Stone Dreaming Woman

by Lael R. Neill

  “Jenny, you’ve been so quiet this evening. Is anything bothering you?” he asked.

  “No, not really.”

  “Where have Richard and Angus and your father gone?”

  “They’re next door at Bimbo’s, having dinner. I didn’t feel like going with them.”

  “Heavens, I don’t need a private nurse now. Go and get some supper.”

  “No,” she sighed. “They’re just about done now, anyway, and I’ll have to leave soon.”

  “You act like you’re worried about something.”

  “Actually there is something wrong, and I’m glad you didn’t figure it out sooner. I have to leave Canada. I’m going back to New York with Father. Our train leaves at ten.” He reached for her hand.

  “You’ll be back, though.”

  Slowly she shook her head and let the sword fall. “No, I won’t. I’m going back to join the staff of Northtown Surgical Clinic. It’s everything I always wanted to do, and it’s the greatest opportunity in the world for me. I really don’t have any other choice. This is all I’ve ever dreamed of since I was six years old and saw the miracles my father could work in people’s lives.”

  “Jenny! No! I don’t believe this!” The words were torn from him.

  “Oh, yes. Believe it, Shane. You knew all along I was just visiting here and the day would come when I’d go home.”

  “But you let me think you cared for me…”

  That was territory into which she did not want to venture. The ground was too shaky there. “Be that as it may, it’s over. After all, no man really wants a woman with a career. No woman with a career should marry, either. There will come a time when she will have to put one or the other first, and her heart will be broken, perhaps his also. If you had to make the same choice, you know what yours would be.”

  “You have a medical practice here,” he protested. “You’re needed in a way you could never be needed in a big city like New York. Elk Gap needs you, Angus needs you, and I need you. Perhaps the men you’re used to couldn’t stand competition from your medical career, but I’m not most men. I wasn’t raised like that. I could never pursue my own happiness at the expense of another person.”

  “I know our relationship has been special to you. It has been to me, too. But I need the experience I can only get at Northtown. It’s a research hospital. The experimental procedure that saved your life was developed there, and now I can have a chance to be a part of all that.”

  “If you go to New York, as soon as Angus lets me out of this hospital, I’m coming after you,” he vowed. She backed off, shaking her head.

  “Don’t, Shane. Don’t even think of it. You’d receive a very nasty surprise. My life in New York isn’t nearly what you think it is.”

  “I could always become one of New York’s finest. But then, in a grand place like that, a half-breed shanty Irish cop wouldn’t even be dirt under your feet.” She steeled herself against the guilt.

  “You told me how Ottawa made you feel. New York is twice as big. You’d die there. I’m sorry, but this is signed, sealed, and delivered, and there’s nothing you can do about it.” She gave him an intense look, hoping the conflict that raged inside her did not show.

  “Why did you let me think you love me? Why have you been with me night and day for the last eleven days? Was it just to make sure I got well enough to survive? Jenny, it would have been more merciful to have turned your back on me and let nature take her course.”

  Her eyes brimmed dangerously with heartache and anger, but her voice was low and controlled as she rounded on him.

  “Shane Patrick Adair, don’t you dare say anything like that again, ever! Don’t you even dare think it! I could save ten thousand lives, but if I hadn’t done everything I could to save yours, I could never have lived with myself. I’m sorry if it seems like I’ve pulled you out of the frying pan only to drop you into the fire. I didn’t, really, and when the initial hurt wears off you’ll understand that. You have your work, after all, and someday you’ll find love. It’s only in Victorian romances that people die of broken hearts. It’s also only in fairy tales that people marry their true loves and live happily ever after.”

  “Please think this over. You’re needed here.”

  “Needed, perhaps. But is just being needed here because I am a physician enough to build an entire life on? I have thought it over. I’ve thought it over and under and up and down and inside out and backward, and I keep coming to the same conclusion. I have to go to Northtown. I’ll be needed there, too, and even though it would be nice to say I’d be coming back, I just don’t know what will happen. In fact, right before the accident, I asked you to go away and leave me my dignity.”

  He looked down at his hands. His face was largely expressionless, but she read defeat written large in the set of his shoulders. “Then God be with you. But I won’t let you go. I’ll be in New York.”

  “I wish I could forbid you, but you’re a free man. If you want to march off a cliff, that’s up to you. Goodbye, then. I have to leave now. Thank you for being so kind to me over the summer. I have valued your friendship, and I will always remember you in my prayers.” She turned away without looking at him; she would not have dared the merest glance. It would have ripped her resolve to shreds. She glided toward the door with regal detachment, as though she had a book balanced on her head and Aunt Eleanor critiquing her posture.

  “Jenny,” he called after her. “What happens if you decide you want love?” It was too little, too late, but his words still brought the tears. Out in the hallway she jammed a knuckle into her mouth to stifle the one sob that got away.

  The little bistro was as authentic as they came, run by a real immigrant family from a nameless small town in the sunbaked south of Italy, where oregano, garlic, and olive oil were the staples of life. Heartsick in a way she had never believed possible, she slipped in. She spotted her father, Richard, and Angus at a table, and hung in the shadows where she could hear their conversation. She caught Angus in the middle of a sentence.

  “…really going to make Jenny go back with you?” he asked.

  “Jenny is going back to New York of her own free will, Doctor MacBride,” John replied between bites of spinach-stuffed cannelloni. “Besides, I don’t see that it’s any of your business.”

  “It is indeed my business. After all, you’re robbing me of the partner in my practice. She’s an excellent physician, and she’s been invaluable to me.”

  “Physician!” John exploded. “There’s no woman in the world who’s fit to be a practicing physician! Oh, she probably did well enough with runny noses and baby catching, but women can’t handle real emergencies. Any type of bloody trauma and she’d probably faint dead away and give you two patients to treat instead of one.”

  “The first call she took in Elk Gap was a traumatic amputation, a boy who had his foot taken off by a leg-hold trap. Her procedure could have been in a textbook. She gave him a stump he could walk on.”

  “She was always good at embroidery,” Weston said dryly.

  “She kept her head at the scene of Shane’s accident, didn’t she?”

  “I was there to tell her what to do. He was fortunate. Women’s hearts rule their heads, and their biology runs the whole show. He’s just lucky it wasn’t the wrong time of the month.”

  Angus’s cheeks flared scarlet, and his Scots burr rasped like a buzz saw. “Doctor Weston, I did not hear that last remark. If I had, I should be obligated to thrash you within an inch of your life. Jenny has been a consummate physician. She has an innate diagnostic sense, and she’s always been right. She can put anyone at ease, from a frightened child to an old man with angina. I’m not going to elaborate, but I’d much rather have her share my practice than you, for all your self-promoted grand reputation.”

  Jenny’s heart nearly stopped. She almost stepped out and halted the conversation, but her father’s cool, condescending tone held her there in the shadow of a faux grapevine.

  “Y
ou’ve been practicing in the bush too long, Doctor MacBride.”

  “What gives you the right to play God, Weston? Did it give you satisfaction to flaunt your so-called brilliant skill out here among us unwashed heathens in the hinterlands and save a life just so you could turn around and ruin two? You’re the one on whom the Hippocratic Oath is wasted, not Jenny,” Angus retorted hotly.

  John Weston looked up, his mild eyes deceptively echoing Richard’s. His tone became pedantic and patronizing, as though he were talking to a very dense child. “Jenny is a woman. Women were created to get married and have babies. Jenny will be married soon, to a young man of impeccable family. One or two children, and she’ll forget Elk Gap ever existed.”

  God, she thought, how can you be so nasty? At that moment Richard interjected himself into the argument.

  “John, I can only agree with Angus. What you’re doing is wrong. It’s arbitrary, it’s selfish, and it’s cruel. Have you forgotten how Father objected to you and Catherine?” He paused to let it soak in. “Even though you hated him for opposing you, you’re treating Jenny exactly as he treated you. If you make her leave on that train tonight, I never want to hear of or from you again.”

  John turned his gaze to Richard, masking his surprise like a poker player. It was an expression Jenny had seen before when someone turned the tables against her father. “The situation is not comparable at all, Richard,” he said mildly. “Jenny is a woman.”

  Richard rose and laid his napkin next to his barely touched plate. “You have no idea how wrong you are, John. I hope you wake up before it’s too late. Now I have nothing more to say to you. You are no longer my brother. If you will please excuse me, Angus?” After the polite formality he turned on his heel and strode away, but stopped at the doorway as Jenny stepped out of the shadows. Wishing she had interrupted the conversation before it got out of hand, she moved toward the table like one in a trance.

  “Father, I believe your cab is here.”

  “Come here and sit down. I’m not through with my supper yet.” She drifted toward him, nearly catatonic.

  “Jen,” Richard said softly. She turned to him.

  “Goodbye, Uncle Richard.”

  “Can I do anything?” His voice was low and private.

  “Take care of Fleur. If you don’t want to ride her, give her to Shane.”

  “Aren’t you going to want her with you someday?”

  “No. I wouldn’t take her to the city. I won’t be riding anymore anyway.” She stretched up to kiss his cheek. “I love you so. I’ll write often, I promise. God bless.”

  “God bless you, too.” He hugged her, and then she broke off and crossed the room. She had just started to sit down by her father when a uniformed nurse hurried up to Angus.

  “Doctor MacBride, Inspector Adair tried to get out of bed and fainted. He’s conscious now and doesn’t appear to be in difficulty, but you should come immediately.” He chucked his napkin down and lurched to his feet. For a moment his eyes met Jenny’s, and he scooped her into an ursine embrace.

  “God keep ye, lass.” For a moment she buried her head against his broad shoulder.

  “Oh, Angus,” she breathed, muffling her face in his tweed jacket.

  “Not tae worry, lassie. He and I will muddle through. ’Tis ye I worry aboot.” He turned to her father, who merely glanced at them before diverting his attention to the remnants of his supper. Angus gathered his cane and squared his coat over his shoulders. “As for you, Doctor Weston, you’re a cruel, heartless bastard. If there’s any justice in heaven, I hope you’re called to accounts for all the unhappiness you’re causing this day.” He stumped from the restaurant, and Richard followed.

  A short time later, John Weston helped Jenny into the hired cab. She sat staring blankly ahead as he told the driver to start for the railroad station. The sluggish team pulled slowly into the street.

  “Well, then, we’ll be home soon,” he began. “It’s going to be nice, having you in the house again. Your room is as you left it. I did take the liberty of disposing of most of the clothes you left, except your ball gowns. Eleanor said your wardrobe was completely out of style, and since the Mission Board had a clothing drive, I shipped everything off to the less fortunate. You must let her take you shopping as soon as you get home. I also instructed Richard to send only your furs. You’ll not need the books now, and as for the clothes, I’ll not have my daughter looking like some backwoods farmer’s wife. That brown checkered whatever-it-was is hideous, and I can’t say much for what you’re wearing right now. You shouldn’t wear black. You’re too thin, and your eyes are too dark. It’s unflattering.”

  “Black is all I’ll ever wear from this moment on. Let it be a reminder to you.”

  “Oh, you don’t mean that. Of course you’ll enjoy a new wardrobe. It goes without saying that cost is no object.” She did not reply. Eventually he drew breath and spoke again. “I’ve given it a good deal of thought. We’ll announce your engagement at the New Year’s Ball. That’s come to be a tradition in the family. How does it sound? Mr. Hildebrand has a brilliant future ahead of him. His father is thinking of a gubernatorial campaign. I was the first to endorse his candidacy. That young chap will follow in his father’s footsteps, mark my words.”

  “I think the Hildebrands are bankrupt. Phillip let slip to Corporal Weller that he dared not go home without a firm commitment that I’d marry him and bring a substantial dowry with me.”

  “Oh, bosh. James is practically carrying Northtown’s whole research program by himself.”

  “I believe the term is deficit spending. He is spending beyond his means and desperately needs the Weston money.”

  “You’d better have facts to back that allegation. I believe you’re making it up. You’re just trying to weasel out of keeping your word. But when you’re married to Phillip you may be First Lady someday. What do you think of that?”

  Her lethargy snapped. She turned hard eyes on her father, and at once they brimmed caustic tears of helpless hatred. “Why do you even bother to ask? Are you enjoying rubbing the salt in, then?”

  “After a few babies, you’ll think in an altogether different vein. You’ll be doing what women were put on earth to do.”

  She rounded on him with surprising venom. “Father, you may force me to marry. You may even force me out of medicine. But there is no power on earth that can force me to have marital relations with a man I detest, or to bear his children. I will guarantee you this right now. I will never allow Phillip Hildebrand to consummate our marriage. I will force him to divorce me. It will be public and it will be messy, I guarantee.”

  “If you do not have a child within three years of your marriage, I will disinherit you.”

  “Didn’t your own father threaten the same thing if you married Mother?”

  “That’s not in the least comparable, and you know it. I’m a man.”

  “Oh! I understand now! Bullying a daughter is permissible. Coercing a son is not. Fine. Disinherit me this moment! I welcome it! I can make my way in the world. And like Uncle Richard, once I am out of your household, I want no further contact with you, ever. From this moment, I have no father. You are nothing more to me than the neighborhood bully all grown up.”

  “You may feel that way now, but believe me, someday you’ll thank…”

  That was the last straw. She felt a rush of anger so strong that for an instant lightning flashed in her head and she was within a scant inch of lashing out physically. She heard her voice low and harsh, interrupting him in a way she had never dared before. “I’ll tell you exactly when I’ll thank you. I’ll thank you when you and Phillip Hildebrand are both dead and I’m free!” She had heard the phrase deafening silence. Now it wrapped around them in the darkness of the hired cab.

  “Jen?” he asked after a moment’s pause. She was too angry to catch the slight hesitance that crept into his voice.

  “Yes, Father?”

  “You and Inspector Adair—do you love each o
ther?”

  “I’m not going to dignify that with an answer. You’ve lost no opportunity to let me know that you couldn’t care a whit less what either of us feels toward the other.”

  “Just tell me, Jen.” He suddenly sounded old and tired.

  “Yes, we do. Why do you think he tried to follow me tonight? He knows you lied to him, and he also said that as soon as he’s well he’s coming to New York after me. You’ve not heard the last of him, and he’s one man even you can’t bully.” John looked at her, his expression thoughtful and worried at once. She resumed staring blankly at the front of the cab. He reached up and knocked on the roof, summoning the driver.

  The teamster slid his small hatch open and leaned over. “Yes, sir?” he asked.

  “Pull over a moment, please. I need to check my valise. I think I may have forgotten something.”

  “Right away, sir.” Jenny heard him call “whoa” to the horses, and the cab stopped along the right-hand verge of the unpaved street. She did not move.

  “Jen?” he asked.

  “Yes, Father?”

  “I loved your mother more than my very soul. She was charming and gentle and lovely, and she was completely content to let me do all her thinking. You look so much like her that it’s difficult for me to realize that you do think. And to boot, you think like a Weston.” He broke off with a deep sigh. For a moment she felt the merest glimmer of hope.

  “How would you have felt if someone told you that you couldn’t practice medicine? What would you have done if someone picked out a wife who made your flesh crawl and told you your feelings didn’t matter? I meant what I said. Perhaps someday I will be grateful to you, but it will only come if you give up your heavy-handed interference in my life.”