Trey’s forehead crumpled in a dusty frown. “You sure as hell are a stubborn woman,” he said, with a marked lack of admiration.
Savannah laughed. “You’ve known me for five years, Trey. Are you just now figuring that out? You go ahead and spend the evening with your bride; I can look after our investment just fine on my own.”
Trey still seemed doubtful, but he knew a losing battle when he saw one. Usually. “I’ll be right upstairs. You need me, you just whack on the ceiling with a cue stick, and I’ll come right down.”
Savannah smiled at the image. “If you say so,” she agreed.
“Sing another song, Miss Savannah,” one of the cowboys urged, from the bar, where the whiskey was flowing freely. “Somethin’ melancholy.”
Savannah rolled her eyes at Trey, but she’d finished as much as she could of the sandwich by that time, and she got up and sashayed over to the piano. It was a part of her performance, that swinging and swishing of silk, and it raised an appreciative cheer from the customers, just like always.
She was midway through her song, a maudlin piece about a silver-haired mother watching the road for her “loving boy Billy,” never to return from the war, when Dr. Parrish came in. He seemed to set the very air to churning, just that easy.
The sleeves of his borrowed butternut shirt were rolled up, revealing powerful forearms, and his dark hair was rumpled and, at the same time, sleek, like the wing feathers of some predatory bird. Seeing Savannah in her red dress, face paint, and tousled hairdo, he narrowed his eyes.
Savannah had long since come to terms with the facts of who she was and what she did to earn a livelihood, for the most part anyway, but seeing herself reflected in Parrish’s handsome face stung, and that in itself was enough to make her angry.
She played harder and sang louder, pretending to ignore the doctor, but instead watching him out of the corner of one eye. They might have been alone in that saloon, the two of them, for all the attention he paid to the bartender or the flock of hooting cowboys washing trail dust from their throats. He didn’t go near the bar but instead came straight toward the piano.
Savannah braced herself, more than ready for a fight, but he stopped short of her and sat down at the nearest table, tumbling a drover into the sawdust when he appropriated a chair. The cowboy scowled, then went off to find another place to sit.
Savannah’s voice trembled a little, but her audience didn’t seem to care. They cheered uproariously when she launched into an encore. She wanted to look away from Parrish’s face, wanted to in the worst way, but he seemed to be holding her gaze by means of some fierce magic, and she could not break the spell. Her own voice faded from her ears, as did all the other sounds of that noisy, smoke-hazed place, and she knew she was still singing only because she could feel the sound resonate in her vocal chords.
When the song ended at last, the cowboys bellowed for more, but Savannah couldn’t oblige. She remained a captive, could not turn her eyes from Parrish’s face.
After a lot of shouting and toasting, the customers gave up trying to persuade her, at least for a little while, and turned back to their drinking in earnest. The doctor did not move, let alone go to the bar and order a drink, as Savannah would have expected him to do.
When the spell slackened, she managed to rise and make her way through the sawdust to where he sat. He was alone by then; the men who had shared his table were engrossed in a game of faro being played in a far corner of the room.
“Pour you a drink?” Savannah inquired, though she knew he didn’t have the money to pay. He’d lost every cent remaining to him playing checkers with Jacob McCaffrey.
He shook his head. “Sit down,” he said, just as if he had the right to make demands like that. His voice was quiet, though, as if he was making an effort to be polite.
Savannah sat. She told herself it was because the day had been a long one and she was feeling tired, though the truth was, something about this man’s presence electrified her as surely as if she’d laid both hands to a lightning bolt. She could barely breathe. “How was Granny Johnson?” she asked, because she needed to say something. The silence might have stretched on forever if she hadn’t, with Parrish just sitting there, staring at her.
He ignored the question. “You oughtn’t to be seen in public in such a getup,” he said. “I have half a mind to wash that stuff off your face myself.”
Heat stung Savannah’s throat and forehead, made a hot ache beneath her cheekbones. She was hurt and embarrassed, but he didn’t need to know that. She wasn’t about to let on that his opinion mattered in the least. “You might just as well try to take soap and water to a singed wildcat,” she answered mildly. “You’ll come away with half again as many scratches if you try it with me.”
He sighed, thrust one graceful, long-fingered hand through his hair. She noticed, oddly, that it trembled only slightly. He was well and truly sober, though for how long was anybody’s guess. “You’re not a whore,” he said. “Are you?”
Had it not been for her pride, that question, coming from him, would have caused Savannah to lay her head down on the gouged top of that saloon table and weep. Still, she held on. Spoke moderately. “I most certainly am not.”
He looked her over as though she were one of the curious and thus fascinating specimens he’d surely studied in his medical school laboratory. “Then why in hell do you dress and act like one?” He sounded honestly confused, which only went to show that he was lacking in manners as well as tact.
She drew a measured breath and let it out slowly. It would do no good to fling herself upon him, screeching and scratching, even though that was precisely what she wanted to do, all of the sudden. She had to live at Springwater, after all, and a tale like that was sure to spread from one crew of drovers to another until it reached the Mexican border, by which time it would have grown to epic proportions. “If you don’t like the way I’m dressed, Doctor, I invite you to get out of my saloon. I’ve got songs to sing and whiskey to sell. Unless you’re buying, I have nothing more to say to you.”
He leaned toward her, his dark eyes snapping. “Well, I’ve got a few things to say to you,” he countered. “You don’t belong in this place, and you damn well know it.”
She bent toward him, and the red feather skewering the pile of curls on top of her head slipped a little, falling between them. She swiped it aside with an angry gesture, and was even angrier when she spotted a smile hiding at the back of his eyes.
“That’s where you’re wrong, Dr. Parrish—I do belong here. I own half interest in this place. I’ve been working in saloons since I was sixteen years old. And I see no need to account to you or anyone else for the choices I’ve made.”
He reached up, plucked the feather out of her hair, examined it as though he expected to see something crawling amidst the downy fluff, and laid it aside on the table. “Sell your share of the business to Hargreaves,” he said, as confidently as if he had the right to dictate such things. “You could probably live indefinitely on the proceeds, if you were careful.”
Savannah could feel a tiny muscle twitching under her right eye. “And do what?” she hissed. She’d go crazy, just sitting around some parlor, waiting to get old and die.
“Something worthwhile,” Parrish answered, undaunted. His tone was mild. Reasonable. Damnably certain. “Like nursing. You handled yourself fairly well with the Leebrook girl. You might even have a talent in that direction.”
Nursing? Who would accept care from her, a saloon woman and supposed prostitute? No one, that’s who. “Thank you,” she said evenly, “for the benefit of your wisdom.”
He grinned and raised an invisible glass in an impudent toast. “At your service,” he said.
CHAPTER
5
THE ENCOUNTER at the Brimstone Saloon set the tone for other meetings, in the days and nights to follow, or so it seemed to Savannah. A sort of prickly tolerance arose between her and the doctor, both of them going on about their business, each
giving the other as wide a berth as possible. It wasn’t always easy, this last, given the crowded state of the Springwater station, and the fact that both of them were staying there.
Savannah had been “in town,” as Jacob and June-bug McCaffrey so optimistically said, for nearly a month when Rachel and Trey’s mail-order house arrived from Seattle, over a period of three sultry mid-summer days, via a variety of freight wagons. Each new arrival was an occasion of much excitement and speculation, and on the fourth day, as if by magic, people began arriving from far-flung farms and ranches, the men armed with tools and opinions, no doubt, the women with preserves and quilt pieces to be shared or exchanged.
Savannah watched the gathering of friendly females from a distance, and with no little envy, learning from Emma that this one was Evangeline Wainwright, wife of Scully, a prosperous rancher, that one was Mrs. Bellweather, mother of Kathleen, who attended school at Springwater, and there was Granny Johnson, who was looking sprightly despite her ailment. June-bug had visited the old woman often over the past few weeks, Savannah knew, and so had Dr. Parrish.
Not, of course, that Savannah had been paying overmuch attention to what Dr. Parrish did. She couldn’t help noticing, though, that he didn’t drink or gamble when he came to the Brimstone Saloon, though he often took a chair at this table or that, listening earnestly to the tales of drovers, peddlers, and just-plain drifters passing through. More than once, she saw him mount one of Jacob’s horses and set out with harried, grim-faced riders, sent by some trail boss to fetch him. Cowboys being cowboys, the doctor was in high demand for setting broken bones, treating snakebite, and digging out the odd bullet. He continued to pass his nights in the McCaffrey hayloft, insofar as Savannah knew, and took his meals with good appetite, according to June-bug’s unbidden reports.
Now, with the sparse though enthusiastic populace of the region clustered in the high grass next to Trey and Rachel’s home site, he materialized again, pushing up his sleeves with the rest of them.
Now, the steady thwack-thwack of hammers rang up and down the rutted road, punctuated by the back-and-forth rasp of saws. Looking on from the front window of the deserted Brimstone Saloon—even the clientele had gone to help raise the walls of the Hargreaves house—Savannah knew a piercing sense of separation and loneliness.
“You ought to go down to the station and join in,” Emma said, looking up at her. The child wasn’t supposed to be in the saloon, per Rachel’s explicit orders, but she must have had the run of it before her father’s marriage the year before, because she knew every inch of the place—where everything was kept, what brands of whiskey were to be had, the rules of every game of chance.
Savannah gave a slight snort and looked down at her bright green silk dress with its resplendence of feathers, bangles, ribbons, and beads. She looked like a tropical bird, or a piece of tasteless furniture run amok. “I don’t think I’d fit in very well,” she said, in a deliberately pleasant voice, because she liked Emma and already feared that her ungracious response might have offended the child. “Do you?”
Emma shrugged. Her eyes were thoughtful as she turned her gaze to the window again, and the scene beyond, and it came to Savannah that the girl, being half Lakota Sioux, surely knew all about being a misfit. “Pa says everybody who comes out here to the back of beyond has at least one secret, or something that makes them different anyway. That gives us things to learn about each other.”
Savannah smiled, albeit a bit sadly. She’d been shunned enough times in her life to know those Springwater women, with their noisy, chasing children, their calico dresses, and baskets full of homey food, would never welcome her into their midst. Miranda, on the other hand, was already one of them, despite her own fall from grace. She’d been helping June-bug cut and assemble quilt pieces for weeks, and it was no secret that she’d developed an eye for Landry Kildare, a handsome rancher with two hellion sons.
“You go ahead,” Savannah said to Emma, very gently. “I have things to do here.”
Emma took in the empty room. Even the bartender had gone to join in the work party. “What?” she asked reasonably, looking around, as though expecting some task with Savannah’s name on it to step up and present itself.
Savannah sighed, laid a hand on Emma’s shoulder. “When you’re older, you’ll understand,” she said.
Emma’s gaze was narrowed with an intensity of thought. “I think I understand right now,” she said. “You’ve already made up your mind that those women won’t like you. You aren’t even going to try to be their friend, I’ll bet, just because you’re scared.”
Savannah wondered when this kid had turned into an old woman.
“I’m not scared,” she lied.
Emma did not look convinced, to say the least. In fact, she all but rolled her eyes. “You’ll be missed, you know,” she informed Savannah, shaking a verbal finger under her nose. “Miss June-bug will see you’re not there, or Rachel will, and they’ll come after you, one or the other of them. Maybe both. Mrs. Wainwright, too, probably. She’s real sociable.”
Savannah was still dealing with Emma’s insights, and the prospect of being sought out and dragged into the center of the festivities was more troubling than being deliberately excluded. Emma was, after all, a bright, damnably observant child, and she didn’t miss the fact that Savannah was flustered.
“You’re scared,” the girl accused baldly, and for the second time.
Savannah’s heart did a half-turn, then tightened. She swallowed. No sense in lying; this child would see through any attempt at subterfuge. “Scared isn’t exactly the word.”
“Oh, yes it is,” Emma replied. In that instant, she looked more like her father, who could be downright implacable when the spirit moved him, than ever.
“I agree,” put in a masculine voice, from just inside the swinging doors. Prescott Parrish, of course; the man was a plague, or so she constantly told herself. She would have done anything to be able to change the way she reacted to his presence, but she’d long since learned that there was no changing it. Every time he came into a room, especially unexpectedly, her heart started thrumming, and pretty soon all her pulses were beating like drums. “You’re a coward, Miss Rigbey,” he observed. “You’d tuck your fancy feathers and crawl under the floorboards if you could.”
Savannah’s gaze shot to the doctor’s face. Who did he think he was, coming into her place of business, saying things like that? Making things tighten and melt inside her? “How kind of you to come all this way,” she said sweetly, “just to share your opinion.”
Emma looked from one adult to the other and, being no fool, made a hasty excuse, turned tail, and fled.
Parrish favored Savannah with one of his lopsided, lord-of-the-manor grins. He looked good, damn him, brown from the sun, his formerly gaunt frame filled out from June-bug’s fine cooking. His eyes strayed along the length of her before coming back to lock with her blue ones; the impact was equivalent to a pair of railroad cars coupling on a spur. “I wish I could take the credit,” he said. “For affronting you with my opinion, I mean.” He shrugged, and his mouth took on a mock-rueful shape. “As it happens, though, I’m merely an emissary for Mrs. McCaffrey. Your absence from the festivities has been noted and commented upon. A decree has gone out, from June-bug if not Caesar Augustus, that you are to present yourself at the station forthwith, there to sew, cook, or just gossip with the other females of the community. It looks as though this house-building party might go on for days.”
Savannah felt such a yearning that she feared it showed in her eyes; her pride, usually a fortress in which she could take refuge, teetered around her, providing only the most tenuous shelter. “You ought to know, if June-bug doesn’t, why I have to stay away.”
Parrish raised an eyebrow. His arms remained folded, and after letting her squirm for a few moments, he repeated his earlier accusation. “Coward,” he said.
Savannah realized that she’d clenched her hands into fists, fists full of green b
eaded silk, and forced her fingers to go slack. “Look at me,” she responded, with a note of desperation in her voice. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not wearing calico.”
He ran his eyes over her again. “Oh, I’ve noticed,” he said dryly. “God help me, I have noticed.”
“Tell June-bug that I’m—I’m busy.”
“She’s not stupid, Savannah. She’ll just come down here after you herself, even if it means endangering her immortal soul by setting foot inside a den of iniquity like the Brimstone Saloon.”
Savannah feared that he was right. She looked out the window again, too miserable even to clasp at the last tattered shreds of her dignity. She’d faced outlaws in her time, as well as drunken, marauding cowboys and miners and Pony Express men too long on the trail. None of them had unnerved her the way those ordinary women did, in their blessedly plain dresses. Only when the doctor took a gentle hold on her arm and turned her to face him did she realize she was gnawing on her lower lip.
Parrish laid a hand to her cheek, passed the pad of his thumb lightly over her mouth, as if to smooth away the evidence of her distress. She should have pulled away from him right then, she knew that, but she didn’t. There were so many things she should have done, and hadn’t.
“Under all that rouge and kohl and rice powder,” he said quietly, “you are more than passably pretty. Even if you were ugly as dried mud, you’d still have as much right to participate as any of the others.”
Savannah’s heart did something acrobatic, something she hoped to high heaven hadn’t shown in her face. “I believe there is a compliment hidden away in that insult,” she said, and could not help the shaky smile that came to her mouth.
Springwater Seasons Page 18