Marry Me (20 page)

Rhyne resisted Whitley’s attempt to pull her to her feet. She used her own intonation. “I don’t know. I don’t think it’s a good idea.” Nothing to do with balls and Whitley could possibly be a good idea. She regretted the lapse in judgment that made her utter the words in the first place.

“Come with me. Please?” When Rhyne remained firmly in her seat, Whitley threw up her hands. “Oh, very well. I’ll be right back. Don’t leave.” She fairly sprinted out of the dining room and skidded into the hallway. The clink of glass beakers and test tubes alerted her to Cole’s presence in the surgery. She tiptoed past the door and slipped into the library. It only took her a moment to find what she was looking for. Tucking it under her arm, she beat a retreat back to the dining room. Rhyne was precisely where she left her, but not looking particularly happy about being there.

Whitley set the book on the table in front of Rhyne and sidled up to her chair. She reached over and opened the book, thumbing through the pages quickly. Familiarity with the volume helped her find what she was looking for without difficulty. She flattened the pages to reveal the twin illustrations of a naked male, the left side a frontal view, the right, the profile perspective. “There,” she said, pressing her finger to the figure’s groin. “That’s what the boys call balls.” She turned several more pages, uninterested in illustrations of the gastro-intestinal, circulatory, and nervous systems, and went directly to reproduction. Here the groin area was revealed in minute detail, much of it from the inside.

“See. There’s a sac. And the balls are in the sac. They’re really testicles and the sac is a scrotum, but you’ll never hear Tom and Ben use those words. They think they know so much.” She rolled her eyes. “Boys.”

Rhyne slammed the book closed, nearly trapping Whitley’s fingers between the pages. “Take it away,” she said. “Put it back exactly where you found it and don’t remove it from the library again. Don’t remove it from the
shelf
again.”

Startled by the edge of anxiety in Rhyne’s tone, Whitley blinked widely. She accepted the book when Rhyne thrust it at her, but she stood rooted to the floor. “It’s all right,

Rhyne. Really.” “Take it.”

Whitley turned and fled. And ran headlong into Cole.

“Careful,” he said, embracing her to take the force of the collision on himself. “What is this?” He placed his hands on her shoulders and drew back to examine her face. “Tears? What’s wrong, Whit?”

She ducked her head.

“Oh, no. No hiding, Whit. Tell me.”

Whitley twisted her shoulders in an attempt to remove Cole’s hands.

“Where is Miss Abbot?” He looked past his sister to the entrance to the dining room. When his attention returned to Whitley, he noticed the book under her arm. “What do you have there? And do not tell me it is a book because I can plainly see that it is.”

Her response was to press her lips tightly together.

Cole sighed. “Go,” he said. He released her shoulders and stepped to the side. As she darted past, he plucked the book from under her arm. Cole thought she might try to wrestle it from him, but she barely paused. She was halfway up the stairs before he reached the dining room.

Rhyne was gathering Whitley’s papers, slate, and school-books when Cole stepped into the room. She had heard the skirmish in the hallway, but didn’t know Cole had recovered his book until she glanced up and saw him cradling it in his arm. A fine tremor made her fingers clumsy as she attempted to square off the papers.

Cole did not speak immediately. He observed Rhyne first, noting her pale features, the almost bloodless lips, the slight quiver of her fingertips. Her narrow shoulders were hunched, set forward protectively, and the effect was to make her appear more vulnerable, not less.

As soon as he stepped toward the table, she backed away. He stopped and regarded her questioningly. She merely stared back, her eyes troubled, her entire demeanor uncertain and unsteady. Cole spoke the five words guaranteed to get her back up. “Are you afraid of me?”

Rhyne straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin. Her stare was feral.

“No,” he said. “I don’t suppose you are.” He held up the book, reading the title for the first time.
“Burnside’s Illustrated Anatomy.
Is this the source of everyone’s distress?”

“I am not distressed.”

That was clearly untrue, but Cole did not press. “Whitley’s not talking, either.” He placed the book on the table and looked up in time to see Rhyne staring at it with distaste. “So it is the book. I imagine Whitley took it from the library. Was there a question? Something she wanted to reference?”

Rhyne held on tightly to the items in her arms, conscious of feeling protected by the small barrier they provided. “It’s my fault. I let her provoke me into challenging her. She went after the book to prove she knew something that I didn’t think she did. Turns out, she did know.”

Cole waited for more to follow, but Rhyne seemed to believe her explanation of events sufficed. “That’s all?”

She shrugged. “That’s the gist of it.”

He very much doubted that. “If Whitley proved her point, why is she upset?”

“You’ll have to ask her.”

“I’m asking
you.
Explain it to me.” He pushed the book across the table. “Better still. Show me.”

Torn between bravado and surrender, Rhyne bit hard into her lower lip. She tasted blood. “Maybe this isn’t a good idea.”

“What?”

“Working for you.”

Frustrated, Cole thrust a hand through his hair. “I didn’t imagine Whitley could get the better of you this quickly. Mrs. Abernathy and Mrs. Green lasted considerably longer.”

“She didn’t get the better of me.”

“That’s not how I see it. You’re ready to leave, or did I mistake your meaning?” When she said nothing, he went on. “No, I didn’t think so. By my reckoning, you haven’t earned a full week’s pay. What has it been since we exchanged that handshake? Four days? Five?” Cole knew the answer almost to the minute, but he wanted to press her.

“Five days.”

“Is that what your word is worth?”

Rhyne slammed the books and slate on the table. The loose papers skittered across the polished surface. She picked up
Burnside’s Illustrated Anatomy
and pitched it at Cole’s chest. Her accuracy was as good with a book as it was with a rifle, and she caught him squarely in the breastbone.

“Find it yourself.”

Cole took the shortest route to reach her. He launched himself
across
the table. The direction of the assault was so unexpected that Rhyne momentarily froze. That indecision cost her dearly. Cole caught her by the waist and used his own momentum to force her back against the wall. Before she could catch her breath, he changed his grip and pinned her wrists level with her shoulders.

He held himself still, aware of nothing so much as the roar of blood in his ears and thudding of his heart. He took measured breaths and waited for calm. Slowly, so slowly that he was hardly conscious of the movement, his head dipped forward until it rested against Rhyne’s brow. He listened to her breathing now, not his own. Quick, shallow sips of air revealed her wariness. She was alert, not paralyzed by fear, and Cole could only imagine that she was waiting for an opportunity to strike or flee.

It fell to him to make certain she made the right choice.

He lifted his head but continued to lean forward, pressing her wrists to the wall with minimal effort. He turned his hips slightly, giving her his flank to avoid a knee to the groin.

“Are we agreed that you struck first?”

The answered hovered on Rhyne’s lips, but in the end, she only nodded.

“For the life of me,” Cole said, “I cannot decide if you expect me to try to beat you bloody because you’re Runt Abbot, or dismiss you from your employment because you’re Rhyne.”

She swallowed hard. “Why not both?”

Cole found her question intriguing. It wasn’t issued as a challenge, but put to him out of real confusion. “Because there is no sense in it. Neither response resolves anything. Doing both would be …” He paused, searching for a word to describe the folly she was inviting.

“Like using a sieve to fill a leaky bucket?”

He stared at her. “Yes,” he said after a long moment.
“Exactly
like that.” He eased his hold on her wrists but didn’t release her. She didn’t attempt to test his grip. “Are we done, Miss Abbot?”

“Yes.”

He let go and pivoted to the side, giving her ample room to walk past him. Rhyne’s hands fell to her side, but she didn’t push away from the wall. She stared straight ahead, concentrating on her breathing, waiting for her heartbeat to quiet. Cole glanced at the book Rhyne had pitched at him. Lying unopened on the floor,
Burnside’s IllustratedAnatomy
looked harmless enough, certainly not capable of provoking so much in the way of emotion and conflict. He left Rhyne’s side and went to pick it up.

“Go on to bed,” he said, laying the book on the table. “It’s late.” He saw her uncertainty. Her eyes darted from him to the book then back to him. He didn’t miss the effort it required for her to peel herself away from the wall.

Rhyne straightened and smoothed the material of her gown over her midriff. Taking a steadying breath, she rounded the table. “One hundred eighteen and one hundred nineteen.”

He barely heard her, and what she was telling him didn’t immediately register. She was gone from the room when it came to him.

Cole pulled out a chair but only to rest his knee on the seat as he turned the book toward him. He opened it and used his index finger to carefully turn the pages. The ones he was looking for were creased at the corners, suggesting they had been visited more than once and were probably dog-eared for easy reference.

Cole spent no time at all studying the drawings. Closing the book, he sat down slowly and tried to recreate the scene between his sister and Rhyne in his mind. He had no doubt that the illustrations fascinated Whitley, and it was easy to imagine her sneaking in to the library to satisfy her curiosity. It was not so different than Johnny Winslow comparing parts with his siblings.

Rhyne’s response to the drawings was more complicated. She admitted provoking Whitley in some manner, so she would have felt responsibility for the book being removed, and perhaps concern about what he would have to say. But Cole believed that her reaction was more visceral than cerebral. He remembered the fine tremor in her hands, the hunching of her shoulders, and finally, the stillness in her features that could not mask her aversion.

Confronted with the same pictures, Runt Abbot would have snapped his suspenders and spit, perhaps engaged in some ribald humor that made him one of the boys. But Rhyne was no longer afforded the same protections, and it was Rhyne who had been violated.

And now violated again.

Chapter 7

Pounding at the side door made all of three of them put down their forks. Cole’s chair scraped the floor as he pushed back from the table. “I’ll see who it is.”

Rhyne could see that Whitley wanted to follow. She encouraged her to stay seated with a small negative shake of her head. Whitley hesitated, then surrendered. Neither of them resumed eating.

Cole only returned long enough to tell them that he would be leaving. “There’s been an accident at the mine. That’s Will Beatty at the door. He’s going to take me out to the site. Don’t wait up for me.”

Whitley turned around in her chair and called after him, “I could help, Cole!” When there was no response, she started to rise.

“Don’t trouble your brother,” Rhyne said. She pointed to the seat of the chair, indicating that Whitley should occupy it.

Whitley sat again, this time even more reluctantly than the last. “I wouldn’t be in the way. I know how to help Cole.”

“I’m sure you do. Did Cole teach you, or was it something you learned from your mother? I believe you told me she cared for wounded soldiers.”

“That’s right, but Mama never stopped volunteering in the hospitals. She wouldn’t let me go with her, but she always talked about what she did there. Cole never did. Mama mostly went to St. John’s, same as Cole. St. John of God is a teaching hospital. You know what that is,

don’t you?” “Not really.”

Whitley shrugged. “Well, it’s associated with the university where Cole studied, and lots of things he had to learn were taught right there at St. John’s. He watched surgeries and autopsies and followed the doctors around on the ward when they diagnosed and treated the patients.”

“Autopsies? What’s that?”

“Cutting up dead people.”

Rhyne frowned. “Now why would you want to do that?”

“I
wouldn’t, but my mother said the doctors do it to learn what killed the patient. Cole says it’s mostly doctors that kill the patients, but Dr. Erwin didn’t want to hear that.”

“Who is Dr. Erwin?”

Whitley didn’t answer immediately, distracted by the sound of the side door slamming shut and the hurried tread of Cole and that no-account Beatty boy on the steps. She pushed her plate away, no longer willing to pretend an interest in her dinner. She picked up the dangling thread of conversation without a prompt from Rhyne. “Dr. Erwin is in charge at St. John’s. He’s very important, but not as important as he thinks he is. That’s what Mama used to say.”

Whitley’s voice dropped to confidential tones. “She didn’t care for Dr. Erwin. Same as Cole. Where they disagreed, though, was about Caroline Erwin. Cole liked her enough to ask her to marry him, but Mama never warmed to her–not that anyone outside the family would have even known. It was a very private matter.”

“Dr. Monroe is married?” asked Rhyne.

“No. He
was
engaged. Caroline ended it not long after Mama died, but that’s because Cole thought it would be better that way. If she hadn’t, he would have. He said it was because he couldn’t be what she wanted him to be, but I think it was because of me.”

Rhyne regarded Whitley suspiciously. “How much did your brother actually tell you, and how much did you learn listening at doors?”

Whitley did not pretend to be insulted. “I’d never know anything if it weren’t for closed doors. Cole says I’m incorrigible. I had to look it up. It means I’m–”