Jane Goodger

by A Christmas Waltz

  “I’ll go tell Dulce the good news,” Agatha said happily.

  “What was that all about?” Amelia asked when Agatha had gone. “I hope you know it is terribly rude to speak in a foreign language in front of someone who knows no Spanish. I didn’t even know you could speak another language. You don’t know French or German, do you? Italian? I’m fairly proficient at each, but not Spanish.”

  “I picked it up here and there. We had a bunch of those Spanish fellows in the Wild West show. Darn good cowboys. And Agatha’s married to a Spaniard.”

  “What do you have against her daughter?”

  “Do you know what Dulce means in Spanish?”

  Amelia shook her head.

  “It means ‘sweet.’ That girl is about as sweet as a lemon before it turns yellow.”

  Soon after Agatha disappeared into the house, Boone came out looking unhappy. “Why don’t you go get Miss Wellesley’s bags,” he said to Carson, then turned to Amelia. “I hear your living arrangements have been resolved.”

  “At least until the wedding,” Amelia said brightly.

  Boone gave Carson a quick look, which Amelia saw but couldn’t quite interpret. “Right. Let me show you to your room. It’s not much, but it’ll have to do given the alternatives.”

  Amelia began to follow Boone, then turned to Carson.

  “Didn’t you think about this at all when you sent for me?”

  “I just figured it’d work itself out,” he said, grinning.

  For some reason that grin, that used to make her heart melt, was slightly grating. It was almost as if Carson thought he could grin everything away. If he murdered a man in cold blood, no doubt Carson would truly believe he could wink and smile at the jury and get off scot-free.

  Boone led her into a cool hallway that seemed almost dark compared to the brightness outside. “The garden is lovely,” Amelia said.

  “It’s a nice bit of color.”

  They passed a door with frosted glass and the word “Office” stenciled in black on it. In the corner, in much smaller letters, were the words: Boone Kitteridge, M.D.

  Amelia stopped dead.

  “Mr. Kitteridge.”

  “Yes, miss.”

  “What is this here?” she asked, pointing to the door.

  “My office,” he said, as if stating the obvious. Boone Kitteridge, unlike his brother, who could talk the paint off a wall, was a man of few words.

  “Are you a medical doctor?”

  He continued down the hallway. “I am.”

  Carson’s lies about his older brother loomed even larger. He’d had her completely convinced that his brother was a simpleton who needed him. It was the reason, he’d repeated over and over, for his need to return home before they married. He could not wait, he’d said, because his brother needed him to help run their fictional ranch. His dimwitted brother.

  “You went to university?” she asked.

  “Tulane in New Orleans.”

  Amelia stalked after Boone, feeling her anger and bewilderment toward Carson grow. Had everything been a lie? She knew many of the stories he’d told had been embellishments, or even downright fabrications. It had been part of his charm. But to lie about the most basic things, like what his town looked like, that his brother was slow, that he owned a ranch. Those lies seemed so unnecessary, and somehow cruel.

  The lies were piling up so high it was beginning to get difficult to wade through them all. He told her that he loved her, but did he? He told her that he’d sent for her, but had he?

  With her throat closing up from unshed tears, she found herself in a sunny, whitewashed room with a simple but clean bed in one corner and a chest of drawers in another. It was far smaller and far simpler than the meanest servant’s quarters back home in Meremont.

  “The toilet’s down the hall. Second door. It’s the only one in Small Fork,” he said, with a hint of pride.

  When she didn’t react, he said, “I suppose you’re used to such things.”

  “What? Oh, the toilet,” she said absently, staring at the lacy curtain that fluttered limply in the arched window, as if it were unused to catching a breeze. “Yes. We have several. I…”

  “You all right, miss?” Boone asked, taking a step toward her.

  “Thank you, Mr. Kitteridge, I’m perfectly well,” she said, even though she felt completely horrid. “Or should I call you Doctor Kitteridge?”

  “That’s not necessary,” he said, sounding almost embarrassed by the title. “I’d just as soon you call me Boone.”

  Suddenly, Amelia felt light-headed, from the heat, the stress, the lack of food. “Boone,” she said calmly. “I do believe I’m going to faint.”

  Boone immediately led her to the bed. She was deathly pale, her skin bathed with sweat.

  “Agatha, I need a cool cloth,” he shouted, grabbing one wrist and holding it to feel her rapid pulse. “Are you wearing a corset, Miss Wellesley?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Well, I suggest you remove it. Or at least loosen it.”

  She looked up at him and he felt the blue of her eyes as an almost tangible blow. “But, Boone,” she said, making the smallest attempt at a smile. “I hardly know you.”

  And then she fainted dead away.

  Boone watched her eyes roll back into her head and caught her before she tumbled forward to the floor. He laid her back and immediately began undoing the tiny buttons that started at her throat and moved down to just below her waist. When Agatha entered the room with the cloth, he laid it on the girl’s head and squeezed so that the cool water soaked into her hair.

  “Agatha, could you please explain to me why women need to wear these things?” he asked as he began unlacing the offending garment.

  “I don’t. And Dulce wouldn’t be caught dead in one.”

  Boone was quite aware that Dulce didn’t wear a corset. In fact, nearly every man in Small Fork, with the exception of old Blind Pete, knew Dulce didn’t wear much of anything to cover up her body.

  Within moments of his beginning to unlace her corset, those blue eyes opened and gazed at him with a certain amount of pique.

  “You fainted,” Boone said. For some reason he found it necessary to explain why he was unlacing her. The girl made him extremely uncomfortable, and he had to fight to maintain his impassionate doctor’s demeanor, though for the life of him he didn’t know why it was such a struggle. Hell, of course he knew why. Lying before him in a state of half dress was perhaps the most beautiful bit of femininity he’d ever seen. And she was smiling at him.

  “I fainted. And so you took advantage of that moment to undress me?”

  Boone almost smiled. Almost. “The reason you fainted, I suspect, is a combination of the heat and this corset.”

  “I’ve been wearing corsets since I was sixteen years old and I’ve never fainted before. It is this heat. I daresay I’ve never felt anything like it in my life.”

  “Where is she from?” Agatha asked.

  “I’m from Hollings, England. It’s near the sea. The wonderfully cool, refreshing sea,” she said darkly.

  “Fancy talk,” Agatha muttered, but with absolutely no malice. It was as if everything that came out of Miss Wellesley’s mouth was a combination of amusing and amazing.

  Amelia pushed Boone’s hands away. “I’m quite fine now,” she said, and sat up, only to instantly grab at her head, which no doubt felt as if it were about to fall off her slender shoulders.

  Agatha disappeared and reappeared in less than a minute with a glass of water in her hands. “Drink this. And when was the last time you ate? Honestly, Boone, a good breeze could blow this one over.”

  Boone watched as she reached for the glass with a shaking hand.

  “I don’t understand it. You’re going to be thinking I’m some sort of pampered weakling. Honestly, I’ve never been fragile. My brother would joke how I should have been a boy because I like to climb trees.”

  It suddenly dawned on Boone just why a young g
irl would travel from England to Small Fork, Texas, in pursuit of his brother. He didn’t know how he could have been so stupid. No woman in her right mind would leave her home to chase Carson, especially not a lady from England who obviously would have no trouble finding a husband. Unless, of course, she’d done something unforgivable. Unless, she was running away.

  “Agatha, would you excuse us please?” Boone said, and watched as Agatha’s eyes widened.

  “You think?”

  Boone shook his head to silence the woman. Clearly Agatha had come to the same conclusion as he, at about the same time.

  Lady Amelia Hollings was obviously pregnant, and it was just as obvious, given that she hadn’t seen Carson in seven months, that it wasn’t his brother’s child.

  Chapter 3

  Amelia watched, looking slightly bemused as the older woman left the room.

  “I’m dying,” she said dramatically, making fun.

  “You’re pregnant.”

  Of all the reactions he’d thought she’d give him—guilt, shame, defiance—he had least expected her to begin laughing.

  “I’m what?” she asked between perfectly unladylike guffaws.

  “Is it possible?” he asked, for some reason praying it was not so.

  “Are you telling me that the only reason for a woman to faint is because she is pregnant? What sort of doctor are you?” she said, giggling. “Unless my name is Mary and my husband is Joseph, I do believe I am not with child.”

  Boone felt his cheeks flush. “It seemed likely, given you came all the way from England chasing after my brother.”

  Now it was Amelia’s turn to flush. “I was not ‘chasing after’ your brother. He is my fiancé and we planned for me to come to Texas. Next time you make such a prognosis, Doctor, perhaps you should get more information. That sort of erroneous diagnosis could ruin a girl. Even the hint of such a thing. But perhaps Texas is so far removed from polite society, you were unaware of that.”

  “It seems to me that if Carson had a fiancée, he might have mentioned it to me,” Boone said, feeling his temper inexplicably rise. He rarely showed his anger and he disliked people intensely who did. Taking a calming breath, he stood.

  “I did mention her,” Carson said, smiling from the doorway.

  Carson had mentioned many women he’d met in England, Boone knew. It was that he’d failed to mention he had a fiancée.

  “Now what are you two fightin’ about?” Carson asked. “You look like a couple of cats vyin’ for the same mouse.” Boone and Amelia both glared darkly at Carson.

  “Your brother insulted me,” Amelia said, lifting her chin. Carson gave Boone a sharp look, and Amelia hastened to add, “Well, not in a calculated way.”

  “She fainted, and I thought she might be pregnant,” Boone admitted.

  Carson’s eyes widened, and he let out a whistle. “If there’s one thing Amelia aims to protect, it’s her virtue.”

  “As it should be,” Amelia said.

  “She did faint.”

  “It’s hot here,” she said. “Neither of you seem to notice. In fact, other than that mangy dog in front of your store, no one seems to notice.”

  “It’s not hot,” the men said in unison.

  “And the dog’s not mangy. He’s just old,” Boone said.

  Amelia picked up the wet cloth and pressed it against her cheek. She looked like she was about to cry, and Boone wouldn’t have blamed her if she did. He couldn’t imagine traveling all that way, expecting a happy fiancé and a prosperous ranch, and finding his brother instead.

  “You should lie here and rest,” Boone said. “You’re not used to the heat. It gets cool at night, don’t worry.”

  “Cool?” Amelia asked, with rather a pathetic amount of hope.

  “Temperatures can drop to the sixties.”

  “That sounds purely delightful,” she said, looking at Carson with such love it made Boone want to leave the room.

  He did, followed by Carson, and went down the hall to the store. He’d always planned to have Carson help out and eventually run the store, but his younger brother had never shown any interest in doing so. Some days Boone was so busy with his practice and running the emporium, it was near impossible. If it wasn’t for Agatha, he wouldn’t have been able to manage. When the ranches were getting ready to drive the cattle to Abilene, they went through Small Fork and both his mercantile and doctor’s office were busy. But all the ranches had already begun their drives, leaving Small Fork sedate and quiet for a time.

  When they reached the relative privacy of the store, Carson let out a foul curse. “What the hell am I gonna do?” he said, looking to Boone for answers as he always had.

  “The way I see it, you either marry her or you don’t.”

  Carson gave him a dark look, but Boone had little patience for his brother’s dilemma. It was just one in a long line of dilemmas Carson had gotten himself into, and this one, he decided, his little brother was just going to have to solve by himself.

  “It’s not my fault she came,” Carson said, sounding like a spoiled six-year-old. “She came on her own. We agreed that I would send for her. I figured after a while, she’d meet someone else and move on. Hell, I know her brother didn’t want her to come.”

  “The thing is, Carson,” Boone said with forced patience, “the girl is here and it looks to me like she’s still expecting to walk down the aisle with you. You’ve got to tell her the truth.”

  Carson shook himself as if Miss Wellesley was on his back, clinging, while muttering, “Damn, damn, damn,” over and over. He stopped finally and looked at Boone with an almost tortured expression in his eyes. If Boone didn’t know better, he’d say that Carson was actually tortured by the circumstances.

  “She told me she loved me,” he said, as if that were the worst possible thing to hear from a woman’s lips. For Carson, it probably was.

  “And how do you feel about her?”

  “She makes me horny,” he said hopefully.

  Boone let out a low chuckle.

  “Why in hell did she come?” Carson asked again, as if this time he was hoping the answer would be different.

  “You’ve got to deal with this,” Boone said, a clear warning in his voice.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I will.”

  When Amelia woke up, it was to a world gone soft and pinkish yellow. Her room glowed in the early evening light, and she smiled because she hadn’t seen anything so pretty in a long time. Best of all, it was no longer hot, but pleasantly warm. She felt amazingly rested and content, considering how miserable she’d been just a few hours ago. Smiling, she stretched luxuriously.

  “You’re as pale as a fish belly.”

  Amelia let out a small screech to hear the strange female voice in her room.

  “I’m Dulce Sullivan.”

  Amelia found a dark-haired, dark-eyed woman staring at her. Her skin was the color of tea with a bit of cream.

  “I’m supposed to make sure the men don’t get beneath all those skirts,” she said, nodding to her dress, which had become a frothing mess in her sleep. Or perhaps in her faint.

  “I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, Mrs. Sullivan. You may call Miss Wellesley.”

  Dulce stared for two beats, then burst out laughing. “My mother was right,” she said.

  “Right?”

  “You are the strangest-talking woman I’ve ever heard in my entire life.”

  “Yes, well, strange is in the ears of the hearer,” Amelia grumbled. That only made Dulce laugh even harder.

  “I’m sorry, I’ll get used to you eventually.” The woman hardly looked sorry at all. She appeared rather pleased with herself. “For as long as you’re here.”

  She said this last with forced emphasis, as if trying to tell Amelia something without saying it aloud. Dulce had a way of looking at her that made her distinctly self-conscious, with a hostile undertone, perhaps. “I plan to be here for the rest of my life,” she said.

  “That
right? I just don’t see it. Fainting types don’t last long out here.”

  Amelia sat up and straightened her skirt and her spine. She supposed she did look like a “fainting” type. Everyone, even her brother, had underestimated how tough she was, and part of that was her appearance. She always had been pale, and having golden blond hair didn’t help. She was petite and thin and sweet looking, which was why whenever she asserted herself, everyone appeared slightly shocked.

  “Mrs. Sullivan. I have traveled across an ocean, then traveled by myself across this vast country. I would hardly say that is the action of a weak woman.”

  Dulce stared at her and Amelia thought she’d gotten through to her when the girl started laughing again. “Just can’t take a word out of your mouth seriously. Just can’t.”

  Amelia let out a sigh and stood, grateful that the room didn’t spin around her. “If you are going to laugh each time I speak, Mrs. Sullivan, I’m afraid this arrangement will not be acceptable.”

  Now that shut the girl up. “First off, call me Dulce. What exactly am I supposed to do? My mother said you just needed a female about to keep the men away.”

  “Not men, man. Carson is my fiancé and there are times when, well, he doesn’t act the proper gentleman.” Amelia could feel her cheeks flush and was so mortified, she failed to see Dulce’s dark look. “But that is not the only reason you are here. I also need a maid.”

  “A maid? My mother does maid stuff.”

  “No, a personal maid. You will do my hair, help me change. Take care of my clothing. Make certain it is fresh and the wrinkles removed.” Amelia shrugged. “I’ve been making do, but most of my gowns are simply impossible to put on by myself, never mind my good corset, which laces in the back.”

  Dulce shook her head, her eyes incredulous. “You want me to dress you?”

  “Well, yes. To assist me,” she said, feeling somehow ridiculous for wanting such a basic thing. “Look at this dress,” she said, opening her trunk and taking it out. It was a lovely gown, made for her London Season by one of the best dressmakers in town. She held up the deep blue silk gown, and turned it round to show Dulce the intricate back held together by tiny buttons. “I could never get this on or off without assistance.”