Firefly

by Linda Hilton

  Though he wanted to comfort her, Morgan realized there was nothing he could say until she had told him everything. It was, after all, exactly what he had asked for.

  “Mama couldn’t take the cold winters in Minnesota, so we moved to Kansas City. There I met a cavalry officer, Lt. Andrew McWilliams, just like every girl dreams of. Except that he already had a girl. A wife, in fact, in St. Louis.” Now a new element crept into her voice, a sarcasm, a bitterness turned inward. She believed in her guilt, and that was the worst of it all.

  “Julie, I’m sorry,” he said quietly, disgusted at how lame the words sounded.

  “Sorry? Why? It was my own fault for flaunting myself at him.”

  “You? Flaunt yourself?” Morgan snorted a bitter laugh. “Good God, Julie, you don’t even know how to flaunt yourself. Amy used to tease and flirt ten, no a hundred times more than you could ever do, and she was no more wicked than a newborn babe.”

  “But she didn’t attract married soldiers and horse thieves and itinerant peddlers the way I did. They were wicked, and I had to be wicked, too, if they wanted me.”

  Her head had been resting on his shoulder; now she let it slip and hang in shame, away from the steady caress of his fingers.

  “Hans is the only one who treated me like a…like a good woman. He respects me and he will make a good husband for me.”

  The lack of emotion in her statement told Morgan that she had memorized the words, words her father had probably taught her to make her believe in her guilt and shame. Morgan did not believe any of it.

  “That still doesn’t explain why you’re so afraid of me. Do you think I’m one of those wicked men?”

  What a stupid, stupid question! Of course she does! he told himself angrily. You were the town drunk, you threw up in her flowers, you didn’t mind letting her see you half naked, and more than once you managed to kiss her. Why wouldn’t she think you wicked?

  But she didn’t answer him right away. Slowly, she got to her feet and walked away from him, twisting the handkerchief around her fingers. Her hair had come loose, the long braid swinging down the middle of her back with each step.

  Did she dare confess to him what she felt? He seemed more inclined to pity her than hate her. If she revealed her feelings, he might maintain his present opinion, or he might change his mind and think her wanton and shameless. She had, after all, let him kiss her, and this afternoon, she had permitted him to lock the door and hold her almost intimately on the sofa for a very long time. Hadn’t Mama always said no decent woman let a man touch her?

  “Julie, you are not wicked.” When she didn’t turn around and he wasn’t sure she had heard him, Morgan stood and walked a step or two toward her. “Men like to make conquests of innocent girls like you, and if you had no one to teach you how to handle them, it is hardly your fault if sometimes there was a little trouble. And you can’t take the blame for everything else, either.”

  As though they had minds of their own, his fingers reached for her, clasping her thin shoulders to turn her around, then drawing her closer.

  “How can I explain away the mistakes of half a lifetime in just a few minutes?” Morgan whispered. “How can I make you see that you were never to blame? Your father pushed your mother to the ground and it was the fall that brought on her labor, not your actions. Even in his anger at what you were doing, no decent man would have done that to his wife. And your mother has been lying to you all this time.”

  He had thought carefully about telling her; it was not something he let slip because of his emotional reaction to her story. She needed to hear the truth, just as she had needed to tell the truth. There was no reason to hide anything any more.

  Julie said nothing, though he felt her stiffen slightly in his arms. He held her exactly as he had held her before, but somehow the feeling was different, stronger, deeper, warmer inside him. He had to let her go, for more reasons than one.

  Leaving one arm loosely around her waist, he guided her back to the sofa and gently pushed her down, though he did not join her. Nearness to her was doing strange things to him that he was in no condition to deal with now. Her problems had to come first; he would handle his own later.

  “I don’t think your mother was ever very sick,” he began, feeling his way across uncharted ground. “Maybe it took her a little longer to recover from Willy’s birth than normal, but I’m quite sure she recovered fully.”

  She searched for the handkerchief she had dropped earlier. Morgan picked it up and handed it to her, then thrust his hands into his pockets.

  “I don’t understand,” Julie replied. “I saw her, I watched her every day. She could hardly walk, and you know how terrible her headaches were.”

  “No, I don’t. I only know what she told me. And you’ve seen how much better she is now. Do you think a concoction of sugar and vinegar and a little bit of whisky is enough to make that dramatic a change in her health if she were really sick?”

  She seemed to believe him, or at least if she had any serious doubts about his claims, she hid them well.

  “I haven’t the faintest idea why she’d want to put on such a monstrous act for nine years, Julie, but she has, and for some reason now she’s trying to cast off the role. She apparently played it quite well; she had your father completely fooled. She said he hadn’t touched her since Willy was born.”

  “But he was afraid another baby would kill her. I knew that.”

  “It was an excuse. She’s perfectly capable, even at her age, of having another baby, and nine years ago she was no different. But I don’t care about her; I care about you. I can’t stand seeing you hurt the way you do all the time. And I think too much of you to let you go through the rest of your life thinking you were to blame for something that had nothing to do with you.”

  It was all very logical and made perfect sense. His charges had the ring of truth.

  “Oh, it’s all so confusing!” she cried suddenly, startling them both. “And why would Mama lie to me? If I didn’t cause Willy’s birth and she wasn’t really ill, then why did I…No, it isn’t true. It can’t be.”

  She was thinking aloud, not speaking to him, Morgan realized, and he felt more uncomfortable than when she had poured out her pain to him. He could comfort her, but he could not think for her.

  “They hate me,” she said quietly, coming to a clear revelation. “If I am innocent and they hate me, then they are monsters and I am no better, for I am their child.”

  “No, that’s wrong!” Morgan insisted, but he had the feeling she never heard him. He could stand her acquiescence no longer, yet he felt powerless against the cruelty that had been done to her. And if he told her the one thing that might make a difference, she would only class him with the other bastards who had used her.

  “Stop it!” he ordered. “For God’s sake, how can you give in to it so easily? What will it take for you to see the truth? Your mother is a vain, lazy, petty woman who cares for nothing but herself. Not even you. It didn’t enter her mind that she might be hurting you when she played the invalid. She only cared about keeping a husband whom she hates out of her bed. I told you before that it was your father’s temper and his violence that brought on Katharine’s labor, not anything you did. I’m a doctor, Julie; don’t you believe me?”

  *

  Hungry, hot, and bone weary, Morgan climbed the stairs to his bedroom. Johnny Cole’s timely knock on the office door had put an end to the scene in the infirmary that afternoon, though it was hardly the end Morgan wished for. Julie composed herself quickly, as he supposed she had done many, many times in the past. It almost frightened him how easily she hid her feelings, and he wondered just how much more she had buried within.

  Johnny’s grandmother, old Mrs. Westerman, had had another attack, and Morgan grabbed his bag and followed the boy to the house on the other side of the Castle. He ordered Julie home, insisting there was nothing she could do to help. The truth was that he feared he’d be too distracted by her presence to render t
he elderly woman any assistance at all. As it was, he could barely keep his mind on his work, though there was little he could do anyway.

  Ev Cole’s mother-in-law lingered through the early evening and into the night. The old woman’s daughter, Ev’s wife Sarah, had to be sedated and was snoring peacefully when her mother died shortly after midnight. Morgan couldn’t help thinking how much stronger and more serenely beautiful Julie would have been helping him instead of the scatter-brained Sarah who couldn’t face anything.

  The thought stayed with him while he walked home, glancing toward Julie’s house, dark now and silent. His own was no different, and twice as lonely. He peeled off sweaty clothes and dropped them to the floor carelessly, his mind still tangled. He opened the window shutters to let in the breeze, but even the fresh scent of night air and the raucous chorus of coyotes did not penetrate the clouded barrier to his soul.

  He didn’t light the lamp, for he knew what he would see. Amy. Memory of her was the only thing to get through the silent wall, and he could not bear to look at her when thoughts of another woman tormented him. As he lay on the bed, a sheet drawn over him against the chill of the breeze, he tried to force the pain away. The bottle of scotch was still in the kitchen pantry, and he did not delude himself that he didn’t consider getting it. But it offered insufficient solace.

  Exhaustion brought some relief, though the unconscious knowledge that he had only a few hours left in which to sleep seemed to keep his rest light and troubled. Awake and yet asleep, he dreamed. He never lost all touch with the reality of the darkened bedroom, the tangled sheets, the window open above his head, but wisps and fragments of fantasy joined him.

  Julie, as he had never seen her and wished to see her, glided to his bedside. Gowned in a shimmer of white, with her hair unbound and blown by a breeze, she seemed more than a mere mortal. He wanted to touch her, but the lethargy of dreams held him motionless. His arms lay limp and still at his sides, though he felt the bed sag where she sat down. How warm she was, and how beautiful. Though there was no moon, only stars, he could see her plainly. Her eyes soft and warm and pleading. Her lips, which he had tasted so briefly, smiling and parted with a hunger he ached to appease. Where the formless gown draped from one shoulder to the other he could see the shadowed valley between her breasts, and the filmy fabric clung to aroused nipples. He reached for her with hands that could not move, but he knew there was nothing to touch, nothing to hold.

  He blinked, not to stop tears, for there were none, but to clear his head of the dream. The image had been real, almost too real, and yet he knew it was only a phantom of his weary brain. The hot pain, however, was very real. His hand moved now, slowly because he was still not sure he had entirely left the land of dreams.

  He groaned as his fingers encountered the tumescent organ. The pain was exquisite, the desire a burning agony, and the joy terrified him, because he wanted Julie, no one else, and he dared not have her.

  Chapter Twenty

  The alarm wakened him to a glaringly bright morning. The sun through the open shutters already heated the room uncomfortably. After silencing the metallic nuisance beside his head, Morgan stretched and yawned and wished he could have lain abed another four or five hours at least. Friday, however, was invariably busy, and any delay on his part in getting the office open only meant Julie would be stuck with the burden of explaining his tardiness to the patients waiting to see him.

  Julie. The very thought of her brought back the dreams—the nightmares—of yesterday and the night. Sitting on the edge of the bed with the cool tiles on his bare feet to chase the last streamers of sleep from his groggy brain, Morgan held his head between his hands and tried to sort the real from the imaginary, the remembered from the dreamed. Unfortunately, all the bad things were real, all the good things impossible.

  He combed his fingers through his hair and then rubbed his unshaven chin while he yawned again. Of all the horrible things he had thought of Wilhelm Hollstrom, nothing had come close to the truth. Poor Julie, to have been forced to watch—to listen—while her father killed her lover. Del shivered again at the thought.

  It was no wonder, he told himself as he stood and stretched his still tired muscles, she felt so little enthusiasm for her upcoming marriage to Wallenmund. One marriage had ended in disaster, and she probably could not get that out of her mind as she prepared for a second.

  He turned to close the shutters against the blinding sun and the day’s heat and then bent to pick up the sheet that had fallen from him when he stood up. Remembering the way he had wakened from that eerily erotic dream, he sheepishly examined the bedclothes for evidence of nocturnal arousal. He found no telltale stains. Half angry, half relieved, half disappointed, he straightened the bed and sighed before he gathered clean clothes and headed for the kitchen to shave and fortify himself with coffee.

  It must have been a dream, all of it.

  And it was just as well. The one reason he had allowed himself to be so honest and open with Julie was that he knew she was safe from him, whether she knew it or not. He could not seduce her, though he admitted he was beginning to wish he could, but his disability gave him the opportunity to treat her much differently than most men would. If last night’s display of renewed virility had been real, he might have lost that candor with her and have changed more of his attitude.

  But why not? a voice inside him asked. Staring at his face in the mirror, he listened to the voice repeat the question and he failed to come up with a suitable answer.

  “I admit I don’t want her to marry Wallenmund,” he told his reflection as he slathered his cheeks and chin with shaving soap. “But that doesn’t mean I have to offer to marry her myself. If I did try to court her, I’d have to be damn careful not to play into any of her fears.” He let the warm lather soak his whiskers for a few moments and stropped the razor firmly, unemotionally. “I can’t say I’d be unhappy if she accepted me. On a purely intellectual basis, she’d make a fine wife. Whoever gets her ought to be damn thankful. Lord knows she can cook, and she’s so good with children, even that brat Willy, that she’ll make a wonderful mother someday. As far as helping me the way Amy did, I have a feeling, ashamed as I am to admit it, that Julie will be even better.”

  He scraped a cheek carefully, not forgetting the mornings his hand had been far from steady. He looked closely at his reflection and decided it was almost time for another haircut, too.

  He finished the right cheek and went on to his chin and throat.

  Amy helped me, he thought, not daring to talk aloud for a few seconds, but Julie would take the work to herself. She’d be a full partner in everything. Amy used to listen to my gripes and my disappointments and she’d soothe them out of my system, but Julie would share them with me, and nothing would ever be as discouraging again if I had her to shoulder some of the burden with me.

  “But could I ask her to do that?” he wondered, wiping the razor on the towel that hung around his neck. “Lord knows I couldn’t ask her to love me the way Amy did, and there’d never be any promise from me that I’d love her either. Maybe that would be best, too, for both of us. We could enter into a relationship with no emotional shackles to each other, a logical extension of what we already have.”

  The problem was that what he had with her right now wasn’t enough. He rediscovered that every time he got close to her, emotionally or physically. Even in the bright light of day, when the phantasms of night were supposed to be vanquished, he felt that insane desire growing again. He lifted the corners of the towel to wipe off the last traces of lather, but there was nothing to wipe away the seductive dream-image of Julie that lingered in his mind.

  He covered his face with the towel and struggled against the power of that image. He knew damn well what it was telling him, and he couldn’t ignore what it was doing to his body. Not all the dreams had been dreams; part of them had been very, very real, as this was real now.

  *

  Julie smoothed the new apron over her secon
d best dress and stepped out the front door. She smothered a yawn and tried to stretch a kink out of her neck. Up half the night sewing the new apron and the other half trying to sort out the incredible tangle of conflicting emotions her discussion with Morgan had aroused, she had had trouble staying awake while she fixed breakfast and now could think of almost nothing but going back to bed. But she had already seen Morgan walk up to the office, where the usual Friday morning crowd had gathered early, so she had no choice but to persevere.

  If he noticed the new apron, he had no time to comment on it, and within minutes of her arrival, Julie forgot about the garment anyway. It was one of those days when one absurdity seemed to lead right to another, and for that she was grateful. Had it been a day of crises and tragedies, she was certain she could not have withstood the strain. As it was, she actually found moments to smile.

  When she first entered the surgery, she found Morgan already busy, peering into Lucas Carter’s left eye from a distance of something less than two inches.

  “That you, Julie? Hand me those tweezers over there.” He pointed to the instrument just barely out of his reach. “I’ve found the offending eyelash and don’t want to lose it.”

  When he had the pale, curved hair out, he held it up for Lucas to examine.

  Lucas returned the favor by squinting the other eye closed and aiming a stream of tobacco juice accurately at the brass spittoon.

  “Amazin’, ain’t it, how a little whisker like that can hurt so damn much,” Lucas said. “I couldn’t hardly see straight enough to spit.”

  No sooner had Lucas left and Julie was about to call the next patient in when Ada McCrory came screaming up the front stairs with her youngest child, two-year-old Bridget, in her arms. The child, crying nearly as hysterically as her mother, wore a pair of sewing shears around her chubby little wrist.

  “I can’t get ‘em off!” Ada wailed. Julie led her into the surgery, where Del waited, the picture of masculine fortitude and patience. “I was doing some mending when a customer came in, and I set all the needles and the scissors up where I didn’t think she could reach anything. When I come back, she was puttin’ her hand through the handle, and now I can’t get it out!”