Ginny Aiken (20 page)

Now what?
he asked himself, running an unsteady hand through his hair. He noted it was still dark outside. “I must go.”

Letty wore the puzzled look she’d donned when he’d pushed her aside. “My rig,” he explained. “The town would burn with gossip about the lady doctor who wasn’t so much a lady.”

“I see.”

Dignity bolstered Letty’s bearing, and she looked exquisite. Her trademark coiled-braid coronet had unraveled, and her dark curls cascaded over her shoulders. Her lips were dewy and inviting. Her silver eyes suggested another kiss. He resisted the temptation.

“I—” He cleared the roughness in his throat. “Tomorrow morning I’ll stop by the Pattersons’ and finish repairing the window in the children’s room. There’s no need for you to worry about it.”

Letty nodded, a bemused look on her face.

He had to get away while he still could. “I’ll see you again. Soon.” He turned on his heel and left the room, feeling like the worst kind of fool.

Eric’s hands shook so hard he feared he’d drop his son. The body, still warm from its sanctuary inside Martina’s womb, filled the cradle of his palms. Bruises mottled the fragile skin of tiny buttocks and back, mute testimony to the midwife’s efforts to turn the infant. Miniature fists clutched at Eric’s heart with their stillness.

Baby Karl’s face, perfectly formed yet motionless, was an inhuman shade of purple. Tufts of golden curls covered his round head. The deep blue eyes, staring into Eric’s soul, riveted him.

His son’s eyes. Through the tears sluicing down his face, Eric read reproach in those eyes.

“How could you let me die?”

“No!”

Eric balled his fists into the blanket kinked around his thighs, bringing it to his chest, wishing he could stop the pain that pummeled his heart. The nightmares were so vivid, so real.

He felt the moist warmth of his son’s skin; he saw accusations in the innocent eyes. He lived the reality of his child’s inertness, of life that should not have been lost. If he hadn’t let his love for Martina overshadow his judgment, baby Karl would by now have celebrated his second birthday, and Eric wouldn’t be living in a hell of his own making.

He’d failed his wife and son. He had no right to so much as look at another woman. Not one like Letitia Morgan.

He couldn’t risk loving her; he couldn’t give her a child he might fail as he had his son; he dare not promise the strength he couldn’t provide.

“Watch your tail!”

Marmie answered with an indignant “mrrreow!”

Eric tugged off his crooked tie for the third time, his irritation growing. This maneuver normally took him seconds to complete, but today Letty’s face seemed to hover between him and the mirror, making it impossible to knot the length of silk.

“Scat,” he groused when Marmie rubbed against his shin.

How had he allowed himself the weakness that led to last night’s passion? He knew from the outset that Letty Morgan was a most dangerous woman, and yet he’d returned to her side time and again, drawn by her compassion and her genuine goodness.

Then he’d really gone and done it. He’d kissed her with more honest hunger than he remembered ever feeling, even for his dead wife.

He simply couldn’t let insanity strike again. He had to avoid Letty Morgan as if she carried the most repugnant disease.

Decision made, Eric took up his brown leather portfolio and, with his free hand, dusted off the ginger-cat fur on his trouser leg.

On the short trip to town, Eric fixed his thoughts on business matters. Ford was still looking into the activities of the swindling Swartleys but hadn’t come up with the evidence to catch them. When Eric thought of those two, a chill crept up his neck. His gut told him he already had the key to the puzzle, but he couldn’t quite put a finger on it. After last night, he had to wonder if his difficulty came from his preoccupation with a certain doctor.

He spouted German and slammed a fist on the buggy seat. He’d done it again. He’d let her back into his thoughts. Still, what man could forget a kiss like that?

“Good morning, Amos,” he called as his horses clopped to the stable.

From his rocker on the porch, the livery owner radiated peace and contentment. “Mornin’, Mr. Eric Wagner, sir.”

He frowned. Last night’s embrace had him so rattled, he couldn’t even form a smile. That troubled him, as did his failure to keep Letty from his thoughts for more than a few minutes’ time.

The horses came to a stop. He jumped down to the raked dirt and nodded to the stable boy when the youth came for the mares. Eric retrieved his portfolio and headed for his office.

“Somethin’ on your mind this mornin’?” Amos asked.

Startled, Eric looked up. Heat filled his cheeks. The current state of his mind was not for anyone to know. “Work, just work.”

Amos’s pointed stare told Eric he hadn’t fooled his friend. “Like I said, Amos, too much work, and I’d best get on with it.”

“Yessir.” Amos paused and then asked, “Seen the purty doc lately?”

“Oh, here and there.”
Mostly everywhere, as if you were keeping
track of her,
his conscience taunted. “Work is waiting. And Ford. Ford’s waiting for me, too.”

Amos radiated sly mirth. “Mm-hmm, work. Gotta get to it, then.”

“Precisely.”

Eric sped toward the privacy of his office as if to outrun an angry steer. That foxy Amos . . . he saw through everything. He even heard what hadn’t been said. You couldn’t fool the man, no matter what.

Slamming the door behind him, Eric winced as the shade hit the glass pane. He had to get control of himself.

“Morning, Eric,” Ford offered.

“Anything on the Swartleys?”

Ford jabbed his spectacles up to his flaxen eyebrows, laying a trail of ink up the side of his nose. “Not a thing, and I’ve bird-dogged them. Never let them out of my sight.”

On their way to his office, Eric said, “I thought about it last night.”

Oh, yeah?
his traitorous conscience jeered.
When? Before you embraced Letty? Or perhaps when you locked your lips on hers?

He gritted his teeth, threw his portfolio onto the desk, then watched a mountain of paper slither over the edge. The day had become a disaster, and he still had the greater measure of it to survive.

Eric heard Ford’s poorly muffled guffaw and scrambled for gravity. “As I started to say, I thought about the Swartley matter last night. We have to review everything again.”

At Ford’s dismay, Eric flattened his palms on the desk. “Yes,
again
. My gut tells me we have what we need in our files. We just can’t see it as the key to the scheme.”

Ford scratched his head. “You sure you’re well today? That did and didn’t make much sense.”

“Enough of that. Work, we have work to do.” Taking his seat, Eric opened the drawer to his left. “Here.” He dropped a
file labeled “Swartley” on the mess on the desk. “Let’s find what we’ve missed.”

He glanced up at Ford’s sigh. The reporter’s expression said, “Time to humor the boss.”

Blast it, he
was
right; he felt it in his bones. His instinct for news and his pursuit of truth rarely failed him. “Please bear with me, will you? They came to town flat broke, right?”

“Sure. They started out sharing a tent with two other miners near the Heart of Silver shaft. They worked for Hart, but lazy as they are, they got fired fast, and besides, they’ve always spent time at Bessie’s and the saloons. They’re still broke.”

“Not that broke. They bought the Seymours’ claim, even if for a pittance.”

With Ford’s nod, his glasses tumbled down, and his finger trailed another ink track up his nose when he replaced them. “Then the Kurtzs’ claim, and later Simpson sold out, too.”

Eric tapped his fingers against the notes. He turned the facts in his mind again, but the Swartleys’ game eluded illumination.

Ford cut into Eric’s thoughts. “They paid them all pennies.”

Clasping his hands behind his neck, Eric leaned back in his chair and crossed his ankles on the desktop. He thought and thought, counting each piece of information he knew. Before long, he began voicing his ponderings. “They only have pennies. They rarely work, then they spend their earnings at Bessie’s—”

Eric’s feet crashed to the floor. He bolted upright. As if someone had turned on a lamp, the answer blazed in his mind. “It’s been staring at us the entire time.”

Ford popped up and knocked down his chair. “If you don’t mind, please explain. I haven’t the slightest—”

“It’s the money, Ford. Yes, they’ve paid only pennies, but those pennies add up. Someone is funding the Swartleys. They don’t have enough money to have bought all that land, even if it was in bits and pieces.”

Ford bent to set the chair upright, then sat again. The wheels in his head spun almost visibly with the new information. “I’ll be hornswoggled. You’re right. The question is, who’s their cash cow?”

When sifted sunlight kissed her face, Letty stretched in her warm bed. A fanciful smile curved her lips. Eric . . .

She didn’t have the words to express what their embrace meant to her. He was Eric, and Eric was more than enough.

She, however, was a physician, and patients would soon line up for her. Still smiling, she poured water from the pottery pitcher into the fluted basin on her washstand. A splash to her face snapped her back to reality. She plied her washcloth and finished her ablutions.

Her garments seemed plainer today than yesterday, but then today she felt less plain. Today her mirror reflected excitement in the roses on her cheeks, mischief in her smile, happiness in her gaze.

Letty chided herself. “Honestly, fanciful thoughts won’t heal a soul. Sick people don’t care that Eric kissed you last night.”

Even so, she couldn’t wait to see him again.

Letty ran downstairs and poured corn into the crate that housed her growing chickens. “What am I going to do with you?” she asked as the birds fluttered their wings and pecked for kernels. “You need a proper coop and a yard to scratch up.”

The thought stuck while Letty treated a steady flow of patients. It followed her when she took advantage of a lull to run to the manse and check on Mim, who basked in the light of the Stones’ love. They’d insisted on keeping the child, and Letty was glad, since she had no jobs for the proud girl.

Noon found Letty back in her kitchen with nothing to do but watch her fowl jockey for position in the crate. A knock at the kitchen door made her leap at the chance to do something.

“Daisy! Come in, dear. What brings you by?”

Daisy removed the black shawl she wore over her head as a crude disguise. She glanced down the street, then stepped into Letty’s kitchen. “I came to see Mim.”

Letty set the teakettle on the stove. “I’m sorry, dear, she’s not here. Pastor and Mrs. Stone came last night to take her home with them. They have more room than I do, and she agreed to go.” Noting the alarm on Daisy’s face, she hastened to reassure her. “The pastor and his wife are lovely people. Mim couldn’t be in better hands.”

Daisy shrugged.

“They’ll be glad to have you visit her,” Letty added.

Daisy snorted. “I can’t visit ‘lovely people,’ Doc. Their flock would flee faster than mice do from cats.”