Banner O'Brien

by Linda Lael Miller

  Bracing himself against the desk with both hands, Adam read the paper again. It was some sort of sales message; he crumpled it and tossed it away.

  “Adam?”

  He looked up, saw a flushed and discomforted Francelle standing in the office doorway. “Yes?”

  “Is Banner—Mrs. Corbin—all right?”

  Adam sat down, entwined his fingers, settled back in his chair. “Why do you ask, Francelle?” he countered evenly, though he suspected that he already knew the answer to that.

  “Well—she was arrested and everything. I was just wondering—”

  “Where are the papers, Francelle?”

  Damning color flooded the girl’s face. She’d taken Banner’s divorce decree all right, along with the certificate proving she’d married Sean. Probably Francelle had given the latter to Marshal Peters, in a burst of good citizenship, and either hidden or destroyed the former.

  God, if she hadn’t been a child, and one of Melissa’s closest friends in the bargain, he would have throttled her where she stood.

  “What papers?” she asked finally.

  “I think you know ‘what papers,’ Francelle. You gave the marriage certificate to your father, didn’t you? And he, being a worthy sort with a love of the law, rushed it over to Marshal Peters. Since everyone knows that Banner is married to me, it was a clear-cut case of bigamy, wasn’t it?”

  “I didn’t take any papers!”

  “Francelle.”

  “I didn’t have anything to do with any of this!”

  “Where are the divorce papers, Francelle?”

  She lifted her chin, looking at once defiant and prepared to run. Her throat worked, but she said nothing.

  Adam was calm, quiet. And furious enough to wring her fetching little neck. “Who else had the opportunity, my dear?”

  Her lips trembled. “Why—why, you did.”

  Adam sighed. “All right. I can question your father—it’s doubtful that he’ll lie to me, Francelle.”

  Francelle lowered her head, recovering. When she met Adam’s gaze again, however, her eyes were overly bright and her cheekbones glowed red. “You believe Banner, don’t you?” she marveled. “You believe her when she says she was free to marry you!”

  “Of course I do. Don’t you, Francelle?”

  The child was groping within herself for an answer when Melissa suddenly swept in, through the other door, her blue eyes fierce.

  “I want a word with you, Francelle Mayhugh!” she snapped, ignoring her brother, backing her childhood friend up against a bookshelf. “Banner told me about her missing divorce papers and I want to know where they are!”

  Francelle looked like a rabbit, forced into a thicket by a snarling, tireless predator. “I didn’t—I mean—”

  The spectacle was gloriously amusing; Melissa pressed her straight little nose almost to Francelle’s and closed in for the kill. “You give those documents back! If you don’t, Miss Francelle Mayhugh, your own papa won’t know you by the time I’m through!”

  Francelle burst into tears. “I did it for love!” she cried, like a road show heroine.

  Adam lowered his eyes, at once amused and sympathetic. He should have guessed how Francelle felt, he supposed, but the thought had never crossed his mind. Not much had since O’Brien had come into his life and turned everything upside down.

  “You had no right to do that to Banner,” Melissa replied, more gently. “Francelle, my sister-in-law spent almost a full day in that horrible jail cell, and she could have been sent to prison! How would you like to have a baby in the territorial prison, when you hadn’t even done anything wrong?”

  A shock went through Adam—he heard nothing more of the conversation. A baby. O’Brien was going to have a baby?

  He shot out of his chair and raced back into the main part of the house, shouting his wife’s name at intervals.

  * * *

  It was to be a restful day, a day off from rounds and patients, and Banner was looking forward to it. She was, in fact, sitting in Maggie’s kitchen with Jenny, sipping tea and chatting.

  “O’Brien!” The word rang through the great house, like a bellowed curse.

  Jenny’s lips quirked, and she exchanged a knowing look with Maggie. “What did you do now, Banner?” she teased.

  Banner trembled as she set aside her cup, rose from her chair at the table, smoothed her skirts, and then resolutely sat down again. What was she doing, rising to attention like some soldier about to be upbraided by a visiting general?

  The kitchen door clattered against an inside wall as it was flung open, and then Adam filled the chasm, glowering. “You’re pregnant!” he accused, as though she had just been found guilty of some heinous crime.

  Jenny giggled. “You can never fool a doctor,” she said, as she and Maggie vanished from the room like so much smoke.

  “Behave yourself,” Banner said to Adam in crisp tones, as she squared her shoulders and lifted her chin.

  Miraculously, Adam did subside a little; he sank into the chair opposite her own and ran one hand through his hair, looking distracted. “When?”

  “If you mean to ask when the baby is due,” Banner said, “Then the answer is September. If, on the other hand, you meant—”

  “Shut up, O’Brien.”

  Banner swallowed, realized that her hands were gripping each other with such force that the knuckles ached.

  “September,” her husband said, musing. And then a slow grin creased his face and crinkled around his wonderful eyes. “September!”

  “Yes,” teased Banner, more at ease now. “It comes after August and before October.”

  Adam’s grin faded, and she knew that he was thinking of Sean. Though they seldom mentioned the threat of his return, it was always there, like the mountain. Like Lulani and that woman on the Silver Shadow.

  Adam’s hand came to hers, closed over it, warm and rough and strong. “Shamrock, I—”

  Banner drew back, hurting again, poisoned by her own thoughts. She had almost forgotten, in the lingering heat of last night’s lovemaking, what a disaster her marriage to Adam Corbin really was.

  “Don’t,” she whispered, closing her eyes.

  She heard the chair scrape as he stood up, knew that he had turned away from her. Probably he was thinking that his own life had been easier without Banner O’Brien. She’d been nothing but trouble, after all, with her supposed extra husband and her quick, quarrelsome tongue.

  “I’ll hire another doctor,” he said.

  Banner’s eyes popped open; she stared at the immovable expanse of her husband’s muscular back. “What did you say?”

  Adam turned, grasped the back of his chair with both hands. The knuckles were white with force. “You’ll be busy, O’Brien. And in case you’re thinking of arguing this, let me just say that no child of mine is going to be dragged through Indian camps and brothels just so you can go on practicing!”

  “No child of yours? Isn’t this my baby, too?”

  “You’re damned right it is, doctor, and you’re going to behave accordingly!”

  In that moment, Banner felt as though she’d lost everything—her husband’s love and fidelity, her pride. And, now, her career, too.

  “Don’t do this to me, Adam,” she pleaded, in a soft, defeated whisper, for she knew that he could. Under the law, in fact, he could throw her into the street and keep the child to raise as he pleased. She had no legal rights at all, where her marriage was concerned. “Y-you don’t know how hard I worked—how difficult the male doctors made things—”

  “I think I do,” Adam argued in a recalcitrant hiss. “But the risk was inherent, wasn’t it, O’Brien? After all, you’re a woman.”

  Fury displaced Banner’s resignation. “Like Jenny said, you can’t fool a doctor!”

  “Very funny.” His gaze rose, meaningfully, to the ceiling over their heads; their room was directly overhead. “But you’re a woman first, Shamrock—I can swear to that.”

  “I�
�ll leave you if you make me give up medicine entirely!” she warned, clamoring to her feet, overturning her chair. This time Adam Corbin was not going to sway her with his forceful manner or his lovemaking!

  “Not with my child inside you, you won’t.”

  Banner closed her eyes, opened them again. The room dodged and undulated around her. “It’s my baby, too,” she reminded him again, softly, sadly. “And if I want to take my child and leave, I will.”

  “Wrong.”

  Banner swallowed further argument; she had been foolish to fling down that particular emotional glove in challenge, to tip her hand the way she had.

  “Couldn’t we come to a compromise?” she asked, reasonably.

  “What sort of compromise?”

  “Just some of the time, Maggie could look after the baby. And I could still work in the hospital . . .”

  Adam sighed and his grip on the chair relaxed a little. “O’Brien,” he began, in a low, measured voice, “We’ve never really talked about having children. I just assumed that you wanted a family as much as I did. Was I wrong?”

  Tears welled in Banner’s eyes; she bit her lower lip and shook her head. “You weren’t wrong,” she said.

  “But you want your practice, too.”

  She nodded.

  Adam rolled his eyes heavenward, then glared at her again. “Don’t we have enough problems without this, O’Brien? Isn’t it enough that I always have to be listening, always have to be looking over one shoulder, expecting Malloy to come out of the woodwork and hurt you? Maybe kill you?”

  “There are things I don’t like about this marriage, too, you know!” Banner cried suddenly. “Like Lulani, for instance!”

  “That again.”

  “Yes, that again! How dare you try to strip me of everything that matters to me, Adam? I’ve lost my pride—I’ve had to watch you ride off to visit that woman every three weeks—I’ve had to lie alone in bed and know that you were on the Silver Shadow with—”

  Adam broke in with a muttered swear word and, “That does it, O’Brien. That’s it. Get your things and put on your warmest clothes, because we’re going up the mountain right now!”

  Banner gaped at him. “What?”

  “I want to show you exactly what I’ve been hiding.”

  “Why can’t you just tell me?” Banner retorted, amazed and off-balance and suddenly not so certain that she wanted to know his blasted secret at all.

  But Adam’s eyes strayed to her stomach, and Banner knew that he was remembering the child, reconsidering. “I can’t tell you, O’Brien—I have to show you. But—”

  Not knowing whether to plead against the trip or for it, Banner simply stood still, in silence, and waited. “You’ll have to do as I tell you,” he said, after a long and visible deliberation. “For once, Shamrock, you’ll have to obey.”

  She nodded, unable to speak now, even if she had chosen to.

  Adam was about to say something more when the sound of a distant blast rattled the windows and even shook the floor beneath their feet. He swore and bounded out of the kitchen at a dead run, closely followed by a frantic and suddenly vocal Banner.

  “What was that?” she cried, holding up her skirts to keep from tangling her feet in them and falling.

  “The mill,” rasped Adam, loping through the walkway now. “I’d say a boiler exploded.”

  “My God!”

  They reached the office; Adam was ransacking a cupboard for emergency supplies, dropping things into his bag.

  “Let me come with you!”

  He impaled her with a look that did not inspire rebellion. “No. You’ll be needed here. Fill as many tubs as you can find with the coldest water possible. Have Maggie and Mama and everybody else you can find help you.”

  Banner did not question him now. If a boiler had exploded in the mill, as he surmised, there would be burn victims. She turned and raced back into the main house, shouting for Maggie and Mrs. Corbin and Melissa.

  It was a blessing that Jenny was still there, for many hands were needed, and Francelle was no help at all, hovering in a corner of the ward as she was, muttering something about papers.

  The men from the stables were summoned, and they busied themselves with the task of unbolting the tub in the bathing room upstairs, while Maggie scrambled for washtubs stored in the attic. Jenny and Melissa set themselves to pumping water.

  Banner laid out vials of morphine and sterilized the needles of syringes, all the time imploring Francelle to make herself useful by seeing that the sheets on the ward beds were smooth and clean.

  When words failed, she stomped over to the girl, grasped her shoulders in both hands, and shook her. “Francelle, listen to me! There has been an accident. There will be injured people coming here. Damn you, stop your blithering and help me!”

  “I didn’t mean to get you into trouble,” sniveled Francelle. “I’m sorry—I’m sorry—”

  “Francelle!”

  “Do you think A-Adam will hate me?”

  Banner drew back her hand and slapped Francelle with all the force she could muster. “Get busy!” she screamed.

  The men from the stables came in, carrying the tub from upstairs. Dismissing Francelle, Banner ordered them to start hauling in water and blocks of ice from the icehouse out back.

  They obeyed without question, and Banner scrambled to check the bedsheets herself, since Francelle had wandered off somewhere, mumbling and holding her smartly slapped face with one hand.

  The beds, as Banner had expected, were clean.

  But there were only eight. What if there were dozens of casualties? Where would they put so many people?

  Banner resolved the dilemma quickly and raced up the stairs, where she pulled clean sheets from the linen cupboard at one end of the hall. By the time the first of the wounded arrived, by wagon, every bed on the second floor, including her own, boasted fresh linen.

  There were five men in that first group, some of them unconscious, some writhing, one shrieking in pain.

  Working like demons, Maggie and Banner cut away the men’s clothes and ordered those that were awake and suffering lowered into the waiting tubs of ice water stationed in the aisle of the ward.

  People began to arrive from other houses—Temple Royce was among them—bringing ice and blankets and a stoic willingness to help.

  Another load of wounded men came, and Banner was aware of Adam’s brisk presence and the terse cadence of his voice. Even though she was too busy to so much as look up from her work, she was comforted.

  With Jenny and Melissa and Katherine, she carried in fresh water and carried out stale. She administered injections of morphine and supervised the placement of those patients who could bear to be lifted out of the tubs and put into bed.

  And over all this was the fierce, far-off roar of the lumbermill, consuming itself.

  * * *

  Twilight came and the sky was still a hellish, crimson color, snapping with sparks. Four men were dead, and more than a dozen would wish for the same respite before they began to recover.

  Adam Corbin turned from the window in despair, sought Banner with his eyes. Finding her, he found hope.

  She was working with one of the patients, her beautiful cinnamon hair rumpled and falling from its pins, her dress splotched with God knew what.

  I love you, he said to her, without speaking.

  She looked up, smiled wanly, and her lips moved in silent answer.

  Adam was buoyed by the exchange; he went back to his own patients—those upstairs, in the family beds.

  The days ahead would be long ones, difficult ones. Ironic as it seemed, he would need O’Brien more as a doctor than he ever had as a wife.

  * * *

  Keith Corbin stopped short, amazed. There were people sleeping all over the dining room floor—Melissa by the sideboard, Maggie near the kitchen door, Adam and Banner under the table.

  “Are we being evicted?” he demanded, spreading his hands in the predawn light.


  His mother muttered something and sat up in the windowseat, yawning. “Keith?”

  “What’s going on here?”

  Katherine yawned again and gestured for him to lower his voice. “There was an explosion at the mill yesterday,” she explained. “Do be quiet.”

  Keith felt his eyes go round. “Are all the beds full? That many people were hurt?”

  Katherine nodded. “You could have chosen a better time to come for a visit, I’m afraid.”

  “Actually, I came about the orchards,” her son replied, smiling, despite everything, as he watched Adam stir and cup Banner’s right breast in one hand.

  Katherine had followed his gaze, and she cleared her throat in soft reprimand. “Keith.”

  He chuckled and shrugged his shoulders. “At least something is going well, it appears.”

  “That is a rash judgment if I’ve ever heard one.” Katherine rose from the windowseat and stretched. “I’ll make some coffee—if we can get past Maggie, that is—and tell you just how ‘well’ everything has been going.”

  “Bigamy?” gasped Keith, a few minutes later, in the quiet sanction of the kitchen. “I don’t believe it!”

  Katherine cupped her hands around her coffee mug. “Of course you don’t believe it—it isn’t true. That’s a good thing, too, because Adam and Banner have troubles enough without that.”

  Keith sighed. “He’s still making those trips up the mountain, isn’t he?”

  She nodded. “Will you talk to him, Keith? Jeff isn’t here, of course, and I know Adam wouldn’t listen to me, but he respects you, and you might be able to reason with him.”

  Keith was close to Adam, but he had his doubts about getting his older brother to confide anything concerning those mysterious and regular pilgrimages of his. “I’ve tried before, Mama,” he said. “So has Jeff. We even started to follow him once.”

  Katherine arched one eyebrow. “Oh? What happened?”

  “Nothing. At least, nothing my masculine pride would allow me to recount.”

  “He was angry,” guessed Katherine.