Lady Sundown (#1 of the Danner Quartet)

by Nancy Bush

  If the situation hadn’t been so desperate, Lexie would have laughed out loud. When Tremaine turned to glare coldly down at Miss Everly, Lexie had to admire the woman’s courage. “You may come with us, if you’d like,” Tremaine said in a velvet voice, “but if you utter one word along the way I’ll drop you out on the street.”

  “You are no gentleman, sir!”

  “Thank God for that.”

  Lexie held the front door wide, catching Tremaine’s gaze and sharing a silent moment of mirth with him. Miss Everly strode behind them, climbed into her own waiting coach, Hildegarde at her heels, and commanded the hired coachman to take her to Willamette Infirmary. But when Lexie put a foot on the step of Tremaine’s buggy, Miss Everly came rushing back to her.

  “Miss Danner, it would be in your best interests to return inside. Your reputation has been so tarnished, I can’t begin to think how to put it right. You should never have let a strange man into your room! I am shocked and outraged.”

  “Tremaine is my brother,” Lexie said calmly, mentally crossing her fingers at the deliberate misconception. She had a feeling that if Miss Everly knew the truth she would believe Lexie’s soul was on a straight path to damnation.

  Miss Everly’s brows raised. “Your brother?” She collected herself as only a true lady can and said, “Well, I’m most relieved to hear it. But that doesn’t mean you can come with us.”

  Lexie had suffered as much hypocrisy as she could stand. She simply turned her back to Miss Everly and climbed onto the buggy seat next to Tremaine, slipping her arm around Ella. Tremaine slapped Fortune’s back and the horse surged forward in a gallop.

  Lexie clung to the side of the rattling buggy. Ella’s head lay on her shoulder and the girl shuddered and moaned. “A few minutes more,” Lexie soothed, stroking her hair. “Just a few more minutes.”

  The hospital looked exactly the same: a white building against the star-studded ebony sky. Other buildings loomed dark around it. Tremaine brought Fortune to his stamping halt, clean streams of air shooting from the horse’s nostrils. The stable boy took Fortune without a word, and Tremaine carried Ella through the front door.

  Once inside Lexie realized she’d been wrong to think nothing had changed. Now the foyer of the building was a beehive of activity.

  “A railway accident with a carriage and a shooting at a private home,” the receptionist explained breathlessly to Lexie’s startled gaze as Tremaine strode down the gaslit linoleum hallway, Ella’s limp form in his arms, one of her arms swinging in painful abandon.

  Lexie tried to follow, but in this she was thwarted. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” a nurse in a volunteer’s striped uniform said, as she held Lexie’s arm.

  “But Ella is my roommate,” she protested.

  “She’s Dr. Danner’s patient.”

  “You don’t understand. My name is Lexington Danner. I’m Dr. Danner’s — stepsister,” Lexie explained anxiously.

  “That doesn’t mean you can follow Dr. Danner. He’s taking that young woman to surgery.”

  Lexie was forced to sit on a narrow couch beside a man in a knife-edge-creased suit who sat casually elegant, one shoe propped on his other knee. She felt his eyes on her but didn’t turn his way. She had no more interest in casual conversation than she did in behaving like a so-called lady.

  But her companion had no such qualms. He smiled gallantly and said, “You’re Dr. Danner’s stepsister.”

  “That’s correct.” Lexie groaned inwardly as Miss Everly, along with Hildegarde, stepped into the foyer.

  “I thought Dr. Danner wasn’t a native of Portland.”

  Lexie glanced at him, trying to discern his interest, but it appeared this was just small talk. “We are from Rock Springs,” she said a trifle shortly.

  “Ahhh…” He nodded and grew quiet.

  At that moment Miss Everly descended upon Lexie, her mouth a line of displeasure and disappointment. Lexie drew in a long breath and prepared herself for the list of transgressions about to be laid on her head.

  Maybe she’ll expel me! she thought with suppressed joy.

  “Lexington,” the stiff headmistress intoned gravely. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to restate our goals. From now on you and I shall have twice-weekly meetings in my office. A book on etiquette would not be inappropriate.”

  Lexie managed a weary nod. Her bad luck was holding firm.

  Chapter Nine

  Victor Flynne surreptitiously studied the attractive young woman seated next to him. Her blond hair tousled fetchingly around her shoulders, and her eyes — the color and sparkle of emeralds — were trained with unwavering dedication on the reception nurse.

  Casually, he lifted the scattered remnants of yesterday’s newspaper and snapped the pages open. Lexington Danner, he mused. Lexington. Danner. He’d come to the hospital tonight with the hopes of gleaning information about the hush-hush shooting that had taken place this evening at the home of mega-ship builder Silas Monteith. But instead he’d met this striking beauty, and her name struck a chord inside his quick investigator’s mind. At that moment a giant of a man with sleek gray hair strode through the hospital doors. “My name’s Silas Monteith,” he said with gruff authority to the receptionist. “I want to inquire about the patient.”

  Victor Flynne, whose power to fade into the background was one of his main assets, dipped his felt hat lower over his nose and abruptly turned his attention to the newcomer. For the moment the names Lexington and Danner were shoved aside, filed away to be reviewed later. Victor had bigger fish to fry. Silas Monteith was a veritable goldmine of blackmail possibilities.

  ¤ ¤ ¤

  With barely constrained anger, Tremaine watched Dr. Peter Caldwell, one of the hospital’s staff doctors, drop ether unhurriedly, as if he had all the time in the world. The man seemed oblivious to the unconscious woman on the table. He acted innured to everything around him, his face bored, his methods meticulous and nerve-wrenchingly slow.

  “Is she under yet?” Tremaine asked with acid asperity.

  “Yeah, she’s under.”

  As if answering Tremaine’s question, Ella suddenly turned her head, mumbling, “Whad you say?”

  “Pour on more ether,” Tremaine gritted through his teeth. Caldwell shot him a surly look but did as he was told. Tremaine sighed inwardly and flexed his fingers on the scalpel. He understood Caldwell’s problem: the young doctor didn’t like taking orders from someone not directly employed by Willamette Infirmary. Since Tremaine was only affiliated with the hospital, having never signed on as a staff doctor, he was something of an outsider and therefore treated with a reserved kind of respect.

  Tremaine’s decision had been more a lack of decision — he really would have preferred being a country doctor — and it was this very indifference that made the other doctors resent and mistrust him. Why, they wondered, should he scorn a position most of them coveted? The fact that he was an excellent anatomist and an even better surgeon irritated the already sore wound. It didn’t help that he preferred treating patients outside the hospital; people who could not afford a physician’s care.

  “She’s under,” Peter snapped again, his jaw tight.

  This time Tremaine double-checked, just to be sure, and earned himself a glance of incredible virulence from his contemporary. Ignoring it, he made the incision in Ella’s abdomen swiftly and accurately. An infected appendix often started out as a general malaise of the stomach region, but if the pain became localized, so localized that the patient felt capable of putting her finger on it, the surgeon had better move damn quickly. If the appendix should burst, the poisons it spread through the peritoneum were nearly always fatal. Tremaine had never seen a patient survived a ruptured appendix.

  Peter came around the table, craning his head to see what Tremaine was doing.

  “Get back over there!” Tremaine growled. “God help you if this patient wakes up before I’m finished!”

  “Well, hell,” Peter muttered, his nape a brilliant s
hade of crimson. He returned to Ella’s head, his back stiff with outrage.

  The nurse handed Tremaine instruments and sponges with the unspoken efficiency that indicated long practice. Tremaine thanked her with his eyes as she traded arterial clamps for the scalpel. Thank God he’d finally gotten someone competent.

  Once Ella’s vessels were closed off, Tremaine searched for the appendix. It wasn’t hard to find. Red-hot and swollen, it lay just where Ella had pointed. The scalpel was placed in Tremaine’s hand and he deftly removed the appendix, trading the scalpel for a needle and thread. Swiftly and carefully he stitched the incision, undid the clamps, then sewed each muscular layer of Ella’s abdomen closed.

  “Well done, Doctor,” the nurse murmured.

  Tremaine, who’d barely had time to remove his jacket before the surgery, grinned at her, his white cotton shirt splattered with blood. “Thank you,” he said. Peter Caldwell left the operating room without a word.

  Tremaine’s thoughts instantly turned to Lexie. He washed his hands, grimaced at the state of his clothes, then threw on his leather jacket. He could change later. Right now he wanted to see if Lexie was still in the waiting room.

  She was there all right, hollow-eyed and frightened, her hands clasped between her knees. As soon as she saw him she bounded her to her feet.

  “Is Ella all right?” Lexie demanded anxiously, her green eyes staring at him in a way that demanded truth.

  “She made it through surgery,” Tremaine told her gently. “Barring any unforeseen complications, she should be fine.”

  “Should be?”

  “Should be,” he said determinedly.

  Lexie relaxed, her face glowing in a way that made his heart squeeze. “You operated on her?”

  He nodded and at that same moment became aware of Miss Everly, seated primly by the door, Hildegarde sitting beside her. Both women eyed Tremaine with cool distrust.

  “Did you remove the appendix?” Lexie asked urgently.

  “Yes. Just in the nick of time. It was ready to burst.”

  She drew a breath through her teeth. “Thank you, Tremaine! Oh, thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me yet,” he said with a faint smile, relieved to see how the waiting room had cleared out. Between the carriage accident and the shooting, Willamette Infirmary had been overflowing with emergency patients. It had been all the staff could do to keep up with the rush. Tremaine, who’d been on his way out, was long past due for his date. Thoughts of the raven-haired beauty he’d pledged to meet slipped away with only the faintest regrets. The warm admiration in Lexie’s eyes was worth any later recriminations.

  “Dr. Danner.” Miss Everly rose stiffly. “I did not realize you were Lexington’s brother.”

  Tremaine would have corrected her, but Lexie rushed into speech, her hand gripping his arm. “When can I see Ella?”

  “Maybe as early as tomorrow afternoon.” He regarded her thoughtfully. She didn’t want Miss Everly to know they weren’t brother and sister. As much as it bothered him, considering the older woman’s antiquated views, he could readily understand why.

  Lexie stifled a yawn and Tremaine said the, “Come along, Lexie. I’ll take you home.”

  He silently dared Miss Everly to object, and for once in her life, that worthy woman kept her lips firmly closed.

  ¤ ¤ ¤

  Dawn was painting faint gray streaks on the horizon as Lexie held out her hand for Tremaine to help her into the buggy. She muffled a cry of amazement and delight at the assortment of blankets inside and the heat emanating from the floor by her feet. The livery boy had set hot bricks inside the buggy at Tremaine’s request.

  “Whatever possessed you!” she murmured with a sigh of contentment as he tucked the small fur blanket over her legs. “We’ll be warm as toast all the way to school.”

  Lexie couldn’t know about his aborted rendezvous, so Tremaine said lightly, “Who says we are going there right away?”

  She straightened with a jerk as he dropped onto the seat beside her, his thigh lightly pressed against hers. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I’m not taking you back yet.”

  It wasn’t Fortune pulling the buggy this time. It was a fresh horse, a deep black animal with powerful haunches who eagerly tossed his head and fretted at the bit. Knowing how angry Tremaine had been at her earlier, Lexie uneasily wondered what he had in mind. “Am I being abducted?” she asked cautiously

  “Afraid of what that might mean?” His mouth quirked with humor.

  Lexie relaxed. At least he wasn’t furious. He seemed to have forgiven her pellmell dash through the back streets of the city. “Does saving people’s lives always put you in such good humor?” she asked, shooting him a sideways smile.

  “Always.”

  “I’ve never seen you at the hospital before. Sometimes I forget you’re really a doctor.”

  Tremaine had a sudden burning memory of Betsy Talbot. Never mind that there had been precious little he could do to save Betsy’s baby; the circumstances came back in vivid relief. Betsy’s tears, her own life hanging by a thread, his fight with Jace Garrett. Tremaine’s face hardened. By some miracle Betsy had survived, but it was no thanks to Garrett.

  Lexie witnessed Tremaine’s change of expression and her heart squeezed. “What is it?” she asked anxiously.

  “Nothing.” He couldn’t bring himself to tell her about Jace’s perfidy, nor his cold-hearted apathy where his mistress was concerned. He would make sure she knew before their engagement was officially announced, but he couldn’t tell her yet. Not when she looked at him with those trusting, misty eyes.

  “Why did you really bring me out here?” She stifled another yawn and laid her head back, watching the Willamette’s silky waters flowing. They were driving through a parklike area next to the river.

  “Because I’m too keyed up to sleep, and I didn’t want to be alone.”

  “So you wanted to be with me?” she murmured. Her head lolled back and dropped on his shoulder, sleep overpowering her. Tremaine glanced down at her golden crown and smiled grimly to himself. Yes, he thought. I wanted to be with you.

  And while she nestled beneath the curve of his arm, Tremaine brought the buggy to a halt at a sheltered spot beside the river, his breath smoking in the frigid air, the yellow glow of a new day’s sun gilding the Cascade Mountains to the east.

  ¤ ¤ ¤

  Lexie stirred and awoke to both delicious warmth and numbing cold. Blinking, her eyes still sleep-drugged, she realized she was seated in an unfamiliar buggy, enveloped by an equally unfamiliar warmth. Blankets covered her up to her nose and only her forehead and eyes were exposed to the chilled December air. Instinctively, she closed her eyes and snuggled back to the source of heat.

  Slowly, she became aware that the warmth she felt was an arm draped around her waist, lazily and familiarly. She lay against someone’s hip, her head against a broad chest with a steadily beating heart.

  Lexie’s heart began to thud. Good Lord, what time was it? she wondered. Her gaze darted forward. A blanket had been tossed over the horse that stood silently and peacefully in a small turnout above the river, a sturdy rock wall the only barrier to the slowly moving water swirling below.

  Tremaine’s thigh was beneath her hip. Lexie groaned inwardly. It was a wonder Miss Everly hadn’t called out the sheriff to track her down. And if she should ever find out Tremaine wasn’t her natural brother, Lexie would be ignominiously tossed from the woman’s prestigious school — a delicious thought she entertained for several moments before remembering how her mother would take that news.

  She glanced back at Tremaine. Something akin to tenderness spread through her veins and for one swift instant she recalled their kiss. She studied his lips with avid curiosity. They’d been pressed so hard against hers, yet now they looked soft and inviting. Soft and inviting? Lexie was shocked by her naïveté. There was nothing remotely soft or inviting about Tremaine.

  He sighed in his sleep and she swept hi
m another look from beneath her gold-tipped lashes. There was something touchingly vulnerable about the way he looked, Lexie decided. Something totally different from the Tremaine she was used to. A thrill of tenderness shot through her and before she really understood the impulse, she laid her hand on his cheek, then was mortified when his blue eyes opened and stared steadily into hers.

  Something leapt between them, some spark of awareness that caused Lexie’s throat to constrict, her heart to hammer painfully in her chest. She could see a flame burning steadily in his blue gaze until his lashes narrowed, hiding their flickering depths.

  “Good morning,” she said unsteadily. “At least I think it’s morning.”

  “You fell asleep,” he said, and she could feel the way his voice rumbled in his chest. Trying to extricate herself from his arms, she was amazed when his grip tightened.

  “You fell asleep, too. Tremaine, I have to get back.”

  “I know.” He didn’t release her, however. “You’re warm,” he said, holding her close.

  Lexie hardly knew how to handle this conversation. She half laughed. “So are you.”

  He stretched and beneath his leather jacket she caught a glimpse of spattered, dark red splotches on his white shirt. “Tremaine!” she whispered in alarm, pulling back his jacket to see the dried bloodstains. “What happened? Are you all right?”

  To her surprise he grinned like a bandit. “Just a flesh wound,” he drawled.

  “Don’t joke with me. What happened?”

  “I’m afraid that’s Ella’s blood. I didn’t have time to change before the operation and I didn’t feel like wearing surgical gear home.” He gave her a sideways glance. “And I didn’t expect to spend the night sleeping with a beautiful woman.”

  Lexie immediately withdrew to the other side of the buggy. His remarks made her uneasy. “How am I going to explain this to Miss Everly?”

  “Lie,” he suggested, stretching languorously in a way that made Lexie supremely conscious of his potent male virility. His stomach was board flat, his shoulders wide and muscular, his legs long, lean, and hard. Climbing down from the seat, he whipped the blanket off the horse’s back, then settled in beside Lexie again. His beard-roughened jaw and tousled hair gave him a raffish air that Lexie’s senses responded to. Swallowing, she focused her gaze on the sluggish river and concentrated on Jace.