The Midwife's Secret (12 page)

“Goin’ over it with me again won’t solve anything. Let
me fill out the papers, will ya?” Benny held up his quill pen.

Amanda backed away from the counter, inches from Tom, and fought to control her emotions. “Let’s give the man an opportunity to do his work. There’s nothing more to be said.”

She left, but Miss Clementine and Pa began to argue with Graham and Benny again. Tom followed Amanda’s resolute figure out the door into the morning sunshine, desperately plowing through ideas of how he might help, but coming up short.

The sunshine hit him square in the eye. “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.” She searched his face. The shadow from her bonnet cast a line across her suntanned nose. “I can’t believe everything I’ve worked for…might be gone.”

“It won’t,” he said, trying to console her.

Amanda rubbed her temples. “How many deeds do you think Finnigan sold? Even if I win this time, what if another man comes along, with another deed, a better one?”

“I don’t know what it all means, Amanda, but I’ll do whatever I can to help you.”

With what? With what could he help her? He was drained of resources. This morning, the tinsmith came calling with another one of those padded bills of Finnigan’s. To boot, Gabe’s letter from Toronto arrived, wondering where Tom’s bank draft for Gabe’s June rent at the boarding house had gotten to.

She leaned into the handrail of the boardwalk, glancing down the street at the early morning shoppers. “Thanks, Tom, but it’s out of your hands.”

Amanda was right.

Who owned the parcel of land? And who owned the half-built log cabin?

“I guess we’ll have to stop building for now…” Amanda choked on the words. “And if I should…should lose the land, I’ll have to move back to Calgary to my family there. I—I’ve got Grandma to think about, and now the children.”

Tom silently cursed Finnigan. Where in Sam Hill was the blasted man? How could he have done this to all these innocent people? Why had Tom been so blind to the man’s deceptions? Had he been that greedy for Finnigan’s influx of cash?

He took a breath of needed air. He was too tired to stay furious. “Do you need a lift home?”

“I rode my bicycle. Grandma came with your father, but I wanted—needed—to be alone.”

“Let me walk you, then. Where’s your bicycle?”

“Around the corner of the mercantile, in the shade.”

Grandma and Pa exited the land registry just then, walking behind Amanda and Tom, heading to Pa’s horse and wagon hitched up the road.

“Don’t you worry,” said Miss Clementine, patting Amanda’s shoulder blade. “We’ll get this mix-up sorted out.”

When they passed Fannie and her father, James Jefferson, Tom nodded hello, but the tinsmith and his daughter looked down at the boardwalk as they continued walking.

“And imagine,” Mr. Jefferson muttered, “the old woman rides the contraption, too. Independence! At her age, gallavantin’ around town like a circus performer on a unicycle.”

Shocked to their boots, Tom and Amanda turned around in time to see Grandma’s jaw drop open. Her long gray braids started flying. “Circus performer? Why, that little weasel—”

“Leave him be, Clementine,” Pa said, placing his hand on the older woman’s elbow. “He’s an old fool.”

“Well, I never,” Grandma gasped, adjusting her black dress. “How dare he say such a thing. I’ll show him circus performer—”

“I’ll speak to him later,” Pa vowed. If he didn’t, Tom sure as hell would. The man had some nerve insulting the two women, and right under Tom’s nose!

They left the old folks by the wagon, Amanda still shaking her head at Jefferson’s remark, Tom distracted by the crowd up ahead that was forming around the mercantile’s alley.

“What’s going on?” asked Amanda, stepping through with Tom right behind her.

“Is this your bicycle?” asked an Englishman, dressed in wool knickers and jacket. By his checkered wool hat with its long red feather, he was obviously a tourist. An agreeable older woman stood by his side, presumably his wife.

Tom looked down to the ground where the man was pointing. Amanda’s bicycle lay in the dirt. “What happened to the bicycle?” Tom demanded, jumping forward to yank it up. Fortunately, it looked unharmed. “Who did this? Did you see—”

“I saw a couple of men passing by,” said the Englishman, “then it was in the dirt. It must have fallen in the breeze. No harm done. My brother in Dover has one like this. It’d be wonderful for my wife and I to ride one while we’re here for the summer. Is it for sale?”

“I’m afraid not,” said Amanda, standing above Tom as he checked the wheel.

The stitches tugged in his left arm, reminding him he’d need more medication soon. “Looks fine.”

The man reached into his pocket. “But I’ll give you—”

“No, thank you,” Amanda repeated kindly. “I much prefer my freedom to any amount of money.”

“I totally understand,” said his wife with a smile.

Tom did, too. Who would give up their freedom for a lousy twenty or thirty bucks? It couldn’t be worth more than one third the price of a good horse, and a good horse was going for about a hundred.

“Good day, then,” the couple said as they left.

It appeared there was no damage done, so Tom dismissed it as an accident. Amanda did, too.

Sliding onto the seat, she rearranged the green twill fabric of her split skirt. Tom tried not to notice the sleek outline of her legs as she perched beside him—her trim waistline, the pronounced swell of her breasts behind the fabric of her blouse. He was reminded of how good she looked in the rain yesterday, when he’d fought over her with Quaid.

“Do you feel well, Tom? You don’t look it. You may need another dose of your drug.”

She mistook his sudden desire for her as a need for more medication. Truth was, he was feeling great, being here with her. His biceps hurt, but his mind was clear. As she shifted her weight from one foot to the other, wriggling her bottom on the seat, he could think of only one thing she could do for him. Naked on top of him. Naked beneath him. Naked standing up—

“Tom? What are you thinking about?”

“A cold tub of water.”

“To soak in? Can I get you anything? Something you need?”

I need you.

“Nothing?” she asked, mistaking the blank expression on his face.

Everything,
he thought.

“Tom?”

How had he gotten so mixed up with Amanda Ryan? Why did he want her so badly? “No thanks.”

“I hope you feel better tomorrow. You know what’s the worst thing about all of this?”

I want you but you don’t want me?

She continued, “I hate to stand idle and wait for the magistrate to arrive to seal my fate.”

Tom glanced away from her bewitching body, toward the diner. “There must be something we can do.”

“Finnigan’s got a brother in Canmore,” she said tentatively, as if exploring his reaction.

Tom squinted down at her, hesitant to even glance her way. She had such a hold on him. “Graham told me that, too.”

“The Mountie who questioned him wasn’t able to pry much information out of him. Said the man was poorer than dust, and not likely involved with any schemes of his brother’s.”

He scratched his eyebrow. “Yeah, I know. Finnigan’s only relative.”

Amanda’s blue eyes shot up to his. “I wonder if he’d talk to a woman.” The wind kicked at her loose hair.

“A woman? What are you thinking?”

“Canmore’s not far. Less than an hour by train. A person could take it tomorrow morning and be back before suppertime.”

Tom stared at her. That independence of spirit glowed in her skin. That same spirit that gave her the strength to move to Banff, to start over without a husband, to help her grandmother and then the orphans.

Normally he’d insist she not go anywhere near trouble, but if there was anything the two of them could do to extract information from Finnigan’s brother, shouldn’t they take that chance? What did he have to lose? One day on the train? He wouldn’t even have to worry about a chaperone since they weren’t staying overnight.

“I’ll go with you,” he said.

Her gaze dropped to his stiff shoulder. “But you’re not well.”

“How could I let you face this man alone?”

“I could ask someone else. Your father, maybe. Or Donald O’Hara. Or Pierce.”

Tom gripped the bicycle handles. He didn’t trust her protection to anyone else, even though the Mounties had told him the brother seemed harmless—a family man with five young children and hardworking wife. But Tom was good with a gun, and fast on his feet. Whether he could keep his distance from Amanda was another matter. “I’m going.”

“What makes you think I have anything to say to you?”

In a dilapidated barn, standing alongside Tom who was dressed in a red shirt, denim pants and double holsters, Amanda watched Frank Finnigan milk his cow. Although they’d been here with him for five minutes, and another fifteen with him and his wife inside their home, it hadn’t taken Amanda more than a second to realize the man was angry.

Two of his youngest children, barefoot and wearing dirty overalls, chased three cats around the stall as their father held a teat in one hand and shot milk three feet away into the mouth of a fourth cat. He laughed at his daughter’s giggle. The creases at his eyes were gentle. Was he a co-conspirator with his brother?

Amanda didn’t think so. Then who was he angry with?

She dangled a piece of straw over one of the cats, who lunged at it, enthralling the children. She stepped back against a ladder, careful not to soil her only peach-colored suit. “Are you upset with us, sir, for coming to see you?”

The question took him by surprise. Tom, too. He removed his black Stetson and furrowed his brows. She was only trying to get a response. They didn’t have much time left before the train returned, and Amanda usually found that good, honest people responded to point-blank honesty.

The man glanced up from his stool and grimaced. “It’s your waste of time, not mine.” He turned away again to concentrate on milking, pressing his dark forehead into the cow’s flank. The squirt, squirt, squirt echoed from the tin bucket.

“The Mounties told us you’re Zeb Finnigan’s only kin,” said Tom.

“When the Mounties come calling, people have gotta answer,” he said sarcastically.

“Do you know where Zeb is?” Tom asked again.

Frank Finnigan laughed without humor. “Isn’t that the question everyone would like to know?”

“Yes it is,” Amanda replied, making sure the children were again out of earshot. “He cheated me for the price of my property, and stole from Tom’s business.”

Finnigan kept working, unruffled, but Amanda noted a muscle had tightened in his jaw. The words were getting to him.

“I don’t have any more time to spend with you,” he said. “I told you and the Mounties all I know.”

They’d come all this way for nothing? Thirty questions had led to nowhere? She looked to Tom, his angular shoulders profiled in the slanting light.

“Just one more thing,” said Amanda. “What was it that Zeb stole from you, sir?”

The tin bucket clanged. The milking stopped. The gruffness in his voice matched his harsh expression. “What makes you think my own brother would steal from me?”

Amanda didn’t want to humiliate the man, but he was living in poverty. Five children and a very thin wife, all living in a shack no bigger than Amanda’s. No other livestock except the cow, no horse to plow the fields, no crops planted. “Your wife told me your property was rented. It wasn’t that I was snooping, it’s just that when I asked whether you’d planted the wheat yet, she mentioned the land wasn’t yours.”

Fury and shame burned in the man’s eyes. “He took it all from us. He…he…gambled away our deed.”

Amanda’s heart sank with compassion. “I’m so sorry. He shouldn’t have done that.”

“No, he shouldn’t have. I’m his brother, for God’s sake. His
brother.
”

“Zeb is a gambler?” Tom asked. Amanda knew this was something the Mounties hadn’t discovered.

“Yeah. It’s a sickness with him. Like it was with our mother.” The man watched his children climb the haystack. “I don’t want him put behind bars, though. You aren’t going to do that, are ya?”

Amanda didn’t want to answer. Zeb Finnigan was ruining lives. He had to be stopped by the law.

Tom stepped forward. “It’s out of our control. It’s out of yours, too,” he said gently, placing a large hand on the man’s shoulder. It seemed to comfort Frank.

“This land should belong to my children. I worked two years in the coal mines, nearly lost my arm doing it,” he said, holding up the hand with the missing three fingers.
“I thought this farmland would be my salvation. Zeb took it, instead.”

Tom rubbed his jaw especially hard. She’d seen him do that several times in the past half hour. Was it sore? “If you tell the Mounties, and they find your brother, they might be able to get it back for you.”

“They’ll only put in him jail where he’ll rot away to nothing. I can’t turn in my own brother.”

Amanda had an urge to forget about the whole darn thing.

Tom nodded, looking to her to leave. “Is there anything else you’d like to tell us, Frank, before we go?”

“Yeah. Zeb always seems to come back for more. When he gambled away my deed, he came back two weeks later and took my wife’s solid gold locket. That’s all we had left, or he probably would have returned again.” The man looked to Amanda. “You best watch out for him.”

“Thank you,” she said, sympathizing with his difficulty in telling her. “We have to be going now, we’ve got a train to catch.”

They said goodbye to the children, and less than an hour later, they boarded the evening express to Banff. It was packed with passengers. The Canadian Pacific Railway had invested big dollars making all the cars luxurious for the summer tourists.

“Well, it wasn’t a waste of time after all,” said Tom, leading Amanda down the plush corridor of the drawing room. “We found out Zeb’s a big gambler.”

They sank into the red velvet seats across from each other. Tom rubbed his chin and jaw again, then massaged the back of his neck.

“You okay?”