He noticed Olympia's squirms and picked her up from Frannie's arms, putting her face near his shoulder as he patted her back. The reward was a substantial burp, which startled Olympia and made Frannie chuckle.

“You know, Frannie, under the circumstances, perhaps you could call me Will,” he suggested.

The car was getting lighter. He could see her face plainly as she gave him a measuring appraisal. “Under the circumstances? Will, it is,” she told him. “And do you know something? I prefer Francie. My brothers call me that.”

“Francie, it is,” he told her as he handed back Olympia and filled the eye dropper again. They continued feeding the baby, Francie's head close to his. When Olympia began to squirm this time, she put the baby to her shoulder and rubbed her back until the burp came.

Worn out with her efforts and by her full stomach, the infant slept, nestling her dark head into the hollow of Francie's shoulder. Francie kissed the baby and heaved a small sigh that sounded to Will like perfect satisfaction.

“Too much of that and you'll find yourself unable to let her go,” Will said.

“And you think I haven't already succumbed?” Francie asked, her voice suddenly as serious as his own. “Will, you're not as bright as I thought.”

“That probably isn't hard to imagine,” he replied. “I could sit here and think about all the ways I could have changed the outcome of that hambone surgery. I could have taken a closer look at her when I went through the immigrant car earlier. I could have…”

He stopped, because Francie had put her finger to
his lips and then leaned forward and kissed them. He couldn't think of a single objection and kissed her back. Since Olympia was balanced between them, he steadied himself with a hand on Francie's knee. When they finished kissing, he left his hand where it was.

“My da says you have a bad habit of doing that,” she murmured, her lips still close to his.

“Francie, I've never kissed your father.”

She laughed softly and flicked his cheek with her fingernail. “You
know
what I mean! Da says you berate yourself every time someone dies, and pace around your office and mutter to yourself and second-guess.” She lightly touched her forehead to his.

“All surgeons do that,” he said in his defense. His hand was still on her knee. He felt his whole body growing warmer, which was welcoming, because he felt as though he had been cold for years.

“I doubt Captain Hunsaker second-guesses himself,” she retorted.

“Maybe not all.”

He didn't try to stop himself. He moved his hand under her nightgown, until he touched the soft hair between her legs.

“Just a minute.”

Embarrassed, Will started to leave the berth, but she stopped him. “Just a minute, I said,” she repeated, as she handed him the sleeping baby. She opened her valise on the floor and folded in a tablecloth he had borrowed from the dining car, making it a sheet. She took Olympia from him and set the sleeping infant in the open valise, tucking it partly under the lower berth, where it was firmly anchored.

After closing the curtains around them, she sat on
the lower berth and pulled her nightgown over her head. Without a word, Will pulled back the blanket again and removed his trousers. The uniform jacket was already off and getting wrinkled—where, he didn't much care.

“Are you sure about this, Francie?” he whispered.

She nodded. “Remember last night when Nora told you about her husband covering her with a blanket at the dance? You've now done that twice to me.”

“Francie, that was…”

“Different? Tell me how some time, but not now, Will. I need you.”

“Ditto here.” He pulled the blanket over them without another word.

W
ill had occasionally fantasized about making love on a train. There was something pleasantly stimulating about the rhythmic clatter of the wheels that had appealed to the sybarite in his nature.

As he began to explore Francie's abundant curves, he tried to tell whatever part of his brain might still be rational that this was a supremely bad idea. This embarrassment of riches was his hospital steward's daughter, for goodness' sake. He explored Francie's breasts with his hand and then his lips, as he reminded himself that it was getting light; that the conductor knew where his berth was and could fling open the curtains with another medical emergency; that he was about one week away from marrying a beautiful lady who loved him.

None of his puny admonitions had the smallest effect on his body. If Francie had any similar objections, they weren't registering with her, either, from the eager way she touched him and kissed him more thoroughly than he had ever been kissed in his life. He knew he should
have been gentlemanly enough to assure her that he would be gentle—on the chance—and what did he know?—that she was a virgin—but he didn't. Just as well, because he wasn't gentle.

With a sigh, Francie happily accommodated his rather assertive entrance into her body—good grief, where were his manners? She pressed against his back with her hands and heels as they both discovered that train rhythm was amazingly erotic: a satisfactory conclusion to his scientific experiment. He gathered her close, relishing every thrust and parry and holding himself off until she climaxed once and then again only delirious seconds later. She pressed her lips against his neck to keep herself from letting the entire train car hear her approval of what the two of them had just so energetically wrought, courtesy of biology and the Union Pacific Railroad.

If she could be so restrained, so could he. Will groaned into her ear when his own turn came, which only made Francie tighten her grip on him and unleash herself again. Man of science that he was, Captain Will Wharton, post surgeon, had no inkling that the average woman in 1877 was so talented.

But enough was surely enough, especially when the porter came through the car, sounding his summons to breakfast and announcing an arrival in Omaha in one hour. He knew he should be a kind fellow and unlimber himself from Francie's charms, but for the life of him, he had no urge to find the exit. Besides, she was still twining her legs around his—who knew that a gentle hand running up and down his back would be so soothing? Every single care he had boarded the train with in Cheyenne had flown away; he was jelly.

Francie shifted first, so he reluctantly did the polite thing and moved. She was all business for a moment, finding a cloth for him and her, probably the handful of napkins that he knew he would never, ever return to the dining car. And then she curled close to him, so they lay together as one. It was his turn to sigh and pull her closer, as she flung one leg over his loins as though she owned him. Maybe she did. He rested his hand on her head, massaging her scalp.

Someone had to say something, and again Francie was way ahead. “I'm not a virgin,” she whispered. “It's been a while, though.”

He had no trouble saying the right thing. “I'm not, either,” he whispered back, “and ditto on the chronology.”

She kissed his chest. “At the end of the war, I became engaged to Jemmy Doyle, sergeant in the Irish Brigade. Everyone knew the war was over. It was only a matter of time, and then we'd be married, so why wait?”

Francie was silent then, and he gently pulled her even closer. “It happens, Francie.”

“I know.” He sensed her great sorrow, mellow now, but evident. “Jemmy died at the battle of Sayler's Creek, right before Appomattox. That was twelve years ago.”

“I'm sorry,” he said and kissed her forehead.

“So was I.” Another sigh. “Will you think me strange if I was sorry there was no child? I loved Jemmy Doyle.”

And I love you now,
he thought, beguiled with the knowledge that skidded to a halt across the stage of his mushy brain.
I wonder how long I have loved this woman?

“I'm sorry, too, Francie,” he told her. “You'd have made a fine sergeant's wife. Damn war, anyway.” He
kissed her again, then ran his finger gently along her jawline. “A moment of plain speaking here, Francie: I confess to having wanted to do this practically since the first time you set foot in the hospital to read to my miscreants.”

“You're not serious,” she said and it sounded like a statement of fact.

“I am, actually.” He took a deep breath. “I'm not sure when it happened last night, but I'm being honest for the first time in a year of observing you. What are we going to do?”

Francie pushed herself on one elbow, the better to see into his eyes, now that their curtained berth was light. She opened her mouth to speak, when someone coughed politely outside the curtain.

“Yes?” Will asked. Better he should speak, since this was his berth.

He wasn't sure what Francie was going to say, but when she kissed his fingers, then made herself small under the covers, he suddenly prayed there wouldn't be any Philadelphia wedding. When Francie was safely behind him, Will opened the curtain a crack. “Yes?”

It was the conductor, with just the faintest whiff of scotch on his breath.
Someone had to finish the bottle,
Will thought, amused.

“Captain, you need to fill out the death certificate. We'll be in Omaha in forty-five minutes.”

Will closed the curtain and hurried into his wrinkled uniform, helped along by Francie. He had to stop every few minutes to kiss her, and nearly called a halt to the whole proceedings when she made it her business to button up his trousers in such a lingering fashion. What a talented female. Barefoot, he padded down the aisle
to the washroom and dragged a razor across his face in some approximation of military spit and polish. He took a moment to appraise himself in the mirror: brown eyes still as earnest, hair just as red, moustache still giving his somewhat baby face enough gravitas to suggest he could perform surgery on grown-ups, lips a bit bruised from hard usage by Mary Frances Coughlin.

Maddy will never know,
he thought for one traitorous moment, and then he knew he could never marry her now, no matter how scandalous his ordinary life was quickly going to become. Good Heavens, the wedding of the season was going to turn into the debacle of the decade. Whartons and Radnors would rise up and smite him, and rip his club memberships to shreds. He'd be a lucky cur if Maddy didn't sue him for breach of promise.

“So be it,” he told the man in the mirror, who managed to look both satisfied to the hilt and green about the gills at the same time. “If you're going to be a cad, might as well do a good job of it.”

He put on his shoes in the corridor, narrowly avoiding stumbling into a full-breasted matron heading to the women's washroom and looking like one of Wagner's Valkyries. He parted the curtains to his berth to see Francie struggling into her shirtwaist. He obliged her by buttoning her up the back, seasoning the act with a kiss or two. The valise was lying open on their berth now, but it was empty.

“I woke up Nora at about the same time Olympia started making little noises,” Francie whispered. She kissed his ear. “Hopefully, we were quieter.”

He blushed and nodded. “I am never going to ask,” he whispered back and Francie smiled.

“You and Nora take Olympia to the dining car.” He handed her a greenback. “I recommend the French toast.” Heavens, what a prosaic sentence. It nearly made him wince, considering that he wanted to crawl back into his berth for Round Two.

He cleared his throat, conductor-fashion, and parted the curtains on the upper berth to see Nora holding Olympia now. “Good morning, Nora,” he said, hoping she had slept through all the early-morning activity in the berth below. Since she looked far more rested than he did, he thought that was the case.

“Good morning, Captain,” she replied.

Maybe it was a trick of the light, but he could have sworn Nora gave him a slow wink. He closed the curtains, sweating in the cold air. He smiled at nothing and no one, until he thought of Maddy.
I am the world's biggest fool,
he told himself.
I can treat the common cold, but not the common cad.