Linda Lael Miller Bundle

by Linda Lael Miller

  It hurt that the concern she saw in his face was so obviously for her sanity and not for his safety and Trista’s. “Lizzie, there are doctors back in Boston and New York—men who know more than I do. They might be able to—”

  “Just get out of here,” Elisabeth spat out, tensing up like a cat doused in ice water, “and let me take my bath in peace.”

  Instead, Jonathan brought out more kettles and filled them at the pump, then set them on the stove. “You took care of me when I needed you,” he said finally, his voice low, his expression brooking no opposition, “and I’m going to do what I have to do to take care of you, Lizzie. I love you.”

  Elisabeth had never been so confused. He’d said the words she most wanted to hear, but it also sounded as though he was planning to pack her off to the nearest loony bin the first chance he got. “If you love me,” she said evenly, “then trust me, Jon. You didn’t believe your own eyes and ears and…well…I’m all out of ways to convince you.”

  He sat her down in a chair, then fed more wood to the fire so her bathwater would heat faster. He didn’t look at her when he spoke. “There isn’t going to be a fire, Lizzie—you’ll see. The third week of June will come and go, just like it always does.”

  She stared at his back. “You’re going to pretend it didn’t happen, aren’t you?” she said in a thick whisper. “Jonathan, you were gone for eight days. How do you explain that—as a memory lapse?”

  Heat began to surge audibly through the pots of water simmering on the stove. “Frankly,” he answered, “I’m beginning to question my sanity.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Frantic pounding at the front door roused Elisabeth from a sound, dreamless sleep. She reached for the robe she’d left lying across the foot of the bed and hurried into the hallway, where she saw Jonathan leaving his room. He was buttoning his shirt as he descended the stairs.

  She remembered the proprieties of the century and held back, sitting on one of the high steps and gripping a banister post with one hand.

  “It’s my little Alice,” a man’s voice burst out after Jonathan opened the door. “She can’t breathe right, Doc!”

  “Just let me get my bag,” Jonathan answered with grim resignation. A few moments later, he was gone, rattling away into the night in the visitor’s wagon.

  Elisabeth remained on the stairway, even though it was chilly and her exhausted body yearned for sleep. She was still sitting there, huddled in her nightgown and robe when Jonathan returned several hours later.

  He lit a lamp in the entryway and started upstairs, halting when he saw Elisabeth.

  “What happened?” she asked, wondering if she was going to be in this kind of suspense every time Jonathan was summoned out on a night call. “Is the little girl…”

  Jonathan sighed raggedly and shook his head. “Diphtheria,” he said.

  Elisabeth’s knowledge of old-fashioned diseases was limited, but she’d heard and read enough about this one to know it was deadly. And very contagious. “Is there anything I can do to help?” she asked lamely, knowing there wasn’t.

  He advanced toward her, and his smile was rueful and sad. “Just be Lizzie,” he said hoarsely.

  They went back to their separate beds then, but it wasn’t long before someone else came to fetch the doctor for their sick child. When Elisabeth finally gave up on sleeping somewhere around dawn and got up, Jonathan had still not returned.

  She built up the kitchen fire and put coffee on to brew. And then she waited. This, she supposed, would be an integral part of being the wife of a nineteenth-century country doctor—if, indeed, destiny allowed her to marry Jonathan at all.

  Sipping coffee, her feet resting on the warm, chrome footrail on the front of the stove, Elisabeth thought of her old life with Ian. It was like a half-remembered dream now, but once, that relationship had been the focal point of her existence.

  Tilting her head back and closing her eyes, Elisabeth sighed and contemplated the hole her leaving would rend in that other world. Her disappearence would make one or two local newscasts, but after a while, she’d just be another nameless statistic, a person the police couldn’t find.

  Ian would cock an eyebrow, say it was all a pity and call his lawyer to see if he and the new wife had any claim on Elisabeth’s belongings.

  Her father would suffer, but he had his career and Traci and the new baby. In the long run, he’d be fine.

  Janet and Elisabeth’s other friends in Seattle would probably be up in arms for a time, bugging the police and speculating among themselves, but they all had their own lives. Eventually, they’d go back to living them, and it would be as though Elisabeth had died.

  Rue, of course, was an entirely different matter. She would come home from her travels, read the letter Elisabeth had written about her first experience with the threshold and be on the next plane for Seattle. Within an hour of landing, she’d be right here in this house, looking for any trace of her cousin, following up every lead, making the police wish they’d never heard of Elisabeth McCartney.

  So close, Elisabeth thought, imagining Rue in these very rooms, her throat thickening with emotion, and yet so far.

  The sound of Trista coming down the steps roused Elisabeth from her thoughts.

  “What are you doing up so early?” Elisabeth asked, taking the child onto her lap.

  Trista snuggled close. Although she was wearing a pinafore, black ribbed stockings and plain shoes with pointy toes, her dark hair hadn’t been brushed or braided, and she was still warm and flushed from sleep. She yawned. “I kept hearing people knock on the door. Is Papa out?”

  Elisabeth nodded, noting with a start that Trista’s forehead felt hot against her cheek. God, no, she thought, pressing her palms to either side of the child’s face. No! She made herself speak in an even tone of voice. “He’s been gone for several hours,” she said. “Trista—do you feel well?”

  “My throat’s sore,” she said, “and my chest hurts.”

  Tears of alarm sprang to Elisabeth’s eyes, but she forced them back. This was no time to lose her head. “Were you sick during the night?” She tightened her arms around the child, as if preparing to resist some giant, unseen hand that might wrench her away.

  Trista looked up at Elisabeth. “I wanted to get into bed with you,” she said shyly.

  Elisabeth bit her lip and made herself speak calmly. “Well, I think we’d better forget about school and make you a nice, comfortable bed right here by the stove. We’ll read stories and I’ll play the piano for you. How would that be?”

  A tremor ran through the small body in Elisabeth’s arms. “I have to go to school,” Trista protested. “There’s a spelling bee today, and you know how hard I’ve been practicing.”

  There was an element of the frantic in the quick kiss Elisabeth planted on Trista’s temple. “It would be my guess that there won’t be any school today, sweetheart. And it’s possible, you know, to practice too hard. Sometimes, you have to just do your best and then stand back and let things happen.”

  Trista sighed. “I would like to have a bed in the kitchen and hear stories,” she confessed.

  “Then let’s get started,” Elisabeth said with false cheer as she set Trista in a chair and automatically felt the child’s face for fever again. “You stay right there,” she ordered, waggling a finger. “And don’t you dare think of even one spelling word!”

  Trista laughed, but the sound was dispirited.

  Elisabeth dragged a leather-upholstered Roman couch from Jonathan’s study to the kitchen and set it as close to the stove as she dared. Then she hurried upstairs and collected Trista’s nightgown and the linens from her bed.

  By the time Jonathan came through the back door, looking hollow eyed and weary to the very center of his soul, his daughter was reclining on the couch, listening to Elisabeth read from Gulliver’s Travels. The expression on his face as he made the obvious deduction was terrible to see.

  Immediately, he came to his daughter’s bed
side, touched her warm face, examined her ears and throat. Then his eyes linked with Elisabeth’s, over Trista’s head, and she knew it might not matter that there was going to be a fire the third week in June. Not to this little girl, anyway.

  They went into Jonathan’s study to talk.

  “Diphtheria?” Elisabeth whispered, praying he’d say Trista just had the flu or common cold. But then, those maladies weren’t so harmless in the nineteenth century, either. There were so many medical perils at this time that a child would never encounter in Elisabeth’s.

  Jonathan was standing at one of the windows, gazing past the lace curtain at the new, bright, blue-and-gold day. He shook his head. “It’s a virus I’ve never seen before—and there seems to be an epidemic.”

  Elisabeth’s fingers were entwined in the fabric of her skirts. “Isn’t there anything we can do?”

  He shrugged miserably. “Give them quinine, force liquids….”

  She went and stood behind him, drawn by his pain and the need to ease it. She rested her hands on his tense shoulders. “And then?”

  “And then they’ll probably die,” he said, walking away from her so swiftly that her hands fell to her sides.

  “Jon, the penicillin—there wouldn’t be enough for all the children, but Trista…” Her sentence fell away, unfinished, when Jonathan walked out of the study and let the door close crisply behind him. Without uttering a word, he’d told Elisabeth he had neither the time nor the patience for what he considered delusions.

  He’d left his bag on his cluttered desk in the corner. Elisabeth opened it and rummaged through until she’d found the bottle of penicillin tablets. Removing the lid, she carefully tipped the pills into her palm and counted them.

  Ten.

  She scooped the medicine back into its bottle and dropped it into her pocket.

  Jonathan was stoking the fire in the kitchen stove when Elisabeth joined him, while Trista watched listlessly from the improvised bed. Elisabeth could see the child’s chest rise and fall unevenly as breathing became more difficult for her.

  Elisabeth began pumping water into pots and kettles and carrying them to the stove, and soon the windows were frosted with steam and the air was dense and hot.

  “Let me take her over the threshold, Jon,” Elisabeth pleaded in a whisper when Trista had slipped into a fitful sleep an hour later. “There are hospitals and modern drugs…”

  He glowered at her. “For God’s sake, don’t start that nonsense now!”

  “You must have seen the cars going by on the road. It’s a much more advanced society! Jonathan, I can help Trista—I know I can!”

  “Not another word,” he warned, and his gray eyes looked as cold as the creek in January.

  “The medicine, then—”

  The back door opened and Ellen came in, looking flushed and worried. When her gaze fell on Trista, however, the high color seeped from her face. “I’m sorry I couldn’t come sooner, but it’s the grippe—we’ve got it at our place, and Seenie’s so hot, you can hardly stand to touch her!”

  Jonathan’s eyes strayed to Trista for a moment, but skirted Elisabeth completely. “I’ll be there in few minutes,” he said.

  Ellen hovered near the door, looking as though she might faint with relief, but Elisabeth felt nothing but frustration and despair.

  “I’ll get your bag,” she said to Jonathan, and disappeared into the study.

  When she returned, the doctor had already gone outside to hitch up his horse and buggy. Elisabeth gave the bag to Ellen, but there seemed to be no reassuring words to offer. A look passed between the two women, and then Ellen hurried outside to ride back to her family’s farm with Jonathan.

  Throughout the afternoon, Elisabeth kept the stove going at full tilt, refilling the kettles and pots as their contents evaporated. The curtains, the tablecloth, Trista’s bedclothes—everything in the room was moist.

  Elisabeth found fresh sheets and blankets and a clean nightgown for Trista. The child hardly stirred as the changes were made. Her breathing was a labored rattle, and her flesh was hot as a stove lid.

  Elisabeth knelt beside the couch, her head resting lightly on Trista’s little chest, her eyes squeezed shut against tears of grief and helplessness. This, too, was part of being a Victorian woman—watching a beloved child slip toward death because there were no medicines, no real hospitals. Now, she realized that she’d taken the vaccinations and medical advances of her own time for granted, never guessing how deadly a simple virus could be.

  Presently, Elisabeth felt the pharmacy bottle pressing against her hip and reached into her pocket for it, turning it in her fingers. She was no doctor—in fact, she had virtually no medical knowledge at all, except for the sketchy first-aid training she’d been required to take to get her teaching certificate. But she knew that penicillin was a two-edged sword.

  For most people, it was perfectly safe and downright magical in its curative powers. For others, however, it was a deadly poison, and if Trista had an adverse reaction, there would be nothing Elisabeth could do to help. On the other hand, an infection was raging inside the child’s body. She probably wouldn’t live another forty-eight hours if someone didn’t intercede.

  Resolutely, Elisabeth got to her feet and went to the sink. A bucket of cold water sat beside it, pumped earlier, and Elisabeth filled a glass and carried it back to Trista’s bedside.

  “Trista,” she said firmly.

  The child’s eyes rolled open, but Trista didn’t seem to recognize Elisabeth. She made a strangled, moaning sound.

  The prescription bottle recommended two tablets every four hours, but that was an adult dose. Frowning, Elisabeth took one pill and set it on Trista’s tongue. Then, holding her own breath, she gave the little girl water.

  For a few moments, while Trista sputtered and coughed, it seemed she wouldn’t be able to hold the pill down, but finally she settled back against the curved end of the couch and closed her eyes. Elisabeth sensed that the child’s sleep was deeper and more comfortable this time, but she was so frightened and tense, she didn’t dare leave the kitchen.

  She was sitting beside Trista’s bed, holding the little girl’s hand, when the back door opened and Jonathan dragged in. “Light cases,” he said, referring, Elisabeth hoped, to the children in Ellen’s sizable family. “They’ll probably be all right.” He was at his daughter’s side by then, setting his bag on the table, taking out his stethoscope and putting the earpiece in place. He frowned as he listened to Trista’s lungs and heart.

  Elisabeth wanted to tell him about the penicillin, but she was afraid. Jonathan was not exactly in a philosophical state of mind, and he wouldn’t be receptive to updates on twentieth-century medicine. “You need some rest and something to eat,” she said.

  He smiled grimly as he straightened, pulling off the stethoscope and tossing it back into his bag. “This is a novelty, having somebody worry about me,” he said. “I think I like it.”

  “Sit,” Elisabeth ordered wearily, rising and pressing him into the chair where she’d been keeping her vigil over Trista. She poured stout coffee for him, adding sugar and cream because he liked it that way, and then went to the icebox for eggs she’d gathered herself the day before and the leftovers from a baked ham.

  Jonathan’s gaze rested on his daughter’s flushed face. “She hasn’t been out of my thoughts for five minutes all day,” he said with a sigh. “I didn’t want to leave her, but you were here, and the others—”

  Elisabeth stopped to lay a hand on his shoulder. “I know, Jon,” she said softly. She found an onion and spices in the pantry and, minutes later, an omelette was bubbling in a pan on the stove.

  “Her breathing seems a little easier,” Jonathan commented when Elisabeth dished up the egg concoction and brought it to the table for him.

  She didn’t say anything, but her fingers closed around the little bottle of penicillin in the pocket of her skirt. Soon, when Jonathan wasn’t looking, she would give Trista another pill. />
  He seemed almost too tired to lift his fork, and Elisabeth’s heart ached as she watched him eat. When he finished his meal, she knew he wouldn’t collapse into bed and sleep, as he needed to do. No, Jonathan would head for the barn, where he would feed and water animals for an hour. Then, provided another frantic father didn’t come to fetch him, he’d sit up the rest of the night, watching over Trista.

  Elisabeth woke the child while he was in the barn and made her swallow another penicillin tablet. By that time, her own body was aching with fatigue and she wanted to sink into a chair and sob.

  She didn’t have time for such luxuries, though, for the fire was waning and the water in the kettles was boiling away. Elisabeth found the wood box empty and, after checking Trista, she wrapped herself in a woolen shawl and went outside to the shed. There, she picked up the ax and awkwardly began splitting chunks of dry apple wood.

  Jonathan was crossing the yard when she came out, her arms loaded, and he took the wood from her without a word.

  Inside, he fed the fire while she pumped more water to make more steam. Suddenly, she ran out of fortitude and sank against Jonathan, weeping for all the children who could not be saved, both in this century and in her own.

  Jonathan embraced her tightly for a moment, kissed her forehead and then lifted her into his arms and started toward the stairs. “You’re going to lie down,” he announced in a stern undertone. “I’ll bring you something to eat.”

  “I want to stay with Trista.”

  “You’re no good to her in this condition,” Jonathan reasoned, opening the door to her room and carrying her inside. He laid her gently on the bed and pulled off her sneakers, so incongruous with her long skirt and big-sleeved blouse. “I’ll bring you a tray.”

  Elisabeth opened her mouth to protest, but it was too late. Jonathan had already closed the door, and she could hear his footsteps in the hallway.

  She had to admit it felt gloriously, decadently good to lie down. She would rest for a few minutes, to shut Jonathan up, and then go back to Trista.