But Rachel was stricken by that warm light, rather than bouyed. Who but a loving, devoted wife would see that lamps were lit against the gathering twilight?
She swallowed miserably as Griffin Fletcher helped her down from the buggy seat and abandoned both the vehicle and the weary horse to the care of a huge, gangly boy. Not once had it occurred to her that he might be married, and she found the possibility distinctly unpleasant.
“I can’t imagine how I overlooked this house, since I must have passed it twice today,” she said, in a light, false voice, glancing back toward the familiar road that led on to Jonas Wilkes’s house.
Griffin’s dark eyes, calm only a moment before, were suddenly brooding and remote. “Jonas’s place is pretty imposing,” he said, opening an iron gate in the stone fence and half-pushing Rachel through it. “Your eyes were probably too full of all that brick and gilt and marble to notice.”
There was something profoundly wounding in the way he spoke, but Rachel couldn’t quite identify it. Her nerves were suddenly throbbing and raw, as though they’d all been bared to the brisk evening wind, and her voice trembled when she spoke.
“I really should go back to my tent.”
Griffin laughed, but there was no humor in the sound, and no warmth. “You speak as though you have a choice, Miss McKinnon. And believe me, you don’t.”
Rachel was too tired to match wills with this surly man, but she did manage a flippant, “I doubt that your wife will appreciate an unexpected houseguest.”
He looked away quickly, but Rachel saw the brutal annoyance in his face all the same, and something that went far, far beyond it.
“I don’t have a wife,” he said shortly, as they climbed the stone steps leading onto the porch.
Rachel wondered as he opened the front door and ushered her inside. She wondered why part of her wanted to kick this insufferable tyrant in the shins and part of her rejoiced that he had no wife.
The inside of Griffin Fletcher’s house was as tasteful and appealing as the outside. It was a clean, spacious, well-furnished place, with high ceilings and polished wooden floors.
Rachel felt welcome in that house, even in the disconcerting presence of its taciturn owner. It was as though the structure itself had drawn her to its heart, to comfort and strengthen her.
Griffin startled her out of her fanciful thoughts by tossing his medical bag onto a table with an irritated crash and calling out, “Molly!”
A trim, strikingly pretty woman with hair the color of cinnamon and sparkling, humorous green eyes appeared in a wide doorway. She was probably somewhere in her late thirties, Rachel thought, but no matter how long she lived, she would never get old.
“Saints be praised, Griffin Fletcher!” she beamed, her tones shaped by a lilting, musical brogue. “You’ve brought home another one!”
Rachel found herself liking Molly Brady very much.
Chapter Seven
Jonas tried to raise himself from his pillows and failed miserably. The pain in his groin was sharpened by the motion, and sweat beaded on his forehead and along his upper lip.
Everything hurt. Everything.
Jonas lifted swollen eyes to the bedroom windows, saw the deep darkness, heard his name in the voice of the night. To distract himself, he sought the hours wandering lost in his mind, and they eluded him.
His breath burned hot in his lungs and parched his throat. Griffin.
Rage assuaged some of Jonas’s pain as he recalled the beating he’d taken, and he swore harshly in the darkness.
Instantly, the door nearest Jonas’s bed swung open, the halfhearted light of a coal-oil lamp flowed into the room. McKay. Jonas was revolted by the subtle stench of the man.
“Need some whiskey or anything, Boss?”
Jonas closed his eyes, swallowed. “Bring the doctor.”
There was a sound—metal colliding softly with wood. He turned his head, caught sight of McKay’s rifle leaning against the doorjamb. Jonas laughed inwardly; the fool had been standing guard in the hallway.
McKay brought the lamp into the room, set it down on Jonas’s bedside table. “But, Boss, he’s the one what did this—”
The pain was growing intolerable. “Do tell. Bring the doctor!”
McKay hurried out, and Jonas made the costly effort to reach out and retrieve his pocket watch from the bedside table. He opened the case, pressed the small button near the stem, heard the odd, gentle tune it played. He squinted, saw that it was nearly ten o’clock.
Jonas waited, remembering his flighty, excitable mother and the high hopes she’d had when she’d presented him with this very special watch. Sorry, Mama, he thought, with grim amusement.
He heard the faint, ponderous chiming of the great clock standing downstairs in the entry hall, but after that, he lost track of time. The pain swept over him in waves, leaving nausea in its wake, bearing down on him again the moment he tried to rise above it.
Finally, a lengthy shadow appeared in the open doorway. Without speaking, Griffin Fletcher tossed his medical bag onto the foot of the bed, pulled back the blankets, and began to examine Jonas with swift, deft motions of his hands.
Jonas bore it all in silence, until Griffin drew a syringe from his bag and filled it from a glass vial. “You know something, Griffin? You’re an honorable man,” he said, without admiration.
“I’m a damned fool,” replied Griffin flatly, injecting the compound into Jonas’s right arm.
“True,” said Jonas.
Griffin dropped the syringe and vial back into his bag. “The swelling will go down in two or three days,” he said. “In the meantime, your romantic pursuits will be severely limited.”
“What about the fine mash you made of my face?”
“Only temporary, unfortunately.”
Jonas laughed as the pain began to ebb a little. “It’s too bad we’re enemies, you and I.”
Griffin raised one eyebrow and snapped the medical bag shut with a sharp motion of his right hand. “No sentiment, Jonas. There is a limit to my patience.”
Jonas felt measurably better, and he eased himself into a sitting position. “A limit? I didn’t know you had any patience to set limits on. There really won’t be any permanent damage?”
Griffin smiled. “Not unless you bother Fawn again. Or Rachel.”
Jonas ignored the remark. “Why did you come here—after what happened?”
Griffin stood in the doorway now, poised to leave. “I had to, and you know that.”
“Stay. Have a drink.”
“Why? Did you poison the brandy?”
Jonas frowned. “I’m proposing a truce, Griffin. We’ve been at each other’s throats for too long. I honestly—”
“You never did an honest thing in your life,” Griffin broke in, clearly uncomfortable. “What do you really want, Jonas?”
“Rachel McKinnon.”
Griffin’s face hardened in the tremulous light. “I’ll kill you first.”
Jonas sighed, relaxing on the down pillows. “Oh, I would hate to see things go quite that far. Besides, I think I love her.”
“Sure you do, Jonas. After knowing her for one day, you’re ready to swear your undying loyalty and devotion.”
Jonas’s laugh was soft, even. “You don’t believe that people can fall in love that fast? Or is it that you’re not immune to her charms yourself?”
This time, Griffin laughed. It was a rough, ragged sound. “She’s a child, Jonas—a child.”
“She’s seventeen. Thirteen years younger than you and I.”
“Exactly.”
“But she’s a woman, Griffin.”
“That’s an opinion.”
Jonas knew that his weakness was an advantage, for the moment, and he pressed it. “She is a beautiful woman, Griffin. Maybe even more beautiful than Athena.”
Griffin lowered his head, closed his eyes. It was odd, Jonas thought, the power that name still held over the man. He looked as though he’d been gut-shot.
/> “Well, Griffin?” Jonas prodded. “Is she more beautiful than Athena?”
Griffin glared down at him, his anguish plain in his face. “Yes,” he said, and then he was gone.
Jonas tossed back his blankets, eased himself out of the bed, and hobbled across the room to the bureau. There, he opened a bottle of whiskey, raised it to his lips, and drank until the last remnants of the pain didn’t matter anymore.
• • •
Rachel lay perfectly still beneath the sheets and blankets of a real bed, Molly Brady’s good cooking resting lightly in her stomach. A soft rain pattered on the solid roof overhead, and she was warm in her borrowed nightgown.
She did not permit herself to think of the staggering course that day had taken; she could not bear to remember it all now. But she did allow her mind to slide back over the evening.
They had eaten dinner, not in Dr. Fletcher’s expansive, many-windowed dining room, but in the large, bright kitchen, around a circular oaken table.
There had been so much food, all of it hot and fresh, and to Rachel’s great surprise, she had been ravenously hungry.
Molly Brady, her huge, slow-witted son, Billy; Dr. Fletcher, and herself. Reviewing the scene in her mind, Rachel knew she would relish the quiet, ordinary celebration of it always.
Molly was a spritely, direct woman with a ready laugh, and Rachel liked her, even though she wondered whether or not her relationship with Griffin Fletcher went beyond cleaning and cooking and doing wash.
Rachel sighed and drew the heavy flannel sheets up under her chin. She wondered which of the bedrooms contained Fawn Nighthorse, the Indian woman she’d met that morning—a lifetime ago—in Tent Town.
A great fuss had been made over Fawn throughout the evening; Molly carried trays up to her room, and Dr. Fletcher visited her frequently, his face grim.
Rachel didn’t know whether Fawn was ill, or whether she’d been hurt somehow. She hadn’t dared to ask.
Now, alone in a small, quiet bedroom, she felt a twinge of envy, followed by a deep, shattering sense of loneliness.
And Dr. Fletcher—Griffin—was out. She could feel his absence throbbing in the substantial house, as though the structure was straining to hold its breath until his return.
Then, in the distance, a door closed. The house let out its breath, drew another, and was normal again. Rachel closed her eyes and slept.
• • •
Griffin awakened reluctantly with the dawn. Another day. God, sometimes he wished that time would stop just long enough to allow him to gather his thoughts.
He threw back a tangled blanket and moved, naked, across the cool smoothness of his bedroom floor. At the washstand, he poured tepid water from a pitcher into a basin and washed. That done, he shaved, dressed in his customary black trousers and a fresh white shirt, and brushed his hair.
Though he had a number of other matters to think about, his mind kept straying back to Rachel, who was sleeping in the room directly across from his. A sudden, devastating need sprang up inside him, consuming him, thrusting aside all his good intentions.
He was free now, he reminded himself. There was no good reason why he shouldn’t be attracted to her.
Fitful and unaccountably anxious, he moved to the windows, looked out on the clear, freshly washed day forming itself of sunshine and blue sky and fading mists. He drew a deep, ragged breath and searched his mind for specific fears but found only one—loving again.
Griffin braced himself inwardly, turned from the window, and left his bedroom.
In the hallway, he paused, everything within him drawn to Rachel’s closed door. After several seconds, he summoned enough discipline to walk away, to open the door of the room where Fawn rested and look in.
She was gone, and the room was as neat and unchanged as if she’d never been there at all.
Griffin was both exasperated and amused, but he wasn’t surprised. Even as a small child, Fawn had had trouble staying in one place for more than two hours at a time.
He descended the stairs, strode through the quiet house to the kitchen.
There, four different lamps aided the struggling dawn, and Molly stood before the enormous cookstove, stirring something in a cast-iron kettle.
Her smile was wary, and a tendril of steam-dampened, coppery hair fell over her forehead. She brushed it aside with the back of one hand. “What about the McKinnon girl?” she demanded without preamble.
Griffin bowed slightly and laughed. “And good morning to you, too, Molly Brady.”
Molly shook her head good-naturedly and ladled hot oatmeal into a crockery bowl as Griffin helped himself to coffee.
“She’s a pretty thing, isn’t she?” Molly pressed. “Saints above, I can just imagine what those lilac-colored eyes do to a man’s insides.”
Griffin sat down at the round oaken table and spooned coarse brown sugar over the cereal Molly set before him. “She’s only a child,” he snapped, speaking as much to himself as to Molly.
Her laugh was pleasantly derisive. “Some child, that one.”
“She’s only seventeen,” Griffin said, taking an unusual interest in the cream pitcher.
“Aye,” Molly agreed cheerfully. “And at her age, I was a year married and mother to my William.”
Griffin ignored the remark and ate in silence.
Molly wouldn’t have it. “The poor thing—she looked so lost and confused last night! I’ll be bound you didn’t trouble yourself to explain matters to her, Griffin Fletcher.”
Griffin sat back to finish his coffee. “Her father can explain. I’m going to find him today.”
Molly raised one shapely auburn eyebrow. “Aye? And it’s a day’s ride up that mountain and back. What if you’re needed here?”
Griffin shrugged with an indifference he didn’t feel. He shouldn’t go, he knew that—especially not when he could probably persuade Field to go instead. But he needed the ride, the distance, the time.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can. Until I am, you keep Rachel in or near this house. Jonas is flat on his back and hurting in some crucial places, but that doesn’t mean he won’t try anything.”
Swiftly, before he could refuse, Molly refilled his cup with coffee. “Griffin,” she ventured, with gentle caution. “I know that you and Becky McKinnon were close friends. I know you promised her that you would see Rachel safely out of Jonas’s reach. But what if Rachel is attracted to him? Whatever else he is, Jonas is good-looking and rich. Those qualities make a powerful combination when a girl has been poor all her life.”
Griffin shoved his cup away, staining the crisp white tablecloth in the process, and rose to take his suit coat and round-brimmed hat from the peg beside the back door. “Jonas would destroy her,” he said.
Squaring her shoulders Molly, extended the ever-present black bag. “Maybe he does love her,” she said doubtfully, her green eyes haunted and faraway.
“Love?” The word was bitter on Griffin’s tongue. He wrenched open the door and was comforted by the resulting rush of cool air. “Jonas wouldn’t know love if it did a jig on his breastbone.”
Molly’s strong, Irish chin lifted. “And you’re a fine one to be throwing stones, Griffin Fletcher. The word practically makes you scream and run.”
Griffin went out, slamming the door behind him in eloquent response.
• • •
When Rachel awakened, she was bemused to find that she felt nothing. Not grief for her mother, not anger at Griffin, not loneliness. There was, it seemed, a void inside her.
The lovely house was cool and quiet as she made her way through it, to the kitchen.
Molly Brady was there, with her quick smile and her cautious, questioning eyes. “Here, then, sit down and have a bite,” she commanded, in her melodic brogue.
Rachel smiled wanly as she accepted the offered oatmeal, with muttered thanks, and sat down to eat. As she moved, the cheap wool of her dress scratched at her bare thighs and irritated her breasts, but she didn’t care.
Nothing mattered, nothing at all.
Molly centered a wide-brimmed straw hat atop her head. “Rachel?”
Rachel looked up, managing a soft, distracted smile. “Yes?”
“Welcome.”
Tears clustered in Rachel’s throat, which was odd, she decided, since she had no feelings.
Molly must have seen something in her face, for she approached swiftly, took off her hat, and sat down in the chair nearest Rachel’s. “I’m thinking you’re a girl in need of someone to talk to, Rachel McKinnon.”
“It’s very strange,” Rachel confided, pushing her half-finished breakfast away. “So much has happened to me, and yet I don’t feel anything.”
“You will,” Molly promised, one of her small, reddened hands coming to rest on Rachel’s wrist.
Rachel swallowed, averting her eyes. “What kind of man is Dr. Fletcher?” she asked.
The housekeeper sighed. “He’s a good man—a strong, responsible man.”
“But he’s arrogant and aloof, too!” Suddenly Rachel’s lost emotions were streaming back, and she wasn’t so sure she welcomed them. “My goodness, Molly, I was minding my own business. I went to Mr. Wilkes’s house because he invited me to take a bath—”
Gentle amusement sparkled in the green, green eyes, but there was something disquieting there, too. “Yes?”
“It was all very innocent—I’d gotten muddy, you see, and there was no place else to bathe! In any case, Griffin—Dr. Fletcher—came storming in there and dragged me out, and he’s been giving me orders and insulting me ever since!”
Molly sat back in her chair and folded her arms across her chest. “Tact has never been one of Griffin’s outstanding gifts. He is a very direct man.”
“What right does he have to tell me where I can stay and where I can’t, to bring me here?”
“None, I suppose. But the doctor and your mother were good friends, Rachel. And he promised her that he would protect you.”
“From what?” Rachel demanded, her voice sharp with frustration.
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