Stone Dreaming Woman

by Lael R. Neill

  “Then you’ll let Northtown go to the dogs.”

  “I’ll live up to my end of the bargain. Tell the driver to go to the depot. But bear in mind that James Hildebrand is after your money. When you discover that he is indeed in dire financial straits, you’ll know I’ve been right all along, and you’ll have to live with the fact that you ruined your only child’s life for nothing more than the satisfaction of your own stubborn, selfish pride.”

  “You’ll not have to prove to me that you can keep a promise,” he sighed. “in spite of what you may think now, my heart isn’t made of granite. I’ve alienated you enough already. I don’t want you to hate me for the rest of your life.

  “You never knew your grandfather because we did not move to Parkfield until after his death. I thought I did not treat you as he treated me because I never made you address me as ‘sir’ or stand whenever you were in my presence. He did storm and fume and rage at me when I announced that I wanted to marry your mother. He objected most strongly to her Southern roots. We wed completely against his wishes, and he did disinherit me. I only shared in his estate because Mother, Richard, and Martha felt I had been treated unfairly, and they gave Parkfield to me. He also broke up your Aunt Martha’s one true romance because he disapproved of the man’s religion. Richard did not escape his wrath, either. He wanted at least one son to follow him into the military, and I had already chosen medicine. He berated Richard ceaselessly for choosing what he deemed to be a less than masculine career. And you know how your grandmother eventually came to feel about him, largely because of the callous way he treated his children. I confess I loathed him to his dying day, and yet I find myself behaving exactly as he did.” He paused and sighed deeply again.

  “You mean…” There was a sudden glimmer of light at the end of a very dark tunnel.

  “Doctor MacBride says you’ve done sterling work while you’ve been sharing his practice, and I’ll admit I felt no small pride when he said that. He’s right. You’re needed here, and if you choose to be a country doctor, then be the best. You can, you know. You’re a Weston.” He gave her a quirky, bittersweet half-smile.

  “You’re not making me go with you?” By way of reply he drew the train tickets from his pocket and eloquently tore them in half. “And what of Northtown?”

  “Our Lord said let the dead bury the dead. Northtown can raise its own funds. There are enough rich widows who need charitable causes. Need I say that I am an eligible widower? I can appeal to them regardless of what James Hildebrand does. And if you and Inspector Adair decide you want to be married, I’ll give you the grandest wedding New York ever saw.”

  “Even if his grandmother is a full-blooded Iroquois?”

  “You’re a lady of taste and breeding. I trust your judgment.” She did not believe her ears. She sat dumbfounded until he tapped on the roof of the cab. The driver leaned down again.

  “Sir?”

  “Go back to the hospital, please. I did indeed leave something important behind. You needn’t hurry. I’ve missed tonight’s train at any rate.”

  “Yes, sir,” the teamster responded. He chirped to his horses, and the cab swung in an unhurried, deliberate half circle.

  Jenny felt slow, relieved tears tracing their way down her cheeks. She decided to try to talk them away. “Shane is a wonderful man. He’s sophisticated, kind, brave, honest, and gentle. He’s also talented and intelligent. And his maternal great-grandfather was a person of some note. Remember your French history? Claude des Roches?”

  “The name is familiar. Wasn’t he some sort of royal advisor, supposed to have been executed in the Reign of Terror?”

  “The truth is that he escaped to Canada. His youngest son by his much younger second wife was Shane’s grandfather, who raised him after his parents and his older sister died in a smallpox epidemic.” She had hoped she could distract herself from tears, but it did not work. They still fell, spotting the front of her traveling outfit.

  “Jenny,” her father said quietly, reaching toward her. She came into his embrace and sobbed against him for a moment. “Jenny, don’t cry now. It’ll spoil your complexion and make your nose red, and your young man is upset enough as it is, if you told him what I think you did. Go to him and make things right between you. I’ll talk to him later, too, when everything has settled down.” She dug into her reticule for a handkerchief, but her father produced one from his pocket and mopped her face as he had done countless times after childhood tumbles and bruised feelings. He pressed it into her hand. “There. Keep it. It’s a lot more utilitarian than those lacy things you ladies carry.”

  “Thank you,” she said hoarsely, gulping back fresh tears. She felt the surprising strength of her father’s arms about her, and suddenly she was a little girl again, letting him keep the big, frightening world at bay. She cuddled against his chest and gave herself over to the clip-clop of the horses’ hooves and the rocking of the cab.

  At length he drew a heavy breath. “Jenny, I know I should never have opposed your entry into medical school. But there’s more to it than the mere fact that you are a woman. Something deeper and much more personal. Do you remember your mother’s little fainting spells?”

  “Yes, but in her era ladies did that sort of thing.”

  She felt more than saw him shake his head slowly, sorrowfully. “No. She suffered from traumatic epilepsy after having been thrown from a runaway cart when she was four years old. Her seizures were neither severe nor frequent, and for the most part controllable with medication.

  “Do you remember the day she died? She was standing on one of the garden benches picking roses, had a seizure, fell, and struck her head. She sustained an injury quite comparable to Inspector Adair’s subdural hematoma. However, we knew much less about them then. We took her to Northtown. Stuart Hoffman admitted her, and I scrubbed in on the surgery. I violated a primary precept of our profession in treating a member of my own family, but I was the only one with the requisite skill. And—God help me—we couldn’t save her. She passed away four hours post surgery. It tore my heart out. I couldn’t stand the thought that someday someone dear to you would die and you would be powerless to do anything about it. And, Jen, it almost happened.” She was shocked at what she was hearing. She had never imagined her reserved and unemotional father would ever bare his heart to her in that fashion. Her arms tightened around him.

  “Oh, Father, I’m so sorry! I never realized. No one ever said anything to me. But then it didn’t happen again. You and I brought Shane through hell. It took both of us, and I’ll be forever grateful to you.”

  “There’s an old saying that all’s well that ends well,” he said comfortingly, echoing what Shane had told her not so long ago. He held her against the warmth of his chest, and for the moment she remained content to take shelter in his familiar strength.

  It was dark by the time they reached the hospital. She did not wait demurely to be helped from the coach. Instead, she hiked up her skirt and jumped to the sidewalk, then flew up the stairs, once again the tomboy of her childhood.

  She paused outside Shane’s nearly closed door, gathered her composure, and nudged it open as quietly as she could. It was dim inside the room but not completely dark, and inside she saw a scene that would never fade from her memory. Angus was sitting at the far side of the bed, and Shane was staring up at the ceiling, ignoring whoever was trying to invade his private sphere of grief.

  “Shane!” she exclaimed, her voice urgent but nonetheless soft. He looked around, and when he recognized her, an expression of disbelief came across his face but was quickly supplanted by a look of utter joy that all but lit the room.

  “Jenny!” he exclaimed. She launched herself across the room and scooped him into her arms, and they clung to each other desperately. For the second time in an hour she found herself sobbing uncontrollably, her tears soaking into his butchered hair. Neither noticed when Angus left.

  “What are you doing back here? Won’t you miss your train?” His voi
ce was muffled against her neck. She felt her bonnet dangling down her back. She impatiently loosed the ribbon and let it fall.

  “I’ve missed it, and there won’t ever be another unless we’re on it together.”

  “Are you… You’re not leaving?”

  “No, I’m not. Things changed very quickly. It’s a little more complex than I led you to believe, and I’ll explain it later, but no, I’m not going to Northtown.” She held him against her and felt his arms around her back. Then his hand touched her tear-wet cheek, traveled across it, and stroked her hair as though he had to touch her to believe she was real.

  “Jenny, sweetheart, please don’t cry. It’s over now.” His voice was strangely tight, and she felt his shoulders shaking. She took a deep, calming breath and felt her tears diminish, but when she looked at him his eyelashes and her shoulder were wet. Her emotions had turned giddy, putting her very close to laughter.

  “Darling…” She pulled him into her arms again.

  “Whoever said grown men don’t cry certainly has a lot to learn,” he muttered, letting her hold him.

  “That’s all right, sweetheart. Doctors do too, sometimes.” He pulled her down and kissed her, and she tasted the salt of tears that could have belonged to either of them. Then she realized he was shaking with fatigue and the effects of adrenaline wearing away. She eased his shoulders back against his pillows and stroked the ragged hair away from his forehead.

  “Jenny, what…”

  “Hush. I’m not leaving, ever. Father and I worked everything out, even where you’re concerned. He accepts you and my medical practice. He told me if I was going to be a country doctor, be the best.”

  “This is all too much for one day,” he sighed. “My mind is running over.” She took out her father’s handkerchief and blotted his eyes, then her own.

  “I know, I know. It’s been too much for me, too.” A stray tear escaped her left eye and she attacked it with the handkerchief. “I’m sorry. I must look an absolute fright.”

  He reached out and touched her left hand. “You’ve never looked more beautiful to me than you do right now, not even on the night of Adrian Beaufort’s ball.”

  She paused with the handkerchief halfway back to her reticule. “I know you have a headache. I can tell by your eyes. This has been a difficult day. Let me give you something so you’ll sleep.”

  “As long as you’re a doctor again.”

  “I can find one. I’ll be right back.” She kissed his forehead. He leaned back, close to total exhaustion, but when she tried to leave, he reached for her hand and clung to it stubbornly.

  “Jenny, this may not be the time or the place, but before you get away from me again, please marry me? I love you with everything that’s in me. I have for a long time. If I’d only had the courage to ask you sooner, all this might never have happened. You’d have been able to tell your father you’d committed to me and you didn’t need either Phillip Hildebrand or Northtown. I don’t want to take a chance on anything coming between us again. Please say you’ll be my wife?”

  She turned back, giving him her full attention. “Of course I will. I love you, too, in a way I could never love any other man. You’re right, you know. If you’d declared yourself to me sooner, I would have had more ammunition for the firefight I’ve been in for the last two weeks. But better late than never, as the saying goes.” Her labile emotions swept her along like a whitewater river. She stifled the laughter that welled up inside her.

  “What’s so funny? I just asked you to marry me and you just accepted. That’s the most monumental step in anyone’s life.”

  “I was just thinking what I could possibly say to people when they asked me where we were when you proposed. I can’t very well say ‘in bed.’” Then the humor of the situation dawned on him, too, and his amused smile echoed hers.

  “I promise I’ll propose properly, on my knees, as soon as I’m able. But you know, I should play the love flute for you and leave a gift of meat at your door, and in accepting it you would accept me.”

  “I can do without the meat. And honestly, knowing your music ability, I wouldn’t want you anywhere near a flute. You can commit murder just trying to sing.”

  “That’s true, but since the flute only has five notes, there’s really no way to do it wrong.”

  “I think you’d find a way. All right. Enough talking for a while. Let me go find Angus and get your medication so you can sleep.” He nodded in acquiescence. She squeezed his hands, then disappeared.

  She applied the handkerchief to her eyes one last time as she went to find Angus. The charge nurse on the floor directed her to the lobby, where she encountered Angus, Richard, and her father. Their conversation ceased too abruptly when she approached.

  “Yes, Jenny?” Angus asked.

  “I need to ask you to order medication for Shane. He’s complaining of pain, and now that I’m no longer on the staff here…”

  “I’ll come, then,” he interrupted her. “And you’ll be back on the staff by morning. Not tae worry aboot that.” He levered himself up with his cane. She did not look at her father or her uncle for the moment.

  “I’ll see that you’re reinstated as soon as the director is here tomorrow,” John Weston said. She had never seen him so subdued. “Is Inspector Adair all right?”

  “I think he’s just overtired. He’s had too much excitement for one day. With a good night’s sleep, he’ll be fine.”

  “Good. I’ll admit I was concerned when the nurse reported he had fainted.”

  “I don’t think he hit his head,” Angus replied. “His eyes look all right, but one canna tell in a situation like that. I’m just going to watch him closely for the next twenty-four hours or so. We’ll be back shortly.” Angus ushered Jenny ahead of him up the flight of stairs to Shane’s room.

  “If you don’t mind, I’d like to check him again,” he said.

  “Since this afternoon, you’re the physician of record on this case. I couldn’t mind.”

  “What happened with your father? A miracle?”

  “Just about. It’s as close to a miracle as either of us will ever see.”

  The older man nodded. “It must have been, lass. I’m just glad everything will be all right.” She sighed in agreement.

  “Me too,” she replied. “Me too.” They climbed the last few steps in silence, and then she pushed Shane’s door open. It was darker inside the room than it had been a few minutes before, but she could see he was lying in his favorite sleeping position, curled on his right side with his head inclined toward her and his right fist next to his face. She tiptoed up to him, trying to cushion the heels of her high shoes, but the care was wasted. He was asleep, his entire body relaxed and his breathing deep and regular.

  “Well, it seems our intervention won’t be necessary,” Angus whispered. “I think the lad’s exhausted. And I don’t think he’s the only one.”

  She looked down at Shane’s sleeping form for some moments before she said softly, “He’s not the only one, Angus. It’s been too long for me, too.”

  “Let’s just leave him be for now. You go back to the hotel and get a good night’s sleep. I think I’d like to turn his case over to you and go back on the noon train tomorrow.” He ushered her out and closed the door behind her.

  “That was quick,” her father remarked as they returned to the lobby.

  “He was asleep when we got back to the room,” Angus said, folding stiffly into a nearby chair. “I think we’ve all had a long day. I’ll stay for a few hours, until I’m certain he won’t wake up. The rest of you go to the hotel and get a good night’s sleep yourselves. As I told Jenny, I’m going to leave this in her hands and go home tomorrow. I’ve left my practice too long.”

  “I’m about to leave mine a little longer,” John Weston said, with a barely concealed yawn; “though I do have a locum tenens to take up the slack. Richard has convinced me to spend a week or two with him, at least until Inspector Adair is discharged and Jen
ny gets back. Admittedly I could use a vacation. I haven’t seen Richard to speak of in two years, and I haven’t taken a proper holiday since before Catherine’s passing. Someone else can handle my cases while I’m away.”

  “I wish I could say the same. I expect I’ll be besieged day after tomorrow.”

  “If you’re under an avalanche, I’d be glad to assist you in any way I can,” John volunteered.

  “Oh, no!” the older man crowed. “You don’t know what you’ve just volunteered for! And I’ll certainly take you up on your offer. You can handle Jenny’s part of the practice until she returns.”

  “Very well. I’d like to see where my daughter will be practicing.”

  “Has been practicing,” Angus corrected. “She’s been doing a stellar job, too.”

  John nodded in agreement. “After all, she is a Weston,” he said with no small pride.

  “I’m ready for bed,” Richard interjected with a heartfelt yawn.

  Jenny rose, shaking out the folds of her skirt. “I am, too. Good night, Angus. Don’t stay up too late,” she said.

  “Nae, lass. I won’t. I only want to make sure Shane stays asleep.”

  The next morning dawned cooler, the air thin with the first coming of fall. The four dawdled over breakfast, then showed up in Shane’s room. Bathed and shaven, he had brightened considerably since the previous day and greeted everyone with a smile.

  “Inspector Adair, may I have a private moment with you, then?” John asked. Richard, taking a big cue from his brother, ushered Jenny and Angus out of the room.

  “I suppose you may, Doctor Weston, since there’s really nowhere for me to go.” Shane was full of suspicion. When the room was empty, John came to his bedside.

  “Sir, I have wronged you deeply, and I tender my most humble apologies,” he began, his voice an echo of the Old General’s. “When I told you Jenny was betrothed to Phillip Hildebrand, I lied to you, deliberately and unconscionably. Jenny never gave her consent to any such betrothal. I tried to force her into it, in part by driving you away. She is not now, nor has she ever been, engaged to marry anyone. Yes, she agreed to come back to New York with Phillip and me, but she did so under duress. I have begged her forgiveness and I beg yours, too, if you can find it within you. Please accept my apology, for Jenny’s sake if for no other reason. And I have another apology to make to you, too. I am sorry for impugning your family honor. No gentleman ever makes allegations like that unless he expects to be called out. It was beneath me, and I apologize.”