Secret of the Wolf (35 page)

sofa; she smiled like the idiomatic cat who'd eaten the canary. Harper took a chair by

the empty hearth, his gaze shifting from Johanna to Quentin and back again. Wilhelm

Schell nodded to himself from his wheelchair and Oscar played with his puzzle, while

May sat cross-legged on the carpet at Quentin's feet. Johanna ensconced herself at the

head of the room, separate from everyone else—especially Quentin
.

She needn't have worried, when the two of them were accompanied by six potential

chaperons
.

Chaperons with no power to prevent a loup-garou from doing whatever he wished

No. He forced out the savage, alien thoughts and concentrated on his objective. He had

to get Johanna to himself, but not for the reasons his vivid imagination suggested.

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Casually, he picked up his chair and carried it close to Johanna's. May scrambled to

follow him. From the sofa, Irene snickered
.

Johanna concealed any hint of discomfort. "Quentin," she said, loudly enough for the

others to hear. "How was your day?”

Such banalities were just another shield between them. "Better, I think, than yours," he

said under his breath
.

She pretended not to hear him. "You have such a handsome voice, Quentin. I thought

you might read to us this evening, from one of May's books." She smiled down at the

girl. "Would you like to choose one, May?”

"By all means," Quentin said, grasping the opportunity. "May, didn't you tell me the other

day that you'd found an abandoned bird's nest? I'd very much like to see it, if you'll bring

it along when you fetch your book.”

The girl hesitated, sliding a glance at Johanna. "I'll get it," she said, and scurried into the

hall
.

Johanna sat very stiff and tall in her chair. Quentin smiled vaguely about the room for

the benefit of the other patients, as if he had nothing at all on his mind
.

"About the other night—" he began
.

"There is something I must tell you—" Johanna said
.

They stopped at the same moment and stared at each other
.

"Ladies first, by all means," Quentin said
.

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"No. Please continue.”

He lowered his voice to a hoarse whisper. "Johanna, I owe you a profound apology. I

came into your room uninvited. I behaved like a cad. I am sorry.”

She breathed in and out several times. "Do you remember what you said and did?”

"I remember

enough." He tried to capture her eyes. "I wasn't myself, Johanna. Will

you accept my apologies?”

"Of course, Quentin. As a doctor, I understand such things. Let us speak no more of it.”

His lip curled. There was his answer. It always came back to that, didn't it? Her

professional detachment was her shield—maiden's armor, to protect her from unwanted

intimacy or the chance of transgressing the patterns and accommodations of her life.

She could still look at him and act as though he hadn't seen her naked body, never

come close to—

He tried to stop the thoughts as they spilled, unchecked, from the dark reaches of his

mind, but they were stronger than he was. "Shall we speak of Dr. Bolkonsky instead?”

She flinched, hardly more than a twitch of an eyebrow
.

"You took May into town today," he said, "to see this Bolkonsky.”

"Yes, I did.”

"And something went wrong.”

Johanna drew her legs under the chair. "May is not used to leaving the Haven.”

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"It was more than that. I saw both of you when you came back. She was terrified, and

you were gravely upset.”

"This is a personal matter.”

"Personal? For you, or for May?" He leaned closer to her, and she angled away. "If it

concerns May's well-being, it concerns me as well.”

She straightened and met his gaze. "I appreciate your friendship for May, but she is my

patient, not yours. And soon—" She broke off and visibly braced herself. "Given the

complications that have attended my attempts to treat you, it seems best for everyone if

I locate another doctor who can take over your case.”

He felt not so much shock as anger—righteous, cleansing anger. He clenched his fists

in his lap. "You mean you want to get rid of me.”

Her eyes widened. "No, Quentin. It's for your own good.”

"For your good, because you're afraid.”

Her expression grew remote. "I wish only for you to receive the best of care. I may not

be able to provide it

as I'd hoped." She swallowed. "You will not be leaving right away.

There are few doctors to whom I'd entrust any of my patients, and the search will

require diligence. In the meantime—”

"In the meantime, we'll go on like this, avoiding each other, avoiding the truth. Neither

doctor and patient, nor friends, nor lovers.”

She paled. "I would hope that we are friends, Quentin.”

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Her distress drained the unwonted anger from his body. What was he doing to her? It

couldn't have been easy to admit that she no longer felt qualified to act as his doctor,

even though he was the one to blame. How could he expect her to acknowledge

anything else?

"Johanna—”

May chose that moment to return to the parlor, bearing the bird's nest in her cupped

hands and a book tucked under her arm. She laid the nest at Quentin's feet. A porcelain

fragment of a blue robin's egg rested at its center
.

Quentin smiled for May's sake. "A treasure indeed," he said, lightly touching the nest.

"Surprisingly sturdy, for all that it's made of twigs." He glanced at Johanna. "Very much

like the human mind.”

"And should it tear, it can be mended," she said with her usual composure. "If the desire

is strong enough.”

"Not so the egg inside." He tapped the broken shell with his fingertip. "No mending it

once it breaks.”

"Then we must take that much greater care to protect it. May, did you bring your book?”

With a little sigh of compliance, May began leafing through the book to find her favorite

passage
.

Irene, feeling neglected, arose from her royal seat and sauntered over to join Lewis. He

ignored her, and so she turned her attentions to Harper. Quentin heard the murmur of

their conversation, during which Irene strove in vain to attract Harper's interest. He

responded with neutral courtesy, which offended Irene's sense of self-importance. She

whirled about and set her sights on more familiar prey
.

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"I hear you have a new lover, Johanna.”

Johanna blinked at the sudden attack. "I beg your pardon?”

"That handsome new doctor in town, Bolkonsky." Irene's smile was poisonous. "I don't

know why you ever thought he would have an interest in you.”

May dropped her book on the carpet and stared at Irene. Quentin touched her shoulder.

She was trembling
.

"Why don't we go for a walk, May," he suggested. "You can show me where you found

the nest.”

The girl refused to budge. Johanna rose to take Irene's arm and steer her away from the

others. Despite the low pitch of her voice, Quentin heard every word she spoke
.

"How do you know about Dr. Bolkonsky, Irene?”

"You think I'm stupid, don't you? Just because I've been forced to live out here in this

rural backwater with a house full of loonies and old maids—" She shook off Johanna's

hand with a sneer. "Well, I do know about Feodor Bolkonsky. I know a lot more than you

would ever guess. I still have admirers who have no intention of leaving me here to rot,

and I—" She caught her painted lower lip between her teeth. "You might as well give up,

Johanna." She pointed her chin toward Quentin. "Take him if you want. I don't.”

She flounced back to the sofa, leaving Johanna to stare after her. Quentin wasn't in the

least surprised that Irene DuBois had her own devious ways of tapping into the local

gossip, even if the town considered her one of the "loonies" herself. She certainly

wouldn't balk at prying into Johanna's personal and professional affairs
.

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She might even have already done what Quentin planned to do tonight. He hoped that

Johanna didn't draw the same conclusion
.

"Trust a woman like Irene to know the names of every eligible male within a hundred-

mile radius," he joked when Johanna rejoined him. "I believe that I should pity the man.”

"I do not." She sat down again, her expression shut to him. There'd be no further

chance for conversation tonight
.

Quentin did as he was asked and read May's passage from The Story of Avis. The

others made a pretense of listening, but he doubted they truly heard. When the

gathering broke up an hour later, Harper made as if to speak to Quentin, only to fall

silent. Quentin didn't encourage him. All his attention was centered on Johanna and

May, the doctor and the innocent. They needed him, and, come the end of the world, he

wasn't about to let them down
.

Just after the stroke of midnight, when everyone was tucked safely in his or her bed,

Quentin slipped into Johanna's office. He knew exactly what he was looking for, and

where to find it
.

If he felt like a thief in the night, that was exactly what he was. Johanna kept her notes

in the desk drawer, unlocked. She obviously hadn't expected any of her patients to go

rifling through them. Not Irene, who might have already done so. Certainly not Quentin
.

The recent entries about her meetings with Bolkonsky, and the visit with May, were

tucked into the front of her notebook. Quentin sat down at her desk and read by the

sliver of moonlight that shone through the office window. He sifted the lines of careful

handwriting until he found the pertinent section
.

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The earlier notations rang with the confident satisfaction she'd shown after the first

encounter with Bolkonsky. What she said of the man bordered on infatuation. Quentin's

hair bristled, and he had to force his mouth to close over his teeth, which had a

tendency to bare at every mention of Bolkonsky's name
.

Fool, he told himself. Concentrate
.

Concentration paid off. Yes, she thought very highly of the doctor at first. Enough to be

flattered by his attention, to write glowingly of his knowledge of hypnosis and his study

of her father's work. She even wrote of her hopes that Bolkonsky might become

Quentin's new doctor
.

But the next meeting's entry was different. May's father, he read, and stopped
.

May's father. A Mr. Chester Ingram, a wealthy San Francisco magnate, a man Johanna

had never mentioned. Bolkonsky had come to Silverado Springs to recover Ingram's

daughter, lost to him two years ago. And he'd deceived Johanna in order to gain her

trust before revealing his true motive for summoning her
.

That was why she'd taken May into town
.

Quentin set down the page and stared out the window. Johanna must have known of

May's father, but she had deliberately not contacted him. She'd kept the child here,

apart from Ingram, and was distressed at his appearance. Quentin remembered what

she'd told him before he met May for the first time: "Her mother left her with us for

treatment. I suspect her home life was not a happy one.”

No reference to the mother here. Only a description of May's visit to town, where

something had gone terribly wrong
.

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An hysterical fit. Terror. All because May's father had come into the room against

Johanna's wishes and recommendations
.

The terse sentences Johanna had written here hinted at so much more than they

revealed. The one point made abundantly clear was that Johanna did not want to

release May to her father

and had no intention of doing so
.

Quentin swallowed the sourness in his throat and replaced the notes in their original

order, then began a second search that took him to the bookshelves against the wall,

and the boxes of older records
.

The ink was faded on the original entries, made the night May came to the Haven.