My Darling Melissa (27 page)

He set her back from him and tried to sound stern. “I don’t remember giving you permission to leave school,” he said.

Mary laughed, her sightless brown eyes shining with the pure joy of rebellion. “I’ve learned everything those people can possibly teach me,” she said. “I want to stay here in Port Riley from now on.”

“We’ll discuss that later.” Quinn shoved a hand through his hair and started up the stairway, his arm around Mary’s waist. He wanted to introduce her to his wife, or at least mention that he had one, but he was hesitant, having no idea what state of mind Melissa might be in.

It turned out that Helga had spared him the trouble of making an announcement. “The maid tells me that you’ve taken a bride,” Mary said. She sounded hurt, though she jutted out her chin and added defiantly, “I’m glad you didn’t marry that dreadful Gillian. I don’t like her.”

Quinn allowed himself a smile at the irony of that and spoke gently. Since the accident that had blinded her a year before, Mary had been prone to emotional outbursts, and he
was always careful not to upset her. “Maybe you won’t like Melissa either,” he teased as they moved along the upper hallway. “Did you ever think of that?”

Mary shook her head purposefully. “I know I’ll adore anyone with the nerve to wear bloomers and buy her own printing press,” she insisted.

They reached the master suite, and Quinn was just about to knock when Helga came out of another room and said quickly, “Oh, please don’t wake her, sir! Mrs. Rafferty’s plumb done in!”

“I’ll meet her later,” Mary said considerately. “Right now it’s time for Auntie to read aloud from Mr. Shakespeare’s sonnets.”

Quinn helped Mary across the hallway into her own room and was greeted by an ominous look from his aunt. She sat in a rocking chair near the cold fireplace, a thin woman with scraggly red hair that had once been a rich auburn, clad in a sensible serge dress of faded blue.

Quinn inclined his head to her and would have slipped out but for the fact that she made one of those imperious gestures of hers that invariably froze him in his tracks.

“Your brother and I will have a word, Mary,” she said, rising from her chair, “and then we’ll read.”

In the relative privacy of the hallway Alice gripped both Quinn’s hands in hers and looked up into his eyes. “I have wonderful news,” she told him in a whisper.

Quinn was weak with relief. Given the way the day had been going, he’d expected more trouble.

“There is hope for Mary, Quinn. Real hope.”

Quinn rested against the wall and gave an exasperated sigh. “You’ve been to another phrenologist? Another faith healer?”

“Dr. Koener is a physician,” Alice said. “A surgeon. He’s examined Mary’s eyes, and he believes that a simple operation could restore her sight. However, there are risks.”

Mary had visited virtually every doctor between Seattle and San Francisco, all to no avail. Quinn believed that it was time for her to accept her limitations as a blind person and make what she could of her life. He glared at his aunt and
ground out, “You shouldn’t have done it. You know what I think about—”

Alice met his gaze squarely and folded her arms. “I know what you think, all right. The truth is, Quinn Rafferty, that when it comes to that child you’re just plain cowardly!”

“What’s so special about this Dr. Koener?” he hissed, ignoring his aunt’s last remark. “What makes him different from the nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine other doctors she’s seen?”

“He has had special training in Austria, that’s what. Quinn, he is a very fine doctor—I know he can help Mary!”

“He can disappoint her, you mean,” Quinn retorted, furiously weary. “Not to mention putting her through hell and maybe even killing her!”

Alice gripped her nephew’s arms firmly in her thin, strong hands. “At least go and talk to the man, Quinn.”

He felt his face contort as he imagined what Mary could be forced to endure. “What if it doesn’t work?” he demanded.

Alice was intrepid. “What if it does?” she countered, and when her words had had time to sink in she reached up and touched his cheek with one hand. “His name is Albert Koener, and his office is on Third Avenue.”

Quinn turned away and, having nowhere else to go, slipped quietly into the rooms he shared with Melissa. She was not lying on the bed, as he’d expected, but stretched out on the settee, both feet propped on the arm. Her lashes lay thick and dark on her pale cheeks, and her hair was coming loose from the heavy braid trailing down over one shoulder.

Unable to resist, Quinn bent and kissed Melissa’s forehead. If he’d gotten one thing out of this crazy day, it was the realization that he truly loved this woman, and that was something to hold onto.

Sound asleep, Melissa squirmed a little, fluttered one hand in front of her face, and said, “Stop it, Ajax!”

Quinn grinned and shook his head. “How brief is glory,” he said, and then he carefully rearranged the blanket that covered her and left the room.

He made his way through Sunday-quiet, sunny streets to
the little building that housed both the Western Union office and the operator himself, and he knocked on the door.

Charlie resented being made to send wires on Sundays or after hours, and he made his feelings clear, but he sent out the message Quinn dictated and waited patiently for the response.

A full forty-five minutes had passed when Adam Corbin wired back from Port Hastings:

ALBERT KOENER IS A GOOD MAN. YOU CAN TRUST HIM. HOW IS MELISSA?

Quinn wasn’t sure how to answer that question. To say that she was fine wouldn’t be entirely honest, and he didn’t want her family worrying unnecessarily, either. Finally he responded:

YOUR SISTER IS AS ORNERY AS EVER. THANKS FOR EVERYTHING.

After that Quinn went back home, but instead of entering the house he walked around to the stables and saddled his horse, a temperamental gelding he’d never taken the trouble to name.

An hour’s ride brought him to the falling-down cabin where he’d been raised. Smoke was curling from the chimney, and while Quinn was tying his horse to the hitching post Eustice came out, grinning.

“This a social call?” he crowed. The look in his eyes told Quinn he’d guessed what the visit was about, and that he was relishing his son’s discomfort.

Even now, after so many years, Quinn hated to set foot inside that place. “Sure it is, old man,” he said in a cold voice. “I can’t think of anybody I’d rather pass the time of day with.”

Eustice howled with laughter at that and stepped back inside the one-room cabin. Quinn followed, unable to keep from glancing up at the loft where he’d spent so many miserable nights as a boy.

“You knew Mary was coming back, didn’t you?” he made himself ask, facing his father over the huge cable spool that served as a table. “That’s why you’re here.”

The old man sighed and scratched his protruding belly through a layer of flannel. “She’s my daughter,” he reminded Quinn expansively. “I reckon it’s my duty, so to speak, to know her whereabouts.”

“She’s not your daughter,” Quinn bit out, “and that’s exactly the point. And if you go near her, you poisonous old bastard, I’ll boil your gizzard and feed it to the squirrels!”

Eustice chuckled and shook his head. “Still ain’t told her the truth, have you? I’ll bet that sweet little wife of yours don’t know, neither. My, my, but that does sweeten the pot. It does indeed.”

“Melissa would understand,” Quinn said flatly. The fact was, however, that he wasn’t all that sure of her reaction, and Eustice knew it. Still, something compelled him to try and bluff his way through. “As for Mary, she’s no prouder of being yours than I am. I’ll risk losing her and Melissa, too, before I’ll let you blackmail me again.”

Eustice’s expression had turned solemn. “You know somethin’, boy? You’re an ungrateful whelp—I didn’t take the strap to you near often enough!”

The cabin was suddenly filled with ghosts. His mother was there, weeping and pleading with Eustice to show mercy. Quinn could hear the shaving strap slicing through the air, could almost feel it making contact with his flesh.

He dashed outside to stand gasping for air, struggling against a hatred so deeply ingrained that it made him yearn to kill. With his father’s laughter ringing in his ears—whether he was remembering that or hearing it then, he could not tell—Quinn untied his horse, mounted, and started back down the mountainside to Melissa.

Sixteen

Sunday dinner would have been a glum affair, as far as Melissa was concerned, if it hadn’t been for Mary Rafferty’s insistent good spirits. Quinn had just returned from a ride, and he was in a distracted, uncommunicative mood. After systematically dividing the food on his plate into heaps he muttered an excuse and left the table.

Melissa immediately rose and went after him, stopping him in the hallway with an urgently whispered “Quinn!”

He paused, and Melissa could see the muscles go tense beneath the white fabric of his shirt, but he did not turn to face her. “I’m tired,” he said. “I’m going to bed.”

It was barely seven-thirty. “Are you sick?” Melissa asked, remaining a few feet behind Quinn even though she longed to step around him and read the expression in his eyes.

He gave a ragged laugh then, and his hand curved briefly around the newel post as he started up the stairs. “You could say that,” he replied curtly.

Melissa let him go without another word. She was grateful that he’d gone upstairs instead of to a saloon or a mistress,
as another man might have done. When she returned to the dining room Mary heard her approach and asked anxiously, “Is Quinn all right? Why did he leave?”

Miss Alice nodded at Melissa’s questioning glance, granting her permission to intercede. Melissa could not tell the truth, since she didn’t know what it was, so she answered, “The last few days have been hectic for him, Mary, what with the hotel opening and everything. I’m sure he’ll be fine with a little extra rest.”

Mary seemed mollified by this explanation and launched into an entirely new subject. “I’m glad Quinn married you, Melissa,” she said with conviction. “I did despise Gillian Aires with my whole heart!”

Melissa suspected that her young sister-in-law did everything with her whole heart, and she already loved her for it. “Why?” she asked before noticing that Miss Alice was glaring at her in warning and shaking her head.

Quinn’s sister found her water glass and raised it carefully to her lips. “There’s no love inside her,” she replied after taking a sip from the goblet. “You can tell that about people, you know—just by how they make you feel.”

Miss Alice brought the conversation skillfully back to weariness. “As Quinn is tired, Mary,” she said, “so are you. It’s been a long journey from Seattle, and you need to be in bed soon.”

“I’m not a child,” Mary protested, but there were shadows under her eyes, and her skin looked drawn and pale. She pushed back her chair in a dejected gesture of concession and blurted out, “Did you talk to Quinn about Dr. Koener, Auntie?”

Alice’s thin lips tightened across her teeth for a moment. “Yes, and I got just the reaction we expected, but you mustn’t be discouraged. Quinn will come to see reason once he’s had time to think.”

Melissa was left adrift when the two women excused themselves and quit the table, and her appetite was gone. Given what Mitch had told her in the buggy that afternoon, she had been full of questions about Quinn and Gillian, and
now a new mystery had been added. She wondered who Dr. Koener was and why Quinn’s opinion of him was so important, but she had no one to ask.

When Alice did not come back downstairs Melissa retired to the master bedroom. Quinn was not in bed asleep, as Melissa had expected him to be, but seated at his desk, working over a column of figures. His shoulders looked so painfully tense that she went to stand behind him and began massaging the muscles in his upper back.

He sighed and submitted to Melissa’s ministrations, laying down his pencil. “My God, that feels good,” he said.

“Who’s Dr. Koener?” she asked after a long time, working at his neck now, her thumbs plying the nape.

Quinn groaned softly and let his head fall forward. “He’s a surgeon practicing in Seattle. Alice wants him to operate on Mary’s eyes.”

Melissa tried to pose her question in a tone and manner that would encourage further confidence. “And you’re opposed to that?”

“I don’t know.” Quinn caught Melissa’s hand in his and drew her around, at the same time pushing back his chair so that he could set her on his lap. He looked so tired and forlorn that she was filled with love for him, and all the things that Mitch had said were far from her mind in those moments. “I wired Adam this afternoon,” he went on. “He thinks Koener is all right.”

Melissa traced the outline of Quinn’s lips with the tip of her index finger. “When it comes to medicine, Adam’s word is as good as gold. He even made Banner show credentials when they went into practice together.”

Quinn kissed Melissa’s finger lightly, then pulled it away. Misery lingered in his eyes, along with a forlorn sort of amusement. “Go to bed, Calico,” he said. “I’ve got work to do, and you’re distracting me.”