Twin of Fire

by Jude Deveraux

  Listlessly, she sat on one of the sofas.

  “Have you seen the dress, Blair?” Houston asked as she turned around, holding a big cut-glass bowl that must have cost someone the earth.

  “What dress?”

  “Our wedding dress, of course,” Houston said patiently. “I’m having yours made just like mine.”

  Blair felt that she couldn’t stand to be in the room with so much enthusiasm. Maybe Houston could be put in a thrill of delight by a few presents, but she couldn’t. “Mother, I don’t feel too well. I think I’ll go to bed and read for a while.”

  “All right, dear,” Opal said, as she dug into yet another box. “I’ll send Susan up with a tray. By the way, a young man called and said he wouldn’t be at the hospital tomorrow. A Mr. Hunter, I believe,” she said.

  If anything, Blair began to feel worse. She’d neglected Alan shamefully in the last few days.

  The morning came all too soon, and Blair’s mood wasn’t much improved. At least, the patients at the hospital kept her mind off her own problems—that is, until Leander came. His black mood made hers seem like a beam of sunshine. Within two hours, he managed to yell at her four times, telling her that if she wanted to be a doctor, she had to learn a few things. Blair wanted to yell back at him but, after one look at his face, she wisely said nothing except, “Yes, sir,” and tried to do what she could to obey his orders.

  At eleven, she was bending over a little girl whose broken arm she’d just set, when Alan came up behind her.

  “I thought I’d find you here—with him.”

  Blair gave the little girl a smile. “Alan, I’m working.”

  “We’re going to have a talk now, in front of the entire hospital or alone.”

  “All right, then, come with me.” She led him down the corridor to Leander’s office. She didn’t know the hospital very well, and it was the only place she knew where they could be private. She just hoped that Lee wouldn’t come back and discover them in there.

  “I should have guessed this is where you’d go. His office! You must feel comfortable in here. No doubt you’re in here often enough.” To his consternation, Blair collapsed in a chair, put her hands to her face and began to cry.

  Alan was on his knees before her in an instant. “I didn’t mean to be cross with you.”

  Blair tried to control her tears, but couldn’t. “Everyone is cross with me. I never seem to please anyone. Mr. Gates never leaves me alone. Houston hates me. Leander can barely speak to me, and now you…”

  “What’s Westfield got to be angry about? He’s whining hands down.”

  “Whining?” Blair pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and blew her nose. “He’s not even in the competition. He said he could see that I loved you, and so he was no longer going to compete.”

  Alan stood and leaned against the desk. “Then why are you spending day after day with him? You haven’t been two feet from his side for a week.”

  “He said that he’d like to work with me for the few days left of my stay. He said he’d never worked so well with anyone before. And he extended the invitation to both of us.”

  “Of all the underhanded—,” Alan began, pacing the room. “He is lower than I thought. I never heard of such a sneaky, dirty trick.” He looked back at Blair. “He knows you’re infatuated with anything to do with medicine, so he uses that to get near you, and of course he’d invite me! The man’s had years of experience and training over mine, so he looks great while I look like an idiot.”

  “That’s not true! Leander said he wanted to work with me, and we do work well together. It’s as if we, read each other’s minds.”

  “From what I hear, it’s been that way since the first night you went out.”

  “Now who’s being underhanded?”

  “No more than he is,” Alan shot back. “Blair, I’m tired of looking like a fool. I’m a student doctor competing in an operating room with a man with years of experience. I grew up in a city, but I’m competing in a canoe and on horseback. There’s no possible way that I can look good against him.”

  “But you don’t understand. Leander isn’t competing. He no longer wants to marry me. I’m staying in Chandler until my sister gets married, and then you and I will leave together. I still have hopes that Houston will marry Leander.”

  He watched her for a moment. “I believe that some part of you actually believes what you’re saying. Let me tell you something: Westfield has not left the race. The poor man is competing so hard it’s a wonder he has any breath left. And if you believe you’re not getting married on Monday, why haven’t you put a stop to all the wedding plans your sister is making? Do you plan to sit in the front row and watch your sister get married while you’re surrounded by two of everything? What are you going to do with all those presents?”

  He put his hands on the arms of the chair and leaned his face into hers. “As for Houston marrying your beloved doctor, I don’t think you could sit there and watch that.”

  “That’ll be enough, Hunter,” came Leander’s voice from the doorway.

  “It’s not nearly enough,” Alan said, advancing on Leander.

  “If it’s a fight you want—.”

  Lee stopped when Blair placed herself between the two men.

  “Blair,” Alan said, “it’s time you made a decision. I will be on the four o’clock train out of this town today. If you’re not there, I’ll leave alone.” With that, he left the room.

  Blair stood there alone with Lee for a moment and neither said anything, then Lee put his hand on her arm.

  “Blair,” he began, but she moved away.

  “I think Alan’s right. It’s time I made my decision and stopped playing childish games.” With that she swept past him and walked the two miles to her house.

  When she got home, she very calmly took a pen and paper and began to make a list of the pros and cons of leaving with Alan. There were five good, strong reasons that she could come up with of why she should leave with him. They ranged from being able to get out of this bigoted town to allowing Houston to no longer feel pressured to marry her millionaire.

  The only reason she could think of for not leaving with Alan was that she’d never get to see Leander again. She’d not be able to work with him on that new infirmary of his—of course, if what Alan had said was true, maybe Leander had shown her his plans just as a ruse to win the competition.

  She stood. If she didn’t get to work on the clinic here, in Pennsylvania, St. Joseph’s Hospital was waiting for her.

  She glanced down at her uniform and knew that that one garment was the only thing that she’d take with her. She couldn’t walk out the door carrying a bag other than her medical bag, or there’d be questions. All she could take was what she was wearing. She crumbled the list in her hand and kept it there. She might need it to remind her why she was doing this.

  Downstairs, her mother was arranging gifts, and Houston was out. Blair tried to say a few words to her mother, to say good-bye without saying the exact words, but Opal was too busy counting pieces of silver.

  With her chin in the air, Blair went out the door and walked the long way to the train station. As she walked, she looked at the bustling little town with different eyes. Maybe it wasn’t as bad as she’d originally thought. It wasn’t Philadelphia, but it had its compensations. Three carriages rattled by carrying people who called out to her, “Hello, Blair-Houston,” and the double name for once didn’t seem so bad.

  As she neared the train station, she wondered what would happen after she’d gone; if Houston would marry Lee, if her mother would understand Blair’s disappearance, if Gates would hate her more than he did already.

  She arrived at the train station at three forty-five and quickly saw that Alan wasn’t there yet. She stood on the platform, her medical bag beside her, fiddled with the list in her hand, and thought about how this could be her last few minutes in the town named for her father. After the scandal she’d caused—stealing her sister’s fia
ncé, then running off with another man four days before the wedding—she doubted whether she could come back before she was about ninety years old.

  “Ahem,” came a voice that she recognized, and she turned abruptly to see Leander sitting on a bench behind her.

  “I thought I’d come to say good-bye,” he said, and Blair went to stand in front of him. The list fell from her hand and, before she could pick it up, Leander took it and read it.

  “I see I lost out to Uncle Henry and to your guilt over Houston.”

  She snatched the list from his hands. “I have done something unforgivable to my sister, and if I can remedy what I’ve done, I will.”

  “She didn’t look too unhappy to me the last time I saw her. She was looking at Taggert like he hung the moon.”

  “Houston likes his money.”

  Lee snorted. “I may not know much about that woman, but I know she isn’t in love with money. I think what she likes is a little more, ah…personal.”

  “You’re crude.”

  “Then I guess it’s good that you’re marrying somebody perfect like Hunter, and not somebody crude like me. Just because I do things to your body that make you cry with pleasure, because we enjoy each other’s company, because we work together so well—those aren’t reasons to marry me. I hear you even beat Hunter at tennis.”

  “I’m glad I’m not marrying you. I never wanted to, ever.” A sound made her glance down the track and she saw the train.

  Leander stood. “I’m damned well not going to wait here to see you make an ass of yourself.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “You’re going to be miserable, and you deserve it.” He turned on his heel and left.

  For a moment, Blair almost ran after him, but she caught herself. She’d made her decision and she was sticking to it. This would be better for everyone concerned.

  The train pulled into the station, but Alan still wasn’t there. She stood and walked down the platform while two men got off the train and a man and a woman got on.

  The conductor started to motion the train forward.

  “You have to wait. There’s someone supposed to be here.”

  “If he ain’t here, then he’s missed the train. All aboard.”

  With disbelief, Blair watched the train pull out of the station. She sat down on the bench and waited. Perhaps Alan was just late and meant to catch the next train. She sat there for a total of two hours and forty-five minutes, but Alan didn’t appear. She asked the ticket manager if a man fitting Alan’s description had bought a ticket. He’d purchased two tickets early that morning—for the four o’clock.

  Blair paced the platform for another thirty minutes, then began to walk home.

  So this was how it felt to be jilted, she thought. Funny, but she didn’t feel bad at all. In fact, the closer she got to home, the lighter she felt. Maybe tomorrow she could work at the hospital with Leander.

  When Blair walked into the house it was as quiet as a tomb, and the only light on was in the family parlor. She walked in, and to her surprise, her mother and Leander were sitting there, talking as quietly as if they were at a funeral.

  When Opal saw her daughter, she very calmly, very slowly, dropped her embroidery and fainted. Leander stared at Blair so hard his mouth fell open, his cigar dropped out and set the fringe on a little footstool on fire.

  Blair was so pleased with their reactions that she stood there grinning at them. The next moment, Susan came into the room and began screaming.

  The screaming revived them all. Lee put out the fire, Blair slapped her mother’s hands until she recovered, and Susan went off to make tea.

  As soon as Opal was sitting upright, Leander grabbed Blair’s shoulders, jerked her to her feet and began shaking her. “I hope that damned dress of yours fits because you’re marrying me on Monday. You understand that?”

  “Leander, you’re hurting her,” Opal cried.

  Lee didn’t pause in shaking Blair. “She’s killing me! You understand, Blair?”

  “Yes, Leander,” she managed to say.

  He pushed her down on the sofa and stormed from the room.

  With shaking hands, Opal picked up her sewing from the floor. “I believe I’ve had enough excitement in the last two weeks to last me a lifetime.”

  Blair leaned back on the couch and smiled.

  Chapter 16

  For three days, Leander kept Blair so busy at the hospital that she had no time to think. He came for her early in the morning and returned her late in the evening. He took her to the warehouse on Archer Avenue and told her of his plans to renovate the place into a women’s clinic. Right away, Blair had some ideas of her own, and Lee listened quietly and discussed them with her.

  “I think we can have it ready in two weeks, since the equipment is already on its way from Denver,” Lee said. “I’d planned it as a surprise, a wedding present, but I’ve had more than my share of surprises lately and can’t stand any more.”

  Before Blair could say a word, he ushered her out of the warehouse and into his buggy and drove her back to the hospital. She was relieved that what Alan had said wasn’t true, that Lee hadn’t been lying about the clinic just to win the competition.

  As the hours accumulated and the wedding grew closer, Blair wondered why Lee had wanted to marry her. He made no attempt to touch her, and they never talked except to discuss a patient. A few times, she caught him watching her, especially when she was working with other doctors, but he always turned away when she looked up.

  And every day, Blair came to respect Lee more and more as a doctor. She soon realized that he could have made a great deal of money if he’d stayed in a big city hospital but, instead, he chose to remain in Chandler where he was seldom paid for anything. The hours were long and hard, the sheer amount of work overwhelming, and the rewards, for the most part, intangible.

  On Sunday afternoon, the day before the wedding—when Blair was feeling a little queasy from Houston’s pre-wedding party the night before—he called her into his office. It was an awkward meeting for both of them. Leander kept staring at her in a way that made her arms break into gooseflesh, and all she could think of was that tomorrow she was going to walk down the aisle to him.

  “I’ve written a letter to St. Joseph’s Hospital, telling them that you’ll not be accepting their position.”

  Blair took a deep breath and sat down heavily in a chair. She hadn’t thought about having to give up the internship.

  Lee leaned forward on the desk. “I was thinking that maybe I’ve been a bit highhanded.” He began to study his nails. “If you want to call tomorrow off, I’d understand.”

  For a moment, Blair was so bewildered she couldn’t say anything. Was he saying that he didn’t want to marry her? She stood quickly. “If you’re trying to get out of this after all you’ve done to force me to marry you, I’ll—.”

  She couldn’t say any more because Leander had leaped from behind the desk, grabbed her shoulders and kissed her in a hard, intense way that left her speechless.

  “I don’t want out,” he said when he had released her and Blair had managed to get her weak knees under control. “Now, get back to work, doctor. On second thought, go home and rest. If I know your sister, she has three dresses for you to try on, and your mother will have a hundred things for you to do. I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon.” He grinned broader. “And tomorrow night. Now, get out of here.”

  Blair couldn’t help smiling back at him, and she kept smiling all the way home.

  But her smile disappeared as soon as she entered the Chandler house. Mr. Gates was furious because she had been working at the hospital on a Sunday and not at home helping her sister with the wedding arrangements, especially when poor Houston wasn’t feeling well today. Blair was tired, too, and she was nervous about the wedding, and she was close to tears before the odious man got through yelling at her. Opal seemed to understand what her daughter was feeling and quickly got Mr. Gates to go to his study, as she took Blair into the garden
to start writing thank-you notes.

  Blair was still smarting from Mr. Gates’s attack when she sat down with her mother.

  “How could you marry a man like him, Mother? How could you subject Houston to him? At least I got away, but Houston’s had to stay here all these years.”

  Opal was silent for a few minutes. “I guess I didn’t consider you girls when I fell in love with Mr. Gates.”

  “Fell in love with him! But I thought that your family forced you to marry him.”

  “Where in the world did you get such an idea?” Opal asked, aghast.

  “I think Houston and I must have decided it on our own. We couldn’t see any other reason for your marrying him. Perhaps we liked to think that after our father died, you were too distraught to care whom you married.”

  Opal gave a little laugh. “You both were so young when William died, and I’m sure that as children you’d remember him as the most wonderful of fathers, always doing things, creating things, making excitement wherever he went.”

  “He wasn’t like that?” Blair asked cautiously, dreading to hear awful things about her adored father.

  Opal put her hand on her daughter’s arm. “He was all and more than you remember. I’m sure you don’t remember half of his spirit, his flamboyance, or his courage or ambition. Both of you girls have inherited much from him.” She sighed. “But the truth is that I found William Chandler the most exhausting man on earth. I loved him dearly, but there were days when I had tears of relief in my eyes when he finally left the house. You see, I’d been raised in the belief that a woman’s role in life was to sit in the front parlor and direct servants while she embroidered. The most strenuous thing I had planned to undertake was counted cross-stitch. All those little squares to count!”