Lynna Banning (6 page)

“Why is it not?” Erika pursued.

Tithonia gave a nervous hiccup of laughter. “Because people talk about such things. About you. And about the doctor.”

“People talk already about me,” Erika said. “Mr. Zabersky, man next door, says I am stubborn-headed. Church minister says for me to come on Sundays or will not go to heaven. Grocery keeper says I buy wrong kind of yeast for bread. They are all wrong, except Mr. Zabersky. Is true that I am stubborn-headed.”

Adeline added a private word of agreement.

Tithonia’s smile faltered. “I mean,” she said purposefully, “they will talk about you
and
the doctor. In the same breath.”

“Ah, I see now. Doctor makes speeches about dirty water to drink and people get mad. They say he is stubborn-headed, too, that is it?”

Tithonia rolled her eyes in Adeline’s direction.
“Yes, you both certainly are stubborn-headed. But that is not quite what I meant. To be blunt, Miss Scharf, your reputation is at stake.”

“Because of doctor?”

“Because of you and the doctor, yes.”

“Not because of goat, or flower garden nobody likes, or wrong yeast?”

“No.”

Erika thought for a moment Adeline glimpsed a flash of blue fire before the thick lashes flicked down.

“Goat is wrong thing I do. Flowers, too. And maybe yeast. But not doctor. Doctor is not wrong. I am not wrong.”

“But—”

“Forgive me, Missus Mayor, but who lives in doctor’s house is not your business.”

Tithonia gaped at her, her lace-fichued breast swelling in indignation.

All at once Adeline brimmed with energy. She propelled herself into the fray.

“Tithonia, wouldn’t you like some of my chamomile tea while we visit? Erika must tend to the babe now. ‘Tis past her feeding time.”

She settled the teakettle on the stove top and turned to the mayor’s wife, who sat staring at the Dutch doors swinging to and fro in Erika’s wake.

Well-done, child! You’re a canny lass, even if you are a Lutheran!

E
rika cuddled the small, fragrant body of Marian Elizabeth Callender against her shoulder and paced resolutely up and down the first-floor hallway. “Hush, little one,” she crooned. “Hush, now.” She traversed the large foyer and made yet another circuit around the front sitting room, turning her body round and round in slow circles in an attempt to calm the crying child.

“So much wailing, little Marian! And so many tears. Come now, can you not smile for me?”

For the past hour she had paced in and out of the downstairs rooms—all but the doctor’s study—because it was cooler on the ground floor. Upstairs, the nursery and the other rooms, the sitting room that served as the library, her bedroom, and no doubt the doctor’s bedroom, sweltered in the heat radiating from the roof under a relentless August sun. When
the baby stopped crying, Erika would tuck her into the portable wicker bassinet she had moved into the front parlor. But would the infant ever cease her wailing?

The child’s thin cries continued. Erika sighed. She had cried steadily most of the long, hot afternoon. Erika decided it was the oppressive heat, but not even sponging her with cool water seemed to bring relief. She wasn’t wet. No pins poked into the delicate skin. What, then?

Whatever the cause, Erika was tired out. The poor mite herself must be exhausted, she thought. Maybe the baby missed its mama? Erika’s heart felt a tiny catch.

The front doorbell shrilled and Erika jerked. All day long, that bell! Since Dr. Callender had resumed seeing his patients, a constant stream of townspeople trailed in and out from morning until past teatime. Half the residents of Plum Creek seemed to be ailing.

She reached for the polished brass doorknob. “Why, Mr. Zabersky! What I do for you?”

The tall, bearded man on the veranda removed his hat and smiled at Erika. “You, my child, can do nothing.” He raised his voice to be heard over the baby’s wailing. “Dr. Callender, a little something, perhaps.”

“Ah, you have engagement—no, is wrong word. Appointment, I mean?”

“Yes,” the older man affirmed. His bushy silver mustache twitched, and his eyebrows rode up and down.

Erika jiggled the baby at her shoulder and patted the tiny back.

“May I come in?” Mr. Zabersky said.

Erika’s face heated. “Oh, forgive, please! All day baby cry and I am pre.pre.”

“Preoccupied?” He shut the door quietly behind
him.

“Ja. Pre-occupy. Come in, please, Mr. Zabersky. I will tell doctor you are here.”

She rapped on the closed door to the second parlor, which served as the physician’s office. A small room behind it—a maid’s room at one time—was used as an examining room.

“Enter,” a resonant male voice called.

Erika pushed the door open. The doctor raised his head from the stack of blue medical files on his desk. “Yes?” A subtle edge sharpened the tone of his voice.

“Mr. Zabersky is here to see you,” she ventured. Why did he always snap at her so? He was like a caged lion, and his temper, so short! Maybe that, too, was because of the relentless summer heat.

“Ah, yes,” he said. “Ask Mrs. Benbow to bring us some tea, would you? I missed lunch again.”

The doctor had worked through both breakfast and
lunch, Erika noted in silence. Until an hour ago, patients had filled every chair in the spacious front hall.

“Ted? Come right in.” Jonathan rose from his desk, extending his hand to the older man. “More headaches, is that it? I thought we had them licked this time. But I’ve a new idea to try.”

The rest was inaudible as the physician’s resonant voice faded behind the closing door.

And then suddenly the door cracked open, and the lion roared. “Stop that child’s caterwauling, Miss Scharf! It’s giving
me
a headache!”

Erika turned away.
That child?
Not “Marian Elizabeth,” or even “my daughter”? What kind of father was he? What kind of man?

Insensitive,
a voice within her spoke.
Incomprehensible. Irascible.
Just yesterday she’d used the dictionary to make a list of new English words to describe Dr. Jonathan Callender.
Illogical
and
illmannered,
she added mentally. She conveniently forgot her very last entry.
Intriguing.

Tonight, she resolved, she’d start on the
J
words. She felt better already. Heartened, she moved toward the kitchen, rocking the baby gently up and down. “Please, please, dear baby, stop crying. Your papa it makes angry, and your mama up in heaven will not be happy.”

She spoke briefly to Mrs. Benbow, just emerging from the-pantry with a large towel-draped bowl of
rising bread dough in her hands. Then she half walked, half danced her way into the sitting room.

“Ssh, ssh, Liebchen.” She spun this way and that, avoiding the long rocker runners, the polished walnut harp in the corner, the heavy end table covered with a lacy black shawl. Around and around she waltzed, softly humming an old tune. Her skirt rippled as she turned.

“…liegst mir im Herzen.”
she sang. Her hem flared out, brushing against the harp strings with an echoey glissando. Instantly the baby stopped crying.

Erika stared down at the infant, barely able to believe her ears. The reverberation of the harp shimmered in the silence.

Experimentally she plucked a single string with her forefinger, and a lovely note bloomed in the quiet. Marian Elizabeth made a soft cooing noise.

Erika plucked another string, and then another. Even individual notes sounded beautiful, all by themselves, she marveled. Laboriously she picked out the first phrase of a lullaby by ear.

The baby’s tiny fist uncurled, and her head settled onto Erika’s shoulder. By the end of the second plucked phrase, the child was sound asleep.

Erika tiptoed to the wicker cradle and gently laid her on the smooth white sheet. Still humming, she moved to the harp and stood gazing at it. In the late-afternoon light the wood looked warm, the carved
scroll at the top almost fluid. A forest of strings stretched beneath her tentative fingers.

Never before had she heard any sound as heavenly sweet and pure as the notes of a harp. A sharp yearning rose in her, a need so strong it almost frightened her. She wanted to make the instrument sing! Oh, if she could only make more of those beautiful sounds!

“Erika, my dear, would you like to learn?” Mr. Zabersky stood in the doorway.

“What? Oh, I did not see you, Mr. Zabersky.”

“Do you wish to play the harp?” The old man’s voice was so soft Erika thought she must have dreamed his question.

“I can teach you. I was a musician once.”

“Oh, I—I couldn’t,” Erika demurred. “Harp does not belong to me.”

Mr. Zabersky reached a hand into his jacket pocket and withdrew a white paper packet. He shook it. “Pills,” he announced with a broad smile. “For my headache. Pay for them later, the doctor says. Maybe I can give you music lessons instead?”

Erika gasped. “Oh, could you? Do you think—do you think doctor would let—that I could really learn?”

“But of course, my child. I am a very fine teacher. I’ll come tomorrow, shall I? When the baby sleeps, at.” He withdrew a gold watch from his top trouser
pocket and squinted at it. “Four o’clock. Would that be satisfactory?”

Erika opened her mouth to reply and then let it drift shut. Surely she was sound asleep and none of this was really happening!
Satisfactory?
It was superb. Stupendous. Sensational! All the most exciting new many-syllabled words she had learned last week.

“Oh, yes!” Erika breathed. “Oh, thank you. Thank you! I will myself make you some tea after the lesson, so will not interrupt Mrs. Benbow.”

Mr. Zabersky made a brief courtly bow. “Until four o’clock, then.” He turned to leave, then pivoted back to her. “One small favor, perhaps?”

“Anything,” Erika breathed.

“Those delicious buns the housekeeper brought with the tea for Dr. Callender. Do you think possibly.”

“I will make sure to have buns, yes. They are very good. Mrs. Benbow makes them with Demerara sugar and honey.”

The old man’s black eyes sparkled. “Demerara.and honey,” he murmured. “A pleasure.”

He retrieved his hat from the oak hat stand in the front hall and stepped to the door. “A most certain pleasure.”

Erika felt like laughing and crying all at once. Could it really be that Mr. Zabersky, that kindly old
gentleman who had helped her plant wild iris and valerian, was her fairyfolk godmother?

Ah, no,
she chided herself.
My mind runs on so, as if I am dreaming. Mr. Zabersky is surely my fairy god
father!

Jonathan raised his eyes from Theodore Zabersky’s medical file and stared at the door separating his office from the rest of the house. With one hand he loosened the silk cravat at his neck and ran his forefinger around the inside of his white linen shirt collar. Too much starch again. Ever since Tess—

His throat closed. His housekeeper had lapsed into her own ways since Tess was no longer around to give orders. Mrs. Benbow always added lots of starch to his shirts. It was her stamp of approval in a way.

He prayed Ted Zabersky would be his last patient of the day. After arguing for an hour with Cyrus Peck about his knee joints and trying to convince Mrs. Ellis to boil their water since their place bordered the creek, he had a splitting headache. His temples pounded, and sounds in the heated stillness of late afternoon were intensified until the smallest noise made him wince.

Perhaps he was hallucinating. A moment ago he’d thought he heard Tess’s harp. He leaned forward, planted both elbows on his paper-strewn desk and dug his thumbs into his eye sockets.
Tess. Would you
have lived if I’d taken you home to Savannah, as you wanted? Or did you despise me so much for making you grow up that you died simply to hurt me?

“My beautiful, willful Tess,” he murmured. “So accomplished at playing the lady, but such a child at heart.” She wanted him all to herself every minute of the day. How could he be a husband to her and a physician as well? There simply wasn’t enough of him.

He recognized the rage seething below the surface of his grief. Rationally he knew it was better than being numb, as he had been these past terrible weeks, but lately he felt as if his skin were on fire, stung with the brutal points of a thousand needles, like circulation just returning to frozen limbs. Psychosomatic, no doubt. Even so, the painful, almost exquisite sensitivity of the surface of his body persisted day and night.

His mind still felt as if it was asleep, though. Part of him wanted to shake off the torpor crushing him; another part wanted never to wake up from the halfworld he’d escaped to. Maybe it would be easier to remain numb.

Odd how the body roused itself, clamored for life, before the spirit was ready. He’d do some research on the phenomenon sometime in the future. If he was to have a future. At times he didn’t think so. Other
days, like today, he knew he would not. Sensed he would die soon, was perhaps dying even now.

Despite Mrs. Benbow’s overstarched collar, his head felt so heavy he could barely hold it upright If it weren’t for the threat of cholera in the town, he would let himself drift off and escape forever.

And what about your baby daughter?
He felt a curious blankness where she was concerned. He told himself he felt nothing for her, neither love nor hate. He tried not to think about her. Usually he was successful, but just now, when he thought he’d heard Tess’s harp, he found he couldn’t keep the child out of his mind.

And Erika Scharf?
the insistent voice questioned.

Yes, Erika, too. He tried very hard not to think about the young German girl. Ever since that day when he had clung to the slim woman with the honey-colored hair, he realized he had been avoiding her.

A whisper of sound brushed against his ear. The harp again.
God blast that instrument to kingdom come!
Would he never be free of it? Of Tess?

Into his silent, stifling study drifted four distinct notes, clear and soft as if dropped into his heart from a great height. In an instant he was on his feet, his fists clenched. He strode to the door and jerked it wide.

“Stop it!” His voice boomed inside his head, a
harsh, ugly bellow he’d never imagined he possessed.

An arpeggio faltered, then resumed.

“Stop, I said!” At his shout, the sound ceased.

Before his mind could engage, his legs started forward, propelling him across the hall into the front parlor. He stomped to a halt before the burled walnut instrument.

Erika spun toward him, her hand at her throat. The blue eyes widened at the sight of him, then the bronze lashes swept down.

“What are you doing in here?” he thundered.

She pressed one finger against her lips and gestured toward the tiny form in the wicker cradle. “Come,” she whispered.

She moved in front of him, toward the door. The faint scent of lilac emanated from her starched white waist. In spite of himself, Jonathan inhaled sharply.

A wave of longing choked him. Almost of its own volition, his hand reached out to touch her. He caught himself just in time.

Madness. The hunger of his body pushed him into no-man’s-land.

“Now,” Erika began, her back to him, “you wanted something?” She turned slowly as she finished her sentence.

“Yes,” he blurted. “I want. I want.” His brain went blank. Pain sliced through his thoughts.

His body spoke for him. His groin tightened, ached with need. He wanted
her!
There was no mistaking the truth of human physiology. What in God’s name was happening to him?

You are beginning to come back to life,
the voice inside reminded him.

“Ah, no,” he muttered. I
am not ready.

Some part of you is ready, Jonathan. The healthy part. The normal, male part.

Erika stared at him. “Is something wrong, Doctor?”

“What?”

She jumped at the bark in his voice. “I said—”

“I heard what you said, dammit. No, nothing is wrong.”

Everything is wrong. You hunger, but you do not partake.