The Doctor Takes a Wife (9 page)

S
arah couldn't stop looking over her shoulder every few yards as she and Prissy walked home, still not sure she wouldn't see Ada following them with some weapon raised high to attack her.

For God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind,
she remembered from the New Testament, she thought, and felt the fear lift away from her as if someone had removed a thirty-pound sack of flour from her back.

Lord, please heal Ada and restore her sound mind.

They reached the wrought-iron fence that surrounded the mayor's house and grounds. “Thank God that crazy Ada didn't try to follow us, although I'm sure Dr. Walker wouldn't have let it happen,” Prissy said, lifting the heavy iron latch that opened the gate. “Oh, I wish something could be done with her so she wouldn't keep popping up like that, when you least expect her! It's positively spooky,” she grumbled on. “Why can't her parents see she needs to be in an institution? There ought to be a law.”

“I'm sure that poor old couple can't bear the thought,” Sarah said. “From everything I've ever heard about such places, it's like putting someone in a cage. You don't hear of anyone ever emerging again in his right mind.”

Prissy rolled her eyes. “That may well be true, but I think you're being entirely too generous about this,” she said. “Next, you'll say we need to keep praying about it.”

Sarah grinned, for she had indeed been about to say that very thing. “Of course I wish Ada weren't acting like this—for Dr. Walker's sake, if not for mine. He looked so tired today at the graveside, so sad. I'm sure losing a patient must be very hard on him.”

Prissy sighed. “See, you do care about him! Sarah, what Nolan Walker needs is a good
wife
to encourage him, to see that he eats properly, make sure he gets his rest.”

The picture Prissy had painted of Sarah as devoted wife, caring for Nolan, was a very appealing one. But she couldn't dwell on it, because Prissy wasn't done.

“When are you going to get off your lofty perch and let yourself love him?” she went on. “That excuse that he's a Yankee's wearing a little thin by now, don't you think?”

Sarah stared at her as they had reached their little cottage and went in. She hung up her coat with a sigh, then took Prissy's coat and hung it up, too. “Dr. Walker and I
have
become friends. But how can he and I be anything more if he's not a believer? The Bible warns about being unequally yoked, you know.”

Prissy groaned exasperatedly. “Sarah Matthews, if
you gave that man the
slightest
bit of encouragement, he'd be sitting in the front pew every Sunday morning, and you know it.”

“Having him come to church with the wrong motive is not the answer,” Sarah said. She knew she sounded prim and she didn't want to, but if Nolan came to church, she wanted it to be for the right reasons.

“Maybe he'd start off coming to see you, but while he was there, he'd have to hear the preaching,” Prissy pointed out. “That's the way
I'd
do it, anyway.”

Sarah sighed again. Could Prissy be right?

“You don't mind me inviting him to the taffy pull, do you?” Prissy asked. “I mean, I wasn't inviting him for my sake, but you were distracted by seeing Ada staring at you, which I didn't realize at the time, and I—”

“No, I'm glad you did,” Sarah assured her. She couldn't deny she'd be glad to see Nolan there. Unless someone brought some unattached male guests, she and the other Spinsters would be watching the ones who were courting bill and coo with their beaux, something that was becoming harder and harder to do without feeling a very human envy. “With no family here in town, he probably doesn't take very much time to enjoy himself,” Sarah murmured. “And perhaps he and one of the other Spinsters will discover a liking for one another…” She busied herself with lighting the stove and putting the teapot on top of it, activities that didn't require her to look Prissy in the eye.

Prissy gave a low whistle. “Sarah Matthews, you can just stop saying such silly things that you don't even believe. I'm not fooled for a minute.”

Sarah couldn't help but smile. “I'm glad you always tell me the truth, Prissy,” she said, and gave her friend an impulsive hug. “We'll see what happens. Now, why don't we get back to your cooking lessons? If your mama and papa are coming to supper tomorrow night, we'd better see if you can make some edible dumplings, and then we need to do a bit of housekeeping.”

“Ever the taskmaster,” Prissy groused good-naturedly.

 

Nolan didn't show up at the taffy pull. Sarah told herself it didn't matter, that she hadn't been expecting him to, and tried to keep herself from watching the door every time it opened to reveal a new guest's arrival. She even had a good time, laughing and singing with the others as they stretched and pulled the sugary, sticky confection into pieces of candy. A wiry ranchhand from Cherokee glued himself to her side during the early part of the evening, and he was pleasant enough company, but when he left later without asking if he could call on her, she was only relieved.

Had Nolan been called out to see a patient, or had he decided a taffy pull was just too childish for a professional man such as himself to bother with? Perhaps he wasn't interested in her after all.

 

In actuality, Nolan had been summoned back to the Parker ranch that morning, for both the little Parker girl and her grandmother, Hal Parker's widow, were abed with the same high fever and coughing that had felled the old rancher. Hank Parker's wife was staying
out of bed by sheer will to take care of them, for she was feverish and coughing, too.

By nightfall he'd forgotten all about the taffy pull, immersed as he was in the struggle to save the old woman and the child. He stayed out at the ranch for twenty-four hours, alternately medicating the grandmother and the granddaughter and helping the younger Mrs. Parker sponge both of them down. He finally sent the exhausted young wife off to bed and instructed her worried husband to heat up some of the broth left on the stove for her. By morning, the little girl seemed as if she would survive with some careful nursing, but the old woman had followed her husband into death.

He drove home the next day, aching in every joint, as weary and discouraged as he'd ever been in the war after hours in the casualty tents.

But when he arrived back at his office, there was already a man sitting on a horse in front of it, waiting for him. There would be no rest for him yet.

He visited two ranches and three houses in town that day, and all of the patients he saw were suffering from the same chills, fever, coughing and body aches. He dosed them for their fevers and coughs, instructed their families on nursing them and giving them lots of water and nourishing broths and reassured them the best he could. He advised the still-healthy inhabitants of each house to stay home so as not to spread the contagion.

Of the patients he saw that day, only two were advanced in years, so with any luck the others would recover. But it was clear that Simpson Creek was in the throes of an epidemic. And all of them had been at the funeral of Hal Parker.

Each time he returned to his office, someone else was waiting to bring him to another sick person, or had left a note in his door that he was needed at such-and-such a house. He wished he could split himself into several doctors, so he could be in more places at one time, or at least had a trained assistant who, in his absence, could dispense medications, or take care of someone until he could get there. A nurse—yes, that's what he needed. A nurse. Or several nurses.

He finally fell into bed without eating supper, for he was too tired to make himself anything and it was too late to walk down to the hotel restaurant. He slept dreamlessly until the sound of church bells woke him the next morning.

Got to tell Reverend Chadwick he ought to call off Sunday services until this epidemic dies down,
he thought groggily. People didn't need to be congregating in small places, spreading the sickness. If there was a God, wouldn't He understand?

He'd barely completed the thought before the sound of his office bell jangled him fully awake. Apparently he wasn't going to have time to have a proper breakfast and shave before his patients needed him again.

 

“I declare, I've never seen so many cases of the grippe,” Mrs. Gilmore said Wednesday afternoon over dinner. Sarah and Prissy were dining with them, as they did at least twice a week. “Why, just in town yesterday I heard of half a dozen people down with it.”

Sarah thought of Milly. They'd just been together at church Sunday, but perhaps she ought to ride out to the ranch this afternoon and check on her and Nick. If they
were fine, she was going to tell them not to come into town, she decided. A woman with child didn't need to be exposed to sick people.

Before she left, she'd set a pot of vegetable soup to simmer on the stove, enough for their supper and to take some down to leave at Nolan's office. The poor man was likely working such long hours that he probably wasn't taking the time to eat properly. But could she trust Prissy to mind it so that it didn't boil down to nothing and scorch the soup into a charred mess? The girl could be so forgetful sometimes….

“And someone said it's really bad down at Burnet,” Prissy's mother went on, helping herself to another serving of scalloped ham. “I'm going to have to write your Aunt Vira, Prissy, and make sure she's all right. She lives in Burnet, you know,” she said to Sarah.

Sarah did know, for Mrs. Gilmore spoke incessantly about her older sister Vira. It sounded as if the woman was quite a character, and a hypochondriac to boot.

“Speaking of Vira, I stopped by the post office on my way home, and there was a letter from her,” Mayor Gilmore announced, breezing into the dining room, late as usual, and waving an envelope.

Seizing the envelope, his wife dropped her fork on her china plate with a clatter and tore it open. She held out the unfolded page for a moment until her eyes found their focus, then scanned the page.

Sarah saw the color drain out of her normally florid cheeks.

“Oh dear,” she murmured, and stared at the page again.

“Mama?” inquired Prissy. “Is Aunt Vira sick?”

“No, but she says everyone else in Burnet is, so she thought it best to come here for a visit. She plans to stay until the influenza's all gone from down there. Anson's going to bring her, she says.”

“Mama, you've got to write and tell her not to come!” Prissy cried. “It's no safer here, with people falling ill left and right.”

“I can't,” her mother wailed. “You know Vira—she never waits to hear an answer. She's probably already on the way!”

“Nevertheless, Martha, we ought to try,” Mayor Gilmore said. “There's probably more risk of her bringing the contagion here than of her contracting it in Simpson Creek. Write out what you want to say after dinner, and I'll see if we can send a telegram—or if the wires are not working, maybe I can pay one of Andy Calhoun's boys at the livery to ride down with the message.”

“Well, if you're not able to stop her, it'd be fun to see Anson, at least,” Prissy said. “I've been writing him to persuade him to come visit with his mother ever since we started the Spinsters' Club, but he kept giving me excuses. I think the idea of all those single women scared him,” Prissy said with a giggle. “You'd like him, Sarah.”

“Didn't I meet him a long time ago? Before the war?” Sarah asked. She had a hazy image in her mind of a boy with dark brown hair some six years older than her who'd taken delight in tormenting the girls at a church picnic.

“That's right, you did—I remember now. Oh, he's changed since then,” Prissy assured her. “Last May
when we went down to Burnet to welcome him home from the war, I swan, he'd grown a foot taller while he was away,” Prissy enthused. “And that military bearing…” She pretended to fan herself. “If he wasn't my cousin…”

Sarah laughed at her friend, and then everyone was quiet as the clatter of horses' hooves and carriage wheels on the driveway outside reached their ears.

Mayor Gilmore got to his feet and peered out the window. “Well, you needn't bother writing the message. She's here, she and Anson. And from the amount of trunks and boxes, she means to stay for a while.”

W
ith an excited shriek, Prissy sprang up from the table. She ran to the window to confirm her father's words, then out of the dining room, her shoes clattering on the flooring of the hallway. Mayor Gilmore and his wife hastened after her in a more decorous fashion. Sarah followed them, lingering in the doorway, not wanting to intrude too soon on a family reunion.

“Aunt Vi! Anson!” Prissy called, running down the steps. The young man assisting his mother out of the landau had his back to them when Sarah reached the doorway, but Sarah could see that he was tall and solidly built. Aunt Vira was plumper than her sister, indeed quite rotund, and possessed of at least two chins. She was dressed in a matching violet coat and bonnet which clashed violently with the maroon wool dress beneath it.

Sarah saw the old woman look up to see her niece rushing at her, but before she opened her arms to her, Aunt Vira pressed a rumpled lacy handkerchief to her mouth and gave a gusty sneeze.

“Oh, my dear girl! Martha, Herbert! I certainly hope
you have a roaring fire going, for I declare, I've never been so chilled in all my born days!” she cried, embracing Prissy, and then her sister. “Anson put a hot brick at my feet when we left, but it didn't stay hot very long, I can tell you. And that road! My poor bones have never been so rattled about in my body! I felt as if my brain was about to shake right out of my skull!” She sneezed again.

“I told Mama the trip would be hard on her, and that we should keep to home, but she insisted on coming,” said the young man, who had finished giving Antonio directions on stabling the horses and had now come to join his mother. “Why, cousin Prissy, you're looking all grown up!” he said with raised eyebrows.

Sarah understood instantly why Prissy had hinted that her cousin was handsome. With those dark eyes and hair and that broad-shouldered frame, she could well imagine he could make quite an impression on the Spinsters' Club if he stayed long enough.

“Oh, pooh, I don't look any different than I did in May when we came to see y'all,” Prissy pouted prettily, and her cousin gazed down at her, enchanted.

As long as there were women like Prissy, Sarah thought with amusement, there would always be Southern belles.

“But who's this?” Anson said, tearing his gaze away from Prissy and toward Sarah.

Prissy didn't seem to mind relinquishing the spotlight. “Aunt Vira, Anson, this is my best friend, Miss Sarah Matthews. Sarah, my aunt, Mrs. James Tyler, and my cousin Anson.”

Anson strode forward and bowed to Sarah. “Miss
Matthews, I am charmed to meet you,” he said, turning the full force of his smile on her.
“Charmed.”

Sarah could no more have stopped the smile which spread across her face at this fulsome greeting than she could stop breathing, but even as her eyes catalogued his features, she was thinking how Nolan's angular face appealed to her more.

“Mrs. Tyler, Mr. Tyler, nice to meet you,” Sarah murmured.

“Oh, no, that won't do, Miss Matthews,” protested Anson smoothly. “Please, call me Anson.”

Aunt Vira smothered a cough before saying, “And where do you live, Miss Matthews? Are you visiting with Prissy?”

“That's the best part, Aunt Vira!” Prissy interrupted. “She lives right there,” she said, pointing beyond the older woman toward the cottage, which was nearer to the road. “With me! Mama and Papa are letting us use the old cottage!”

Vira Tyler's jaw dropped open. “Whatever for? Why would you choose to live away from your dear mama and papa, niece? That makes no sense.”

Prissy giggled. “Oh, Aunt Vira, we're just across the lawn from the big house!”

“Actually, it makes perfect sense, Vira,” Mayor Gilmore put in smoothly. “Martha was at her wit's end trying to teach Priscilla all the housewifely arts when our daughter would much rather think of feminine fripperies, but her friend Miss Matthews seems to have perfected all the skills and virtues that a young lady should know to manage her own house. So we thought it a fine idea to let them live in the cottage for a while,
where Miss Matthews can teach her all these things. I fear we have been too indulgent with our only daughter, Vira, but she learns willingly from Miss Matthews.”

Unseen by her parents and her aunt, Prissy rolled her eyes at Sarah before interjecting, “Aunt Vira, she's teaching me how to cook! I've learned to make delicious stews and light-as-a-feather cakes and mouthwatering fried chicken and—”

“Yes, yes,” Vira Tyler said, waving one hand and dabbing her forehead with her handkerchief in the other. She sneezed yet again. “That's wonderful, dear niece, and you must tell me more later, but right now, I need to get inside by the fire. I am chilled to the bone, I tell you! If there's been a colder day this winter, I can't remember it.”

Sarah saw Prissy's parents exchange a look. Though overcast, the weather had been very mild for January. Without another word, they helped Aunt Vira into the house.

Anson tucked Prissy's arm in his as they strolled toward the house. “Perhaps you'd like to demonstrate your newfound prowess in the kitchen for me while I'm here, cousin.”

“What a good idea! We'll make a party of it! I'll invite the ladies in the club who have not yet found a beau, and—”

“
Whoa,
cousin! What's wrong with just the three of us, you, me and Miss Sarah?” He winked at Sarah over his shoulder. “I believe I'd like to become better acquainted with your friend, not be subjected to a passel of females all aiming their wiles at me at once.”

Prissy let out a peal of laughter. “Why, Anson, who's
to say our friends are going to fall all over you, you conceited thing? And if you hadn't interrupted me, I was going to say I'd be inviting Nolan Walker, our new town doctor. He would like very much to court Sarah, but she's still making up her mind about him—”

“Prissy, you're talking about me as if I weren't here,” Sarah complained. “And I'm very sure your cousin isn't interested in my personal business,” she added with a quelling glare at her friend. Prissy could be such an artless chatterbox at times!

Anson was about to mount the first step up into the house, but at that, he let go of Prissy's arm and turned around to grin at her. “Oh, but I
am
interested, Miss Sarah. A man likes to know at the outset if he has a rival.”

Sarah took a step back, unsure how to politely discourage Prissy's cousin's flirtatiousness. Perhaps, if she had not met Nolan first, she might have found Anson Tyler's confident charm appealing. The thought startled her—she had insisted she wasn't interested in Nolan, and yet again she found him preferable to another man?

Even as she made this startling realization, Prissy gave her cousin a light, playful slap on the cheek. “Now you
stop
that, Anson! You'll frighten Sarah away, and she'll move back to the ranch, and Mama and Papa will make me live in the big house….”

Anson raised his hands in mock surrender. “All right, all right,” he said. “I hope I haven't offended you, Miss Sarah? I promise to behave myself during my stay here. Pax?”

Sarah smiled in spite of herself. “Pax.”

“Wonderful,” Prissy said. “You must be hungry, Anson. I'm sure Flora is putting dinner together for you at this very moment. Let's all go inside and chat. You can tell us what's become of all those handsome boys you mustered out with, Anson.”

“Y'all go ahead,” Sarah told them. “You'll want to spend some time with your relatives, and I have some things to do.”

“But—”

“I'll be back by supper,” she assured them. “Prissy, I'm sure you'll want to show Anson our cottage—could you just check on the soup I'm going to put on the stove to simmer?”

Sarah headed for the stable, where she requested Antonio saddle the horse she usually borrowed. Then she went to the cottage, where earlier she had diced some carrots, onions and the remains of some chicken they'd had last night, added some dried beans she'd soaked overnight and some pepper, salt and dried chilies and mixed it all in a pot of chicken stock. Then she set it on the stove to simmer before changing into her riding clothes.

Within half an hour she was riding toward the ranch.

She found Milly in her kitchen, stirring her own pot, but hers held chili. The room was redolent with the savory, spicy smell.

“Oh, I was just thinking about you!” Milly cried, rushing forward to embrace her sister. “I heard someone ride up, but I thought it was just one of the men coming in from the pasture. They're all out checking
fence and tending stock, but they'll be so glad to see you!”

Roses bloomed in Milly's cheeks once again, Sarah noted, and if she could stand the smell of chili cooking, she must be feeling better.

“You'll stay for supper, won't you?” Milly burbled on. “I'll have one of the men ride back with you, or you could even stay the night…I'm so happy to have some female company after all these men!”

Sarah shook her head. “I'm sorry, I promised I'd be back at the cottage for supper.” She told Milly about Prissy's aunt and cousin showing up unexpectedly, but didn't mention one of the reasons she wanted to get back was to deliver soup to Dr. Walker. “I really just came to see how you were doing, to see if everyone was well.”

Milly blinked. “Fine as frog hair split three ways—even me,” she said with a grin, patting her abdomen, “though I've had to let out my dresses in the waist a bit. Good thing I'm handy with a needle, hmm?” She studied Sarah more closely. “Why shouldn't we be well?”

“The influenza's getting really bad in town, Milly,” Sarah told her. “Several folks have come down with it since old Mr. Parker died. I see Dr. Walker's buggy going back and forth all the time, and it seems like there's always a horse or a wagon parked in front of his office. I came to tell you as long as everyone's healthy out here at the ranch, you'd better not come into town. No sense in risking your health, Milly, especially now that you're expecting.”

Milly frowned and her shoulders sagged. “But I was
just planning to go to mercantile, now that I'm feeling better,” she said. “Bobby's grown out of all his shirts again,” she said, referring to their youngest cowhand. “And what about church on Sunday?”

Sarah was thoughtful. It was now Wednesday. “You'd better stay home, Milly. Send one of the men to the mercantile if you absolutely have to have something, or send them to me. As for church, I'm sure the Lord will understand.”

“Well, at least sit down with me for a few minutes and have a cup of tea and some of these cookies I made,” Milly said, pointing to a crockery jar on the table. “Tell me all about Prissy's aunt and cousin. The middle of January seems like an odd time to come for a visit.”

Sarah nodded. “The influenza's hit Burnet very hard, so she wanted to get away from it, I expect.” She thought Prissy's aunt was coming down with something, too, what with the way she couldn't stop sneezing and coughing when she arrived, but she didn't mention it, not wanting to worry Milly.

“And is her boy Anson as ornery as ever? I imagine he's all grown up now, isn't he?”

Sarah nodded. “He's grown a foot since he went away to war, and filled out some. He's quite the handsome charmer now.”

“Ohhhhh?” No one could inject such a depth of meaning into a single syllable and a lifted brow as her sister.

“He tried flirting with me, but I indicated I wasn't interested,” Sarah said loftily, pretending a great inter
est in brushing a cookie crumb off her bodice. “Though I imagine the Spinsters' Club ladies will be.”

“Why?” Milly said, ignoring Sarah's second remark for the first. “Because of our Yankee doctor?”

To her dismay, Sarah felt a blush spreading up her cheeks. “Of course not. I don't know why you and Prissy keep trying to pair us off.”

Milly only smiled.

“We agreed to be friends,” Sarah said, “and then he didn't even show up at the taffy pull, and hasn't mentioned it since. Though I imagine it was because he was so busy taking care of all those sick folks,” she admitted, determined to be fair.

“And how's Ada?” Milly asked.

Milly had been to the Parker funeral, but she had left before Ada had shown up and glared at them. Sarah told her sister about the incident, finishing with “But I haven't seen her since, fortunately.”

“You be careful if you do,” Milly said. “I'll pray for her.”

The grandfather clock in the parlor struck the hour. “Goodness, it's getting late,” Sarah said, rising. She wanted to return in time to deliver that soup to Nolan so he'd have it before he was ready for his supper. “I've got to be going. Please tell Nick and the men I'm sorry I didn't get to see them….”

As much as she cared about Molly and the rest of the ranch's inhabitants, she felt pulled back to Simpson Creek as if by a magnet. For that was where Nolan was.