Marry Me (14 page)

“After last evening, I think it is better not to speak behind her back or fool ourselves to believe we are out of her hearing. Perhaps we should discuss this at another time.”

“No,” she said quickly, surprising even herself. “No, I wouldn’t care if Rhyne overheard.” She took a steadying sip of coffee. “I went to Doc if I had a cough I couldn’t seem to chase away or a steady ache in my fingers that kept me from sewing, but I didn’t have confidence in him to help me with what he called female problems. From time to time he’d deliver a baby, but mostly he left that to Mrs. Cromwell or Mrs. Best.”

“Midwives?”

She nodded. “They’re very good, and you won’t regret relying on them, but they don’t have the breadth of knowledge you do–or at least that I believe you do. You submitted an extraordinary
vita,
Dr. Monroe. The committee was especially impressed with your tenure at St. John of God Hospital. It was our belief–rightly or wrongly–that it broadened your experiences, making you knowledgeable of the range of illnesses and conditions that you’d find here.”

“I believe that it does, Mrs. Cooper, but I hope the committee hasn’t forgotten that I entered into the agreement with the understanding that I would be able to continue my research.”

“Yes. Yes, of course. There is no question of that.”

Cole leaned his hip against the warm stove and drank from his cup. “Come to see me after we return,” he said. “It’s unlikely that there’s anything wrong at all. It could be that you simply want it too much.”

“How can that be?”

“Honestly, I don’t know. It just seems to happen that way sometimes. Have you ever tangled your sewing threads because you’re trying to hurry?”

“Yes.”

He shrugged. “It’s like that, I suspect.”

Rachel considered his imperfect metaphor. She wondered what parts were tangling.

“There is also the possibility,” Cole said, “that the problem with conception lies with your husband.”

“No,” she said. “I know it doesn’t. Wyatt’s first wife was pregnant when she died. Please don’t repeat that. No one knows.”

Cole was vaguely insulted that she thought it was necessary to caution him. “I think I’ve demonstrated that I honor confidences.”

“I’m sorry. Of course you have.” She looked away, embarrassed. “Old habits.”

“I need to wake Rhyne,” he said. “I may ask you to assist me, Mrs. Cooper. Would you be willing to do that?”

Rachel had no experience with what he was asking her to do. She had never been present at a birth and what she understood about her own body was limited to her relations with her husband. She realized she was astonishingly ignorant.

“If you think it will help Rhyne,” she said.

“It might. We’ll see.” He poured a second cup of coffee for himself and a small one for his patient. He set both cups on the tray he’d been using and balanced it carefully in one hand while picking up his medical bag in the other. That left him without a hand to open the door to Rhyne’s room. “Would you?” he asked, indicating the door with a thrust of his chin.

“Of course.” Rachel rose and preceded him to the door. She let it swing open and stepped aside to allow him to enter. It wasn’t her intention to linger, but what she glimpsed from her vantage point at his side rooted her to the floor.

A Winchester in Runt Abbot’s hands was a deadly thing.

“The only step you better be taking, Dr. Monroe, is the one that puts you on the other side of that threshold.”

Cole didn’t move. “I thought we were past you trying to run me off, Rhyne. Put the rifle down.”

“Not a chance. I saw what you have in that bag.” She nodded toward the satchel on the floor. “I’ve been waitin’ for you.”

Cole hefted the bag in his hand. The weight of it spoke to his error. “Let’s discuss this,” he said calmly. “I brought you coffee.”

“So help me God, I’ll shoot you where you stand if you come in here. Put the tray on the floor, take your cup, and go.”

Cole held on to the tray and let his medical bag thump to the floor. “I’m not going anywhere.” He passed the tray to Rachel and told her to back out of the way.

“I think you’re safer if I’m standing here.”

“I wouldn’t count on it,” he said wryly. “Go on. I’ll be fine.” He returned his attention to Rhyne. Her grip on the rifle hadn’t wavered yet. She was kneeling on the bed, her thighs slightly splayed for balance. It was difficult to know which was more rumpled: her shirt or her hair. A deep pillow crease marked her cheek, and the flush of sleep still suffused her complexion. The danger posed by the weapon was a marked contrast to the pair of lace-trimmed drawers she was wearing.

He was in a standoff with a feral kitten.

“I’m not going to examine you against your will, Rhyne.”

“I won’t let you put that mask on me again.”

“I only put you to sleep to spare you more pain. That wouldn’t be the case today. There’d be discomfort, but not pain.”

Rhyne jerked the rifle at him. “How would you know? I bet no one’s ever poked you with something like what you’ve got in that bag.”

“You’re right. I only know what my patients have told me.”

She still wasn’t satisfied. “They probably lied. Did you think of that? I bet they didn’t want to disappoint you, you being so plainly easy to look at and all.”

Cole sighed. “May I please come in, Rhyne? Johnny and Wyatt will be here soon. There’s no reason to include them in this conversation.”

“Maybe they’ll want to know what you do to women. It might even be against the law. That’s what I’m thinking.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” he said impatiently. It was easy to call her bluff when he concluded the better choice was for her to just shoot him. A single long stride took Cole far enough into the room that he was able to slam the door shut behind him. He walked over to the bed, jerked the Winchester from her hand, and expertly removed the cartridges. He pocketed them and returned the rifle. “Don’t ever point that at me again. You won’t like what happens to it the next time.”

Rhyne cradled the Winchester protectively.

“What the hell’s wrong with you?”

She liked it when he forgot himself and spoke like a regular person, not a professor-doctor-scientist.
Et tu, Brute.
She knew Latin, too. “I reckon I got a little squirrelly.”

“Squirrelly.”

“It means demented.”

“I
know
what it means.” He sat down in the chair and plowed one hand through his hair. “What caused it?”

That raised her eyebrows. “Have you looked at those things in your bag?”

“Yes.” He pointed to the bag at his feet. “May I?”

Rhyne laid the rifle beside her and sat back against the iron head rail. She regarded the bag uncertainly but finally gave her approval.

Cole set the bag in his lap and opened it, displaying the instruments for her to see. “These are delivery forceps,” he said, pointing to the curved metal tongs. “To help ease a baby out. All of my obstetrical instruments are blue gun steel so they can be sterilized. That means I can heat them to a temperature that destroys bacteria and reduces the chance of infection. Bed fever, for instance.”

“I’ve delivered animals before,” she said. “I used my hands when I had to.”

“Yes, well, this is the preferred procedure for women giving birth.”

Rhyne wondered about the poor baby’s soft head getting squeezed like a ripe melon, but she kept the picture that made to herself. “What’s that?” She pointed to another instrument. “That part looks like a duck’s bill.”

“It’s a trivalve speculum.”

“Does it go where I think it does?”

“In your vagina, yes.”

“Vagina. You’ve said that before. Is that what the front hall’s called?” “Front hall?”

“My brothers told me that’s what it was. Front hall. Back door. Rainspout. All the parts.”

“I see,” he said carefully. Cole recalled Johnny telling him about comparing parts with his sisters and brother. It was difficult not to smile. He wondered if the nomenclature the Winslows had employed was as illustrative as what the Abbot boys used. “Yes, the front hall is the vagina. The literal Latin translation is sheath.”

“Sheath.” Perhaps there was some value in learning more Latin. Judah had never seen the point of it. He thought Greek and English were the voices of the poets. Homer and Shakespeare were his favorites. “What exactly does it do? Not the vagina, I mean. The speculum.”

Cole wondered if he could have such a frank discussion with anyone other than Rhyne. Her curiosity was not restrained by embarrassment. He was bound not to do harm, and in this circumstance harm would be done if he made her feel shame. He removed the speculum and demonstrated how it opened. “Once this is inserted into the vagina, I can open it and look into the canal. I would be able to see your cervix–that’s the tip, the neck, of your womb. I’d better understand what injury had been done.”

Rhyne frowned. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Now it was Cole’s brow that creased. “You remember the beating, don’t you?”

She nodded, but there was hesitation and uncertainty in the small movement. “The marks haven’t gone away,” she said. “Of course, I remember.”

“All of it?” He watched Rhyne’s confusion fade to fear, and he knew then that she had passed out under the force of Judah’s blows. He spoke quietly, but he also spoke the truth. “When the beating didn’t produce an immediate abortion, Rhyne, Judah used his walking stick inside you to force one.”

Chapter 5

Cole threw back the covers on his bed and put on his slippers. He shrugged into his robe, belted it, then left his bedroom in search of warm milk and brown sugar and maybe some of Mrs. Easter’s rolled oats bread if Whitley hadn’t sneaked the last of it.

He made his way through the dark house without incident. He’d discovered that Whitley was easily disturbed by these increasingly frequent excursions, and the quickest way to alert her was to light a lamp. As long as nothing was left out of place when they retired for the night, he could manage the route without stubbing his toe.

When he reached the kitchen he finally lighted a lamp and fired up the stove. He swung a chair around and straddled it while he waited for the milk to heat. He wondered if what he really wanted was to go to sleep. He could always go to the surgery and lose himself in his work. There were nights when that was a better choice.

Footsteps behind him in the hallway had Cole glancing over his shoulder. “What woke you, Whitley?”

She shrugged. “I don’t think I was really sleeping. I keep listening for you.”

“I wish you’d stop doing that.”

“I wish you’d stop doing this.”

He sighed. They were at an impasse. “Would you like some milk? I can add more to the pot.”

“No.”

“Did you eat the last of the oat bread?”

“There’s still some in the box. Would you like me to get it for you?”

He let her do it because she wanted to be useful. He watched her slice off the heel–his favorite part–and smear a bit of butter on it. She placed it on a small plate painted with delicate red poppies and passed it to him.

“Did you look in on Rhyne?” he asked.

She nodded. “I always do.”

“How is our patient doing?”

“She sleeps much better than either of us. She never stirs when I go in.”

Cole knew that didn’t necessarily mean Rhyne was sleeping, but he refrained from sharing that with Whitley.

“What happened to her, Cole?”

“Whitley.”

“If I knew, then maybe I’d know how to talk to her.” It was a familiar argument over these last three weeks. “You talk to her just fine.”

“But she hardly says anything.”

“She will when she’s ready. She’s not a chatterbox like you.”

Whitley dropped into the chair at the head of the small table. She pulled her hastily braided hair forward and began to rework the plait. This occupied her for a bit longer than a minute and helped her sustain her silence until she was compelled to point out that his milk was scalding.

Cole jerked upright, almost tipping the chair as he stood. He grabbed a towel to wrap around the pot handle and removed it from the stove. The milk beaded and sizzled as he poured it into a cup already containing a teaspoonful of brown sugar.

“I like her,” Whitley said. “Even if she doesn’t talk much. You’re right about me. When I have to, I can carry both ends of a conversation.”

“Mr. Cassidy says you do a lot of that in school.”

“Mr. Cassidy is ancient, Cole, and he only wants to talk about ancient things.”

“Greece, perhaps? The Roman Empire? Those kinds of ancient things?”

“Precisely.” She pushed out her lower lip, but Cole wasn’t watching and the effect was lost. She sucked it back in and absently rubbed the spray of freckles on the bridge of her nose. “I already know about those civilizations. We studied all about them at Miss Starcher’s, and since they’re ancient, they really don’t change, do they?”

Cole gave her full marks for being able to coax a smile out of him. “We had an agreement, Whitley. If you did not settle well in school here, then you’d have to go back to Miss Starcher’s Seminary while I stayed behind to honor my contract. I thought you might be bored in Mr. Cassidy’s classroom, but from what I have seen, he appears to have challenging studies for all of his students. Are you falling behind?” He gave her a sideways look when she didn’t answer. “What? You’re suddenly having trouble with your end of our discussion?”

She blew out a large breath, making her lips vibrate, and tossed her fiery braid back over her shoulder. “Let’s end our discussion.”

“Let’s,” he agreed. “Go to bed, Whitley. We’ll talk about school in the morning.”

“Well, that is certainly something to look forward to.” She kissed him on the cheek and then made a dramatic exit, practicing her flounce for her own amusement.

Cole listened to her climb the stairs. Her footfalls echoed softly as she went down the hallway to her room. He gave her ample time to crawl into bed again before he left the table. Droplets of hot milk splashed the back of his hand as he carried the cup and crust to the library. It was more likely that he’d fall asleep there while reviewing his notes than if he returned to bed. Standing at the closed pocket doors, he realized he’d left the oil lamp behind. It was that oversight that allowed him to glimpse the narrow band of light in the seam of the doors.