The Midwife's Secret (17 page)

“A good friend? If you find a good friend in a man, you should keep him.” Something about her tone seemed very sad. The older, made-up woman standing beside her, waiting for her to finish, nodded in agreement.

Amanda was suddenly overcome with the mixture of
strong perfumes in the crowded space. She hadn’t thought to wear any. Even if she had, she’d left her three bottles behind with her mother and sister in Calgary. She remembered thinking, why would I need perfume in Banff?

“Are you here with someone, too?” Amanda asked them, uncomfortable in the stilted silence and trying to fill it.

“We’re here only for the dancing. We skipped the speeches altogether. Quite frankly,” the pretty woman said, “I didn’t come with someone, but I plan on leaving with him.”

Her friend chuckled.

The directness of the response silenced Amanda.

While the woman stood up to leave, Ruby squeezed to Amanda’s side, huffing in exaggeration at the crowd she had to tame to get here.

Catching sight of the brunette, Ruby stopped abruptly, staring in surprise from Amanda to her. Then Ruby recovered quickly, running her thick hand over her yellow and blue taffeta gown, stepping to the brunette to kiss her cheek. “How nice to see you again, Clarissa.”

Amanda was taking an awfully long time, thought Tom, gazing down the hallway again, past the bobbing heads, but no sign of the black-haired beauty. He reentered the ballroom and listened to the orchestra weave their magic, nodding to Graham and the other constables standing at attention in the corner.

When he’d held Amanda in his arms on the dance floor, he’d felt the harsh uneven rhythm of her breathing, and he knew what she felt for him was not as casual as she’d led him to believe. He’d looked into her eyes and he’d seen the passionate message swirling in the deep blue depths. His heart was still thundering.

Amanda Ryan wanted what he wanted.

Luckily, things were going better this evening than Tom had expected, on all fronts. After his speech, two men had come to him, requesting his bid for a new restaurant they hoped to build before the end of the tourist season, and Graham told him that his sergeant wanted to get a bid on a larger stable for the Mounties’ horses.

Payroll might be met again this week, Tom thought with a surge of relief.

At the sound of his name being called, he glanced to the door. Amanda was finally walking through it in her magical swirl of blue satin. She looked upset; her face was drawn and solemn. He straightened, taking his hand out of his jacket pocket. What was wrong?

Then he noticed another figure following close behind, encased her in her trademark family jewels and a glamorous new burgundy gown, talking to Ruby and waving to him.

For cripe’s sake, Clarissa Ashford.

His gut clenched. In a predatory response, he scanned the room. Was Finnigan here, too?

No, of course not, he thought, trying to make quick sense of the situation. Finnigan was a wanted man. Clarissa wasn’t wanted by the law, not technically. She wasn’t charged with a crime. But why in hell was she here and what was she doing with Amanda?

And how exactly did he feel about it?

He rose to full alert. His gaze was transfixed as they came closer. Amanda was slightly taller and more slender, walking with determination in her stride, whereas Clarissa was softer, with more curves and twists to her hair and body. But not half as appealing.

Tom leaped to Amanda’s side, offering a silent look of
condolence. Her body withdrew and her gaze was cool.
Great.
What had Clarissa told Amanda?

“Clarissa,” he said, trying to restrain his anger as he peered down at her smiling face. The last time he’d heard from her was that blasted note she’d left him in the sawmill. “What are you doing here? Where’s Finnigan?”

Clarissa frowned.

“I think I see my husband,” said Ruby, looking uncomfortable. As she walked away, she squeezed Amanda’s shoulder, and Amanda bent her soft face to Ruby’s hand, acknowledging the tender gesture.

Tom felt nauseated. The last thing he wanted tonight was to hurt Amanda. She knew part of the story, but not all of it. Hell, he didn’t know himself how the story with Clarissa would end. And this wasn’t the time or place to confront her.

Clarissa’s rosy lips puckered. “That’s a fine way to greet me.” She studied Amanda with curiosity, as if wondering why Amanda was still standing there. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Amanda,” she said in dismissal.

Amanda didn’t budge. Annoyance hovered in her expression. She braced herself, showing no signs of leaving, bringing her reticule to her midriff in quiet defiance.

So Clarissa didn’t know Amanda was his companion?

Clarissa tried again. “I’ll…I’ll catch up with you later if you like, and we can have another nice conversation then.”

Tom walked to Amanda’s side. He draped an arm around her shoulders. She stiffened beneath his touch. He silently swore. “Amanda’s here with me tonight.”

Clarissa’s lips parted open as she stared at Amanda. Amanda blinked.

Clarissa’s thick brown lashes flew up at him.
“With you?”
Her eyes narrowed for a moment of contemplation,
then she blushed. A deep crimson crept up her neck. Tom had never seen her blush before. She tilted her head at Amanda, the glossy brown coils shifting on top of her head. “
He’s
your good friend, I suppose.”

Amanda’s voice was strained, but deliberate. “I didn’t realize we were talking about the same man.”

They’d been talking about him? About what? His neck grew hot beneath his tight cravat.

“Oh, really?” whispered Clarissa.

“That’s enough, Clarissa. I’ll ask you again. What are you doing here, and where’s Finnigan?”

“Can’t we have this discussion in
private?
”

Tom dropped his arm from around Amanda. “You can speak frankly in front of both of us. Amanda herself has been affected by all this business with Finnigan.”

“Has she been affected by the business between
us?
” The sexual insinuation was obvious.

Amanda gasped, then stepped away. “I should let you talk.”

“Please stay,” said Tom, reaching out and grabbing her by the arm. Clarissa’s eyes followed the movements of his possessive hand on Amanda.

“I don’t think there’s any
business
left between us,” he said pointedly to Clarissa. All he felt for her right now was frustration. “If you remember, you left me a note?”

Clarissa paled at the reprimand. When she clamped her lips together and tilted her head, candlelight from the nearby table hit her face.

Did she have a bruise?

Startled at the prospect, Tom stepped close and cupped his fingers beneath her chin. She seemed to bask in his touch, mistaking it for a forward gesture. He kept his distance to let her know it wasn’t.

He tilted her jaw to the light. “What happened? How did you get this bruise?”

With a sudden look of shame, she pulled away.

Tom felt his blood run cold. “Blazes. Finnigan didn’t—”

“It’s nothing. I ran into the carriage door when I arrived.”

Tom didn’t believe her. The bruise looked older; already blue. Finnigan was a son of a bitch. “Why did Finnigan do this to you?”

Clarissa looked to Amanda and Amanda looked away, allowing the woman her dignity. When Clarissa turned back to him, she sagged. “I don’t know. And I’m sorry that I…that I…left you when I did. I should have stayed with you, not him.”

It was too late, he thought. When she fell against him, he opened his arms to comfort her, more from pity for an old friend than anything. When he looked up again, Amanda was gone.

Hell. He had to find her. But who could blame her for leaving? What a sticky mess.

He allowed Clarissa the respect of not shoving her away. Being rude wasn’t right, especially when someone was hurting. Tom should listen to her explanations, if only to get his answers about Finnigan. For Amanda’s sake, too.

Clarissa was wearing the flowery perfume that used to be his favorite. Now all he could think of as he smoothed the back of her hair was how sorry he felt for her.

No one deserved to be beaten, and when he got a hold of Finnigan—and he damn well would—he’d let him know how it felt.

What a terrible mistake she’d made, getting messed up with the likes of that man. Only a few weeks ago,
Tom
might have been the one to fall into her soothing arms, but a lifetime had passed since then.

What Clarissa had done to him was brutal. She’d left him for his business partner and he thought she’d broken his heart. Now he realized she’d only broken his pride.

Tonight when she returned, had she really expected that things would fall back into place?

He scanned the faces of the crowd past Clarissa’s looming hair. Where did Amanda go? He’d stay and get his answers from Clarissa, and deliver her to Graham, but Tom wasn’t about to let Amanda slip through his grasp. Not after what he’d felt in her response to him tonight.

His heart didn’t belong with Clarissa, it belonged with Amanda.

“W
here are you going, Amanda?”

Startled to discover Tom was still at the ball an hour later, let alone standing behind her and Margaux and Pierce in the hallway, Amanda could only nod.

Beyond the breadth of Tom’s dark shoulders, a crystal chandelier flickered high above them, its candlelight casting shadows over his face. The scent of burning wax curled around them.

She held her temper in check. She knew it was a good thing Clarissa had arrived, that it could only help their cause in finding Finnigan. But Amanda had spent the past long hour with Margaux and her young friends, teaching them the steps of the waltz, trying to pretend she was enjoying herself, that Tom Murdock didn’t matter to her. She’d danced with the men who’d asked, all the while wondering where in thunder her own escort was.

She’d had no polite means of escaping the curious looks of the adults who knew she’d arrived with Tom, and for those who questioned her, all she could do was simply shrug. It was left to her imagination where Clarissa and Tom had escaped to together.

Then, of course, there was the guilt she felt for being
mad at Clarissa—the poor woman who’d been beaten by a man they all now despised.

“I asked where you were going?”

Her gown swished as Amanda pulled away from Tom. She clasped her lacy handbag closer to her bosom. “I’m showing Margaux and Pierce to the carriages. We’re going home.”

His confidence seemed to dampen. “All of you?”

She kept her voice and her features composed, although inside she was secretly delighted and relieved that he’d finally appeared. She scolded herself for caring. “Yes, all of us.”

Towing the children down the corridor, she motioned to the doorman. He pushed open the door and she exited into the star-filled night. Her group spilled out behind her.

A mountain breeze whispered through her tangled hair, easing the harshness in her stance.

“Please don’t go,” said Tom, standing tall beside her.

“Why not?” she asked in a suffocated whisper, descending the stairs.

He studied her face for a beat. “Because we’re not finished.”

“I think the evening’s over.” It had come crashing down around her when Clarissa Ashford had appeared.

With irritation at herself, Amanda wondered why on earth she should care who in tarnation Tom spent his time with. No commitments, she reminded herself.

Standing beside Pierce, Margaux grabbed her by the elbow. Margaux’s face held an expression of concern. “We’ll be fine getting home on our own. You don’t have to go on our account.”

Amanda’s gaze softened as she looked at Margaux, wishing the girl wouldn’t worry about her. She glanced at the lineup of adolescents on the cobblestones. Ten people
ahead of them; it would only be a five-minute wait for a carriage.

“Don’t worry about me, Margaux.” Amanda pulled her soft angora around her arms, and with a deep breath, faced Tom. “We’ve had a lovely evening tonight, thanks to you. But I’ve got an early appointment in the morning, and I’m really not used to staying up all hours.”

“It’s not that late,” Tom insisted, shoving his hand into his pocket, looking up at the limestone facade and the clock nestled in the wall. “It’s only quarter to eleven.”

Her mouth grew dry. Why did he want her to stay? To get more details from her to corroborate with Clarissa’s stories? “Is this about Finnigan?”

“There’s more to it. I want you to stay
for us.
” The color deepened in his face. His jacket parted open and the muscles beneath his white silk shirt quickened her pulse.

What had he and Clarissa talked about for a solid hour? Did he still care about Clarissa as much as he had a month ago?

It was obvious what she’d wanted.
I didn’t come with someone, but I plan on leaving with him.

He ran a hand along his cheek. “Let the children go on ahead. Listen to what I have to say, and what I’ve learned about Finnigan’s whereabouts. You do want to know, don’t you?”

He knew the right words to make her fumble. But couldn’t she wait until tomorrow to hear the news?

“Stay, Miss Ryan,” Pierce prodded. “I can take care of Margaux. I’ll make sure she gets home all right.”

“None of the other adults are going home yet,” Margaux begged. “Our friends are all going home on their own. Why can’t we?”

Amanda opened her mouth to protest, then glanced around her. It was true no other adults were leaving, and
she supposed the children would feel proud, making their way alone. “All right. I’ll stay a while longer. Just a little,” she directed to Tom, who happily nodded and stepped back for the carriage to pull up beside them. “Margaux, tell Grandma not to wait up. It’s been a long night for her already.”

“I will, ma’am.”

As Tom and Amanda watched the carriage leave, the two youngsters sharing the carriage with three of their friends, Tom leaned in close and whispered to her temples, “Finnigan was hiding out in Canmore.”

She whirled around to face him. “Where his brother Frank lives?”

He stared at her in the moonlight. The direct way he was gazing at her made her wonder what it’d be like to relive the velvet heat of his kiss. “Apparently just down the road,” he said. “Frank must have known where he was all along.”

She breathed through parted lips. “He didn’t tell us the truth.”

“He probably couldn’t.”

“Poor Frank. No wonder he looked so tormented.”

Tom was so incredibly attractive in his black suit, she lost track of the people jostling around her. Tom raised his arm to her shawl, leading her away from the hotel. “Are you ready for the next bit of news?”

She waited for his answer as her shoes padded against the stones. Holding her train of fabric firmly in her hand, she enjoyed the cool slick feel of satin against her arms and breasts and thighs.

“Clarissa had no idea he’d stolen money from my account, or overcharged for lumber.”

“Do you believe her?”

“Yes, I do.” With tanned, sensitive fingers, he ran a
hand over his jaw, which was already developing a dark shadow, Amanda noticed, even though he’d likely shaved hours before.

“How could she not know? It was right beneath her nose.”

“It was right beneath mine, too, and I didn’t know.” When he stopped walking to face her, his eyes glistened with regret. The collar at his neck parted, revealing the hollow curves of his throat. “She just discovered it now, when I told her. They’d been gambling all over the prairies, but she thought it was with his money. She told me she hadn’t checked in with her family because she needed time for them to adjust to her choice of Finnigan…over me.”

Emotion spilled into his voice, and she realized he must still have deep feelings for Clarissa.

Hurt and longing filled her, making it difficult to speak. “I’m so sorry, Tom. But now that she’s back maybe you two—”

“What?”
His lips twisted. “She never gave me a second thought, leaving with a man she thought had more money lining his pockets than I had.”

Starlight glimmered over his firm lips. With a calm, assured grip, he led her off the stone path and turned to the deserted country road that led to town. The closest carriage was a hundred yards ahead of them.

“Where’s Clarissa now?” Amanda asked, trying to understand what this all meant.

“Graham’s talking to her.”

“But she’s been beaten. You need to help her. You should…you should be at her side.”

When they cornered a clump of fragrant, fifty-foot-high pine trees, he stopped. They were shielded from the hotel and everyone’s line of vision. “God, Amanda, you’re so
much more than she is. Where I should be
is
right where I am. Here with you.”

When he gazed at her, his tender look pierced her heart. He stepped closer, bridging the gap between them, making her crank her neck to look up at him. That sweet erotic pulsing began to beat within her. When he carefully lifted his heavy arms to rest them on her shoulders, she felt the heat of his body course down hers.

She’d never felt for another man what she felt for Tom. William’s touch had never awakened her the way Tom’s did.

With a low guttural moan, he lowered his demanding mouth on hers. The touch of his persuasive lips sent a wave of arousal through her body.

She let him take her. She wanted it, yearned for it. It’d been so long since she’d felt the warmth of another human being pressed against her, she yearned for more than a kiss.

They explored each other with abandon, the feel of their mouths, their lips, their tongues. When his bare hands slid down her naked back, she gasped with pleasure. This was what it was like to come alive and feel something.

A crack of gunpowder exploded in the sky.

She jumped at the sudden sound, but he laughed softly and pulled her back into his protective arms. His feverish lips brushed hers. “The fireworks have started.”

“At the hotel, or between us?”

“Both.”

Breathless with excitement, they laughed into each other’s mouths, then he devoured lower, planting kisses down her throat, over her curvy shoulder, one delicate earlobe, lower to capture the sliver of creamy flesh at her cleavage. She felt her nipples tighten beneath the satin of her gown, her breasts swollen by the graze of his hot lips.

Could she stop this?

No, never.

Squeezing her waist with renewed vigor, he crushed her body to his. When he broke free of her lips, his mouth was bruised with passion. “Come with me.”

“Where are we going?” she asked, drunk with eagerness, knowing that at this tumultuous moment she’d go anywhere with him, all he had to do was ask.

“A place where we can watch the fireworks in private.”

Tom led Amanda up the overgrown pathway, halfway up the mountain to a patch of thick grass he knew there, nestled between the trees and foliage, overlooking the town. He loved how good she felt in his arms.

Surrounded by the sensations of moist dew and fragrant leaves, Tom fought to restrain himself from simply grabbing her, wrestling her to the ground, and working his way up her delicious body with his mouth. But in his soul he knew the invitation had to come from her. Her silent agreement to follow him here was a big step in her faith in him and he didn’t want to overpower her.

“You were right,” Amanda said, peering at the town’s flickering lights below, a sheen of perspiration highlighting her pretty face. “There’s nothing like the view from a mountainside.”

Glancing through the full branches, past her shapely profile on the hillside, he took a moment to savor the extraordinary evening. In addition to the lights from the boardwalk, fires burned in the backyards of folks who couldn’t make it to the ball themselves but who still wanted to see the fireworks. Kerosene lanterns lit up the path of the hotel, and candles inside the hotel windows illuminated the shadows of moving people.

Most spectacular of all, hundreds of people gathered on the grounds, heads turned up, watching another bowl of
light explode in the sky, then cascade into rivulets to the earth. It was all done in the open grass, as a precaution against fire.

Amanda stared with awe. The curves of her throat glistened in the starlight, against her string of pearls, and as the gunpowder crackled above them, circles of golden light danced across her forehead and cheeks, illuminating her beauty. His heart pounded in reaction.

“The children will see it, too,” she said, her body heavy and warm alongside his. “On their ride home.”

A hot ache grew in his throat. “I imagine so,” he murmured, entranced not only by her radiance, but by the way she always thought of the children. What a bloody waste she couldn’t have any of her own. But what a joy she’d found Josh and Margaux.

“Did you bring me here to see this view?” She turned around, and he found himself inches from her face.

“I brought you here to share my favorite place in the world.”

She stared at him in his new black suit, with her quiet oval face, moist, full red mouth, a flush to her skin that he couldn’t believe he was responsible for putting there. He thanked whoever it was in the stars above that had led her to him.

“It’s lovely, and very private. No one would know it’s here unless they came looking for it. I understand why it’s your favorite.”

“I come here when I need to think.”

“It that often?”

“A lot lately.” A sense of urgency drove him, but he tried to control his desire. Removing his long jacket, he spread it on the dry ground, then stood up straight in front of her. “If we sit, we can watch the fireworks.”

She didn’t make a move to sit. When she slowly slid
her gaze over his ruffled shirt, then collar, then up to his face, he could hear her soft inhale, feel the uncertainty in her.

He reached out with one strong hand and tugged her down to the grass. His pulse hammered when their skin met. She perched on the hillside, her angora shawl as smooth as a downy feather, spilled around her full hips.

What he wanted to say to her was,
Pull me down beside you, lay with me and take me and touch me. Touch my hair and touch my mouth and touch my neck, and touch me lower. Let me explore your body and show you what it’s like to make love. Let me make your blood pound and let me make you cry my name.

Instead he said none of those things. Curling his fingers into the velvet green grass beside his leg, he stroked the soft blades, wishing he were stroking her bare, soft skin, her bare, soft nipples.

Another cannon of fireworks exploded above them, striking the air with tension. The charge seemed to arc through her. “You come here to think.”

“Yes.”

“What about?”

His voice strained. “You, mostly.”

He saw her shudder in the blast of light. “What about me?”

“I’ve been wondering what’s been going on with you, what you think about…late at night.”

Humor illuminated her mellow blue eyes. “Lots of things. Josh’s medical problem, Margaux’s new school, my grandma, my log cabin and what’s going to happen in court on Monday.”

His gaze came to rest on her mouth. “I mean, what you think about men.”

Suddenly shy, she turned away to look up through the
trees, but he followed her movements and captured her stubborn chin between his fingers. The dark black fringe of her lashes cast feathery shadows on her cheeks.