My Darling Melissa (29 page)

Melissa blushed. In all truth, she’d hoped he wouldn’t remember. “I behaved like a shameless hussy!” she lamented.

Quinn laughed at her expression. “And I’ll be eternally grateful,” he replied.

She blinked, uncertain whether he was teasing or not. “Go on with you,” she finally said, with a self-conscious wave of one hand.

He drew her to her feet and held her very close for a moment. “My bed is the one place where I don’t want you to be a lady, Melissa.” He sighed heavily and set her away. “If I didn’t have a meeting, I’d take you there right now.”

“I’ve got newspaper stories to gather anyway,” Melissa was quick to point out. She reached for a notebook and a freshly sharpened pencil. “Come to think of it, I’d better sell some advertising as well.”

Quinn kissed her again and left the railroad car, still shaking his head.

Melissa devoted the morning to selling advertising space in her newspaper, as she had told Quinn she would, and the effort was entirely fruitless. Even Mr. Kruger, her last and best hope, was lukewarm to the idea. He wanted to see at least one issue come out before he invested the fee.

It was midday when Melissa returned to the house to find Mary sitting at the bottom of the stairs, weeping.

Melissa immediately sat down and took her sister-in-law’s hand. “Why, Mary, what is it?”

Mary sniffled. “It’s Quinn. He isn’t going to let me have my operation!”

“I’m sure he’ll reconsider after he’s had some time to think about it,” Melissa told her, trying to sound reassuring.

Mary shook her head. “No,” she sobbed. “He told me he’d made his decision, and that it’s final!”

“Where is he?” Melissa asked gently.

“I don’t know,” Mary said, getting to her feet and groping for the banister. “And I don’t care!”

Melissa glanced toward the study doors and saw that they were closed. “Shall I help you up to your room?” she asked quietly.

Alice appeared before Mary could answer and solicitously led her charge up the stairs.

After smoothing her hair and summoning a calm attitude Melissa knocked at one of the study doors. When there was no answering invitation she went in anyway.

Quinn was seated on the edge of his desk, talking earnestly with someone who was hidden from Melissa’s view by the high back of a chair. At her entrance he glared at her, and it was clear that the gratitude he’d felt that morning was a thing of the past.

“I’m busy at the moment,” he said in a clipped tone, as though Melissa were a troublesome child instead of his wife.

Gillian peeked around the back of the chair and waggled gloved fingers. “Hello,” she sang out.

Melissa struggled to keep her temper. “Hello,” she said sweetly, wanting to find one of those trees where Quinn’s and Gillian’s initials were carved and tie them both to its trunk.

Quinn’s look was ominous. “Whatever it is, darling, can’t it wait for a few minutes?” he said.

Gillian bounced out of her chair. “Now, Quinn,” she chimed, “I’ve taken up enough of your time for one day. I’ll just run along now—we can talk tomorrow.”

With that Quinn’s partner left the study, and he was alone with his wife.

“Mary tells me that you’re not even going to talk with Dr. Koener,” she began.

Quinn turned away. “There’s no point in it.”

“There is every point,” Melissa insisted. “Mary’s sight could be restored. Surely you can understand what hopes she must have pinned on this.”

“I won’t take the chance,” Quinn said flatly.

Heat pulsed in Melissa’s cheeks. “I thought we were talking about Mary, not you,” she dared to say.

Quinn faced Melissa at last. “Do you have any idea of the pain she might have to suffer?” he demanded in a furious undertone. “Even Aunt Alice admits that the chances are seven out of ten that Mary will still be blind after the surgery. What kind of odds are those?”

Melissa stepped close to Quinn and put her arms around his neck. “Just talk to the doctor, darling—that’s all we’re asking. Go to Seattle and talk with him.”

Quinn sighed and rather grudgingly embraced her. “If I do, will you go with me?”

Melissa thought of her vain efforts at interesting the local merchants in advertising and nodded. She was getting nowhere with her newspaper anyway.

Quinn kissed her thoroughly, then mumbled against her mouth, “Come upstairs, Mrs. Rafferty, and let me love you.”

Melissa could have named ten thousand reasons why Quinn’s idea wasn’t a good one, but she missed supper all the same.

Seventeen

There were a great many unanswered questions in Melissa’s mind and heart when she set off for Seattle with her husband that rainy Tuesday morning aboard the steamer
Excelsior,
but the time wasn’t right for asking them. Quinn was in an uneasy, pensive mood, and more than the upcoming conference with Dr. Koener was troubling him.

Their table in the ship’s salon was beside a window, and even shrouded in rain the scenery along the northern part of the Olympic Peninsula was beautiful. Quinn didn’t seem to notice that, even though he was staring through the water-beaded glass.

Mary came in, laughing, perfectly dry inside her hooded rain cloak. As always, Alice was hovering nearby, but today a new element had been added. A nice-looking young man with thick brown hair and blue eyes had given Mary his arm.

Melissa’s smile brought Quinn out of his glum reflections, at least temporarily, and he turned to find what had inspired amusement in his wife. Seeing Mary openly flirting with the handsome boy, he made a grumbling sound and started to get up.

“Don’t you dare interfere!” Melissa whispered, quickly catching hold of his arm. “No harm is being done—they’ve only been walking on the deck.”

Quinn sighed and sank back into his chair. “You’re right,” he admitted raggedly. “Melissa, what’s the matter with me?”

Melissa had given a lot of consideration to that question, and she had a ready answer. “I think you’re overtired.”

An ironic glint appeared in his eyes, and one corner of his mouth twitched slightly in an attempt at a smile. “It’s hard to believe what can happen in the space of two weeks, isn’t it?”

Melissa dropped her gaze, knowing he was referring to her abrupt intrusion into his life the day she’d run away from Ajax and quite unsure whether he thought those weeks had been bad ones or good. “Yes,” she said, feeling miserable.

A waiter arrived, bringing a tray that contained a carafe of hot, fresh coffee, a pitcher of cream, a bowl of sugar, and two cups. He poured for both Melissa and Quinn, but Melissa, queasy again, ignored her coffee.

“It wouldn’t be a bad idea for you to see a doctor yourself while we’re in Seattle,” Quinn ventured to say.

Melissa bit her lower lip before answering, “It’s too early to tell whether I’m pregnant or not.”

“When were—when would you have—”

Melissa knew he was trying to ask if her period was overdue, and she rather enjoyed his embarrassment, since her own was so acute. “A few days ago,” she said.

“Oh,” Quinn replied, and he dropped two lumps of sugar into his coffee. He turned his attention to the window again and looked as glum as ever.

Melissa couldn’t stand it. “Would it really be so bad?” she whispered. “If you and I had a child, I mean.”

When he looked at her, she saw torment in his eyes. “If the child survived, it would be wonderful,” he replied. “But they often don’t, you know, and a lot of times the mothers don’t make it, either.”

At last Melissa felt she was getting somewhere, and her
spirits were greatly lifted to know that he would welcome the baby when it was born. She dared to reach out and take Quinn’s hand. “I’ve got three brothers,” she said softly, “and all of their wives have had children. Not only did my nieces and nephews survive, so did my sisters-in-law.”

Quinn did not look reassured; instead, he seemed almost haunted. “My mother probably had a dozen pregnancies, Melissa, and she failed every time. The last one took her with it.”

“Your mother couldn’t have failed every time,” Melissa pointed out. “She had you and Mary.”

Quinn started to say something, then stopped himself. After nearly a full minute had passed he mumbled, “I wish we could just keep going from Seattle, Melissa, and never go back to Port Riley.”

Melissa thought of all he’d built, notwithstanding the fact that he’d done much of it to spite Gillian’s father, and she shook her head. “You don’t mean that.”

The expression in Quinn’s eyes said otherwise, but Melissa didn’t press the subject further. Mary brought the young man over to her brother’s table and introduced him as Scott Murray. He was a student at the University of Washington, in Seattle, and he was obviously very taken with his new acquaintance.

“He probably thinks she’d be easy to take advantage of,” Quinn grumbled when Mary and Scott had gone outside for a walk around the rainy deck.

By then Alice had joined them, and she looked up from her needlework with fire in her eyes. “Quinn Rafferty, if you make a remark like that in Mary’s presence, I will personally box your ears. She is pretty and sweet, and it’s quite natural for young men to like her.”

“She’s also blind,” Quinn said, and then he pushed himself out of his chair. “I need some fresh air.”

Melissa, who agreed with Alice on the matter of Mary’s living as normal a life as possible, gave him a warning look and said, “Is it fresh air you want, or are you planning to spy on poor Mary?”

His guilty expression told all, but neither Melissa nor Alice tried to stop him when he left the salon. Melissa, for her part, was relieved to be spared his dour mood for a while.

“Tell me about Quinn’s father,” Melissa ventured to say after a few minutes, her arms folded in front of her on the table.

Alice lifted her gaze from the sampler she was embroidering and said, “I’ve always wondered what the good Lord could have been thinking of the day he made Eustice Rafferty. He’s as close to a devil as any man I’ve ever met.”

“Then the rumors I’ve heard are true—he did abuse his wife and children.”

Alice sighed sadly and nodded. “Ellen—Quinn’s and Mary’s mother—was my sister, you know. She was always a gentle, delicate little thing. I never did understand what she saw in that brute of a man, but I think she must have loved him, because she stayed. Through it all, she stayed.”

“Maybe she was afraid to leave,” Melissa suggested tentatively.

But Alice shook her head. “We had family, Ellen and I, over in the wheat country. She could have gone to them at any time, and they’d have taken her in.”

Melissa was frowning. “There’s quite a gap between their ages—Quinn’s and Mary’s, I mean.”

“Sixteen years,” Alice said.

With a shrug Melissa replied, “I guess that’s not so strange. The youngest of my brothers is thirteen years older than I am. I was a surprise to the whole family.”

Alice nodded. “So was Mary. And she was the light of poor Ellen’s life. She started her decline when Mary was five. Quinn had made some money by then, and when his mother got so weak he came back and took his sister away to board with a preacher and his wife in Port Riley. I didn’t blame him, Eustice being what he was, but it was the beginning of the end for Ellen. She just gave up after that.”

Melissa looked out at the rainy coast of the peninsula, wondering whether or not to trust this woman. She finally
decided that she had to, or burst from trying to contain her curiosity and concern. “The night before last Quinn tried to choke his father.”

Alice set her needlework aside on the table, her full attention fixed on Melissa. Her cheeks had been drained of their color, and her eyes were wide. “Eustice is in Port Riley?”

Melissa nodded, more concerned than ever. Alice looked as though she might faint.

“Dear Lord,” she whispered.

Quickly Melissa poured Quinn’s aunt a glass of ice water from a pitcher the waiter had brought earlier.

Alice drank most of the contents of her glass and then asked brokenly, “Why didn’t Quinn tell me? I would have insisted upon taking Mary away immediately.”

Melissa could not answer that question, but she offered some of her own. “Why are you so afraid of Eustice? And why did Quinn want to kill him?”

Alice was still trembling. “He’s a monster,” she replied. “He hates Quinn, and he’d use anything or anybody to hurt him.”

A shiver moved down Melissa’s spine. Her father had cherished his sons, although he’d been strict with them, and she found it impossible to grasp Eustice’s relationship with Quinn. “Why?” she whispered, stricken. “Why would any man hate his own son?”

“Quinn was always better than Eustice, better and smarter, and that old man knew it. The jealousy made him mean, like a rabid dog.”

Melissa’s eyes were wide. The realization of what Alice was saying was finally dawning on her. Eustice wanted to destroy his son, and he would go to any lengths to do it. That meant that Mary was in danger, but so was she—and so was the baby she was surely carrying.

Lost in troubled thoughts, Melissa got out of her chair, mumbled something to Alice, and put on her cloak as she walked away from the table.

The coolness of the rain calmed her a little, and when she
rounded the deck she found Quinn on the other side, gazing out at the water. Mary and her friend Scott were nowhere in sight.