Ginny Aiken (30 page)

A flush painted Letty’s cheeks. She looked appealing, feminine. “I still don’t see—”

“You’re taking business from him, and he charges dearly for his services. How do you think he can afford the life he leads? Surely you’ve noticed his penchant for the costly and exotic.”

“The mansion and the peculiar walking stick.”

“Precisely. In addition, you’re a homeopath. He’s an allopath. You know the difference in cost between the types of treatment and the antipathy of allopaths for homeopaths.”

“I do indeed.” She began to pace. “Medicated pellets and tinctures cost a fraction of what their invasive treatments cost.”

Still pacing, she fell silent, deep in thought. Eric respected her need to consider the situation, despite his urge to run out and make things right for her. How could he make things right? He didn’t know, but that didn’t change how he felt.

Suddenly she stopped. “Losing three patients and my work with Daisy and Mim shouldn’t cause such an uproar. There’s something else here. Does Dr. Medford go . . . that is, does he patronize Bessie’s Barn?”

This time, Eric blushed. “I’m afraid so, and you could be right. He might have an ulterior motive for his attacks. Still, I wouldn’t hang the man on supposition.”

Her eyes sparked silver with anger, her cheeks went red, her shoulders heaved with her gulped breaths, and Eric knew he’d never seen a more fascinating woman.

She advanced on him. “I see you’re defending another man. It’s so very like you, like all men. That surgeon can say atrocities about me, and yet I’m wrong to hate his lust for bought flesh?”

“He’s not the brothels’ only patron.”

A steely stare hit him square on, and Eric knew he’d said the wrong thing. But she didn’t let him speak.

“Am I to learn now that the esteemed publisher of the
Hartville Day
is yet another of Bessie’s clients? That the disingenuous
denial of your patronage the day I arrived in town was nothing but a bald-faced lie?”

Fascinating was one thing, but enough was enough. “You needn’t question my character, Letty. I don’t buy harlots. I prefer the intimacy of one man and one woman within the sanctity of marriage. And you know it.”

Silence crackled between them.

Eric continued. “This story isn’t pretty, but you need to hear it as much as I need to share it with you. The boy I told you about, the one who found his father with a harlot, was me.”

Letty’s gaze turned sympathetic.

“I threw myself at him,” he said. “I wanted to fight away the ugliness, take away the pistol he had, but I couldn’t. Even though he stored it in his desk before I left and promised not to use it, I found him dead later that day. He’d taken his own life. My mother, who’d been bedridden for a year, overheard our argument. Her heart failed, and I lost my entire world.”

He narrowed his gaze. “I would never buy a woman.”

The room closed in on Letty. Truth, raw and real, burned in Eric. Yes, he’d spoken true when he denied frequenting brothels, and his anger now was justified, but below the anger, below his righteous indignation, Letty found something that stole her breath. It paralyzed her, leaving her open, vulnerable, completely bared to its intensity.

Eric’s emotions shone clear in his eyes. They brought back everything she’d felt when they’d embraced, kissed. They told her she was indeed the only woman he needed, and if she dared believe, they said she still held his interest. Perhaps even a place in his heart.

Her pulse kicked up its rhythm. Her heart pounded in her chest. Excitement fizzed up her back, sparked in her veins, made her dizzy, giddy, and dazed.

Eric reached out and touched the fists at her sides. One by one, he unfolded her curled fingers and wove them through his. The heat from his palms sent shocks up her arms, to her head, to her heart. Such longing, and only for him.

“Eric . . .”

He slowly pulled away, and a glance showed Letty the feelings weren’t one-sided. But he’d still backed off.

“Go,” she said. She remembered too well the enshrined room. “You’re still haunted by the past. I am the present.”

Eric nodded and retrieved his cane.

Letty turned her back to him. She heard him step away, his walking stick thudding on the floor. He paused.

“I’ve no right to interfere,” he said, “but my conscience insists I warn you. You’ve gained a powerful adversary. I argued on your behalf at my house the other day, but I can’t promise your safety if you won’t listen to me.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“So you’ve said, but please hear me out. You’ve accused me of seeing you as I saw Martina. I could never do that. No two women could be more different than the two of you. I watched Martina die because of her stubbornness. I don’t know that I could stand to see you suffer after rejecting my help.”

Letty heard Eric’s anguish and saw his shoulders slump. On his way out, he added, “I couldn’t live with myself if I failed you, too.”

She could almost touch his torment, and she would have given almost anything to follow him, but she couldn’t fight his ghosts for him.

Instead, she sought God’s comfort in her room.

15

“This is remarkable,” Letty told Daisy. “Only two mistakes on the entire page. I’m proud of you.”

Daisy chuckled. “Me, too.”

In the two weeks since the girl had left Bessie’s Barn, Letty had watched her undergo a transformation. The colorful wardrobe Randy had provided was modest enough to please the most critical eye, and since Daisy was also staying with the Stones, no garish paint sullied her pretty face.

When the Stones gave the girl free rein of their modest library, she surprised everyone with an affinity for the written word. Her tenacity at the typewriter was also reaping results.

“You, Daisy girl,” Letty said, “are ready for new employment. We must find somewhere for you to put your superb skills to use.”

The girl’s joy vanished like the sun behind a storm cloud. “Who’d hire a—”

“Don’t defeat yourself before you launch the battle. That attitude will bring more trouble than all the mistakes you’ve made.”

“No, Doc, I don’t think so. You see, I . . . ‘took care’ of most of the men around here at one time or another. They sneaked
off to me when they should have been with their wives.” Daisy fisted her hands. “Do you think they want me near their businesses? They’re afraid of what I might say about them. None of them will give me a job.”

“Look at me,” Letty said, thumbing her chest. “I’m a doctor, a woman in a man’s world. I know how much they fear women. I don’t always win my battles, but as God’s servant, I must go where He leads.”

“You only threaten their pockets, Doc. I threaten their pride.”

“Pride is another sin. You can’t—”

Heavy footsteps clattered up her porch, putting paid to Letty’s effort. She wouldn’t let Daisy give up. Still, she couldn’t wage war against the girl’s fears with someone else around.

“Dr. Morgan? Daisy?” Ford called.

“In the kitchen,” Letty answered. Daisy’s cheeks colored nicely. Perhaps, as she’d thought that afternoon two weeks ago, God would use Ford in Daisy’s restoration.

The reporter slapped his crushed hat against his thigh. “Good afternoon, ladies.”

Letty bit her lip to hide a smile. As usual, Ford looked like the innards of someone’s ragbag. Every garment on his wiry frame had more wrinkles than an average octogenarian. His tie hung askew, and a pencil rode over one ear. The perpetual smear of ink clung to the side of his nose, and for the first time since they’d met, she noticed what a well-shaped nose it was. Clear blue eyes peered with intelligence and curiosity from behind his spectacles. White-gold hair curled over his forehead, giving him a youthful look. It suddenly dawned on her that Ford was close to her own age.

She’d never looked closely at Eric’s reporter, since Eric had always captured all of her attention. In view of what was happening in her kitchen, however, she now realized how attractive Ford really was.

And Daisy, because of what she’d been forced to experience,
was not so much the girl she should otherwise be at sixteen. Vibrant, blond Daisy was as lovely as the summer flower whose name she shared, somewhat soiled by tragedy, but a delightful young woman who needed a chance.

“Ford,” Letty started, “as a reporter, you know just about everything that happens in Hartville, right?”

The young man slung his jacket over a kitchen chair, wadded his shirtsleeves to his elbows, then met her gaze. “Usually.”

She prayed for gumption. “Would you know of any business that needs an excellent typist?”

Ford’s spectacles slid down his nose. “You, Dr. Morgan?”

“No,” she said, eyeing Daisy, whose pale curls flew from side to side.
Too bad, my dear girl
. “Not me. Her.”

Ford turned to Daisy, an appreciative gleam in his eyes. “Perhaps I do know of something. How well does she use the machine?”

Letty waved Daisy’s paper before his nose. “Only two mistakes on the whole page, and her fingers plumb dance over those keys.”

Smiling, Ford looked up at Letty then back at Daisy. “Would you ladies care to visit the office with me? We might be able to arrange something.”

At the newspaper, the trio removed their coats, and Daisy sat at Ford’s desk. Ford lost his spectacles the moment her long, graceful fingers touched the keys, but he didn’t seem to notice. He watched her type and, from what Letty could tell, also took in how fetching the girl looked in her apple-green shirtwaist and forest-green skirt.

When she reached the end of the piece, Daisy folded her hands in her lap.

“I believe, ladies,” Ford announced, “that I’m looking at the newest employee of the
Hartville Day.
”

“And who might that be?” asked Eric from the doorway, startling
Letty. She’d been so charmed by the scene before her that she hadn’t noticed his arrival. Her heart began to pound.

“Daisy Butler, of course,” answered Ford.

Letty risked a look at Eric and, as she’d expected, saw the thunderclouds blow into his fine features. His forehead creased, his eyes narrowed, and his mustache twitched, mirroring the muscle in his cheek. “May we speak in private, Dr. Morgan?”

“Why, certainly, Mr. Wagner,” she answered, meeting his mutinous gaze. She turned to Ford. “Please show Daisy the office.”

Letty squared her shoulders and followed him. Despite his need for the cane, he quickened his pace down the hallway. He flung open the office door and stalked to the far side of the room. Letty couldn’t help but note how well he maneuvered despite his recent injury, and thought perhaps the thump of the cane lent added emphasis to his temper.

“I see nothing humorous in this situation, Dr. Morgan.”

“And what situation would that be?”

“For starters, charming my reporter into hiring that . . . that—”

“That
girl
. One who wants an opportunity to earn a decent living. Just how, Mr. Self-righteous Newspaperman, is she to do that when men like you deny her the right?”

Noting Eric’s scramble for a response, Letty took advantage of the rare lapse. “Actually, in view of something Daisy said, asking you to hire her is my way of paying you a compliment.”

Eric’s stunned look gave way to one rife with skepticism and curiosity. “How so?”

“You’ve made clear your strict avoidance of brothels, right?”

He nodded.

“Daisy said earlier that no one in town would hire her because they would fear she might expose them and their manly foibles. Since you’re utterly honorable, you have nothing to hide or lose by employing Daisy.”

Triumph tasted sweet when Eric gaped.

He raised his arms in surrender. “I don’t know why I try to reason with you. You have the most convoluted sense of logic of anyone I know.”

Eric couldn’t refute the truth in Letty’s contention. Unlike his father, who’d cloaked his vice in secrecy, he had nothing personal to lose by hiring a fallen woman. He did, however, have a business to run, and it would surely suffer once others learned the identity of his latest employee.

On the other hand, might his gesture bring about other acts of compassion? Could his action turn the tide for the abused girls and strike a blow to the cathouse trade? Was it a surge of hope like this that drove Letty to fight for what she believed?