“You don’t know that.” She choked on the words, and Ethan could hear her teeth chattering. Even through their gloves he could feel the pulse galloping in her wrist at breakneck speed.
No, he didn’t know what might have happened to Nim. But he did know Clara was on the verge of shock, and the last thing he wanted right now was to confront a deranged woman when he was administering aid to an ill one. Grimly he lifted her completely off her feet, swinging her over a stinking mass of garbage, then led her down the flagstones to the back of the cottage.
The door gaped wide-open.
A whimpering cry burst from Clara’s throat. Ethan forced her behind him, and used his body to block the entrance. He could see a bit of light coming from the kitchen, and his nostrils stung with the mildewy odor Clara had described earlier. Slowly, one arm stretched like a bar across the threshold, he eased into a minuscule mudroom, his gaze swiftly searching the dark corners for movement.
“Ethan. Please…” Clara pushed against his arm, her hands digging into the wool of his overcoat. “I can’t bear this…”
Grimly he stepped forward and forced himself to peer into the kitchen, dread and fear and determination tangling his own insides into knots.
A square oak kitchen table with four press-back chairs sat in the middle of the floor. An oil lamp had been lit and placed atop the table. A woman dressed in black widow’s weeds sat in one of the chairs. Another oil lamp sat beside the sink, its light shining on a pile of damp rags from which the putrid odor emanated, though less strong.
Purring noisily, NimNuan sat on the widow’s lap, his blue gaze trained upon Ethan.
Suddenly Clara shoved her way past him to charge into the kitchen, where she came to a dead halt. Ethan came to stand beside her.
“Nim!” she cried brokenly. The cat leaped down and streaked across the floor. Clara scooped him up into her arms and buried her face in the cream-colored fur.
Ethan scratched behind one chocolate ear, then skimmed his fingers soothingly down one of Clara’s tear-dampened cheeks; all the while his gaze remained trained upon the other woman.
“I wouldn’t have hurt him,” she spoke into the charged silence, her voice surprisingly refined.
“That’s good.” Approaching her carefully, he watched her eyes, which after a moment flickered before she turned her head away. Her hand, reddened but scrubbed clean, lifted to her throat. Ethan pulled out one of the chairs and eased down beside her. “What’s your name?” Stay casual, he repeated to himself, while his trained gaze noted the gaunt, paper-white cheeks, the tremor in her hands and the eerily calm rise and fall of her breathing.
“Velma Chesterton.”
She met his gaze, and even as he sifted through his memory he automatically catalogued the dilated pupils in her light blue eyes—and the expression of shame. Deranged individuals did not manifest an awareness of inappropriate behavior.
“You don’t remember me, do you?” she asked, her voice resigned. She lifted one hand to wearily press her fingers to her temple, and the lamplight caught on the dull gold of her wedding band.
Shock jolted Ethan’s heart as the name finally clicked into place. “Chesterton,” he repeated with lips gone numb. An amalgam of memories poured through him. “Your husband was Senator Chesterton, from…Indiana?”
“Iowa.” The haunted gaze moved beyond Ethan to Clara, then returned to Ethan. “I’ve always loved animals. I grew up on a farm. When we moved to Washington, my husband promised I could have a pet to keep me company, because he would be gone so much. But he died. He died and it’s your fault.”
Ethan’s muscles tensed, instinctively ready to defend Clara, or himself, from physical attack.
Seemingly impervious to the seething atmosphere, with Nim draped over her shoulder in a limp purring bundle, Clara sat down opposite Mrs. Chesterton, then transferred Nim to her own lap. “What do you mean, it’s his fault? Why have you committed all these acts of vandalism against Dr. Harcourt?” she demanded. “What has he ever done to you?”
Clara was not a woman to beat about the bush.
“He didn’t control his Jezebel of a wife!” The words spewed across the table. “He stood by and watched while she seduced my husband. Never lifted a hand, never made her leave him alone. If he’d done his duty by her, I wouldn’t be a widow, haunted to this day by the scandal of it all. I’d still be a wife. I’d have a husband who loved me.”
Tears glazed the fever-bright eyes, their gaze locked on Ethan. “I heard when you returned, heard all about the congressman who went back to doctoring in this idyllic little town in Virginia, only an hour’s ride from where you failed your wife and turned your back on your duty to your country. It wasn’t fair. Your wife ruined my life, and here you are, cool as you please, setting up a medical practice, buying a home.” The long fingers curled into fists. “And then…and then you have the audacity—both of you—to engage in the same sordid behavior that robbed me of my husband.”
Rage scorched Ethan’s body in a conflagration. “Madam, you may level any attacks at me and I’ll answer to them. But you will not impugn the character of Miss Penrose.” He planted his palms on the table and stared the woman down until she turned her head aside. “May I remind you that my wife, like your husband, is dead. I am legally and morally free to pursue any unmarried woman I choose. And if that woman accepts my attentions, you will not accuse either of us of less-than-honorable behavior.”
Clara soothed an alarmed Nim with one hand while she stretched her other across the table, resting it on Ethan’s forearm. “Mrs. Chesterton, I think you should be careful about painting a scarlet letter on my back, when you’re the one who’s guilty of trespassing, not to mention vandalism.”
The other woman’s face crumpled. She fumbled a black hankie from her sleeve and dabbed her eyes. “You’re right. I’m sorry, so sorry. I don’t know what came over me. Ever since that awful night when my husband perished, I haven’t been myself.” She glanced at Ethan with streaming eyes. “I couldn’t bear returning home to Iowa in shame, nor could I stand the gossip and the looks of pity. For the past three years I’ve been living in a one-bedroom apartment, so full of anger and bitterness I could scarce swallow a bite of food. The day after I learned you’d returned to Virginia, I took the train here. Took a room in a boardinghouse. I s-saw when you put out your sign. Watched all week how patients flocked to see you. It was as though you had erased the past, while I…” she twisted the damp handkerchief into a gnarled rope “…I couldn’t escape from it.”
“So you decided Dr. Harcourt deserved to be as miserable as you?” Clara asked, though her tone remained mild. The hand stroking Nim never wavered. “Hence the letters?”
A sigh shuddered through Mrs. Chesterton’s body. “I never intended any real harm. I was just…The anger…It was choking me alive. Writing those notes—it seemed harmless enough. It…helped.”
“And the basket of rotten fruit?” Ethan put in, eyeing her without sympathy. “The garbage all over Miss Penrose’s front porch and path?”
“I shouldn’t have done that. I do realize now. But the feelings…For the first time I was focusing on something other than my own suffering. I even slept at night. Except the notes…after a while, they weren’t enough. I knew I needed to stop, but I couldn’t. I…couldn’t.”
“Why did you come into my house?” Clara suddenly blurted. Nim stretched his front paws up on her shoulders, as though he were embracing her, and let loose a plaintive meow. Clara’s eyes teared, and she tucked the cat against her like a small child. “Thank you for not hurting my cat,” she whispered. After clearing her throat, she finished more strongly, “My house—why did you stay?”
“I’d frightened your kitty, when I was—” Her shoulders hunched, and her feet shuffled nervously. “He came up behind me, out front, and meowed. I was so startled I dropped the, um, well, the sack, and your kitty ran off. I felt so bad. I followed him, and he was there, at the back door. Sh-shaking.” She covered
her face with the handkerchief, but after a moment managed to continue. “I opened the door for him, and he ran inside. I wanted to reassure him, but my hands were filthy. So I washed them in your sink, and while I was washing them he came over and sat at my feet. He’s so beautiful, and he started purring, and making strange sounds, almost as though he were…”
“As though he were talking,” Clara finished. “He was. Nim’s not your ordinary barn cat. He’s from Siam, and he thinks he’s supposed to converse with humans. He’s also discriminating about his company. Normally he doesn’t take to strangers, particularly ones in the process of slinging garbage all over my yard.”
“After I washed my hands, he let me hold him.” She glanced from Clara to Ethan, deep lines scoring her forehead and cheeks. “I know what I’ve done is dreadful, unforgivable. But you must believe me about the cat. I would never hurt him, or any other animal. And even when I wrote those notes, I knew it was wrong. I knew, but I couldn’t stop. I’m sorry. So sorry.”
A strange sensation feathered through Ethan, like the brush of warm invisible fingers. The outrage seemed to swell like a cresting wave before it receded into a widening pool of…peace. “I know a thing or two about guilt, and lack of forgiveness,” he said, and had to clear his throat before he could finish. “I’ve spent the past three years hating my wife, feeling guilty because I wasn’t the man she wanted me to be. Those injurious emotions almost cost me the love of a good woman.”
When Clara’s hand lightly slid over his shoulder, he turned toward her—and instead found himself inches away from a pair of myopic blue eyes. A smile that started deep in Ethan’s belly whooshed up and tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Not to mention the love of a good cat.” When Nim more or less poured his agile feline body into Ethan’s arms, all Ethan could do was accept the lithe bundle and grin. “Tell you what, Mrs. Chesterton. Tomorrow morning you clean up the mess you made out front, then you come with me to the sheriff. I think we’ll be able to clean up the rest of the mess you’ve made of your life without too much trouble. As for the past—” over Nim’s head he and Clara exchanged a warm look “—perhaps Miss Penrose and I can help a bit with how to let it go. Some things aren’t worth hanging on to.”
For the first time he looked at Velma Chesterton with compassion, and saw enough of himself to realize Clara was right—sometimes living one’s faith simply meant helping a hurting person, regardless of the state of your own emotions. “I’ve also rediscovered the love of God,” he confessed, his skin suddenly prickling with that indescribable sensation of warmth infusing his heart—his soul, his spirit. “I’d say it’s long past time to quit toting the coffins of our respective spouses on our backs. I believe, with God’s help, I can dump mine in the grave where it belongs. Then between the two of us, not to mention the help of a good woman and her cat, we ought to be able to do the same with yours.”
“I don’t deserve…I don’t understand.” As though she couldn’t help herself, Mrs. Chesterton reached a trembling arm out, her fingers barely skimming Nim’s furry belly. “You have no reason to be kind,” she whispered.
Clara rose and walked around the table. “It’s Christmas,” she said, leaning down to give the other woman a hug. “It’s the perfect time of year for kindness. Forgiveness. And new hope. Some weeks ago our minister gave the congregation a task. We were to bring symbols of our burdens, and lay them in the manger, renouncing them in order to celebrate the Christmas season. I had broken dreams, just like you, dreams that were never realized. So…I listened to our minister, and I let them go—and God supplied me with something infinitely more wonderful.”
“After we take Mrs. Chesterton home,” Ethan commented, gently depositing Nim on the floor, “I have something to share with you about that Sunday and the symbol you left at the altar.”
Epilogue
On a blustery afternoon two days before Christmas, Clara was busily writing when someone pounded on the door. When Clara opened it, Ethan stood grinning on the freshly scrubbed stoop, his thick hair wind-tossed and a glint sparkling in the clear green eyes. “Good. You’re not busy. I’ve brought something, and I’ll need your help with it.”
“Ethan, what on earth—? And I am busy. I’m writing.”
“Your letter to the editor can wait.”
“It’s not a letter,” Clara began, but he had turned aside and leaned down. When he straightened, his arms were full of a fragrant little fir tree.
“You’ll need to clear off that table under your window. I think this tree will look quite nice on it.” And with Clara dazedly trailing after him he proceeded into her parlor, set the tree on the floor, then strode back outside to return with a large gift-wrapped box tied with a huge red ribbon. “Here. Open this while I clear the table.”
“You brought me a Christmas tree.”
“I’ve always known you were an intelligent, observant woman. Open the box, sweetheart.”
A whoosh of sentimentality gummed up her throat, paralyzing her vocal chords. Clutching the box to her middle, Clara watched while Ethan cheerfully cleared the tabletop and plonked the tree—to which two strips of wood had been attached crossways, forming a stand—right in the center. A fresh, resiny fragrance permeated the air.
Nim strolled in from the bedroom, instantly going over to strop himself against Ethan’s legs before rising up to sniff the tree. Smiling, Ethan gave the cat an affectionate pat before walking back over to Clara. “Looks perfect, doesn’t it?” Gently he removed the box from her unresisting hands. “Like Christmas has finally arrived at Clara’s cottage.”
“You’re impossible, and I love you.” She reached for the box, her heart fluttering at the same time the rest of her seemed to be dissolving like the sugar glaze she’d applied to a batch of cookies she’d made that morning. “Your present isn’t ready yet.”
“This isn’t a present, it’s decorations. Hurry up and open the box. This will take some time.”
So Clara ripped off ribbon and paper and lifted off the lid, to discover dozens of tissue-wrapped objects nestled inside. The objects turned out to be tiny charms, like the one of the Capitol Building she’d relinquished weeks earlier. Only these charms were made of gold. “Ethan…You…I don’t know what to say.” Eyes filling, she held up the first one, a long-tailed cat with a mischievous smile. Bright blue-colored glass eyes winked in the December sunlight pouring through the window. “It’s Nim!”
“Keep going. Methuselah’s in there somewhere.”
Until this moment, Clara had never experienced the childlike joy possible only at Christmas. Each charm elicited a happy gasp, a delighted laugh, a sigh of contentment. Ethan helped her tie them to the tree with strands of red ribbon—a turtle, as promised, a piano, a key…
“The key to my heart,” he told her as he brushed a circumspect kiss against the nape of her neck, sending a wave of goose bumps all over Clara’s skin.
“I love you, Ethan Harcourt,” she replied. “And I’ll cherish my Christmas tree forever. But don’t delude yourself for an instant if you think I plan to consider any garlands, or gilded angels, or magnolia leaves and sprigs of ivy, or—What’s that?” He had reached inside his waistcoat to tug something out, which he shielded from Clara with his other hand.
“I thought I’d defer negotiations on appropriate Christmas decorations until after I gave you your Christmas present.”
“But…Christmas is still the day after tomorrow. You were supposed to wait. I told you I haven’t finished—I mean, I’m not ready to give you—Oh, padiddle!” Eyes narrowed, she lunged for his hands. “What is it, then?”
Ethan held his hands up high, way beyond her reach. “Are you sure you don’t want to wait for another forty-eight hours?”
“If you’d wanted to wait, you shouldn’t have teased me.” Exasperated, she picked Nim up, then turned her back on Ethan, ostensibly to study her lovely tree, proudly displaying the dozen gold charms amongst its fragrant branches. “I can’t wait for everyone to see t
his. Albert will take all the credit for introducing you to me in the first place. Eleanor will probably kiss you—no, she’ll shake your hand, firmly. Willy will offer to take you to his favorite fishing spot and Louise will enlist your aid on the sly, to hang a few greens and some mistletoe.”
“I like the mistletoe part. What about your parents?”
For a second the old defensive misery dimmed the present glow. But as she absorbed the kindness in Ethan’s eyes, the defensiveness transformed into an extraordinary lightness. “Mother will rearrange the charms to her liking. Father, as he comments every visit, will suggest I either rid myself of half the furniture, or move someplace where he won’t trip over a footstool or something. They might congratulate you on reforming their daughter.”
“Well, their daughter transformed me.” Slowly he returned whatever he’d been holding to the pocket of his waistcoat. “Perhaps I’ll wait until Christmas Day after all. I want your whole family to witness how much I love you.”
“Ethan…Louise has been matchmaking from the first time she heard about you. Our feelings for one another, especially after you and Mrs. Chesterton talked with Sheriff Gleason, by now fuel every conversation in Canterbury from dawn until dusk.” After putting Nim down, she approached Ethan, grateful when, without asking, he took her hands and tugged her closer. “Speaking of Mrs. Chesterton…I learned she was a church organist before she married. Oh, and she’s no longer wearing widow’s weeds.”
“I know. She stopped by yesterday to offer me another basket, this one filled with fresh oranges, nuts and a mince pie.” He grinned down at Clara. “She’s not as good a cook as you, but it was nice seeing her looking the way a woman ought to look, delivering food fit for human consumption. She also included a formal note of apology, on the same stationery, only this time she signed it.”
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