Lynna Banning (17 page)

Blind instinct drove his feet down the length of the infirmary to the doorway. He had to see Erika, had to tell her.

“I’m going home for an hour,” he announced.

Without waiting for a reply, he began to walk, then to run, toward the big gray house on Maple Street.

Mrs. Benbow clutched at his sleeve the instant she saw him. “Why, whatever is the matter?” she croaked. “Is it Erika? Has something happened?”

“Adeline, where is she?”

“At the Brumbaughs’. Tonight’s the musicale.
Lordy, from the look on your face I thought—You’ll have to hurry, or you’ll be late. I’ve laid out your clean shirt, and.”

Tithonia’s musicale! He’d completely forgotten about it. A twinge of unease escalated into inexplicable anger.

Erika was out, occupied with something that didn’t involve him. She was his wife, and she had a life separate from his. Separate from him!

He raced upstairs to bathe and change. He didn’t want Erika to be separate. He wanted her all to himself. It was selfish, perhaps, but the truth. He needed her. She had a child, a husband, a household to run, social standing in the community. What more did a woman—even a woman as unusual as Erika—need?

With an odd sense of foreboding, he tore off his day shirt and trousers, scrubbed his hands and sponge-bathed the rest of his torso in the basin on his dresser. Then he dressed hurriedly for the evening event.

Before he left the house, something propelled him into the nursery where his daughter lay sleeping. He tiptoed in and for a long minute stared down at the child. Her tiny fingers were curled into a fist outside the pink-and-white quilt.

A choking feeling of awe swept over him. His throat constricted, aching as an apple-sized lump
lodged in it. He felt happier and at the same time more frightened than ever before in his life.

He was so close,
so close,
to finding happiness at last. To finding himself. He couldn’t let it slip through his fingers a second time. He couldn’t bear it.

Erika. Erika!
He would fight to keep her. He would do anything—
anything
—to keep Erika safe in his house, and in his heart.

And he would try, no, he would succeed! He would learn to be a papa.

D
ozens of candelabra glowed with light in the Brumbaughs’ oversize front parlor. Jonathan was grateful the guests were already seated, their backs to him, when he arrived. His hands had shaken so much he hadn’t managed to fasten all his shirt studs. In his haste, he’d stuffed the last two in his watch pocket and hoped no one would notice.

He had to see Erika, had to hold her, tell her how much she meant to him, how frightened he was of losing her.

Too late, he realized as he scanned the room. Every chair was filled, and the performers for the evening were closeted somewhere out of sight. The recital had started.

Jonathan eased into a shadowed corner as a trio of women assembled in front of the ornately carved square grand piano and began to sing “Ave Maria,”
accompanied by Jane Munrow. Jane made a number of mistakes, but finally the trio warbled to a shaky but satisfactory end.

The applause, which brought smiles and blushes to the ladies’ faces, allowed Jonathan to surreptitiously find a chair and pull it into the shadows. He sank onto the padded cushion. Resting his head on the high wooden back, he became vaguely conscious of Jane Munrow’s raspy voice speaking some words on behalf of his proposed new water system. After each performance, it seemed, the musicians were to remind the audience why they were assembled: to raise funds for the hospital and the water project.

Jonathan shifted on his chair and closed his eyes. He alone knew that digging was already under way on an improved method of supplying the town’s drinking water. A holding pond and filtration system would be fully operational by Christmas. Purification of the creek water for outlying farm use was also under contract with an engineering firm from Deer Creek. In the meantime, he thought as Jane’s voice droned on, all the valley residents could do was continue to boil their water and pray the epidemic did not recur.

He let his mind wander, and the next thing he knew Ted Zabersky was tuning his violin. Madison Lander and the Vahl boy carried in Erika’s harp and
positioned it in the center of the room. Erika followed.

Jonathan jerked upright. His wife looked ethereal in a softly gathered dress he’d never seen before. She twirled the harp stool to adjust the height and then seated herself.

At the first brush of her fingers across the strings, Jonathan forgot to breathe. Ted Zabersky played well, but the harpist…the harpist was an angel in a cloud of blue-striped lawn. The melody was Mendelssohn’s “On Wings of Song.”

Erika’s heart jolted when she glimpsed Jonathan in the far corner of Tithonia Brumbaugh’s spacious front parlor. All at once her fingers felt clumsy, as if the tips were covered with thick cotton. She checked her hand position—thumbs up, palms close to the strings, as Professor Zabersky had taught her—and refocused on the notes. Bending her head, she put into the music everything she felt about the man who had been her husband a little less than a month. Joy. Peace. Ecstasy. Her body felt marvelously alive at the sight of him.

She followed the violin melody Mr. Zabersky played, feeling his subtle rubato and ritardando—fine new words she had added to her expanding vocabulary. A feeling of contentment, of knowing who she was and where she belonged, flowed through her.

She risked a peek at Jonathan. Surely he would be proud of her, pleased at her first musical triumph!

The expression on her husband’s face almost made her heart stop. Dark eyebrows lifted, his tanned, angular face looked puzzled, as if something unexpected had hit him squarely between the eyes. Slowly his brows descended into a troubled frown.

Jonathan stared at his wife as if he had just this moment laid eyes on her. Music poured from the harp, beautiful sounds he had never dreamed possible, touched with nuance and emotional depth.

His wife played exquisitely!

Jonathan sat as if he’d been poleaxed. Pride flared within him, so deep and hot he feared his expanding chest would pop out the remaining shirt studs. His wife, in fact, was a very fine musician!

And, he realized at that moment, his wife was more than his wife. She was someone else, as well. Someone he did not know.

An odd twinge of unease began at the back of his neck and traveled down the length of his spine. Why should this bother him? Erika belonged to him, was now mother to his child, his partner in body and in spirit.

But inside he. knew there was more. Erika was.herself. A part of her—the part he watched tonight as wonder and possessiveness warred inside him—would never be defined by her marital relationship
to him. Erika was much more than Mrs. Jonathan Callender.

His breath dammed inside his chest. Erika was Erika, and she would never be entirely his.

When the piece drew to a close, Erika rose and curtsied to the audience. The clapping and cheering overwhelmed her, sent the blood into her cheeks.

Mr. Zabersky gave her a beaming smile and kissed her hand. Then he spoke under his breath. “Bravo, my dear. You make an old violinist feel young.”

He stepped back, and Erika’s tongue turned to cornsilk. She had let Mr. Zabersky convince her to address the assembled company with a short speech, a plea for contributions for Jonathan’s new hospital. Now, facing a roomful of Plum Creek townspeople, she regretted the decision right down to her toes.

She moved a single step forward and laid one hand on the harp to steady her body’s trembling. “Ladies and gentlemens. Gentlemen,” she corrected. At the sound of her voice, the clapping died.

“Professor Zabersky and I very happy to play for you this evening.” Her voice shook, and she paused to draw in a shallow breath. “We tonight offer our music because we need.that is, we hope you support new hospital in Plum Creek for sick people.”

She shot a look at Jonathan where he sat bolt upright on Tithonia’s striped damask dining chair. His mouth opened and shut as if he had started to say
something and then changed his mind. His eyes shone with a curious light, but she couldn’t read the expression in them. She prayed he would approve of the words she spoke on behalf of his hospital.

She pulled her gaze away and tried desperately to remember the next line of her speech.

“Never more again,” she said, then immediately amended it. “Never again you must travel to hospital in a city far away. Hospital will be right here in Plum Creek, for all people.”

A smattering of applause followed, and then someone called out a question. “You mean all
white
people, don’tcha, Miz Callender?”

Erika jerked. White people? What did he mean? She lifted her hand off the harp and raised her chin. “All people,” she repeated. Her quiet voice sounded firm and strong in the sudden silence.

“Black folks, too?” the voice pursued. “And Injuns?”

“How ‘bout that passel of Chinese behind the liv-. ery?” someone else added.

Erika felt a sudden chill sweep over the parlor. From across the room, she caught Tithonia’s narrowed gaze. Her hostess would not want controversy stirred up at a social event in her home. Of course, at
no
time or place would Tithonia want even the hint of bending the old rules by which she and the
residents of Plum Creek had lived for two generations.

Erika let her glance rest on the assembled guests. None of them wanted change. Not Tithonia, not any of the ladies of the quilting circle, possibly not any woman or man in all of Jackson County. Especially if it meant the rights of a previously shunned minority would change, too.

Her breath clogged inside her lungs. What about Jonathan?

It occurred to her she had no idea what her husband’s thoughts were on the subject She loved Jonathan, admired his dedication to healing the sick. And yet, she realized with a rush of horror, she had assumed his feelings would be the same as hers. Now she acknowledged that she could not be sure of that. She had only her own assumptions about his beliefs.

What a puzzle marriage was! How was it a woman could know a man intimately and yet not know the depth of his spirit?

Because,
an inner voice whispered,
you see him in your own image! And he does the same. Neither of you really knows the other. That is the real adventure of a marriage!

She heard the low rumble of dissatisfaction among the guests crowding Tithonia’s parlor. Her stomach floated up behind her rib cage and turned over.

She needed Jonathan’s approval, his love. She
longed for Tithonia’s acceptance, and that of the other ladies, but now an insistent idea lodged in the back of her mind.

It didn’t matter what Jonathan or Tithonia or anyone else thought about black people or Indians or the Chinese families in town. She knew what
she
thought.

She recalled the elderly Negro farrier down at the livery stable, the two Chinese families who lived in a single shack and worked laying railroad track between Plum Creek and Rose City. She thought of Micah Tallhorse and his brother, the offerings of smoked fish and fresh vegetables left on the back porch steps. They were human beings, too.

She steeled her nerves and opened her lips to speak. “Yes,” she acknowledged. “The hospital should be open to all the people.”

A murmur ran around the room. Instantly, Tithonia heaved herself to her feet. “Next,” she said in a commanding voice, “we are honored to hear Mr. Zabersky’s talented daughter, Mary, and her betrothed, Mr. Whitman Vahl. They will perform for us a new song, all the way from St. Louis.”

As she moved aside, Erika sought Jonathan’s eyes. His steady perusal dashed her entire body in ice water. Hard-eyed and still frowning, he held her gaze for an interminable minute, and then he sent her a barely perceptible nod.

She had no idea what the gesture signified. Approval? Barely concealed toleration? Acknowledgment of battle lines drawn between them?

Her heart pounding, Erika accepted Theodore Zabersky’s arm and allowed him to conduct her to a seat. She watched Madison Lander carry her harp away and tried to quiet her breathing.

Mary Zabersky took her place at the piano, and Erika forced herself to concentrate on the young woman’s calm demeanor. She intended to learn as much about proper deportment as she could by studying how other ladies conducted themselves. Every social gathering was an opportunity for instruction.

Still shaking from the words she had spoken in public, she pressed her back into her chair and tried to quell the thudding of her heart.

As Mary’s clear soprano voice, carried the strains of “While Strolling Through the Park” over the chords strummed on Whitman’s guitar, Erika fancied Jonathan’s eyes on her, boring into her back.

She had made a mistake, a terrible mistake. She had spoken out on an unpopular issue, damaged Jonathan’s chances for hospital donations. Oh, why could she never just
think
things and not speak them out in words?

She longed to escape the hot, crowded room, longed to remove her tight, buttoned shoes and run
barefooted through the cool grass in the town square. She was a peasant at heart. Too simple in her tastes and too outspoken in her opinions to be a fine lady.

Or, she admitted with a sinking feeling inside her belly, a doctor’s wife.

It had been a mistake to marry Jonathan. She had reached for happiness, for marriage with a man she admired and loved, but she knew now that she could never live up to its obligations.

“I
finished icing my orange cake,” Mrs. Benbow said from the kitchen stove. “I’m just puttin’ the roast into the oven, so why don’t you lie down and take a bit of a rest, lass? You look all tired out.”

Erika was in a fizz of nerves. It was her first dinner party, and Jonathan had been called out to the Rukavin place. With pure terror, she faced the prospect of entertaining the mayor and his wife on her own.

The occasion was a celebration of two events—Plotinus and Tithonia Brumbaugh’s thirty-second wedding anniversary and release of the last cholera patient from Jonathan’s hospital. After six long weeks, the epidemic appeared to be over.

At Jonathan’s suggestion, Erika had invited Theodore Zabersky and his daughter, Mary, together with Mary’s fianc6, Whitman Vahl, Gwen Shaunessey and
her elderly mother, Mrs. Madsen. Try as she might, Erika could not calm her nerves, and here it was the afternoon of the affair!

She would be a failure as a hostess. If it weren’t for Mrs. Benbow’s menu advice and solicitous guidance through the pitfalls of planning her first at-home social event, Erika would have crept out to the backyard hours ago and poured out her fears to Jasmine, the goat.

“Yes, I—oh! Not yet. I forget flowers for table.
The
table,” she corrected. She flitted out to the laundry porch, then dashed back into the kitchen for the flower shears she kept hanging near the back door.

“Iris and.and.” Her mind went blank. What sort of flowers were proper for the dining table? Valerian blooms had too sharp a scent, and besides, they were carmine red. She liked close color combinations, but Tithonia had once remarked that Erika’s front garden beds looked “mixed up.”

Since then, Erika had walked the streets of Plum Creek and studied the gardens of other houses. Roses, mostly. Tiny pink ones or floppy, fragrant yellow blooms arched over trellises.

She had no rosebushes. Maybe next year, she vowed. She would ask for cuttings and plant them blended together in related shades, like a tapestry.

In her mind, she began to lay out the garden beds as she marched up and down the path, shears in hand.
She’d give anything to be able to kneel and dig in the rich dirt instead of entertaining seven people at dinner!

She gathered all the purple iris stalks in bloom, then glanced at the swaths of black-eyed Susans she’d planted against the foundation. Yes! Quickly she cut a huge armload.

When the hall clock struck six, the baby was fed and changed and put to bed, the mouthwatering smell of Mrs. Benbow’s rosemary-encrusted roast drifted upstairs, and her yellow-striped taffeta evening gown lay on her bed, freshly pressed. Even though she spent the nights with Jonathan in the master bedroom, she still used her small bedroom as a private retreat and dressing room.

By six-thirty, Jonathan had still not returned home, and their guests were due at seven. Erika peered out the window at the waning light. Had he been delayed by something unexpected at the Rukavins’? Stopped to visit another farm along the way or perhaps developed one of his headaches?

He couldn’t have forgotten! She’d spent too many sleepless nights confiding to him her fears about the upcoming dinner gathering for him to be unmindful of the date.

Her fingers fumbled with the corset lacings as the feeling of foreboding grew stronger. Something was going to happen tonight, she could feel it in her
bones. Mama had always said she could often sense a disaster before it happened.

A headache of her own nagged at the back of her head, and her mouth suddenly felt dry.
Jonathan wouldn’t leave me to do this alone, would he? As punishment for speaking out at the recital?

Not one word had passed his lips about that evening. Other than gripping her arm so tightly it hurt and hustling her home to bed and a night of lovemaking that still made her blush, Jonathan had never revealed how he felt about her outspoken opinions. Or about the proposed hospital’s admittance policy. Since the recital, she hadn’t had the courage to ask him. Some instinct told her to leave well enough alone. For now, anyway.

She drew on the cool, silky material of her new evening dress. Oh, so extravagant! Jonathan had showered her with gifts: parasols and shoes and gowns, two paisley shawls, a black velvet cape. Once she protested that all she really needed was a plain denim work skirt because her old one was worn out, and he had bought her three new ones—not denim, but sateen in beautiful colors like rose and forest green and blue.

She adjusted the short puffed sleeves and low-cut neckline of her dress, then turned to the framed mirror on the dresser. Looking back at her was someone she didn’t recognize.

Her cheeks were flushed from the heat of the kitchen where she’d helped Mrs. Benbow peel potatoes and slice carrots for the past hour. Her eyes shone with a hot inner light. She looked feverish, overexcited.

“Never again,” she swore aloud. “Never again a party dinner for Missus Mayor or anyone else!” She preferred to eat her meals in the company of Jonathan or at the cozy kitchen table with Mrs. Benbow.

Still, she wanted to please Jonathan, yearned to step into the role of doctor’s wife with ease and flair the way his former wife would have. She knew Tess had been trained from birth in the ways of proper social conduct; Erika had learned everything from scratch. Underneath, she would never feel comfortable.

She looked down at her feet, encased in supple French kid dress slippers.
Stadtschue,
Mama would have called them. City shoes. Her toes felt mashed under the black leather. She would never learn to like such contraptions!

She swallowed hard and headed for the stairs. When the doorbell sounded in the front hall, her throat tightened.
So soon?
And Jonathan was not here yet!

Mrs. Benbow, resplendent in a new lace-trimmed black bombazine dress, opened the door.

Tithonia swept past the housekeeper in a flurry of
lilac ruffles and pleats. “Erika, my dear!” the mayor’s wife gushed. A waterfall of purple lace trembled over the older woman’s ample bosom.

Plotinus tagged at her elbow. The plump mayor lifted his stiff straw hat and handed it to Mrs. Benbow, then loosened the buttons on his doublebreasted frock coat and turned to Erika.

“Don’t mind tellin’ you, Miz Callender, it’s a warm night for a suit, even a linen one!”

Erika smiled and pressed his hand. The mayor and his wife were early!
Oh, God, help me to think! What am I supposed to do?

“Jonathan n-not home yet,” Erika stammered. “Other guests not arrived yet, so please, come into parlor.”

Tithonia embraced her. “We’ll just entertain ourselves, then, won’t we?” She linked arms with Erika and drew her toward the parlor doorway.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Mrs. Benbow direct a sharp-eyed look at the mayor’s wife. “Dinner’ll be at seven, like the invitation said,” the housekeeper snapped. “My roast needs a spell to set and—”

Tithonia ignored her. “Naturally. Come along, Erika. You must show me some new song on your harp. Professor Zabersky, he taught my Jenny, you know. Such a capable man! He tells me you’re quite the brightest light among his pupils.”

Erika gaped at her. She was not prepared to play this evening. She had barely recovered from her performance nerves the night of Tithonia’s charity recital.

Too late she realized that of course she would be expected to play! Ladies always entertained their guests; that’s why they took lessons and practiced—to be “accomplished.”

She was unprepared for the ordeal. The only thing she could play was the accompaniment for Mr. Zabersky’s violin piece, but just the arpeggiated chords alone amounted to…to nothing!

“Oh, but I—” She broke off in midsentence. She would
not
be bullied by Tithonia. And certainly not in her own house! A wave of dizziness washed over her at the audacity of what she was about to do, but she shook her head to clear it and straightened her spine.

“We will perform tonight, Mrs. Brumbaugh, but it will be a surprise for you and the mayor. For anniversary.”

Tithonia sent her a delighted look and turned to her husband. “Oh, Tiny, do you hear that? A surprise! You know how I love surprises!”

The mayor patted her shoulder. “My dear, that I do. I wonder what our hostess has planned!”

Erika blanched. She, herself, wondered exactly the same thing!

The Zaberskys arrived next, Mary in a soft brocaded rose silk, holding tight to Whitman Vahl’s hand and blushing, her father looking stiff and elegant in a formal frock coat and black top hat. When Gwen Shaunessey and Mrs. Madsen appeared, Erika conducted them to the parlor, then went to help Mrs. Benbow in the kitchen while the guests chatted.

Just when the housekeeper declared her roast couldn’t wait one more minute before serving, Jonathan burst in through the back door.

“I am sorry to be so late, Erika, on this night of all nights, but—” He closed his arm around her shoulders and hugged her, careful not to let his dusty jacket touch her gown. “I went to see Samuel Tallhorse. Micah found me at the Rukavin place. Said his brother’s leg was stiffening. I rode out to the reservation to check on it.”

Erika nodded. He smelled of horse and sweat and dust. At the moment, she wished her husband was a banker like Plotinus Brumbaugh, with regular hours and a predictable life.

“Can you bathe and change in—” she cast a questioning look at Mrs. Benbow, poised over the roast with a carving knife in her hand “—ten minutes?”

“I can. I’ll carve that at the table, Mrs. Benbow.” He planted a quick kiss on Erika’s warm cheek. “Ten minutes,” he promised. And he was gone,
sneaking upstairs on cat feet while Erika rejoined her guests.

“My husband was called away,” she explained. “To the reservation. He is dressing now and soon will join us.”

She went on struggling to make conversation for minute upon agonizing minute, waiting for Jonathan to appear. Finally, when she had exhausted her studiously practiced list of small-talk phrases, she lapsed into uneasy silence.

She was sure her head would explode from the strain of entertaining a roomful of people all by herself. How could she have been so foolish as to think she could ever play the role of a lady? She smiled at Gwen Shaunessey, encouraging her to continue the story she was telling, forcing herself to concentrate so she could ask polite questions later.

At last Jonathan appeared in the doorway.

Tall and handsome in a dark suit with a gray silk tie knotted at his throat, her husband advanced among the guests, shaking hands and grinning as if nothing untoward had happened. Erika was so glad to see him she could have wept.

The gray silk exactly matched his eyes, she noted. When he paused before her, took her hands in his and held them to his lips, her heart soared. She was his, body and soul, and-wanton that she was-she delighted in it.

“Ladies, gentlemen,” he announced with an engaging smile. “I believe dinner is served.”

As the meal began, Erika looked to Mrs. Benbow for subtle guidance in pacing the courses. Soup came first, tomato bisque flavored with fresh basil. Then a salad of chilled asparagus spears on beds of watercress, and finally slices of succulent roast beef with browned potatoes and carrots.

She could not taste a thing. Lumps of food went down her throat like so much paste. Jonathan poured wine and made easy, amiable conversation with Tithonia on his right and Mary Zabersky on his left, then methodically progressed down one side of the long table and up the other, drawing each guest out, sharing anecdotes, playing the perfect host.

Erika studied him as the main course progressed, tried to emulate his conversational technique with Plotinus on her right. Mrs. Benbow sat just to her left, occasionally intoning a word or two of guidance but otherwise eating in silence.

Laughter and the sound of clinking glassware faded as she stared at her husband’s chiseled features, watched his purposeful hands lift a knife, tip a glass to his lips. Her head spun.

Plotinus leaned forward over his laden china plate. “Out at the Indian reservation tonight, were you, Jon? Any trouble?”

“No trouble,” Jonathan replied. “Just a broken
leg I set a while back. I’ll have to reset it. It’s healed crooked.”

Tithonia set her fork down with a clank. “Where will you do this. In town?”

Jonathan looked up. “Yes, in town. I have to rebreak the bone, under ether, of course. I’ll do it at the hospital, since there are no cholera cases left.”

Tithonia’s lace waterfall fluttered. “I’m sure the
new
hospital, when we raise sufficient funds to construct it, will not accept Indians.”

“Why not?” Erika heard herself blurt out.

Tithonia’s jaw snapped shut

“Because, my dear,” Plotinus said, patting Erika’s hand, “we expect any, er, project my wife and I support, uh, contribute money to, must meet with Tith—with our…um…approval.”

Erika caught Jonathan’s steady gaze. She knew he hoped for the mayor’s financial backing for both the hospital and the new water system. And the Brumbaughs were guests in their home. She must not insult them.

But it was wrong, what Tithonia and the mayor said.
Wrong!
No one who was sick or in need should be excluded because of his heritage. She held her husband’s glance across the table, tried to read his feelings. How she longed to see into his heart!

But Jonathan adroitly shifted the subject, and again conversation swirled around her. Mrs. Benbow signaled
it was time for dessert, and Erika rose to help the older woman clear away the dinner plates.

“It’s unusual, to say the least.” Tithonia’s voice followed Erika into the quiet haven of the kitchen. She leaned her head against the shelf of kettles near the stove and shut her eyes. How could she even
think
she could entertain like a lady? It took all her resolve to keep from fleeing through the laundry porch and outside where Jasmine was tied under the plum tree.

But she would not. Could not. Only cowards ran away.

Erika reentered the dining room bearing the layered orange cake on a plate in time to hear Tithonia’s final words.