Plum Creek Bride
Lynna Banning
PLUM CREEK BRIDEErika Scharf Had Always Followed Her Heart Now it had led her to America, and a tortured man with a motherless infant. But would the widowed Dr. Jonathan Callender ever recover from his grief? Whatever drove him had died with his young wife - or so it seemed to Jonathan Callender.He knew only that nothing mattered anymore - until the day a German whirlwind disguised as the very determined Erika Scharf charged into his life - and made his heart live again.
Table of Contents
Cover Page (#u4e39c0c3-b426-5dad-8160-bd9f51bdb8aa)
Excerpt (#u5363e177-00e7-534d-bb20-743633a1cf31)
Dear Reader (#u59393d9e-35cf-5c42-9589-6b11180cf209)
Title Page (#u6bd758bf-0d55-5f8b-84c2-d0186682267a)
About the Author (#u78fe4d7e-ee4d-51ac-82fa-360a806c3ed0)
Dedication (#ue2d0ed95-5f6d-570b-b1f2-cc205b1fe677)
Chapter One (#u4614e981-798e-510d-9e8f-c81553c9e487)
Chapter Two (#u0e9bcf28-8e15-54ce-8fc5-2dcc16752f0d)
Chapter Three (#u23150ff8-05cb-5028-8866-c6dfd76bf0c5)
Chapter Four (#u5bd2ba0a-97ff-5421-bb60-da09eeb7c774)
Chapter Five (#uc29f44f0-53b7-5ed5-81f1-c7e6ed41185c)
Chapter Six (#uc36d6ec5-8e9b-564f-b913-c592ea3d5036)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Author Note (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
A smile tugged at one corner of his mouth,
but his eyes were calm.
All at once she felt light-headed. She couldn’t look away from him.
Was it possible this stiff, unfriendly man had a glimmer of understanding about how she felt?
No, not possible. He planned to send his baby daughter—his own child—thousands of miles across the sea to Scotland. What kind of man would do that?
Still, he had kept her secret. And he hadn’t objectedwell, not too strongly, at least—when she’d spoken up about sending his child away.
Absentmindedly, Erika pressed new patterns into her mounded potatoes while she tried to think about the man who faced her across the table. Dr. Jonathan Callender held her future in the palm of his smooth, aristocratic hand. She had to try to understand him.
More than that, she had to please him.!
Dear Reader,
As the weather heats up this month, so do the passion and adventure in our romances!
Let’s begin with handsome single father Dr. Jonathan Callender and his darling baby girl, who will undoubtedly warm your heart in Plum Creek Bride, an emotional new Western by Lynna Banning. Critics have described the author’s works as “evocative,” “touching” and “pure fun!” In this marriage-of-convenience tale, German nanny Erika Scharf arrives in Oregon to care for the Callender child, and finds a grieving widower who struggles to heal a town plagued by cholera. But it is Erika who heals Jonathan-by teaching him how to love again.
Medieval fans, prepare yourself for an utterly romantic forced-marriage story with Susan Spencer Paul’s latest, The Captive Bride, about a fierce knight who’ll stop at nothing to reclaim his family’s estate-even marriage! Ana Seymour brings us Lord of Lyonsbridge, the daring tale of a sinfully handsome horse master who teaches a spoiled Norman beauty important lessons in compassion and love.
Temperatures—and tempers-flare in Heart of the Lawman by Linda Castle, which is set in Arizona Territory. Here, a single mother is released from prison, only to find that the man who mistakenly put her there, Sheriff Flynn O’Bannion, is awfully close to capturing her heart!
Whatever your tastes in reading, you’ll be sure to find a romantic journey back to the past between the covers of a Harlequin Historicals® novel.
Sincerely,
Tracy Farrell
Senior Editor
Please address questions and book requests to:
Harlequin Reader Service
U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269
Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3
Plum Creek Bride
Lynna Banning
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
LYNNA BANNING
has combined a lifelong love of history and literature into a satisfying new career as a writer. Born in Oregon, she has lived in Northern California most of her life, graduating from Scripps College and embarking on her career as an editor and technical writer, and later as a high school English teacher.
An amateur pianist and harpsichordist, Lynna performs on psaltery and recorders with two Renaissance ensembles and teaches music in her spare time. Currently she is learning to play the harp.
She enjoys hearing from her readers. You may write to her directly at P.O. Box 324, Felton, CA 95018.
For Suzanne Barrett.
With grateful thanks, to Yvonne Woolston, Andrew and Shirley Yarnes, Leslie Yarnes Sugai, Lawrence Yarnes and my great-grandmother, Mareia Bruhn Boessen.
Chapter One (#ulink_5b4df444-9bcd-5dc9-8931-f87f347d2ac5)
Plum Creek, Oregon, 1886
The searing July heat boiled up from the road as Erika gazed up the tree-shaded street. She shifted her heavy satchel to her other hand. She had walked all the way from the stagecoach stop, and the plain, high collar of her wilted travel dress stuck to her neck. Perspiration trickled between her breasts, and her feet, imprisoned in tight high-button shoes, baked like twin loaves of Brot. Bread, she corrected. English words were so hard to remember!
She turned up the street, trudged another twenty paces and stopped. The two-story house occupied the entire corner across from where she stood. A white board fence encircled the meticulously groomed emerald lawn, and a scrolled iron sign hung from a porch rafter. Jonathan Callender, Physician.
Such a grand home!
A trio of graceful plum trees shaded the huge grayand-black Victorian structure from the merciless sun. Erika moved past the neat row of scarlet zinnias bordering the gravel path leading to the front porch, unlatched the gate and marched up the cobbled walk. Settling her satchel on the painted veranda floor, she lifted the iron knocker and rapped twice. After what seemed an interminable wait, she rapped again. Someone must be home; a dusty black buggy stood in front of the house.
Another long minute passed, and Erika tapped her foot in frustration.
Abruptly the door swung inward, and a tall, dark-haired man faced her. The sleeves of his rumpled white shirt were rolled up to his elbows, and the collar gaped open at the neck.
“Yes?” His rich, deep voice startled her with the impatiently clipped single word.
Erika swallowed. “My name Erika Scharf.”
“Yes?” he repeated. Weary gray eyes surveyed her with disinterest.
“Name means no-thing?” She winced as she realized her pronunciation error. She had to work hard at English, but thoughts came faster than her tongue could form the words.
“Nothing at all. Should it?”
“You not get my letter? Your wife, Mrs.” She extracted a slip of paper from her reticule and squinted at it. “Ben-bough?”
“Mrs. Benbow. My housekeeper.”
“She write and—Oh! Your housekeeper? Not your wife?”
“That is correct. Now, Miss Scharf, perhaps you would tell me why your name should mean something to me?”
For some reason the look of the man made her feel hot and cold all at once. “Oh, yes, my name. My papa German. Mama she is—was—Danish. When I come New York, name not Scharf, but Scharffenberger. Too long to write, so they make short. Scharf. Is more American, ja?”
“Ja. Yes,” Jonathan amended hastily.
“You do not remember name?”
“I do not” What did this chit of a girl want with him? Was she ailing?
“Are you ill, Miss Scharf?”
Two dimples appeared in her sunburned cheeks.
“Nein. Never ill. Much health. I go to work now?”
“Work?” he echoed.
“Ja, work. W-o-r-k,” she spelled. “Did not your wife tell you?”
“My wife is.” He could not bring himself to say it. “Tell me what?”
“Mrs. Ben-bough, Benbow, she write to me in New York and say, ‘Come to help, is baby coming.’ There is baby, yes?”
Jonathan started. A shard of pain ripped into his belly. “Yes, there is a baby.”
Tess must have sent for the young woman months ago. He had never been told.
“Come in, Miss Scharf.”
Erika stepped through the wide doorway. “Baby is called.?”
“Marian. Marian Elizabeth.” His throat tight, he ushered the young woman into the parlor.
“I will see house later,” she said. She did not sit down, but flitted about the room inspecting everything—Tess’s tall walnut harp, the settee she had ordered reupholstered in forest green velvet, the polished oak end table piled high with medical journals from the East, then the harp again. The young woman ran one finger over the dusty surface.
“I would like now to see my room, please.”
Jonathan jerked. “Your room?”
“Yes, please. I come to stay, help with baby.”
Jonathan watched the slim young woman hoist her traveling bag and turn toward the wide mahogany staircase. Tess had not told him about the baby in the first place, and when she did, she hadn’t admitted how risky it was for her. Now he found his wife had engaged a-a what? He already had a housekeeper. A mother’s helper?
He groaned inwardly. Another surprise.
“You cannot remain here, Miss Scharf. My wife is. She passed away three weeks ago. There is no mother, and there is no need for a mother’s helper.”
“But there is baby!” Erika protested.
As if in corroboration, a thin wail drifted from behind a closed door. The honey-haired young woman stared at him accusingly.
“I come all the way from New York, from Bremerhaven on ship. I cannot go back. I have no money for ticket.”
“I will pay your—”
“Besides,” she interjected. “I do not want to go back. I like America. And Or-e-gon.” She pronounced each syllable with care. “I like very much. So I do not go back.” She folded her arms across her tiny waist and lifted her chin. “I stay.”
“On the contrary, Miss Scharf. This is my house and my child. I can do whatever I feel necessary.”
“But—”
“When the infant is six months old, I intend to send her to my mother in Scotland.”
“You cannot,” Erika exclaimed, her blue eyes widening. “Baby needs father.”
Jonathan raked the fingers of one hand through his hair. “Baby needs—” He cleared his throat. “The child needs a mother. Someone to care for it, feed it. In Scotland—”
“In Scotland is not mother. Or father. Here in Plum Creek is family. You. Papa.”
A smile flashed across her face, lighting the sapphire blue eyes from within. In the next instant, the curving lips pressed into a thin line and the sparkle in the wide-set eyes faded. “Next best thing to mama is mama’s helper. Me. Erika Scharf.”
She brushed past him, leaving the scent of lavender and travel dust in her wake. “I work now.” She headed toward the staircase. “I will put on apron and then meet baby.”
The doctor stepped forward. “You will not!”
Erika paused on the first polished riser. “And why not is that?” She suppressed a smile of triumph at so many correctly pronounced w’s today. She was learning! But the English came slowly.
Dr. Callender’s hands closed into fists. “Is there something wrong with your hearing, Miss Scharf? I said I intend to send the child to Scotland.”
“Nein.” She met his gaze with an unflinching stare of her own. “Hearing good. Seeing also good. Thinking—” she tapped a forefinger against her forehead “—best of all! Baby stay here, with papa.”
He drew himself up to his full height. “Now, look, miss. You may stay the night, and that is all. In my home, I decide what is best.”
Erika tipped her head to meet his gaze. “Ja, of course,” she agreed. “But baby not on Scotland ship now. Later maybe, not now. Now, baby is here. I am here. You—papa—are here. Is for the best, I think. You will see.”
She spun and started dragging the satchel up the stairs. “Which room, please? I put on apron now.”
Erika did not look back at him on purpose. She didn’t want to give the frowning man at the bottom of the stairs one second to open his mouth and stop her ascent to what was surely the closest to heaven she’d ever been in her twenty-four years.
A house! A big, welcoming house, with beautiful furnishings and lace curtains at the windows—and so many windows, the glass sparkling clean, not dingy with soot as in her parents’ tiny cottage at home. Mama would be so happy for her! Mama had always wanted a window.
A house in America! It was almost too good to be true. America. Land of the free, Papa had said. Where people were equal. It was all he’d talked about before he died. In America, even a poor German cobbler could eat.
More than that. An unmarried woman could work hard and save money, could stay respectable even if she did not marry. A young woman in America had a future.
And now that she was finally here, nothing—not fire or flood or Dr. Jonathan Callender—would keep her from starting her new life. It was what Papa had wanted for her. It was what she wanted. In fact, it was the only thing she wanted—to live in America.
She reached the last door in the long hallway and tentatively laid her hand on the polished brass knob. This one? she wondered. The door was smaller than the others.
Now at last she was here, at the home where she was needed. She quailed at her defiance of the formidable-looking physician, but she would never, ever give up her only offer of employment. Or her dream. And, she resolved, she would never, never admit how frightened she was.
She twisted the doorknob and walked in.
Erika stared at the lovely room. A Brussels carpet in tones of rose and burgundy spread over the floor, and on top of it, centered between two tall multipaned windows, stood a narrow bed swathed in ivory lace. There were few other furnishings except for an imposing carved walnut chiffonier and a night table next to the bed. On it sat a white china basin and matching pitcher.
The small, simple room looked comfortable and inviting. It was sumptuous, by Erika’s standards. Surely she must have opened the wrong door! Mrs. Callender had promised she would have her own room, but this—this seemed far too grand for a servant’s quarters. This was luxury indeed, compared with the threadbare boardinghouses and dirty hotels she had occupied this past month of traveling from New York across the plains and mountains to Portland and then south to Plum Creek.
In spite of herself, she took a cautious step onto the richly patterned carpet. Mercy, her travel-stained shoes would surely soil it! Quickly she unhooked the laces, stepped out of the brown canvas shoes and edged onto the patterned carpet in her stocking feet. The thick, soft wool caressed her toes. What heaven!
Yes, it must be the wrong room. But so beautiful. So welcoming, as if waiting just for her. On impulse she slid one bureau drawer open. Empty.
She slid it closed and opened another. Empty, except for a spray of dried lavender scenting the flowered paper lining. If the room belonged to someone, would not the drawers be full? With a gasp of pleasure, she realized Mrs. Callender’s intention: the room was to be Erika’s!
She felt as if she had died and floated up to live with the angels. A room to herself! A private, quiet place where she could be alone! Never in her life had she had a door she could close to keep the world out.
And a bed covered in lace, like a wedding cake! She plunged her hands under the bedclothes. And a real mattress!
Hers! Her throat closed with emotion. Hurriedly she scrabbled in her satchel for the clean, white apron folded at the bottom and dumped the remaining contents into the open bureau drawer. The doctor had to let her stay! He had to!
With shaking hands she removed her straw hat and drew the apron neckband over her head, fashioning the ties into a wide bow at her waist. Smoothing out the sharp creases in the starched material, she surveyed herself in the oval mirror propped on the chiffonier.
She pinched her cheeks with both hands to make sure she wasn’t dreaming, then reinserted a hairpin into the loose bun of honey-colored hair piled on top of her head. Tomorrow she would braid it into a crown as she had in the old country.
Hastily she flicked her cambric pocket handerchief over the dusty shoes and was bending to pull them on when a piercing cry penetrated the quiet.
Erika jerked upright The baby. Casting a quick look at the pristine, feminine bedroom, she bolted for the door and pulled it shut behind her.
A lusty wail rose from below, punctuated by a man’s impatient voice and the thump of footsteps as he apparently paced back and forth. Erika paused at the bottom of the stairs, consciously straightened her spine and drew in a fortifying breath. She was ready.
She moved toward the crying that rose from behind a closed door. Just as she lifted her hand to knock, the door jerked open.
“It’s about time,” the physician barked. “What the devil were you doing up there?”
Erika took an involuntary step backward. Perspiration beaded the doctor’s high, tanned forehead. Tendrils of black hair curled awry, as if he had combed his fingers over his scalp. The penetrating gray eyes narrowed into shards of slate as he awaited her response.
“I was putting on my—”
“I can see that,” he snapped. With a sigh he turned away, gesturing toward a wrinkled wraith of a woman in a severe black dress, seated beside an unadorned white wicker cradle.
“This is Mrs. Benbow, my housekeeper. Erika. what was it again? Ah, yes. Scharf. Erika Scharf.”
The older woman fanned herself with one corner of a tea towel and pinned snapping black eyes on her. “What church are ye?” she demanded over the baby’s cries.
“Church?” Did she dare admit she did not regularly attend church? All she knew was that the service was not conducted in Latin, so she could not be Catholic. “Why, Protestant, I suppose.”
“You suppose? Don’t you know? How were ye raised, if I might ask?”
“I was brought up in Germany,” Erika replied, trying to keep her voice steady. “Papa Catholic. Mama Lutheran.” She did not add that her grandfather, her father’s father, had been a Jew. Papa had converted before he met Mama.
“Well, that’s a fine muddle!” The woman jostled the edge of the wicker crib. “Hush now, child.”
Erika risked a peek into the cradle. A tiny pink mouth stretched open, emitting screams of anguish. At Erika’s touch, the crying stopped abruptly, and two startled, tear-filled blue eyes gazed up at her.
Mrs. Benbow sighed. “The wee thing’s hungry. Again,” she added with a grimace.
Erika glanced at Dr. Callender, who had resumed his pacing. The tall man tramped back and forth before a huge mahogany desk littered with papers and journals.
“The child cries constantly,” he growled. “Likely cannot yet. tolerate cow’s milk. I cannot see patients with all this din and uproar, and Mrs. Benbow cannot cook and clean house and care for a child as well. She must be sent to Scotland, and the sooner the better.”
Mrs. Benbow nodded in agreement. “I canna climb stairs any longer, so we have kept the bairn down here, in doctor’s study. But with my back the way it is.” Her voice trailed off.
The wailing resumed Erika disengaged her forefinger from the baby’s grasp. “May I pick her up?”
“Of course, of course,” the old woman rasped. “That’s why ye’ve come, isn’t it? Miss Tess had me send for ye. Not that I thought much o’ the idea, but seein’ as how things turned out, perhaps it’s for the best.”
Erika hesitated. She sensed the woman’s resentment. She deduced that Mrs. Benbow had run the Callender household for some time. Erika’s arrival was an obvious intrusion on the crusty housekeeper’s territory.
“Well, go on!” the older woman rasped. “Pick the babe up and get her to stop crying, if ye can.”
Erika reached into the cradle and slid her hands under the blanketed bundle. Lifting her up, she held the infant securely against her body. The tiny creature lay warm and fragrant on her breast. A sweet, soapy fragrance rose from her skin.
Erika’s heart squeezed. The baby was exquisite, like a porcelain doll with her fair skin and rosy cheeks and huge blue eyes. And so tiny! So perfectly formed!
“Mrs. Callender must have very beautiful been,” she murmured.
The doctor turned away abruptly. Erika watched as he bent his head and fingered a framed portrait on his cluttered desk.
“Aye, she was that,” Mrs. Benbow volunteered with a significant look at her employer. “‘Tis a sad house ye’ve come to, lass. Nothing’s been the same since Miss Tess has been gone.”
Erika saw the doctor turn the photograph face down on his desk, but still he did not turn around. A silence thick as cold molasses descended as Mrs. Benbow dabbed at her eyes with the towel.
Erika waited for someone to speak. After a long minute, she concluded that the conversation had come to an end.
The baby’s comforting weight against her breast reminded her why she had come in the first placeto help with the infant. Now more than ever she wanted to stay and work in this house with its spacious, elegantly arranged rooms and the lacy, private bedroom upstairs. More than that, she realized, she felt an inexorable pull toward the soft bundle snuggled in her arms.
“I presume you will leave in the morning,” the doctor announced. His voice sounded ragged with fatigue. The expression in his face was cold, as if a lifeless mask had been drawn over his features. But in his eyes, Erika saw the agony of a bereaved man and a silent, unconscious cry for help.
She shifted the baby to her shoulder. “I stay for three dollar a week,” she said quietly.
“No,” the physician said. “Mrs. Benbow can manage until—”
Mrs. Benbow slapped the tea towel onto her lap. “I say she’s a gift from God.”
“No,” Dr. Callender repeated.
The housekeeper studied Erika with unsmiling eyes. “She’s young, but she’ll do in a pinch.”
The doctor scowled.
“Just until—Lord preserve us, lass!” the housekeeper cried. “Where are your shoes?”
Erika winced. In her haste, she’d forgotten them.
Fighting back a choking fear, she caught Dr. Callender’s cool, calculating gaze as he awaited her answer. Would he dismiss her on the spot for being a lackwit?
“Well, Miss Scharf?” His tone was silky with derision.
“I—” A warm wetness seeped through the soft blanket. “The baby is needful,” she said, quickly shifting the topic.
She bent over the cradle and laid the infant on its back. Reaching for the diaper folded over the foot of the crib, she spoke over her shoulder. “I stay. Shoes do not matter.”
Erika lifted the square of soft cotton diaper and froze. She knew nothing about babies! She was a cobbler’s daughter, the only child Mama and Papa ever had. She’d never even had any younger cousins to care for. Oh, what was she to do?
- She knew what a diaper was for, but how in the world was it attached? She’d been engaged to do laundry and ironing, maybe watch over the child when the mama went out. But now she was not the helper—she was the mama!
She felt eyes boring into her back—one pair black and disapproving, one pair gray and distant. Measuring.
Erika closed her eyes and uttered a brief, silent prayer. Help me, God! Show me about diapers!
When she opened her lids, the room hummed with tension. Summoning her courage, Erika unfolded the diaper and peeked under the infant’s soaked cambric gown.
Chapter Two (#ulink_b6538ef7-5126-5a48-99ad-75113466b323)
With grudging admiration, Jonathan watched as Erika bent over the wicker cradle. She wasn’t the first serving girl to be subjected to Adeline Benbow’s assessing eye and pointed questions, but she was the first to stay more than five minutes after the experience.
How long Miss Scharf would last under his housekeeper’s exacting rule was another matter entirely, but at the moment the prospect solved the problem of what to do with the young woman. Since Mrs. Benbow expressed a preference for the girl’s help, however temporary, he couldn’t simply turn her out.
He’d lay odds she’d last less than a week. Mrs. Benbow could be a stem taskmaster, and now that she was too old to climb the stairs more than once a day, she bore an extra grudge against life in general and young women in particular. If Miss Scharf lasted more than the week, he’d try to find her another position. But she would need the hide of a rhinoceros to survive even one day under Mrs. Benbow.
He watched Erika gently lift the folds of the cambric sacque away from the baby’s body with capable, graceful hands. The look on her face when she touched his daughter told him she had a sentimental nature. And sentiment meant vulnerability. If he knew anything about women, Miss Scharf had a soft heart, and because of it, she would suffer. In spite of himself, he felt a twinge of sympathy for the eager, rosy-cheeked woman.
Erika smoothed out the diaper and draped it over the edge of the wicker cradle. Moving very deliberately, she unsnapped the safety pins holding the wet garment in place. As she did so, she studied the arrangement of folds in the material, the position of the fasteners, how they were attached. With care, she lifted away the wet diaper.
The housekeeper watched her every move, then tossed the tea towel she’d been fanning herself with into the cradle. Erika’s toes curled. What was she supposed to do with that?
“Cornstarch is in the candy dish,” the older woman offered in a dry tone. She pointed to a fluted glass bowl on a side table.
Cornstarch? Why would she need cornstarch?
As if in answer to her unspoken question, Dr. Callender spoke in a low, controlled voice. “It is much superior to nursery powder.”
Powder! Of course. With an inward sigh of relief, she rolled the wet diaper into a wad and deposited it on an empty corner of the doctor’s desk. She heard Mrs. Benbow’s snort of disapproval and the physician’s quick intake of breath, but she was too distracted to care. Cornstarch must be for the baby’s moist skin. She eyed the huck tea towel.
That was it! She must dry the infant’s tender skin, then dust on the fine white powder. Oh, thank you, God, for showing me how to proceed
She snatched up the wrinkled towel and just as quickly discarded it. “Is soiled,” she said as calmly as she could. “May I have clean one?”
The housekeeper rose and drew herself up with an air of superiority. The stiff bombazine dress rustled in the quiet room, and Erika had a quick vision of a peacock displaying its feathers.
“Certainly,” the woman snapped. The door clicked shut behind her.
Left alone with the doctor, Erika experienced a moment of panic. Would he notice her inexperience?
She kept her back to him as she folded the dry material into what she judged to be a diaper-shaped rectangle. The door opened and in swept Mrs. Benbow, a clean towel in her hand. Erika accepted it, then reached for the dish of cornstarch. She patted the baby’s damp skin with the towel, then dusted on the powder with the cotton ball in the dish cover.
As she lifted the folded diaper she managed a surreptitious glance behind her. Both Dr. Callender and his housekeeper had their attention riveted on her. She could block out one person’s view with her body, but not both. One of them would just have to witness her first fumbling attempt at changing an infant’s diaper. Which one should it be?
She chose the housekeeper. The physician would dismiss her at once if he suspected how inexperienced she was. Mrs. Benbow might disapprove, but she would not complain, since she obviously regarded caring for the infant herself with some distaste.
Keeping her back toward. Dr. Callender, Erika lifted the baby’s tiny legs and slid the material beneath her rump. She wished her hands would stop shaking! Slowly she brought the material up between the kicking limbs. Praying she would not stab the infant with the pin, she forced the point through thicknesses of cotton material and, using her finger as a guide, snapped the device securely in place. When the second pin closed, Erika breathed in relief. She’d done it!
“Humph!” Mrs. Benbow sniffed behind her. “Now I s’pose you’ll need that milk heated up. I’ll have to go poke up my stove.” With a sour look on her face, the woman yanked open the study door.
“Please,” Erika was amazed to hear herself say. “Pour out old milk. Use fresh.”
The housekeeper stiffened, and Erika held her breath.
“Miss Scharf is right,” the doctor said in a low, even voice. “In this hot weather, milk clabbers readily.”
“Harrumph!” The housekeeper huf—fed and swished away, an angry set to her thin, hunched shoulders.
Milk, Erika thought desperately. Babies needed milk, of course, but how much? How warm? And if not from a mother’s breast, how was it to be drunk?
“Boil the nursing flask, too, Mrs. Benbow,” the physician called through the open door.
Ah, that was it-a bottle of some sort! Erika covered her relief by lifting the infant into her arms. Except for a single blanket over the mattress, no other bedding softened the bare wicker.
She stared down at the starkly appointed cradle, then pivoted toward the doctor. “Where is kept baby’s clothes and…bed makings?”
“Tess…” A momentary flash of anguish twisted the physician’s regular features. He swallowed, then continued. “My wife stored the baby’s things in the nursery.”
“Nursery? Where is nursery?”
“Upstairs. Mrs. Benbow cannot manage the stairs, so she moved the cradle into my study until.for the time being.”
“I move back to nursery,” Erika announced. “I can go up and down stairs. I t’ink is why missus send for me.”
Jonathan said nothing. He strode to the laceshrouded window, drew the panel to one side and stared out. He would be glad to have the child ensconced out of earshot in the special room Tess had insisted on when she had finally confessed her pregnancy. Every sound the baby made reminded him of his wife’s untimely death. Even so, he wasn’t sure he wanted to be left alone with himself in the sanctuary of his study.
But life could not stop because Tess was gone. It was time for him to see patients again. He had to resume his practice, or that quack Chilcoate would kill off half the town.
“Yes, move the babe upstairs,” he said, clipping his words short. And as for you, Erika Scharf, stay out of my sight.
To be honest, he wanted nothing to do with Tess’s child, or the young woman she had engaged without telling him. Women, he had learned, were devious and dishonest. Never again, he resolved, would he allow himself to love one. No woman would ever again enchain his heart.
And no child, either.
Erika frowned as she inspected the nursery. The small, stifling room next to her own chamber smelled of dust and dried lavender and obviously had never been used. A stack of clean diapers filled the laceruffled bassinet; on top of the broad, waist-high chest on the opposite wall lay a folded blue knit shawl. A cobweb looped from the garment to one drawer pull.
A rocking chair stood next to the single window. Erika noticed the layer of dust between the dark walnut slats. It looked as if no one had ever sat in it.
She lifted the diapers off the striped ticking mattress and set them on top of the chest. God in heaven, the infant’s bed had not even been made up!
Erika cocked her head to one side. The untouched state of the room answered her questions about the odd situation she’d stepped into. From birth, the child had evidently been cared for by the housekeeperfed and tended to in the wicker cradle downstairs in the doctor’s study. Considering Mrs. Benbow’s spare, bent frame, her inability to climb the stairs and her obvious reticence about picking up the baby even when it wailed, Erika surmised the child had received attention only out of duty. Even the papa, Dr. Callender, seemed uninterested. Remote.
Had he delivered the infant and immediately relegated her to the care of his dour housekeeper as his wife lay dying? Poor man.
And the poor Liebchen! What a sad beginning for a child. No one to hold or comfort her, no warm mama’s body to nestle against, no breast to suckle. Erika knew instinctively what the child needed. Love.
And that silent, enigmatic man whose house this was planned to send his own child to Scotland? Erika would die first. The instant those tiny, perfect pink fingers had curled around her thumb, Erika’s heart had contracted. Now the child lay downstairs, looked after but not loved. It was not good enough.
She plucked the handerchief from her apron pocket and whisked it over the dusty chair and bureau top, shook out the shawl and folded the mound of diapers and laid them in an empty drawer. In the middle drawer she found a set of infant-sized sheets and a tiny pillowcase with embroidered pink and gold flowers twining around the edge. She made up the bassinet, laid a rose-edged crocheted baby blanket over the top sheet and opened the window to air the room. A warm, sweet-scented breeze washed over her perspiring face.
Erika pressed her forefinger against the smooth rocker back, setting it in motion. Forgive me if I not know everything, Mrs. Callender, but I learn quick. I will take good care of your beautiful baby girl.
She watched the chair tip slowly forward and then back on its long, curved runners, as if nodding in silent agreement.
Chapter Three (#ulink_1b4b98f5-d438-5b1d-b094-e5a302bf40bd)
Erika slipped the cambric sacque over the baby’s head and cradled the tiny form in the crook of her arm. In the single day since her arrival in Plum Creek, she had mastered not only changing diapers but dressing and feeding Marian Elizabeth Callender. Now, alone in the kitchen on Sunday morning while Mrs. Benbow attended church, Erika planned to bathe the child for the first time.
Grateful not to have the housekeeper’s sharp eyes assessing her every motion, she moved about the spotless, meticulously arranged pantry searching for a vessel to serve as the baby’s bathtub. The teakettle on the stove hissed as she scanned the cabinets and long, painted shelves for a basin of the appropriate size.
Skillets, cooking pots of various sizes, three sets of china. What riches! She gazed about her in awe. So many beautiful things! The blue-flowered plates she recognized from last night’s dinner, eaten in haste on the small kitchen table while Mrs. Benbow grudgingly rocked the baby in the wicker cradle.
Aside from her own bedroom upstairs, the wellkept kitchen with its ornate, nickel-trimmed iron stove and the wealth of utensils and china and glassware was her favorite room.
Ah, there! On the top shelf! Her gaze fell upon a large white china bowl with a matching cover. Just the right shape for a baby to sit in, and the cover so clever—to keep the water warm until bath time! Shifting the infant to her other arm, Erika reached over her head to retrieve the basin.
Zu hoch. Too high up, she amended in English. She must remember to speak the language of America! She would never become a citizen of this great country if she could not.
Undaunted, she settled the infant on a folded towel in the oblong porcelained iron sink and dragged a stool over to the shelf. She climbed onto the stool and with care lifted down the curious dish, cover and all. At the same instant the tall figure of Dr. Callender filled the doorway.
His white shirt was rumpled, his eyes red rimmed, as if he had not slept. The tumble of unruly coalblack curls over his forehead gave him an almost jaunty, boyish look. But his pale, strained face told her otherwise.
“Good day, Miss Scharf. I thought I would brew myself a cup of tea before Mrs. Benbow.” He turned somber gray eyes up at her, perched on the stool, and his brows rose. “.returns from her weekly religious indulgence,” he finished after a moment’s hesitation.
“Water is hot,” Erika said as she stepped off the stool. She set the china basin on the sideboard.
His gaze followed her, the expression on his face changing as he spied the infant. “What, may I ask, is the baby doing in the sink?”
“Oh, I bath baby now.” Erika gestured at the covered dish. “I find, how you say, bath-ing tub, on shelf. You use first hot water in kettle to make tea, then I wash baby.”
The eloquent, dark brows drew together. “You’re going to bathe my daughter in that?”
“Is what Mrs. Benbow uses, ja?”
“Certainly not. This, young woman—” he tapped a deliberate forefinger on the dish cover “—is a soup tureen. A wedding gift from my wife’s uncle in Savannah.”
“Ah. I see.”
Jonathan saw a sheepish smile curve the corners of her mouth.
“I make mistake.”
He watched her hand dive into her apron pocket and withdraw a small notebook and a chewed pencil stub.
“How you spell, please?”
He spelled out the words slowly as she scribbled on the pad. “Toor-een,” she pronounced. “For Suppe, ja?”
“For soup, yes. Not for bathing.”
“Ah.” The blue eyes sparkled with the joy of comprehension. “What for baby, then?”
Jonathan opened his mouth to reply, then snapped his jaw shut. He hadn’t the faintest idea. To his surprise, it annoyed him, not knowing. He liked to have answers—remedies—for the problems that came his way. His lack of a ready solution in this area made him uneasy, as if a part of his life were drifting out of his control. What would one use to bathe the infant?
When he’d delivered newborns in other households, particularly those far from town, he’d used a bucket or a small washtub, whatever was handy and reasonably clean. He realized suddenly that after Tess’s death he hadn’t been interested enough in the child to wonder about her care.
The child’s birth had cost him his wife. He had wanted nothing to do with Tess’s child. He knew he should feel ashamed of such antipathy toward his own flesh and blood, but what he felt was not shame but rage. His soul was dead. His heart was fired not by love but by fury.
What a reprehensible man he must be underneath the veneer of good manners and education! He wasn’t fit to lick the boots of the poorest, most illiterate farmer in Jackson County.
He wondered about himself, about his sanity. Because of Erika Scharf’s question, because of her very presence in his kitchen at this moment, he felt himself jolted into a different awareness, as if he’d been sleeping and she had shaken him awake. Their roles were reversed. She belonged; he did not.
Great Scott, he was a stranger in his own house!
Erika pointed to the top shelf of a glass-fronted cabinet. “That one,” she said, satisfaction tingeing her voice. “Reach for me, please?”
Jonathan eyed the stack of china plates and bowls. Extending one arm above her head, he opened the cabinet door and lifted down the indicated bowl. Tess’s best Haviland vegetable dish. With suppressed amusement he handed the dish to the young woman who waited, arms outstretched.
He watched Erika run her fingers over the dish and bit back a chuckle. Mrs. Benbow prepared dinner each Sunday evening; tonight’s meal might prove more interesting than usual. What would his housekeeper say when she discovered Erika’s use for her favorite serving dish?
* * *
Erika smoothed her hands over the material of her best skirt, a simple gored blue percale that had seen many washings. It was her only other garment besides a serviceable denim work skirt and her black travel ensemble. She’d ironed out the creases earlier that afternoon, after the baby’s bath and afternoon feeding, heating up the sadiron on the kitchen stove while she washed and dried the flowered china bowl she’d used for the baby’s bath.
Now, with the infant sleeping soundly in the next room, she tucked the stray wisps of hair into the crown of braids she’d wound on top of her head, keeping one ear attuned to the nursery. She had purposely left the door ajar to hear if the child cried.
Her hand stilled. She had actually been invited to join the doctor and Mrs. Benbow in the dining room—not as a servant, but as if she were a member of the family. Once each week, the housekeeper had instructed, on the Lord’s Day, Dr. Callender and his wife insisted the housekeeper join them at the formal Sunday meal. Now that his wife had “passed over,” as the older woman put it, Dr. Callender wished to carry on the tradition. Erika would join them at the table.
She peeked into the nursery to satisfy herself that the baby still slept. At the sight of the delicate, perfect fingers curled outside the rose coverlet, her heart lifted in her chest like a balloon. At any moment she expected to float up off the floor. A baby was a miracle from another world, so small and beautifully formed. She shook her head in wonder.
Downstairs, an ivory damask cloth covered the walnut table, which was laden with sparkling crystal and gleaming plates and bowls. Erika quailed at the sight. All those shiny forks and spoons, and glasses and plates on top of plates. How would she ever know which to use?
At the head of the table Dr. Callender sat, tapping a well-manicured forefinger against his crystal wineglass. Instead of the rumpled white shirt, the physician wore dark trousers and a black jacket, a silvergray silk cravat loosely knotted under his chin. He looked every inch a prince, or even a king. And he was not smiling.
At his right, Mrs. Benbow perched stiffly in the high-backed chair like a black sparrow with sharp, unblinking eyes.
Erika’s throat constricted. She hadn’t the slightest notion what to say to the doctor, or to the formidable woman who stared at her with obvious disapproval.
“Miss Scharf.” The doctor’s low, unemotional voice sent a butterfly skittering into her stomach.
“In this house, meals are attended with unfailing punctuality.”
Erika shifted her gaze from the housekeeper to the dark-haired man at the head of the table. “What means that, unfailing punc—punctu.?”
“You’re late,” snapped the housekeeper. “That’s what it means. My mashed potatoes will be stonecold.” She gestured at the mounded bowl on which a chunk of butter the size of a hen’s egg melted.
“So sorry,” Erika murmured as she slipped into the empty chair across from the stern-faced woman. “Baby cry and cry after the milk I give her. I could not sooner come.”
“Quieting a crying child is a labor of Sisyphus,” the doctor observed. “It never stops.”
“I stop it,” Erika said softly. “I rock her until crying stops, and she falls asleep. Cannot be very good mama if not have—how you say?—waiting. No, patience—that is the word! Patience.”
The flicker of a smile twitched across the doctor’s finely proportioned lips. “Patience,” he echoed. He pushed back his chair and rose. “Cow’s milk often does not agree with infants. Goat’s milk might be better. Mrs. Benbow, help yourself to the vegetables while I carve.”
Goat’s milk! Where in the world would she find a goat? Erika opened her mouth to ask, but Dr. Callender lifted the cover off the serving platter and busied himself with a wickedly sharp-looking knife.
A tingle of apprehension danced up Erika’s spine as she watched the physician’s long, capable fingers expertly pare thin slices of roast chicken into a neat fan-shaped pile on the china platter. His quick, purposeful movements made her breath catch. He made cutting up the fowl look so simple, even graceful, as if he enjoyed slicing into the succulent flesh of a once-living creature.
Her heartbeat hiccuped. Of course, she reminded herself. He was Dr. Callender. Maybe he was also a surgeon, used to cutting into.things.
She shuddered and cast a look at the housekeeper. Mrs. Benbow’s gaze followed every motion the physician made, an approving gleam in her eyes. No doubt she considered it her chicken, Erika thought, which she had prepared and offered up as a sort of sacrifice to her employer.
“White meat or dark?” the doctor inquired.
Erika blinked. “What?”
He studied her with quizzical gray eyes, the knife in one hand, a two-pronged silver fork in the other. “Breast or thigh?”
She couldn’t utter a word. She hadn’t the faintest idea. In all her twenty-four years she had never been asked such a question. It was either food or no food, never what kind of food; his question was beyond her understanding. She had so much to learn in America!
One thing she did know, however, was that speaking the word breast out loud in this man’s presence was an impossibility. Already she felt her cheeks flame at the thought of such an intimacy. Thigh was just as bad.
“White,” she choked out at last.
“Breast, then,” he said. His voice was unemotional, but deep in his eyes a light flickered, as if he were secretly amused. “Mrs. Benbow?”
He lifted a generous piece of chicken onto Erika’s plate as he waited for the housekeeper’s reply.
“Chest, thank-ee.”
The doctor chuckled. He served the housekeeper, then himself, taking both thigh and drumstick and a double spoonful of the fluffy whipped potatoes.
Erika mentally inscribed the word chest in her study notebook. She had thought it meant a piece of furniture with drawers, but in English, she was learning, one word could have two meanings. Repeating the word over and over in her head, she watched Mrs. Benbow dip the serving spoon into the oversize vegetable dish.
When it came her turn, she dug in the silver spoon and hesitated. The bowl looked familiar. She plopped the potatoes onto her plate, continuing to study the container.
It was the baby’s bathtub! Erika froze in horror. Not two hours ago, she had used the same bowl to bathe the infant! What would Mrs. Benbow say if she knew?
But she didn’t know, Erika assured herself. The sour-faced woman was totally absorbed in cutting her chicken “chest” into tiny square pieces. The housekeeper would only know about Erika’s earlier use of the bowl if—
Her breath squeezed off. If Dr. Callender told her! Oh, dear God. Would he? Was her employment in America to last just these two magical days before she’d be turned out of this house to fend for herself?
Her heart in her throat, she sneaked a look at the black-haired, elegantly attired gentleman at the head of the table. Calmly he glanced at the vegetable dish and lifted a morsel of chicken past his lips. He chewed for what seemed an eternity, swallowed, then opened his mouth to speak.
Erika flinched as his gaze met hers. Now. He would tell Mrs. Benbow now what she had done with the vegetable bowl.
“Mrs. Benbow?”
The housekeeper bobbed her gray head. “Yes, sir?”
Erika shut her eyes. She didn’t want to see the look on Mrs. Benbow’s face when he told her.
“My compliments. This chicken is excellent.”
“Why, thank you, sir!”
Erika’s lids snapped open. Across the table a pair of gray eyes surveyed her with a keen look. One dark brow rose in a sardonic arch. “Is something wrong, Miss Scharf?” he inquired, his voice bland.
“No,” Erika managed. She stabbed her fork into the potatoes on her plate, nervously moving them into a circle. She kept her eyes glued to the crisscross marks her fork tines made. “Nothing is wrong.”
When at last she raised her head, she found he was still looking at her. A smile tugged at one corner of his mouth, but his eyes were the same—calm, distant, except for that sudden odd light in their depths.
All at once she felt as if her head was full of sunshine. She couldn’t look away from him.
What was he thinking at this moment? Why had he not told Mrs. Benbow about the vegetable bowl?
Was it possible this stiff, unfriendly man had a glimmer of understanding about how she felt?
No, not possible. He planned to send his baby daughter—his own child—thousands of miles across the sea to Scotland. What kind of man would do that?
Still, he had kept her secret. And he hadn’t objected—well, not too strongly, at least—when she’d spoken up about sending his child away.
Absentmindedly, Erika pressed new patterns into her potatoes while she tried to think about the man who faced her across the table. Dr. Jonathan Callender held her future in the palm of his smooth, aristocratic hand. She had to try to understand him.
More than that, she had to please him!
Chapter Four (#ulink_127fa08c-fd80-5fd1-bfeb-9578cf7c0c96)
Erika gave the goat’s lead a determined tug. “Come, Jasmine! Doctor say goat milk good for baby. We will be late for feeding!”
The goat lifted its head from a cluster of pink roses twining over a picket fence and stopped chewing. Two hard black eyes regarded her with curiosity for a full minute before Erika gave another sharp jerk on the rope. The animal trotted after her.
Jubilant, she marched along Chestnut Street with a spring to her step. She had bargained for the goat at the first farm she’d reached on the road out of town, trading the promise of a free consultation with Dr. Callender for the best milk goat of the bemused farmer’s herd. But getting the animal from the farmer’s field to the doctor’s backyard wasn’t so easy.
So far, Jasmine had devoured most of the wild iris blooms scattered along the road back to town, plus a large portion of a purple butterfly bush arching over a neighbor’s fence, and now the roses. Erika sighed. Just a few more blocks, and she could tether the headstrong animal to the plum tree behind Dr. Callender’s stable. With its preference for a diet of flowers, the milk should be extra rich and tasty!
Pleased, she tugged the animal around the corner onto Maple Street and tied it to the plum tree behind the whitewashed barn.
Jonathan lunged into the dusty black buggy, grabbed the reins and flicked them smartly over the mare’s broad back. “Of all the confounded, muddleheaded arrogance,” he muttered. “One of these days, so help me, I will throttle that quack Chilcoate within an inch of his life!”
Daisy leapt forward and trotted down Main Street. When the doctor forgot to signal his intention, the horse turned the corner by habit.
No, Jonathan amended, belatedly pulling on Daisy’s rein. He would not throttle the man. He’d let the fool hang himself with his own rope. Sooner or later it had to happen; one of his noxious elixirs would poison someone. Jonathan prayed nightly for the health of the unwitting townspeople of Plum Creek and carried an extra bottle of ipecac in his medical bag.
Underneath, he knew getting rid of the incompetent old man wasn’t going to change a thing. It was the mayor—that idiot banker, Brumbaugh—and the rest of his town council toadies who were bent on ignoring the situation until it would be too late. An hour ago he’d argued himself blue in the face, ended up shouting at the mayor and telling Rutherford Chilcoate to shut up unless he could speak intelligently or even comprehend the existence of bacteria.
What would it take to convince them he knew what he was talking about? They needed a new water system, one that bypassed contamination sources and had a reservoir and modern filtering equipment. Cholera had been rampant in eastern cities for the past decade; it was only a matter of time before it hit Plum Creek. A sixth sense told him it would be sooner rather than later, since the farms and small ranches upstream continued to let their animal waste matter seep into the town water supply. Summer would be hot. And long.
He flapped the mare’s reins. Unfortunately, new water systems cost money. He’d offered to finance the project himself if they’d just vote on it! Their lack of concern made him so mad he could eat thistles.
He jerked the reins unnecessarily. Daisy had already halted in front of his house. Jonathan raked one hand through his hair, rose to step out of the buggy and stopped short. What in God’s name had happened to the scarlet zinnias Tess had planted a month ago? Every single bloom in the carefully tended border had been nipped off at the crown.
He dropped the reins, bounded out of the buggy and strode up the walkway onto the veranda.
“Mrs. Benbow!” He surged through the front door and headed for the dining room.
The housekeeper poked her head out of the kitchen. “Sir? Why, whatever be the matter?”
“The zinnias! What happened to Tess’s zinnias?”
Mrs. Benbow looked blank. “What’s wrong with them?”
Jonathan strove to calm his breathing. “They’re gone, that’s what. No blooms, just stalks.”
The housekeeper’s eyes widened, then narrowed in comprehension. “Best ask Miss Scharf.”
“Miss Scharf?” He barked the name. “What does Miss Scharf have to do with the zinnias?”
“Well,” the old woman began, “it’s not exactly her, it’s probably.”
Jonathan pivoted and headed for the stairs before the housekeeper could finish her sentence. He went up two at a time and with the knuckle of his fisted hand gave a short, sharp rap on Erika’s closed door.
“Miss Scharf?”
No answer. He knocked again, then edged the door open.
The room was empty. The lacy coverlet had been neatly drawn up on the bed, the single window propped wide open. A fresh, sweet-scented breeze ruffled the lace curtains. Jonathan paused, his hand resting on the doorknob.
Something felt different. The room was serene. Straightforward. No perfume atomizers or jewel boxes or other fripperies adorned the chest of drawers, no petticoats or discarded wrappers were tossed carelessly across the chair or the narrow bed. The faint smell of lemon oil made him lift his nose and sniff the air. For a moment he forgot the anger that had propelled him up the stairs.
Something about the room slammed a fist into his solar plexus. It was neat, well-ordered, purposeful, like its occupant—the single-minded young woman Tess had engaged as a helper.
Tess had never returned a garment to her capacious wardrobe or polished a single piece of furniture in her short married life.
That was it! The room seemed strange because it was not like Tess. In the next instant an ache laced his heart into a knot of anguish.
She’s gone, you fool! Let her rest in peace.
His anger returned threefold. Someone had decimated the zinnia border Tess had wanted. Each morning for a week she had supervised the digging and planting undertaken by their neighbor, Theodore Zabersky. Each morning for a week Tess had smiled at Jonathan instead of complaining about the long hours he spent seeing patients or all-night ordeals delivering babies on remote farms throughout the county.
It had been a sweet time for the two of them; he damn well wasn’t going to let this reminder of it be destroyed!
He banged the door shut. “Miss Scharf?” He shouted her name louder than he’d intended. “Answer me!”
“Here,” a muffled voice sounded. “In library.”
Library? He didn’t have a library. She must mean the upstairs sitting room. It was the only room in the house besides his study where Tess had allowed his books. What in God’s name was an uneducated immigrant girl doing in there? He strode down the hallway and threw open the door.
Erika looked up from the desk—his desk, he noted with annoyance—and gave him a shy smile. The curve of her mouth faltered as he loomed over her.
“I—I hope you not mind,” she said with a slight stammer. “I find quiet place for study.” She indicated the notebook spread before her, flanked by a dictionary and a worn-looking textbook. “I pronounce new American words and write many times to remember.”
Reading upside down, he made out a row of carefully penciled words. Tureen. Another line began with unerring and ended with congratulate.
“Miss Scharf, what happened to the zinnia border?”
Her blue eyes widened. “Zinnia? What is zinnia, please?” She lifted her pencil, poised it over the notebook.
Jonathan clenched his jaw and counted to fifteen before he trusted himself to speak. “Zinnias, my dear young woman, are the flowers that grow along the front path. Or did. Come here and take a look!” He tramped over to the window.
When she joined him, he pulled aside the curtain and directed her gaze to the walkway below.
“Flowers gone,” she observed. She looked at him expectantly.
“I’ll say they’re gone. The question, Miss Scharf, is where have they gone? And why? In this household, you do not pick flowers without permission.”
“But I do not pick!” she protested. “Maybe Mrs. Ben—”
She halted, clapped one hand over her mouth for a moment. “Oh! It was Jasmine! The goat.”
“Goat!” Jonathan stared at her. “I don’t have a—”
But Erika was already heading for the doorway. “Must have got loose, maybe eat rope!”
She flew ahead of him down the stairs, through the kitchen and out the back door. Mrs. Benbow, stirring soup at the stove, paused with her spoon in midair.
“Excuse us,” Jonathan panted as he strode past her.
Erika disappeared around the corner of the barn. By the time he caught up with her, she was yanking a small white goat with a frayed rope around its neck toward the plum tree. When she had secured the animal, she turned to face him.
“Goat bad for flowers, maybe. But is good for milk.”
“Where did that animal come from?” he demanded.
“From farmer. Mr. Peck. He give.”
“He gave it to you?” At her nod, he jammed his hands into his trouser pockets to keep from hitting something. “I don’t believe it. Cyrus Peck never gave away anything free in his life.”
“Not for free,” Erika protested. “For—how you say—ex…ex…for trade.”
Incredulous, Jonathan stared at her. “Trade for what?” he snapped.
‘Trade one goat for one doctor visit. We get milk for baby, he get leg fixed.”
“Leg fixed! There’s nothing wrong with Cyrus Peck’s leg that a little hard work wouldn’t remedy.” The anger he’d tamped down inside him leapt to life. Cold fury washed through his veins.
“Do you mean to tell me you took it upon yourself to bring a goat, a destructive, messy animal, onto my property? Let it eat my wife’s zinnia border? Let it—”
“I not let eat!” Erika’s eyes blazed the color of a hot summer sky. “Goat get loose, eat rope. Eat. zinnias,” she admitted. “I am sorry for flowers, but goat give good milk. I feed baby and not one crying. So is good,” she announced. She raised her chin in defiance.
Jonathan didn’t know whether to laugh or swear. Rage and amusement battled his brain to a standstill. Part of him wanted to strangle the young woman who stood before him.
She twisted her blue work skirt in both hands, then suddenly straightened her spine and drew herself up to her full height. The top of her head just reached his chin.
“Milk more important than flowers,” she said in a determined voice. She tipped her head up and gave him a level look. “As papa, you want good for baby. As doctor, you say not cow’s milk but goat milk good for her, so I get goat. I want good for baby, too!”
“Then keep the damn thing tied up!”
“Ja, I will,” she said quietly. “Will also fix flowers.”
“Everything has been topsy-turvy since you set foot in the door,” Jonathan grumbled. “I ought to send you back to New York or Hamburg or wherever it is you came from.”
Erika lifted her chin and surveyed him with steady blue eyes. “I stay in America. I stay here in Plum Creek, America, to help. I stay for baby. And,” she finished, her voice trembling, “for me.”
Try as he might, Jonathan could think of nothing to say. God in heaven, he was cursed. Tess was dead, leaving an infant he couldn’t bear to touch or even look at because it reminded him so much of her. Mayor Brumbaugh was stumbling blindly toward disaster, and now Cyrus Peck would descend on him with another tirade about his “bad leg.” This time he’d give the crotchety old farmer some fifty-dollar advice: Work an hour a day and mind his own business!
On top of this, he had Miss Erika Scharf to contend with. A more determined, maddening young woman he had never encountered. What god had he offended that such furies pursued him?
More to the point, what should he do about them?
About her.
He contemplated the crown of honey-colored braids wound on top of her head. He would be civil, he decided. He would swallow his anger and accept the goat. It was a good-hearted deed, after all. And she was right about the milk.
He would overlook the incident this time. Let her stay. But one more disaster—just one more unsettling event in his already unraveling world—and that would be that.
Baby or no baby, he would send Erika Scharf on her way.
Chapter Five (#ulink_57638763-bfbe-5278-902c-204abe1c3932)
Erika watched the doctor tramp onto the back porch and stalk through the kitchen door. The screened panel swung shut behind him with a resounding thwap.
She knew she had overstepped. She had “taken too much upon herself,” Mrs. Benbow had warned when Erika appeared with the goat. Worse than disturbing the housekeeper, she had angered Dr. Callender, made him so furious his eyes burned like smoldering coals when he spoke to her.
Surely he knew she meant no harm to him, or to his flowers? His wife’s flowers, she amended. Why could he not see that zinnias were not as important as milk for his child?
Unless. Erika paused at the top porch step. Unless the child did not matter to him. Thoughtful, she moved into the kitchen and approached the ramrodstraight figure of Adeline Benbow, swishing an oversize iron spoon back and forth in the stockpot.
“Excuse, please, Mrs. Benbow.”
“Overstepped, ye did, traipsing out to bargain on your own,” the housekeeper snapped. “Told you so this morning. Got no more sense than a butterfly.” She banged the spoon against the side of the pot for emphasis.
“Ja,” Erika said in a low voice.
“Use English, girl! You will never learn, otherwise.”
“Yes,” Erika repeated. “You are correct.”
“And just who’s going to milk that animal, I ask you?” the housekeeper demanded.
“I will. And feed it, too. Papa had a goat back in old country.”
“Hmmph. It’s just too much for the doctor after all that’s happened,” the housekeeper huffed. “Losing Miss Tess when they’d just begun their life together. well, it knocked him plumb sideways. Days he’d spend just staring at the bed where she had lain during her torment. Nights, too, staring and staring and seeing nothing. I’m surprised he drove the buggy to town today. Hasn’t set foot outside these walls since the funeral three weeks ago.”
“Maybe he visit the grave?” Erika ventured.
Mrs. Benbow shot her an odd look. “Maybe.” The corners of her thin mouth turned down, and her stirring arm slowed to a stop. An unfocused look came into her eyes.
Erika seized her chance. “What was lady like?”
“Miss Tess?” The stirring resumed, rhythmic figure eights accompanying her words. “Miss Tess was. Her people were from Savannah. Well-to-do they were, before the war. Miss Tess, she had most everything she ever wanted, and that included the doctor. One day he came to call on her father, Colonel Rowell, and the next day he and Miss Tess were engaged.”
“Why did doctor go to that place, Savannah?”
“Colonel Rowell was a surgeon during the war. He found a new way to set broken bones, and—”
“And doctor want to learn?” Erika finished for her.
“Saints, no! Doctor knows all about such things from his training in Scotland, you see. He went to Savannah to thank Colonel Rowell for saving his own father’s life after the battle of Shiloh.”
“And he meet Miss Tess and marry her? She was very beautiful?”
“Oh my, yes,” the housekeeper murmured. “Hair like black silk, she had. And eyes so green they looked like emeralds.”
“And?” Erika prompted. An insatiable curiosity about the woman who had been mistress of this fine house, and the doctor’s affection for her, gnawed at her insides. She wanted to know all about the woman Dr. Callender had loved so much his child—even his own life—seemed unimportant now that she was gone.
“Well,” the housekeeper continued, “Miss Tess was cultured in the Southern way. She had a lovely voice, and she accompanied herself on the harp. She had fine taste in gowns, too—always wore the latest styles from Paris.”
Erika glanced down at her plain blue denim work skirt and the toes of her sensible shoes peeking from beneath the hem. She could never be a lady because her feet were too big and her tastes too simple. She was a working girl through and through, a poor shoemaker’s daughter with rough English speech and untutored manners. Such things could be learned, she supposed. But even if one had a quick mind, it required generations of breeding and practice in manners to make a real lady.
The housekeeper sighed and slid the lid onto the simmering soup kettle. “But for all that, Miss Tess didn’t—” She broke off and turned toward the sink.
Erika pricked up her ears. But? Miss Tess didn’t what? “Yes?” she invited.
She wanted to know about Mrs. Callender as a person. What kind of woman planted brilliant scarlet flowers in a thin, straight line like carefully spaced soldiers marching toward the front steps? Had Mrs. Callender been a kind woman? Did she like to laugh? Was she warm and caring as well as beautiful?
“Miss Tess never cared much for. Ah, well, never you mind. The bairn’s beginnin’ to wail, do ye hear? You’d best warm that milk you set such store by. I put your bucket in the pantry cooler. After that, you can help me with the ironing. I got too much starch in the doctor’s shirts again, and they scorch easy.”
Tess never cared for what? Erika wanted to shout, but Mrs. Benbow dismissed her with a wave. She pondered the unanswered question all the way up the stairs to the nursery. Perhaps later. She would spend all afternoon in the sweltering kitchen, helping the housekeeper with the ironing. Maybe then the old woman would finish that intriguing sentence.
But she did not Erika labored for hours over the starched white shirts as the baby slept in the nursery upstairs. By late afternoon her hands ached from lifting the heavy, nickel-plated sadiron and guiding it over the pleated shirtfronts. The six-mile walk out to Cyrus Peck’s farm and back early this morning hadn’t bothered Erika’s strong legs a bit, but pushing the heavy iron back and forth over acres of white linen made her shoulders ache.
The housekeeper smoothed sheets and pillowcases with a second iron until she plopped exhausted into the single chair next to the stove. “Teatime,” she announced in her raspy voice.
The thought of drinking a cup of scalding tea made Erika groan out loud. The kitchen was stifling, the air hot and heavy with moisture, the smell of scorch and tomato puree suffocating. She longed for a cool drink of spring water.
“You have a complaint, missy?” Mrs. Benbow queried, an unpleasant edge to her voice.
“Nein. No. Is very hot. I warm easy.”
The housekeeper sniffed. “A hothouse girl. But you work hard, I’ll say that for ye.”
“Papa used to say I do everything ‘hard.’ I do not like halfway things.”
Mrs. Benbow glanced up. “Your father is dead?”
Erika nodded. “Mama, too. Of fever, last year. We do not have doctor in my village.”
A curious look crossed the housekeeper’s face. “You mean you came to America alone? All by yourself?”
“Ja. No other way. No one in village want to leave, even though things there very bad. So I come alone.”
“Were…weren’t you frightened?”
“Oh, yes. I come anyway. Nobody see how I shake on inside.”
The housekeeper rose and set the teakettle on the stove. “I came with my Donald. I didna want to leave my home, but Donald wanted to build ships in America. Men are like that. They want to do things.”
“I also want,” Erika replied. “I want to speak good American, and be able to write, so I can become citizen. Maybe someday vote.”
“Vote! My stars, girl, are ye daft?”
Erika fished in her apron pocket for her notebook. “How spell ‘daft,’ please?”
“Never you mind. All a woman ought to want is a husband and babes of her own. All I wanted was my Donald, but he up and died in Philadelphia three years after we were married. I have been with the Callender family ever since.”
The kettle began to sing. Erika lifted it off the hot stove and poured the steaming water into a flowered china teapot. “I am sad you lose husband,” she said in a soft voice. “But glad you are here in Plum Creek.”
Mrs. Benbow jerked upright. “Are you, now? Then it’s daft you are for sure! I haven’t been—” She broke off. “Why in the world are ye glad?”
Erika handed the older woman a mug of tea. “Because,” she said slowly, “you learn—I mean, teach me things.”
“I do? You’ve been here just three days, missy! Just what is it I’ve taught you?”
Erika cradled the warm mug of tea in her hands. “You do not like me, but you care for doctor. I learn is possible to ‘get along.’ And I watch at dinner. You show me what spoon to eat soup with, which glass for water.”
She purposely avoided mentioning how she learned the difference between the blue flowered vegetable dish and the ceramic washbowl she now used for bathing the baby.
Mrs. Benbow gaped at her, her snapping black eyes widening as she peered over the rim of her mug.
“And I learn also about doctor’s wife,” Erika continued.
“Miss Tess? Now, why on earth.” The older woman’s voice trailed away.
“Tomorrow I replace flowers. Want to do what is proper, like real lady would.”
The housekeeper’s thin gray eyebrows went straight up. “If you don’t mind some advice, child, I’d leave well enough alone about those flowers. You’ve done enough for one week.”
She plunked her mug down on the table and rose. “Now, let’s just finish up these few pieces of linen before I have to start supper.”
A fluttery Tithonia Brumbaugh swept open the front door of the mayor’s two-story house on Chestnut Street. “Why, good afternoon, Dr. Callender,” she warbled. “I didn’t expect a call so soon after—”
Jonathan cut the plump woman off with a curt nod. The mayor’s wife had an unerring knack for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. “Is the mayor in?” he inquired, his tone brusque.
“Why, no. Plotinus is over at the bank, where he spends most Tuesdays. Won’t you come in?” She peered at his face. “Forgive me, Jonathan, but you look dreadful. Is anything wrong?”
Jonathan ground his teeth. Everything was wrong.
“Thank you, no. I’ll drop in at the bank.” He tipped his hat and retreated to the buggy. Daisy jerked forward before the whip snapped over her head.
So he looked “dreadful,” did he? And he’d forgotten again what day of the week it was. At this rate, he would never regain his equilibrium.
Damn Tess, anyway. It had been an uphill struggle ever since the day he laid eyes on her, all ruffles and furbelows, in Colonel Rowell’s Savannah drawing room. She’d torn up his heart and tossed it away as casually as she poured tea and ordered the servants about.
When he reached Main Street, he slowed the mare to a walk. By the time he stopped the buggy in front of the bank, Jonathan had calmed himself and tried to forgive Tess for the hundredth time for setting her cap for him and then dying.
“Summon Mr. Brumbaugh,” he ordered the young man behind the wire cage. “Tell him it’s urgent.”
“Yessir, Dr. Callender, right away. Say, Ma’s sure been feelin’ better since you gave her those pills last month. What’s in ‘em, anyway?”
“Carbohydroxygenate,” Jonathan said shortly. They were plain sugar pills, but he didn’t think it any of the boy’s business. What Mrs. Ellis needed was attention, not medication.
“Mr. Brumbaugh?” he reminded.
The youth ducked his head and disappeared through an inner doorway. In a moment he was back, gesturing Jonathan forward through the swinging wrought-iron gate.
“Go right on in, Doc. The mayor’s been expecting you.”
“I’ll just bet he has,” Jonathan muttered under his breath. Four long strides and he entered the bank president’s inner sanctum.
The round, florid-faced man rose from behind the spotless desk. “Jonathan, good to see you.” He extended a beefy, freckled hand.
“Plotinus, let’s not play games. You know you dislike the sight of me. You’ll like it even less when you know what I came to say.”
“Now look, Jon, can’t we agree to—”
“We cannot,” Jonathan snapped. “Or rather, I cannot,” he said, softening his tone. “Dammit, man, you’ve got to swing the vote on a new water system. I’ve walked every mile of Plum Creek these past few weeks. We’ve got privy and barnyard waste seeping into the water along a ten-mile stretch north of town. Drinking water pumped from that creek is contaminated.”
“Yes, yes. You’ve said it all before, Jon. We’re getting tired of hearing—”
“It’s dangerous, ‘Tinus. Polluted water brings disease.”
“Aw, come on now, Jon. You’re expectin’ a disaster like you read about in those back East newspapers you’re always quotin’. But hell, my house and your house get their water from wells, so we have nothing to worry about.”
Jonathan grabbed the mayor’s shirtfront and pulled him up nose-to-nose. “Plotinus, you simpleminded ass, don’t you realize that, wells or no wells, if we have cholera here, the whole town will suffer? You, me, everybody?”
Sweat stood out on the mayor’s mottled face. “Just how come you’re so sure?”
“Because I’m a physician,” Jonathan snapped. “Because I’ve seen the bacterium under a microscope!”
“Dr. Chilcoate says—”
“Good God, man, Chilcoate’s not a qualified doctor! He’s a medicine hawker, not a physician. Come on, ‘Tinus, I need a vote.” He released the perspiring man, steadied him with one hand while the shorter man regained his balance.
“We need the water system,” he continued in a milder tone. “You know we do.”
“Mebbe. But there’s no more I can do, I’m afraid. Council already decided the matter. Nothing more can be accomplished, this year at any rate.” The mayor straightened his shirt collar with shaking hands. “You oughtta go away for a rest, Jon. Been strung up kinda tight since—”
“You know, and I know,” Jonathan said between gritted teeth, “that this has nothing to do with Tess’s.” He couldn’t say the word.
“Sure, Jon, I know. You’re just doin’ your job.” He reached up, clapped a thick hand on Jonathan’s shoulder. “Now get out of my office and let me do mine.”
“You’re a damn fool, ‘Tinus,” Jonathan snapped.
“I know. Always have been, I guess. Leastways I’ve got no power over the council members to force another vote.”
Jonathan clamped his jaw shut in frustration. He couldn’t just give up. He didn’t know what else to do, but he had to think of something. The health of an entire town was at stake.
“I want you to try, anyway. Call another meeting.”
The mayor worked his lower lip. “I’ll try. But don’t hold your breath. And stay away this time. You’re gettin’ folks riled up with all your talk about horse dung and bugs.”
Numb with disbelief, Jonathan drove back to Maple Street and the house he had shared with Tess. Somehow, now that his wife was gone, his whole life shattered, it was important—desperately important—that he try to save Plum Creek.
A sickening feeling of failure rose inside him. Now that the baby was ensconced upstairs, out of his study, he could once again pore over his medical journals from the East and abroad. Much good it did him.
With foreboding, he noted that the leaves of trees that had been frothy with blossoms in May were even now brown and sere around the edges. Midday temperatures had hovered around the hundred-degree mark for over a month, and the thick pall of road dust swirling about Daisy’s feet smelled dry and smoky. The worst heat of this long summer was still ahead.
But there might still be time to find a suitable building—a barn, a warehouse, even a church cellar—to scrub down for use as a temporary hospital if the need arose. He thought of Tess, and the familiar knot of anger tightened around him like a hangman’s noose. She didn’t die on purpose, he reminded himself. But he still felt abandoned. It felt like pure, unadulterated hell.
He stopped the buggy, laid the reins on the bench and climbed out. “The irony, old girl,” he said to the mare as he unhitched her and led her toward the barn, “is that I finally have all the time I need for my medical practice. But now there’s no joy in it.”
It was all wrong. Tess had always wanted more of him than he could give. She’d resented his commitment to medicine, the long days spent seeing patients, the emergencies that called him out in the dead of night. To be honest, he had chafed under her misguided nagging.
He had fallen in love with her that day in Savannah, deeply in love. But in the short time they’d had together, they couldn’t seem to balance passion and resentment. He regretted that he hadn’t been able to manage things differently—make Tess happy as his wife.
And now it was over. His time with her was past.
Is life always like that? he wondered. Always learning too late what went wrong?
Chapter Six (#ulink_0b52cc76-c684-58b6-950e-aa10f92bbcd1)
Jonathan rounded the corner of the barn and started across the lawn toward the front porch. What an ass he’d been in Plotinus Brumbaugh’s office this morning. He’d lost his sense of perspective and his temper, as well. He wouldn’t be surprised if the mayor put it out that Jonathan was deranged.
Right now, he needed to be alone. He’d hole up in his study, a stiff whiskey at his elbow, and get a grip on himself. As close as he was to the edge, he didn’t want to blunder into Mrs. Benbow or that slip of a German girl. She already regarded him as an ogre. He’d seen it in her eyes that first day—a wary, assessing look, as if she expected him to bite.
Mrs. Benbow would tut-tut when she discovered the empty whiskey glass and the telltale smell of spirits, but he didn’t care a whit. He was accountable to no one. His sanity outweighed the disapproval of his housekeeper, even one who’d been with his family as long as Mrs. Benbow had. This was his home, his sanctuary. The world outside seemed unreliable. Treacherous.
For the first time in his life, he acknowledged, he could not control events by force of will. But he’d be damned if he’d change one thing about the few things he could govern—and one of them was his residence and another was his private study.
Tess had come into his life and been taken from him, and there had been nothing he could do about it. His sense of self, his trust in those things he had valued—knowledge, love, even his skill as a physician—had been shaken to the core. He needed. what? Privacy? Escape?
He needed sameness, he knew that much. Something on which to anchor his equilibrium.
He skirted the expanse of green grass, inhaling the comforting, earthy smells of summer honeysuckle, the peppery hint of horse manure, wood smoke. Cicadas screamed in the plum tree.
Four steps from the front walkway he brought himself up short “What the devil?” He raked an unsteady hand through his hair.
A new crop of scarlet zinnias poked their bright heads up along the square cement stepping stones Tess had insisted on. But instead of bordering the path in the neat orderly line he was used to seeing, the new plants were arranged in masses, mingled with clumps of purple woods iris and drifts of skyblue pincushion flowers. It looked like a riotous dance of blooms casually swirling in the general direction of the front steps.
He sucked in a breath. Never in a month of Sundays would Tess have tolerated such a wild-looking garden!
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