by Jo Goodman
“I’ll be damned,” George said, slowly rotating his shoulder. He whistled softly. “I’ll be damned.”
“That’s a good bet,” said Ben from his chair. “You about done carrying on about your aches and pains? If you’re going to sling insults at folks inside the Songbird, you should be prepared for what comes after. Doc Dunlop would have had no parts of you until morning and that’s a fact.”
“Lucky for me that he ain’t here no more and I found me an angel of mercy.” He grinned toothily at his angel and blew her a kiss, humid with alcohol.
Ridley almost reared back, but she held her ground because that’s what she did. Never give ground. Over the shoulder of her patient, she caught Ben’s eye. “I think we’re done here.”
He stood. “I believe we are.” He walked to the door, opened it, and gestured to George to make his exit. “You square things later with her, George. You understand? Bring her a load of wood, split the right size for the stoves. I swear I’ll lock you up for being a nuisance if you don’t. A couple of buckets of coal, too.”
“I hear you,” George muttered, ducking his head as he left. “Hear you just fine. First thing in the morning, it’ll be here.”
Ben pulled the door closed. “Good idea to keep this locked. There’s no telling who’d try to wander in otherwise.”
“When do you think he’ll realize that he saw the doctor tonight?”
“Like as not, sometime tomorrow when I explain it to him. George is all right. He’s got himself all twisted up over Charlie Custer—that’s Charlie as in Charlotte—and he can’t stand it if he thinks someone’s looking at her crossways. I guess tonight it was Holden Anderson.”
“It seems as if you have a lot to occupy you, Sheriff.”
“Some nights, yes. Most nights, nothing at all. I’m sorry we woke you. That’s what I was trying to prevent. I figured you needed your sleep.”
The thought of sleep provoked a yawn. She used the back of one hand to cover it.
“Yeah,” he said, watching her. “I thought so.”
Ridley waved aside his concern. “I don’t even know what time it is.”
“Around three. Still plenty of time for shut-eye.”
“What about you? Don’t you sleep?”
“I was doing just that until the ruckus at the saloon.”
“Oh.”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “Got a bit of a crick here on account of nodding off sideways in the chair.”
“What happened to your deputy?”
“I sent him home. He’ll have night duty tomorrow.”
Ridley thought she understood what that meant. “Then you’ll be keeping Mr. Salt at least that long?”
“Yes. It seems best.”
She nodded. “I wouldn’t object if you offered to show me how to fire up that stove now. I’d like a cup of tea.”
“You’re sure?”
“I am, yes.”
“All right, then. I need to bring in some of the wood you have on the stoop. Give me a moment.” When he returned with an armload, he directed her to lock the surgery door and then headed to the kitchen. He dropped the wood into a galvanized pail beside the stove. “Have a seat.”
Ridley pulled out a chair and sat. “I suppose you think I’m hopelessly ill-equipped to live here on my own.”
“What I think is that you’ll learn, partly because you have to, but mostly because you want to. I take it you had help back in Boston who did this kind of thing for you.”
“Yes. Mrs. Roach was our cook. Madelyn Eddy was her assistant. There were others, too. My mother came from money. My father worked hard to meet her expectations. There was always help.”
“So that’s why you don’t know how to start a stove. Where I was raised, my mother was the help. I picked up the temperament of a stove like this by watching her wrangle it into submission.”
“I’ve seen it done, but I wasn’t paying attention.” She set her folded hands on the tabletop. “I am now.”
Ben went through the steps, explaining the difference between the front damper, the oven damper, and the chimney damper, each with a particular use and importance. He showed her the ash receiver, which Mary Cherry had seen fit to clean, and warned her that when she freed the grate of ashes, she had to put on the covers over the firebox, close the front and back dampers, and open the oven damper. The steps had to be followed as a precaution to keep ashes from flying all over the room.
“Should I be taking notes?” she asked.
“Only if you think you need to.”
Ridley hoped there was a book in the library that explained it all because she was certain there was no such book in her own collection. She concentrated on what he was saying about building the fire: Turn the grate back into place, remove the covers, and cover the grate with pieces of paper. Having none handy, he showed her how to place small sticks into the firebox and arrange it so it would admit air. He added the hard wood next.
“You’re out of coal, but you’d add it now. I’ll send Bill Olney by tomorrow with a couple of buckets for you. Not sure I trust George to remember.” He looked around, spotted matches on top of the windowsill, and asked her to light one. While she was doing that, he returned the covers to their positions, opened the closed dampers, and then took the lighted match from her. As he held it under the grate, the fire was drawn toward the wood. He tossed in the match and closed the door. “That’s all there is to it,” he said.
“Uh-huh. I’ve observed surgeries in the operating theater that were less complicated.”
Chuckling, Ben picked up the kettle and went to the sink, where he pumped water until he had a good clean flow. He filled the kettle halfway and set it on the stove. He brushed off his hands on his trousers. “I should be going.”
She frowned. “What do you mean? Aren’t you going to stay and have a cup of tea with me?”
He cocked an eyebrow at her, amusement in his eyes. “I did not want to presume that I was invited.”
“I’d be a poor hostess if you weren’t. You did all the work.”
“Well, then, thank you. I’d like a cup of tea just fine.”
Ridley rose from her chair just as he sat. “I have to get the tea. I am not entirely unpacked. I brought my favorite blend with me.”
“Of course you did. I bet you brought a little china pot and one of those knitted sweaters to go over it.”
“A cozy.” She smiled. “Yes, I have that, too.”
“Did you arrive here expecting Frost Falls to be the last outpost of civilization?”
She hesitated before answering.
“Oh,” he said. “I see. You thought civilization stopped at Denver.”
“Something like that.”
“Saint Louis?”
Ridley nodded. “I suppose I had that notion.”
He grunted softly. When she left the room to retrieve her tea and teapot, he called after her, “It’s the dime novels, isn’t it? If you read Felicity Ravenwood, you probably read a Nat Church adventure now and again.”
“If I did,” she called back, “it’s because Doc recommended them to me as a means of acclimating myself.”
“Of all the . . .” Ben shook his head as his voice trailed off.
“What’s that you said? I couldn’t hear you.”
“I said—” He stopped. “Never mind. I was talking to myself. Do you need help? You sound as if you’ve stuffed your head in a trunk.”
“Found it!” It wasn’t but seconds after her eureka discovery that she reappeared in the kitchen holding the pot and cozy in one hand and a small pouch in the palm of the other. “Perhaps you think I should not be so triumphant,” she said, placing the items on the table, “but there were several bad moments back there when I thought I had left it all behind.”
“Of course,” he said dryly, regarding h
er satisfied smile. “The comforts of home.”
Not certain if she was the object of his amusement yet again, Ridley cinched her robe and then went to the china cupboard and took down two cups and saucers. The saucers, with their gold leaf rims, were part of a set. The cups were not. She set them on the table, along with a spoon, and then returned to her chair, where she carefully measured tea into a silver tea ball. She placed the infuser inside the pot and replaced the lid. The water in the kettle had not begun to roll.
Ridley set her folded hands on the edge of the table and looked around the room, casting her eyes on anything . . . except Ben Madison. “Do you take sugar in your tea? I don’t have any.”
“I do, but I can do without.”
She nodded. “I suppose I shall have to visit the mercantile in the morning and purchase the staples that I’ll need. Is that the sort of thing that Mary Cherry would do for my godfather?”
“Uh-huh. Would you like me to have her stop by so you can meet her, maybe decide what you want to do?”
“No. Not yet. I want to think on it awhile.”
“Makes sense. You’ve hardly been here twenty-four hours.”
Ridley was vaguely startled to hear it. Her head came up and a small vertical crease appeared between her eyebrows. “That’s true, isn’t it?”
“It sure is. A lot has happened and I don’t think you’ve had but a minute of sleep.”
Ridley could not argue with that. “I’ll sleep in. When word gets around that I’ve arrived, I don’t expect to have any patients beyond a few curiosity seekers.”
“Folks might surprise you.”
“Will they?”
He shrugged. “Probably not.”
She laughed under her breath. “I think I hear the water rolling.”
He placed one hand over her wrist when she started to rise. “Give it another minute or so.”
More aware of his hand on her arm than she wanted to be, Ridley sat. His hand fell away. She watched him return it to his lap. “Why do you suppose Doc chose you?”
“You mean to help smooth the way for you?”
“That’s right. Why you?”
Ben shrugged. “I can think of a couple reasons, but it’s all conjecture. He never spelled it out plain.”
“I imagine one of the reasons is your position.”
“My position? Oh, you’re talking about me being a duly elected officer of the law.”
“Sheriff,” she said dryly. “Yes.”
“Maybe. I expect that carries some weight with folks but not as much as the fact that I know pretty much everyone in and around town. More importantly, I get along with most of them. I’ve known Doc almost all my life, got to know him better about six years back when I was his patient, and better yet when I became Jackson Brewer’s deputy, moved to town, and we became neighbors.” He stood and found a towel to wrap around his hand as he picked up the kettle. “You want to take the lid off that little pot?”
Ridley did, holding it away while he poured, and then replacing it so the tea could steep. She waited for him to sit again before she spoke. “When you said you became Doc’s neighbor, how did you mean that exactly?”
“Exactly?”
“Yes. Neighborly? In the neighborhood? Share a fence neighbors?”
“That’s the one.”
Her cheeks puffed as she blew out a small breath. This was unexpected. She couldn’t have imagined that she would be having tea with him on so short an acquaintance, yet here she was sitting at the same table, close enough that she could see the fine dusting of copper hair on his knuckles, the freckles scattered across the bridge of his nose, and the subtle lift of one corner of his mouth. Her heart did an odd little skip and she spoke carefully, without inflection. “So you and Doc are next-door neighbors.”
“We were. Now you and I share a fence.”
“The white house with the blue shutters. That’s yours?”
“Yes. The blue shutters were my mother’s idea.”
Ridley’s brow wrinkled. “She lives with you?”
“No. She’s had a small suite at the hotel since she began working there. Mr. Butterworth gave her the accommodations because he knows he has a gem in her. But here’s the good thing about sharing a fence with me.” His chair scraped the floor as he pushed back. “I have sugar.”
Ridley stared after him as he disappeared without so much as a by-your-leave. When she realized her jaw had gone slack, she clamped her mouth shut. Her neighbor. Doc should have told her that. She wondered if her father knew. In all likelihood, he did, and he would have approved. She would not put it past him to have suggested something like this. It went a long way to explaining why he was supportive of her decision to leave home. Not only supportive, but also encouraging.
She had hoped he trusted her judgment. Now she was not so sure. It was disappointing to have come so far and then realize she was hardly more than a few steps beyond the garden wall. Was she supposed to be grateful for her father’s oversight? His protection? Perhaps someday, but not just now.
Ridley was still musing on this Ben-as-neighbor conundrum when he returned with a cup of sugar. He set it in front of her and then nudged it closer when she continued to stare at it.
“It’s sugar,” he said, tapping the lip of the cup.
Ridley blinked. Feeling rather foolish for being caught so deeply in woolgathering, she spooned sugar into her cup. Once he had done the same, she poured the tea, and breathed deeply of the warm aroma that held a hint of oranges and clove.
“Deep thoughts?” asked Ben, stirring his tea. “You were about a thousand miles away by the time I got back.”
“Nineteen hundred miles, give or take.”
“Thinking about home, then.”
Ridley couldn’t see that it hurt to admit it. She raised her cup, blew on the hot surface of the tea, and nodded. “Did Doc ask you to keep him apprised of my progress?”
“No. I imagine he thought you’d do that.”
“What about my father?”
“What about him?”
“Did he ask for reports?”
Ben removed his hat and hooked it on the spindle back of another chair. He pushed his fingers through his hair, first one way, then the other, so that the darker shades of orange lay crossways over the lighter ones. He regarded her at length, his mouth screwed pensively to one side.
“I’m not sure I understand your meaning,” he said.
“It was not a difficult question. Did my father request reports from you?”
“How is it that you figure he could do that? We’re not acquainted. Never corresponded. There is only you to connect us and that’s just come about today.” He corrected himself. “Yesterday, though it is surely starting to feel as if it were longer ago than that.”
Ridley could concur. “You have to know my father.”
“See? There’s my point precisely. I don’t know him.”
“I’m sorry. I just thought . . .”
When she didn’t say what it was that she thought, Ben filled it in for her. “That I was some sort of spy?”
“No. Nothing like that. Well, not exactly like that. No cloak-and-dagger.”
Ben sat back, sipped his tea, and watched her over the rim of the cup. “I’ve seen this before,” he said. “This is the influence of one Felicity Ravenwood. You should stop reading her adventures.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
He shrugged. “Something to think about, though.”
“It isn’t.”
“So you say. I say different.”
She opened her mouth to speak and then abruptly closed it. Her eyes narrowed on his, searching his features for some hint of mischief. He was remarkably good at concealing it. His blue eyes were perhaps a shade brighter than they had been earlier, and there was a slight curl to his mout
h that lifted one corner higher than the other. His eyebrows, several shades darker than his hair, were fixed in a position of serious contemplation. Now that his hat was removed, she could easily see the tips of his ears. No flush there.
The freckle dust across his nose was a beguiling feature, and she found herself staring at it in a manner that was wholly impolite.
Ben passed a knuckle over his nose. “It’s the freckles, isn’t it? Trying to connect the dots, I suppose.”
“Not quite. Has anyone ever done it?”
“The jokers in the bunkhouse at Twin Star. I slept right through it both times, and the ink did not come off without some serious scrubbing. The freckles remained, though, so that was disappointing.”
Behind her cup of tea, Ridley smiled.
Ben said, “Are you satisfied that I’ll not be in correspondence with your father, and that if Doc and I trade letters, you will hardly figure in mine?”
The abrupt turnabout in conversation startled her and her smile faded. “I am.” She lowered her cup and repeated herself so that he could hear her clearly. “I am.”
“Good. I’m your neighbor. Not your guardian. Once you’re settled in, have your practice established, I probably won’t see you but five or six times a week, same as I did Doc, and that’s only if you take to walking the way he did.” Ben finished his tea and hauled the leanly muscled length of him out of his chair. “It’s been a pleasure, Dr. Woodhouse, and I thank you for the tea. If you get a hankering for more like it, you’ll want to speak to Mickey Mangold’s wife. She’s the one who blends the tea leaves here. If she doesn’t have it, she’ll get it for you.” He picked up his hat, settled it on his head, and gave her a nod. “How early you figure you’ll rise?”
“Eight?”
“Give yourself another hour in bed, and I’ll be by an hour after that to take you around and introduce you properly.”
“Ten o’clock, then.”
“Lock the door behind me.”
Ridley rose to see him out. He stood on the back stoop for a moment after she shut the door. She realized he was waiting to hear the lock fall in place. She turned it, saw him nod as though satisfied, and then he was gone.
