Fletcher's Woman (6 page)

Field cleared his throat diplomatically. “Well, she's in the hands of the Lord,” he said, as though that settled every question, made everything all right.

The look Griffin turned to his best friend was scathing and fierce. “Damn it, Field, save that for your sheep, will you?”

Hollister slipped out of his shabby overcoat and drew a worn, much-used Bible from its pocket. Griffin could see some inner preparation taking place; it was a familiar look that never failed to nettle him.

An awkward silence fell, broken only by the pounding of the rain overhead and the soft sound of Sam Harper's grief.

Griffin folded his arms, lowered his dark head. “I'm sorry,” he said.

There was compassion in Field's face, and more understanding than Griffin was prepared to encounter just then. “Nonsense,” he said, somewhat gruffly. Then a wariness came into Field's features, a remembering. Again, he cleared his throat.

Griffin knew the look. “Out with it, Field,” he prodded impatiently.

“Just promise you'll stay calm.”

Griffin felt everything within him tense. “What is it, Field? Is Becky dying?”

Field was moving toward Fanny's room, where he was needed. “No. But Fawn Nighthorse just told me that Jonas has the girl. She saw Rachel get into the carriage and leave about half an hour ago.”

Griffin felt something terrible erupting inside him. “Rachel? She was sure it was Rachel?”

“She said it was the girl with purple eyes.”

Griffin grasped his coat and bag in two savage motions and bolted toward the door. “I'll be back,” he growled. And then he bounded out into the rain.

•   •   •

Rachel felt warm color pound in her cheeks as the plump, matronly housekeeper studied her.

“Would you like a cup of tea?” the woman asked, after an agonizing moment. “It will take awhile to heat your bathwater.”

Tea. Rachel couldn't remember the last time she'd enjoyed such a luxury. She nodded, trying not to seem too eager. “Please.”

“This way, then,” sighed the housekeeper, with noble resignation.

Rachel followed her through a great, arched doorway and across a magnificent dining room. Here, there were costly, colorful rugs on the floors and real paintings on the tastefully papered walls. A massive chandelier hung, its many prisms gleaming like bits of a shattered rainbow, over a polished oak table. Six floor-to-ceiling windows looked out on a garden of budding roses and a three-tiered marble fountain.

She thought of the tent where she'd taken her breakfast, and a small, rueful smile curved her lips.

“I'm Mrs. Hammond,” the housekeeper announced brusquely, as she led the way through a swinging door and into the largest, cleanest kitchen Rachel had ever seen.

She stared at the gleaming copper kettles hanging on the
yellow walls, at the glass-fronted cupboards filled with exquisite china. “My name is Rachel. Rachel McKinnon.”

Mrs. Hammond turned. There was a quickening in her expression, and her thick hands tugged at the full-length apron protecting her dark, rustling dress. “McKinnon,” she mused, seeming to taste the name. “McKinnon. Now that name is right familiar to me.”

Rachel shrugged offhandedly. “It's common enough, I suppose.”

“McKinnon?” Mrs. Hammond shook her neatly groomed gray head. “You don't hear that often, like you do ‘Smith' or ‘Jones.' ”

Rachel was intimidated—by her surroundings, by Mr. Jonas Wilkes, and by this stern-faced, disapproving housekeeper. Nervously, she ran her hands down the skirts of her ruined, icy dress. “Y-You're very kind—to go to all this trouble, I mean.”

Mrs. Hammond took a steaming teakettle from the cook-stove, poured water into a bright yellow china pot, and measured in several generous scoops of tea. Her expression softened slightly as she looked at Rachel, and there was a note of unexpected kindness in her voice when she spoke again. “No trouble. Here—come and stand by the stove while I find you something warm and dry to wear.”

Rachel approached the great, gleaming monster of a stove. It's nickel scrollwork glinted and shone, even in the dim light of a stormy day, and the warmth was wonderful. “Thank you.”

“And don't be worrying about your poor, spoiled dress,” the woman called, as she marched off toward the swinging door leading back to the dining room. “We've got a thing or two around here that will probably fit you.”

Rachel trembled, huddled close to the stove. Her eyes fell with longing on the yellow teapot, and the curling steam from its spout brought a tantalizing scent to her nostrils.

She drew a deep breath and waited.

After perhaps five minutes, Mrs. Hammond returned, bustling and pink-cheeked, a long, flannel nightgown clutched to her rounded bosom. “There's a little dressing room right around the corner,” she said. “Why don't you get out of those wet clothes while I pour us some tea?”

Rachel took the soft gown in eager fingers, her eyes downcast, and obeyed.

The dressing room sported a huge enamel bathtub, soft
chairs, and an exquisite painted silk screen to disrobe behind. Awed, Rachel stepped around it and peeled off the hateful calico dress and the sodden cotton drawers and camisole beneath it. The flannel gown felt wonderfully smooth and warm as it fell against her skin.

What would it be like to wear such things as a matter of course and take baths in a room apparently reserved exclusively for the purpose? Did her mother live this way?

Rachel smiled to herself. At Miss Cunningham's, in Seattle, she'd taken her baths in the middle of the kitchen floor, scrubbing furtively, ever fearing that one of the other tenants might wander in.

She drew a deep breath and hurried back to the kitchen, where Mrs. Hammond graciously poured tea.

It was almost like being a lady.

Rachel drank one cup of strong, fragrant tea and longed for another, but demurred when Mrs. Hammond offered it. She'd behaved scandalously enough, arriving as she had, sopping wet and in the carriage of a relative stranger. It wouldn't do to add gluttony to her sins.

Half an hour later, she sank, awe-stricken and delighted, into the hot, scented water she and Mrs. Hammond had heated and carried into the dressing room, to the bathtub. She soaked for a few glorious minutes, and then began to scrub her pinkened flesh and disheveled hair with soap that smelled of wild flowers.

Clean at last, and truly warm for the first time in weeks, Rachel wrapped her hair in a towel, turban style, and sank to her chin in liquid luxury. Beneath the scented water, she could just barely see the small, diamond-shaped birthmark beside the nipple of her left breast.

It was then that she first heard the quarreling voices. She could not make out the words, but two men were shouting at each other, and Mrs. Hammond put in an occasional shrill remark.

Rachel trembled, tried to think what she should do. Before anything workable occurred to her, the dressing room door burst open with a force that threatened to rip it from its hinges and a glowering, dark-haired man appeared in the doorway.

“Get dressed!” he snapped.

Horrified, Rachel covered her breasts with her arms and sank deeper into the water.

“Now!”
the man yelled.

Speech failed Rachel; she could only nod frantically.

But the man was apparently satisfied. He gave Rachel an impatient look that scraped the edges of her soul, and then closed the door.

Rachel scrambled out of the bathtub and huddled behind the silk screen, wrenching the towel from her head and drying herself in quick, desperate motions. Her heart jammed in her throat when she heard the door open again.

But it was Mrs. Hammond who peered around the edge of the screen and extended a tangle of clothing: silken under-things, stockings, a lavender dress made of some soft, rustling fabric.

Mrs. Hammond volunteered no information whatsoever, and Rachel was fully dressed before she could manage to say anything at all. “Who is that man?” she whispered. “What does he want?”

The housekeeper sighed, but her eyes were kind. “That, my dear, is Dr. Griffin Fletcher. And I'm afraid he wants you.”

Rachel was terrified. “Why?”

Mrs. Hammond shrugged. “Lord knows. He's a gruff sort, Child, but he won't hurt you.”

“H-He has no right—”

“Right or no right, we'll all have hell to pay if you don't do as he says,” Mrs. Hammond said. And then she was striding out of the room, closing the door behind her.

Rachel bit her lower lip, scanning the room. There was only one window, and it was firmly shut.

She wrenched at it hopelessly until she realized that someone had painted over the lock, sealing the one avenue of escape available.

Hot tears brimmed in her eyes as she pulled at the window twice more, out of sheer terror.

Again, the door opened. And the man with the dark, stormy eyes was standing there, watching her. He held out her battered, mud-caked shoes. “Put these on.”

Rachel lifted her chin and walked toward him.

•   •   •

Jonas's wrath was bitter and vicious, but he had held it in check as his old enemy thrust Rachel through the kitchen and the dining room and out through the front doors.

He'd been afraid to challenge Griffin, and that fear lingered, further souring the defeat.

Mrs. Hammond stood in stubborn silence, at the stove, stirring something into the soup.

“Send McKay for the Indian,” Jonas said, after several seconds of charged silence.

“But, Jonas—”

“The
Indian,”
Jonas breathed. “Fawn Nighthorse.”

Disapproval flashed in Mrs. Hammond's eyes as she dared, at last, to meet his gaze. “But it's the middle of the day. What's Tom supposed to tell her?”

Jonas whirled, pushed open the swinging door with a crash of his right palm. “That her rent is due,” he answered.

When she felt it was safe, Rachel risked a fleeting glance at the man sitting in the buggy seat beside her. The muscles in his jawline were tight with disapproval, as were his firm, aristocratic lips.

Dr. Griffin Fletcher. Rachel was grateful that Mrs. Hammond had volunteered his name:
he
certainly hadn't had the good manners to do so.

“Why are you doing this?” she ventured, painfully conscious of her wet, unbrushed hair and borrowed clothes.

Dr. Fletcher turned dark, intolerant eyes to her face. His voice was a low rumble, a sound like two thunder clouds colliding in a distant sky. “What did Jonas offer you?” he countered coldly.

Rachel felt crimson blood flaming in her cheeks. “I beg your pardon?” she gasped, nearly choking on the words.

“Never mind,” the doctor growled, turning his attention back to the buggy reins and the horse and the rutted, muddy road at the base of Mr. Wilkes's stone driveway.

Rachel sat back on the cushioned seat, her heart in her throat, and prayed silently for a speedy and miraculous rescue.

As if to reflect the storm of emotions raging within her, the rain became a torrent, thumping at the roof of the buggy and flinging itself inside to sting Rachel's face and drench the pretty amethyst dress.

Dr. Fletcher seemed to have forgotten that she existed at all, and she found that idea oddly disturbing. She disliked the man intensely—had on sight—and yet something within her craved his notice.

“I demand to know where you are taking me,” she said firmly, over the din of the worsening rain.

Now, he looked at her. The dark light in his eyes was scathing as his glance passed over the half-sodden dress and then returned to her face. “You're cold,” he said almost accusingly. And then, deftly, he removed his dark suit coat and thrust it at her.

Rachel draped the coat around her shoulders and glared at him. “I insist that you tell me—”

The stern lips curled in a humorless grin. “You insist, do you?” He laughed, and the sound made Rachel ache to the marrow of her frozen bones. “That
is
interesting.”

“Are you always nasty and impossible, Dr. Fletcher?”

“Only on my good days,” he retorted. “Do you always go home with men like Jonas Wilkes?”

Shattering humiliation closed Rachel's throat for a long moment. When words were possible, she forced herself to speak in the measured, dignified tones of a lady. “Mr. Wilkes was very kind to me.”

Grim amusement danced in the dark depths of his gaze. “Oh, he's a fine fellow,” Dr. Fletcher drawled, with sardonic relish. Again, his eyes moved to the now nearly transparent fabric of her dress. The bitter mirth in his look faded away suddenly, and another emotion flared up, savage and unreadable, in its place. “Nice dress,” he said.

Rachel was not naive enough to believe that she had been complimented, and she swallowed the automatic “thank you” that rose in her throat.

The pitiable horse trudged on, its hooves sticking now and then in the deep mud, its breath forming little clouds even in the driving rain. Rachel pretended a compelling interest in the lush foliage choking the roadside.

Presently, they reached Providence again, but the beleaguered buggy did not stop at any one of the snug, neatly painted houses Rachel so admired. It labored on and finally came to a halt in front of the very cottage where she had encountered Mr. Wilkes such a short time before.

“You might as well come inside and dry off,” Dr. Fletcher
allowed tersely, springing from the buggy seat and taking an ancient black medical bag from the floor.

Rachel glanced warily in the direction of Tent Town. It was vaguely visible in the downpour, and still singularly uninviting.

She suppressed the instinct urging her to flee this officious man while she had the opportunity, and to cower, shivering, inside the questionable sanction of her own tent.

Dr. Fletcher didn't seem particularly concerned, one way or the other. He was already striding up the neat little walk leading to the cottage door.