Lynna Banning (5 page)

“I want you to try, anyway. Call another meeting.”

The mayor worked his lower lip. “I’ll try. But don’t hold your breath. And stay away this time. You’re gettin’ folks riled up with all your talk about horse dung and bugs.”

Numb with disbelief, Jonathan drove back to Maple Street and the house he had shared with Tess. Somehow, now that his wife was gone, his whole life shattered, it was important—desperately important—that he try to save Plum Creek.

A sickening feeling of failure rose inside him. Now that the baby was ensconced upstairs, out of his study, he could once again pore over his medical journals from the East and abroad. Much good it did him.

With foreboding, he noted that the leaves of trees that had been frothy with blossoms in May were even now brown and sere around the edges. Midday temperatures had hovered around the hundred-degree mark for over a month, and the thick pall of road dust swirling about Daisy’s feet smelled dry and smoky. The worst heat of this long summer was still ahead.

But there might still be time to find a suitable building—a barn, a warehouse, even a church cellar—to scrub down for use as a temporary hospital if the need arose. He thought of Tess, and the familiar knot of anger tightened around him like a hangman’s noose.
She didn’t die on purpose,
he reminded
himself. But he still felt abandoned. It felt like pure, unadulterated hell.

He stopped the buggy, laid the reins on the bench and climbed out. “The irony, old girl,” he said to the mare as he unhitched her and led her toward the barn, “is that I finally have all the time I need for my medical practice. But now there’s no joy in it.”

It was all wrong. Tess had always wanted more of him than he could give. She’d resented his commitment to medicine, the long days spent seeing patients, the emergencies that called him out in the dead of night. To be honest, he had chafed under her misguided nagging.

He had fallen in love with her that day in Savannah, deeply in love. But in the short time they’d had together, they couldn’t seem to balance passion and resentment. He regretted that he hadn’t been able to manage things differently—make Tess happy as his wife.

And now it was over. His time with her was past.

Is life always like that?
he wondered.
Always learning too late what went wrong?

J
onathan rounded the corner of the barn and started across the lawn toward the front porch. What an ass he’d been in Plotinus Brumbaugh’s office this morning. He’d lost his sense of perspective and his temper, as well. He wouldn’t be surprised if the mayor put it out that Jonathan was deranged.

Right now, he needed to be alone. He’d hole up in his study, a stiff whiskey at his elbow, and get a grip on himself. As close as he was to the edge, he didn’t want to blunder into Mrs. Benbow or that slip of a German girl. She already regarded him as an ogre. He’d seen it in her eyes that first day—a wary, assessing look, as if she expected him to bite.

Mrs. Benbow would tut-tut when she discovered the empty whiskey glass and the telltale smell of spirits, but he didn’t care a whit. He was accountable to no one. His sanity outweighed the disapproval of
his housekeeper, even one who’d been with his family as long as Mrs. Benbow had. This was
his
home, his sanctuary. The world outside seemed unreliable. Treacherous.

For the first time in his life, he acknowledged, he could not control events by force of will. But he’d be damned if he’d change one thing about the few things he
could
govern—and one of them was his residence and another was his private study.

Tess had come into his life and been taken from him, and there had been nothing he could do about it. His sense of self, his trust in those things he had valued—knowledge, love, even his skill as a physician—had been shaken to the core. He needed. what? Privacy? Escape?

He needed sameness, he knew that much. Something on which to anchor his equilibrium.

He skirted the expanse of green grass, inhaling the comforting, earthy smells of summer honeysuckle, the peppery hint of horse manure, wood smoke. Cicadas screamed in the plum tree.

Four steps from the front walkway he brought himself up short “What the devil?” He raked an unsteady hand through his hair.

A new crop of scarlet zinnias poked their bright heads up along the square cement stepping stones Tess had insisted on. But instead of bordering the path in the neat orderly line he was used to seeing, the new plants were arranged in masses, mingled
with clumps of purple woods iris and drifts of skyblue pincushion flowers. It looked like a riotous dance of blooms casually swirling in the general direction of the front steps.

He sucked in a breath. Never in a month of Sundays would Tess have tolerated such a wild-looking garden!

“Good God almighty! Who did this?”

Something clanked onto the cement, and Jonathan jerked his head up. Beside the steps leading up to the veranda, a blue-clad figure crouched over the garden bed. Slowly she rose to face him, propping dirtsmudged hands on her hips.

“I did this.”

The words came from under a floppy-brimmed blue straw hat.

Jonathan’s gaze moved from Erika to the flower bed behind her where more zinnias, violet iris and rose-red valerian rubbed shoulders in an untamed jungle of blooms. It was a horticultural kaleidoscope of shapes and colors. Jonathan hated it.

“This,” he said testily, “is not what Tess would have done.”

“No, is not. Is what I have done.”

Jonathan eyed the wooden flat of valerian plants at her feet, the wild iris spilling out the top of the bulging gunnysack. “What in God’s name gave you the idea you could just waltz out here and—”

“Mr. Zabersky,” she interrupted. “Next door
neighbor. Is good gardener. He helps me get plants, but I decide where to put.”

“And what, may I ask, did you bargain away this time?” Jonathan braced himself to hear that Theodore Zabersky, a man who had never been sick a day in his life, would now expect a free consultation for some nonexistent affliction.

Erika raised her chin, her blue eyes flashing with indignation. “I did not bargain,” she said. “I pay for.”

“All of this?” He gestured at the half-empty flat.

“The curly petals came from the woods. Mr. Zabersky digs them for me.”

“Curly petals? The iris, you mean.”

“Ja.
Iris. I not know how to say.” She bent to retrieve her trowel from the walkway. “Almost finished. Then I will feed baby and have tea.”

Jonathan groaned aloud. He, too, was “almost finished.” But he would have whiskey, not tea. A double shot, and the sooner the better.
Oh, God, what would Tess.

In the next moment he felt a hiccuping sob rise from his belly. He clamped down on it, hard, suppressing it through sheer willpower. He stared down at the traitorous array of flowers planted in Tess’s front garden bed. Suddenly he felt as if he were viewing the scene from a great distance through a sepia-toned lens.

Tess would never see this. She was no longer here. She would never again set foot on the earth.
Never.

His jaw clenched. Tears stung into his eyes, and from the depths of his soul he cried out in silent anguish.
Why, God? Why?

He covered his face with his hands and turned away.

Stunned, Erika stared at him. She had intended to please him with her morning’s work; instead, she now realized she had done something terribly wrong. Her heart ached over the hurt she had unknowingly caused.

The doctor kept his back to her, but a muffled choking noise told her he was weeping. The sound ripped into her belly. Papa had wept like that when Mama died. She had felt the same gut-wrenching anguish, the same helplessness, then as she did now.

She dropped the trowel and moved toward him. Laying her hand on his sleeve, she tugged him a quarter turn toward her and wrapped her arms about his shuddering frame.

“Cry,” she whispered. “Is good to let out.”

With a stifled moan he pulled her tight, pressed his face against her shoulder. His entire body trembled.

Erika held him, smoothing the dark curls from his forehead, crooning the words of a German lullaby. He smelled of dust and shaving soap. Her heart skipped, faltered, and then hurtled on.

Gradually he quieted. At last he lifted his head and looked at her with weary gray eyes. Their gazes locked, and in that instant Erika felt a curious warmth envelop her, as if the earth had stopped turning and the sun shed all its light on this one spot.

Shaken, she stepped away from him. She had no right.

“I feed baby now,” she managed. “Finish garden later.” She turned to leave, a nameless bird beating its wings against her breastbone.

He reached out one hand and stopped her. “I apologize, Miss Scharf. I don’t know what came over me.”

“I know,” she replied quietly. “Is grief. After, you will be better.”

She moved away from him, afraid he would see her face, read her feelings. When she reached the veranda, she heard his voice behind her.

“I will reimburse you for the plants.”

Without answering, Erika closed the front door behind her and stood perfectly still. Some things in life were beyond price. No amount of money could pay for what he had taken from her in the few seconds she had stood clasped in his arms.

She closed her eyes and clenched her hands into fists. Her heart was worth more than all the flowers in the universe.

T
ithonia Brumbaugh stabbed her needle into the Sawtooth Star quilt stretched on top of her broad dining-room table. “Ladies, this is scandalous!” She tugged the backing material toward her.

“Oh, don’t be so dramatic,” Jane Munrow remonstrated in her usual raspy tone. She jerked the quilt to realign it. “It’s not scandalous. It’s merely…unusual.”

Gwendolyn Shaunessey propped both her thin arms on the table. “Unusual! Oh, come, Jane. A young girl alone in that house with the doctor? Of course it’s scandalous!”

The three other women gathered around Tithonia’s polished walnut table squirmed on their horsehair chairs.

“Maybe not scandalous,” Mary Zabersky interjected into the silence, “but Tithonia’s right. It is
definitely improper.” She ducked her head, concentrating on making tiny, even stitches around a square of lilac gingham. Her dark curls fell forward to obscure her face.

“Precisely,” Gwendolyn breathed. “Im-proper.” She accented the first syllable.

“Well, I think you’re all being too catty about something we know nothing about.” Susan Ransom’s voice rose, as it always did when she was piqued. As the newest and youngest member of the group, Susan was the most outspoken of the women. Also, she was unmarried, which placed her squarely at the bottom of the pecking order.

“You
know nothing about it,” Gwendolyn pointed out. “That is not to say that
we
know nothing.
We
know quite a bit. At least, Tithonia does.”

Tithonia wove her needle into her half-finished square of blue-checked gingham and rose. “Ladies, it’s time for our tea.”

A scandal was a scandal, and the banker’s wife loved nothing better than laying out the delectable details before the five-member Presbyterian Ladies Quilting Circle, along with her vanilla sugar cookies and thick slices of Swedish apple cake.

The other ladies carefully rolled up the quilt and pushed back their chairs. Tithonia poured and handed out steaming cups while the plates of cookies and cake slices were passed hand to hand. Mary clattered
her cup onto the saucer. “Have you seen her? She’s very unusual looking. Wears her hair in braids around her head, like a crown. And eyes like morning glories.”

“She’s from Germany,” Jane said shortly. Her clipped tone betrayed her disdain for the direction of the conversation.

“I heard she is an orphan. Hasn’t a penny to her name.”

“How old is she?”

“Can she read and write?”

“What wages does he pay her, do you think?”

“Such a shame what she did to Tess’s zinnia border! Imagine, mixing purple iris with valerian!”

“Maybe she’s color blind!”

The ladies chattered like busy hens until Susan Ransom suddenly set down her china saucer with a thunk. “Really, ladies! I think this Erika person is taking entirely too much of our time and attention. After all, we are here to quilt, are we not?”

Silence dropped over the company for almost a full minute. Finally Mary Zabersky cleared her throat and mopped a delicate embroidered handerchief over her upper lip. “What does Mrs. Benbow say about her?”

“Mrs. Benbow,” answered Jane, brushing cake crumbs from her ample bosom, “doesn’t say anything about anything, much less about Erika Scharf.”

Gwendolyn’s blue eyes widened. “Nothing at all?”

“Nothing.”

“But she’s Dr. Callender’s housekeeper! She’s lived there for years, even before Tess, I mean, the late Mrs. Callender-even before he brought his wife to Plum Creek. She must know something!”

Tithonia stared at her friend. Widowed four years before as the result of a logging accident, Gwendolyn had herself nursed hopes of attracting the handsome physician. Her disappointment when he had brought Tess home after his trip to Savannah had festered into quiet despair.

Tithonia rose to refill Gwendolyn’s cup, then circled the table with the dish of lemon slices. “Of course Mrs. Benbow knows things.”

“What things?” Mary’s dark eyes snapped in anticipation.

“Yes, what? Tell us, Tithonia. Don’t keep us on pins and needles!”

“Well,” the banker’s wife began, relishing her role as the purveyor of community intelligence.

“Yes?”

“What did she say?”

“Hush!” Gwendolyn hissed. “Let Tithonia speak”

Tithonia settled herself into the upholstered chair at the head of the table. “Now, Adeline Benbow isn’t
one to gossip, mind you. It isn’t so much what she says as what she doesn’t say.” She glanced about at the ladies of her quilting circle. “Adeline attends services each Sunday, as you know. Erika Scharf does not.”

“You mean she’s a Catholic?”

“I mean, she does not attend church. Period.”

Jane sniffed. “And what does that prove? One’s religion is a private matter.”

“But my dear Jane, don’t you see?”

“See what? The cream, please, Mary. See what?” Jane repeated.

“Why, they’re alone in that house, of course. For an entire morning.” She paused dramatically. “Every Sunday.”

Jane shrugged and half-filled her cup from the cream pitcher as it came her way. “So?”

Tithonia lowered her voice to a whisper.
“Together.”

“Well, of course, together. It’s the doctor’s house. He lives there.”

Jane’s scratchy tone set Tithonia’s teeth on edge. “And
she
lives there, too!” Tithonia added tea to the milky contents of Jane’s cup.

“So does Mrs. Benbow,” Jane snapped. “Where else would the doctor’s household help live?”

“That is not the point, Jane,” Tithonia retorted. “The point is- Oh, Mary, do have a second piece
of cake. You look a bit peaked. The point is, they are not chaperoned.”

“Chaperoned!” Susan’s cup again clattered onto her saucer. “Since when do servants and their employer need a—”

“Since Eve tempted Adam with that apple, my dear.” Tithonia’s chest swelled in indignation. “You are young, yet, Miss Ransom. And have much to learn, I see.”

“Mrs. Benbow had lived alone in that house with Dr. Callender—alone, I repeat—for at least ten years until Tess arrived,” Jane protested.

“Mrs. Benbow is in her sixties. Erika Scharf is only twenty-five.”

“Twenty-four,” Mary corrected. “At least, that’s what my father says. He helped her plant that awful jumble of flowers in the front garden. He even built a shed for that dreadful goat!”

“Twenty-five, twenty-four. What difference does it make?” Tithonia snapped. “I recognize my duty as a Christian woman.”

Nothing was going to hinder her righteous cause. She’d made up her mind, and no one, certainly not her quilting circle ladies, was going to change it. She’d hoped to enlist them as allies, but some of them—particularly Jane and young Susan Ransom—were addlepated beyond belief.

She’d set things right the very first thing in the morning.

“Ladies, more tea?”

Adeline Benbow laid the last gold-rimmed breakfast plate on the stack in the cabinet and hung the damp cotton dish towel beside the stove to dry. Already the morning air was hot, and the fire she’d built in the firebox added to the heat in her kitchen. When the insistent knocking at the back door started, Adeline mopped her face and neck with a limp lace handerchief and smoothed her skirt for company.

“Adeline?” Tithonia Brumbaugh’s piercing voice came through the door.

“A bit early for a social call, isn’t it, Tithonia?” Adeline said, opening the door. “I’ve barely finished washing up the breakfast things.”

“Forget the breakfast things. This is more important.”

Adeline narrowed her eyes. “Now, what could be more important than a clean kitchen?”

Tithonia’s bosom expanded, puffing up her plump torso until the waterfall fichu on the rose sateen morning dress trembled. Adeline thought she resembled a smug, worm-stuffed robin.

“Out with it, Tithonia. I’ve got work to do.”

“Well, then,” Tithonia breathed in a conspiratorial
tone. “Have you not considered what people will think? What they are saying?”

“Saying about what? Tithonia, I declare, you can be oblique at times.”

The mayor’s wife blinked. “May I sit down, my dear? My bunions, you know.” She settled onto a hard-backed chair and crossed one ankle over the other. Her black leather shoes barely touched the shiny painted floor. “Oblique, is it?” Her flushed forehead creased into a frown.

Adeline suppressed a smile. Tithonia’s vocabulary was limited to the words in
Godey’s Lady’s Book
and the Presbyterian hymnal.

“Oblique,” Adeline reiterated. “Come to the point, Tithonia. I haven’t got all day.”

“Well,” Tithonia replied, lowering her voice. “We understand there is a young woman living here. A Miss Scharf?”

Adeline reached behind her to retie her loose apron. “We? Who is ‘we’?”

“My quilting circle ladies.”

The housekeeper nodded. Just as she thought. What Plum Creek gossip didn’t originate around Tithonia’s quilting table was certainly embellished there. And Tithonia did most of the embellishing.

“Therefore, my dear,” Tithonia continued, “we want to express our concern about—”

The Dutch doors separating the kitchen from the
dining room swung open, and Erika flew in. “Mrs. Benbow, I have just to warm the baby’s—oh, please excuse. I did not know was company here.”

“Erika, this is Tithonia Brumbaugh, the mayor’s wife.”

Erika curtsied. “Am honored, missus.”

“Miss Scharf is the baby’s nurse,” the housekeeper added. “Tess—Mrs. Callender—engaged her before she passed away.”

Adeline watched Tithonia’s sharp eyes take in Erika’s simple blue chambray work skirt and crisp white blouse. Her gazed moved from the crown of honey-colored braids adorning the younger woman’s head to her nipped-in waist to her sensible laced canvas shoes. She felt a hum of energy in her chest when Tithonia frowned.

“Why, you’re a mere child, my dear! It’s fortunate that I came before it’s too late.”

Erika’s hands stilled on the ties of her apron. “I am twenty and four, Missus Mayor. Not a child.”

Tithonia’s eyes widened. “All the more reason for me to speak out.”

Adeline waited. Tithonia wasn’t used to being put on the defensive. The housekeeper knew Erika well enough to deduce it would only be a matter of time before the inevitable happened.

Erika’s blue eyes snapped. “I am glad you speak out. Will be more for me to learn.” She patted her
apron pocket where Adeline knew she kept her English notebook.

Tithonia swallowed. “Good. Having an open mind will make my mission easier.”

“Yes, missus.” Erika withdrew her notebook and fished in her pocket for a pencil. Adeline yanked the shopping-list pencil off its string. Without a word she handed it to Erika.

Tithonia straightened her shoulders. “It has come to our attention, Miss Scharf, that you are residing in Dr. Callender’s house.”

“Oh, ja. Yes,” Erika replied. “Is so beautiful and big, with windows everywhere! I am happy to be re-siding here. And baby is happy, too.”

“But do you think it is proper?”

Erika blinked. “Proper? Oh, yes. I learn quickly about baby.” She flashed Adeline a smile. “Is proper.”

“But you
live
here.”

“Ja. I do.”

“With.uh.Dr. Callender.”

“Ja.
Beautiful house belongs to him.” Erika turned puzzled eyes on the mayor’s wife.

“I live here, too, Tithonia,” Adeline reminded her. “In fact, I’ve lived here with Dr. Callender for the past twelve years. Just—” she took care to enunciate each word “—the doctor and myself.”

“Oh, Adeline,
you
don’t matter!”

The housekeeper’s chin came up. “And why not?”

“Adeline, for heaven’s sake. You’re the housekeeper, that’s why!”

Erika opened her notebook. “Why does not housekeeper matter?”

“Because.because. Oh, Adeline, you see, don’t you? You’re.ah.old, and she—Miss Scharf—is young. Eligible. It’s a matter of propriety.”

Erika scribbled in her notebook. Then she raised her head and met Tithonia Brumbaugh’s gaze. “I do not see difference between Mrs. Benbow and myself. We live here in house. We work for doctor. I work upstairs, take care of baby. Mrs. Benbow work downstairs, take care of house and cooking. Oh, I forget—I care for goat, too.”

“Goat!”

“Oh, ja.” Erika’s smile made her eyes sparkle. “For milk.”

“The babe was colicky,” Adeline explained. “The doctor recommended goat’s milk, and Erika—”

“Yes, yes, I see.” Tithonia squirmed on the hard chair.

“And I plant flowers along walk—pretty ones, from woods, to make beautiful again.”

“So I noticed,” Tithonia observed dryly.

An awkward silence fell. Adeline waited, unconsciously
holding her breath, as Erika laid the pencil down on the baking table and faced the mayor’s wife.

“So, I do wrong thing?”

“Well.” Tithonia hesitated. “Well, no. Not exactly.”

Adeline opened her mouth to voice the question that had been nagging at her, then thought better of it. She pressed her lips together. Mayor’s wife or not, Tithonia Brumbaugh was not going to be allowed to judge the workings of Adeline’s bailiwick. For twelve years she’d managed the smoothest running household in Plum Creek. That and Dr. Callender’s comfort were the only things that mattered.

Erika brought the matter to a head with a single innocent question. At least, Adeline assumed it was innocent. But at the moment, the look in the young woman’s china-blue eyes was anything but guileless.

“So, Missus Mayor,” Erika said slowly, “is wrong what we do?”

“Oh, no, my dear. Not both of you, just…well, you see, you’re young and, um, somewhat vulnerable.”

Erika wrote in her notebook. “Vul-ner-a-ble,” she murmured. “What mean, please?”

“It means that you—your name, that is—can be damaged.”

“And Mrs. Benbow’s name not?”

“Mrs. Benbow is a widow. An older woman.”

Adeline stiffened but said nothing.

“How can name be damaged, please?”

A brief smile of triumph crossed Tithonia’s round face. “Plum Creek is a small but law-abiding community,” she said. Her voice, Adeline noted, took on a sanctimonious tone.

“Sharing a house with a member of the opposite sex,” the mayor’s wife continued, “well, it just isn’t done.”