Twin of Fire

by Jude Deveraux

  There was laughter surrounding them, and the sound of Alan thrashing in the water as he tried to get back into the canoe, and there was the sound of Blair flailing at Lee to make him let her go. Somehow, he managed to row them the few feet to shore using just one oar, while holding Blair with his other arm and suffering as little physical injury as possible from her flying fists.

  Once on shore, he stood before her and grinned like a little boy who’d just done a magnificent feat.

  “My hat,” Blair said through clenched teeth and Lee, still grinning, went to the little wooden boat to get it.

  And when he had his back turned and he was off guard, Blair grabbed a discarded paddle and pushed him in the back with all her might. To her great joy, Leander went face down in the mud at the edge of the lake.

  But Blair didn’t have time to enjoy her success, because she saw that Alan was still floundering in the water. She thanked heaven for her years on the women’s rowing team as she made her way out to Alan in Lee’s boat.

  “I never learned to swim,” he said, as she leaned over to help him over the side. “Just to tread water.”

  They managed to get him inside the boat, Alan coughing, dripping water and weak, after what, to him, had been a harrowing experience. Blair glanced toward shore and saw Lee standing there covered with mud, and that gave her some satisfaction.

  Expertly, she turned the boat and rowed them to the other side of the lake to the rental place.

  She took care of the rental while Alan stood to one side and sneezed, then got them a hired carriage to take them back to the Imperial Hotel where he was staying.

  Blair was so angry that she didn’t even look at Alan all the way through town to the hotel. How dare Leander treat her like that in public—or in private for that matter, she thought. She had made herself perfectly clear that she wanted nothing to do with him, yet he insisted on forcing himself on her.

  She followed Alan up the stairs to his room. “If I ever get my hands on that man, I’ll kill him. He is the most insufferable creature! Thinking that I could ever possibly want to marry someone like that is just a perfect example of his self-centeredness. Give me your key.”

  “What? Oh. Here. Blair, do you think you should go into my room with me? I mean, how do you think it will look?”

  Blair took the key from him and opened the door. “Could you imagine living with that man? He is like a very large spoiled boy who has to have his own way. Now, he’s decided that he wants me, probably because I’m the first woman to ever say no to him, and so he sets out to make my life miserable.” She stopped and looked at Alan as he stood dripping on the hotel room floor. “Why are you standing there in those wet clothes? You should get undressed.”

  “Blair, I don’t think you should be here, and I certainly don’t plan to undress in front of you.”

  Blair began to come back to her senses and realized where she was. “You’re right, of course. I guess I was too angry to think. Will I see you tomorrow?”

  “If I don’t die of pneumonia before then,” he said with a smile.

  She smiled back at him, started to leave, then, on impulse, she turned back and flung her arms around him as she pressed her mouth to his.

  He held her tentatively at first, as if he didn’t want to get her wet, but as Blair applied more pressure and more passion, he held her closer, turning his head as he became more involved in the kiss.

  Blair pulled away. “I have to go,” she said softly, as she moved toward the door. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Alan stood still for a while after Blair’d gone, not bothering to change out of his wet clothes. “You didn’t say no to him, Blair,” he whispered, “and when I kiss you you have to go, but he can make you stay all night.”

  On Thursday morning, Blair burst into the Chandler house, tears running down her face, and ran upstairs to her room. She had to plow through several bouquets of flowers before she could get to the bed. Sweeping aside a half dozen boxes of chocolates, she flung herself on the bed where she spent an hour weeping. Leander Westfield was making her life impossible. Yesterday he’d once again ruined a pleasant afternoon with Alan. She and Alan had gone on a picnic in the country and Lee had shown up, firing a six-gun in the air to frighten the horses, and trying to pull Blair atop his horse. But, again, she’d managed to thwart him by making the horse rear, and she got away.

  Alan had stood there watching them, not able to participate since he knew very little about the temperament of horses that weren’t attached to a carriage. In fact, Blair’d had a difficult time talking him into taking a ride, rather than renting a buggy as he preferred to do.

  When Blair had gotten away from Lee and his rearing horse, she mounted one of the horses that she and Alan had rented—the other one had run away at the sound of Lee’s pistol—and spent some moments persuading Alan to mount behind her.

  Blair’d spent a great deal of her childhood on a horse, and she needed all her skill now, as she raced to get away from Lee. As she turned back to look at him once, with Alan holding onto her for dear life, Alan screamed in fear. They were fast approaching a tree, and the horse was going to hit it if he wasn’t given room to pass it.

  Leander saw the danger at the same time and, in a lightning-fast movement, swerved his horse so hard that the animal unexpectedly reared, throwing Lee into the dust. Because of his action, Blair and Alan were able to get away safely.

  Unfortunately, or fortunately from Blair’s point of view, Lee’s horse kept on going, heading for the safety of his stable.

  Alan was clutching both Blair and the saddle as she kept up a brisk pace back to town. “Aren’t you going to give him a ride? It’s miles back to town.”

  “It’s only about six miles,” she answered over her shoulder. “And, besides, he should be used to walking by now.”

  That had been Wednesday, and compared to today, that had been a day of thanksgiving. Early this morning, Gates had started on Blair because he’d finally heard what had happened at the lake, and how Blair had been seen with another man, and how she’d humiliated Lee before everyone.

  Blair didn’t want to argue with him, so she said that she was to meet Lee at the hospital this morning. She lied and said that Lee wanted to talk to her about medicine, but the truth was, she was hoping Lee wouldn’t be at the hospital, because she certainly didn’t want to see him.

  Gates insisted that she go with him as he left for work, and when he dropped her off, he waited to see her go through the doors. Like a prisoner, she thought.

  The inside of the hospital was familiar to her, and the smell of carbolic, wet wood and soap was like coming home. No one seemed to be around, so she started wandering about the wards, peering inside the rooms, glancing at the patients and wishing that she could get back to Pennsylvania and go to work.

  It was on the third floor that she heard something that she identified at once: the sound of someone trying to breathe.

  She became Dr. Chandler instantly, running into the room, seeing the older woman choking and beginning to turn blue. Blair didn’t waste a second before she began pushing on the woman’s chest and then using her own lungs to force air into the woman.

  She hadn’t applied two breaths before she found herself forcibly pulled away.

  Leander pushed so hard that she nearly fell as he began clearing the woman’s throat. Within minutes, the patient was breathing evenly again and he turned her over to a nurse.

  “You come to my office,” he said to Blair, barely looking at her.

  What followed for Blair was twenty minutes of a tongue-lashing such as she’d never had before in her life. Lee seemed to think that she was trying to interfere in his work and that she could have killed his patient.

  Nothing Blair said made any difference to his rage. He said she should have called for help rather than worked on a patient that she knew nothing about, that the treatment she’d tried might have been the wrong one and she could have done more harm than good.

&
nbsp; Blair knew he was right and, even as he spoke, she began to cry.

  Leander relented, stopped his tirade, and put his arm around her.

  Blair drew away, screaming that she hated him and she never wanted to see him again. She ran down the stairs and hid inside a doorway while he ran past looking for her. When the way was clear, she left the hospital and caught a trolley car home—where she was now, crying and never wanting to see that horrible, hideous man again.

  At eleven, she managed to pull herself together enough to leave the house to meet Alan. She told her mother she was meeting Lee to play tennis and Opal merely nodded, mistakenly trusting her daughter.

  Opal was sitting on the back porch, trying to enjoy the spring afternoon and not worry about her daughters, her embroidery in her hands, when she looked up to see Leander standing in the doorway. “Why, Lee, what a pleasant surprise. I thought you and Blair went to play tennis. Did you forget something?”

  “Mind if I sit down and join you for a while?”

  “Of course not.” She looked at him. Rarely was Lee’s handsome face marred by a frown, but today he looked as if he were deeply worried about something. “Lee, is there something you’d like to talk about?”

  Leander took his time in answering as he withdrew a cigar from his inner coat pocket and motioned to Opal for permission to smoke. “She’s out with a man named Alan Hunter, the man she says she’s going to marry.”

  Opal’s hands stopped sewing. “Oh, dear, yet another complication. You’d better tell me all of it.”

  “It seems that she accepted this man’s marriage proposal in Pennsylvania and he was to come Monday and meet you and Mr. Gates.”

  “But by Monday, Blair’d already…And the announcement of your marriage had been made, so…” She trailed off.

  “It was my doing that our engagement was announced. Both Houston and Blair wanted to keep quiet and forget any of it’d ever happened. I’m almost ashamed to admit that I blackmailed Blair into remaining in Chandler and participating in the competition.”

  “Competition?”

  “I met Hunter at the train station on Monday, and I talked him into competing with me for Blair’s hand. I have until the twentieth to win her, because on the twentieth she’s going to decide whether she wants to marry me or leave town with Hunter.”

  He turned to Opal. “But I think I’m losing, and I don’t know how to win her. I’ve never had to court a woman before, so I’m not really sure what has to be done. I’ve tried flowers, candy, and making a fool of myself in front of the entire town—all the things I thought women liked, but nothing seems to be working. On the twentieth, she’s going to leave with Hunter,” he repeated, as if it were the most tragic of thoughts and, with a sigh, he told Opal what had been going on in the last few days, told her about the lake incident and then the time with the horses and ended with this morning at the hospital when he had, admittedly, been a little rough on Blair.

  Opal was thoughtful for a moment. “You love her a great deal, don’t you?” she said with surprise in her voice.

  Lee sat up straighter in his chair. “I don’t know whether it’s love exactly…” He glanced at Opal, then seemed as if he realized he was fighting a losing battle. “Well, all right, maybe I am in love with her, so in love that I don’t even mind looking like the town idiot—if only I get her.”

  He quickly began to defend himself. “But I’m not about to go to her looking moony-eyed and tell her that I did an unmanly thing like fall in love with her on the first night I spent with her. It’s one thing to have your roses thrown back in your face, but I’m not sure I’d like to have the same thing done to my declarations of undying love.”

  “I think you may be right. Do you know how this other man is courting her?”

  “It’s something I clean forgot to ask.”

  “He must be the ‘friend’ who keeps sending her medical books. Blair reads one, and an hour later she leaves the house, saying she’s meeting you.”

  “I have a room full of medical books, but I can’t imagine sending one to a woman. I guess I have to agree with Mr. Gates when it comes to medicine. I wish she’d give up this absurd idea and settle down and—.”

  “And what? Be more like Houston? You had a perfect homemaker, yet you fell in love with someone else. Did you ever think that if Blair gave up her medicine she’d not be Blair?”

  There was silence between them for a few moments.

  “At this point, I’m willing to try anything. So you think I should send her some medical textbooks?”

  “Lee,” Opal said softly. “Why did you become a doctor? When did you first know that you wanted to dedicate your life to medicine?”

  He smiled. “When I was nine and Mother was ill. Old Doc Brenner stayed with her for two days and she lived. I knew then that that’s what I wanted to do.”

  Opal looked out across her garden for a moment. “When my daughters were eleven, I took them to Pennsylvania to visit my doctor brother, Henry, and his wife, Flo. We had no more than arrived when Flo, Houston, and I came down with a fever. It wasn’t serious, but it kept us in bed and left the care of Blair to the staff. My brother thought she looked lonely, so he invited her to go on his rounds with him.”

  Opal paused to smile. “I didn’t learn what went on until days later, when Henry was so excited that he could no longer contain himself. It seems that Blair disobeyed Henry when he told her to stay away from the patients he was treating. The first day, Blair helped her uncle in a difficult, messy birth, keeping her head clear, never panicking, even when the woman began to hemorrhage. By the third day, she was assisting him in an emergency appendectomy performed on a kitchen table. Henry said he’d never seen anyone so suited to medicine as Blair was. It took me a while to get over the shock of the thought of my daughter being a doctor, but when I talked to Blair about it, there was a light in her eyes that I’d never seen before, and I knew that if at all possible I was going to help her become a doctor.”

  She paused to sigh. “I hadn’t reckoned on Mr. Gates. When we returned to Chandler, all Blair could talk about was becoming a doctor. Mr. Gates said that no girl under his protection was going to do anything so unladylike. I stood back for a year and watched Blair’s spirit gradually become smothered. I think the final straw was when Mr. Gates forbade the library to loan Blair any more books on the subject of medicine.”

  Opal gave a little laugh. “I think that was the only time that I ever stood up to Mr. Gates. Henry and Flo had no children, and they begged me to let Blair come live with them, promising that Henry would take the responsibility of seeing that Blair received the best education money could buy a woman. I didn’t want to see my daughter go, but I knew it was the only way. If she’d stayed here, her spirit would have been broken.”

  She turned to Lee. “So you see how much medicine means to Blair. It’s been her entire life since she was just a girl and now—.” She broke off as she pulled an envelope from her pocket. “This came the day before yesterday, from Henry. He sent it to me so I could break the news to Blair as gently as possible. The letter says that even though she qualified to intern at St. Joseph’s, even though she placed first in the three-day-long testing, the Philadelphia City Commissioner has vetoed her placement, because he says it’s an impropriety to have a lady working so closely with men.”

  “But that’s—,” Lee burst out.

  “Unfair? No more unfair than your asking her to give up medicine and stay home to see that the maid irons your shirts the way you want them.”

  Lee looked out at the garden, smoking his cigar, thinking.

  “Maybe she’d like to visit a few cases with me in the country. Nothing too difficult, just some routine checks.”

  “Yes, I do think she’d like that.” She put her hand on his arm. “And Lee, I think you’ll see a different Blair from the one you’ve seen up ‘til now. Because Blair tends to be a bit outspoken, people sometimes don’t see the size of her heart. If you continue to make Mr.
Hunter look like a fool in front of her, she’ll never forgive you, much less begin to love you. Let her see the Leander this town knows, the one who repeatedly gets out of bed at three o’clock to listen to Mrs. Lechner’s complaints of mysterious pains. And the man who saved Mrs. Saunderson’s twins last summer. And the man who—.”

  “All right,” Lee laughed. “I’ll show her that I’m actually a saint in disguise. Do you think she really does know anything about medicine?”

  It was Opal’s turn to laugh. “Have you ever heard of Dr. Henry Thomas Blair?”

  “The pathologist? Of course. Some of his advances in disease detection have been—.” He stopped. “He’s Uncle Henry?”

  Opal’s eyes twinkled in delight. “The same, and Henry says Blair is good, very good. Give her a chance. You won’t be sorry.”

  Chapter 10

  Blair’s day was not improved by her tennis game with Alan. During her schooling, her uncle had emphasized the importance of exercise. He said that vigorous physical exercise would help improve her ability to think and to study. Therefore, Blair had joined the rowing team, had learned to play tennis with some of the other students, and, when she could, she’d participated in gymnastics, bicycling, and done a little hiking.

  She beat Alan at tennis.

  Alan was looking distracted as he walked toward the side of the court. Throughout the game, he’d watched over his shoulder, with an expression on his face that showed that he thought someone was going to appear at any moment.

  Blair was very annoyed when the game was finished, because she suspected that Alan’s worry about Leander was keeping him from playing well.

  “Alan, I almost think you’re afraid of him. So far, we’ve beaten him every time.”

  “You have beaten him. I’m useless in this country. Now, if we could meet in a city, perhaps I’d have a chance.”