Harper's Bride

by Alexis Harrington

  Dr. Garvin looked apologetic. "It's highly contagious, so both of you might get sick too if you haven't already had it. Some people though, especially adults, seem to be resistant to the disease. And I think your baby has a relatively mild case of the fever—with good nursing some children pull through just fine. The rash will spread, so sponge her with soda water once in the morning and once at night. In a day or two you'll also notice that her tongue has turned the color and texture of a strawberry. Try to get her to eat though—your milk will be just fine for her. Other than that—" He sighed. "I'm afraid this is a wait and hope situation."

  After promising to check in the next day, Dr. Garvin put on his coat and picked up his bag. On his way to the door, he patted Melissa's arm. "I won't tell you not to worry. But worrying won't get the job done. Put more energy into taking care of Jenny and yourselves. If you two should fall ill"—he looked from Melissa to Dylan—"there will be no one to tend your baby."

  Melissa stared at the closed door, feeling as if the crack of doom had just sounded. Her baby, the dearest little soul she'd ever known, was close to death, and she was the cause. She turned to face Dylan. He stood with his arms crossed tightly over his chest, and his handsome face was wiped clean of all expression. She knew she'd been angry with him earlier, but for the life of her, she couldn't recall why now. Whatever the cause, it must have been trivial. She could think of nothing but the over-warm bundle in her arms, her own flesh and blood.

  She looked down at Jenny's flushed face, at the rash that crept up to her tiny neck. "I'm so sorry, button," she whispered, her breath coming in hitches. "It's all my fault. I only meant to earn a better life for us. I never thought you'd get sick from someone's clothes."

  "Melissa," Dylan murmured, "it's not your fault. Blaming yourself won't make Jenny well. Besides, you don't know if that's how she caught this fever."

  "Of course she did!" Melissa snapped back, unable to keep the emotion out of her voice. Didn't he understand how guilty she was? She began pacing again. "Either she got it from the clothes or from the miners." She let an angry, rueful tone slide into her words. "Oh, I was going to prove to everyone how strong I was, that I could make it in the world on my own, and it didn't matter if Coy left me with just the dress on my back. Well, he's dead now and so is Rafe. And Jenny—"

  "Don't say it!" Dylan barked. Frowning, his eyes like hard green stones, he strode forward and took her shoulders again in a hard grip. "Melissa, you've got to be strong to take care of her. You can't afford the luxury of self-pity right now."

  Scared and swamped with contrition, Melissa stared up at him, at the planes of his face where his own worry and grief had etched lines, and his eyes that seemed haunted by events long past. Drawing courage from his warm touch and firm words, she struggled to bridle her runaway panic. "Yes, of course, you're right," she admitted and took a deep, steadying breath. Then she added in a small voice, "It's just that she's so little, and I'm so scared for her."

  He gave her shoulders a light squeeze, then released her. "I know. But all you can do is your best. And I'll be right here if you need help."

  Melissa took heart in that, and she felt like kissing him for it. In her whole life, she'd never had anyone to depend on. She'd heard a lot of empty promises, but Dylan—she knew his word was good. He'd stand by Jenny and her. "Thank you, Dylan."

  She shifted into action then, and followed the doctor's instructions about the soda bath and feeding Jenny. At first the baby wouldn't eat anything. After several tries, though, she finally took a little milk.

  With full darkness upon the town, Dylan and Melissa sat in edgy silence, keeping watch over Jenny, who slept fitfully. Her fever did not abate, but the little girl hung on through the hours. Melissa was grateful for Dylan's company—she couldn't think of even one other man of her acquaintance who wouldn't have been asleep or gone by now. There was so much goodness in him, as intimidating as he could be, yet it seemed he was determined to spend his life alone.

  Just after midnight and while Jenny was quiet, Melissa, who'd been sitting next to the cradle for hours, walked to the window, flexing her tense, aching shoulders as she went. Resting her forehead against the cool glass pane, she gazed dully at the laughing, free-spending carnival rolling along under the streetlights on Front. Above, a sliver of moon riding low on the horizon hid behind a mask of gauzy clouds, and a few stars twinkled around it. Now that August was waning, the chilly nights fell earlier and lasted longer.

  With her focus so fixed on this room, she marveled at how precarious life was, and how heartless the world could be. It continued on, unaware and unconcerned about the fate of one child who lay in the cradle next to Dylan's bed.

  She heard Dylan's chair legs scrape across the plank flooring, and then felt his warmth behind her as he laid his hand on her shoulder. His touch was firm but gentle, the contrast reminding her of the kind man who lurked beneath a threatening persona.

  He worked at the tightness in her muscles, coaxing them to relax, but her thoughts were bitter.

  "I'm beginning to see what you hate about this place," Melissa said without turning. "It's all a gaudy spectacle on the surface, but I think there's a lot of suffering that we don't see. What good is making money if it costs you everything else that matters?" She shook her head as she gazed down at the street. "If I'd had the chance to refuse, I never would have come up here. Why did you? What made you choose this place?" She heard him sigh behind her, not in exasperation, she thought, but as if pondering her question. His hand fell away.

  "When I left The Dalles, I'd already lost all I had that mattered to me. I didn't know where to go. I just wanted to put some distance between me and them—the old man, my brother . . . Elizabeth."

  Melissa turned to face him then. She wouldn't question him about her—he was the one to bring up the woman's name. Maybe this time he would tell her what he'd run away from so that she could understand why his eyes had their haunted look.

  He went back to the table and sat down again, slouching low and crossing his ankle over his knee. "Remember when I told you about the night I left home, that it was because of an argument I had with my father about the horses?"

  She nodded, leaning against the windowsill behind her.

  "Well, there was a little more to it than that." He shifted his gaze to an empty coffee cup on the table before him, turning it idly as if looking for the grit to give voice to his story. "I met Elizabeth Petitt four years ago at her homecoming party. She'd just gotten back from some fancy eastern school. Her father, William Petitt, was one of the bank's biggest customers. I agreed to go to keep peace with my own family—the old man told me to put on decent clothes and stop looking like a hired hand for one night." He sent her a wry smile that stopped short of his eyes. "How could I resist such a bighearted invitation? I'd planned to stay for just a half hour or so, make small talk, and then leave. I don't know why, but I'd supposed that the daughter was probably a homely bluestocking her family wanted to marry off. But when I was introduced to Elizabeth, it was like I lost everything, my sense of time, my heart, my mind—everything. From that moment I was doomed." He shook his head, and his expression turned bittersweet. "She was beautiful, with long black curls and dark eyes, and so different from the other women I'd known. On the surface she was ladylike and cultivated, almost girlish, I guess. But beneath all that I discovered a wanton, uninhibited, free-thinking woman. She had me tripping all over myself like a fifteen-year-old boy. I turned into the worst kind of blind, love-sick fool anyone ever saw. I couldn't eat, or sleep, or think of anything or anyone but her."

  Melissa lowered her eyes. It was almost impossible to imagine Dylan as he described himself then. He was so serious and controlled, even in anger. The day she'd seen him pin that miner's sleeve with his meat cleaver crossed her memory. That was the Dylan Harper she knew—dangerous, swift-moving, and certainly unpredictable. As difficult as it was to picture him so besotted, she found it harder still to think of another woman bring
ing that out in him.

  He plowed his hand through his hair. "Elizabeth listened to everything I had to say, and there was a lot—I'd kept most of my thoughts and ideas to myself. Finally, I thought I had someone to talk to, someone who understood my love for the land and the horses. At least I thought she understood. I don't know why—there were never two people with less in common. But I didn't realize that at the time, and it wasn't until a lot later when I figured out that while I'd told her all about myself, I knew almost nothing about her. Before I knew what I was doing, I'd asked her to marry me."

  "I suppose it isn't that we don't know people," Melissa put in softly. "I think sometimes we make up our minds to ignore the things about a person that give us doubt, or make us worry. I know that's what I did with Coy."

  He considered her for a moment, as if seeing a new side to her. "You're smarter than you give yourself credit for. I think you knew from the beginning that you were taking a gamble on Logan. It was a bold risk, but the odds were so high you were bound to lose."

  She walked to the cradle and looked at Jenny. "Maybe you're right," she admitted, letting her eyes meet his. "I wanted to leave home so badly, I was willing to take a chance on Coy. It was too much to hope that everything would work out, that somehow he would turn into the kind of man you—" She looked away then, and felt her cheeks flushed as if she too suffered from fever. Reaching down, she swabbed Jenny's head with a cool cloth.

  Her unfinished remark hung between them awkwardly. "I'm probably not the man you think I am, either, Melissa."

  She looked up again, the cloth wadded in her fist. "But you've been kind to Jenny and me. You took us in when we had no one to turn to."

  He shrugged and straightened in his chair. "I didn't have much choice, considering the circumstances. But I'm no teetotaler, and I hate wearing a suit. I like being outdoors, I don't have much interest in front parlor politics, and I expect to get my hands dirty when I work. Elizabeth didn't care if I took a drink, but she didn't like anything else I did except—" He glanced away. "Well, she didn't like much else."

  Adjusting the baby's dress, Melissa stroked Jenny's hot, downy hair with the back of her fingers. She thought again of Elizabeth's patrician features and wondered if the woman had been out of her mind. There was nothing about Dylan that she didn't like, except her helpless attraction to him. "It sounds as if she could have had any man that suited her fancy. Why would she choose one she felt she had to change?"

  "Why," he repeated. Then he looked up at Melissa and grinned. In this light she thought the smile looked almost malevolent. "Over time, the reason made itself dear enough. It was money."

  "Money? Didn't you say she came from a wealthy family?"

  "Some people never get enough. I began to suspect that her father and mine had plotted the whole thing from the beginning, but . . . "

  Pushing himself from his chair, Dylan went to the stove and shook the coffeepot. His movements were restless, like those of an animal pacing in a cage. She knew the coffee in the pot must be only lukewarm, but apparently he didn't care—he filled his cup. But he left it on the stove and paced to the window, where he stared at the blue-black night sky.

  "But?" she prompted quietly.

  Keeping his back to her, Dylan shoved his hands in his back pockets and sighed. "Hell, I thought I was in love with her, and I figured it didn't much matter how we'd come together." Shaking his head, he added, "I was truly bewitched by her."

  With the benefit of hindsight, Dylan wondered why he hadn't seen Elizabeth for what she was. Being in love with her, that shouldn't have mattered. But, then, she had been very clever in her duplicity, cloaking it with a sizzling, teasing passion that had made him view her exactly as she must have wanted him to: helpless but so charming, so beautiful, so ornamental. He felt like a fool now.

  He wasn't about to tell Melissa that the only time Elizabeth had not found fault with him was when she writhed beneath him in his bed over the stables. It had been a puzzle to him then, and even now he wasn't sure he grasped how a woman with such dainty, impeccable manners and dress could turn into a demanding, insatiable hellcat who'd left him sweating and exhausted, with his back on fire from the long red welts she'd raised with her nails.

  Dylan glanced over his shoulder at Melissa's downturned head. Guileless, gentle, and modest, she was so unlike Elizabeth. Faint smudges beneath her lower lashes told of her fatigue, but she still looked beautiful to him.

  "The harder I tried to please her, the more demanding she became until she had me by the b—Well, let's say she wanted her own way about everything. I knew something wasn't right between us, but I couldn't put my finger on it. Finally, the night I had that blow-up with the old man, I went to her place and asked her to come away with me, right then, that moment. I was practically on my knees, begging her to go, when her father came into the parlor and told me that our engagement was off." He turned to face Melissa. It hurt to talk about it, but somehow, it hurt more to keep it to himself. "She had decided to marry my brother, Scott, instead. Elizabeth confirmed it and said she'd been waiting for the right moment to tell me."

  "Oh, Dylan," Melissa moaned.

  He walked back to the table and flopped into the chair again. "What a perfect ending it was—to everything. I guess they deserve each other. I hope I never care that much about anyone again."

  He could tell her that, but he knew it was already too late.

  Dylan cared about Melissa.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The day and night that followed were a blur to Melissa. The passage of time was marked only by sunrise and sunset, and by the soda baths she gave Jenny, who, though still feverish, doggedly clung to life. Melissa refused to do more than catnap while Jenny slept, and occasionally she woke up stiff, feeling like an old woman from dozing in the chair.

  Once someone came upstairs looking for the singing washerwoman, but she called through the door that they had a sick child in the house and she couldn't work. She had certainly lost her desire to sing. There was nothing to sing about.

  Keeping the trading store closed, Dylan maintained the vigil with her, leaving only to attend Rafe's funeral. She wished she could pay her respects as well, but it was impossible. At any rate, there was nothing she could do for Rafe now, but Jenny needed constant care.

  Dylan returned from the ceremony hollow-eyed and looking exhausted.

  "Did Dawson do well by Rafe?" she asked, looking up from Jenny's cradle.

  He nodded and went to the coffeepot on the stove. "The funeral drew quite a crowd, and a lot of eulogies were spoken for him. I think more people knew and liked him than he realized. Nearly everyone there pitched in some money to get him a good headstone. McGinty, Big Alex, Bill Ladue, they all gave. Even Belinda."

  Thinking of what Dawson winters would be like, her mind conjured a tiny casket covered with roses and a string of mourners trailing behind it in a bitter wind, their black figures set against a cold, gray sky. She gazed down at Jenny and said, "What a desolate place to have to bury a person. It would be so hard to leave someone alone in a grave with ice and snow and darkness. I don't think I could . . . " She looked up at Dylan. "I just don't know what I'd do if . . . I couldn't stand it."

  He walked over to her and handed her his cup of coffee. "We're not going to worry about that now, okay? Jenny's going to get well, and everything will be fine. As for Rafe—" He sighed. "If it's possible, I think his spirit has gone to be with someone who died before him, someone who meant a lot to him."

  Late in the afternoon, Dr. Garvin came by as he'd promised, and Melissa thought the young physician looked surprised to see that Jenny had survived thus far.

  "This is promising, very promising!" he declared upon examining her. "Her fever isn't gone, but it's down."

  Dylan stayed out of the way, but Melissa saw the hope and relief in his eyes.

  Dr. Garvin instructed her to maintain the regimen of Jenny's treatment and told her to take care of herself as well.

 
For the rest of the day and that night, Dylan stayed close by. Melissa silently blessed his company, although she insisted that he get more sleep than she did. He brought their meals in from restaurants and chophouses to save Melissa the chore of cooking, and took his turn walking Jenny. She drew strength from his quiet presence, and sometimes while both he and the baby slept, Melissa would watch over them and feel such a rush of love she thought her heart would break.

  The long hours in the small room gave her a lot of time to think, and she came to two decisions. First, she knew she would take in no more laundry here in Dawson. Jenny might have caught her fever in a number of ways, but Melissa refused to expose her to any more danger. She'd made good money washing for the miners, but no amount of gold was worth risking her child's health.

  As to her heart, she knew that to speak her feelings now was out of the question. She and Dylan were both distracted and worried. But when this was over, she thought, when Jenny was well again—the baby would get well, she was positive—Melissa determined that she would tell Dylan how she felt. She had come to realize that life was too perilous and uncertain to let the chance for love slip away.

  She looked at him as he lay across the end of the bed, his chest rising and falling, the worry in his face smoothed out in sleep, and let her eyes trace the line of his full mouth. The stubble of his day-old beard shadowed his face, emphasizing his strong male features. She wished she could trail her fingertips along his jaw and over his lips, just for the pleasure of touching him. The kisses that they had shared seemed like a dream now, beautiful but not real. The rice sack still occupied the space in the middle—Melissa had come to hate the thing.

  Dylan was bitter about Elizabeth, and he had every reason to be. She had as much, if not more, reason to be bitter about Coy. But what good could it bring? It would be a mistake to let those experiences color their lives. After all, who knew when fate could steal away a life? Their recent brushes with death—Rafe's, Coy's, and Jenny's fever—had given her a new perspective. They needed to put the past where it belonged, behind them, and leave it there.