Laurie Alice Eakes - [Midwives 03]

by Choices of the Heart

  His eyes fluttered open and looked straight into hers for a moment, then drifted shut.

  “He knows you, girl,” Mrs. Brooks said. “He told me how he feels about you. You save his life and he’ll be wanting you around forever.”

  “If he gets well,” Esther said with care, “he’ll owe it to the Lord, not any skill of mine.”

  “True, true.” Mrs. Brooks nodded. “But he won’t see it all thatta way.”

  Hannah entered the room carrying a pewter mug from which steam rose. “This was all I could find to use. There weren’t no broth left over.”

  Esther’s nostrils flared. Poor Zach. It was willow bark tea and without any honey. It hadn’t seemed to help him much before, not being strong enough to ease his pain for long, but it was hot and wouldn’t hurt him.

  She took the cup and, with Gosnoll holding Zach upright, guided the rim to his lips. “Just a few sips to warm you. It’s that awful bitter stuff, but it’s warm.” She talked and cajoled in her sweetest fashion, and the contents vanished down Zach’s throat a few drops at a time.

  Gosnoll lay Zach down and stared at Esther with a bemused expression. “You’re good at this.”

  “I’ve had a great deal of practice.” She fussed with Zach’s covers and with his hair. Still Gosnoll gazed at her. The more he gazed, the more she took up little things to occupy her.

  And the further across the room Hannah retreated until she perched on the edge of the sofa beside her dozing father and brother.

  They all looked exhausted. None of them had known much sleep over the past two weeks. The floor, even without rug or blanket, looked appealing. Esther sat cross-legged and made notations in her midwife’s notebook.

  Soaked in cold natural pool for thirty minutes. Removed when shivering grew intense. Wrapped in blankets and gave one cup of white willow bark tea.

  And right before dawn, Zach’s fever broke.

  Griff reached Christiansburg in two days. He and his horse both dropping from fatigue, he spent money on a room and slept until hours past daybreak. From the one other time when he’d gone to the bank—that time with Zach and Henry Gosnoll—to open accounts for themselves and the mine, he knew to dress in a linen shirt and a coat and trousers made from wool despite the heat of the day. The other men wore neck cloths. Griff didn’t own one. Perhaps he should purchase one. And since he was there, he would buy ribbons for the girls, one for Esther too, some of that fancy thread Momma and Liza liked, and new slates and chalk for the schoolroom.

  If they still had a teacher when he returned.

  He certainly wanted her back. So did the children. Even Brenna admitted she missed the stories Miss Esther read to them, and Ned liked the way she let him bring bugs and things into the classroom if he could tell her something about them. Griff missed her voice when they sang. It was so rich and pure and smooth like fresh cream. He missed her woodland flower scent, her light step, the way she spoiled the stray cats like they were beloved relatives. He missed all the kindness she was lavishing on Zach.

  If only the ridge had a doctor.

  As though he conjured it from his imagination, he saw the shingle announcing that a doctor’s place of practice lay within. A rather good doctor, judging from the size of the house beyond the surgery—two stories and painted white with green shutters, two chimneys, and a profusion of roses in the front garden. A man like that would never come to the ridge to see the victim of a family feud. But Griff could ask him questions, perhaps buy some fancy medicine, anything to free Esther from her sense of obligation to remain at Zach’s bedside.

  If she wanted to be free.

  If she did, then he would find the opportunity for her. If she did not, he wouldn’t have wasted his time and would have aided his cousin.

  He knocked on the door to the office.

  A young woman perhaps three or four years older than Liza opened the door. She had eyes the color of moss and hair like the red stones they sometimes dug from the rocks, a startling and pretty combination. “I’m so sorry. I was expecting someone else.” Her voice was pretty too, lighter than Esther’s but just as smooth. “If you want to see the doctor, he’s still up at the house. Momma just got home from a lying-in and they’re having breakfast.” She looked him up and down. When her gaze reached his face again, it held interest. “You don’t look injured or ill. Can you wait a wee bit?”

  Ears hot from her perusal, Griff shifted from one foot to the other and shoved his hands into his pockets. “I can come back later. I have some business that I can do first.” He started to turn away.

  “Whom should I tell him to expect?” she called after him. “I’m forever forgetting to ask people their names.”

  “Tolliver. Griff Tolliver.”

  “Oh?” The little word held a page of curiosity.

  Griff nodded and went about his business at the bank. They remembered him and ushered him in with the same respect they showed other customers, but he noted the differences in his appearance and theirs. Besides no neck cloth, he wore boots, not shoes, beneath his trousers, and he’d forgotten to cut his hair again.

  On his way back down the street, he saw a barbershop and considered going in for a haircut, but the memory of Esther’s fingers twining through the hair on the back of his neck, then smoothing it down again, stopped him. If she liked it, he would leave it. If she liked it and it wasn’t just a distracting ploy on her part.

  He continued to the doctor’s office.

  This time a different woman answered the door. She was in early middle age, also strikingly pretty with dark red hair and brighter green eyes than the younger female. “Are you the Mr. Tolliver here to see my da?” she asked in a Scots burr.

  Griff blinked. “Yes’m. Um, yes, ma’am. Doctor—” He hesitated, not sure he knew how to say the name on the door.

  “Docherty. He’s waiting for you. I’m his eldest daughter, Melvina Docherty McWythie.” She led him along a narrow corridor with doors closed on either side until it reached an open room at the end. She dragged one foot a bit but otherwise moved with grace. “Da, this is Mr. Tolliver come back to see you.”

  A big man rose from behind a desk. Light from the windows shone on gray hair still bearing enough red to show where the daughters had gotten theirs, but the eyes were pure, winter-day gray. He held out a broad hand. “I’m Rafe Docherty. How may I assist you?” He too spoke in that broad Scots burr so common in the mountains. “As my daughter said, you look hale and hardy to me.”

  “I saw your sign and thought to ask for my cousin’s sake.” Griff glanced at the woman.

  “I’m going back to my ledgers so you two can talk.” She smiled at Griff. “Do not let my da frighten you. He has not been a pirate for nearly thirty years.” With that odd remark, she swept from the room.

  Griff arched one brow at the older man.

  Docherty laughed. “I was ne’er a pirate, only a privateer. Now sit you down and tell me what you are asking for your cousin.”

  “He’s got an infection from a stab wound,” Griff began.

  “That sounds bad. Where is it?”

  “Right above the hip.” Griff touched his own side. “Got a wound there myself but didn’t suffer from the infection.”

  “Odd, that, the two of you getting stabbed in the same place, no?” The gray eyes fixed on Griff, piercing as arrowheads, as Docherty picked up a quill pen and uncapped an inkwell.

  Griff met the gaze and ignored the implied question. He wasn’t about to tell an outsider about the feuding. “The best thing to a doctor we have is a midwife with some healing skills.”

  Docherty’s hand stilled in the act of dipping the quill. “A midwife, you say? An older lady then?”

  “No, she’s right young. A bit younger than me.”

  “So nae so much experience.” Docherty wrote something on a clean sheet of paper before him, his head bowed. “And you’re asking advice on how to treat a wound sepsis?”

  “He has a fever eating away at him.”


  “Ah, then ’tis throughout the body. Ver’ bad. We have not the medicines to treat such systemic fevers. We can only treat the symptoms and trust in God and the strength of the patient.” Docherty dipped his pen, wrote another word, then looked up. “What has this midwife healer young lady done for treating the fever?”

  “I . . . don’t know.” Griff shifted on his chair, suddenly uncomfortable in his middle as though his breakfast weren’t settling well. “Wiping down with cold water. Some hot drinks.”

  “Some willow bark tea, some cinnamon perhaps.” Docherty rose and crossed the room to a cabinet with dozens of tiny drawers. He began drawing them out and scooping fragrant powders into paper pokes. “I doubt she has much of the willow or cinnamon with her. What else? Feverfew? Aye, for certain.” He continued in this manner for several minutes, rattling off names of powders and liquids, until he had filled a basket with paper packets and tiny vials. Griff watched, his gut and mouth growing tighter by the moment.

  Finally, Docherty carried the basket back to the desk and set it before Griff. “There now. That’ll suit her fine.”

  “Will she know what these are all for?”

  A stupid question. Of course she would.

  “Aye, I am thinking she will. Now then, do you leave for home straightaway?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then come up to the house for some coffee and food before you go. My wife and other daughter would like to be meeting you, I am thinking.”

  Him? A common man from the mountains, who didn’t know the right way to talk or dress? Griff eyed the basket, his hand twitching with the urge to grab it and bolt for the door before he learned what was wrong here.

  But hot coffee and food sounded good before he made the long journey back into the mountains.

  He followed Docherty to the house, where a pretty woman whose hair still showed flashes of its former gold greeted them with a warm smile and curious sidelong glance at Griff. The flirtatious younger daughter kept her gaze demurely downcast in front of her parents.

  “Sit down, Mr. Tolliver,” Mrs. Docherty told him in a honey-and-cream voice like Esther’s. “Do you like anything in your coffee?”

  He said he didn’t. He sat at a fine walnut table before a deep window overlooking the red and pink roses and other flowers he couldn’t name. Mrs. Docherty served him coffee. Miss Docherty served him warm rolls with butter and strawberry jam, slices of ham, and fresh raspberries. They gathered at the table, Dr. Docherty asked a blessing upon the meal, and four pairs of eyes fixed themselves upon him.

  “Tell us about your mountains.”

  “Tell us about this young midwife.”

  The two eldest women spoke at the same time.

  Griff looked to the doctor for help.

  He smiled. “I’d like to know where you’re from first, Mr. Tolliver. Where is it?”

  “Southwest of here,” Griff answered with care. “Along the New River. Some surveyor told us once it was seventy-five miles from here.”

  “And no roads?” Miss Docherty exclaimed.

  “Just a track,” Griff admitted.

  “Do you have wild animals there?” Miss Docherty persisted.

  “Sounds to me,” Mrs. McWythie murmured, “like they have some wild people.”

  Griff’s fingers tightened on his knife. Fixing the elder daughter with a fierce glare, he said in his best mountain drawl, “We’re gettin’ civilized, ma’am. My family owns half a mountain and half a lead mine.”

  “And you hired a teacher.”

  Griff’s head snapped around to face Docherty. “You’ve . . . heard?”

  “News travels.” Docherty’s smile was warm, encouraging. “But my wife would like to know about your midwife healer. She’s one herself.”

  The gut tightness returned. “I don’t know what to tell you,” Griff hedged.

  “Let’s make this easy,” Mrs. Docherty suggested. “Start with her name. I may know her.”

  “She’s not from around here.” Griff set his knife down and curled his hands around the edge of the table. The gazes upon him were too intense, the faces too set for something not to be wrong. “Her name is Cherrett. Esther Cherrett.”

  The younger daughter gasped. The other three exchanged glances.

  Griff gave up thinking he could eat. “You know her.” It was a statement stemming from a suspicion he’d carried from the doctor’s office.

  “Aye,” Dr. Docherty affirmed, “we ken who she is. She’s the missing daughter of our dear friends.”

  28

  Esther turned the page and began to read yet one more of Shakespeare’s sonnets. These and several of the playwright’s dramas, all appearing old enough to have belonged to the bard himself, were the only reading materials in the Brooks household other than the Bible. She’d been reading that to Zach. It kept him awake. Shakespeare sent him to sleep. And he needed his sleep, as much of it as he could get. He needed broth and milk and eggs, and she, his mother, or his sister spooned those down him in small portions several times a day. He was far too thin and weak to do much for himself, but his recovery seemed more likely each day.

  “I said you’re an angel,” he had told her when he woke after his fever broke.

  “You can thank your brother-in-law for carrying you up to the pool, not me. I’d run out of ideas on what to do.”

  And sent Mattie to Rafe Docherty for no reason. By now Rafe and Phoebe and at least their daughters and son-in-law, if not their sons too, would know where to find her. No doubt a message was on its way to her parents even as she read one more sonnet in the heat of the summer afternoon. No doubt they would arrive in as little as four and no more than six weeks. She had that long before she had to make up her mind whether to stay or keep running.

  “Esther?” Zach’s voice was as weak as he.

  She raised her gaze from the book. “Yes?”

  “You stopped reading.”

  “I thought you were asleep.”

  “Thirsty. Please.” He reached toward the cup of water beside his bed, his hand trembling.

  “I’ll get it.” She set the book aside and crossed the room to kneel beside him.

  He’d lost so much muscle she could lift him. She held him with one arm beneath his shoulders and her other hand holding the cup.

  He smiled at her from half a foot away. “I feel like a child.”

  “You won’t for long.”

  “I hope not.” He curled his fingers around her wrist holding the cup to his lips. “I love you now more than ever.”

  “No, Zach, you do not.” She tried to ease herself away from him, but he held on. Her heart began to pound, her stomach clench. “You’re confusing love with gratitude. Now let me go.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Zach—” She couldn’t breathe.

  A commotion sounded in the yard, horses’ hooves, men shouting.

  “Let me go, Zach.” Esther’s voice rose on a note of panic. “You have callers.”

  “Not for me.” He leaned closer to her. His breath brushed her cheek, stirring the hair she no longer owned pins enough to keep bundled into its knot, and bile burned in her throat. “Just kiss me so I can truly feel alive.”

  “I c-can’t kiss—”

  The parlor door burst open and Griff Tolliver strode in—tall, broad, vigorously strong and healthy with his wind-tossed hair and sun-bronzed skin. The very air in the room seemed to crackle and swirl.

  Then it settled to unnatural stillness. “I beg your pardon for interrupting.” Griff closed the door behind him. “I crossed paths with your brother on the trail and brought him home, Zach.”

  “You didn’t need to come in and tell me that.” Zach’s voice, though weak, held enough ice to fill a barn.

  Esther’s face and neck burned as though she had caught Zach’s fever, but the panic slipped away. She tried to pull away from him again. He held her with more strength than he should possess. If she struggled, she would likely spill the water all over him. If sh
e didn’t get away, Griff would think the worst of her.

  She sent him a pleading glance. “Welcome back, Griff. I trust you had a safe journey?”

  “Safe enough.” He plucked the cup from her hand. “I think she wants to get up, Zach.”

  “Only because you walked in.” Zach sank back against his pillows, and Esther scrambled to her feet, smoothing back her hair.

  “I think,” she said with her own hint of frost, “you can get your own water now, Zachary Brooks.”

  “Aw, Esther, you can’t blame a man who’s been a-dyin’ for trying.”

  “You . . . can if she’s not wi-willing.”

  “But was she unwilling?” Griff murmured.

  A tremor raced through Esther, and she backed to the door. “Excuse me. I need some air.” She jerked up the latch.

  Zach grinned at Griff. “She saved my life, now I’m going to marry her.”

  “I didn’t . . . I’m not going to . . .” She ran out of the house and into the yard.

  No one was there now, and she dropped onto the lowest porch step, her face buried in her hands. She was shaking for no good reason. That was Zach, weak-as-a-new-calf Zach, not some healthy male. She could have gotten away even if it had made a bit of a scene. He wouldn’t have hurt her. He wanted nothing more than what Griff had taken.

  No, what Griff had given and she’d taken before giving back.

  A low moan escaped her.

  “What’s amiss?” Griff was there beside her, silent as ever in his approach, his hand light on her hair. “Are you ill? Mattie said you’ve been at Zach’s side constantly.”

  “I’m not ill. Worn to a thread, is all, and not much liking the way Zach thinks he has a claim on me.”

  “Miss Esther Cherrett . . .” Griff crouched before her, coaxed her chin up, and met her gaze. “I’m only an ignorant mountain boy compared to the fancy, educated friends you have, but I know fear when I see it, and you was—were scared in there.” He tapped her chin. “Since when have you been afraid of Zach?”