Mistletoe Courtship (21 page)

“W
hat are you
doing?”
Heart thumping hard enough to make her dizzy, Clara stumbled over a crooked brick, and Ethan's hand tightened. “Ethan, I can't see well in the dark, and you're walking too fast—oomph!”

He stopped with a suddenness that made her smack straight into him. But even as she tried to pull back, his arm wrapped around her, coat and all, then he half guided, half carried her past the Gordons' house, Mrs. Brenders's boardinghouse and a packed-dirt cross street until they reached the livery stable, now deserted. Obscured by the night, a horse and buggy waited in front of the hitching post.

“Get in,” Ethan ordered, his hands insistent as he virtually shoved her up onto the narrow cloth seat.

Clara might have leaped out while he walked around to untie the horse, except she was almost as curious as she was furious. The seat springs squeaked when he climbed in beside her. He jiggled the reins, setting the buggy in motion. “I've never dealt well with officiousness,” she began levelly enough.

“Right now, I'm not dealing well with anything.” While Clara sputtered her way through that retort he tossed a heavy
wool lap robe over her. “Bundle up. I'm the only physician around Canterbury these days, and in my present mood you wouldn't want to fall sick.”

“I never get sick of anything but surly high-handed males.” She was grateful at the moment for the thick shroud of darkness, otherwise Ethan would be able to see her face. Surely the hurt would show—how often had he told her about her expressive face? Worse yet, tears stung her eyes.

Clara was not a weeper. One more reason she never should have fallen in love with this difficult, confusing man, she decided as one of the puddled tears finally slid down her cheek. If it wouldn't have involved fighting her way free of muff, coat and heavy lap robe, she would have swatted his arm. “Now that you've successfully abducted me, where are we going?” she asked instead.

For a sickening moment Ethan didn't respond. The horse trotted along, its hooves and the jingle of the harness the only sounds other than the rattle of the buggy wheels. Clara's vision blurred no matter how many times she blinked the moisture away.

Without warning he swung the horse to the side of the road, under a bare-branched elm whose immense trunk, when combined with the starless night, plunged them into invisibility. “I don't know where we're going,” he growled before muttering some inaudible phrase. “For three years I've been doing my best to go nowhere. When I finally scrape together the courage to try living again, you come along and resurrect feelings I thought atrophied a long time ago.”

“So sorry to hear you have feelings. Since you've trampled all over mine, I'll try to return the favor.” Struggling furiously, Clara worked one hand free of all encumbrances, swiped her face, then attacked the lap robe. “Ever since we met again you've behaved like an India-rubber ball, bouncing helter-
skelter in all directions. One moment you're a charming gentleman, the next you act as though I'm a noxious insect in need of squashing. You compare me to a
table arrangement,
but when I try to alter my appearance to look more…more womanly you storm out of the house without a word. You call unannounced, bare your soul, and now you're dragging me off in the night like a pirate! So to reassure you,
Dr.
Harcourt, I will abandon all the plans I've made, and promise to pretend you don't exist even if we have the misfortune to sit beside one another at a dinner party. And if I'm ever unfortunate enough to need a physician, I'll find one in Washington!”

“You want to talk about erratic behavior? Very well, let's look at yours. You're an educated, intelligent woman, yet for all intents and purposes your family acts as if they're embarrassed by you. You're also a striking woman, yet you seem set on hiding the beauty. You live alone, you write anonymous letters to editors that you don't want anyone to know about. You talk to me with perception and sensitivity, then turn around and…and—
Dear God in heaven.”
His voice turned hoarse, even anguished. “This is too much. I can't—”

All of a sudden his hands burrowed beneath her cape to clamp over her upper arms. “Clara, why didn't you include a note with the basket?”

She passed her tongue around dry lips and tried not to cringe. “What difference does it make? You apparently knew instantly I was the giver. I planned to include a note with my next surprise.” When Ethan jerked as though she'd jabbed him with a hatpin, Clara couldn't control a reflexive flinch.

Thick silence froze the air between them.

Then slowly, his movements almost caressing, Ethan slid his hands up her arms to her face. Like Clara he wore gloves. The faint scent of expensive leather burned her nostrils and the careful touch burned her heart. “I've frightened you, haven't
I?” he asked in a voice gone soft as kidskin. “I'm sorry. Shh…don't say anything. It's all right.”

“No, it's not.” She sniffed loudly. Where had her righteous indignation disappeared to? “I don't understand you.”

“The feeling's mutual.” There was a pause. “Clara? Why, you're crying, aren't you?”

“What if I am? You drag me off into the night, hurt my feelings, then you—you…” The words dribbled to a halt because he removed his hands long enough to tug off the gloves, then skimmed her cheeks with his bare fingers. Though chilled by the winter night, his touch set off torches that heated Clara's skin and shot Chinese sparklers along her veins.

But his gentleness intensified her confusion. More tears spilled over. She heard Ethan's breath catch. “Here.” He pressed a handkerchief into her hand.

Silently Clara mopped her face, and wondered if she possessed the strength to maintain her composure until she reached the privacy of her cottage. “I'm cold. I'd like to go home. Please.”

“Will you at least answer a question? I know I don't have the right to ask, but…I need to. Badly.”

She peered through the darkness, but could scarcely discern the faint glitter of his eyes, much less his expression. But she sensed the desperation rolling off him in waves, desperation and a profound weariness that mirrored her own. Love, Clara decided, truly left one's soul too vulnerable to pain, and all the joys promised in the Bible were not strong enough to counter it.

Yet she could not refuse Ethan's plea. Perhaps that in itself was from God—this longing to dispense reassurance, to offer comfort despite the fear of enduring further hurts.
Comfort ye, my people…

Hesitantly, Clara allowed the tenuous emotion to fill her up,
praying that her own fractured faith would still be heard with compassion.

If Ethan asked her something improper or salacious, however, she'd wallop him with the buggy whip, assuming she could find it in this ink-blot darkness. “What do you want to ask me, then?”

A short laugh was the response, followed by another moment of strained silence. “I'm probably shooting myself in the foot, but at this juncture I don't care anymore. Clara…over the past several weeks have you sent me other notes? Anonymous ones?”

Mystified, she tilted her head, straining to catch at least a glimpse of his expression. “No. I know you asked me to—” and she'd spent days fretting about it “—but I've never sent you any sort of note, anonymous or otherwise. It might sound contradictory, considering the basket I left on your porch, but it would be rude to send an unsigned note, don't you think? I don't write many personal letters—don't have time.”

“You do write letters to editors, using a pseudonym.”

“Which is why I don't have time to write personal notes. As you pointed out, I'm already an embarrassment to my family. They would be—I'll call it indignant—about the tone of some of my letters.”

“I never should have said what I did, about your family. Will you forgive me? My sister harped about my stupidity in marrying Lillian. My dad never understood why I wanted to leave medicine for politics. But they still loved me. So does your family.” He paused, then heaved a long sigh. “Never mind. I know you're still confused. I'd like the chance to explain. Actually, if you're willing to trust me enough, I'd like to show you something.”

Gathering fortitude about her like chain mail, Clara cautiously responded, “I trust the man I met in a garden three
years ago. I trust the doctor my brother convinced to open a practice here. As for anything else…”

“That will do for now. Whether you believe it or not, I understand. You might say I'm not the trusting sort myself, when it comes to women.” He gave another bitter little laugh. “You tell yourself you'll heal, that time and God's grace will eventually do its work. You finally lower your guard—and get thrashed.”

“What have I ever done, that you believe I could deliberately hurt you, Ethan?” The question burst forth, but she no longer cared a fig what emotions she revealed. Later she would work through any regrets—much later, when she was a tottering old lady who only faintly remembered what it felt like to have been seared by unrequited love. She would write her memoirs, then burn them to ashes.

“God help me,” Ethan said, “but I hope the answer to your question is nothing at all.” He gathered the reins and they continued down the street. “What I want to show you is in my desk drawer. If you prefer, we can stop by the sheriff's office, and have him or one of the deputies accompany us.”

The sheriff's office? A niggle of alarm quickened her pulse. “Does this have something to do with Deputy O'Shea lurking around your house?”

“Yes.”

“So he's the reason you know who left the basket.”

“He saw you leave it, yes.”

When he didn't elaborate, Clara leaned her head back against the seat and closed her eyes. Sometimes, picking at the scabs of a person's hurts left deeper scars. Lord only knew she bore a heart full of them herself. “Do whatever you want,” she told Ethan.

He murmured something in response. She wasn't sure, but she thought it sounded like
If only I could.

O
n the short and silent journey to his house, Ethan tried to pray. His thoughts had scattered like windblown snowflakes when Clara claimed she'd never written him any notes. She'd even offered an explanation, one quaintly Clara-esque, and because he wanted to believe her so badly he'd behaved like the most boorish of clods.

He had frightened her. What sort of man bullied the woman he loved into a buggy and drove off into the night with her?

Don't ask the question if you can't face the answer.

After securing the horse, he assisted Clara down, unsurprised when she marched down the brick walkway without once looking his way. Fortunately a streetlight illuminated the path to his front porch. Once inside, he hung their coats and mufflers on the coatrack, then led her down the hall to his office. “This won't take long,” he promised, reaching for a scrap of paper and a pen. “Please sit down.” She stiffly perched on the edge of the chair while he dipped the pen in ink, then handed it to her. “Would you write a sentence, anything you think of—a line from a Christmas carol, a poem? Even a shopping list will do.”

“You want to see if my handwriting matches the notes, don't you?”

He nodded, noting absently that his blood pressure had given him a headache, and his insides felt as though he'd ingested an entire block's worth of bricks.

“What on earth do those notes say?” She stared blankly at the pen, then up at Ethan, comprehension draining her complexion of color. “Someone's
threatening
you, aren't they? That's why Officer O'Shea was here. He's guarding you. So where is he now? If you've been threatened, what are you thinking, to wander around without him? Ethan, why haven't you—Wait. Wait.” Her gaze slid back to the pen, then the paper on the desk.

When she lifted her head again, Ethan planted his feet square on the floor and stood unmoving, shoulders braced for the killing blow. A hurt, angry woman inflicted more injury with words than any hurled stones. His hands, sweating now, curled into fists, and he could feel the nervous tic in his left eye he'd developed the year Lillian began her first affair.
God, I don't want to run anymore. Help me face her like a man.

So he stood still while she searched his features with excruciating thoroughness. Stood while she wrote several lines on the sheet of paper, then solemnly thrust it out.

Their fingers brushed; he watched in stupefaction as color rushed into her pale cheeks, and the pen dropped with a clatter onto the desk. A blob of ink splashed onto the blotter like drops of blood. Slowly Ethan forced himself to look down at the words.

“It's from Virgil's
Aeneid.
I could have written it in Latin, but I was afraid you'd think I was showing off. Well?” She stood abruptly, chin tilted imperiously. “What do you have to say, Dr. Harcourt?”

Ethan tossed the paper onto the desk, then carefully reached for those cool, slender fingers. “I say thank God, and will you forgive me?”

“Amen. And…eventually.”

A gust of pure relief weakened his knees. He brought her hand to his mouth and pressed a fervent kiss against the inside of her wrist. “Would it help if I confess that I love you, that these past few weeks have been eating me alive…and your quote could not have been more accurate if you'd been inside my head?” He smiled, loving the sight of her rapid descent into flustered confusion.

“I…What did you say?” she stammered out. “Is this another trick?”

“No, dear one. It's the declaration of a man teetering on the verge of destruction, because he was terrified the woman with whom he'd fallen in love had instead fallen into a mental abyss where I couldn't save her.” Wrapping his fingers around her delicate wrist, he tugged her closer. “Not only are you inside my head, you're inside my heart.”

Because he'd come to better understand her, Ethan quietly held her hand against his thudding heart and waited for her to sort everything out. The wait was not devoid of pleasure; for the first time he felt free to absorb her features—the line of her jaw, the shape of her ears and the soft tendril of seal-brown hair that had escaped to dangle along her temple. Her incredible eyes brimmed with intelligence and uncertainty and shyness.

After a while the prolonged silence began to erode his nascent confidence.

God, I don't deserve her. But I can't bear the thought of
her turning away.
He should have waited, should have kept his fool mouth shut until he gained her trust again. He should have—

“Ethan?”

“Ask anything you want, sweetheart.” He brushed his index finger, which trembled slightly, to the pulse throbbing in her temple. “I understand why you're confused, and I can only apologize—the rest of my life if necessary—for ever believing you'd be capable of writing threatening notes, no matter how vague the threat.”

Unbelievably, Clara shrugged. “If I'd been married to a man who repeatedly betrayed me, I'd feel the same suspicion toward all other men. Without evidence to the contrary, of course you'd wonder if I'd written…whatever was written in those notes. Then for Mr. O'Shea to witness my delivery of a basket—” her eyes crinkled at the corners “—which I'm afraid was carried out in a noticeably clandestine manner, well, I'd be suspicious of me, too. You don't have to apologize. You've made it…ah, abundantly clear that I'm no longer a suspect.”

Abruptly the wisp of humor vanished. “I just can't believe…I never dreamed a man, especially someone like you, would…would…”

Her voice trailed away and her eyelashes swept down to screen her expression. When she started shaking, Ethan with scant ceremony tossed convention aside and drew her into his arms. “Shh…” he whispered, pressing her head against his shoulder. “Shh…”

Her hands clutched fistfuls of his waistcoat. “You're a former congressman, a respected physician. You can't possibly lo—” She stopped.

“Love you?” he finished it for her. “Well, now that I'm convinced I'm not going to have to have both of us admitted to St. Elizabeth's Asylum, how about if I spend between now and
Christmas convincing you that, if you'll have it, my heart is yours, Clara Penrose?”

“You don't know me!” She thumped her hands against his chest. “That's why you suspected me in the first place. I'm eccentric. I live alone. I love animals and treat them like people. I have absolutely no fashion sense as you know, and I never know what to do with my hair. That's why I just stuff it in the bun. What you saw that night at Albert's house is impossible for me to duplicate. My fingers can play a Bach fugue but they don't know what to do with hairpins. And…and I believe that women really should have the right to vote and that—Mmph.”

He stilled the panicked flow of words with a kiss, a brief but thorough kiss that ripped through his wavering control like a scalpel slicing cheesecloth. When Clara turned boneless in his arms, he forced himself to lift his head. “I refuse to apologize for my gross impropriety.”

“Mmm. Me either,” she mumbled dazedly, then blushed a lovely shade of rose.

Charmed, he cupped her chin. “As for your character condemnation—a trait we'll have to work on—I happen to believe God knew precisely the sort of woman I needed to clear the scales from my eyes. And that woman, dear one, is you.”

“I always heard love was blind.” Her fingers crept up to his face. “I've never been kissed like that before,” she whispered. “Is it different, when you love someone?”

All the breath sucked out of his lungs. Throat tight, Ethan hugged her, dropping soft kisses to her eyelids, her nose, forehead, then finally eased her back down into the desk chair to avoid the temptation of her tremulous mouth. “What are you saying, Clara?” he asked, the words husky.

She swallowed several times, but the dark brown eyes didn't so much as flicker. When at last she spoke, the words emerged soft yet clear as a cloudless winter night. “I'm saying that I love
you back, Ethan Harcourt. I'm not sure what we're supposed to do about it, though.”

All the Christmas bells in the world could not equal the joyful clanging in Ethan's heart. He wanted to shout, wanted to sweep this precious woman back into his arms and never let her go.

Instead, because she was Clara, he knelt on the floor beside her, lost himself in those great dark eyes, and allowed himself one last kiss, repeating his avowal of love against her lips.

Tomorrow he would address the unknown woman's identity, and contact the sheriff. But for tonight, he needed to embrace the one he was convinced had been heaven-sent, at just the right time, for all the right reasons.

Thanks for the best Christmas present You could give me, Lord.

 

Outside, a dark figure slowly sank to the cold ground, one fist pressed against her mouth to stifle the scream clawing to escape. How could he? How
dared
he bring a woman to his house, late at night, without even a butler or housekeeper in residence? He knew better. And the woman—she knew that woman. She'd seen her face in the streetlight when the doctor helped her out of his buggy. Of all the women in this self-righteous little community, Clara Penrose should know better than to engage in such scandalous behavior.

Except she
was
Clara Penrose, who, despite her unconventional ways, was considered practically a saint. Oh, she'd heard all the stories in the boardinghouse. It was Miss Penrose this and Miss Penrose that. They might talk behind their hands about her eccentricities, but they still thought she set the moon and stars in place.

Well, perhaps Clara Penrose's reputation deserved a readjustment.

Her previous warnings to Ethan Harcourt had not achieved the desired effect. She had been too cautious. Too…squeamish.

Huddled on the bone-chilling ground, she rocked back and forth, awful memories swirling around her in shades of scarlet and orange and black. It wasn't fair, wasn't fair,
wasn't fair.

Gradually a thought formed deep inside, gathering force until it dispelled the ugly memories. A slow smile spread across her cracked lips and chilblained face.

Yes. The idea offered a perfect solution, though she didn't have much time to gather everything. She risked one last peek through the window, which revealed two silhouettes still at the desk. The Penrose woman looked to be reading something while the doctor stood close by her side, his hand resting on her shoulder.

The woman slipped away from the window and melted into the night.