“I hope so,” Fancy said with a sad little shrug, “because I don’t know what I’d ever do without that impossible man.”
The afternoon passed quickly for Melissa, and it was with reluctance that she said goodbye to her sisters-in-law on the wharf that evening. They were off to a hotel quite some distance from the one where Melissa would be staying.
“Do you want to join Fancy and Banner in their fight for justice?” Quinn asked with a grin when they had reached their own hotel and he had arranged for a room. Mary and Alice had gone to their apartment near the school for the blind.
Melissa lowered her eyes. Ever since Quinn had told her that he loved her, beneath the wheelhouse eaves on that rainy deck, she’d been eager to be alone with him. She blushed and said, with the sincere shyness of a new bride, “I’d rather stay with you, Mr. Rafferty.”
He lifted her chin with his hand but did not kiss her, since the lobby was crowded with people. “I’ll do my best to see that you don’t regret that decision, my love,” he promised in a low voice that sent sweet tremors through Melissa.
In their room, which was spacious and afforded them a grand view of Elliott Bay, Quinn appeared to be in no hurry to enjoy husbandly privileges. He went to stand at the window, gazing out at a world curtained in rain. Since the big fire three years before Seattle had become a modern city, with towering brick buildings and telephone lines and paved streets.
“What do you see out there that’s so fascinating?” Melissa asked, putting her arms around Quinn and resting her forehead in the hollow between his shoulder blades.
Quinn sighed. “Lots of possibilities and lots of dangers,” he answered at length.
Melissa smiled and kissed his back through the fine fabric of his white shirt. “It just so happens that there are a few possibilities right here in this room,” she said brazenly.
She felt Quinn’s chuckle against her cheek before he turned in her embrace and rested his hands on her waist. “Not to mention a few dangers. I have an idea that my heart is in imminent peril, Mrs. Rafferty.”
Tilting her head back, Melissa looked up at him and answered, “I’ll capture it if I can, and I’ll never give it back.”
Quinn kissed her forehead. “I’ve been deluding myself. You’ve owned me, Melissa, since the moment I pulled you up onto the platform of my railroad car. Do you remember how we collided?”
Color blossomed in Melissa’s cheeks, and she nodded mischievously. “I remember.”
His hands were moving languorously up and down her back, but instead of soothing Melissa, relaxing her, they wound a tight coil of delicious tension inside her. “If I’d been willing to face facts,” Quinn said, “I’d have had to admit that I was in love with you then. I do recall the devout conviction that if I didn’t have you before nightfall, I was going to die.”
Melissa laughed. “But you didn’t.”
Quinn’s hands came around to caress her breasts, still safe beneath her prim white shirtwaist with its high collar and little pearl buttons. “I progressed from fearing death to longing for it,” he said. “My God, Melissa, I wish I understood what it is that you do to me—if I did, I’d have some defense against you.”
She looked up at him, hurt. “But you can’t think that I’m your enemy.”
“You have far more power over me than an enemy ever could” was his startling reply. “No one, not even that son of a bitch who calls himself my father, has ever made me crawl. But you, Melissa—you could do it.”
“I wouldn’t!” she cried in dismay. “I love you too much to ever hurt you!”
Quinn traced her mouth with the tip of a gentle index finger, then bent to sweep her into a consuming kiss. Melissa broke from it, gasping, and whispered, “Oh, Quinn, let me lie down—I can’t stand on my own.”
He laid her tenderly on the bed, as though she were made of the most precious and delicate stuff, and began unfastening the buttons of her blouse. When he’d reached the swell of her breasts he stopped temporarily to kiss that satiny flesh and taste it with his tongue.
Melissa whimpered as he drew up her skirts and petticoats to stroke a silk-covered thigh with his hand, and her head began to toss from side to side in the beginnings of ecstasy when he finally bared one of her breasts and took its aching peak in his lips.
In the meanwhile he eased her drawers down, sliding them over her legs and tossing them away. Melissa moaned fitfully when he began to stroke her; she had been wanting Quinn for hours, and she wasn’t sure she could endure the preliminaries, no matter how delicious they were.
“Please,” she whispered, her hands entangled in his hair, “take me, Quinn. Take me now.”
The request was not one Quinn generally granted—the more excited Melissa was, the better it pleased him—but in this instance he accommodated her. He allowed her to open his trousers and push them down over his buttocks, and he trembled when she caressed him for a few moments.
He needed little help to find his way inside her, but still, in her eagerness, she guided him.
Quinn regarded Melissa with hot, hungry eyes as he poised himself above her at one point in their lovemaking, pausing to savor the intimate contact. “I love you,” he said hoarsely.
Melissa’s hands were moving slowly and softly over his back, which was damp with perspiration. “And I love you,” she answered.
Then, with an upward thrust of her hips, she reestablished the friction that would soon ignite flames hot enough to consume them both, and Quinn cried out like a man suffering the most exquisite of agonies.
Melissa was drawn into his satisfaction, her body moving like a ribbon in a high wind, her hands frantic along the corded muscles of his back. Quinn, powerless in the throes of his own release, allowed her the shouts of triumph he usually muffled with a kiss.
When it was over he collapsed beside her, gasping, his head pressed to her heart. Melissa, beyond speech herself, buried her fingers in his hair, closing her eyes against tears of sheer happiness.
They went to the symphony that evening, but even Mozart’s compositions contained no crescendoes as sweet or as sweeping as those they’d known in their lovemaking. Still, Melissa heartily enjoyed the concert, and she was reasonably certain that Quinn had, too.
Since the rain had let up, they walked back toward their hotel hand in hand. “I guess you could say this is our honeymoon,” she said shyly.
Quinn favored her with a sidelong grin. “I guess you could.”
A streetcar clanged past, and when it was quiet again Melissa asked, “What do you think of the suffrage movement?”
Quinn’s grin broadened. “Considering joining those two rabble-rousing sisters-in-law of yours over at the rally?”
Melissa shook her head. “I believe in the cause, but I meant what I said about wanting to stay with you.”
Quinn squeezed her hand. “I think women should be able to vote, Melissa, if it’s any comfort to you.”
It was, and the glow in Melissa’s eyes must have told him so, even though she didn’t. “Fancy says Jeff is really angry with her for coming to the rally. He threatened to leave her.”
They were nearing the hotel now, but Quinn pulled Melissa into a small coffee shop instead of going on. He made no comment on what she’d said until they were seated at a table with huge slices of cherry pie in front of them.
“I’ve heard of people being blinded by love,” he said, “and I think that’s what’s happened with Jeff. If he does leave, he won’t be able to stay away.”
The thought of Jeff and Fancy’s trouble took a bit of the sparkle from Melissa’s own happiness. “Then you wouldn’t be angry if you’d been in his place and I came over here to participate in a rally for women’s rights?”
A muscle tightened in Quinn’s jaw, and Melissa thought again what very complex creatures men are.
“I didn’t say that,” he pointed out. “A woman belongs at her husband’s side.”
“Couldn’t he get bored with her rather easily that
way? Or she with him?”
Grudgingly, Quinn grinned. “I hate it when you’re right,” he said.
Melissa laughed. “I know.”
“I want to stay in Seattle,” Mary announced first thing the next morning, when she and Alice and Quinn and Melissa all met in front of Dr. Koener’s office building on Third Avenue. “I’m going back to school.”
Quinn looked pleased until he made the connection between Seattle and young Scott Murray, the university student Mary had met on the steamer. Alice and Melissa, of course, were way ahead of him. “We’re going to have to talk about this,” he said sternly.
Melissa reached up and laid a finger to his lips. “Another time, darling,” she said gently.
With obvious effort Quinn put Mary’s budding romance out of his mind. Soon they were all upstairs in Dr. Koener’s outer office.
The doctor’s receptionist, a pretty young girl, smiled broadly up at Quinn, who had wired ahead for an appointment before leaving Port Riley. “Come right in, Mr. Rafferty,” she said, rising from her chair. “Doctor will want you, too, of course, Mary.”
Alice and Melissa were left to wait in the reception area. There was an assortment of magazines to read, but neither of the women was able to work up any interest in world events or fashion. Their thoughts were with Mary.
When the young woman came out she was in tears, and Alice went to her immediately, taking her out into the hallway.
Melissa waited for Quinn. “Dr. Koener didn’t change your mind,” she said, careful to keep all emotion and all judgment from her voice.
Quinn took Melissa’s arm and brought her into the inner office, where a man with bushy black hair and small glasses resting on the tip of his nose greeted her with a smile. “Hello, Mrs. Rafferty,” he said. “Your husband has asked me to explain to you the risks involved in the operation Mary needs.”
Melissa sank into a chair, deflated, but she listened closely while Dr. Koener told her that Mary’s optic nerve had been pinched when she’d fallen from her horse and struck her head on a rock.
Melissa felt shame that she’d never asked the specifics of Mary’s accident, but she pushed it aside to concentrate on what the doctor was saying.
“An operation might or might not relieve the pressure on the optic nerve,” he explained. “There is a possibility that her sight will return on its own—in these cases, the body can take considerable time to repair itself. Mr. Rafferty’s concern—and I admit that I share it—is this: Surgery could halt the healing process, if it’s happening.”
Melissa was sitting on the edge of her chair. “You mean it’s really possible for Mary’s eyesight to come back on its own? It’s been a year, after all.”
The doctor nodded. “Yes, it’s possible.”
She turned and looked up at Quinn’s face, and in that moment she knew that the subject of Mary’s surgery was closed. The risks were too great, and he wasn’t willing to take them.
His decision was either the beginning of Mary’s hopes or the end of them. Only God could know which.
Eighteen
The big house was quiet at last.
Adam Corbin breathed a contented sigh and spread an ace-high straight flush out on the surface of the small table in his office.
Jeff threw in his cards and muttered, “Damn it, that woman’s got me so confounded I can’t even play a decent hand of poker!”
Keith laid down two measly jacks and laughed. “Who are you trying to kid?” he asked good-naturedly. “Fancy’s the best thing that ever happened to you, and you know it.”
Turning in his chair, Jeff glowered at his younger brother but said nothing.
“Don’t mind the captain here,” Adam said, taking a cheroot from the pocket of his shirt and lighting it with a wooden match. “He’s feeling sorry for himself tonight.”
Keith coughed as smoke wafted through the cramped, cluttered little room. He ignored Adam’s remark. “You ought to give those things up,” he said, referring to the cheroot. “They’re bad for you.”
Jeff rolled his eyes. “Are you going to treat us to a sermon?” he drawled.
Keith drew his chair a little closer to the table and cleared his throat. “As a matter of fact, big brother,” he began, “I do feel a need to offer my help in your hour of desolation.” He paused and looked back over one shoulder. “It’s sure quiet in here. Where are the children?”
Adam shrugged. “We’re hiding out from them,” he answered with a straight face. In truth, Maggie, the housekeeper, had put the herd of them to bed upstairs.
Jeff glared at Keith. “I don’t need your help or anybody else’s,” he grumbled, as though there had been no break in the conversation. “In fact, I think you’ve got some nerve even bringing up the subject! What the hell do you know about what I’m going through? Your wife is safe under your roof, probably warming your slippers or something!”
Keith sighed. “Tess is as fired up about women getting the vote as Banner and Fancy are,” he told his brother patiently.
“But she didn’t go to Seattle to the rally, did she?” Jeff asked, looking smug.
“She would have if it weren’t for the chicken pox.”
Adam was amused to see that Jeff shrank back a little at these words, as though Keith had been in contact with bubonic plague. “Chicken pox?” he echoed thinly. “Tess has the chicken pox?”
Keith chuckled and shook his head. “No, Jeff. The children do. Probably got it from the Bradley children. They came down with it a couple of weeks ago.”
“Oh.” Jeff looked reflective for a few moments, then horrified. “My God, what if my boys get it? Fancy’s going to be away for a week!”
Although Adam certainly didn’t relish the idea of a chicken pox epidemic sweeping through the family as well as Port Hastings in general, he couldn’t help grinning at the thought of Jeff trying to take care of three itchy little boys. “You’ve got a housekeeper,” he suggested. “Make her look after the kids.”
Jeff looked crestfallen. “I can’t. She quit.”
Adam and Keith exchanged a knowing look that seemed to infuriate Jeff, and he shoved back his chair and nervously loosened the collar of his shirt. “Hell, what am I worrying about? They might not even come down with anything.”
“How about you, Jeff?” Keith asked with a broad grin. “Have you ever had chicken pox?”
“I don’t remember,” Jeff said.
“You haven’t,” Adam informed him.
“Good God!” Jeff boomed as the possibility of his own infection struck him. He’d talked with the Bradleys at church himself!
Adam and Keith both laughed, even though neither of them was immune to chicken pox either.
Jeff scratched the side of his neck. “Don’t just sit there,” he said to Adam. “Deal the cards.”
Adam began to shuffle the worn deck. “Actually,” he began after clearing his throat, “it just so happens that Keith and I did want to have a little talk with you.”
Jeff looked suspiciously from one brother to the other. “About what?” he demanded.
“Your private business,” Keith said bluntly. “We feel the need to interfere in it a bit.”
Color suffused Jeff’s face. “Is that so?”
Adam set the cards in the middle of the table, and Jeff cut them automatically, even though his dark blue eyes were fixed on his brother the whole time and snapping with fury.
“You’re going to lose Fancy if you keep on being so damned hardheaded,” Adam said, speaking around the cheroot clamped in his teeth. “Do you really want that, Jeff?”
He seemed to deflate, settling back in his chair and reaching for the glass of whiskey he’d been nursing all evening. Glumly, he shook his head. “This whole thing has gotten completely out of hand. I don’t even know how to start making things right again.”
“I’d suggest moving back into your own house, for one thing,” Keith ventured to say, making a steeple of his fingers beneath his chin. At the defiant look this br
ought from his brother he added, “You’re going to have to give some ground, Jeff. Let Fancy have a little breathing space.”
Jeff sighed and idly scratched his left shoulder. “I guess that means I shouldn’t go over to Seattle and drag her out of that rally by her collar,” he said with a sheepish grin. “Damn it, a week is a long time.”
“Long enough to think about what you want to say to her,” Keith pointed out.
Adam was pleased, since this was the first sign of cooperation Jeff had shown since his marital problems had begun. He glanced at Keith. “Shall I deal you in for another hand, Reverend?”
Keith shook his head. “Can’t stay. I’ve got a wife and a warm pair of slippers waiting at home.”
“Lucky bastard,” Jeff muttered, albeit with a half grin.
“Amen,” said Adam.
It was a beautiful, sunny morning, and the steamboat was scheduled to sail in an hour. Quinn was having a heart-to-heart talk with Mary in the hotel dining room, so Melissa set off for the nearby newspaper office.
The place was bristling with excitement, and the huge presses made an ear-splitting racket. People ran in every direction, some of them shouting, and the air smelled of ink and sweat and smoke.
“Can I help you, ma’am?” a clerk yelled, smiling at Melissa.
“I just want to look!” Melissa hollered back pleasantly.
The clerk nodded, but cautioned at the top of his lungs, “Be sure and stay out of the way, now, or you might get hurt!”
Melissa wandered around as long as she dared and left the clamorous building with a freshly printed edition of the Seattle Times under her arm. When she met Quinn in the hotel lobby, as agreed, she was full to bursting with what she’d seen and heard.
There were shadows in Quinn’s eyes, even though he smiled as he listened to Melissa’s accounting. She had chattered on for several minutes before she brought herself up short and said, “I’m sorry, Quinn. I didn’t even ask about Mary. Is she going with us, or will she stay here?”
He sighed. “She’s staying—going back to school.”
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