Marry Me (23 page)

“Whitley’s fine. She knows I’m leaving. Sarah Ann Beatty’s in labor. Mrs. Best is with her, but Jack Beatty came for me because the midwife can’t turn the baby.”

Nodding, Rhyne stooped and slid the Winchester under her bed. “I’ll look out for Whitley.”

“Thank you.” He backed out of the room and would have closed the door if Rhyne hadn’t rushed forward and put a restraining hand on the knob. “What is it?”

She didn’t have an answer, didn’t understand the urgency that had pushed her toward the door in the first place. She hovered there a moment longer, staring at him, wondering at the strain that showed in his features, then she nodded once and allowed the door to close quietly.

Cole had not yet left the house when Rhyne ushered Whitley inside her room. “The left side,” she said, infusing her tone with more weariness than she actually felt. The ruse was necessary to prevent Whitley from talking her ear off when what she wanted was quiet, if not precisely sleep. “I’m on the right.”

It was close to dawn before Rhyne was able to ease herself out of bed without rousing Whitley. She carried a shawl and slippers and gave Whitley one last over-the-shoulder glance before she left. The floor was cold even where rugs covered it. After tiptoeing down the stairs, Rhyne stepped into her slippers and threw the shawl around her shoulders. In the kitchen, she checked to make certain the grate was free of ashes before she started a new fire. By the time Whitley had to rise for school, Rhyne wanted to have two loaves of bread in the oven and porridge on the stove.

She was punching out the wheat dough after its second rise when she heard the door to Cole’s office open. When no one called out, she realized it was Cole returning. She had already determined that she wouldn’t search for him. If all had gone well at the Beattys, he would find her. If it hadn’t, he would also find her. It no longer seemed odd that he sought her out. For him to do otherwise would trouble her now.

She knew the moment he came to stand at the threshold of the kitchen. Concentrating on shaping the dough into two loaves of equal size, Rhyne didn’t lift her head. She did not mind that he watched her work and felt no pressure to hurry or to give him her attention. Perhaps he found watching the activity as calming as she found performing it. She set each loaf in a pan prepared with grease and brushed them both with milk before she slipped them into the oven. Turning around, she wiped her hands on her apron, and looked at Cole for the first time.

Everything she didn’t want to know was there on his face.

“I’m so sorry,” she said quietly.

He nodded, wearily rubbing the underside of his chin. He pushed away from the doorjamb and drew out a chair. As was often his habit, he spun it on one leg until it faced the table backward. He straddled it and sat, resting his arms along the back rail.

“There’s coffee,” she said.

“Please.”

Rhyne prepared a cup for him and set it under his nose. He thanked her with a brief glance, but he didn’t say anything. She began clearing the table.

“Leave it,” he said.

“All right.” Rhyne laid the rolling pin on the floured breadboard and sat before he had to tell her it was what he wanted. She brushed back a wayward lock of hair and tucked it behind her ear.

Cole watched her streak her hair with flour and didn’t say a word. It was easy to imagine how she would look sitting across a table from him in thirty years. In spite of the long night behind him, and the rigors of the day ahead, he felt his mouth twitch, and because he believed she could not possibly appreciate the wandering of his mind, Cole raised his cup and hid his smile from her.

When he set the cup down again, he was ready to tell her everything. “Sarah Ann was already eighteen hours into labor when Mrs. Best realized the baby had turned. She knows the dangers of a breech presentation. Certainly she has more experience with them than I do, but nothing she tried worked. When she couldn’t turn the baby, she sent Jack for me.”

Cole paused, turning his cup around but not lifting it to drink. “I don’t know what they thought I could do.” He shook his head. “No, I do know. They thought I could save her and the baby.” His short laugh held no humor. “As though Sarah and her child had just slipped underwater and all I had to do was extend a line.”

Rhyne wanted to offer her hand. Uncertain if it was the right thing to do, or if it would be welcome, she sat on it instead.

“Do you remember the equations Whitley was doing after dinner?” he asked.

Rhyne nodded. “The ones with two solutions.”

“Yes. One negative. One positive. And they’re both right. There was nothing like that at the Beattys’ tonight. I told Jack that I might be able to save the baby, but not Sarah Ann. I couldn’t promise him that I could do it, only that I
might
be able to. He wouldn’t let me cut his wife. She begged him; she wanted the baby to have a chance. He couldn’t do it, and I lost them both.”

“I’m sorry, Cole.” There was an unfamiliar ache at the back of her throat, another behind her eyes. “So sorry.”

Watching tears hover on the rim of Rhyne’s lower lashes, Cole suddenly realized he’d never known her to cry. The monogrammed handkerchief she pulled from her apron pocket was the one he’d given her, but she had it in her possession because of laughter, not grief. Was she remembering the loss of her own baby? he wondered. Mourning for Sarah Ann whom she knew or a child that she never would? Did she hurt for Jack Beatty? Understand Mrs. Best’s sorrow?

Then he knew. Her heart ached for
him.

He stood, circled the table, and drew Rhyne to her feet. “I’m going to put my arms around you,” he said quietly. “This is for me. I need it.”

She nodded faintly. It was comfort that she wanted to give him. Her eyes never left his.

Cole slipped his arms around her waist and rested them at the small of her back. “You can do the same.”

But she couldn’t. Her arms hung at her side. She crumpled the handkerchief in one fist and worked it convulsively.

“See?” he said. “The tears are gone.”

Rhyne blinked. Her long lashes spiked. Her smile was watery. “I won’t say it’s because I’m afraid.”

“I know.” He could feel the fine tremor of her body beneath his palms.

“Tell me about the baby,” she said.

“A boy. Small and perfect. It only seemed that he was sleeping. Jack named him Edward James. That was what Sarah wanted if it was a boy. It was her father’s name.”

“And Sarah Ann?”

“She held Jack. He crawled into the bed with her, and she held him like the baby she never would. I remember she kept stroking his cheek. Mrs. Best and I left them alone. When we heard Jack moving off the bed, we knew she was gone.”

Rhyne pressed her lips tightly together as pain pierced her heart. The wound was ragged and deep, and radiated wide from the very center of her soul. She was unaware of how profound her sorrow was until she heard herself speak in a voice she barely recognized as her own.

“I killed my mama, too.”

Rhyne would have wrested herself away from Cole, but he held her fast and pulled her closer. He raised one hand to cradle the back of her head and pressed her cheek in the curve of his neck and shoulder. Her body jerked with sobs. The effort she made to control her breathing only made it worse. Her slender frame was so tight with tension that he thought she would break.

Cole pressed his mouth against her hair. He spoke to her, whispering words that had no real meaning but still offered sweet comfort in their cadence and repetition. The impact was gradual, measured in the fractional softening of the breaths she took and the longer intervals between them. There were no new tears, only the tracking of old ones. Tension slipped away, hurried off by a shudder that left her unable to stand without his support.

He felt her quiet. When she leaned against him, the weight of her seemed as nothing. Where his palm cradled her head he was aware of the fine texture of her hair. It was still unfashionably short, a little ragged at the nape where she tended to brush it away from her neck, but there was no mistaking that this was a woman’s crowning glory. Thick and curling at the ends, he only had to pass his fingers through it once to raise the fragrance of lavender soap.

His hand slid lower to cup the slender stem of her neck. He felt her pulse under his fingers. His thumb made a pass from her chin to the hollow of her throat and rested there.

There was no moment that he consciously stopped talking and began kissing her. His mouth grazed her ear, her temple. He brushed her forehead, then the space between her dark eyebrows. Her cheek was still damp with tears. He found the corner of her mouth. Her lips parted around a shallow breath and he covered them with his own.

There was tenderness. There was need. His mouth moved over hers, delicately at first, sipping, tasting, then with greedy purpose. Her lips were damp, pliant, and parted just that much to allow the tip of his tongue to make a sweep between them.

Her breath hitched. He caught his own.

His mouth came back to hers. He sucked on her lower lip, nibbled on the upper one. His tongue bumped against the ridge of her teeth and passed over the soft underside of her lip.

A chair scraped the floor as Cole kicked it out of the way. He backed Rhyne against the table. The hand he’d used to support her moved to her waist, and he inched closer, finding that small space she’d made for him between her legs.

He brushed aside the hair that fell softly against her neck. He lowered his head. His lips grazed what he had uncovered. Her skin was smooth and warm, the scent of her inviting him to linger.

She turned her head, exposing the long line of her throat. He put his mouth to her skin and sucked. Her hum of pleasure vibrated against his lips. His hand at her waist slid lower until it rested against her hip. With almost no effort on his part, she came to sit on the edge of the table.

He abandoned the warmth of her neck to return to her mouth. He kissed her again. Then again. Deeply. Hungrily. Need welled up inside him, powerful and prevailing, impossible to ignore.

But not impossible to control.

He lifted his head and waited for the unsteadiness of his own breathing to pass. His eyes were closed, but he did not doubt that she was watching him, or that her gaze would be wide and wary. Opening his eyes, he gently cupped her face in both his hands and met her stare.

“I imagine you regret leaving your rifle behind,” he whispered.

Rhyne did not respond.

Cole sighed unevenly. “I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.” He let his hands fall away and plowed his hair with one of them. “Are you all right?” His eyes roamed over her, pausing once when they came to the small bruise on her neck, lingering there the way his mouth had. “Christ. You have to say something, Rhyne.”

She raised one hand to her mouth and touched her lips with her fingertips. They felt vaguely swollen, but the shape of them was unchanged. The pressure she applied was light, like his first kisses, and she had the sense of his mouth moving over hers.

She lowered her hand and slid to the floor when Cole took a step back. She held on to the edge of the table on either side of her and tested the strength of her legs. It would not have surprised her if she’d been as wobbly as a foal, but why that would be true was more difficult to understand. She wasn’t injured, and that was the only point of reference she had for the weakness in her legs.

That left the kiss. The kisses. He’d done it so many times she didn’t know how to distinguish one from the other. Some made her heart race. Some made it stop. It was exactly what her heart did when she was afraid, but fear was nothing at all like what she felt. At least she didn’t think it was. It was hard to know when she was unused to admitting that anything scared her.

Rhyne patted down her apron to find her handkerchief before she saw that it was lying in a crumpled ball on the floor. She used the back of her hand to brush at her cheeks and swipe at her eyes. She sniffed once. That was all it took to put practical matters in front of her. “I should check the bread.”

Cole didn’t put his hands on her, but he did block her path to the stove. “Oh, no,” he said, shaking his head. “You have to say something that makes sense. I watched you put the loaves in. They’re not close to being done.”

“I like to visit them.” “I swear, Rhyne, I–”

She held up a hand, palm out. “I don’t take kindly to bullying, Dr. Monroe.”

“I wasn’t b–”

“You were, but we’ll let it rest. As to the other, we should let it rest as well, only I doubt that either one of us can do that. So I’m working up to asking you the thing that’s mostly weighing on my mind.”

Cole waited.

Rhyne’s chin lifted a notch and she screwed her courage to the sticking place. “I’ve been wonderin’ why you stopped.”

Chapter 8

Ann Marie Easter called the meeting of the Reidsville Physician Search Committee to order. After Gracie Showalter led them in prayer and Rachel Cooper reviewed their purpose, the first order of business was to evaluate Dr. Monroe’s performance as the end of six months neared.

Alice Cassidy, the schoolmaster’s wife, began as she always did. “Well, it’s likely to fall on deaf ears, but I can say without fear of lightning striking me that his sister is a firecracker.”

The eight other members of the committee merely traded glances.

Alice frowned. “Shall I interpret your silence as unanimous agreement?”

“You should interpret it as having fallen on deaf ears,” said Rose Beatty. “Really, Alice, can’t you let it pass unremarked even once? Everyone knows about the fight in the schoolyard. That was months ago and hardly worth a comment then. Besides, what’s wrong with being a firecracker?” She smiled widely and gave her head a flirty toss. Her heavy fall of coal black hair rippled down her back. “That no-account Beatty boy likes it just fine.”

“Now, don’t go inviting trouble, Roseanne,” Estella Longabach said. “Light that fuse of yours at home where it’s appreciated.”

Ann Marie tapped her gavel against the table. The linen tablecloth muted the sound, but the place settings bobbled and water stirred in the goblets. She questioned whether meeting in one of the Commodore’s private rooms was a good idea. Sir Nigel had regarded her gavel with great suspicion, and she felt compelled to promise that she wouldn’t smash his imported china.