by Merry Farmer
He offered his arm to her. This time, her mother stared pointedly at her to take it, lips tight in an order. There was nothing Emma could do but shuffle Maggie from her arms into Katie’s. Katie gave her a wary look of camaraderie as she took her sister. At least she wasn’t entirely alone. Emma swallowed a sigh and turned back to Russ, resting her fingertips gingerly in the crook of his arm. She intended to hold on as loosely as she could, but Russ slid his hand over hers, clamping her tightly in place.
“There,” he cooed the way one might to a small child. “That’s better, isn’t it?”
On Emma’s other side, Katie reached out with her free arm to take Emma’s other hand, squeezing it in a show of solidarity.
“Perhaps,” her mother began, the plotting look back in her eyes, “perhaps the two of you could go and walk ahead. I’m afraid… ah, I’m afraid my back has grown tired,” she said, clearly having invented the excuse. “Perhaps I should spend some time riding in the wagon. And I’m sure Katie would like to put her sister away in their wagon.”
“Perhaps you should ask Dr. Meyers to take a look at your back,” Emma offered, feeling as wicked as Katie for it.
“Nonsense,” Russ laughed the suggestion off. “If your back is troubling you, dearest Elizabeth, then you should rest. I will bring a bottle of my own, patented elixir, Sandifer’s Special Serum, to you once the wagon train stops, if you’d like.”
Katie made a choking sound to Emma’s side.
“Yes, that would be lovely,” Emma’s mother said. “Come along, Katie. I’m sure your mother has half a hundred things and more for you to be doing this afternoon.”
“Oh no,” Katie answered, as light as a feather. “She expressly told me to keep Emma company and to set a good example for the younger children. I wouldn’t dream of disobeying my mother.” She kissed Maggie’s forehead.
Emma’s mother’s face fell flat. “I’m sure she didn’t mean for you to stay by Emma’s side when she has someone else to accompany her,” she said in a tight voice.
“I wouldn’t be so certain,” Katie came back, smiling with cunning to match Emma’s mother. “Mam is nothing if not specific about her instructions. I wouldn’t dare leave Emma’s side until she tells me to.”
Emma squeezed her friend’s hand in thanks.
“Well,” her mother huffed.
“It’s no trouble,” Russ declared, a thread of disappointment in his voice. “I do not mind escorting two ladies. Two is better than one, after all. Wouldn’t you agree, Emma?”
Emma forced her lips into something that might have passed for a smile. “Yes, of course, Dr. Sandifer.”
“Russ, please.” He leaned closer to her, close enough to blast her with a whiff of his too-strong cologne.
Ahead of them, Dean turned to peek at Emma. His mischievous grin slipped when he saw her on Russ’s arm. Emma did her best to tell him with her eyes that this was not what she wanted, that her mother had forced her into it, that she found Russ to be odious at best, but she couldn’t tell if he understood. Dean frowned and said something to the old woman.
“I know,” Emma’s mother broke the awkward silence that had fallen on them. “Russ, why don’t you join us for supper tonight?”
Emma’s gut clenched at the thought. What are you doing, Mother? she wondered anxiously.
“That would be capital,” Russ answered.
“Yes, I’m sure it will be quite the show,” Katie piped in. Emma’s mother scowled at her and opened her mouth to reply when Katie continued with, “I’m sure Mam wouldn’t mind sharing our work and our food with one more, seeing as she’s been so generous to share with our new friends.”
“Hmm,” her mother answered. She must have known she was beat. Not even she would be rude enough to manufacture a private supper for Emma and Russ with supplies that belonged to someone else. She took in a breath and put her most charming smile on, directing it at Russ once again. “I suppose a larger party would be that much merrier. Yes, yes, I can work with this.”
Emma squeezed her eyes shut. Once again, her mother had latched onto an idea. Somehow, she had to find the courage to fight it.
Chapter Nine
“Dean? Dean, could I speak to you for a moment?” Emma’s hands trembled as she slipped up to the side of the wagon where Dean worked, binding the arm of a child who had fallen and scratched himself.
He blinked up at her, a wide smile making his already handsome face irresistible. “Of course.” He finished with the bandage and patted the little boy on the head to send him on his way. “You know you can always talk to me about anything, even… even if you have new friends.”
Emma flushed hot, lowering her eyes. “Mother thinks…. That is, she has it in her head…. I don’t….”
“It’s all right, Emma.” Dean stepped closer to her, touching her hands as she twisted them in front of her stomach. “I’m not the jealous sort. You can walk with whomever you want.”
Or be forced to walk with someone I most certainly do not want, she thought to herself.
She took a breath and forced herself to say what she’d come to say. “Mother has invited Dr. Sandifer for supper tonight. I… I was hoping you might come as well?” She finished as a question, aching for him to say yes.
He hesitated, frowning. She was certain he would turn her down, until he said, “Oh, I’ll be there, all right.”
Her heart would have lightened, but for the fury clear in his eyes. “I’m so glad,” she said, letting her relief show. “I don’t know if I could bear it without you.” She reached out and hesitantly touched his shirt sleeve.
Dean’s expression softened. His back loosened. He lifted a hand to rest it on the side of her face. “I said it before, and I’ll say it again. You are far braver than you think you are, Emma Sutton.” He proved his statement by stealing a kiss.
It was just a small kiss, his mouth brushing hers, his teeth teasing the flesh of her bottom lip. He pulled away before she could return it, tugging her off balance. All she wanted was to wrap herself in Dean’s arms, to forget her mother’s silliness and the tedium of the wagon train. Every beat of her heart told her what her future was, what it should be. Why is there so much to wade through to get there? she asked herself.
“I’ll come to supper,” he promised her, touching her kiss-excited lips with his fingertip before lowering his hand and stepping away. “I’ll keep you safe.”
“Thank you.”
An hour later, Emma wasn’t sure if anyone could keep her safe.
“Russ, you sit there, on the bench beside Emma. Yes, yes like that.” Her mother directed everyone who had gathered around the Boyles’ campfire for supper where she wanted them to go. “No, Katie, don’t sit by Emma. Your mother needs you.” She finished her order with a laugh to hide her growing disapproval of the wild Irish girl.
“Is she going to tell you to serve this donkey’s arse too?” Katie whispered in Emma’s ear as she stood.
“What can I do?” Emma fretted. “She’s my mother. She means well.”
“Hmph,” Katie snorted and moved to have a quiet word with her own mother.
Emma’s heart sank. She should call Katie back. She should insist to her mother that her friend sit with her. She should tell her mother she would spend her time with whomever she pleased.
“There. What a handsome picture the two of you make,” her mother said once Russ had taken a seat beside Emma. He took up so much of the bench that Emma felt squashed. Russ was a tall, meaty man, not graceful and fit like Dean.
Say something, you great ninny, Emma pleaded with herself. Say something and put an end to this before it starts.
“Now Russ, I’m certain you’ll just love my Emma’s beef stew. She is such an expert hand in the kitchen.” Her mother beamed with pride as she served a bowl of stew to Russ. Stew Mrs. Boyle had made, with a smattering of help from Emma.
“I cannot thank you enough.” Russ accepted the bowl gratefully. He took a large bite and hummed his apprec
iation. He twisted to grin at Emma as he chewed, a drop of gravy clinging to his beard.
The whole scene seemed like a dreadful repeat of the first meal she had shared with Dean, from the stew to her mother’s hovering. Say something, she urged herself. Get up and move.
Emma was spared the soul-twisting torture of working up her courage to stop her mother’s plotting when Dean strolled into the tense circle of the Boyles’ camp. She nearly wept in relief.
“Sorry I’m late,” Dean said, fixing her with an encouraging smile. “No sooner had I finished patching up Billy O’Doul’s scraped arm than his little sister Marie ran too close to one of the oxen and had her toe stepped on.”
“That poor wee thing,” Katie said, straightening from handing out bowls of stew to her many hungry little brothers and sisters. “Marie always was a firecracker.”
“That she is,” Dean laughed.
Katie gave him an approving smile, then turned that smile to Emma. It was filled with mischief and support.
“Is that Emma’s magnificent stew I smell?” Dean asked, crossing to the fire where Mrs. Boyle was spooning the last of it from a large pot into bowls. She had the good grace to keep her mouth shut in a smile, peeking at Emma with a wink.
“What are you doing here?” Emma’s mother blurted as Mrs. Boyle handed him a bowl. Emma’s stomach tightened so sharply she put her spoon back into her stew and swallowed to keep from being sick. Her mother didn’t even try to hide her dismay at Dean’s presence. How quickly things changed.
“I invited him,” she spoke up, barely above a whisper. She was amazed she had any voice at all.
“What?” Her mother turned her disapproval to Emma. Emma’s heart sank. Any hope she’d had of smoothing things over withered.
“Emma invited me to join you and our friends.” Dean smiled as though nothing were amiss. He thanked Mrs. Boyle for his stew and carried it to sit on a stool beside Emma. Emma could have kissed him for his careful amiability. She could have kissed him for a lot of reasons.
To her surprise, Russ barked a laugh. “That’s Dean for you. Always inviting himself into the heart of someone else’s business.”
As quickly as they’d built up, Emma’s hopes crashed. Dean’s brow flickered into a frown, but he let the comment go unchallenged.
Apparently, Russ saw that as an invitation. “Why, I remember once when we were still in medical school. There was a banquet hosted by the senior class for those of the lower classmen who had scored highest on the mid-term examinations. Only the top five men from each class were invited. Someone forgot to mention that to our Dean. He showed up all bright-eyed and eager, dressed in his finest suit, his hair freshly cut and combed.” Russ roared with laughter.
“I fail to see what’s so funny about a handsome gentleman showing up to a congratulatory dinner looking well put together,” Katie spoke exactly the thought that had come to Emma’s mind. She took a seat on Dean’s other side, facing Russ down and biting the corner off of the slice of bread she’d taken to go with her stew.
“What was so funny was that Dean wasn’t invited,” Russ continued, laughing. “He hadn’t made the grade.”
“I was invited,” Dean answered calmly, focused on his stew. “It was discovered later that there was an oversight. My name had been removed from the list.” He glanced up and straight at Russ with such intensity that Emma suspected Russ had had a hand in the mistake.
“Yes, yes, well that fact only came to light days later,” Russ excused it. “You should have seen the look on his face when he was asked to leave. Given the bum’s rush, he was.”
Dean’s eyebrow flickered, the only outward hint of his frustration. Emma leaned away from Russ, scooting as far to the end of the bench as she could. Her mother glanced between the two doctors with as much confusion as Emma had seen from her in months.
“Or how about that time when we went walking out with the Kennesaw sisters, eh, Dean? Remember that? What fine, willing lasses those two were, eh?” Russ snorted with laughter, spilling drops of gravy from his stew onto his vest. “Old Henrietta took one look at you and burst into tears.”
Dean cleared his throat and addressed Emma. “Someone had given Miss Henrietta the mistaken impression that a certain Douglas Walker—a good-looking boy who was considered the catch of the season by many of the young ladies in Baltimore—would be taking her to the theater that night, not me.”
Russ shook with laughter, bumping up against Emma. “That was a good one. Or how about when we both offered our services to the army as field surgeons at the same time?”
Dean put his spoon down, sharp splotches of red coming to his face. “You followed me to that recruitment luncheon,” he said, low and fierce. “If I remember correctly, when the major spoke to our class at graduation, begging us to join, you were heard to have said that you would rather serve in the darkest jungles of Africa than have ‘worthless trash soldiers’ spilling their blood on your shoes.”
“I don’t think I said—”
“In fact, the only reason you hunted me down and wormed your way into that examination for field readiness was because you’d just been rejected for a residency in Washington.”
“Come now, Dean, there’s no need to bring up that tiny misunderstanding,” Russ snorted. Emma could feel the heat pouring off him as he squirmed by her side. “Tell them about how you were nearly turned away from military service because of—”
“You cheated off of my entrance exam,” Dean cut him off. “You were the one who was caught. It’s a blessing that the army was so desperate for qualified doctors that they let the mishap slide.”
“You should have seen the way that major glowered at him,” Russ laughed, albeit nervously now, his face and neck red. “Looked like a right peacock, he did.”
Silence greeted the end of his story. The Boyles, young and old, stared at Russ in disbelief. Katie sniffed and stabbed at her stew. Emma scooted even farther to the edge of her bench, feeling half of her leg tip over the side.
“I’m sorry,” Dean said, letting out a breath. “This isn’t appropriate for polite conversation. I regret troubling you with it.” His hand twitched toward Emma’s, and for a moment she was tempted to reach out and squeeze it in support.
“I should say it isn’t,” Russ huffed, sanctimonious enough to suggest that he had been the one wronged.
Emma stifled the sigh that wanted to escape from her lungs. This was on its way to being the worst supper party she could have imagined.
Dean clenched his jaw, swallowing the bitter lump that stuck at the back of his throat. Every word Russ spoke was an affront to the men who had suffered and died in the war. That Russ held those men in such little regard when their sacrifice had affected him so deeply burned in Dean’s gut. It took all of his willpower to resist bringing Russ down right then, in front of everyone. But there were women and children present. He had no choice but to hold his tongue.
Emma sat hunched on the bench she shared with Russ—reluctantly shared, if he was interpreting the look in her eyes correctly—cheeks pink, eyes glassy with unshed tears. He would have done anything to have prevented her from ever meeting Russ. At least he could do something to prevent the meal from getting worse.
“Mrs. Sutton,” he began. “Now that you know a thing or two about us, what can you tell us about you?” The best way he could think to keep Emma’s mother from swinging the conversation around to topics that were best left undiscussed was to get the woman talking about herself.
“Me?” She blinked, glancing around at her fellow travelers. “Why, I’m not sure that there’s much that can be said about me.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Dean caught Emma’s mouth twitch toward a grin. It was as good a sign that he was on the right track as he could have hoped for.
“Yes, Mrs. Sutton.” Katie picked up the question with her own grin. “What would provoke a fine lady like you to travel all the way to the other side of the continent?” she asked in her Irish brogue.<
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With all eyes on her, Mrs. Sutton sat straighter, preening and smiling as though she’d received a grand compliment. “Well, I suppose it’s just in my nature to blaze new frontiers,” she said.
Emma’s eyebrow flickered. Dean took another bite of his stew to stifle a chuckle.
“My husband is a businessman, you see,” Mrs. Sutton went on, meeting the eyes of every one of the Boyles who watched her, and Dean and Russ as well. “He has been deeply involved in financing the mercantile industry in New York. However, with the war interrupting commerce, he decided the best course of action was to leave off pursuits in the East to take up with a friend who has begun a similar business, financing merchant shipping endeavors in the West.”
“Speculation?” Russ asked. “I bet he’s made a pretty penny off of that. Enough to put aside quite a nest egg. Or perhaps a splendid wedding gift for his daughter, right Emma?”
He nudged Emma with his elbow. Emma flinched so hard that she slipped off the end of the bench entirely. Dean caught her and steadied her as she found her seat again, red-faced, mouth pressed in a tight line.
“My husband’s business is most certainly not speculation,” Mrs. Sutton went on, frowning both at the question and at Emma, as if she’d fallen off the bench on purpose.
“Heavens, I would never suggest it.” Russ pretended to be scandalized, pressing his free hand to his stomach while the hand that held his stew bowl swayed dangerously close to Emma.
“You just did,” Dean couldn’t help but point out.
Russ turned to him with an incredulous look. “Old friend, I would never do such a thing, and you know it.” He pivoted to face Mrs. Sutton. “Dean well knows that I am the soul of discretion and the upholder of honor.”
A bitter laugh escaped from Dean before he could stop it. Russ glared at him.
“Are you challenging my integrity, sir?”
It was too much to bear. “Yes, I’m challenging your integrity, old friend. I’m challenging it because I know that you have none. Aside from cheating on the army’s medical exam, which has already been mentioned, would you care to tell our friends about Sir Jeremy Podmore?”
