Mountain Christmas Brides

by Mildred Colvin

  Mrs. Barclay came up the stairs then approached down the hallway. “Rose, I brought your coffee. You’re probably still chilled.”

  Rose took the proffered heavy mug and wrapped her fingers around its warmth. “Thank you. I really did need this.” She took a sip of the steaming liquid, finally realizing just how cold she was, even though the log house kept them snug from winter’s cold winds.

  “So how’s your father?” Worry brought deep grooves to the older woman’s brow.

  “I don’t know. Thomas wouldn’t let me go all the way into the sickroom.” Tears breached her lower eyelids and slid down her cheeks.

  Mrs. Barclay wound her arms around Rose and held her close against her cushiony bosom without spilling the coffee Rose clutched between them. “The good Lord’s watching over him.”

  Rose nodded. “And Thomas is a very good doctor.”

  “And how do you know that for sure?”

  Maybe telling her about what happened at the party would make the time pass more quickly. “He was at Thalia’s party when one of the guests became sick. He knows what he’s doing.” Her words brought herself comfort, too.

  “I hope you’re right. I have been real worried about your father.”

  The door opened, and both women turned toward it. Thomas stepped through and closed it behind him. “I believe that Mr. Fletcher has the Spanish flu.”

  The women gasped in unison.

  “I know, it’s serious, but I’ll do everything I can to help him.” He raked his fingers through his dark hair, making it stand out in all directions.

  Rose had never seen him like this. His coat and tie had been discarded, and his sleeves were rolled up, revealing muscled forearms. A stethoscope hung around his neck. He’d never looked better to her, because this was who he was—a doctor through and through. A glimmer of hope for her father entered her heart.

  “How can we help?” Mrs. Barclay stood with her fists pressed against her ample hips.

  “Have you given him any aspirin?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think we have any out here on the ranch. I have some at the house in town. I could make sure one of the hands brings some back the next time anyone goes to town.”

  “That’s okay, I have some in my bag.” He took a deep breath and huffed it out. “I need a washbasin of cold water and some cloths to help me bring down his fever. After we get that lowered, we’ll use steam for the congestion in his chest.”

  “I’ll get them right away.” Mrs. Barclay hurried toward the stairs.

  Rose marched over and stopped so close she could almost feel his heartbeat. “I want to see my father now.” She started to go around him, but he gently held her arm.

  “I can’t take a chance on you getting influenza. I’ll take care of him.” His gaze bored into her, making her feel as if he could see everything in her heart.

  “You don’t understand.” She heaved a deep sigh. “I will stay with him and help you. I don’t want to be anywhere else.” Her emphasis on the last words echoed in the silence of the hallway.

  Thomas stared at her; then his frown softened. “All right, Rose, you can come in, but you must do everything I tell you.”

  She nodded. If that was the only way, so be it.

  For hours, Thomas watched Rose sit beside her father’s bed and bathe his face and chest with cool water and then place the folded cloth on his forehead until the fabric warmed. Over and over she repeated the process until the cloth finally remained cool to the touch.

  Thomas wondered exactly what time it was. Midnight had passed long ago. “Rose, you need to get some rest.”

  “And what about you? You’ve been here longer than I have.” Her eyes looked strained and weary, and her pale face had a pinched look about it.

  “I’m used to taking care of patients.” His reminder didn’t seem to shake her resolve.

  Another bout of deep coughing wracked the patient. Thomas didn’t know how long Mr. Fletcher could keep this up. He looked so frail, not the strong man Thomas remembered so well.

  “We have to ease that congestion in his chest.” Thomas brushed thick black hair peppered with gray from Mr. Fletcher’s forehead.

  Rose stood, but didn’t let go of her father’s hand. “How do we do that?”

  “With steam.”

  After sending Rose for the teakettle, a bowl, and some towels, Thomas studied the bed. Built differently from the one where he took care of Newbolt, this bed would be harder to tent.

  The older man’s hand snaked out and latched onto Thomas’s. “Should … my Rose … be in here?”

  Compassion touched Thomas’s heart. “I know what you’re thinking, but Rose wouldn’t stay away. I’ll just have to pray that the good Lord protects her.”

  “Good … Lord? When did …?” The man’s eyes begged for an answer.

  Thomas dropped into the chair Rose had vacated. “Yes, I know Jesus now.”

  A faint smile veiled his old mentor’s face.

  “Because of all the things you told me, I was finally ready to listen when one of the doctors I interned under shared the Lord with me.” Thomas clasped the other man’s hand. “But I wouldn’t have listened to him if it hadn’t have been for you and your influence. And I don’t mean the money to go to medical school. The most valuable thing you did for me was prepare me to hear Dr. Denison’s words.”

  “I’m … glad.” Tears squeezed out of the older man’s eyes after he closed them.

  Thomas loved this man, but he loved his daughter even more. If he had thought about it before, he would have admitted he had loved Rose as a girl, but that early love was more as he’d love a younger sister. The love he felt for the woman she had become had nothing brotherly about it. He loved her as he would love the woman he married. A forever kind of love.

  When Rose arrived at the top of the stairs, she wondered how she would open the door. Her hands were full. She walked carefully so none of the boiling-hot water would spill from the teapot.

  The bedroom door opened, and Thomas glanced out. “There you are, Rose.” He hurried to take some of her burdens.

  They placed the items on a table near the bed.

  “We also need a sheet.” Thomas couldn’t keep his eyes off Rose. Even after staying awake most of the night, she looked beautiful to him. He wanted to brush back a loose auburn curl that probably tickled her cheek.

  As if she felt his glance, she whisked the offending lock of hair back and stuffed the end behind her bun. “Has he been awake since I left?”

  “Yes, we had a short discussion.”

  “That’s a good sign, isn’t it?” Her pleading expression almost broke his heart.

  “I certainly hope so.” He watched her leave the room to fetch the sheet.

  While she was gone, he folded the towels into thick pads. When she returned they worked together to help her father sit up, then draped the tent over him with a steaming bowl of water resting on the padded towels in his lap.

  For the next couple of hours, they continued to change the water in the bowl so her father breathed in the steam. Finally, most of his coughing settled down, but the heat had brought back the fever.

  Rose only left the sickroom for short periods of time. Thomas spent all the time she was gone in fervent prayer for his patient and the man’s daughter. By midafternoon the next day after a long bout with chills and fluctuating high temperatures, the fever finally broke.

  Thomas sent Rose away and cleaned up his patient, dressing him in a fresh nightshirt. He helped the man sit in a comfortable chair while Mrs. Barclay changed the sheets on the bed. After Thomas returned Mr. Fletcher to his bed, Rose walked into the room.

  Remembering the verse in Proverbs about a merry heart being good medicine, Thomas started regaling them with funny stories from his days in medical school. Soon the room rang with laughter. The laughing Rose he remembered had returned. Her laughter blessed his heart. Even her father roused much of the time and joined in. Could things be looking u
p for Thomas?

  Chapter 8

  Rose hadn’t wanted to leave her father’s room, but now she agreed that Thomas was right. After a hot bath and a long nap, she felt refreshed. She wouldn’t have left if her father hadn’t been better. Even though she’d been afraid she’d sleep a long time and miss something, she awoke early in the evening. She dressed and fixed her hair quickly so she could get back up there and be sure Daddy hadn’t had a relapse.

  When she started up the stairs, she heard Thomas talking to someone. She knew she shouldn’t eavesdrop on a private conversation, but she didn’t want to miss any detail about her father he might not want to share with her. So she crept quietly up the stairs, skipping the third one from the top that always squeaked. Thomas’s voice receded then moved toward her. He must be pacing the hallway.

  “Father God, I praise You for the miracle You worked in this house. Thank You for healing Mr. Fletcher. I wasn’t ready to let him go, and I’m glad it wasn’t Your will to take him right now. And thank You for protecting Rose from this dreaded disease. Lord, my medical degree can’t do a single thing to heal anyone, but with You, I can help people. Thank You for being with me this time.”

  Once again his voice faded away until she couldn’t understand the words. How could she have been so wrong about him? Those memories from childhood when he jeered at her for her faith in God had colored her perception of him far too long. She had changed. Grown and matured. Why hadn’t she considered the possibility Thomas could have learned to love the Lord during those years he was away?

  The spark of love she kept trying to extinguish in her heart became a flame, fed by the knowledge that Thomas was a true man of God, someone she could spend her life loving. Knowing she didn’t have to hold a tight rein on her emotions made her heart light and brought a smile to her face.

  She stepped into the hallway and found it empty. Where was the object of her affections?

  He’d been up longer than she had. Maybe he was in one of the other bedrooms. She hurried to the door of her father’s room and knocked before opening it. Her father sat in a chair near the window, and Thomas stood beside him.

  “Well, look who’s here.” This time her father’s voice sounded strong, and no cough punctuated his words.

  Rose rushed across the room and threw her arms around him, careful not to be too rough. “Daddy, I’m so glad you’re better.” She planted a kiss on his leathery cheek.

  “I’m right as rain now, thanks to Thomas.” Her father shook his forefinger at him. “He’s a really good doctor.”

  “Because of you and Harvard Medical School.” Thomas’s laugh rolled around the room.

  “You don’t have to tell anybody else about that.” Her father sounded stern. “It’s just between you and me.”

  Rose looked from one man to the other. “What’s going on here? What did I miss?”

  Both men started talking at once.

  She threw up her hands. “Wait … wait! One at a time, please.”

  “I said, ‘Nothing,’ ” her father growled.

  “And I was trying to tell you that your father paid for me to go to medical school.”

  Rose crossed her arms and gave her father her full attention. “Is that so?”

  He clasped his hands in his lap. “I could see the potential in him, and we needed a doctor in Breckenridge.”

  “But Dr. Whitten came about a year after Thomas left.” Rose was trying to figure this all out.

  “That’s why I went to Denver when I came back, instead of Breckenridge.” Thomas stuffed his hands into his pockets and gave her a tight grin.

  She leaned down and kissed her father’s other cheek. “You’re really an old softie under all that gruffness. I’m proud of you, and I agree that no one else needs to know.”

  Rose hadn’t noticed how tense Thomas had become until he relaxed at that last statement. She turned toward him. “It’s time you got some rest, too.” She shooed him out. “I want to spend time with Daddy.”

  After Thomas left, Rose pulled a chair beside her father and sat down. “How do you really feel?” Her hands itched to touch his forehead to make sure his fever hadn’t returned.

  “I’m fine. Just a little weak. Won’t be long until I get my strength back.” He tried to look stern, but she could see right through his ruse. “Now tell me about your trip to Denver.”

  For the next few minutes, she regaled him with tales of the party, the storm, Maximilian’s illness, and even about Thomas taking her shopping. Of course, she left out a few details of that trip. Especially about the Hershey’s Kiss. Too much emotion was attached to that moment.

  When she was talked out, her father’s eyes roved over every feature of her face. “Something’s different about you. You’ve changed somehow … even since you came home. You have a glow that you didn’t have yesterday.” Shrewd eyes peered from under his thick brows. “Want to tell me about it?”

  What was there to tell besides how she felt about Thomas? Did she really want to talk to her father about that?

  He waited patiently at first. Finally, he said, “You won’t be able to keep it from me very long. We’ve always talked about everything.”

  Rose knew he was right. She started with the party. How Thomas had affected her. Then she recounted how he scoffed at her faith years ago before he went away to medical school, so she tried to hold her emotions in check.

  He laughed when she said that. “So what changed your mind?”

  “When I came up the stairs just now, I heard Thomas praying, thanking God for healing you and protecting me from the Spanish flu. The way he was talking to the Lord, I could tell He was an old friend to Thomas.” She stopped and looked down at her hands folded in her lap.

  “So do you love him?” Her father had always been direct with her.

  “I think so.” She looked up at him. “How can I know that I’m truly in love?”

  He started to laugh but stopped after the first hoot. “You’ll know. No mistaking how I felt for your mother, and she returned the feelings.”

  Rose remembered how the love they felt for each other gave them a glow anyone could see. She wondered if she had a radiance like that.

  “Just trust your instincts and let the Lord work it out for you. You know you can trust Him.”

  That’s what she really wanted. To experience the love God ordained between a man and a woman. She was more than halfway there. If only she knew what Thomas felt for her.

  Thomas awakened to the enticing aromas of frying bacon and baking biscuits. He’d slept all night. Evidently Mr. Fletcher hadn’t needed him. A good sign the crusty rancher was on the mend. After dressing, Thomas stopped by his old boss’s bedroom and knocked on the door.

  “Come in.” This time the voice sounded strong.

  When Thomas opened the door, Mr. Fletcher sat on the side of the bed, fully clothed. “It’s good to see you, sir. Especially since you dressed yourself.”

  “I don’t see any sense in lying in bed all day today.” His patient huffed out a breath. “Took me longer than usual, but I managed.”

  “Maybe you could take breakfast up here before you tried to venture out. I’ll bring it to you.” Thomas knew he would help Rose’s father down the stairs if he insisted.

  “Sounds good to me. I’ll be waiting for you.” The older man stood and slowly made his way over to the chair near the window.

  When Thomas arrived in the kitchen, Rose was setting four places at the table. “How did you sleep, Thomas?”

  “Very soundly.”

  She looked rested, too. Instead of her usual waves and bun, Rose had pulled her hair back and braided it. Wisps framed her face like a halo of morning sunlight.

  “Is Daddy coming down to eat, or do I need to take him a tray?” She placed the last utensil beside a plate.

  “If it’s all right with you, I’d like to take the tray up to him. I know he’s improved today, but I’ll eat with him. It’ll help me evaluate how much better he really
is.”

  Rose agreed and started fixing a tray with two breakfasts on it. When she finished, Thomas took it upstairs. This time when he knocked on the door, Mr. Fletcher opened it.

  Thomas carried the tray to the table. The two chairs had been placed on opposite sides. While they ate, he observed the vast difference in the rancher. Although the man hadn’t regained all his strength, Thomas was amazed at how far he’d come. After they finished with the food, they lingered over heavy mugs of coffee. Thomas lifted his to take a drink of the fragrant brew.

  “So, Thomas, what are your feelings for my daughter?”

  Thomas sputtered and almost spit out the liquid. How did the man know?

  “Did you really think I couldn’t see the way your eyes follow her every move?”

  Thomas tried to detect any censure in the question but found none. “I like her very much.”

  Mr. Fletcher’s eyes narrowed. “Is that all?”

  Thomas shifted in his seat and placed one ankle across the other knee, resting his forearm on the raised knee. He tried to relax. “Actually, sir, I think I’m falling in love with her.”

  “You think?” The older man snorted. “You really need to know, son.”

  Thomas dropped his foot to the floor and stood, then rubbed the back of his neck. He turned to face Mr. Fletcher straight on. “I love Rose, sir, and would like your permission to court her.”

  “All right!” The old man slapped his knee. “It took you long enough to tell me.” He cackled. “I’d be right proud to have you for a son-in-law.”

  Thomas laughed right along with him. Relief felt good.

  Now that her father was well, Rose remembered the presents she had bought. She went to her bedroom and returned to the kitchen with the tea bags for Mrs. Barclay. “I picked these up while I was in Denver.”

  “You always were such a sweet girl.” The housekeeper gave Rose one of her famous bear hugs. “Should we try some of these now?”

  “No, you go ahead. I bought Daddy some Hershey bars with almonds. I’ll take them upstairs.”