A week passed. Paige spent three more of her precious dollars at the Hudson's Bay Company store on a pair of men's denim pants, which she wore on her blissful early morning rides on Minnie. The pants didn't fit as well as her designer jeans had, but they weren't bad. They were fine through the hips and bottom, and she rolled the cuffs and threaded a belt through the waist to cinch it in.
She tried to stay busy so she wouldn't notice that she was alone most of the time.
Rob came twice. He made a stall for Minnie on his first visit, and the next time he brought her a saddle which he explained was on unofficial loan from the quartermaster's stores at the fort. He also brought two sacks of oats, and Paige thought it wise not to ask if the oats were on loan as well.
Rob took her riding, teaching her how to figure out direction on the open prairie by using the sun and the wind.
When he saw her in her pants the first time, he didn't say anything. He gulped and swallowed hard and then made a point of looking only at her face, for all the world as if she'd forgotten to wear clothes below the waist. Paige couldn't resist teasing the bashful young policeman a little.
"Believe it or not, Rob, where I come from, women wear pants like these all the time, twice as tight as mine are." She did a slow turn, and he looked scandalized. But then he caught her amused glance and rolled his hazel eyes. "Best not wear them to church," he advised with a straight face and a twinkle in his eye.
Paige had transformed the two front rooms of her house into a comfortable waiting room and a starkly furnished examining room which at the moment contained only two chairs and a cupboard she'd had Rob bring in from the kitchen. It would hold her medicines and instruments, she decided, telling herself she was an incurable optimist. You'd be better off asking if they need a clerk down at Rose Rafferty's Ladies Emporium, she chided herself. You could die of starvation up here waiting for nonexistent patients to examine with your nonexistent instruments.
One morning after her ride, Paige sat down with a calendar and a cup of coffee and added up the weeks since that fateful day in August when she'd jogged down to Tony's field to have a look at the crop circle.
It was now the fifth of October. She'd been in Battleford six weeks. Outside, a few snowflakes were drifting down. Thanks to Rob's patient instruction, she now knew all the secrets of the cantankerous stoves, and it was warm and cozy in her house—as long as she remembered to constantly stoke the voracious things with wood.
Also thanks to Rob, she'd mastered some basic pioneer cooking abilities. He'd shown her, amid much laughter and mess, how to concoct basic bean soups, make oatmeal porridge, and stir up a batch of bannock. She'd even conquered biscuits, which took a bit more skill, and expanded her limited diet somewhat.
She felt more at peace at this moment than she had at any time during those six weeks, except for the ever-present concern about money. She was broke. There was no point fooling herself any longer; she was going to have to go out and look for a job, any job. She thought of the social programs of her own time, and a wry grin came and went.
She'd paid enormous taxes that helped support those social programs, and now when she needed assistance, welfare wasn't yet a glimmer in a politician's eye.
A sharp rap at the front door made her jump.
She hurried along the hall and opened it, and her heart began to hammer.
Myles stood on the porch, his red tunic and wide brimmed felt hat covered with snowflakes. He had a medical bag in one hand and another huge lumpy canvas sack clamped in the other.
"Myles, come in, it's great to see you."
On some level, she'd been waiting for him. She'd expressly invited him to visit in the thank you letter she'd written, but now that he was here, she was flustered. All she could think of when she looked at him was the way his lips felt, moving over hers.
Get a grip, Randolph.
"It's great to see you again. Come on in, I've got some coffee on if you'd like a cup." She was suddenly short of breath, and an unreasonable delight spilled through her at the sight of him, tall and elegant, smiling at her.
He ducked his head to avoid hitting it on the door-frame, and once inside he made the hall seem even smaller than usual. He set his things down and took his hat and gloves off. She reached for them.
"This place was designed for little people," she said as she tucked the leather gloves inside the hat and then hung them on the coat tree she'd put in the hallway. "Be careful or you'll brain yourself on the doorways, even I have to duck through a couple of them." She led the way down the short hallway and into the kitchen. The palms of her hands were damp.
"Sit down," she urged, taking a cup from the shelf and filling it with coffee from the enamel pot on the back of the stove. "This stuff's still fresh, you're lucky. By afternoon it's industrial strength, powerful enough to strip paint—"
She turned from the stove and put the cup on the table in front of him, the rest of whatever she'd been saying wiped from her head. "What?"
He was staring at her blue denim clad hips and legs. She'd grown so used to wearing denim pants in the house that she'd forgotten all about them.
"Damn, I keep forgetting women don't wear pants yet," she said in an exasperated tone. "Why on earth not, I'll never know. Those stupid long skirts and petticoats are cumbersome and clumsy."
He was still looking at her, gray eyes narrowed, expression inscrutable, and now she grew exasperated. "For God's sake, Myles, surely it must have dawned on you that women have legs under all that crap they bury their lower bodies in."
His gaze lifted until he was looking into her eyes, and to her amazement, she could see that he was angry.
Furious, in fact. It simmered in his eyes and underlined his polite, southern drawl with cold steel. "You're living alone here, Paige, some distance out of town. You're young and beautiful."
It wasn't a compliment the way he said it. It sounded more like an accusation. "Whether you know it or not, this is still the frontier. Why, half the men in town would take the way you're dressed as an open invitation to rape." His gray eyes glittered like ice, and she felt heat rising up her neck and flowing over her cheeks.
She opened her mouth to blast him, but he didn't give her a chance to say anything. "I warn you, if you hope to set up any sort of medical practice here, you are going to have to obey the conventions of the town. Just by being female and a doctor, you've already defied what people consider right and proper for a woman."
He took a long, slow breath and let it out again. "If you insist on traipsing around in those—those trousers, madam, I guarantee you won't ever have the opportunity to treat a single patient. You'll be totally ostracized by the women, and you'll be in grave danger from a large portion of the male population."
Paige snorted in exasperation. "God, I can't believe this," she exploded. "I wear these pants to ride my horse, for God's sake, not to parade around on the main drag in downtown Battleford."
Her temper sizzled even though a rational part of her recognized the logic in what he was saying.
Logic, hell. Every liberated bone in her body screamed in outrage at the unfairness of his attack. "I wear what I choose in the privacy of my own home." Her voice rose, and she leaned on the table, glaring over at him. "And why shouldn't a woman be free to wear whatever the hell she wants, I'd like to know?"
He studied her with narrowed eyes, his mouth compressed into a thin, tight line, his cheekbones tinged with angry color. "Women should be free to do as they please, in an ideal world. Unfortunately, this isn't ideal."
He got to his feet in one quick motion, steadying the chair that almost tipped over behind him. "Now, madam, if you'll excuse me, I must get back to the fort."
Paige's anger gave way to bitter disappointment. He was leaving, and they hadn't talked at all. She'd wanted so much to sit here with him, here in her cozy kitchen for an hour or two, talking about everything and nothing, laughing together.
She missed him. Why in God's name did they argue so much
?
But she'd be damned if she'd beg him to stay. She stood straight and tall, defiant in her close fitting jeans. She even stuck her hands in her rear pockets, flaunting the offending pants, realizing she was being childish and not caring.
He gave her a long, silent look and then nodded stiffly. He strode down the hall, retrieved his hat and gloves, and was closing the door behind him before she realized he'd left his things on the scatter rug beside the door.
Some demon in her whispered, Let him go. He'll have to come back for them, won't he?
She hesitated, swore, and then reached down and grabbed up the bag and the canvas sack. It took her a fumbling moment to get the door open.
Myles was already on his horse.
"Wait," she called. "Myles, hold it a minute. You forgot your things." She held up the medical bag.
He reined the huge black horse around and raised one hand to his hat brim in a stiff salute.
"They're yours, Paige. May they bring you good luck." He touched his spurs to Major's flanks and rode off without a backward glance, seeming to disappear into the whirling white snowflakes.
Stunned, she watched him until she couldn't make him out anymore, and then she slowly shut the door. She knelt on the hall carpet and, with shaking fingers, opened the medical bag. One by one, she lifted out the contents.
A gleaming stethoscope, a grooved speculum, a silver disk she identified as a primitive curette, a set of forceps, various rolls of bandage, dressings, a thermometer, even several pairs of short rubber gloves—the equipment was archaic when compared with what she was accustomed to, but she knew the bag was lavishly equipped by the standards of the 1880s.
The canvas bag contained a sturdy box, inside which Myles had painstakingly packaged and labeled commonly used drugs of the day: quinine, laudanum, chloroform, herbal preparations she'd never heard of—and a huge, ugly bottle of carbolic.
"Oh, Myles," she whispered as a lump rose in her throat.
He'd included a black book with gold lettering called Physicians’ Standard Modern Medical Practice. She flipped through it, having to smile at the antiquated terminology, but relieved to find that it gave explicit dosages for the medications, detailed directions for administering chloroform to patients of different weights, instructions for using the instruments.
Hot tears dripped down into the bottles and vials and boxes as she fingered the treasure trove Myles had given her, and she sniffled and rubbed her nose on a sleeve.
Here were all the raw materials she so desperately needed to earn a living, the tools she had no way of buying for herself, the medical information that would allow her to use the current methods and treatments of the day.
His gift was the most thoughtful she'd ever received. And, she realized with a sinking feeling in her chest, they'd gotten into a lousy fight before he'd even had the chance to present it to her in person. She knotted her fists in frustration and banged them on her knees.
God damn you, Myles Baldwin, for being a stiff-necked, opinionated, stubborn, cantankerous, old-fashioned…..Her hands relaxed and her shoulders slumped. Extravagant, considerate, kind, handsome gentleman.
And sexy, she reminded herself with painful honesty. Don't forget sexy. Damn it to hell, Myles Baldwin was as sexy as any man she'd ever laid eyes on, in any century. Why couldn't she have met him—
She closed her eyes and shook her head at her own stupidity.
There wasn't any way she could have met Myles Baldwin back in the time where she belonged. He'd been dead a good many years before she was even born.
Myles gave Major his head, letting the stallion pick his way across the snowy landscape.
Below them, steam was rising from the river in a silvery cloud. Myles drew in a deep breath and let it out again. The air was cold in his lungs, but he felt as if a raging fever was burning its way through his body.
Paige. Paige Randolph.
He was on fire, wanting her. Right now, he could see in his mind's eye the exact contours of her slender hips, the way the top of those confounded trousers nipped in and hugged her slender waist, the way his hands might span her if he held her....
He saw again her buttocks, swelling in tantalizing mounds, outlined only by a thin layer of denim cloth. His palms tingled, imagining how he'd cup her, draw her into him, feel those long legs twine around his own as he—
Damn her, she roused him to the point of madness.
The very next afternoon, there was a banging on Paige's front door.
She'd spent a delicious morning sterilizing and arranging her instruments and medications in the cabinet in the front room she'd come to think of as her office.
She'd moved a long, narrow table in, padding it with a blanket, then stretching a snowy sheet over the top, thinking it would do as an examining table—if the time ever came when a real live human person needed to be examined by her, which she was beginning to seriously doubt.
She was stirring a pot of bean soup on the kitchen range when the knock came, and her first thought was of Myles. Her heart leapt with excitement.
He'd come back; she'd known he would. Her hands went to her hair, trying to smooth the obstinate curls. She undid the apron she'd tied around her waist and chucked it on a chair. She checked her blouse for stains, patted at the wrinkles in her skirt.
She grinned down at herself. At least she was wearing a skirt today; that should please the old prude.
She flew down the hall to the door and swung it open, a welcoming smile on her lips.
Now and Then: Chapter Ten
There was a buggy hitched to the gatepost. On Paige's porch stood a man balancing on a crutch, his right foot in plaster, with a pale little woman huddled at his side. Her hands were encased in a furry muff. She wore a large brown hat with a veil that came down over her eyes and overwhelmed her thin features.
"Dr. Randolph?"
Paige nodded. The man looked uncertain, the woman terrified. Her thin lips were trembling.
"Dr. Baldwin up at the fort said to come see you. My name's Gillespie. This here's my wife, Helen."
The name rang a bell in Paige's mind. This was the referral, the "female complaint" that Myles had mentioned in his letter.
Elation swept through her. Here was her first office patient.
She smiled in welcome. "Come in, why don't you? It's cold out here."
Paige settled them in the tiny waiting room, taking a chair herself, searching for and finding her professional manner as she said, "Now, how can I help you?"
"You're sure you're a doctor, miss? You look awful young to me," Mr. Gillespie began, uncertainty in his voice.
It was so much like the reaction her modern day patients had shown to her appearance that Paige had to grin, even though she was painfully conscious of the lack of any framed diplomas on the walls here to reinforce her right to practice medicine.
"I'm cursed with eternal youth," she joked, just as she'd done in her other office. "I assure you, I'm well on my way to forty, and I've been a practicing physician for nearly ten years now."
It was stretching the truth a little, but it seemed to reassure them.
"Now, what seems to be the problem?" She directed the question to Helen Gillespie, but again, it was her husband who answered.
"Helen's been having female troubles. She fainted clean away yesterday afternoon, ain't the first time either. I told her she either came willingly today, or I'd hogtie her and bring her that way."
Paige studied what she could see of Helen, which wasn't much. Her hands were still thrust into the muff, she was bundled from neck to toe in clothing, and the hat shaded her face.
"Perhaps you'd feel more comfortable talking to me in private, Helen," she suggested, getting to her feet. "Come in here, why don't you? And let me take your coat and hat," she added.
Divested of her coat, hat, and muff and seated in the examining room, Helen was a fragile wisp of a woman. She seemed on the verge of tears. Fading blonde hair puffed around her head like fluf
f on a molting dandelion, and her skin was gray-white and pasty looking.
Anemia, Paige guessed, leaning over and taking the woman's narrow hand in hers, glancing at the colorless fingertips and nails.
"Are you having menstrual problems, Helen?"
The woman's eyes filled with tears and she gulped and nodded. She looked down at her hands and whispered, “Trouble with my monthlies, yes. They won't stop, see, they go on and on, right from one month to the next."
"How old are you, Helen?"
"Forty-seven. I know it's just the change, but it leaves me so weak and sick feeling...."
For the next few minutes, Paige questioned Helen, gently but persistently, trying to establish whether or not the problem was actually one of periomenopause, or whether there was reason to suspect a malignancy or some other problem.
It became clear to Paige that Helen had only the most rudimentary understanding of her own body and how it functioned. Paige got a pad of paper and with a pencil, she drew a feminine outline, sketching in the female internal organs.
"These are your ovaries, and this is what happens to us women each month," Paige explained. "Here's what occurs during ovulation—" Paige sketched and described her drawing in simple terms. "Now, during menopause, the lining of your uterus ..."
As Paige talked Helen relaxed by degrees, fascinated by the lesson, eventually even asking shy questions that illustrated how little she understood about what was really happening to her.
"There's absolutely no need to feel embarrassed or self-conscious about any of this," Paige reassured her. "It's a perfectly normal process, one which we all experience."
Now and Forever: Time Travel Romance Superbundle Page 15