Loner's Lady

by Lynna Banning

  “Jess,” she breathed. “Jess.”

  He felt her move away from him, felt the soft wash of lavender-scented air in her wake. Prepared for the worst, he opened his lids.

  “If you won’t come with me, Ellen, then I’m asking you to just…” he swallowed hard “…just hold me in your heart a little while.”

  She stopped and turned toward him. “Always,” she whispered. “Always.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Iona spied Dr. James Callahan even before he turned the corner onto Chestnut Lane. This morning, she resolved with a stiffening of her spine, he would do more than admire her marigolds and pass on. Today she was ready for him.

  He came closer, closer still with each step of his shiny black shoes. There! He had almost reached her front gate.

  Iona sprang to her feet, unaware that her embroidery hoop fluttered from her lap to the veranda floor.

  “Yoo-hoo, Dr. Callahan,” she called before she could stop herself. She skimmed down the porch steps and along the front path, pausing just inside the gate.

  “Dr. Callahan?” She knew her boarders could hear her, that the neighbors were watching. Somehow she didn’t care.

  The doctor slowed, then faced her with his stiff military stance. His face had gone red as a cardinal’s wing, but his gray eyes watched her intently.

  “G-good morning, Mrs. Everett.”

  Iona cleared her throat. “Good morning, Dr. Callahan. Would you care for some lemonade?”

  He hesitated, his salt-and-pepper eyebrows rising.

  “And some cake? Chocolate. I…I made it this morning. For your birthday.”

  “My birthday! Why, my birthday isn’t until March.”

  She looked taken aback. “Oh, my. It’s not your birthday today?”

  “I’m afraid not.” He lifted his hat and turned as if to proceed on down the lane.

  Iona’s smooth pink-and-white forehead wrinkled into a frown. “It isn’t your birthday?” she repeated.

  Doc rocked back on his heel and pivoted. “No, it’s not.”

  “Well, that is a surprise.”

  He studied her with those penetrating gray eyes. “Sometimes…” He closed his lips carefully until he could corral his thoughts. “Sometimes, surprises can be…”

  “Yes?” Iona smiled. “Can be what, James?” she said, her voice gentle.

  Doc swallowed hard. “Can be…well, surprising.”

  Iona looked up at him, her eyes shining. “In that case, even if it is not your birthday, would you care for a piece of my chocolate cake?”

  He ascended the porch steps on feet that had magically sprouted wings, and followed her through the wide front door and down the long hallway to the kitchen. Smack in the center of a bright green painted wooden table sat the tallest cake Doc had ever laid eyes on. Must be three—maybe even four—layers, with a shiny frosting so dark and rich it looked like chocolate satin.

  He licked his lips. There goes my waistline.

  But in such a good cause! Iona looked so happy it was worth it just to watch her. She practically pirouetted around her spotless white-painted kitchen, a silver cake server grasped in one hand. At last she settled next to the round table like a beautiful sky-blue butterfly, the server poised over her creation.

  Doc groaned with pleasure as he counted the layers. One-two-three—yes, four! And all chocolate. Where did she get so much cocoa? Or was it real chocolate? Or was he dreaming…?

  He accepted the small flower-patterned plate Iona presented to him. The generous slab of cake extended over the gilt edge of the china, and Doc closed his eyes and inhaled the chocolaty scent.

  “Makes me want to say a long, poetic grace,” he confessed, his eyes still shut.

  “As in ‘Thank you, Lord, and please give me a fork?’” Iona joked, her soft eyes moving from her handiwork to Doc’s face.

  She stepped forward, tucked the missing utensil into his vest pocket and started to move away, but he captured her fingers in his warm, trembling hand. “As in ‘Thank you, Lord, for Iona Everett.’” He pressed her imprisoned hand to his chest. “I like cake,” he murmured.

  “I am so glad.” She breathed the words so softly he wasn’t sure he’d heard them.

  “I like chocolate, as well. How did you know it’s my favorite?”

  “I…asked your niece. Ellen. She’s staying here at my boardinghouse, you know. Until…well, until she gets things worked out.”

  “Ah,” Doc acknowledged. He glanced into Iona’s face, then his gaze veered off to the environs. “I like your kitchen.”

  “I like my new stove.” Iona gestured with her head toward the huge, shiny, nickel-trimmed iron behemoth that took up almost all one wall.

  Doc watched her eyes move from the stove back to the small, capable hand he still held against his vest. “I like…your hand,” he choked out. “Here. In mine.”

  Iona’s pink cheeks dimpled. “But you won’t be able to sample my cake unless you release it.”

  He wondered at the lazy warmth in her voice. Thought about it, and what she’d said, for a full minute. He still had her hand in his.

  “I’d rather give up the cake and keep…” He ran out of air.

  “Why, James.” She tipped her head up and smiled at him. The room suddenly filled with a wash of golden light, and Doc’s heart stopped. Faltered to a start. Stopped again. He sucked in a breath and tried to swallow.

  Was he dying? Right here with his beloved’s hand clasped in his? Now, before he’d even tasted her cake? Or confessed his ardor?

  “Iona, I…” Thunk-thunk went his cardiac muscles. “I…that is, I…love you.”

  She looked at him a long, long time, her gray eyes shimmering with tears. Then she rose on tiptoe and brushed her lips against his cheek.

  “I know,” she whispered. “Now, eat your cake.”

  The following afternoon, at Ellen’s request, Jess drove the buggy back out to the farm. Before he’d even got the horse tied up, she was down off the seat and moving toward the sunny side of the privy, an odd, determined expression in her eyes.

  “Jess, give me your pocketknife.”

  “Sure, but—”

  “And get a bucket of water, would you? Fill it only half-full.”

  She cut six-inch lengths from the tender ends of the rose canes, plunged them into the bucket he presented, then snipped off a few lush fronds of honeysuckle.

  Jess watched her, waiting for more tears, but none came. Instead she went on cutting the overgrown vines. When he could speak, he leaned toward her. “Care to tell me what you’re doing?”

  “What does it look like I am doing?” she asked softly. She didn’t glance at him, just went on snipping.

  “Looks to me like you can’t wait to fix up your garden.”

  She paused, his pocketknife poised over another rose cane. “Yes, you are right.”

  A fist of cold steel pounded into his chest. Of course. He should have known Ellen could not bear to leave the farm she cherished, even for him. She loved him, yes. But she would not be coming with him.

  He cleared his throat. “I’m buying the Markley place, on the other side of town.”

  She stood absolutely still, not looking at him. “Oh? Does it have a garden?”

  “Not yet. Lots of room, though. A stable and a barn, big house, a cherry orchard on the back ten acres.”

  She turned, her arms full of honeysuckle. “It sounds nice, Jess.” She pivoted abruptly, leaned her head against the greenery-covered privy wall and closed her eyes. Her shoulders shook.

  “Ellen.” He started toward her, but she warned him off with a wave of her hand. “I’m all right, Jess,” she said in a watery voice. “P-perfectly all right.”

  He waited while she cried it out of her system, then gently led her back to the buggy, helped her up onto the seat and, at her gesture, set the bucket of cuttings on the floor at her feet.

  “I’ll take you back to town, Ellen. You’re not ready to stay here alone yet.”<
br />
  “I will never be ready.”

  He climbed into the buggy and lifted the reins. “That’s never stopped you before. I admired that in you from the first. You might be scared, but you wade right in.”

  She gave a small laugh. “And broke my leg, if you remember.”

  He started the horse moving forward. Ellen rode beside him in complete silence, but the look on her face puzzled him. Part thoughtful consideration, as if she was adding up figures in her head. Part resignation. Something was happening in that brain of hers. He wasn’t all that sure he wanted to know what it was.

  Just as he turned onto the main road, Ellen spoke again. “When we get to town, could we stop at the mercantile?”

  Jess threw her a quick look. She sat with her back straight as a rake handle, her chin up, hands clenched in her lap. She was hurting—he could see it in her eyes, in the resolute line of her jaw.

  “Sure. You need something, do you?”

  “Yes,” she said, her voice close to tears. “I most certainly do.”

  Jess waited, hoping she couldn’t hear the desperate thumping of his heart.

  “You said the Markley place didn’t have a garden.”

  “I did, yes.”

  “Then I will need seeds. Lots of seeds.”

  Her words brought his heart to a standstill. “Ellen.” He dropped the reins and reached for her. “Ellen.”

  “Stop, Jess. I can’t kiss you when I’m crying.”

  “Why not?” he whispered against her mouth. “Why the hell not?”

  “Because…” she gasped when he swirled his tongue into the shell of her ear “…the chickens are watching.”

  He drove her to Svensen’s Mercantile, where Ellen bought flower seeds and Jess purchased two ripe oranges. Then he drove to a shady corner of the cherry grove in back of the house he’d just bought, spread out a plaid lap robe Doc kept under the buggy seat, and pulled Ellen down beside him.

  “Nobody’s watching,” he said. “No chickens. No nothing, just trees.”

  “They are beautiful, Jess. We’ll have bushels and bushels of cher—”

  “First things first,” he growled.

  “Of course.”

  “You like the house?”

  “It’s so big, Jess.”

  “It is, yes.”

  She shifted to look at him from under the brim of her straw hat. “I don’t think—”

  Jess reached for her. “Dammit, Ellen, don’t think. Just let me touch you. Close your eyes and let me touch you.”

  She got his name out before his mouth closed on hers, and then whatever she was going to say didn’t matter anymore. When he released her, he unpinned her hat.

  “I love you,” she murmured. “I want to be with you. No matter what.”

  “Now?” he breathed against her lips. “Do you want it now?”

  “Yes.”

  He stood to shuck his trousers and shirt and everything else—underdrawers, boots, socks. Then he drew her up in front of him and very slowly began to unbutton her dress.

  “It has buttons all the way to the hem,” she whispered.

  “What the hell for?” he breathed against her temple.

  “For you to unbutton,” she said in a soft voice. “Isn’t that a lovely word—unbutton?”

  Jess chuckled low in his throat. “There are other words,” he said. “Naked, for one. Skin. Tongue.”

  Something began to squeeze inside her, to swell and ache as she imagined a flower bud would unfold, reaching for warmth.

  “Hands,” he added. He slid the blue muslin off her shoulders, untied the ribbon of her camisole and pushed down her petticoats and lacy drawers. His fingers skimmed over her heated skin, over her hips, up her sides, to her breasts.

  Her insides went liquid. She caught her arms around his neck. “Can you do this? With your bandaged shoulder, I mean?”

  Jess laughed. “Try me.”

  He lifted her off her feet, laid her flat on the blanket and straddled her, breathing hard. “I like this.”

  Ellen grinned up at him. “What ‘this’ would that be?”

  He nuzzled her earlobe. “You. Me. Together.”

  He slid a finger inside her, and his lips found her nipple. She moved with him, wondering at the bolt of pure pleasure she felt. Her inner muscles closed around him and he withdrew partway.

  “Put your hand on me,” he whispered.

  He reinserted his finger and kissed her deeply, then drew her other nipple into his mouth. Ellen cried aloud.

  “I love you, Ellen. I want you. Want you to be mine.”

  Then he was sheathed inside her, feeling her hot, wet flesh close around him, hearing her cry his name over and over.

  “Ellen,” he whispered. “Look at me.” He thrust into her, deep, then shallow, then deep again, holding her eyes while his breathing grew ragged.

  Tears came into his eyes. He wanted to laugh at the sweetness of it, at the pulsing joy that flooded him. He had to be with her. He had to. He thrust deeper, heard her cries of pleasure and abandon. At the last moment he felt her muscles begin to convulse and with a shout he let himself lose control.

  When it was over, he wrapped both arms around her, rolled his body off hers and pulled her tight against him. He would make love to her again when she was ready. Like this, looking into her eyes.

  Ellen drifted, her body sated, her mind dreamily aware of what had just happened. What was still happening.

  Then, while she watched, Jess peeled an orange and offered it to her in the palm of his hand.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Three weeks later, on a balmy September morning when the air smelled of lavender and the sky stretched overhead like a soft blue quilt, the chickens arrived in a slatted wood cage. With them came a fruit crate packed with dishes and skillets, and another loaded with linen. Ellen’s clothes were there as well, and all the garden produce Chad Gundersen and his father could salvage, including two bushel baskets of ripe tomatoes.

  Jess tied Florence the cow behind his roan and led her to her new home, turning her out into an overgrown green pasture. The bed, the oak chiffonier and other pieces of furniture rumbled up in a wagon driven by Sheriff DeWitt. A second load deposited farm tools and sacks of oats and chicken feed into the spacious barn, which was painted red to match the gingerbread trim on the large white, two-story house on Markley Lane.

  The house itself, vacant since Widow Markley had passed on two years before, was attacked the following Saturday morning by a cadre of church ladies, organized by the mayor’s wife, Millie Shonski, bearing mops and brooms. The following Monday, Ellen and Iona Everett began sewing new lace curtains for the upstairs windows and heavy damask drapes for Jess’s first-floor examination room.

  “Ellen,” Iona said one afternoon, her voice hesitant, “would you mind if I asked you something?” She kept her eyes down, slip-stitching industriously on the hem of the last damask panel.

  Ellen looked up from her end of the drapery. They were almost finished with the project, which Ellen was quite enjoying. She and the widow Everett had spent every afternoon for a week cutting and basting the curtain goods Gabriel Svensen had ordered from Omaha for her.

  She liked Iona. Had grown close to her as they sat measuring and stitching. And talking. Iona had shared a good deal of her early married life with Ellen, including the heartbreak of losing her husband after only twelve years.

  “No,” Ellen replied. “I don’t mind. Ask away.”

  Iona cleared her throat politely. “Do you think…that is…well…do you think…”

  “Do I think what?” she prompted.

  “That your uncle James is interested in… I mean, he’s a man, but does that mean…?” Iona’s cheeks turned bright pink, and she dropped her head and whipped out eight more stitches. Ellen waited.

  “Do you think that he craves carnal pleasure?” Iona whispered.

  Ellen smothered a chortle. “Why, I haven’t the faintest idea, Iona. Whatever made you as
k that? Has he made advances?”

  Iona sighed. “No, he hasn’t. Unfortunately. But, you see, I… Lately I am aware of…cravings. Carnal ones. Very carnal ones.”

  “And?” Ellen struggled not to smile with delight. She had never, ever, had such a conversation with another woman, not even her closest friends in the church ladies’ circle. Only with Jess had she spoken of such intimate matters, and those conversations usually ended in bed. Or out in the cherry orchard. But she could never tell Iona about that.

  “And,” Iona continued, her blush deepening to the color of Ellen’s Pink Cherokee rose, “I don’t know what to do about it. Them. My…urges.”

  “Urges,” Ellen repeated. “Yes. To be frank, Iona, I only know about my own urges, which are…” Oh dear, now her own cheeks were growing hot “…very sweet and strong indeed. Dr. Flint says such physical feelings in a woman are perfectly normal.”

  What Jess actually said was that her urges were “enticingly female,” but she would not share that with Iona. That was between herself and Jess.

  “But what should I do about them, Ellen? These urges.”

  Ellen opened her mouth to say “talk to the doctor.” Then she realized that was the problem—the doctor she suggested was Uncle James, toward whom dear Iona was having “urges.”

  “Why don’t you…” Oh, Lord, she couldn’t say that! Why don’t you follow your instincts? Why don’t you spend a night together? Iona would fall over in a faint.

  “Yes?” Iona’s steel needle fell idle. “Why don’t I what?”

  Ellen thought hard for a moment.

  “Iona,” she said slowly. “I have an idea. Have you ever slept in a hayloft?”

  In the following weeks, before Jess and Ellen’s marriage took place, the new Dr. Jason Flint delivered three babies in Partridge and a set of twins in Willow Flat. The morning of the wedding, he looked bleary-eyed after an all-night ordeal with Mrs. Langley over in Partridge. He had just glanced into the bathroom mirror, preparing to shave, when a final shock knocked the remaining wind out of him.

  Ellen arrived from the boardinghouse where she was staying, dressed in her wedding dress of stylishly cut blue faille, her face white as cracker crumbs. She rapped on the front door, then opened it and flew up the carpeted stairs to the second-floor bath to find Jess.