“But you’ve been poisoning people!” Theo exclaimed. “You can’t just sweep it all under a rug.”
“We will remove the water that’s already been bottled,” Morse repeated. “Perhaps we could replace it with that rehydration mixture Dr. Whitacre’s been prescribing.”
“That’s just sugar, water and salt. You can’t make money off that.” Theo’s hands were shaking. He had just revealed that the hotel had been poisoning its own guests, and the result was . . . a shrug? A new marketing strategy? They were more interested in the reputation of the St. Alice than the well-being of dozens, if not hundreds, of guests who had been exposed to toxins and heavy metals.
Greyson slumped in his chair. He stared down into his glass and said nothing.
“I took an oath to do no harm, and part of that oath is being honest with my patients,” Theo said.
Sterling considered this. “You’re a very good doctor. You may well have saved the lives of my wife and my daughter. But, with all due respect, you have the privilege of doing the right thing no matter the cost and then walking away. The rest of us can’t do that. If the St. Alice closes, you’ll be no worse for wear. But the rest of us have to think of the town and the people who rely on it.”
So that was the way it would be. Theo was just a spoiled little moralizer who couldn’t possibly understand the priorities of serious business. Well, if covering up a mass poisoning was what real businessmen did, he wanted no part of it. He stood.
“I’d like to tender my resignation, then.” He set the ceramic bowl purposefully on Morse’s desk. “If you need me, I’ll be with the guest puking his guts up in room 219.”
He left without waiting for a response, feeling braver and more terrified than he’d ever felt in his life.
Chapter 17
Everyone else had gone to bed hours ago, but sleep eluded Ilsa. Now was a good a time as any to un-deck the halls. Usually the tree remained up well into January, but she didn’t imagine that anyone wanted to be reminded of this year’s pathetic Christmas. Her conversation with Owen nagged at her. Jo and Owen had such different backgrounds and ambitions, but they had worked it out. Then again, the Sterlings didn’t have to contend with the likes of Theo’s mother.
She carefully unwound the garlands and put them back in their box for next Christmas. She probably wouldn’t be around when these garlands were taken out again. The thought made her a little sad, and a little excited.
She heard footsteps on the stairs; maybe Annie was sneaking out to see that logger she’d been stepping out with lately. Ilsa turned to tweak her nose about it, but it was Jo on the landing.
“Hey. Is everything okay?”
“Do you hear that?” Jo asked.
Ilsa listened. She didn’t hear anything. “No?”
“Silence.” Jo grinned. “Sarah is usually wailing by this point, so I woke up. Then I noticed Owen still wasn’t back from his meeting, and I heard someone rustling around down here. I figured it probably wasn’t a burglar.”
“Because there’s nothing here worth stealing. Unless he’s after my secret stash of chocolate.”
Jo gasped in mock horror. “Ilsa Pedersen, have you been holding out on me?”
“Follow me, and don’t you dare tell another soul.”
A few minutes later, they both were in the kitchen sipping hot chocolate in contented, companionable silence.
“So what are you doing up?” Jo finally asked.
“Couldn’t sleep.”
“And you couldn’t sleep because?”
Ilsa shrugged. “Maybe it’s too quiet in here. This is the longest Sarah has slept since she was born.”
“I might be lost in Babyland, but that doesn’t distract me from everything. Something’s been going on with you lately.”
“I just have a lot on my mind, that’s all.”
“Such as?”
“You’re like a hound on a trail, aren’t you?”
“Nothing gets between a meddler and her meddling.” She touched Ilsa’s shoulder. “I know I’ve been distracted. But you can tell me if something’s wrong. I’m sorry I haven’t been around much to talk about it.”
Ilsa took another sip of her cooling chocolate, swallowing hard past the sudden lump in her throat. Why did talking to Jo suddenly make her want to cry? “No, I’m fine. Well, I will be fine. I’m on my way to fine. I only . . . ” She looked away. “I guess I got too close to Theo again. And . . . well, you know how it goes. It was good. But then he wanted to marry me, and of course I said no.”
“Why ‘of course’?”
“I don’t need a husband, that’s all. I’m fine on my own. And he didn’t think it through, That’s the real problem. He just did what he thought was right. Then he’d be poor and he’d never get to Europe, and then where would we be? And if even if he wasn’t poor, he wouldn’t understand.” Ilsa knew that she wasn’t making sense, but the tumble of words felt so good.
Jo tried hard to follow the plot of this particular story. “Not needing a husband and not wanting to get married are two different things, you know.”
“I just don’t think I have the patience for it all. Being a wife and a mother and keeping house and doing what someone else wants all the time. I have plans of my own.” Ilsa took a deep breath. It was now or never. “I want to open a store,” she blurted out. “In Vancouver. I’ve been planning and saving and I even have a meeting with a broker next week.” She risked a glance at her friend, and Jo was smiling.
“That’s wonderful. You should have told me ages ago, but it’s still wonderful. I bet you’ll be a millionaire by next Christmas.” Ilsa was suddenly bashful in the face of Jo’s enthusiasm. Why hadn’t she told her earlier? Why hadn’t she trusted Jo to be happy for her? “Did you tell Theo any of this?”
She shrugged. “He said he would understand if it was important to me. But I want to have a real business, like you do. Not a hobby. I don’t want to watch my dream swallowed up by his.”
She had recited variations of that little speech to herself a hundred times since that last night with Theo. Jo was staring thoughtfully out the window.
“I completely understand wanting to go at it alone, prove yourself, and all that. And if all your doctor really wants is to dress you up in pretty outfits and plop you in a parlour to serve tea forever, I’d be the first to tell you to chase him out of your life with a stick.” She reached over to take Ilsa’s hand. “But there’s something to be said for having a partner when you set out on a big adventure. Sometimes you just can’t do everything all on your own. Sometimes . . . sometimes you need somebody to help you carry the load for bit.”
The lump in Ilsa’s throat had returned worse than before. Maybe Theo could do that for her. She hadn’t even given him the chance to try, and who knew if she’d ever find anyone like him again? Who knew if she’d ever even be able to fall in love with anyone else?
Oh God. She loved him, and she’d told him he didn’t matter to her and that she didn’t need him, and now he was gone.
“Oh, no. Oh please, don’t cry,” said Jo. “This is the first day in three weeks that I haven’t cried. Don’t make me start. I was trying to make you feel better, I swear!”
“What if I’m making a mistake?” Ilsa asked. “It’s hard enough imagining not waking up in Fraser Springs, not talking with you over coffee.”
Jo squeezed Ilsa’s hand. “Well, I’m not saying I want you to run off right this instant, either. Lord knows I would keep you here forever if I could. But you shouldn’t grow old and grey in this place just because you might make a mistake.”
Ilsa wiped at her eyes with her free hand. “Well. You’re the boss.”
Their hug was interrupted by Owen walking into the kitchen. His normally cheerful expression seemed tight and pinched. “It’s quiet in here. And why is everybody crying?”
“We’re just happy.” Jo gave him a kiss on the cheek when he leaned down. “A certain little miss has decided that sleeping isn’t so bad.
”
“Well, that’s the best news I’ve heard all day.” Owen gave a wan smile. He hung his scarf and hat on a peg and went rummaging in the icebox. “God, I’d murder someone for a piece of pie.”
“There’s apple left,” Jo said. “Meeting with Morse didn’t go well?”
Owen fished out the pie, snatched a fork from the drying rack, and collapsed onto one of the battered kitchen chairs without bothering to plate anything. “That’s an understatement. Sometimes Morse seems like a genius and sometimes . . . ” He speared an enormous hunk of pie straight out of the tin and wolfed it down as if he hadn’t eaten in days. “Did you know that Dr. Greyson was bottling the hot springs water for drinking? Selling it as some sort of miracle cure. And wait, it gets better. They were bottling it on days when Morse’s damned mine dumped tailings into the hot springs. That’s what was making everyone at the hotel sick. Arsenic. Thank God Dr. Whitacre worked it all out before anybody died.”
Ilsa sat up a little straighter. “Theo’s here?”
Owen nodded. “Took the boat back the minute he figured it out, apparently.”
Someone knocked on the door. Owen looked annoyed and Jo looked puzzled, but Ilsa knew exactly who would be foolish enough to be bothering people at almost eleven o’clock at night. She rushed to open the door.
Sure enough, a slim young man wearing a perfectly tailored coat waited on the front porch. His spectacles fogged with condensation, and he took them off and tucked them in his coat pocket.
“I wasn’t sure anyone would be awake,” Theo said. “But I was walking. And I saw the light.”
“No. We’re all awake. I mean, I’m awake. And Jo’s here.”
She turned around to see if Jo had followed her from the kitchen, but her friend was already herding Owen and his half-eaten pie up the stairs. “Hello, Dr. Whitacre,” Jo said cheerfully. “Don’t mind us. And don’t let all the warm air out, Ilsa. Good night!” And then they were standing, alone, in the front room of Wilson’s.
Theo stepped farther in and pulled the door closed behind him. “Can I get you anything to drink?” she asked, because one had to start somewhere.
“No, I . . . ” It was probably because of the cold, but Theo’s cheeks blazed with colour, and his green eyes seemed unusually bright. “Thank you. Could we sit?” Ilsa nodded and dropped down into one of the two armchairs, and Theo took the other.
“You’re, um, back early.”
Theo shrugged. “I made the most of my time. I thwarted an engagement, got accused of attempted murder—my mother is not currently speaking to me, you’ll be sad to hear—discovered the source of an outbreak of arsenic poisoning, and quit my job.”
Ilsa didn’t know where to start with all of that, so she went with the simplest thing first. “You quit your job? At the hotel?”
“Effective immediately. Morse is probably having my belongings tossed out in the snow as we speak.”
“Oh, Theo. Why?”
“It’s a long story, and I promise I’ll explain it all in a minute. But I had to tell you something while I’ve still got my courage up.” Theo rummaged around in his pockets for moment, then gave up with a huff and took both of her hands in his. “I know you told me you don’t need a husband. You certainly don’t need me. I’ve always known that.
“And right now, I can’t promise you anything. I don’t have a job. I’m probably disinherited already. But I do know, without a single doubt, that I love you. And I want to be with you. I’ve spent weeks and weeks trying to convince myself to want anything else, and it’s never once worked. Every second I spent in Vancouver would have been a million times better if you had been beside me.”
There must be something wrong with her throat again—it was getting strangely difficult to breathe.
“And I know you don’t need me,” he went on in a rush, “But I think that we can make each others’ lives better. I don’t want to tie you down. I want to drink champagne at the opening of your store, and I want to go back to school, and we don’t even have to be married if you don’t want to, as long as we can be together. Maybe we can go to Europe and move to a different city every week. Or maybe you’ll decide you want to have a dozen babies. I don’t know. I really don’t. But I’d like to find out. With you.”
He reached into his pockets again. “Damn it. I’m going to do this properly, I swear.” He pulled his hand from the breast pocket of his coat. “Here.” He held up a thin silver ring. Even in the dim light, it gleamed.
“I know you said I didn’t think it through before, but I had. I’d been thinking it through for six years. If I asked you to marry me again, is there even a chance you would say yes?”
“Yes.” Her mouth answered the question before her brain caught up.
“If you don’t want to hear it, I understand. But I need to ask, and . . . ” Theo blinked. “Sorry. Did you say yes?”
“Yes,” she repeated. Her hands were shaking.
Theo looked down at the ring and up at her. “I hadn’t really prepared for a yes,” he admitted. “What finger does this even go on?”
Ilsa laughed and took the ring from him. Up close, it was delicately engraved with flowers, and a chip of sapphire glinted in the centre of each one. It was the most beautiful, perfect thing she’d ever seen in her life. She slipped it onto the third finger of her left hand. “Perfect fit.”
“I feel like maybe this is the part where we kiss,” he whispered. And so they did. His hands were freezing as he pulled her over into his lap.
After a while, when they had both caught their breath, Ilsa noticed that it had started snowing again, in flurries of big fat flakes that almost rattled the window. “You can’t go outside in this weather,” she pointed out. “We’d better get you upstairs.” She stood—her legs were surprisingly wobbly—and Theo grinned at her when she swayed and caught her balance on the back of his chair. She grabbed his hand and pulled him towards the stairs.
He reached for his cane. “That’s a completely scandalous suggestion, and I’m only agreeing to endanger your reputation because it will break your heart if I freeze to death outside of the St. Alice.”
She’d forgotten that he probably couldn’t go back to the St. Alice. “You’re lucky I said yes.”
Theo looked at her with that scholarly concentration that she loved so much. “I am,” he whispered. “I really am.”
Epilogue
The Vancouver World, Social Pages, June 17 1914, Evening Edition, A12
by Miss Imogen Thornbush
In a big city like Vancouver, a society gal can develop a terrible case of what the French call déjà vu. The same faces and the same jokes at every party, and a dear friend of this author once remarked that if she had to eat even one more bite of aspic, she’d turn into jelly and roll away down the street. The gossip, too, can get sadly stale around the edges. All you dainty darlings are so well behaved that you don’t give us nearly enough to write about!
So it with great pleasure that I report to you that last night, our social scene was shaken up in the most invigorating manner. And where did this grand revitalization take place, you may ask? Not a soiree or a fundraiser or a dinner party, but at a funeral luncheon!
Attentive readers may recall the rather confusing scandal surrounding Dr. Theodore Whitacre some few years ago. The Whitacre name needs, of course, no introduction, but its handsome young scion has always been a bit of a cipher. To say that he was a reluctant participant in the social whirl is to put it mildly, and then he disappeared as if in a puff of smoke. (Some say he went into hiding on the Continent after poisoning an enemy, but we don’t like to spread rumours.) It seems that Dr. Whitacre is rapidly becoming the Sherlock Holmes of the medical world, and only the passing of his father could fetch the prodigal son home. What’s more, he has resurfaced with a most charming European wife on his arm.
Darlings, I can only say that the lovely new Mrs. Whitacre is a breath of fresh air in our musty drawing rooms. I have it on the best authority
that she has studied in some of the finest fashion houses of Paris, and I can personally confirm that she has a simply uncanny eye for cut and color. Devoted readers of this column will be familiar with my tragic quest to wear pastels, which have always been at war with my complexion. No more! Mrs. Whitacre took one look at me and declared that I would look a treat in mint green. When I visited my dressmaker this morning, she draped me in mint green silk, and had dear Mrs. Whitacre been at my side, I would have fallen on my knees in gratitude.
What’s next for the lively Whitacres? (Whoever would have thought one would use the term “lively” to describe a Whitacre! The dowager Mrs. Whitacre gave her new in-law a rather frosty reception, but I suppose no woman of a certain age likes being shown up, especially not on the occasion of her husband’s funeral.)
Dr. Whitacre has been engaged to bring his diagnostic expertise to St. Paul’s Hospital, where he will make a welcome addition to their esteemed ranks.
A little bird tells me that Mrs. Whitacre will be available to design custom gowns for her closest friends. Even more exciting, she will be opening a boutique near Woodward’s to provide all the bits and bobs a stylish gal might need to update last year’s gowns for this year’s styles. Mrs. Whitacre assures me that these little touches are at the very heart of what makes French women the envy of the fashionable world.
So welcome to the Whitacres! Saying bonjour to a little Parisian glamour is exactly what our fair berg needs. Whatever Mrs. Whitacre is designing, I will be the first in line to buy.
About the Author
Laine Ferndale teaches literature and writing to pay for a fairly serious chai latte habit. She lives with her husband and her adorably needy cat.
Find Laine Ferndale on Facebook and on Twitter @laineferndale.
The Infamous Miss Ilsa Page 21
