Four
A couple of hours later, Hannah was back in her cabin watching over her patient as she went about doing what she needed to. Remembering Penny had told her there would be no other emergencies for a few days; she set about putting her small cabin to rights. She often didn’t have time to clean like she should between helping Doctor Thomas at his clinic and seeing to the women’s health needs that popped up from time to time. Recently she’d been seeing a few of the new brides in town. The first was Beatrice Jameson who was surprised to find she was in the family way and a bit worried how she would handle two children under two. Hannah had assured her women had been doing so for much longer than they’d been born, and had made the young wife and mother promise to eat right and send for her at the first sign of trouble or labor pains.
Just a few weeks ago Marta Clark had come to see her worried she was sick. The young woman had also been surprised by her condition and worried about adding another child to her already large family. Hannah herself had been worried a bit about her with five other children and Royce to look after, and had taken it upon herself to go see Royce and ask him to arrange some help for his wife. She hadn’t told him that his Marta was pregnant, but had told him she was working herself into exhaustion. She’d suggested that he find someone to help with some of the cooking and cleaning around their place for a while and give Marta a chance to rest. When Marta finally told him she was with child, he would understand better what Hannah had been trying to tell him without ruining the surprise. ‘Course knowing that Royce’s first wife had died in childbirth, he might be even more of a mess than normal. She’d have to remember to talk to Doctor Thomas about the Clarks next time she saw him.
She cleaned up the area where she had slept the night before, folding everything and placing it back on the shelf it had come from. She’d need it again tonight, but she wanted to clean the floor first since it had been almost two weeks since she’d last had a chance to do so. She grabbed a bucket full of snow to put on the stove to melt and heat as she quickly cut up the two rabbits one of the trappers had given her yesterday as payment for sewing up a wound he claimed to have gotten skinning a beaver. It looked more like something he got from a broken bottle down at the Golden Nugget but she didn’t say so, just sewed it up and took his two rabbits. They’d make a good rabbit stew she and Henry could have both for lunch and supper. She got the stew on and figured they’d use the leftover biscuits from breakfast with lunch; she’d whip up a pan of cornbread to go with the same stew for dinner. She was just starting on scrubbing the floor when Henry start moaning. She walked over and made sure that he wasn’t hurting, but it seemed his moans were more from a dream than from the gunshot wound to his back. He was mumbling about killers and rustlers and she figured it was something he’d encountered as a member of the Marshal service.
She wondered what had possessed the dapper young man she had known in New York to not only join the Marshal Service, but to leave New York. She knew he’d been heartbroken when her sister rejected him, but had it been so bad that he’d fled everyone and everything he’d ever known for a life of danger and getting shot at? She could see as she looked at his bare chest and back that he’d taken other wounds through the years working as a Deputy Marshal and now Marshal. There were several knife scars or cutting scars and at least two other bullets scars that she could see. The young man she’d known in New York was gentle and as refined as anyone of her family’s social status, even if he was a step below them. Could her sister’s rejection of him have changed him so much? Was he even the man she’d loved or thought she’d loved all these years. The young man who had seen her and encouraged her was the measure to which all men since had been found lacking, but was that measure false in itself? She didn’t know, and she didn’t know how to find out in the next six and a half days before the time was up and people found out she’d had him in her place for a week alone. Did she even want to know this Henry Wheeler whose dreams were filled with violence and pain?
How could she find out if she had to keep him on the laudanum for his pain so he’d rest and heal? Maybe she should try an even lighter dose watered down even more. She didn’t want him in pain, but not sound asleep would be good. Besides, she knew the opium in the drug would help loosen his tongue and inhibitions so that maybe she could learn about who he’d become in the last five years. She needed him to see her for who she was and not what he remembered or through the lens of his desire for Esther. Yes, she’d halve his dose after lunch and hope he’d feel like talking to her.
Henry woke to another wonderful smell, some kind of stew unless he was mistaken. He slowly looked around without trying to sit up. The pain from earlier was starting to come back. The medicine Hannah had given him, while it took away his pain, had caused him to have vivid dreams that mixed his past with the thought of losing her to villains from his past, including Rayner. Why he was worried about losing Hannah was something he didn’t want to think about, but knew he needed to. After all, if and when it was found out they’d spent time alone in her cabin during this snowstorm and the time until it thawed enough he could travel, he’d have no choice but to marry her. He couldn’t leave her with a damaged reputation with the likes of Archie Grady and his crew running around. She wouldn’t be safe from advances that she didn’t deserve, especially on top of the fact that she already had the tarnish of being one of the “missing” women. He looked at her on her hands and knees scrubbing the floor on the other side of the table. Her backside was to him and he closed his eyes trying to get his body under control after his eyes had locked on to her perfectly shaped derrière as it moved with every push and pull of her arms. Little Hannah Coppersmith had grown into a beautiful and desirable young lady. One that he’d be a fool to deny he wouldn’t mind being married to. Before he could get himself under control completely, there was a cluck and then a sharp pain in his hand. That stupid rooster almost seemed to know what he was thinking. He sighed loudly so that Hannah would know he was awake before he spoke so as not to startle her. “Must you keep that rooster in the cabin?”
She stopped scrubbing and turned to look at him. Some of her hair had worked itself loose from the two braids and hung around her face in ringlets. Henry wanted nothing more than to twirl them around his fingers and pull her in for a kiss of those full and promising looking lips. “It’s too cold and the snow too deep for Bob to stay outside right now. Besides, his job is to protect my virtue and he couldn’t do that outside, could he?”
“What in the world makes you think you need your virtue protected from me, Miss Coppersmith? I can’t even sit up on my own right now. Speaking of which, I’m going to need to get out of this bed and find a necessary, I’m sorry to say.”
Hannah sighed and placed her scrub brush in the bucket sitting beside her. “I’ll help you get upright and get you the chamber pot. Then I’ll go out and check on your horse and mine. Please don’t do yourself damage while I’m gone.”
She stood and walked over, reaching under the bed and pulling out a chamber pot and setting it on a chair she put beside the bed. She helped Henry sit up for a few minutes to get his pain and weakness under control and then helped him stand. He shook like a newborn colt. She looked up at him, “Are you going to be okay if I leave, or should I just turn around facing the other way and help hold you up?”
Henry turned red. He wanted to tell her to leave but he knew, as embarrassing as it would be to have her hold him up while he emptied his bladder, if she let him go now he was going to fall and embarrass himself even more. As sweat popped out on his forehead she nodded without him saying anything, and slowly turned so she faced the bed and held on to him with both arms, her head buried in his back to give him as much privacy and stability as she could.
He wanted to curse, but knew it would just embarrass them both more. So he quickly undid his buttons and took care of the matter at hand. Once he was finished she helped him sit down; he lay down totally worn out. “Why am I so weak? It’s not lik
e this is the first time I’ve been shot. I don’t remember being this weak the last time.”
Hannah took the chamber pot out and returned quickly, letting in a blast of cold air that had them both shivering and Bob’s feathers puffing. She put the pot back under the bed and sat in the chair facing him. “I told you this morning you lost a lot of blood. That’s why you are so weak. It wasn’t the bullet itself that has done you in, but the loss of blood and laying on the frozen ground for who knows how long before I found you. If you keep resting and eating what I give you, then in a few days, you should be feeling more like your old self, strength and energy wise. It will take a while longer for the bullet wound to heal, but the fact that it missed your spine is a good thing, Henry. You could have been paralyzed if it had been a half inch more to the left. Or collapsed a lung, an inch more to the right. As it was, it just damaged some muscle that I’m sure you’ll recover once you’re mended.”
“I know you’re right, but that doesn’t help me right now. I need to figure out who shot me and if Reverend Theodore survived his near hanging. Plus, now I have to worry about harming your reputation, too.”
“Henry, you can’t do anything about any of those things right now. For now, you need to concentrate on getting well. We’ll worry about repercussions when we must, but until then rest, heal, and let’s get reacquainted; we both know what will be expected of us when word gets out. I’d rather at least be friends again before that happens.”
Henry saw the truth of her statement in her face. She, like him, knew they’d have no choice but to marry to save her from ruin, and she was right; they needed to become reacquainted before that happened. She obviously wasn’t the little wallflower he’d last seen in New York any more than he was the future shopkeeper she’d known. Life and time had changed them both. Her into a beautiful woman who had fulfilled her dream of becoming a nurse. Him, well he was a man still lost in the numbness he’d built around himself at her sister’s rejection. Hannah deserved better than him. He didn’t know how he could let down his walls to become what she deserved, but he’d have to try because she deserved his heart if he could find it.
Five
That night after supper Hannah checked Henry’s wound again. Still it was clean, dry, and seemed to have no infection. After lunch she had washed most of the blood out of the shirt she’d cut off him. Now she tried to sew it back together if for no other reason than so he wouldn’t be half-dressed when someone came to visit when the week was over. It was hard to sit and sew and talk to Henry. His chest and stomach kept distracting her. She found herself wondering how the hair on his chest and stomach would feel under her hands. Would it be soft and downy like those on some of the babies she’d delivered, or wiry and rough like the rest of him? She blushed at the direction her thoughts were taking her. Henry didn’t feel about her like she did him. He’d only agreed they get to know each other again because they both knew that they were going to be forced to marry when word of his staying with her got out. Otherwise, Hannah would become a target for every unscrupulous womanizer in Creede and Creede was full of men of that type. She’d do well to keep her thoughts on that fact, too instead of fantasizing about the man who still loved her sister.
She turned her mind to fixing his shirt. “Why did you rip my coat and shirt off? Why not just remove them before you got me in the bed?”
She looked at him. “How strong do you think I am, Henry Wheeler? It took everything I had just to get you here and in that bed. You were almost dead; I didn’t have time to worry about your clothes. I can fix the shirt and I’ll have Doctor Thomas or one of the Reverends get you a new coat as soon as I can. You should be thankful I could get you here at all; you weigh almost twice what I do, you know.”
She watched as awareness of how difficult it would have been for her dawned on him and she felt a bit guilty. After all, she had Heavenly help and probably could have gotten the coat and shirt off without cutting it but she wasn’t thinking just reacting.
“You’re right, Hannah. I’m sorry; it’s just embarrassing to lay here half-naked in front of you. I am grateful for what you did for me. Seems to me that I was right all those years ago when I told you I thought you’d make a good nurse. You are a good nurse, maybe better than a good nurse. I’m not sure Doc Thomas could have fixed me any better than you did.”
She smiled. “I’m surprised you remember that conversation, Henry, it was so long ago.”
“He looked at her, “Of course I remember it. You were so determined even then. I could see it in your eyes. I knew you would make it because I could see you weren’t going to let anyone or anything tell you that you couldn’t. I even told Esther to stop teasing you about it. I know she didn’t but I told her she should encourage you to go for your dreams. I’m alive right now because you did. So thank you.”
He held out his hand to her and she set his shirt on her lap and took his hand in hers. He looked into her eyes; it was as if something sparked to life between them. He raised her hand toward his lips and was about to kiss her fingers when suddenly Bob was clucking and flying around his head pecking and pulling at his hair. He dropped her hand to try and grab the rooster but all he got was a handful of pin feathers as the poultry protector hopped away.
Hannah covered her mouth to keep from laughing out loud as Henry swore up a blue streak at the rooster who was once again sitting at the foot of the bed watching over them.
“Seriously, Hannah, you need to cook that bird. He’s about the most evil thing I’ve ever seen.”
“He’s doing his job, Henry. Keeping me safe and my virtue intact.”
Henry glared at the bird. “I don’t see why that matters seeing as how everyone will believe what they want when we’re discovered anyway.”
She stilled and glared at him. “Maybe so, Marshal Wheeler, but we’ll know the truth. I’ve survived to the age of twenty-three, gone through nursing school, traveled three-quarters of the way across the country, kidnapped, freed, and worked as a nurse all without losing my virtue. I will not lose it to the likes of you just because we both know we’ll have to wed. I will come to our marriage bed pure or not at all.”
Henry held up his hands as if afraid either she or Bob would lay into him again. “I didn’t mean to upset you Hannah, or imply that I didn’t think you were pure or virtuous. Maybe you should just give me another dose of that pain medicine and let me go back to sleep. After all, you did tell me to rest.”
Hannah sighed and shook her head. “I’m sorry; I guess I’m just getting stressed with all this, too. It is too early to give you another dose of medication. This stuff is very dangerous; people get to where they need it even when not sick or in pain so I’m very cautious about using it. I’ll make your next dose a bit stronger so it gets you through the night but for now, just talk to me. Tell me how you ended up a U.S. Marshal. I mean, the last time I saw you was when my sister got engaged and you had planned on taking over for your father at the shop.”
He looked at her and then nodded like he’d made a decision to share. “That was the night I decided to become a member of the Marshal service. I left the party upset. I had asked your sister to marry me that night, too. Only she told me Augustus asked her earlier and she’d said yes. I was hurt and shocked; I didn’t even know she was seeing him. He used to brag about the things his society girl would do for him that even the girls at the gentlemen’s clubs wouldn’t. All that time I had no idea he was talking about Esther. I left and grew angry the closer to home I got. Then I saw a billboard flyer on a post about joining the Marshal Service and living a life of adventure. I guess I got pretty drunk, but when I woke up the next day all I could think about was running the shop and having to see your sister when she’d come in to buy things. I couldn’t do that so I went and signed up. I worked in the Wall Street office for a year. Mostly as office staff and jailer. Then a Deputy from New Mexico Territory walked in hauling Elizabeth Ryder’s husband in cuffs. He’d gone after Elizabeth with a buggy whip and wh
en the Marshal tried to stop him, he attacked the Marshal. Turned out Reverend Ryder had gone to New Mexico Territory for his health and sent the deputy back to bring his daughter and her children to him after her divorce. Her husband was also beating her and stealing her inheritance. The deputy asked me to travel with him; seemed they needed more lawmen to deal with a situation. So I thought if I left the state, maybe I could move on with my life. I did but I didn’t. Now I’m here and you’re here and well, I reckon we’ll make the best of the situation.”
Hannah nodded. “Yes, I guess we will. But Henry, I want to ask you to take your time and find a way to let my sister go. I may end up having to be married to you, but I don’t want to be a substitute for Esther.”
She got up and looked back at the man in her bed as she put on her coat and scarf. “I need to go milk the cow and check on our horses. I’ll give you your medicine when I get back. She left before he could see the tears in her eyes. Tears for him and his hardened heart, tears for her and her shattered one.
Henry watched as Hannah left to check on the livestock. He wasn’t fooled; he’d seen the tears in her eyes. He didn’t know how to tell her that she would never be a substitute for her sister. What he thought he’d felt for Esther wasn’t anything. Yes, in his near death he’d thought Hannah was Esther for a moment, but how could he let Hannah know she was even lovelier than her sister had ever been. Just her zeal for her work made her more appealing. Her bravery made her more appealing. She’d left everyone she’d ever known to come west, and for what? To answer the call of a doctor who needed help caring for the sick and injured of this town. Even after she was kidnapped and held against her will, almost sold into a life of whoring, she still stayed right here in Creede and started taking care of the medical needs of its citizens. Even in his situation, she could have left him to die or taken the safer route and gotten him to the Doctor’s clinic even if it had meant his death. But knowing what it would mean she’d brought him here to her home and cared for him. Now she was not only tending his wound but cooking, cleaning, and mending for him as if he were already her husband.
Hannah the Healer (Cowboys and Angels Book 7) Page 3