With Every Breath (29 page)

The thoughts swirled in her mind as she took the streetcar to the Georgetown neighborhood where Mrs. Kendall lived. The days were getting shorter, and it was dark by the time she stepped off the car. Fallen leaves and acorns crunched beneath her feet as she walked toward the town house where Mrs. Kendall lived. She was tired and hungry, and the scent of the roast beef sandwich she’d brought for Trevor was tempting her. She had no idea if he’d been eating properly over the past few days, so she’d wrapped up a sandwich from the dinner cart to bring to him.

She knocked softly on Mrs. Kendall’s door, and it was promptly opened by Nellie, Mrs. Kendall’s frazzled-looking daughter. Exhaustion radiated from the woman’s pale face. She looked confused to see Kate.

“Is Trevor here?” Kate asked.

The door opened wider, and Trevor moved into view. His shirt was rumpled. It looked like he hadn’t shaved in several days, nor slept much either. “What do you need, Kate?”

She held up the sack. “I brought you a sandwich and a bottle of your cod liver oil. I know how much you enjoy it.”

A wry grin twisted his lips. “Come on in,” he said, taking the sack from her.

It was warm inside. The bedroom door was open, revealing Mrs. Kendall’s motionless form on the bed.

“She’s asleep,” Trevor said. He motioned to the small dining table on the other side of the room. “Tell me why you’ve come. It can’t be to deliver a sandwich, as much as I’m going to enjoy eating it.”

Kate sat at the table, Trevor across from her. Nellie donned a mask and returned to her mother’s bedside in the next room. Trevor had been ferociously angry the last time they were together, and there was caution lurking in his eyes, almost as if he was afraid she was here to renew their argument.

“Trevor, your father came by the clinic this afternoon.”

His response was electric. “Stay away from him,” he snapped.

“He didn’t stay long. He looked around the lobby area and asked to see you.”

“What did he say? Tell me
exactly
what he said.”

Kate scrambled to remember the details, but she’d been so stunned by the man’s startling resemblance to Trevor that she couldn’t remember much. “I told him you weren’t there, but he didn’t believe me. He said he came all the way from Scotland to see you.”

Trevor gave a harsh laugh. “He came all the way from Scotland to marry an American heiress. I hear she’s worth twelve million dollars. A soap fortune. What else did he say?”

He’d said she was the “famous Kate” and made snide remarks about Trevor’s habit of mingling with the servants, but both those things would be awkward to say with Nellie in the next room. Trevor sensed her hesitation.

“Nell, I want to go for a little walk with Kate. Will you be all right for a spell?”

Nellie half rose from her seat and waved him away. “Go on. We’ll be fine.”

* * * *

Cold air surrounded Trevor once they stepped outside. He glowered at Kate’s thin cloak. “Don’t you have a decent coat? You’ll catch your death in that scrap of nothing.”

It was easier to grouse at her than look at the weary exhaustion on her face. She didn’t look good, and he knew she must have had an awful day. He cocked an elbow out for her to hold, then set off down the street.

“Nurse Ackerman sent a message this morning about Hannah Wexler,” he said. “I know the two of you were friends, and her loss must have been hard. I’m sorry.” When they were fifteen, he remembered Kate getting misty-eyed when their class’s pet hamster died. She was always too tenderhearted for this sort of work.

“Dr. Schrader said there was tubercular scarring in her heart. That was why she went down so quickly and with no warning.”

“You saw the lab report?” he asked.

There was a slight hesitation as she walked alongside him. “A bunch of nurses are out with the flu. I took the notes during the autopsy.”

He sucked in a breath, then turned to face her. No wonder she looked so overwhelmed. Without thinking he drew her into his arms, holding her tight against him. “Oh, Kate, I’m sorry you had to do that.”

“I’m not.” Her voice was muffled against his shoulder. “It made me really respect what you do—what all of you doctors do in trying to help people.”

He squeezed his eyes shut, his heart beginning to split. Reaching out to hold her was stupid and he was bound to pay for it, but sometimes he needed her so badly. He simply
needed
. Needed to know he wasn’t alone. Needed the solid warmth of another person who cared.

His hand moved up to cup the back of her head, stroking her hair. Her arms tightened around his back, and he didn’t care that they stood in the middle of a public walk. He just needed a few seconds of comfort, holding on to another human being who was a friend and a partner. He might never hold Kate Livingston in his arms again, but at this moment they both needed this.

He opened his eyes and drew a steadying breath. “You’re freezing. There’s a coffee shop at the end of the street where we can talk.”

She drew back, and they both started walking again, her slim hand clasped in his. The warm glow of gaslights illuminated the interior of the coffee shop on the corner. He almost regretted when they arrived and he had to release her hand. But it was warm inside the shop, with a booth in the front where they could sit side by side and look out the large window. He waited until two steaming mugs of coffee were placed in front of them before speaking.

“Tell me again what my father said.”

“It happened very quickly,” Kate said as she held the warm mug between her hands. “He seemed to believe you were hiding somewhere on the floor, but Tick wouldn’t let him get any farther down the hall than the nurses’ station. He got a little angry and said that he’d paid for the clinic.”

Trevor choked on his coffee, making a mess. He reached for a napkin to wipe it up and had to clear his throat several times until he could breathe properly again.

“Are you all right? Shall I ask for a glass of water?”

He shook his head. “I’m fine,” he said, his voice a little scratchy. “My father never fails to amaze me.”

“He is a rather imposing man, isn’t he?”

“That’s one word for him.”

As a boy, Trevor had been in awe of him. Neill McDonough rarely visited the cottage where Trevor lived with his mother, no more than once or twice a month. Trevor wasn’t even sure who the strange man was, but his mother was always nervous before the visits and warned Trevor to be on his best behavior. For days she’d tutor him to memorize some Shakespearean poem or fancy mathematical equation.

“If Mr. McDonough sees what a
smart boy you are, perhaps he will pay for you
to go to college. Wouldn’t that be fine, Trevor?”

Trevor wasn’t even sure what college was, but he agreed it would be fine. All he knew was milking cows and spreading hay and running over to the neighboring crofter’s cottage, where Deirdre Sinclair lived.

All of that came to an end when his mother died. He was only nine years old, and it seemed she’d been sick her whole life. One morning he awoke to find his mother dead in her bed. He didn’t know what he was supposed to do. He sat on the corner of her mattress, certain that if he waited long enough, she would wake up. He prayed. He rubbed her hands and tried to slip water down her throat, but nothing happened. Finally he ran over to the Sinclair cottage for help. A few days later, Neill McDonough came to fetch him.

“You can live in my house, lad. I suppose it’s only fitting.”

He would never forget his amazement when the carriage drew closer to Mr. McDonough’s house, which was in fact a mansion. A massive building of imposing granite blocks, it was four stories
high with mullioned windows that sparkled in the sunlight and towers at the corners that soared even higher. The sprawling house looked like it had been built for a king.

A room was found for Trevor in the servants’ wing. He took all his meals there, and it was the only place he felt comfortable. It was obvious to everyone who his father was. There was his last name for one thing, but even as a child, people noticed the stunning resemblance he bore to the master of the grand estate. His father was a widower with no legitimate children, so Trevor was spared the embarrassment of encountering his half-siblings living abovestairs.

The one truly generous thing Neill McDonough did for Trevor was to provide him with an excellent education. A tutor came to live at the house, and Trevor latched on to the education like a hungry wolf, eager to lap up every drop of knowledge. Instead of sheep and cows, he learned about math and science and chemistry. He discovered whole new worlds living beneath tiny glass slides he put under a microscope. He learned about Aristotle and Beethoven and the rotation of the planets around the sun.

His father never paid him much attention, which made it possible for Trevor to run the three miles back to the Sinclair cottage, where he smuggled treats from the kitchen to Deirdre and stole kisses behind the sheep pen.

It all came crashing to an end his thirteenth year.

“I came by my sense of competition honestly,” he told Kate, who pressed tightly to his side on the coffee-shop bench. “My father is the most competitive person on the planet, but what he seeks to win is money and power. He inherited a fortune and amassed another through a series of strategic business arrangements and marriages. His first wife generated millions from overseas plantations in India and Africa, but she died in childbirth. When I was thirteen, my father became engaged to
a German princess. Very rich and very conservative. It would not do to have a bastard son living below the stairs, so I needed to be sent off somewhere.”

He would never forget the deal he struck with his father that year. Neill McDonough looked nervous and guilty as he took him for a walk through the peat field on a corner of his estate. “Look, boy, I have a cousin in America who is willing to take you in. Robert Campbell is a senator in Washington. Do you know what that means? He’s a powerful man in the United States. I will provide for your allowance and a hefty settlement on your behalf. You will be a very rich man when you come of age, but you can’t live here anymore.”

The thought of leaving Scotland terrified him. The Sinclairs were the only people in the world who cared if he lived or died, and he was pretty certain he was in love with Deirdre. He wanted to marry her when they grew up.

“I don’t want to leave,” he told his father.

The man had no patience. “Your only other option is your mother’s cousin, who lives in a frozen fishing village in the Orkney Islands. It’s a barren wasteland, and you’ll freeze your hide off up there.”

“There’s a girl . . .” he said hesitantly.

His father gave an impatient wave of his hand. “The sheepherder’s daughter. Trust me, lad, you can do better than that. I’ll send you to America with a fortune in your back pocket, and you won’t ever think of her again. Or you can live with strangers in a sod hut on an island in the North Sea. What’s your pleasure?”

He took the money. To this day he felt as if he’d struck a deal with the devil. The Sinclairs would have taken him in, but he already had a taste of his father’s life and didn’t know if he could go back. The years with a private tutor opened up a glimpse
of a dazzling new world, and he hungered for more—for science and chemistry and the chance to keep learning about the fantastic universe he’d discovered under his microscope. Living with the Sinclairs would mean cutting sod and herding sheep.

“I hated myself for what I did,” Trevor said. “Deirdre sent me letters at Senator Campbell’s house, but I never answered them. I knew I couldn’t go back to her. I knew the money from my father was sitting in a bank account, and the senator saw to it that it was wisely invested. But I didn’t want to touch it; that money had the stink of betrayal on it.”

He turned to face Kate, sitting beside him and quietly listening. He didn’t want to broach the subject, but it was one that had been eating at her for the past twelve years, and she deserved an honest explanation.

“You know where this is leading, right?”

“The scholarship,” she said.

He nodded. “I wanted to become a man. I wanted to support myself on my own merit and without the tainted money I took from my father. Winning the scholarship would set me free of that godforsaken deal. It would prove I was capable of making my own way in the world. I’m sorry, Kate. I knew you had hopes for college, but I was too selfish to step away from the chance to win it.” Every ounce of energy drained from his muscles, leaving him unspeakably weary and ashamed. “I was wrong. I should have been strong enough to use my father’s money if it meant clearing the way for you. I hope you can forgive me.”

Kate stared blankly at the lukewarm mug of coffee before her. It was impossible to tell if she was seething in resentment, yet the last thing he expected was the fear in her voice.

“Is that why you hired me? Because you felt guilty about the scholarship?” She held her breath, as though learning his job offer had been based on pity rather than merit would sink her.

He wished he’d been so kind, but it had never even occurred to him.

“I hired you because I needed a fighter on my team.” He tried to find her when he first arrived in Washington, but there was no sign of Kate Norton. It took him months to realize she’d been married, but within twenty-four hours of learning her new name and where she worked, he penned a letter to lure her to the hospital. There was neither pity nor romantic motives in his intent. He simply knew she would be the best person in the world to have at his side as he geared up one more time to fight the dragon that had plagued him for most of his life.

“Okay,” she said softly. “That makes sense to me.”

“It does?”

“I still want to smack you for it, but at least I understand now.” A reluctant smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. She reached out to squeeze his hand. “Trevor McDonough,” she muttered. The way she said his name carried a whole world of frustration and annoyance, and a sliver of grudging respect.

“I used the money from my father to fund my research and pay for the medicine I give away to the poor. Yes, it pays for the clinic, and there’s plenty more where that came from. I’ve never touched any of it for my own support. I never will.”