Fletcher's Woman (10 page)

Griffin turned away, caught the handle of his medical bag in one hand, lifted the wide-eyed Fawn into his arms, and walked out.

“You can't leave him like this!” Mrs. Hammond cried out.

Griffin kicked the front door shut behind him in an answering crash.

•   •   •

Rachel could not bear to remain in her mother's bedroom after the undertaker came, so she crept down the wooden steps, through the now-quiet saloon, and outside. The rain was back, but it was a light, cool drizzle; and Rachel welcomed the bracing touch of it on her upturned face.

Dr. Fletcher had ordered her to remain inside the building until his return, just before rushing off to answer some distress call. In Rachel's opinion, that was as good a reason to leave as any.

Tent Town held as little appeal as ever, though, and she had no friends to go to, so she walked around the weathered walls of her mother's establishment and down a path curving through the thick woods.

The sound and scent of the sea came to meet her long before she rounded the last bend and found herself on the rocky
shores of Puget Sound. The tide was rising, and it sounded angry as it hammered at the shoreline and battered the great brown boulders within its reach.

Out on the water, hundreds of rough-barked logs bobbed, bound together by cables. Rachel turned her head toward the mountain rising just to the north and willed her father to know she needed him now and to come home.

In her mind, she could see him working in the misty depths of the woods. Often he bound himself loosely to the trunk of some massive pine tree, climbing at least ten feet up its side to bore, with an auger, two holes: one straight into the heart of the tree, and one at an angle. That done, he would climb down, only to climb back up again, carrying several glowing coals in metal tongs. Carefully, he would press the coals into the straight cavity, to burn there while the slanted perforation provided ventilation.

Soon, the giant tree would fall, shaking the earth as it struck.

Rachel had watched her father work many times, held her breath as he placed the coals expertly, or sawed, winced as he untied himself and jumped clear of the tree's treacherous trunk. His mortality had never come home to her as it did now, on this day of three deaths.

Staring sightlessly at the incoming tide, she hugged herself. What would she do if he was killed? Where would she go?

Rachel bent, took up a smooth, green-gray stone, and flung it into the tide. A stiff wind blew, salty and cold, and pressed her hated brown woolen dress to her bare skin.

Her mother had been so insistent that Rachel go away from Providence, start a new life in some other place. Now, facing the inland sea, she knew she would not, could not leave.

She turned; through the treetops she could see a corner of the saloon's tar-paper roof. She was going to have a little money of her own—she doubted that her mother had saved much—and a perfectly good building.

No, she would not leave Providence. With the money, she would turn the brothel-saloon into a respectable boardinghouse and a real home. Surely such wealth would ease the curious wanderlust in her father's heart; they could stay here always, and live happy, settled lives.

Rachel would have friends, attend church, buy the books and pretty clothes she hungered for. In time, she would become an accepted member of the community.
I might even marry,
she thought, and blushed with chagrined pleasure as the image of Dr. Griffin Fletcher invaded her mind.

Not him!
she vowed, in silence. But, still, his reflection was stuck fast to the bruised walls of her heart.

Presently, she heard the snap of a twig behind her, then the rattle of pebbles rolling down the slight slope that separated the woods on her mother's property from the beach.

Griffin Fletcher stood still where the path and the shoreline met, watching her with weary, haunted eyes. His skin was pale beneath its deep tan, and a muscle in his jaw flexed, then relaxed again.

Rachel felt a devastating, contradictory urge to run to him, to hold him in her arms and comfort him as she would a child.

He broke the spell with a gruff, biting statement. “It's time to leave.”

Rachel glared at him. “I simply can't wait to find out where you're dragging me off to this time, Doctor!”

The remark had an odd effect on him; some of the misery drained from his eyes, and a tentative smile twisted his lips. Something ancient and powerful crackled back and forth between him and Rachel, overriding all the terrible experiences of the day.

At last, he held out one hand. “You know, Rachel, when my mother first presented me to my father, I don't think she said, ‘Let's call this one “Doctor”!' My name is Griffin.”

Rachel held back stubbornly; suddenly, his outstretched hand seemed imperious, rather than inviting. “You are wretched and impossible,” she muttered.
“Where
are you taking me?”

He raised one dark eyebrow, his hand still extended, and there was weary mockery in his tone. “The food is good and the roof keeps out the rain, so what do you care?”

“I care, Dr. Fletcher!”

“Griffin,” he corrected.

“All right! Griffin!”

He relented. “You'll be spending a few days at my house—under the fierce protection of my friend and housekeeper, Molly Brady.”

Curious, and knowing that a vigorous argument would be a waste of precious energy, Rachel accompanied him to his house. It was a huge structure, fashioned of natural rock; and apple trees, aflame with silken pink blossoms, seemed to
encircle it. Lamplight glowed, in golden welcome, from the windows.

But Rachel was stricken by that warm light, rather than bouyed. Who but a loving, devoted wife would see that lamps were lit against the gathering twilight?

She swallowed miserably as Griffin Fletcher helped her down from the buggy seat and abandoned both the vehicle and the weary horse to the care of a huge, gangly boy. Not once had it occurred to her that he might be married, and she found the possibility distinctly unpleasant.

“I can't imagine how I overlooked this house, since I must have passed it twice today,” she said, in a light, false voice, glancing back toward the familiar road that led on to Jonas Wilkes's house.

Griffin's dark eyes, calm only a moment before, were suddenly brooding and remote. “Jonas's place is pretty imposing,” he said, opening an iron gate in the stone fence and half-pushing Rachel through it. “Your eyes were probably too full of all that brick and gilt and marble to notice.”

There was something profoundly wounding in the way he spoke, but Rachel couldn't quite identify it. Her nerves were suddenly throbbing and raw, as though they'd all been bared to the brisk evening wind, and her voice trembled when she spoke.

“I really should go back to my tent.”

Griffin laughed, but there was no humor in the sound, and no warmth. “You speak as though you have a choice, Miss McKinnon. And believe me, you don't.”

Rachel was too tired to match wills with this surly man, but she did manage a flippant, “I doubt that your wife will appreciate an unexpected houseguest.”

He looked away quickly, but Rachel saw the brutal annoyance in his face all the same, and something that went far, far beyond it.

“I don't have a wife,” he said shortly, as they climbed the stone steps leading onto the porch.

Rachel wondered as he opened the front door and ushered her inside. She wondered why part of her wanted to kick this insufferable tyrant in the shins and part of her rejoiced that he had no wife.

The inside of Griffin Fletcher's house was as tasteful and appealing as the outside. It was a clean, spacious, well-furnished place, with high ceilings and polished wooden floors.

Rachel felt welcome in that house, even in the disconcerting presence of its taciturn owner. It was as though the structure itself had drawn her to its heart, to comfort and strengthen her.

Griffin startled her out of her fanciful thoughts by tossing his medical bag onto a table with an irritated crash and calling out, “Molly!”

A trim, strikingly pretty woman with hair the color of cinnamon and sparkling, humorous green eyes appeared in a wide doorway. She was probably somewhere in her late thirties, Rachel thought, but no matter how long she lived, she would never get old.

“Saints be praised, Griffin Fletcher!” she beamed, her tones shaped by a lilting, musical brogue. “You've brought home another one!”

Rachel found herself liking Molly Brady very much.

Jonas tried to raise himself from his pillows and failed miserably. The pain in his groin was sharpened by the motion, and sweat beaded on his forehead and along his upper lip.

Everything hurt. Everything.

Jonas lifted swollen eyes to the bedroom windows, saw the deep darkness, heard his name in the voice of the night. To distract himself, he sought the hours wandering lost in his mind, and they eluded him.

His breath burned hot in his lungs and parched his throat.
Griffin.

Rage assuaged some of Jonas's pain as he recalled the beating he'd taken, and he swore harshly in the darkness.

Instantly, the door nearest Jonas's bed swung open, the half-hearted light of a coal-oil lamp flowed into the room.
McKay.
Jonas was revolted by the subtle stench of the man.

“Need some whiskey or anything, Boss?”

Jonas closed his eyes, swallowed. “Bring the doctor.”

There was a sound—metal colliding softly with wood. He turned his head, caught sight of McKay's rifle leaning against
the doorjamb. Jonas laughed inwardly; the fool had been standing guard in the hallway.

McKay brought the lamp into the room, set it down on Jonas's bedside table. “But, Boss, he's the one what did this—”

The pain was growing intolerable. “Do tell.
Bring the doctor!”

McKay hurried out, and Jonas made the costly effort to reach out and retrieve his pocket watch from the bedside table. He opened the case, pressed the small button near the stem, heard the odd, gentle tune it played. He squinted, saw that it was nearly ten o'clock.

Jonas waited, remembering his flighty, excitable mother and the high hopes she'd had when she'd presented him with this very special watch.
Sorry, Mama,
he thought, with grim amusement.

He heard the faint, ponderous chiming of the great clock standing downstairs in the entry hall, but after that, he lost track of time. The pain swept over him in waves, leaving nausea in its wake, bearing down on him again the moment he tried to rise above it.

Finally, a lengthy shadow appeared in the open doorway. Without speaking, Griffin Fletcher tossed his medical bag onto the foot of the bed, pulled back the blankets, and began to examine Jonas with swift, deft motions of his hands.

Jonas bore it all in silence, until Griffin drew a syringe from his bag and filled it from a glass vial. “You know something, Griffin? You're an honorable man,” he said, without admiration.

“I'm a damned fool,” replied Griffin flatly, injecting the compound into Jonas's right arm.

“True,” said Jonas.

Griffin dropped the syringe and vial back into his bag. “The swelling will go down in two or three days,” he said. “In the meantime, your romantic pursuits will be severely limited.”

“What about the fine mash you made of my face?”

“Only temporary, unfortunately.”

Jonas laughed as the pain began to ebb a little. “It's too bad we're enemies, you and I.”

Griffin raised one eyebrow and snapped the medical bag shut with a sharp motion of his right hand. “No sentiment, Jonas. There is a limit to my patience.”

Jonas felt measurably better, and he eased himself into a
sitting position. “A limit? I didn't know you had any patience to set limits on. There really won't be any permanent damage?”

Griffin smiled. “Not unless you bother Fawn again. Or Rachel.”

Jonas ignored the remark. “Why did you come here—after what happened?”

Griffin stood in the doorway now, poised to leave. “I had to, and you know that.”

“Stay. Have a drink.”

“Why? Did you poison the brandy?”

Jonas frowned. “I'm proposing a truce, Griffin. We've been at each other's throats for too long. I honestly—”

“You never did an honest thing in your life,” Griffin broke in, clearly uncomfortable. “What do you really want, Jonas?”

“Rachel McKinnon.”

Griffin's face hardened in the tremulous light. “I'll kill you first.”

Jonas sighed, relaxing on the down pillows. “Oh, I would hate to see things go quite that far. Besides, I think I love her.”

“Sure you do, Jonas. After knowing her for one day, you're ready to swear your undying loyalty and devotion.”

Jonas's laugh was soft, even. “You don't believe that people can fall in love that fast? Or is it that you're not immune to her charms yourself?”

This time, Griffin laughed. It was a rough, ragged sound. “She's a child, Jonas—a child.”

“She's seventeen. Thirteen years younger than you and I.”

“Exactly.”

“But she's a woman, Griffin.”

“That's an opinion.”

Jonas knew that his weakness was an advantage, for the moment, and he pressed it. “She is a beautiful
woman,
Griffin. Maybe even more beautiful than Athena.”

Griffin lowered his head, closed his eyes. It was odd, Jonas thought, the power that name still held over the man. He looked as though he'd been gut-shot.

“Well, Griffin?” Jonas prodded. “Is she more beautiful than Athena?”

Griffin glared down at him, his anguish plain in his face. “Yes,” he said, and then he was gone.

Jonas tossed back his blankets, eased himself out of the bed,
and hobbled across the room to the bureau. There, he opened a bottle of whiskey, raised it to his lips, and drank until the last remnants of the pain didn't matter anymore.