The Doctor Takes a Wife

by Laurie Kingery

  Got to tell Reverend Chadwick he ought to call off Sunday services until this epidemic dies down, he thought groggily. People didn’t need to be congregating in small places, spreading the sickness. If there was a God, wouldn’t He understand?

  He’d barely completed the thought before the sound of his office bell jangled him fully awake. Apparently he wasn’t going to have time to have a proper breakfast and shave before his patients needed him again.

  “I declare, I’ve never seen so many cases of the grippe,” Mrs. Gilmore said Wednesday afternoon over dinner. Sarah and Prissy were dining with them, as they did at least twice a week. “Why, just in town yesterday I heard of half a dozen people down with it.”

  Sarah thought of Milly. They’d just been together at church Sunday, but perhaps she ought to ride out to the ranch this afternoon and check on her and Nick. If they were fine, she was going to tell them not to come into town, she decided. A woman with child didn’t need to be exposed to sick people.

  Before she left, she’d set a pot of vegetable soup to simmer on the stove, enough for their supper and to take some down to leave at Nolan’s office. The poor man was likely working such long hours that he probably wasn’t taking the time to eat properly. But could she trust Prissy to mind it so that it didn’t boil down to nothing and scorch the soup into a charred mess? The girl could be so forgetful sometimes….

  “And someone said it’s really bad down at Burnet,” Prissy’s mother went on, helping herself to another serving of scalloped ham. “I’m going to have to write your Aunt Vira, Prissy, and make sure she’s all right. She lives in Burnet, you know,” she said to Sarah.

  Sarah did know, for Mrs. Gilmore spoke incessantly about her older sister Vira. It sounded as if the woman was quite a character, and a hypochondriac to boot.

  “Speaking of Vira, I stopped by the post office on my way home, and there was a letter from her,” Mayor Gilmore announced, breezing into the dining room, late as usual, and waving an envelope.

  Seizing the envelope, his wife dropped her fork on her china plate with a clatter and tore it open. She held out the unfolded page for a moment until her eyes found their focus, then scanned the page.

  Sarah saw the color drain out of her normally florid cheeks.

  “Oh dear,” she murmured, and stared at the page again.

  “Mama?” inquired Prissy. “Is Aunt Vira sick?”

  “No, but she says everyone else in Burnet is, so she thought it best to come here for a visit. She plans to stay until the influenza’s all gone from down there. Anson’s going to bring her, she says.”

  “Mama, you’ve got to write and tell her not to come!” Prissy cried. “It’s no safer here, with people falling ill left and right.”

  “I can’t,” her mother wailed. “You know Vira—she never waits to hear an answer. She’s probably already on the way!”

  “Nevertheless, Martha, we ought to try,” Mayor Gilmore said. “There’s probably more risk of her bringing the contagion here than of her contracting it in Simpson Creek. Write out what you want to say after dinner, and I’ll see if we can send a telegram—or if the wires are not working, maybe I can pay one of Andy Calhoun’s boys at the livery to ride down with the message.”

  “Well, if you’re not able to stop her, it’d be fun to see Anson, at least,” Prissy said. “I’ve been writing him to persuade him to come visit with his mother ever since we started the Spinsters’ Club, but he kept giving me excuses. I think the idea of all those single women scared him,” Prissy said with a giggle. “You’d like him, Sarah.”

  “Didn’t I meet him a long time ago? Before the war?” Sarah asked. She had a hazy image in her mind of a boy with dark brown hair some six years older than her who’d taken delight in tormenting the girls at a church picnic.

  “That’s right, you did—I remember now. Oh, he’s changed since then,” Prissy assured her. “Last May when we went down to Burnet to welcome him home from the war, I swan, he’d grown a foot taller while he was away,” Prissy enthused. “And that military bearing…” She pretended to fan herself. “If he wasn’t my cousin…”

  Sarah laughed at her friend, and then everyone was quiet as the clatter of horses’ hooves and carriage wheels on the driveway outside reached their ears.

  Mayor Gilmore got to his feet and peered out the window. “Well, you needn’t bother writing the message. She’s here, she and Anson. And from the amount of trunks and boxes, she means to stay for a while.”

  Chapter Twelve

  With an excited shriek, Prissy sprang up from the table. She ran to the window to confirm her father’s words, then out of the dining room, her shoes clattering on the flooring of the hallway. Mayor Gilmore and his wife hastened after her in a more decorous fashion. Sarah followed them, lingering in the doorway, not wanting to intrude too soon on a family reunion.

  “Aunt Vi! Anson!” Prissy called, running down the steps. The young man assisting his mother out of the landau had his back to them when Sarah reached the doorway, but Sarah could see that he was tall and solidly built. Aunt Vira was plumper than her sister, indeed quite rotund, and possessed of at least two chins. She was dressed in a matching violet coat and bonnet which clashed violently with the maroon wool dress beneath it.

  Sarah saw the old woman look up to see her niece rushing at her, but before she opened her arms to her, Aunt Vira pressed a rumpled lacy handkerchief to her mouth and gave a gusty sneeze.

  “Oh, my dear girl! Martha, Herbert! I certainly hope you have a roaring fire going, for I declare, I’ve never been so chilled in all my born days!” she cried, embracing Prissy, and then her sister. “Anson put a hot brick at my feet when we left, but it didn’t stay hot very long, I can tell you. And that road! My poor bones have never been so rattled about in my body! I felt as if my brain was about to shake right out of my skull!” She sneezed again.

  “I told Mama the trip would be hard on her, and that we should keep to home, but she insisted on coming,” said the young man, who had finished giving Antonio directions on stabling the horses and had now come to join his mother. “Why, cousin Prissy, you’re looking all grown up!” he said with raised eyebrows.

  Sarah understood instantly why Prissy had hinted that her cousin was handsome. With those dark eyes and hair and that broad-shouldered frame, she could well imagine he could make quite an impression on the Spinsters’ Club if he stayed long enough.

  “Oh, pooh, I don’t look any different than I did in May when we came to see y’all,” Prissy pouted prettily, and her cousin gazed down at her, enchanted.

  As long as there were women like Prissy, Sarah thought with amusement, there would always be Southern belles.

  “But who’s this?” Anson said, tearing his gaze away from Prissy and toward Sarah.

  Prissy didn’t seem to mind relinquishing the spotlight. “Aunt Vira, Anson, this is my best friend, Miss Sarah Matthews. Sarah, my aunt, Mrs. James Tyler, and my cousin Anson.”

  Anson strode forward and bowed to Sarah. “Miss Matthews, I am charmed to meet you,” he said, turning the full force of his smile on her. “Charmed.”

  Sarah could no more have stopped the smile which spread across her face at this fulsome greeting than she could stop breathing, but even as her eyes catalogued his features, she was thinking how Nolan’s angular face appealed to her more.

  “Mrs. Tyler, Mr. Tyler, nice to meet you,” Sarah murmured.

  “Oh, no, that won’t do, Miss Matthews,” protested Anson smoothly. “Please, call me Anson.”

  Aunt Vira smothered a cough before saying, “And where do you live, Miss Matthews? Are you visiting with Prissy?”

  “That’s the best part, Aunt Vira!” Prissy interrupted. “She lives right there,” she said, pointing beyond the older woman toward the cottage, which was nearer to the road. “With me! Mama and Papa are letting us use the old cottage!”

  Vira Tyler’s jaw dropped open. “Whatever for? Why would you choose to live away from your dear mama
and papa, niece? That makes no sense.”

  Prissy giggled. “Oh, Aunt Vira, we’re just across the lawn from the big house!”

  “Actually, it makes perfect sense, Vira,” Mayor Gilmore put in smoothly. “Martha was at her wit’s end trying to teach Priscilla all the housewifely arts when our daughter would much rather think of feminine fripperies, but her friend Miss Matthews seems to have perfected all the skills and virtues that a young lady should know to manage her own house. So we thought it a fine idea to let them live in the cottage for a while, where Miss Matthews can teach her all these things. I fear we have been too indulgent with our only daughter, Vira, but she learns willingly from Miss Matthews.”

  Unseen by her parents and her aunt, Prissy rolled her eyes at Sarah before interjecting, “Aunt Vira, she’s teaching me how to cook! I’ve learned to make delicious stews and light-as-a-feather cakes and mouthwatering fried chicken and—”

  “Yes, yes,” Vira Tyler said, waving one hand and dabbing her forehead with her handkerchief in the other. She sneezed yet again. “That’s wonderful, dear niece, and you must tell me more later, but right now, I need to get inside by the fire. I am chilled to the bone, I tell you! If there’s been a colder day this winter, I can’t remember it.”

  Sarah saw Prissy’s parents exchange a look. Though overcast, the weather had been very mild for January. Without another word, they helped Aunt Vira into the house.

  Anson tucked Prissy’s arm in his as they strolled toward the house. “Perhaps you’d like to demonstrate your newfound prowess in the kitchen for me while I’m here, cousin.”

  “What a good idea! We’ll make a party of it! I’ll invite the ladies in the club who have not yet found a beau, and—”

  “Whoa, cousin! What’s wrong with just the three of us, you, me and Miss Sarah?” He winked at Sarah over his shoulder. “I believe I’d like to become better acquainted with your friend, not be subjected to a passel of females all aiming their wiles at me at once.”

  Prissy let out a peal of laughter. “Why, Anson, who’s to say our friends are going to fall all over you, you conceited thing? And if you hadn’t interrupted me, I was going to say I’d be inviting Nolan Walker, our new town doctor. He would like very much to court Sarah, but she’s still making up her mind about him—”

  “Prissy, you’re talking about me as if I weren’t here,” Sarah complained. “And I’m very sure your cousin isn’t interested in my personal business,” she added with a quelling glare at her friend. Prissy could be such an artless chatterbox at times!

  Anson was about to mount the first step up into the house, but at that, he let go of Prissy’s arm and turned around to grin at her. “Oh, but I am interested, Miss Sarah. A man likes to know at the outset if he has a rival.”

  Sarah took a step back, unsure how to politely discourage Prissy’s cousin’s flirtatiousness. Perhaps, if she had not met Nolan first, she might have found Anson Tyler’s confident charm appealing. The thought startled her—she had insisted she wasn’t interested in Nolan, and yet again she found him preferable to another man?

  Even as she made this startling realization, Prissy gave her cousin a light, playful slap on the cheek. “Now you stop that, Anson! You’ll frighten Sarah away, and she’ll move back to the ranch, and Mama and Papa will make me live in the big house….”

  Anson raised his hands in mock surrender. “All right, all right,” he said. “I hope I haven’t offended you, Miss Sarah? I promise to behave myself during my stay here. Pax?”

  Sarah smiled in spite of herself. “Pax.”

  “Wonderful,” Prissy said. “You must be hungry, Anson. I’m sure Flora is putting dinner together for you at this very moment. Let’s all go inside and chat. You can tell us what’s become of all those handsome boys you mustered out with, Anson.”

  “Y’all go ahead,” Sarah told them. “You’ll want to spend some time with your relatives, and I have some things to do.”

  “But—”

  “I’ll be back by supper,” she assured them. “Prissy, I’m sure you’ll want to show Anson our cottage—could you just check on the soup I’m going to put on the stove to simmer?”

  Sarah headed for the stable, where she requested Antonio saddle the horse she usually borrowed. Then she went to the cottage, where earlier she had diced some carrots, onions and the remains of some chicken they’d had last night, added some dried beans she’d soaked overnight and some pepper, salt and dried chilies and mixed it all in a pot of chicken stock. Then she set it on the stove to simmer before changing into her riding clothes.

  Within half an hour she was riding toward the ranch.

  She found Milly in her kitchen, stirring her own pot, but hers held chili. The room was redolent with the savory, spicy smell.

  “Oh, I was just thinking about you!” Milly cried, rushing forward to embrace her sister. “I heard someone ride up, but I thought it was just one of the men coming in from the pasture. They’re all out checking fence and tending stock, but they’ll be so glad to see you!”

  Roses bloomed in Milly’s cheeks once again, Sarah noted, and if she could stand the smell of chili cooking, she must be feeling better.

  “You’ll stay for supper, won’t you?” Milly burbled on. “I’ll have one of the men ride back with you, or you could even stay the night…I’m so happy to have some female company after all these men!”

  Sarah shook her head. “I’m sorry, I promised I’d be back at the cottage for supper.” She told Milly about Prissy’s aunt and cousin showing up unexpectedly, but didn’t mention one of the reasons she wanted to get back was to deliver soup to Dr. Walker. “I really just came to see how you were doing, to see if everyone was well.”

  Milly blinked. “Fine as frog hair split three ways—even me,” she said with a grin, patting her abdomen, “though I’ve had to let out my dresses in the waist a bit. Good thing I’m handy with a needle, hmm?” She studied Sarah more closely. “Why shouldn’t we be well?”

  “The influenza’s getting really bad in town, Milly,” Sarah told her. “Several folks have come down with it since old Mr. Parker died. I see Dr. Walker’s buggy going back and forth all the time, and it seems like there’s always a horse or a wagon parked in front of his office. I came to tell you as long as everyone’s healthy out here at the ranch, you’d better not come into town. No sense in risking your health, Milly, especially now that you’re expecting.”

  Milly frowned and her shoulders sagged. “But I was just planning to go to mercantile, now that I’m feeling better,” she said. “Bobby’s grown out of all his shirts again,” she said, referring to their youngest cowhand. “And what about church on Sunday?”

  Sarah was thoughtful. It was now Wednesday. “You’d better stay home, Milly. Send one of the men to the mercantile if you absolutely have to have something, or send them to me. As for church, I’m sure the Lord will understand.”

  “Well, at least sit down with me for a few minutes and have a cup of tea and some of these cookies I made,” Milly said, pointing to a crockery jar on the table. “Tell me all about Prissy’s aunt and cousin. The middle of January seems like an odd time to come for a visit.”

  Sarah nodded. “The influenza’s hit Burnet very hard, so she wanted to get away from it, I expect.” She thought Prissy’s aunt was coming down with something, too, what with the way she couldn’t stop sneezing and coughing when she arrived, but she didn’t mention it, not wanting to worry Milly.

  “And is her boy Anson as ornery as ever? I imagine he’s all grown up now, isn’t he?”

  Sarah nodded. “He’s grown a foot since he went away to war, and filled out some. He’s quite the handsome charmer now.”

  “Ohhhhh?” No one could inject such a depth of meaning into a single syllable and a lifted brow as her sister.

  “He tried flirting with me, but I indicated I wasn’t interested,” Sarah said loftily, pretending a great interest in brushing a cookie crumb off her bodice. “Though I imagine the Spinsters
’ Club ladies will be.”

  “Why?” Milly said, ignoring Sarah’s second remark for the first. “Because of our Yankee doctor?”

  To her dismay, Sarah felt a blush spreading up her cheeks. “Of course not. I don’t know why you and Prissy keep trying to pair us off.”

  Milly only smiled.

  “We agreed to be friends,” Sarah said, “and then he didn’t even show up at the taffy pull, and hasn’t mentioned it since. Though I imagine it was because he was so busy taking care of all those sick folks,” she admitted, determined to be fair.

  “And how’s Ada?” Milly asked.

  Milly had been to the Parker funeral, but she had left before Ada had shown up and glared at them. Sarah told her sister about the incident, finishing with “But I haven’t seen her since, fortunately.”

  “You be careful if you do,” Milly said. “I’ll pray for her.”

  The grandfather clock in the parlor struck the hour. “Goodness, it’s getting late,” Sarah said, rising. She wanted to return in time to deliver that soup to Nolan so he’d have it before he was ready for his supper. “I’ve got to be going. Please tell Nick and the men I’m sorry I didn’t get to see them….”

  As much as she cared about Molly and the rest of the ranch’s inhabitants, she felt pulled back to Simpson Creek as if by a magnet. For that was where Nolan was.

  Chapter Thirteen

  No light showed through the windows, either in the doctor’s office or the connected house in the back as Sarah strode up the walk in the gathering dusk. Setting the heavy pot of soup on the step, Sarah walked around the yard toward the back, her high-button boots crunching the dead brown grass. A quick glance around showed the buggy parked, its traces empty, but just to be sure he hadn’t ridden the horse, she stepped into the small barn and found his chestnut gelding in his stall, busily devouring his oats. The beast looked up, snorted at her, then dipped his head to his feed once more.