Until Spring

by Pamela Browning

  "Rooney, this is Jane. Jane, Rooney," Duncan said.

  "Well, Duncan, this sure ain't Quixote you've found," Rooney said, stripping off his coat and handing it to Duncan.

  "No, it certainly isn't. Did that old reprobate ever show up?"

  "You bet he did, only minutes after you left. Say, Duncan, can you look in on Mary Kate when you get back to the ranch? I left her watching television at my house."

  "I'll bring her over to my place so Jane here won't be alone when I come back for you," Duncan said. He wrapped Jane in Rooney's coat.

  "You're giving me your coat?" Jane said incredulously to Rooney, as Duncan hustled her out into the bright daylight.

  "Sure," Rooney said. "I'll be fine until Duncan gets back."

  "But what about my own coat?" she said, confused. She couldn't afford to lose it.

  "I'm bringing it," Duncan replied. Sure enough, the old woolen coat was rolled up under his arm. Jane relaxed then, knowing that once it was dry she could have it back.

  Before she knew what was happening, Duncan had bundled her and Amos onto the snowmobile in front of him. The engine roared to life, and Duncan accelerated until their speed fairly terrified her.

  The snow-covered ground disappeared swiftly beneath them. The snow was blindingly white. To one side lay the mountain, and to the other a forest of dark evergreens.

  Jane, closing her eyes against the dazzle, felt the trail weave and rise and twist. The wind, exaggerated at this speed, ripped into her cheeks, and she hid her face deep in the collar of Rooney's coat. Amos, secure in her arms, dug frightened claws into the fabric. Behind her, Duncan guided the snowmobile with subtle shifts of his weight. The vibration of the machine made her queasy, and the noise grated on her nerves.

  She was glad when Duncan stopped the snowmobile. They were standing in front of a two-story house that could have decorated the front of a Christmas card.

  If it hadn't been for the blizzard, she could have walked here last night. She wouldn't have knocked, but maybe she could have gained entrance into the nearby barn and been able to sleep there. She could have been on her way again in the morning before these men even knew she'd been an overnight guest.

  Duncan dismounted and helped her unfold her stiff arms and legs, then held onto her arm as he escorted her up the steps to the front door.

  "I can manage," she murmured, but he paid no attention. The warmth inside the house felt blissful.

  "Poor thing, you look frozen," he said.

  "Is it all right if I put Amos on the floor?" she asked. The cat was struggling to jump down.

  "Sure," he said.

  She bent to set Amos gently on the wide wooden planking underfoot, and the little cat crouched beside her feet and cautiously sniffed the air. Jane almost fell when she started to straighten to a standing position.

  Duncan grabbed her and held her firmly by both arms. His grasp was strong.

  "You really aren't all right, are you?" he demanded.

  "I—" she began, then her knees went weak, and she slumped against him.

  He swung her into his arms with little effort and stood looking down into her face. She closed her eyes against his piercing gaze, which was delivered from a pair of eyes as dark as ebony. It felt good to yield to his strength; she had so little of her own.

  He climbed a stairway and nudged open a door with his foot. She saw pale yellow walls and white woodwork. Duncan deposited her on a bed and strode to the window, where he raised a shade partway. Jane was overcome by a fit of coughing.

  She tried to struggle out of Rooney's coat, and Duncan sat on the bed beside her, helping her remove first one arm, then the other. He was so big and she was so small by comparison that she felt like a child in his presence. Feeling like a child wasn't so bad. When you were a child, you expected someone to take care of you, or at least that was the way she imagined it. You had few responsibilities. A child had all sorts of privileges that adults don't have. It would be nice to travel back in time and be a child again, if only for a little while.

  "I'm going to call the doctor," Duncan said abruptly.

  "Don't," she said. "It would cost money, and I don't have any."

  He took her small hands in his. Her hands were cold, and this warmed them.

  "I'll pay for it. I want to," he said.

  "You don't even know me," she whispered, amazed that he would take care of her, even seemed to want to take care of her.

  "No, I don't know you," he agreed. For a moment, he looked wistful.

  "Then why don't you just let me go?"

  He studied her, and she was overly conscious of how his presence filled the room, dominating it and her. She had an idea that he was used to being in charge, that she was now someone he considered his responsibility—and therefore something not to be dismissed lightly.

  "I doubt that you have anywhere to go," he said.

  The truth of his perception staggered her. So far she had fooled herself into preserving the fiction that she was a real person with a real place to be. "I'm on my way to California," she said defensively.

  "How were you planning to get there?"

  "Oh," she said vaguely, "I'll get there."

  "Is your car broken down on the highway? Were you trying to get help last night? Is that how you happened to flounder across the field and find yourself in the mine?"

  She waited for a few moments before answering. "No, it wasn't exactly like that," she admitted finally, avoiding his eyes.

  "I noticed last night that you have two terrible bruises on your shoulder and hip. Looks like you might have been in an accident," he said.

  "An accident? Well, sort of," she said. He was clearly fishing for information, but she was determined not to give anything away.

  "Like I said, I'm calling the doctor. He's an old friend, and I can count on him to come to the house." And not ask a lot of questions, were the unspoken words between them. He seemed to sense too many things about her, and his perception was frightening in a way. She looked shyly up at him from under her lashes and was impressed with the compassion reflected in his gaze.

  He stood and reached into a bottom dresser drawer for a blanket, which he spread over Jane where she lay. She felt so weak that she couldn't have moved if she'd wanted to.

  "I'll get Rooney's granddaughter Mary Kate to come over and stay with you until Howard Walker—he's the doctor—gets here. Mary Kate is ten, and you can babysit each other. She won't do anything you want her to do, and she'll be an awful nurse, but at least you won't be alone."

  Jane was willing to accept Mary Kate's dubious help if that was the condition to staying here where she could recover from last night's ordeal. She sighed and closed her eyes, slipping into a half sleep where all was peaceful and quiet and, most importantly, warm.

  She became aware of Duncan talking on the phone somewhere in the hall. "Yes, she's conscious, but I'm worried about her, Howard. She's all skin and bones, and her color isn't good. Yeah, if you could make it right away, I'd appreciate it. Sure, and thanks. Mary Kate Rooney will be here to let you in. Yes, that Mary Kate. Uh-huh. I'll see you later."

  Jane opened her eyes when Duncan poked his head around the open door.

  "Howard is coming as soon as he can, and Mary Kate is watching television downstairs. I'm going to go to the mine and get Rooney and see to Flapjack. Don't get up. If you want something, you can call Mary Kate. She might not come, but that's another problem. You can try her, anyway."

  "Okay," she said. Her throat was hurting more and more.

  Duncan seemed to have second thoughts about leaving and walked over to the bed. His look was anxious and concerned, and he pressed a hand against her forehead, leaving a cool imprint when he took it away.

  "You've got a fever," he said.

  "I just need a little sleep to be as good as new," she managed to say. She had no idea that he was thinking how beautiful she was beneath her pallor, and how intrigued he was with her.

  "I hope you're right,
" was all he said, and then he was gone.

  Somewhere a central heating unit clicked on and off, music to Jane's ears, and she heard the faint chatter of a television set downstairs. She slept, waking and thinking she was dreaming when she saw pretty blue and yellow-flowered draperies at the window.

  This bedroom was the one she had always wanted, she mused. Always, she said again, reminding herself that in her case she had only wanted a room such as this one for fifteen months, the length of time that she had existed as Jane Rhodes. Before that maybe she'd slept in such a room, been part of a family, and lived in a hometown. But if she ever had, that part of her was lost, perhaps forever.

  She slept again, and when she woke, a gap-toothed hoyden of a girl was hanging over the bed and blowing bubble gum breath into her face.

  "Want to see me blow a bubble?" the girl asked, and without waiting for approval from Jane, she inflated a bubble only inches from Jane's nose. Jane watched spellbound as the bubble grew and grew, finally collapsing with a warm puff of carbon dioxide into a raggedy pink skin that covered the girl's nose, cheeks and chin.

  Unconcerned, the girl peeled the burst bubble from her face and added the scraps of pink goo to the wad of gum already in her mouth.

  "Want to blow one?" she asked. "It's a relaxing thing to do. You can use my gum. I just got it broken in good."

  Jane shook her head, mesmerized nevertheless by the girl's bubble-blowing prowess.

  "Well, if you ever want to, you have to use Yaya Yum Bubble Gum. It's the best, and it tastes good, too. Don't buy the grape flavor, get the regular flavor. The grape makes me want to throw up." She realistically pantomimed retching, leaning over the foot of the bed.

  "You must be Mary Kate," Jane said.

  "Yeah, Duncan told you about me, I guess. You're Jane. I like your cat. He doesn't care much for baths, does he?"

  Jane pulled herself up onto her elbows in alarm. "You didn't bathe him?"

  "Yep. Sure did. Or tried to. He scratched me. I think it was Duncan's pine-scented shampoo that he didn't like. Look at my scratch." Mary Kate thrust an arm bearing an angry red welt under Jane's nose.

  "Where is he?" Jane asked with more than a little trepidation.

  "The cat? Oh, he fell down the laundry chute. He's okay, though. He landed on a full basket of towels and things. I dried him off with a pillowcase, and he ran into Duncan's closet. I think he's sulking."

  Jane swallowed painfully and hoped that Amos would have enough sense to stay in the closet until she was able to get up to defend him, although from the looks of the scratch on Mary Kate's arm, Amos didn't need defending.

  "I like animals," Mary Kate went on. "Have you ever seen a llama?"

  Jane tried to think. "No, I don't think I have," she said slowly.

  "They're cute. I hadn't seen one either before I came to live with my grandfather. Then I got here and there was a whole ranch of them."

  "You mean this is a llama ranch?" Jane's head whirled. All this time she'd thought that Duncan's ranch was of the cattle variety.

  "Yeah. Duncan and Grandpa raise them. Then they sell them as pack animals or pets. I hate it when they sell one, but that's how they make a living. Quixote's my favorite male, but Dearling's my favorite female. They let me name Dearling myself. She's really small for a female, so she makes a good pet. I hope they never sell her."

  They heard a knock downstairs, and Mary Kate jumped up. "That must be Dr. Walker. I'm supposed to let him in. I won't, if you don't want me to. I hate doctors myself. They give shots."

  "You can let him in," Jane told her, and Mary Kate ran away, her straggly black hair bouncing around her shoulders.

  Howard Walker turned out to be around fifty or so. He put his medical bag on a chair beside the bed and set about examining her with sure, steady hands.

  When he was through, he said, "You'll have to put ice packs on those bruises. And I'm going to bandage the cuts on your hands."

  She said nothing, staring into space with her mouth clamped shut. If Howard Walker thought this was odd, he made no comment. He merely wrapped her hands in bandages, took a swab of her throat to be cultured, and wrote out a prescription.

  "The prescription is for an antibiotic medicine for that throat of yours," he said, peering at her over the top of his reading glasses. "I'll give it to Duncan to have filled. Treat the bruises with ice packs, but only leave them on twenty minutes at a time. Put this ointment on the scrapes on your hands three times a day. Rest in bed until you feel better, and I'll see you in two weeks."

  "Two weeks! I can't stay two weeks," she objected.

  He ignored this. "I want you to eat properly. Three full meals a day, no skipping. I expect to see some roses in those cheeks next time I see you." He snapped the cap back on his pen.

  "But—"

  He waved the prescription in the air. "I'll give this to Duncan when I talk with him. Take care of yourself," and with that he hurried out of the room.

  Jane sank back onto the pillows, pressing her fists to her hot cheeks. Two weeks! She'd planned to be in California before then. How could she stay here with Duncan all that time? He'd surely want to be rid of her.

  Tears stung her eyelids. She had come so far all by herself with no help from anyone. She had made it at least halfway to California, too. She couldn't give up now.

  "I'll get there yet," she whispered to herself as Amos padded into the room through the open door. When he jumped onto the bed, she made room for him in the curve of her body, taking comfort once more in his company.

  * * *

  "She's malnourished, she almost certainly has strep throat, she has a bad case of bronchitis, and those scrapes and bruises make her look as though somebody tossed her off a tall building. Who has she been hanging around with, King Kong?" Howard eyed Duncan balefully as he shrugged into his coat.

  Duncan rubbed the back of his neck. There was a kink in it from last night. "Howard, I don't know. I found her in the old mine during the storm, and for a few minutes I thought she was a goner. Is she going to be all right?"

  "I'd guess that she's no older than her mid-twenties, and her powers of recuperation are probably good. She'll be fine if she gets enough to eat and if she takes her medicine. Under no circumstances should she leave here and set out on her own. Is her name really Jane Rhodes?"

  Duncan shrugged. "I doubt it," he answered.

  "You'll need to get those antibiotic pills, and she must take them regularly as prescribed. If you need me, call again." Howard clapped his hat on his head and started out the door.

  "Thanks, Howard," Duncan called after him. Howard threw him a salute and crunched across the snow to his car.

  When the doctor had left, Duncan called Rooney and asked him to pick up the antibiotic for Jane when he went into town to buy groceries. Then he climbed the stairs and went into the bedroom where Jane lay sleeping.

  The room was in shadow, the shades drawn against the weak winter sunlight. Duncan stood beside the bed, taking in the way her blond hair, fluffier now, spread out on the light blue pillowcases. Her cheeks might have been fine porcelain, so translucent were they, and the tiny hand resting on the blanket might have been that of a doll. Lavender shadows rimmed her lower eyelids, and her eyelashes were baby-fine but thick. She had turned her head to the side so that he saw her in profile. Her face was like a cameo.

  He sat down on the bed beside her, wondering who she was and how she happened to be traversing the wilds of Wyoming. Despite the bedraggled hair and the quality of Little Girl Lost, she looked as though she should be gracing a drawing room in eighteenth-century England, not sheltering from a killer snowstorm in an abandoned mine.

  "Jane Rhodes, who are you?" he asked softly, but she didn't answer. She didn't hear him; she was sound asleep. But even if she had heard the question, he doubted that she would have answered it. Or even could have, for that matter.

  Chapter 3

  Jane dreamed that night of the mine and of lying on the floor trying to ge
t warm. This time the floor was not so hard, and she was much more aware of Duncan's arms encircling her. She awoke suddenly and shivered despite Amos's comforting presence against her side.

  She eased onto her stomach, her favorite sleeping position, and dozed until Duncan came into the room shortly after dawn. She came awake suddenly, immediately defensive.

  "Just wanted to see if you're awake," he said. He disappeared, and when he returned it was with a breakfast tray heaped with food. It held half a grapefruit, steaming hot coffee, corned beef hash with a poached egg in the middle, and toast dripping with butter.

  "I don't think I can eat all of this," she said, clutching the bed covers tightly to her chest.

  "Eat what you can, and I'll give the rest to Amos," he told her.

  "I feel like I'm imposing," she said. She slid to a more comfortable sitting position before taking a bite of the hash. It was delicious. She relaxed slightly and told herself that there was no need to be wary here. Duncan Tate meant her no harm.

  Duncan leaned against the dresser and folded his arms, watching her eat. "We don't get many visitors out this way. I'm glad to have somebody here to talk to."

  "You live alone?" she asked, making an effort at conversation. He seemed to expect it.

  He nodded. "Rooney and Mary Kate live in a smaller house down the road. Well, officially, anyway. They spend a lot of time in this house too. What did you think of Mary Kate, anyway?"

  "She's lively," Jane said with great diplomacy.

  Duncan laughed. "I guess that's one way to put it. Actually, I think she's a terror, and so does everyone else who has ever met her. She's lived with Rooney a little over two years and every day she gets worse. Last week she came over here when I was out and decided to wash all my jeans, and she used hot water. They shrank to the point that I can't wear most of them." He laughed again.

  "I'm sure she meant well," ventured Jane.

  "If you can stand it, I'll have Mary Kate come over again this morning. She can refill your ice packs and get you glasses of water and stuff like that. I don't like leaving you alone, but I've got some things to do in the barn."