Harlequin Historical November 2015, Box Set 2 of 2

by Lynna Banning

  Her vision blurred with tears. She hesitated, then pivoted back to him. He caught both her hands to his chest and held them tight.

  She longed to twine her arms around his neck but people were beginning to spill out of the station house. Even though he’d kissed her right on the platform when she’d left before, she didn’t want to cause too much talk.

  Zane stood without moving. She couldn’t look at him yet. In a moment she would feel stronger and then—The train whistle split the air. She did look up then, saw his mouth twist, his gray eyes fill with pain.

  “Oh, Zane, it is so hard to leave you.” Her voice choked off. He dropped her hands and caught her close.

  “Don’t cry, dammit. I can’t stand it.”

  She did anyway. Tears spilled down her cheeks, wetting his face and the collar of his shirt. The train screeched again.

  He pressed his mouth close to her ear. “I love you,” he whispered. “And you love me.”

  Then he turned her toward the passenger car and gave her a gentle push. Clutching the picnic hamper, she walked forward three steps and climbed aboard.

  The instant she took a seat in the passenger car she leaned out the open window and the train began to slide on down the track.

  Zane stood motionless, watching her glide away from him, until she could no longer see him.

  She wept all the way to Idaho.

  Chapter Seventeen

  August 5th

  Dear Zane,

  I arrived last night, travel-weary and sad. I miss Rosemarie already, and I began missing you the minute the train pulled out.

  I had scarcely unpacked my valise when I was called upon to chair the meeting of the Summer Concert Committee. And, oh, the squabbling! Should we start off with a string quartet or a piano student recital? What will we do if it rains? Which wind quintet first? Flutes and oboes or trumpets with bassoon?

  My, how petty musicians can be. Perhaps a conclave of physicians would be equally contentious, though neither you nor your partner Dr. Graham seem anything but cooperative and unflappable.

  I dislike being in charge of such quarrelsome factions. In fact I am beginning to dislike the quarrelsome factions!

  The weather is perfect for outdoor concerts in the evening, just a touch of breeze to cool the air. August always brings such gorgeous night skies, with stars like silver jewels on dark blue velvet. The usual staff picnics are out of the question because of the humidity, but I plan to go for long walks every evening.

  I miss you. I wonder sometimes if we were fated to meet as we did, and to like each other so much. At other times I think God is surely playing a cruel joke. I am bereft, thinking of all that Cissy is missing—Rosemarie’s mania for chocolate cookies and bread dough and her dear little sleepy face when she first wakes up in the morning.

  I understand more clearly what my sister must have felt when she ran away with you to Smoke River. Practicing Mozart and Brahms must not have seemed important when weighed against not seeing you again.

  Tomorrow I must begin to work on the Schubert piano quintet for the second park concert; it has a beastly final movement, full of racing arpeggios and spread-out chords.

  Professor Beher, the bassoon player, is stopping in for tea tomorrow afternoon; I will bake chocolate cookies and think of Rosemarie.

  And you.

  Winifred

  August 12th

  Dear Winifred,

  Your letter reached me at the end of a long afternoon of hospital rounds, during which I thanked whatever God there is that we have no new cholera patients. The last one, Mrs. Madsen, was released this morning.

  But about your letter. I read it avidly while Samuel tried to gain my attention; finally he snatched it away and complained, “Well, for heaven’s sake, man, if you’d just marry the girl you wouldn’t have to write letters!”

  Those are his exact words.

  I wanted to punch him.

  Yan Li and Rosemarie went for a “walk” this morning, mostly to gain some relief for that poor beleaguered cat of Sam’s. “Kitty” is now Rose’s favorite word. That and “’infred.” By the time you return at Christmas she will be able to pronounce your name properly; then she can start on “Nathaniel.”

  “Daddy” is too easy for a child as intrigued with words as she is. My middle name is Austen; perhaps she might prefer only two syllables.

  I admit to being jealous of Professor Bassoon’s having tea with you. More than a little jealous, to be honest. I want no other man to share even a teapot with you, or win your admiration, or touch you. Forgive me for this, but I think it characteristic of the male of our species to be possessive.

  Of late I find I cannot read poems by Milton, or Tennyson, or Wordsworth, or even the awful doggerel that appears in the Smoke River Sentinel every Saturday, written by women who have never been in love.

  There is no point in denying how much I miss you. You know I want you in my life, and in my bed. And I know as surely as the sun rises each morning that I will never want anyone else but you.

  Rosemarie now sits on my lap as I write this; those sticky chocolate fingerprints on the paper are hers. Well, maybe one very little one is mine.

  Come back to us, my darling.

  Zane

  August 17th

  Dear Zane,

  Our second concert in the park was a huge success. The string quartet played brilliantly, the audience shouted bravos and applauded until their hands must have ached and afterward the president of the conservatory personally congratulated me on a “very fine example of musicianship.”

  All I wanted to do was return home, take a cool bath and forget about next Sunday’s concert. It isn’t the weather that is oppressive; it is the strain of getting the violinist and the cellist to sit down together on the bandstand without hissing obscenities at each other! I pray that the trumpet and oboe players will be better mannered.

  What is it that makes people go mad in the summertime?

  I am starting to teach a few new piano students, but my heart is not in it. These are youngsters, girls mostly, who failed the entrance exam for conservatory admission and are attempting to challenge the ruling against them. I feel sorry for them, really. But had they worked harder, they would not be scrambling now.

  Cissy would say—well, she did say, and quite often—that there was more to life than practicing the piano. In some ways I feel I am looking back at myself when I was that age, wondering about the choices I have made in my life.

  I am not weary of music, or of playing the piano, or teaching, or of performing on the concert stage. But I am dreadfully tired of the politics of my conservatory and the petty concerns of some prima donnas on the staff.

  My friend Millicent is not one of them. I pray that I myself will not turn into one of these.

  My spirits are low tonight, as you can no doubt tell. The end of summer is drawing near and with it comes the ennui I always experience before the new term starts. This year there is a great restlessness in me as well. Perhaps I am just growing older. Or perhaps something is shifting within me.

  Or perhaps I am simply missing you so profoundly I cannot think clearly.

  Winifred

  August 30th

  Dearest Winifred,

  I have surprising and wonderful news. Yan Li is expecting a baby! Yesterday afternoon she fainted in the kitchen as she was washing dishes, and when I examined her—Sam ran all the way to the hospital to get me—there it was: a tiny, very rapid little heartbeat. Sam is so stunned he cannot remember how to scramble eggs, but Yan Li is as unruffled as one of those chickens she has tamed. She should deliver next May.

  She wants you to be here for the baby.

  I want you to be here for any reason at all.

  Winifred, when you left in July I sw
ore to myself I would not beg you to return. I cannot in good conscience ask that you give up the professional career you have established, but, my darling, I cannot lie. I want you here with me. With Rosemarie.

  I wish there were some way I could provide what you need for real happiness and fulfillment in your life, but in truth all I, or any man who loves a woman, can offer is himself, his love and his support.

  You hold my heart now and forever. I have never loved to the depth and strength of what I feel for you now, not even with Celeste. God forgive me, but it is true.

  At night I lie awake and write letters to you in my mind. And during the daylight hours you move always on the edge of my thoughts.

  You are always with me. Always.

  Zane

  Chapter Eighteen

  Winifred surreptitiously ran her thumb along the edge of the large square polished walnut table about which seventeen of her fellow conservatory faculty members gathered. The new term would start next week and during the next three hours the perennial matters of classes and practice rooms and who would first use ensemble rehearsal space would be hashed out.

  The conservatory director, Professor Rolf Adamson, lightly tapped his wooden gavel, and conversation dwindled into silence. He began to outline the meeting agenda but Winifred found herself gazing out the tall windows, admiring the bright crimson and gold maple trees along the faculty house walkway. She loved the brilliant colors of fall, and when the leaves withered and left the bare branches shuddering in the winter winds, an inexplicable sadness fell over her spirits.

  It was like life, she supposed. Eventually spring would come, bringing new green buds and bright golden jonquils poking up from the earth, but it always saddened her to see a lovely thing pass, even a show of scarlet leaves in the fall, which would soon blow away.

  Today it seemed especially difficult to keep her mind on the perennial meeting controversies: Should the string department be awarded an extra rehearsal hall time or should the woodwinds have it? Could the piano teachers take on three advanced pipe organ students or could they wait until next term? And who would manage the recital schedule this year and iron out the continuing squabbles and professional rivalries?

  Winifred caught her friend Millicent’s keen brown eyes and shared a look of exasperation. Streaks of gray peppered the neat bun at the older woman’s nape and the severe navy dress revealed an expanding girth. Millicent was aging, she realized suddenly. Her friend had taught piano at the conservatory for fourteen years.

  Winifred caught herself in a sigh. Would she look like Millicent in another seven years? Even three years?

  She pressed her lips closed. Did she care whether the oboe professor was now maneuvering the string players out of rehearsal space? Or whether two viola teachers complained about their teaching load?

  No, she did not. Again she gazed at the shimmering maple trees outside the window; now backlit by the afternoon sun, they seemed to glow.

  But she did care deeply about her piano students, their recitals, their progress toward proficiency. And she cared passionately about her own performances this season, with Pierre du Fulet conducting her two favorite Beethoven piano concertos; following that, Boston again wanted her for more Mozart recitals and a new Fauré work.

  She watched a small brown sparrow hop onto the tree branch closest to the window and cock its head at her as if to say, Why do you watch me and dream of spring? Are you not content?

  Of course she was content. She was fulfilling the acknowledged purpose of her entire life, what she had worked toward for ten long years.

  The oboe professor made a rude remark and everyone laughed, even Rolf Adamson. Everyone except Winifred, who hadn’t been listening. A general stirring among those seated around the table alerted her to another simmering controversy, but she found she didn’t care until Millicent again caught her eye and raised her eyebrows.

  In the next moment Professor Adamson called for a show of hands: all those in favor of an extra vacation day at Christmas?

  Just as Winifred thrust her arm in the air, the door burst open and a young messenger boy entered, waving a telegram. Rolf Adamson snagged it, tipped the lad, then glanced down at the address.

  “Miss Von Dannen, this is for you.” It was passed down to her, and then everyone resumed the conversation about Christmas vacation.

  Winifred ripped open the telegram.

  ZANE SERIOUSLY INJURED STOP

  COME AT ONCE STOP

  DR. SAMUEL GRAHAM

  With a cry she started up from her chair. She felt numb, her mind suddenly a dark fog. In an instant Millicent was beside her.

  “I must go to Oregon. To Smoke River.” She stumbled over the words.

  “Now?” Millicent whispered.

  With an answering nod, Winifred crumpled the telegram in her hand and moved toward the door.

  Millicent followed. “Professor Beher, could you drive Winifred to the train station once she’s ready to leave? It’s an emergency.”

  Winifred didn’t wait to hear his response but fled down the hallway, out the conservatory entrance and down the street toward her home. Oh, dear God, let him be all right. Please, Lord. Please.

  * * *

  She stepped off the train into a face-nipping wind. She gripped her hat and closed her eyes, her entire body shaking with exhaustion.

  “Miss Winifred,” a voice shouted. She opened her eyes to see a slim young man striding toward her.

  “Sandy Boggs, the sheriff’s deputy, remember? Doc Graham sent me to meet your train.”

  “Oh, Sandy, thank you.”

  He grabbed up her valise and took her elbow. “Buggy’s right here. You wanna go straight to the hospital?”

  Winifred nodded.

  “Thought you might. I’ll drop you there and take your luggage on up to the doc’s house. Wing Sam’s expecting you.”

  “How is—?” She couldn’t finish the question.

  Sandy pursed his lips. “He’s still unconscious, ma’am.” He loaded her valise and handed her into the buggy, climbed aboard and whipped the horse into a trot. “Been four days now and he hasn’t woke up. Doc Graham’s waiting for you at the hospital.”

  Four days! Her heart dropped into her belly. It all felt unreal. The street, the people, even the white-painted hospital looked just as it always had, but everything was different. Inside that building Zane lay fighting for his life.

  She struggled to wrap her mind around what had happened, to stay calm, to be strong. She would not cry. She bit down on her lower lip so hard she tasted blood.

  At the hospital, Dr. Graham grasped her elbow. “Thank God you’re here, Winifred.” He ushered her into a small reception room adjoining the wide entrance hall.

  “Before you go in to see him, let me prepare you.”

  Her stomach clenched. The doctor sat her down in a straight-backed chair and reached for her hand. “It’s a head injury. There was an accident at the sawmill. Zane was pulling the man out from under a belt when the log slipped. It caught him across the back of his head.”

  Winifred sucked in a breath. “Will he live?”

  The gray-haired physician hesitated. “Can’t say, to be honest. I won’t lie to you, Winifred. He hasn’t regained consciousness since they brought him in, and the longer he stays that way, the slimmer his chances are.”

  She pressed her fist against her mouth and bent her head. “May I see him?” she whispered.

  Dr. Graham rose and helped her to her feet. “You look done in, my dear. Maybe you should go on up to the house and rest first.”

  “No. I want to see him.”

  He nodded, then walked her down the hall to a room with a No Admittance sign on the door, pushed it open and slipped his arm around her shoulders.

  She stepped to the single bed and
a stifled sob escaped. Zane lay half-covered by a sheet, his chest bare, arms at his sides. But his face—Oh, God. His skin was paste-colored and white gauze bandages swathed his head. His closed eyelids looked bluish and his breathing was very rapid and shallow.

  “You can talk to him if you want, Winifred. The last sense to go is hearing, so it’s possible he might be able to hear you.”

  She lifted one of his limp hands. “Zane.” Her throat closed. “Zane, it’s Winifred. I came as soon as I could.”

  After a few moments, Dr. Graham gently disengaged Zane’s hand from hers and turned her away from the bed. “That’s probably enough for right now.”

  “Isn’t there anything else I can do?”

  The physician sighed. “Possibly. Just keep talking to him, but first...”

  He led her out into the hallway and nodded at a tall older woman in a crisp white smock. The woman sent Winifred an encouraging smile and disappeared into Zane’s room.

  “First,” the physician continued, “you need to rest. Elvira will watch over him.”

  Numb, Winifred laid her trembling hand on the physician’s sleeve. “You will send someone for me if—?”

  “I will. You have my word. Now, Sandy’s waiting outside with the buggy to drive you home.”

  How she got through the next hour she didn’t know. Sam greeted her at the door with a somber bow and Yan Li tried to smile but kept wiping tears off her cheeks.

  But what broke Winifred’s heart were Rosemarie’s forlorn cries for her papa. She gathered the girl into her arms, then let Sam carry her luggage upstairs. She settled Rosemarie on the bed beside her and tried to sleep.

  Hours later she awoke to find Rosemarie gone and a tray of tea and sandwiches on her bedside table. At first she couldn’t eat a single mouthful, but then she gave herself a stiff talking to. You must eat. You must keep up your strength. Do it for Zane and for Rosemarie.

  Later that night she walked down the hill to the hospital and sat by Zane’s bed. She tried to do what Dr. Graham had advised, but it was hard to talk over her tears.