Lynna Banning (11 page)

Radzu Chilkowsky had come to offer advice: Give Erika the protection of his name. The damnable thing was the man was sincere in his concern for the young immigrant girl Jonathan employed in his household. Chilcoate’s warning against the social consequences Erika was naively inviting must be heeded.

But marry again?
He lurched to his feet, felt the blood pound savagely in his head.

Not until hell froze over.
Every fiber of his being resisted the thought. He had failed before as a husband and would never, ever, risk it again. What’s more, of late he had times when he was uneasy about his mental state. He was quick to anger, argumentative. Depressed.

Given his emotional turmoil, he wasn’t a suitable husband for any woman, let alone one who deserved a chance at real happiness in her adopted country. Between his inadequacies as a man and the demands of his medical practice, he could never make a woman happy.

That left only two options: Send Erika away from Plum Creek or find someone willing to offer her his name. Neither prospect eased the ache in his chest.

He hadn’t been surprised hearing Chilcoate describe how she had spoken out for Micah Tallhorse. Erika was fair-minded, conscientious and honest to
a fault. Dangerously so, according to the medicine vendor’s account.

Jonathan listened to the rippling notes of the harp exercise Erika was practicing in the front parlor. She went over and over the passage until she had it right. It was plain she was extraordinarily gifted in music.

He hated to admit it, but if she left, he would miss her, more than he would have thought possible in the short time she had been here. Even Mrs. Benbow, for all her crusty air of disapproval, had grown fond of the girl. Erika learned quickly and worked hard. The aging housekeeper even admitted Erika had “brought a beam of sunlight into her kitchen and had been God’s true gift to that poor wee babe.”

No matter, Jonathan resolved. He had to do something. He could not in good conscience simply toss someone as fine and spirited as Erika Scharf to the wolves. But keeping her on as his employee meant she would be shut out of respectable Plum Creek homes, or worse, forced to marry some ne’er-do-well who had the audacity to lay his hands on her.

His heart faltered. For her own sake, he acknowledged, the young German girl must leave his house. He dreaded confronting her with such a decision. All at once, his body felt heavy, his mind weighed down by misgivings and an odd sense of loss.

But for Erika’s sake, he knew he had to act. What must be, must be. Before he could allow the thought
to paralyze him, he wrenched open the door to his study.

A wave of sound met him—arpeggios cascading like a clear mountain waterfall. He shut his ears and forced his feet to move toward the parlor.

“E
rika, come into my study, will you?”

Erika stood immediately and smoothed her slim hands over her dark blue skirt. “I check on baby first. Then bring tea?”

Jonathan sighed as she moved toward the parlor doorway. “No. No tea. Coffee, if it’s not too much trouble.”

She flashed him a pleased look, her wide mouth curving. “Is no trouble. Mrs. Benbow grind fresh this morning. I fix.”

Jonathan barred her way. “On second thought, forget the coffee. I’ll have a brandy. Come.”

Her eyes widened into pools of violet. “But the baby.?”

“Now,” he repeated. He’d lose his resolve if he waited. Better to get it over with. “I’ll leave the door open. If the child cries, you will hear her.”

One brandy would never be enough, he thought, watching the small, softly curving figure move ahead of him. Before the matter of what to do about Erika was settled, he’d no doubt drain the whole decanter. Maybe two decanters.

She perched on the edge of the brown damask consultation chair, her unease evident in the stiff set of her shoulders.

“Miss Scharf,” he began. He cleared his throat and bent over the silver tray of spirits he kept on one corner of his desk. He splashed three fingers of Jarvis’s into a tumbler, noting that his hand shook.

“Miss Scharf, is there anyone in Plum Creek, that is, have you met someone, a man, who.” He stopped as a wary look crept into her eyes.

“What I mean is…um…it’s come to my attention that.” Lord help him, he couldn’t curl his tongue around the words! He downed a double gulp of brandy. “Do you wish to stay in Plum Creek?” he blurted out.

The color drained from her face. Speechless, she stared up at him. Jonathan turned away and moved heavily to the window, clutching the tumbler of spirits. “The thing is, Erika, people are beginning to talk.”

Behind him, her voice came low and clear. “I do not care about talk.”

“I’m afraid it isn’t that simple.” He found himself
fervently wishing that it was, that Tithonia Brumbaugh and Rutherford Chilcoate would vanish in a puff of summertime smoke and leave Erika and himself alone. But in a town as close-knit and gossip prone as Plum Creek, he knew there were others who would take their place. Madison Lander, for one.

Jonathan swore under his breath and pivoted to face her, sloshing brandy over the rim of his glass. “Whether you care about talk or not, you are vulnerable. You are young. Unmarried. Attractive.”

“I have done nothing wrong,” Erika stated flatly. “Nothing to make gossip. I think in America, prove first, then guilty? So, in my opinion, is not me but false-sayers who are wrong.” She folded her hands in her lap and lifted her chin.

Jonathan groaned inside. He was beginning to recognize the gesture. When she stiffened her bearing that way, her heels were digging in. Attractive, yes. Vulnerable? Sometimes he wondered.

But she was intelligent and outspoken to a fault. God save him from women with opinions!

A faint tinge of rose touched her cheeks. She bent her head and Jonathan studied the curve of her neck, the crown of honey-colored braids that wound about her head. She was a beauty, he had to admit. He wouldn’t blame any man for wanting her. He wanted her himself, he admitted. At night he lay awake, unable to get her out of his thoughts, aching with desire.

“You think I am attractive?” Erika said hesitantly.

“Well, um, that is.” He groped for words. “Yes,” he said at last. “Most definitely.”

She trailed the fingers of one hand over her forehead, down her cheek. “Truly?”

He nodded. Her color deepened. She smiled, frowned, then smiled again. The glow in her eyes made him forget what he had called her into his study to say.

Get hold of yourself, man! You’re too old and too emotionally depleted to have a second thought about a woman, any woman. Even one as lovely and intriguing as Erika Scharf.
Tipping the tumbler of brandy to his lips, he gulped twice and jerked his thoughts back to the issue at hand.

“Miss Scharf—Erika, would you want to stay here in Plum Creek? Permanently, I mean?”

“Oh, yes! More than anything. I want to take good care of baby and some day become citizen of America!”

He shook his head in disbelief at her innocence. No woman he had ever known had been so direct and so artless. But perhaps Erika harbored no social aspirations, as Tess had. An immigrant girl from Germany might not care whether she was the most fashionably dressed lady at a society event, might want nothing more than respectability and a roof over her head.

A flash of irritation nipped at him. He had spoken to Tess only once about her preoccupation with her appearance, her social status. Tess had merely shrugged her pretty shoulders and ignored him.

Jonathan kept his voice neutral. “Erika, what do you want for
yourself?”

Her face came alive. “Ah, so much I want! To play music, but this you know already. I want also to make friends and speak good language. And—” She caught her lower lip in her teeth.

“And I like very much my bedroom upstairs. Is all my own and so quiet I hear birds at morning time. Very peaceful. Also, I like many books to read, and.and.”

“And?” Jonathan prompted. The girl wanted such simple things, so easily attained. Because of his privileged background, he had never considered how impossible such things as privacy and music lessons might seem to a penniless girl who was alone in the world.

But if that were the case, would she naively accept the attentions of the first man to offer her such things? How could he protect someone as vulnerable as Erika?

Find a husband for her,
a voice within spoke. A
man who will take care of her.
Jonathan’s breathing caught. He would have to arrange a suitable marriage and let her go.

He spoke over an unexpected tightness in his throat. “Would you want to marry?”

Her eyes widened. “You mean, leave baby? Leave this house?”

He nodded. Her face was so changeable, he marveled. She looked determined one moment, stricken the next.

“You could have your own house. Your own children.”

“No,” she said, quiet decision in her voice. “I would not marry.”

A curious feeling of joy mingled with his frustration. He downed another mouthful of brandy. “There is no man you yet care for, is that it?”

As he said the words, he realized he hated the thought of her caring for someone. Until Rutherford Chilcoate’s visit, he had been aware only of his own struggle to keep his mind off Erika. He’d never given a thought as to where Erika might put
her
affections. Now, as the silence hung in the warm summer dusk, he found himself giving it quite a bit of thought.

“No,” she replied at last. “Is not the reason. I.I want to stay here, with baby and—With baby.”

“But I’m afraid that solves nothing.” God in heaven, would he have to dismiss her after all?

“You see, Erika, things cannot, um, must not continue as they are.”

She looked at him with sudden, keen intelligence. “People think bad of me, like Missus Mayor says?”

He winced at the pain in her voice. “Some do, yes. But it will stop if you—”

“I must do what Missus Mayor asks? Then I am accepted? People will like me? Have friends?”

Jonathan’s gut twisted. She certainly had a knack for boiling issues down to the bare bones. And ugly bones they were. Gossip. Social prejudice.

All at once he hated Tithonia Brumbaugh, the mayor, the townspeople of Plum Creek. Not only did they resist change, clinging to a dangerously outdated water system that threatened them all, but their smallmindedness excluded outsiders who did not conform to their narrow, entrenched ideas about right and wrong. Erika could not hope to win.

Erika raised her chin. “Do
you
ask this? Want me to leave, do what mayor’s wife says I must?”

“Yes,” he lied. “I ask it.”

She was intelligent. She would see what she must do to survive. He waited for her acquiescence.

She met his eyes in an unflinching gaze. “Friends I will have, in time,” she said in a quiet voice. “And people not say bad of me. But,” she concluded with careful, clearly enunciated words, “I will do what best I think, not Missus Mayor.”

Jonathan felt like cheering. The girl was silk on the outside, but inside—inside, where it counted—her
bones were made of steel! She was as stubborn, and as single-minded, as Tithonia Brumbaugh. A wave of admiration lifted his spirits. By God, Erika was a match for the mayor’s hypocritical wife. He should send Erika to the next town council meeting!

“And,” Erika added with a tremor in her voice, “I will marry what man I please or not at all. No man will know me without I want him to.”

She rose without looking at him. “I hear baby cry.”

“Erika, wait.” He had heard nothing, not even Mrs. Benbow’s usual pre-supper stirrings from the kitchen. He set the brandy glass down on his desk harder than he intended; the liquid slopped over onto the latest
Medical News.

“I feed baby. Then I pack my clothes.”

“No! Erika, listen to me. You mustn’t leave. It isn’t necessary—we’ll find another way. I’ll—I don’t know. I’ll talk to Tithonia.”

“Will make no difference. Everything has already been said. Missus Mayor speak. You speak. Is not what I want, to leave house and baby, but you explain that I must do something, and so I do it. Please, may I have a little brandy?”

“Of course.” He tipped the decanter and splashed a scant half inch into a small glass. Erika scrunched her eyes shut and downed it in one gulp.

Her eyelids flew open, and she sucked air into her
lungs. “So hot!” she rasped. Her forefinger traced a line from her throat to the center of her chest. “All the way going down, to here!”

Suddenly Jonathan knew what had to be done. He snatched the glass from her hand and poured another shot. “Here. Have another one.”

This time she took a small sip, wrinkling her nose as she swallowed.

—Jonathan addressed a short prayer to the God he’d thought had forgotten all about him, stiffened his resolve and drew in a deep breath.

“Erika, I am financially very well off,” he said rapidly. “I own this house and the Cooper building, as well as estates in Scotland and a large farm in Pennsylvania. I want you to marry me.”

She choked on the brandy. Tears swam in her eyes, and the ivory lace ruffle at her neck trembled. “What you say?”

“I want to marry you.”

Erika struggled to slow her whirling thoughts. What was it doctor said? He wanted to. Had she misunderstood the English? Or dreamed it, perhaps?

Dazed, she aimed her glass of brandy toward the decanter set amidst the clutter on the doctor’s desk, settling it with a click on the silver tray. No more spirits for her, she decided. They gave her such beautiful imaginings, too incredible to be real.
She noticed that he watched her every move, as if waiting for something, an answer to something.

I
want you to marry me.

She jerked upright. Ah, no, it was no dream! He had said it twice. He wanted to marry her?

Oh, kind mother in heaven! He wanted
her?
Plain Erika Scharffenberger from Schleswig?

“Erika,” he said gently. “May I have your answer?”

Answer? What could she answer? That she had loved him from that day in the front garden when he had clung to her, his body shaking with his grief? That there were chasms between them she feared would only widen with time?

“Erika.”

“Please,” she said in a choked voice. “I am thinking.”

“Thinking! What on earth is there to think about? This is the only solution that makes any sense. I can’t auction you off like a side of beef! And I.well, I find I am not willing to send you away. You are.good with the baby, and Mrs. Benbow speaks highly of the help you provide. And,” he added in a barely audible voice, “I need.that is, you are a fine young woman, Erika. I would be honored to give you my name, provide a home for you.”

He ran his hand through his hair and frowned. “I
assure you, it would be a marriage in name only. I would not want to force.”

Erika forced her gaze upward to meet his. His eyes, like two gray stones, blazed with a hot light.

“Is not enough,” she said.

“What do you mean, not enough? I’m offering you everything I own!”

“Some things you do not own. I want to love baby, like good mama does.”

“You will be the child’s legal mother from the moment you accept my offer to the day you die, Erika. No matter what happens, I promise never to separate you from the child.”

Still she hesitated. If she was to enter into a covenant between the two of them, something deep inside her clamored to be spoken aloud.

“I want also some day to love man like…like a woman does.”

She watched his pupils darken, felt her heartbeat quicken as he moved toward her and took hold of her arm.

“If you wish it.” His voice shook. He was as frightened of such a momentous step as she was!

“Yes,” she said with deliberation. “Some day. When time is right.”

Erika’s brain reeled. He was a good man, there was no question in her mind about that. She had watched him set that Indian boy’s broken leg with
steady, capable hands, saw him wince as his manipulation caused pain. She saw the respect he paid to the mayor and his meddling wife, even when his jaw muscle twitched in fury.

The townspeople sought Dr. Callender’s opinion on matters that had nothing to do with medicine—schooling for their children, events abroad, which he kept up with through the foreign newspapers he read. And Erika recalled the offerings left at the back door by poor farmers, grateful for a prescription they could not afford, an extra visit, a birth. A bushel of new potatoes, an overflowing box of late Red June apples. One morning she had found three fresh trout wrapped in a blanket of damp moss. Micah Tallhorse had left them.

Yes, doctor was a good man. But there were other things. He did not attend church, preferring instead long solitary walks in the country with only his writing tablet and a hastily cobbled sandwich stuffed in his jacket pocket. He wore wool in the summertime—most odd—and preferred his linen shirts starched so stiff they crackled when she turned them on the ironing table.