"Let him do it," Darcy said, indicating Holt.
"They won't want to see a stranger any more than you do," Felicity said. "Now stop making foolish objections and go tell your mother Durwin's doing as well as can be expected. I know she's worried about him."
"It would be better if he killed himself," Darcy said. "Then at least Ma wouldn't have to worry herself sick every time he sets out from the house." He looked back at his brother. "He sure looks like he's dead."
"He probably wouldn't regain consciousness for some time yet," Holt said. "The wound was serious and caused considerable trauma to the body."
"What does that mean?" Darcy asked, suspicious.
"It means he nearly died," Holt explained, "and the body has shut down everything it can to concentrate all its effort on healing the wound and preventing infection."
"But how can he eat if he doesn't wake up?" Darcy asked.
"He'll wake when he needs to," Holt assured him.
Felicity left the room, stopped on the other side of the closed door, her mind grappling with the situation. Holt was going to stay. He was going to be around at night and in the morning. He was probably going to watch her father work. It wouldn't be any time at all before he knew everything about her father.
She was confident her father was the best physician in Galveston. He had the best education, wide experience, and he really cared about his patients. He drank too much, but that wasn't a problem as long as she could watch him to make sure he didn't get into trouble. She was sure Holt wouldn't agree.
That was why she didn't want him around. He was no fool. He knew her father had been drinking and couldn't cope with the accident. Despite his fancy education, her father was a country doctor at heart. He liked to visit his patients, know their families, discuss their care with wives, mothers, and daughters. He delivered their babies, set bones and cured fevers for their children, and helped them enter old age comfortably. He would probably go the rest of his life without having to face another accident as grave as Durwin's. As long as nothing really serious happened, she could keep him safe.
She had to make sure Holt understood that. It was her duty to make sure he didn't do anything to harm her father.
"Where are you from?" Dr. Moore asked Holt after Darcy had left.
"Vermont."
Dr. Moore whistled. "How did you end up this far from home?"
"A great-uncle offered to pay for my education if I'd come to Virginia. I thought he was being generous because he was rich and didn't have any children. I didn't realize until he promised to leave me his farm that what he wanted in exchange was for me to take care of his ward Vivian. But I fell in love with her, so everything worked out for both of us."
"Folks aren't going to like that you're a Yankee."
"Why not? Almost everybody in Texas came from somewhere else."
"Most of them came from the South. The only Yankees we have here are the Union Army, the Reconstruction, and the carpetbaggers. That doesn't put you in very good company."
Holt already knew that, but there was nothing he could do about it. Besides, he didn't plan to stay in Texas after he found Vivian.
"I have nothing to do with the Army, Reconstruction, or people trying to pick the bones of the defeated. I only want to find Vivian."
"You won't get any argument from me," Dr. Moore said. "I was just trying to let you know what you were up against."
"I already knew."
But maybe he didn't. Living on Cade Wheeler's ranch, he'd been surrounded by friends, protected by Cade's reputation and success. People accepted him because they accepted Cade and Pilar. In Galveston he was on his own.
"You'd better have your lunch," Dr. Moore said. "Felicity hates to wait once she's got it ready."
"Aren't you coming?"
"I'll stay with Durwin. I don't think he ought to be left alone."
Holt didn't think Durwin was in any immediate danger. It was the possibility of infection that worried him. Once the body was open to the air, it was nearly impossible to prevent infection from setting in. Modern medicine had discovered germs and determined that clean hands and instruments would help prevent infection, but doctors had no effective means of fighting an infection once it set in.
"Don't worry about Felicity," Dr. Moore said. "She's not a bad girl once she gets to know you."
Holt decided not to tell Dr. Moore that he had no desire to get to know his daughter. She was attractive and far more skilled and knowledgeable than he would have imagined, but she appeared to dislike strangers--or at least this particular strangers--even more than Darcy Sealy did.
"Where's my father?" Felicity asked when Holt strode into the kitchen.
"He wanted to stay with Durwin."
"I'll take his lunch to him."
"He said he'd eat after I finished. That way I could watch Durwin for him."
Felicity had been dismayed to see Holt enter the kitchen alone. She couldn't understand her reaction to this man--she understood even less why she should be reacting to him in such an unexpected manner--but she was certain she wanted to keep plenty of distance between them.
"I apologize for serving you in the kitchen," she said, "but it's easier with only Papa and myself. Besides, it's the warmest room in the house in the winter."
"You don't know what cold is until you've lived through a Vermont winter," Holt said. "Snow arrives in October, and we don't see the ground again until April."
"I've never seen snow."
"Count yourself lucky. I remember one year when we had to tunnel to the barn before we could milk the cows."
"You had that much snow?"
"We had to melt ice so the livestock would have something to drink."
"I've never seen ice, either. It never gets that cold around here, not even in the winter."
Her mother had contracted a wasting illness when Felicity was very small. Her father had decided to become a doctor so he could cure her. He'd left them to go to Scotland, never thinking of the hardship of a woman alone managing a plantation.
Her father had told her stories about winters in Scotland--he liked to tell them to equally amazed patients to take their minds off their suffering--but not even her father's vivid imagination had been able to conjure in her mind the reality of frozen water that could float down from the heavens like so many tiny white chicken feathers.
"Tell me about it," she said.
She didn't especially want to hear any more stories about snow, but it was safer than letting the conversation drift toward medicine. She didn't want to know what he thought of her father's appearance this morning. He'd had a drink of whiskey early. He had sobered up very quickly, but she was certain Holt wouldn't take that into consideration.
Holt had very good manners. She didn't know why she'd thought a Yankee would be some kind of barbarian, but Holt was an attractive, well-educated man who spoke intelligently and knew not to talk with food in his mouth or pick his teeth with his fork. She kept looking for imperfections but couldn't find any. Whether she wanted to admit it or not, Dr. Holt Price was just about the closest thing she'd ever seen to the man of her dreams.
Felicity had reached the age when she was considered by many to be past being able to contract a suitable marriage, but she hadn't gotten there because she was indifferent to men. Running the plantation when her father was too drunk to care, helping him in his practice, and spending the war in Andersonville prison had kept her from having any time for herself. The only man who'd ever proposed to her backed out when her father lost his money after the war. It seemed that no matter what she did, her chance for love continued to elude her.
Still, she wasn't willing to give up hope. Her mother had said she was born to love, had named her Felicity because she was destined to be happy. She had promised Felicity that one day she would find the kind of all-consuming love her parents had. So she had waited for a man to come along who would cause her to think of him whether she wanted to or not, to be interested in everything
he did, to notice all the little changes or differences in him from day to day, to want to know even the smallest details about him, to feel a physical attraction that pulled as strongly as a sturdy rope.
It worried her greatly that Holt appeared to be that man.
"I can't believe that," she said, suddenly focusing on what he'd been talking about. "How can anyone have icicles in their nose? Wouldn't it hurt?"
Holt laughed. "You're too numb to feel much of anything."
"But how..." She didn't even know how to ask what she wanted to know.
"When it's thirty or forty degrees below zero and the wind is blowing so hard you have to lean into it to stand up, moisture freezes instantly."
"Why would anybody want to live in a place like that?"
"Because they're born there."
"But they could move to places where it's warmer."
"Vermont is beautiful in the summer. The days are warm and bright, the evenings perfect for sitting on the porch and talking with the neighbors."
"You can do that here practically all year long."
"Spring in Vermont is magical. It's like a birth every year when the snow melts and the earth bursts forth with its green mantle. The birds return, the animals dig out of their burrows. Everything virtually explodes with energy. It's as if the world is rejoicing to have escaped the iron grip of winter once more."
"It sounds like a hard life."
"It is, but it's a healthy one. It's not unusual for people to live into their nineties."
Felicity didn't know anyone over seventy-three. "I guess it's not as healthy in Galveston," she said, "but it's a whole lot more comfortable. I'm sure you miss your home a lot."
"Not much."
That answer surprised her. "Do you plan to go back when you find the woman you're looking for?"
"No."
Chapter Three
Felicity didn't know why his comment should have caused her to start inwardly, but she was beginning to accept that anything this man did would have an unexpected effect on her. She couldn't imagine not wanting to be near one's family. She'd devoted her life to her parents. She expected to be even more devoted when she had a husband and family of her own. There could be lots of good reasons for Vivian to disappear, but Felicity was certain of one thing. If a man loved her as Holt appeared to love Vivian, she'd never have let the war separate them.
"What is this I'm eating?" Holt asked.
"It's sweet potatoes."
"What's that?"
She couldn't believe that anybody didn't know what a sweet potato was. How could she describe it? "It's like a potato, only it's orange and sweet. It tastes better with spices and nuts."
"It reminds me of squashes my mother used to cook, only she didn't put nuts in them. We didn't have pecans."
Something else she found hard to comprehend. Pecan trees grew wild in Texas. There was hardly a stream that didn't have a grove clustered along its banks.
"Did your mother teach you to cook?" Holt asked.
"No. She died when I was thirteen."
"I'm sorry. It must have been hard on your father raising a little girl by himself."
"When my mother died, my father sold his plantation and moved to Galveston."
"Who taught you to cook?"
"A nice lady from Mobile, Alabama. She lived with us until my mother died."
"So why aren't you married?"
"I haven't found anybody worthy of me."
She didn't know why she said that. She'd never said anything like that in her life, but something about this man irritated her as well as attracted her. An uncomfortable combination. She was pleased to see that her answer surprised him. She wasn't as pleased when a slow smile spread across his face.
"That's candid. I'm sure many women feel that way, but I've never met one brave enough to say it."
"I never have before," she confessed, "but you irritate me."
"Why?"
"Maybe it was your assumption that I didn't know enough to assist you in your operation."
"I apologize. You did very well. What else do I do that irritates you?"
"Nothing."
"There's got to be more. You got your back up the moment you set eyes on me."
"What else could I object to? I don't know you."
"You're irritated your father asked me to stay here for a few days."
It was fear, not irritation, but she couldn't tell him that. "It wasn't exactly irritation. His inviting a stranger into the house, someone he'd never seen before ..."
"And a Yankee, to boot."
"I didn't expect it. Papa hasn't done such a thing before."
"I'm sure it's only because I'm a fellow doctor. This is really good," he said, indicating chicken in a cream sauce poured over a cornmeal shortcake. "I never would have thought of putting chicken and corn bread together."
"That's not corn bread. It's a cornmeal shortcake."
"It tastes like corn bread to me."
"It's half cornmeal, half flour. What have you been eating?"
"Nothing like this. The man I worked for married a wealthy woman of Spanish and French heritage. The food was very good, but it was different from this."
"I'm sure it was," she said, feeling slightly defensive. "I can't afford to cook like that." Anymore, she added silently.
She hadn't meant to sound defensive, but he'd already made it plain he thought the woman he loved was so high in society, Felicity wouldn't have met her. Now he was telling her he'd been dining at the table of a woman who was practically an aristocrat. She didn't know why he'd accepted her father's invitation. He must think they were beneath him.
"No need to get your back up," he said. "This is more like the food I grew up eating. After what we had in the war, anything that isn't spoiled or burned tastes great."
"Did you do any fighting in the war?"
"No. What did you do?"
"I worked with my father."
"Doing what?"
"Taking care of prisoners."
"What prisoners? Where?"
"Several places. The last and worst was Andersonville."
"I never heard of it. Where was it?"
"In Georgia."
"What was it like?"
"To quote my father, it was like being in hell."
Holt had finished his meal. He folded his napkin and settled back in his chair. "Tell me about it."
She didn't want to talk about it. She didn't want to remember, but she knew that sooner or later he'd learn where her father had worked. When he did, he'd ask questions. Everybody did.
"I'll tell you on condition that you never mention it to my father."
"Why?"
"He's never recovered from having to watch so many men die--some from starvation but most cut down by disease he was powerless to prevent or do anything about."
"Why not?"
"They wouldn't let him. But they wouldn't let us leave, either. They made him stay there day after day, month after month, watching those poor men die like penned animals. It bothered him so much, he attacked the commanding officer. They locked him in his house for nearly a month. I could see him suffering more each day. You could see the camp from our house. On days when the wind was in the wrong direction, you could smell it."
"I get the feeling you haven't told anybody else about this. Why are you telling me?"
"Because you've already decided my father is incompetent and a danger to his patients. That's why you decided to stay here. Your friends are society. We're not. You're watching Durwin because you don't trust my father to do it without killing him."
She wasn't sure what kind of reaction she expected--she would have to know him better for that--but she had expected some reaction. Instead he just sat there, watching her out of hooded black eyes. He wasn't her idea of a typical Yankee. She saw them as blond, blue-eyed predators. Holt had dark brown hair parted on the side and combed neatly into place. His skin was fair and clean-shaven, but she could see the outline of his be
ard. Neither was he the short, stocky, powerfully built bully she'd envisioned from the tales she'd heard. Until he opened his mouth and spoke, she could have believed he was a native Texan. His tall, slim, broad-shouldered body was that of a cowboy.
"Your father had been drinking when I saw him this morning."
"How do you know that?"
"I'm familiar with every aspect of what alcohol can do to a person. I couldn't miss the signs."
"Papa had just one class of whiskey. Just about everybody in Galveston does."
"Just about everybody is not a doctor."
"He doesn't have any patients until the afternoon. He had plenty of time to enjoy a drink if he wanted."
"A doctor can never confine his work to a few hours of the day," Holt said. "He may be called upon at any time."
"So you're saying he can never take a drink. I suppose you never take a drink."
"No, I don't."
She wasn't sure she believed him. She didn't know any man who didn't take a drink on a regular basis. She knew far too many who took a great many drinks on a regular basis.
"I never knew a man who didn't drink at all."
"You know one now."
"My father likes a glass of whiskey, but he doesn't have it to get drunk."
"I don't know your father, but my impression is that he's serious about his work. That's why I don't understand why he'd risk making a mistake by being drunk."
"He wasn't drunk."
"Are you going to explain that?" he asked after a short silence.
She rose. "Do you want some coffee?"
"Yes, thank you."
She took her time pouring it. "Cream?"
"Black. Cade wouldn't let me back on the ranch if I took to drinking it with milk."
"Not something a cowboy would do?"
"His wife likes it just as strong as he does."
"All that French and Spanish blood."
"I guess so." He took a sip of his coffee. "Not quite as strong as Pilar makes it, but it's good. Now tell me why your father wasn't drunk, even though he gave every appearance of it."
She was reluctant to begin. She could tell from the jut of his chin that he wasn't going to believe her. But he didn't know that her father had lost a wife he loved so passionately he still spent hours staring at her portrait, or that he'd watched thousands of men die, knowing he was responsible for them but unable to do anything about it.
Born To Love Page 3
