With Autumn's Return (Westward Winds Book #3): A Novel

by Amanda Cabot

  “But you shouldn’t . . .”

  Elizabeth shook her head. “Arguing will not help your ankle. I can, but I need the instruments in my office. Be careful. I’m going to lift you up.” Sliding her arms around Phoebe Simcoe’s waist, Elizabeth drew her to her feet. Though she appeared slender, Mrs. Simcoe was no lightweight. Elizabeth wished Dr. Worland were here to watch her. He’d no longer question her strength if he realized she’d just lifted her own weight.

  “Don’t hurry,” she said as Phoebe clung to her. “I don’t want to do any more damage to that ankle.” It took longer than Elizabeth had expected to get her patient to her office, and both women sighed with relief when Phoebe was safely ensconced on the examining table. “This may hurt a bit,” Elizabeth said as she unfastened Phoebe’s high-button shoe. As she had feared, the ankle was badly swollen. A gentle touch confirmed her fears. “You’ve fractured your ankle, Mrs. Simcoe. Fortunately, it’s not a compound fracture. Once I put it in a plaster cast, it should heal properly.”

  Phoebe clenched her fists as Elizabeth touched the swollen appendage. “How long will it take to heal?”

  “Six weeks, if you’re careful. You’ll need a crutch to keep the weight off it.”

  “Six weeks!” Phoebe shook her head. “The fellas will laugh at that.”

  It was not the reaction Elizabeth had expected. Patients frequently groused at how long it took for bones to heal, but few laughed. Though she hated to deliver what might sound like a lecture, Elizabeth needed her patient to understand the gravity of her injury. “A broken ankle is not a laughing matter. Ankles are complex joints, and a fracture can be very serious. You were lucky, Mrs. Simcoe.”

  The blonde whom Elizabeth guessed to be around thirty appeared thoughtful. “Maybe I was lucky, after all. You were there right when I needed you. I doubt any other woman in the city would have helped me.”

  Again, it was an unexpected reaction. Elizabeth reached for a bandage. “Another woman might not have been able to set your ankle, but I’m sure she would have helped you.” Another woman might have taken Mrs. Simcoe to Dr. Worland. His office was slightly closer than Elizabeth’s, and he was, as he had announced at the Cheyenne Club, the most prominent physician in the city.

  A hint of amusement filled Phoebe Simcoe’s blue eyes. “You don’t know who I am, do you?”

  “You told me you were Phoebe Simcoe. Your clothing makes me believe that you’re a widow.”

  “That’s true,” she said as Elizabeth began to wrap her ankle. “Mr. Simcoe has been gone for almost ten years. Most folks here just call me Phoebe. That’s the name of my business: Phoebe’s.”

  Though Elizabeth wracked her brain, she could recall no stores by that name. “I’m sorry, but . . .”

  Phoebe chuckled. “You haven’t been here very long, have you?”

  “A bit less than a month.”

  “And you probably haven’t had much reason to frequent 15th Street. That’s where my business is. On the northeast corner of 15th and Warren.” She looked down at her ankle. “I run a bordello, Dr. Harding. That’s why the good women of Cheyenne pretend I don’t exist.”

  If Phoebe Simcoe expected her to be shocked, she was mistaken. While Phoebe was the first madam she had met, Elizabeth was well aware of the existence of bordellos, the women who lived there, and the men who frequented them. Papa had preached many a sermon deploring the circumstances that led women to brothels at the same time that he reminded his congregation how Jesus forgave that very sin. Elizabeth would not judge Phoebe.

  “Then I’m doubly glad I decided to go to Mr. Ellis’s today. You needed a doctor, and I needed a patient. The women of Cheyenne may admit my existence, but so far they’re not lining up in the streets, waiting for me to treat them.” Elizabeth bit her lip, wishing she could retract the words. She should never have told Phoebe Simcoe—or any of her patients—how small her practice was. “Forgive me,” she said. “I didn’t mean to burden you with my tale.”

  Phoebe’s eyes narrowed, and she was silent for a moment. Then, nodding briskly, she asked, “How would you like a dozen patients? My girls need a doctor. They don’t like it, but I insist on monthly checkups. Doc Worland performs them, and they like that even less. He lectures them most every time he comes, and he’s rougher than he needs to be.”

  While it would be unprofessional to agree, Phoebe’s description was consistent with Elizabeth’s impression of the older doctor. She felt a moment of elation at the realization that, not only would she be gaining more patients, but she would be able to make those patients’ lives a bit easier. “I’d be honored to treat your girls.”

  “You’d need to come to my place.”

  “That’s fine. I make house calls.”

  Phoebe held out her hand, gripping Elizabeth’s firmly. “Thank you, Doctor. It seems this was my lucky day, after all.”

  Dust and rubble. It was everywhere. Harrison tried not to frown, but if there was one thing he disliked, it was disorder, and that was rampant. Oh, the workers claimed they were following his plan. Most days he knew they were. They had demolished the wall between what was once Mr. Yates’s dry goods store and Charlotte Harding’s fancy dress shop, the one with the French name that Harrison never did learn to pronounce. The result would be a large, well-lit store with plenty of space for the goods Barrett planned to carry. Right now, it was an unmitigated mess, just like Harrison’s life.

  He had made no progress with Rose. No matter what he tried, she still shied from him. Before Independence Day, he had consoled himself with the thought that she was wary of all men, but seeing her with Jason had destroyed that illusion. Rose had giggled and laughed as she played with Jason. There was no doubt about it: Harrison was the only man she distrusted.

  He stuffed his hands in his pockets and walked toward the front door. Once he’d assigned the tasks, he had little to do. If he tried to help, all he did was get in the workers’ way, and that delayed progress. Barrett would not be happy if he and Charlotte returned to discover that the store renovation was incomplete. That was why Harrison had a schedule, not just for the store, but for his life. And, unfortunately, the life plan was not going well.

  Perhaps he should take Jason’s advice about Rose. It was good—one part, anyway. Practicing with other girls made sense, but the problem remained that Harrison didn’t know any other little girls. The other part of Jason’s advice was just plain silly. Pray. God had more important things to worry about than providing Harrison with a little girl who’d teach him what other little girls liked.

  Wincing at the seemingly endless sound of hammers and saws, Harrison shook his head. Perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to try. He wouldn’t pronounce the words aloud, of course, but thinking them couldn’t hurt, could it? Gaining Rose’s trust was important, and it wasn’t as if he had any other ideas. He had nothing to lose and maybe, just maybe, everything to gain.

  Turning away from the workers, Harrison faced the front window, closed his eyes, and sent a prayer heavenward. When he opened his eyes, he blinked, certain he was mistaken. It couldn’t be. But it was. Two little girls stood outside the window, their noses pressed to the glass.

  “Well, young ladies, who are you?” he asked as he stepped outside. He wouldn’t call them answered prayers, even though that was exactly what they were. Though the bright sunshine caused him to squint, the girls’ eyes were wide with innocence. Harrison was no judge of ages, but since they were of different heights, he guessed that one was a year or two older than the other. Both had big brown eyes and dark brown hair gathered into uneven braids.

  “I’m Rebecca,” the taller girl said, “and she’s Rachel.”

  All right. They had names, and they hadn’t run away shrieking with fear the instant they saw him. That was good, but where was their mother? What little Harrison knew about young girls included the fact that they did not wander the streets of Cheyenne unaccompanied. “Aren’t you supposed to be with your mother?”

  It was the wrong questi
on. Tears welled in the shorter one’s eyes, while the older one frowned. “She’s gone,” Rebecca told him. “Our ma went to heaven.”

  “Pa said it would be a long time until we saw her again,” the younger girl added.

  “I see.” What Harrison saw was that he was going to need lots more practice if he had any chance of charming Rose. He’d asked two questions. The first had been innocuous, but now the girls were close to crying. He’d have to try harder. “I saw you at the window. What were you looking at?” Surely there wasn’t anything wrong with that question.

  “We heard hammers.” Not surprisingly, it was Rebecca, the older one, who answered. “We thought they might be building a stairway.”

  That was one thing that was not included in the building renovation. Barrett had seen no need for an interior staircase. “There are already two on the outside,” Harrison said, pointing to the one that led to his apartment. A matching stairway on the opposite side of the building led to the apartment Gwen and Rose shared with Elizabeth Harding.

  “We saw that, but it only goes to the second floor.” Rachel’s expression said that Harrison should realize how inadequate that was. He did not. “We were looking for a stairway to heaven.”

  The pain that clenched Harrison’s heart made him gasp. There was no reason to ask why the girls wanted a stairway that stretched all the way to heaven. “I’m sorry,” he said as softly as he could, “but we’re not building a staircase.”

  Though Rebecca appeared stoic, Rachel began to sob. “I wanna see Ma again.”

  He’d thought it couldn’t get worse, but it had. “Does she have a handkerchief?” he asked Rebecca as the tears rolled down Rachel’s cheeks.

  “She always loses it.” Rebecca dug into her pocket and withdrew a large square of calico. “You can use mine. You gotta hold it to her nose, cuz she’s not very good at blowing.”

  And so Harrison found himself kneeling on the boardwalk, holding a brightly colored piece of calico to a little girl’s nose as a tall man clutching a baby to his chest raced toward him.

  “There you are!” the man cried when he reached the girls. Clad in denim and boots, with a Stetson perched on his dark brown hair, the man would have resembled many other men in the city were it not for his distracted expression. “I thought I’d lost you,” he told the girls. When Rebecca and Rachel looked up, their eyes filled with confusion, he turned toward Harrison. “What were they doing here?”

  Harrison mopped the last tears from Rachel’s face and returned the handkerchief to Rebecca. “It appears they were looking for a stairway to heaven.”

  The way the man’s lips tightened told Harrison he was struggling for composure. “I should never have read them the story about Jacob and the ladder. Now they want me to build one so they can visit their mother.”

  Harrison rose. As he’d thought, the young father topped him by a few inches. “I’m sorry for your loss. It looks as if you have your hands full.”

  “You can say that again.” The baby in the man’s arms began to fuss, causing him to slide one of his fingers between her lips. When she started to suck, he turned back to Harrison. “The woman who’s been caring for the girls during the day came down with diphtheria. I’m on my own now.” He looked at the two girls who had returned to staring into the store, as if they didn’t believe Harrison’s story of no stairway. “It’s not too bad at home, but I needed to buy a few things in town and, well . . . You saw what happened. I turned my back for a second, and these two were gone.” He nodded at the baby in his arms. “If Ruby could walk, she’d probably have gone with her sisters.”

  Harrison’s heart ached almost as much as it had when he’d heard the girls talking about their special staircase. “Is there anything I can do to help?” He could probably do the man’s shopping for him.

  The man’s eyes brightened. “Would you watch these two while I go down the street to Myers Dry Goods? I need some clothes for them.”

  Harrison wished Barrett’s new stock had arrived. If it had, he could help the man without having to look after two young girls. “You’d trust me with your daughters, Mr. . . .” He let his voice trail off.

  “Granger. Kevin Granger.”

  “I’m Harrison Landry.”

  “Barrett Landry’s brother? I heard he bought this store from Mr. Yates.”

  “Exactly. Barrett’s expanding it. When it’s finished, it’ll be the most modern dry goods store in town.”

  Kevin Granger nodded. “I promise to do all my shopping there if you’ll just help me out today.”

  “I wish I could, but I don’t know anything about little girls. All I did was ask a couple questions, and I got tears.”

  Kevin shook his head slowly. “It wasn’t you. Rachel cries a lot. I’d be much obliged if you’d help me.”

  Though he suspected he was making a mistake by agreeing, Harrison could not forget that he’d prayed for this opportunity. It would be the worst kind of ingratitude to toss aside God’s gift.

  “What do I do?”

  The tall man’s face brightened. “It’s easy. You ask them.”

  It wasn’t as easy as Kevin claimed, but when Harrison learned that Rebecca and Rachel liked to skip rope, he found a rope inside the store and held one end, helping one girl twirl it while the other jumped. When Rachel and Rebecca tired of that, he learned that they enjoyed singing and found himself joining in childhood ditties. It took less than an hour, but by the time Kevin returned, Harrison was more tired than if he’d spent the entire day at heavy labor.

  “Can we come back, Pa?” Rebecca asked as they left the backyard. “I like Mr. Landry.”

  “Me too,” Rachel chorused.

  Kevin grinned. “See, I told you it was easy.”

  Jason wasn’t certain what surprised him more, the fact that Elizabeth was carrying a package that appeared to have come from Mr. Ellis’s bakery or that she looked a bit like the Cheshire cat, her smile so wide that it urged a man to return it. “Good afternoon,” he said. “Something smells delicious.”

  Though he hadn’t thought it possible, her smile broadened. “I brought you a spice cake.”

  One day when they’d had little else to discuss, he had mentioned that was his favorite, never thinking she’d remember. But she had, for here she was in his office, holding out a box of mouth-watering cake. “Is this all for me?”

  Elizabeth nodded. “If you like. I thought you might share a piece with me, though. You see, I’m celebrating the addition of a dozen new patients.”

  That explained the grin. “Twelve patients in one day is wonderful.”

  He took the cake from her and gestured toward his library. Though the table there was designed for poring over multiple books, it could do double duty as a dining table. As soon as he’d heard Elizabeth’s story, he’d run upstairs and grab a knife and a couple forks and plates.

  “Tell me about it.” He hadn’t seen that many women entering her office. In fact, he hadn’t seen any patients, but that could be because he’d spent an hour in here where the only window overlooked the alley.

  “The way it got started wasn’t wonderful,” she admitted. “A woman fell and broke her ankle outside Mr. Ellis’s store. Fortunately, I saw her and was able to help. I’m sorry about her injury, but I’m certainly not sorry about the new patients, especially since I’ll be calling on them regularly.”

  Though he knew it wasn’t impossible that twelve people in Cheyenne would have picked this day to consult Elizabeth and that they all would require periodic treatment, something about it sounded odd to Jason. “Do you mind my asking who these new patients are?”

  The Cheshire cat grin faded, replaced by an expression that seemed almost wary. “I haven’t met them yet, but they work at Phoebe Simcoe’s establishment. She’s the woman who broke her ankle.”

  “What?” Jason couldn’t hold back his cry of surprise. “You’re going to treat whores?”

  “I’ll be treating women who need a doctor.” Elizabeth’s v
oice was cool, her expression so strained that Jason knew he’d made a mistake. Still, he couldn’t let her continue on that path without warning her. They were friends, and friends were honest with each other, even when the news was painful.

  Using the tone his professors claimed was most effective in convincing reluctant juries, Jason said, “I know you want more patients, but I think you’re making a mistake. You’ve just started winning over the women, and this will set you back. Word spreads quickly in Cheyenne—you know that—and when it does, no decent women will want you to treat them.”

  She wasn’t convinced. He could see that. Her lips thinning, Elizabeth shook her head. “I understand that Dr. Worland used to attend Phoebe’s girls. From what I gathered, his visits there didn’t hurt his practice.”

  “That’s different.”

  “Because he’s a man?”

  Jason nodded slowly. There was no point in dissembling. “You may not like it, but you know there’s a difference. You’ve said it yourself. Women have to be smarter than men to be accepted at medical college, and now that you’ve graduated, everyone expects you to be more competent, more upstanding, and better in every way than your male colleagues.” When she started to bristle, Jason added, “It’s like being a minister’s child. You’re held to a higher standard.”

  “That doesn’t make it right.”

  “I didn’t say it did.” Jason had hated the way his father’s parishioners scrutinized his every move, complaining over the slightest infraction when it was Jason’s fault but ignoring it when one of his friends was responsible.

  Elizabeth’s eyes flashed the way they had the day he’d met her, her heightened color telling Jason how much this discussion irritated her. “I’m not condoning Phoebe’s lifestyle or that of her girls. It’s deplorable that any woman is forced to sell her body. But I took an oath to heal, and that’s what I plan to do. Phoebe’s girls need my care as much as—perhaps more than—what you call the decent women of Cheyenne.”

  “Principles are fine,” he said softly, hoping to diffuse her anger, “but you need to be practical too. Don’t do something that will hurt your career.”