Fletcher's Woman

by Linda Lael Miller

“No,” replied Rebecca with wounding honesty. “No, but once I’d found that out, it was too late. I wouldn’t leave you, Rachel, if I had it to do over again.”

  “Why did you?”

  “Because I couldn’t be sure there would be food, among other things. I knew your father could provide the necessities, knew he would see that you had schooling. And he did, didn’t he?”

  Rachel lowered her head. She had been wrenched from one miserable schoolhouse to another, but she was educated. She could write a neat hand and read any book written in the English language. “Yes,” she said, after a long time.

  Rebecca changed the subject rapidly. “You’ve got to leave Providence, Rachel. And leave it now.”

  “Where would I go?” Rachel asked, and she was surprised by the reason in her voice, for she did not feel at all reasonable.

  “Anywhere. San Francisco, Denver—even New York. Rachel, just go away.”

  Slowly, cautiously, Rachel raised herself to her feet. “If you’re worried that I’ll disrupt your life here—”

  Pain shadowed the sunken amethyst eyes. “My life doesn’t matter anymore, but yours does. I’ll give you the money I’ve saved, and you can start again somewhere else. My friends will sell the business when the time comes, settle my debts, and forward the proceeds to you.”

  Rachel was at once appalled and touched. “I couldn’t,” she whispered.

  “But you will,” insisted her mother. “Rachel, you are a woman now, not a little girl. It is time you lived a decent, settled life.”

  Rachel could not absorb the things she was hearing. “You’re dying, aren’t you?” she asked at last.

  Rebecca seemed fitful now; she was beginning to writhe from the pain she had tried so hard to hide. “That’s what Griffin tells me, and it can’t happen too soon, as far as I’m concerned.”

  Tears slipped, unnoticed, down Rachel’s cheeks. She forgot her resentment and pain, forgot that this woman ran a notorious brothel. Rebecca was her mother, and she loved her.

  “Come here, Child,” Rebecca said, reaching out for one of Rachel’s hands, drawing her into an embrace.

  Rachel allowed herself to be held, and when the spate of weeping had passed, she dried her face, straightened her impossible dress, and went downstairs in search of Dr. Fletcher.

  Rebecca had weakened significantly during Rachel’s brief absence, and she seemed almost to welcome the decline. Her eyes strayed from Rachel’s face only once, when she heard the doctor opening his medical bag.

  She shook her head as he drew out a vial and a syringe. “No, Griffin. I want every moment—every moment.”

  Griffin dropped the items back into his bag without speaking and went to stand at a far window, looking out.

  A last burst of fiery light came into Rebecca’s hollow eyes as she clutched both Rachel’s hands in her own. “You must go—promise me you’ll go. There’s a man, a terrible man—”

  Rachel nodded, unable to speak.

  Just minutes later, Rebecca McKinnon died.

  Chapter Six

  Rachel was devastated. She stood, trembling, in a shadowed comer of her mother’s room as Dr. Fletcher closed Rebecca’s staring eyes and covered her face with the bedsheet.

  A peculiar silence filled the room for a long time; muted sunshine crept across the bare floor, only to be blotted out again by some dark, distant cloud.

  “I’m sorry,” the doctor muttered, as Rachel dried her eyes and raised her quivering chin.

  But Rachel was hearing another voice, her mother’s. “There’s a man, a terrible man—”

  She remembered the angry, almost hateful way Rebecca had greeted Dr. Fletcher, the mean things he’d said and done from the first moment she’d met him. Perhaps the man of her mother’s warnings was this one.

  But Rachel couldn’t be certain; in spite of outward appearance, she had sensed a sort of gruff, irreverent affection between the two of them. And there was, at the moment, no room inside her for any emotion other than the boundless, tearing grief she was feeling. I lost you twice, she raged inwardly, gazing at the thin form lying so still beneath the bedclothes.

  Rachel grappled with the knowledge that there was no shining hope to cling to now, no chance that Rebecca would reappear in her life, repentant and prepared to be her mother again. Somehow, she felt even more bereft than she had at seven years of age, and more alone, too.

  Griffin knew that Becky’s death was a mercy, but still, he mourned her. He would miss her boundless friendship, her blunt honesty, her magnificent wit.

  Yet he would have laughed aloud, had it not been for the shattered girl huddling in a corner. Damn it, Becky, he thought. You managed it after all, didn’t you? You’re gone and Ezra is on the mountain and I’m stuck with the kid!

  Griffin allowed himself a heavy, audible sigh. He reviewed the facts in his mind and came up with the same disturbing result every time: he could not leave Rachel there, at the brothel; places like that had a way of absorbing the bewildered and making them their own. Of course, she couldn’t be dropped off at Tent Town and forgotten, either; he might as well hand her over to Jonas himself as abandon her there.

  “Damn it!” he said, and the words startled him as well as Rachel.

  The girl came bursting out of the shadows suddenly, her amethyst eyes clouded with shimmering tears, her perfect skin pale with outrage. The grief she felt was so tangible that Griffin could feel it mingling with his own.

  “How dare you swear like that—here, now?”

  He started to apologize, but before he could even frame the words, Rachel raised her hand and slapped him, hard. He swayed slightly and stared down into the pinched, furious face, stunned.

  But, then, Griffin understood. He drew the girl into his arms and held her close as she sobbed into his shoulder.

  Something hard and cold within Griffin Fletcher began to thaw. He nearly thrust Rachel away from him, the sensation was so alarmingly familiar; but his need to shelter and comfort her prevailed.

  • • •

  Jonas paced the inlaid hearth in front of his parlor fireplace, heedless of the shattered crystal grinding beneath the soles of his boots. He’d beaten the Indian too well; her bruises and cuts were visible, and the sleep that encompassed her now was not a natural one. There were too many catches in her breathing, and when she stirred on the brocade sofa, frightening, guttural sounds came from her swollen lips.

  The slut could die. The thought stalked Jonas like a snarling beast; he could not outdistance it, no matter how much he paced.

  He paused, resting his elbows on the ornate, gilded mantelpiece, and caught a glimpse of his own face in the mirror gleaming above it. He turned from the sight and glared at the woman groaning on the sofa.

  Jonas was a man of almost limitless influence, but if this girl died, he would undoubtedly stand trial for her murder. He might even hang.

  The parlor doors opened with a hesitant creak, and Jonas looked up to see Mrs. Hammond standing there, her full face etched with furious worry as she studied the girl. “I’ll send for the doctor,” she said, after a long, stiff silence.

  Jonas averted his eyes and walked to the liquor cabinet on the other side of the room to pour himself a generous dose of brandy. “I think that would be a good idea,” he said.

  All the while, Mrs. Hammond’s condemning gaze dug into his shoulder blades like invisible claws.

  “You are a monster, Jonas Wilkes,” the woman breathed, fearless in her long tenure. “A brutal monster!”

  Jonas flinched slightly, but did not turn around to face the woman who had raised him. Hammond would forgive him, as she always had. “That will be all,” he said, with an authority he didn’t feel.

  • • •

  Griffin strode up Jonas’s walk, the medical bag swinging in his right hand. He remembered his earlier visit, that morning, and in spite of everything, he smiled. The animosity between himself and Jonas Wilkes went back a long way and was so fathomless that either man woul
d have been wholly changed without it.

  Jonas answered the crisp knock himself, and his bearing was that of a concerned, distracted friend. He led Griffin across the wide hallway and into the parlor.

  The summons had been a brief one, delivered tersely by the henchman, McKay. Griffin had been told only that he was badly needed at Mr. Wilkes’s house.

  Now, as his gaze scanned the massive room and caught on Fawn Nighthorse’s prone, unconscious form, a stunned hiss escaped him. “Jesus,” he muttered, approaching Fawn swiftly and checking the pulse point beneath her left ear. “What did you do to her?”

  Jonas shrugged as Griffin felt the girl’s rib cage with deft, discerning hands. “Didn’t McKay tell you? She fell down the stairs.”

  Griffin suppressed a killing rage as he lifted one of Fawn’s eyelids and then the other. There could easily be internal injuries, and she would need stitches beneath her lower lip. “You bastard,” he breathed, without looking up.

  Jonas stood at the foot of the sofa now, his voice an irritating drone in the throbbing tension of the room. “Indians are a disciplinary problem, you know.”

  Griffin brought a bottle of alcohol from his bag and began to clean the wounds on Fawn’s battered face. “Shut up, you son of a bitch, and get me some hot water and a clean cloth.”

  Jonas did not stir from his post at Fawn’s feet. “Now, now, Griffin, I thought we were friends.”

  Mrs. Hammond entered the room, shamefaced and stricken, bearing a basin of steaming water and several towels. The flow of the conversation was not interrupted by her presence.

  “Friends, hell,” Griffin growled, making use of the materials Mrs. Hammond had provided—it was annoying, he thought, how she’d spared Jonas even that small effort—and then dipping a steel needle into carbolic acid and threading it with catgut. Fawn flinched as the sharp point of the needle pierced her flesh, then stirred and opened her wide, brown eyes as he tied off the last stitch.

  Soft jubilance soared in Griffin’s weary spirit. It was a valid thing to be happy about, he supposed, a good friend regaining consciousness; and after three deaths and the inheritance of a troublesome, grief-stricken girl named Rachel, Griffin was especially grateful. “How do you feel?” he asked gently.

  Fawn shook her head slowly back and forth. “Not good, Griffin. And no lectures, please.”

  “No lectures,” he promised.

  Fawn smiled, and the effort was obviously costly. “How do you feel, Griffin?”

  “I’ll show you,” he replied. And then he raised himself to his full height, turned to Jonas, and aimed all the terrible pain and anger he felt at him. The thud his fist made as it landed, full-force in Jonas’s midsection, was a satisfying sound.

  Jonas doubled over with a windless grunt, and Mrs. Hammond cried out as though she’d been struck herself.

  Slowly, Jonas straightened up again. There was hatred in his eyes as he surveyed Griffin’s taut features, his shoulders, his half-clenched fists.

  Then, incredibly, Jonas laughed. “Beating the hell out of me won’t exorcise your demons, Griffin. Nothing will do that. By the way, Rachel was a fetching sight today, wasn’t she? I ought to give her the rest of Athena’s clothes.”

  Blood pounded in Griffin’s temples, aching savagery flexed and unflexed the muscles in his hands. Athena’s name fell at his feet like a burning tree, the flames flaring up to sear him in the deepest recesses of his mind and soul. A cry of brutal, murderous fury tore at his throat, and he lunged toward Jonas, blinded by his despair and his rage.

  But Jonas was prepared. A thin, silvery blade flashed in his left hand; the fingers of his right beckoned calmly. “Come on, Griff. Let’s settle it all, right here, right now.”

  Fawn’s cry echoed in the room, and her words were distorted, washing over Griffin’s mind like a low, tepid tide. “No, Griffin—please. Don’t do it…”

  But Griffin could not restrain himself; there seemed to be no reason in all the universe, no sanity. All that mattered was the hatred, the hurt, the betrayal. He relieved Jonas of the knife with one swing of his arm, saw the glimmer of the steel blade as it coursed through the thick air and fell soundlessly to the rug.

  The next few moments were forever lost to Griffin Fletcher; when he came back inside himself, Jonas was lying on the floor in a crumpled, groaning heap, his hands sheltering his groin, blood streaming from the comer of his mouth.

  Bile roiled in Griffin’s stomach and burned in his throat, but he felt no conscious remorse, no pity.

  Mrs. Hammond fell to her knees at Jonas’s side, her considerable bulk quivering with fear and anger. She turned a scathing gaze to Griffin’s face and spat, “You’re no better than he is, Griffin Fletcher!”

  Griffin turned away, caught the handle of his medical bag in one hand, lifted the wide-eyed Fawn into his arms, and walked out.

  “You can’t leave him like this!” Mrs. Hammond cried out.

  Griffin kicked the front door shut behind him in an answering crash.

  • • •

  Rachel could not bear to remain in her mother’s bedroom after the undertaker came, so she crept down the wooden steps, through the now-quiet saloon, and outside. The rain was back, but it was a light, cool drizzle; and Rachel welcomed the bracing touch of it on her upturned face.

  Dr. Fletcher had ordered her to remain inside the building until his return, just before rushing off to answer some distress call. In Rachel’s opinion, that was as good a reason to leave as any.

  Tent Town held as little appeal as ever, though, and she had no friends to go to, so she walked around the weathered walls of her mother’s establishment and down a path curving through the thick woods.

  The sound and scent of the sea came to meet her long before she rounded the last bend and found herself on the rocky shores of Puget Sound. The tide was rising, and it sounded angry as it hammered at the shoreline and battered the great brown boulders within its reach.

  Out on the water, hundreds of rough-barked logs bobbed, bound together by cables. Rachel turned her head toward the mountain rising just to the north and willed her father to know she needed him now and to come home.

  In her mind, she could see him working in the misty depths of the woods. Often he bound himself loosely to the trunk of some massive pine tree, climbing at least ten feet up its side to bore, with an auger, two holes: one straight into the heart of the tree, and one at an angle. That done, he would climb down, only to climb back up again, carrying several glowing coals in metal tongs. Carefully, he would press the coals into the straight cavity, to burn there while the slanted perforation provided ventilation.

  Soon, the giant tree would fall, shaking the earth as it struck.

  Rachel had watched her father work many times, held her breath as he placed the coals expertly, or sawed, winced as he untied himself and jumped clear of the tree’s treacherous trunk. His mortality had never come home to her as it did now, on this day of three deaths.

  Staring sightlessly at the incoming tide, she hugged herself. What would she do if he was killed? Where would she go?

  Rachel bent, took up a smooth, green-gray stone, and flung it into the tide. A stiff wind blew, salty and cold, and pressed her hated brown woolen dress to her bare skin.

  Her mother had been so insistent that Rachel go away from Providence, start a new life in some other place. Now, facing the inland sea, she knew she would not, could not leave.

  She turned; through the treetops she could see a corner of the saloon’s tar-paper roof. She was going to have a little money of her own—she doubted that her mother had saved much—and a perfectly good building.

  No, she would not leave Providence. With the money, she would turn the brothel-saloon into a respectable boardinghouse and a real home. Surely such wealth would ease the curious wanderlust in her father’s heart; they could stay here always, and live happy, settled lives.

  Rachel would have friends, attend church, buy the books and pretty clothes she hungered f
or. In time, she would become an accepted member of the community. I might even marry, she thought, and blushed with chagrined pleasure as the image of Dr. Griffin Fletcher invaded her mind.

  Not him! she vowed, in silence. But, still, his reflection was stuck fast to the bruised walls of her heart.

  Presently, she heard the snap of a twig behind her, then the rattle of pebbles rolling down the slight slope that separated the woods on her mother’s property from the beach.

  Griffin Fletcher stood still where the path and the shoreline met, watching her with weary, haunted eyes. His skin was pale beneath its deep tan, and a muscle in his jaw flexed, then relaxed again.

  Rachel felt a devastating, contradictory urge to run to him, to hold him in her arms and comfort him as she would a child.

  He broke the spell with a gruff, biting statement. “It’s time to leave.”

  Rachel glared at him. “I simply can’t wait to find out where you’re dragging me off to this time, Doctor!”

  The remark had an odd effect on him; some of the misery drained from his eyes, and a tentative smile twisted his lips. Something ancient and powerful crackled back and forth between him and Rachel, overriding all the terrible experiences of the day.

  At last, he held out one hand. “You know, Rachel, when my mother first presented me to my father, I don’t think she said, ‘Let’s call this one “Doctor”!’ My name is Griffin.”

  Rachel held back stubbornly; suddenly, his outstretched hand seemed imperious, rather than inviting. “You are wretched and impossible,” she muttered. “Where are you taking me?”

  He raised one dark eyebrow, his hand still extended, and there was weary mockery in his tone. “The food is good and the roof keeps out the rain, so what do you care?”

  “I care, Dr. Fletcher!”

  “Griffin,” he corrected.

  “All right! Griffin!”

  He relented. “You’ll be spending a few days at my house—under the fierce protection of my friend and housekeeper, Molly Brady.”

  Curious, and knowing that a vigorous argument would be a waste of precious energy, Rachel accompanied him to his house. It was a huge structure, fashioned of natural rock; and apple trees, aflame with silken pink blossoms, seemed to encircle it. Lamplight glowed, in golden welcome, from the windows.