Ginny Aiken (15 page)

“Eric, please talk to me.”

His voice rasped in the silent barn. “There’s nothing to say.”

“Nonsense,” she countered. “Why do you kiss me then pull away like this? Your actions leave me questioning my sanity. I need to know why you’ve toyed with me.”

He stiffened. “I haven’t toyed with you. It would be better if I had.”

She touched his forearm. “I don’t see how playing with my emotions would be good at all. Please, Eric, I need an explanation.”

He slipped from her grasp and began to pace, pausing long enough to kick a bundle of hay. “You’re right. You do deserve an explanation. I just don’t know if I can give it to you. I may still lack the courage.”

“I don’t think you lack courage. A man who can turn his feelings on and off as you do is strong enough to conquer anything.”

“Always the optimist, aren’t you?”

“I look for potential. It makes life worth living.”

He shut his eyes, clamped his jaw, clenched his fists at his sides. “You’ve reached the crux of the matter. My life is hardly worth living. I’m no better than a murderer.”

Letty gasped. “I don’t believe you. You’re too harsh on yourself. Why do you think that?”

“If anything, I’m too lenient.”

As Letty studied him in apparent disbelief, Eric shook his head and tried to find the words to recount his guilt. The deepening dusk bolstered him. He didn’t feel man enough to confess in the light of day.

“Martina died,” he said, his voice ragged. He wished he could erase the past. He wished what he’d said sufficed, but it didn’t. There was more. “Our son died, too, and I let it happen. Compared to someone who battles death daily, I’m the worst kind of man.”

“You haven’t said anything to condemn you yet.”

He cursed her need to strip him of his protection, to have him bare his shame before her. “Of course I have. I’m responsible for the deaths of my wife and son. What more do you want me to say?”

“I want you to tell me exactly what happened and why you’ve assumed the blame. For goodness’ sake, Eric. Hartville’s champion of principle, the man who challenges evil and seeks the truth, isn’t one who’d stand by and let a woman and child die.”

He would have given anything to keep silent and bask in the light of Letty’s faith, but that was too cowardly, even for him. He had to confront his failings once and for all.

“That
is
what I did,” he said, his voice thick. “Martina labored for two days, bleeding badly. The midwife did all she could but finally told us we needed a doctor.”

Eric paused. He relived the horrible moments that still haunted his dreams.

“My wife refused to have a man in our bedroom, much less let him examine her body. She wanted a woman, and the midwife did all she could. I couldn’t sway Martina, and since speaking tired her, I let her have her way. She even said her death was God’s will, but how could it be His will? Why would He want them dead?

“It wasn’t God’s will. I didn’t have the courage to fight her, and God let me fail.”

Eric’s torment overwhelmed Letty, bringing tears to her eyes. His pain became hers, and she would have borne it if she could have released him from its grip.

Moisture coursed down the cheeks of the man she loved. Yes, she loved him. She loved Eric Wagner despite the pain piercing them, the pain both would surely still face.

Letty pressed him. “Why do you call yourself a coward?”

“Because I was scared, afraid to fight her any longer. I should have brought the doctor whether she agreed or not, but because I loved her, because I’d always honored her wishes, I gave in. I might as well have killed her with my hands. Love made me weak, and that love killed my wife and son.”

Letty reached up and, with a gentle touch, cupped his cheek. “You aren’t to blame for Martina’s death. You respected her wishes when she made a choice. God gave us all that right. Your only crime was to love her, perhaps too much, perhaps too well. There’s nothing to condemn in what you did.”

He pushed her aside. “I should have fetched the doctor. I could have saved their lives.”

“You can keep living like this, plagued by the ‘I should haves,’ but ‘I should have’ won’t bring either of them back.”

A strangled sound escaped Eric’s throat.

Letty took the step that separated them, placing her hand on his jaw, feeling him shake. “Yet you’re very much alive, aren’t you?”

Had her hand not held his face, she wouldn’t have known he nodded. “I envy your wife,” she said. “I would rather have the love you gave her than all the medical training in the world. Life is terribly empty when one is alone.”

She waited, wondering what Eric thought of her confession. The moment stretched on.

Then he said, “I know loneliness.”

“Don’t condemn yourself to that, then. I doubt Martina would have wanted loneliness for you.”

Eric fastened his gaze on hers. “How did you know that?”

Because I love you, too, and I want only your happiness.
She wished she had the right to speak the words out loud, but Eric wasn’t ready to receive them. Perhaps he never would be.

Forcing a light tone, she answered instead, “Because I’m a woman. I know how a woman thinks.”

“Yes,” he said, “you are a woman, a lovely one at that, and you deserve the attentions of a whole man, not one plagued by ghosts. I apologize for my behavior. Please forgive me. I can only blame a . . . certain weakness where you’re concerned.”

The pain he dealt her lodged deep.

“There’s nothing to apologize for,” she said, her voice reedy. “Your kisses mean a great deal to me.”

Eric studied the hayloft. He shoved a fist into the pocket of his trousers and ran a hand through his golden blond hair. “Don’t let them, Letty. Find a man of your own, one who’ll give you the love and the children you ought to have. You have so much love to give.”

Let me give it to you,
her heart cried, but she said nothing. She squared her shoulders. “It’s best if I go home now.”

“It’s long past time.”

While Eric hitched her two horses to the buggy, Letty studied his every move. He was a good, strong man. So noble, yet troubled and, from what he’d said, estranged from God.

It occurred to her that Eric was perhaps too noble. The sorrow of widowhood could not be denied, and neither could his love for his wife. But Martina was dead. The man who’d kissed Letty was very much alive and filled with desire—desire for her.

The thought encouraged her. If she could attract a man like Eric Wagner, why should he keep them from the gift God might
be giving them? Who was to say God didn’t intend for them to someday join in holy matrimony?

Wounds, no matter how deep, eventually healed. As a doctor, Letty specialized in encouraging the healing process. Could she, as a woman, encourage Eric’s emotional wounds to heal?

Praying for the strength she lacked, she turned away. She did need a whole man; she needed Eric healed, heart-whole, and reconciled with God. She had to believe that with time and a healthy dose of love, he would indeed become that man. Letty wasn’t ready to consign them to a flavorless existence. She knew that with God all things are possible, and she would keep her hope in Him.

Perhaps Eric thought their attraction was only “a certain weakness” on his part, but Letty remembered knuckles smoothing her cheek and a confession in a rich, male voice.
“I like you, Letty Morgan. I like you too much.”

Heartened by that memory, she took the hand Eric offered and clambered into her new, small buggy. She was glad his manners led him to escort her home. The drive to town gave her yet more time in his presence, something that could only work in favor of and enhance his growing “liking.”

As he brought the horses to an easy trot, Letty glanced his way and smiled. With all her love and God’s abundant mercy, Eric might soon like her far more than that lukewarm “too much.”

Eric stopped the horses in front of Letty’s home. Irritated by the awkwardness between them, he addressed the most pressing matter.

“I’ll take your rig to Amos Jimson’s livery,” he said. “It’s only minutes west of here down Main Street. He’ll board your animals for a reasonable sum.”

Letty’s face lost all color. Clearly, the purchase of Albert’s nag had used up what money she had left, and the citizens of Hartville,
although long on generosity, usually ran short of cash. The keep of one horse would be difficult for her; two could prove impossible.

“Is Mr. Jimson a fair man?” she finally asked.

“As honest as the day is long. Don’t you trust me? I’d never leave you at the mercy of some unscrupulous scoundrel.”

Outraged by her mistrust, Eric was torn between leaving and lecturing until she saw reason. Tempting though both options were, he knew neither would do.

“Yes, well, I trust
you,
” she said, “but who’s to say you haven’t been swindled a time or two?”

“
I
say I haven’t been taken for a fool, and I don’t intend to start at this late date.” Blast, but the woman was infuriating, nosy, and stubborn, and possessed of the most expressive eyes he’d ever seen.

“Your horses will be well cared for,” he enunciated precisely, “and your account honestly kept. Is my word enough?”

Letty tipped up her chin, caught his gaze, and then looked down again. “Yes,” she answered, so softly he had to strain to hear.

She twisted her fingers and, seconds later, dropped her reticule. At the soft plop, she grew more flustered and bent to pick it up. She rose too fast and almost lost her balance in the close quarters of the buggy. Eric ached as he watched her discomfort, well aware that his earlier attentions were its direct cause.

He said, “I’ll be on my way.”

“Fine,” she answered, again in that hushed voice. Avoiding his gaze, she waved him to stay seated. “Thank you for the horse. Although I asked you not to buy one, I do appreciate your gesture.”

Eric cringed at her stilted speech. “It was nothing,” he said in his gentlest voice. “I wanted to help. Good night.”

Stepping down from the buggy, she said, “Good night.”

As he went toward the livery, Eric wondered how Amos had put behind the nightmares he’d endured. The former slave had been forced to watch his mother and sister raped, then killed, by enraged whites. Sensing Amos’s agony, Eric had respected the man’s silence and had never brought up the matter. He wondered if Amos had learned some kind of secret to surviving tragedy. Such a secret would perhaps free Eric to pursue the feelings between the pretty lady doctor and him.

He couldn’t imagine any such secret existed. He couldn’t envision a future with Letty. He could, however, help her.

“Where’s Amos?” he asked a stable boy.

“Jus’ inside, sir,” answered the youth.

“Please take care of the animals, and I’ll find your boss.”

“Yessir,” the boy answered, a smile splitting his face at the generous tip Eric gave him.

Satisfied with the care the horses would receive, Eric loped from the stable to the house, then up the front steps. He knocked and waited for Amos.

“I do declares, Mister Eric Wagner himself. An’ what brings you out tonight, sir?” Amos’s greeting poured out with the cadence of the deep South.