He let the door swing open until it hit a chair, hoping to scare off the ghost of Abidance Merganser. Instead it awakened it. Eyes red from crying blinked up at him.
“What happened?” he asked, heading straight for the coffee pot and lighting a flame beneath it. The last time he had been drunk around Abby he’d kissed her. He was afraid of what he’d do this time if he didn’t exert all of his willpower to control himself.
“He kissed me,” Abby said. “I swear I was all right with it until then. I wasn’t trying to spite you, or make you jealous, or anything. I was just going to go on with my life. Mine and Frank’s.” She sniffed and looked around his desk for a hankie. He reached in his pocket and tossed one to her. He was not going to get close enough to touch her until he was stone cold sober.
“So he kissed you,” he said. “Who the hell hasn’t?”
“Have you been drinking?” She hiccuped twice and sniffed some more.
“Try holding your breath. And what the hell makes you think I’ve been drinking?” he asked.
She raised an eyebrow at him.
“Your fiancé and I might have had a few at McGinty’s,” he admitted. “Or more than a few.” The coffee was bitter. He swallowed it as if he’d been bitten by a rattler and it was the antidote.
“My fiancé?”
“Excuse me. One of your fianceés. The local one.”
“Frank?”
“There are more? Did you tell Emmet you’d marry him, too?”
“Frank told you I said that I’d marry him?” she asked. Did she think a man would keep marrying a woman as beautiful, as brilliant, as wonderful, as Abby a secret?
“He said he was buying that puny piece of land and building a house on it.” He took a swig of coffee and felt his head begin to clear some. “And he said something about children. Planning on a whole passel, Abby girl?”
“He is,” she said. “Would you like me to make you a fresh pot?”
“This is killing me just fine,” he said. “So when’s the big day?”
“There isn’t going to be one,” she admitted. “I told him it was a beautiful piece of land and he should buy it and build a wonderful house with a porch and put a picket fence around it all and live happily ever after there. But not with me.”
He poured the dregs of the coffee into his cup and swallowed it before he spoke. “Why not?”
“Because I don’t love him. Because my heart doesn’t skip a beat when he smiles, or race when I see him from half a block away. I know you don’t want to hear this, don’t want me to—”
“Do I do that to you?” he asked, giving her his most brilliant smile. “Is your heart skipping a beat?”
“Don’t tease me, Seth. I’m going to be an old maid because I can’t let someone hope for what they’ll never get from me. Frank said that—”
“I don’t care what the hell Frank said,” he said. He put down the coffee cup and came over to crouch beside where she sat at the desk. “I want to know what you said.”
“I told him he was too good a man to settle for what he could get from me. That he deserved to be loved and cherished by a woman that would give him her whole heart. And that I couldn’t do that.”
“Because of Armand?” he asked, making sure to get her entire regiment of beaux out of the way. “Has he written to you swearing undying love? Has he asked you to marry him?”
She shook her head.
“Has he told you Je t’adore, chérie? Has he sworn la belle passion?”
“Stop teasing me,” she said, her lower lip quivering so that he could hardly resist it. “This is hard enough.”
“Ah, then,” he said, rising just enough so that his lips could meet hers. “Let me make it easier. Let me make it very easy.” And as he spoke, he stood with her, and pressed himself against her with the urgency of too many years and too much sorrow.
“Seth?” she asked when he pulled his lips from hers long enough to find the top button of her dress and loosen it. “Are you still drunk?”
“Not so much that I don’t know what I’m doing,” he said, playing with the bodice of her dress. “See, I can unbutton a button with just one hand. Two, even.”
“You can break a heart with less than that,” she said, gently pushing him away.
“I am the one you love, aren’t I?” he asked, holding on to her arm as she backed away. Beneath the silly leg-o’-mutton sleeve was an arm so slender, so fragile he was afraid that a strong grip could break it in two. “Just tell me that and I’ll see you home safely.”
“Why?” she asked. “What does it matter?”
“You won’t tell me? Hell. Then tell me this. If I had another pick and shovel, what would you say to going prospecting?”
“I’d say you and Frank Walker are going to have worse headaches than I do, come morning.”
“Oh, Abby girl,” he said, taking her face in his hands. “Is your head hurting you again? Come and we’ll get you some powder for it.”
Abby took his hand and followed him into the examining room. She loved the feel of her hand within his, just as she’d loved the feel of his lips against her own. And even if this sudden affection was the result of too much to drink, she loved every ounce of it. He drank whiskey, and she drank Seth. And both were intoxicating and could lead them into trouble.
But for tonight she didn’t care about trouble. It had hurt her nearly as deeply as it had hurt Frank to tell him that she could never marry him, that she was in love with someone else. She’d saved face by letting him think it was Armand. After Frank was happily married, she figured she could let Armand catch the influenza and die and then she could mourn him and grieve for her lost love for the rest of her life.
Unless Seth had truly come to his senses. Of course, he’d have to be sober for that to mean anything.
What a prospect! Never to be truly and thoroughly loved. Never to find out what it must feel like to be one with the man you love, to hold his love inside you and carry his baby in your womb.
He put some headache powder in an envelope and sealed it. Then he took some more and spooned it into a glass, added water, and handed it to her to drink with a look of such concern on his face that he seemed to think she was dying.
“It’s just a headache,” she said, drinking the glassful of medicine and handing it back to him. “Don’t look so glum. It’s been so nice to see you smile tonight.”
This time his smile was broad enough to send his dimples deep into his cheeks. “Is your heart racing?” he asked, putting his hand just above the swell of her breast. “Why, I believe it is.”
She tried to calm herself, but when she couldn’t simply will her heart to slow down, and Seth was all but snickering, she said, “It must just be the medicine.”
“Maybe,” he said. “But what accounts for mine?” He took her hand and put it on his chest. As she felt the racing of his heart, he closed his eyes for a minute.
When he opened them again he took her hand and placed a kiss in her palm. “Looks all healed,” he said, gently pressing on the tiny scar near the heel of her hand.
“I’m very resilient,” she said, closing her fingers over her palm an order to keep his kiss there forever.
“Like a reed,” he said, spanning her waist with his hands.
“No, like an oak. I just grow a burl around my injuries and don’t let them fell me.”
“I have a great fondness for oaks,” he said. His hand cupped her breast and one finger ran over the fabric that covered her nipple. “And acorns,” he added.
“You’re drunk,” she said, but she didn’t remove his hand. Drunk or sober, in love with her or not, she wanted him, wanted to feel his hands on her body, his breath in her hair.
“Only with you. You intoxicate me, Abby girl.” He played with the buttons between her breasts, opening one, opening another. “You intoxicate the hell out of me.”
“Well, whatever the reason, you’re very drunk, Dr. Hendon.”
“Better me than you
, Abby girl. After all, I wouldn’t want to be accused of taking advantage of you.” He slipped his hand within the bodice of her blouse, and his fingers found her nipple and did a dance of love against it.
But it wasn’t love. It was scotch, or beer, or gin, and she swallowed against her shame as her body responded nonetheless, as if it didn’t care that he didn’t love her. At least for the moment, he needed her.
“Oh, Lord, Abby!” he said, his lips against her cheek, his breath still smelling from McGinty’s as he searched out her lips once again.
“We can’t do this while you’re still drunk,” she said, finally coming unwillingly to her senses.
“Why not?” he asked, smiling a smile that said he was well aware of how much she was enjoying every kiss, every stroke, every touch. “Afraid you’re taking advantage of me in my weakened condition?”
“Yes,” she said, the word sounding choked when she got it out.
“Leave it to you to get things backward again. A man gets a woman drunk to have his way with her, not the other way around.”
“Well, you know how I twist things,” she said, straightening out her shirtwaist, buttoning up the buttons, unable to look him in the eye.
“All right. I’ll see things your way from now on. And I’ll do this right, just as you deserve.” He bowed from the waist and took her hand. “Miss Abby, would you do me the honor of accompanying me on a buggy ride tomorrow after church?”
“Frank already showed me the prairie and the brook and the oaks,” she said, playing on the jealousy that had gotten her this far. “What are you going to show me?”
“He showed you a tree,” he said. “But was it a fig?” He winked at her, and when she stood there mutely, he added, “Cause you know what they do with fig leaves …”
She thought she did, and felt the red creep up from her throat until both cheeks burned.
“Wanna see what’s hidden behind them?”
He’d thrown up twice before he’d been able to get up out of his bed. And the only thing that got him up was the sun. It was shining so brightly that he had to close the curtains to save his brain from bursting through his skull.
To drink is to die one death too many, he thought as he crawled back under his blankets and held his stomach because he didn’t dare touch his head. Heaven help anyone who needed doctoring today. Anyone besides himself, that is.
And if the headache, the nausea, the sensation that the room was spinning around him, wasn’t enough, there was the memory of what he’d said to sweet, innocent Abby to make him really sick to his stomach. Wanna see what’s behind a fig leaf? No matter how drunk he was, he couldn’t have said that, could he? To Abby?
It had all been a dream, maybe, or a nightmare. Except that he could remember the taste of her sweetness, the feel of soft skin and firm flesh against his palm, her nipple between his fingertips.
Did he really ask her if she wanted a private anatomy lesson? He groaned and rolled over onto his stomach, his head over the side of the bed, and heaved into the bowl he’d brought with him to bed one more time.
“Doesn’t Abby look lovely?” Abby heard Emily whispering to Ansel as they took their places behind her in the second row of the grange hall and waited for Sunday services to begin.
She kept her head back as they got settled, pretending to adjust her shawl as she eavesdropped. “Pru told me she was out with Frank Walker until well past dark,” Ansel said loudly enough for her to hear easily. “And very quiet when she came in.”
Abby turned in her seat and smiled tentatively at him and at Emily and the baby, but her eyes were really searching for Seth. Ansel looked around, too, no doubt looking for Frank Walker. Abby didn’t see him either, and they exchanged shrugs before she turned back and smiled at her father as he stood up in the pulpit.
“Well, she’s not interested in Frank,” Emily whispered as Abby’s father nodded at several latecomers and waited for them to get settled.
“What do you call dinner and a buggy ride all in the same week?” Ansel asked her.
“A poor substitute,” she answered loudly enough for Abby to be sure that Emily wanted her to hear. “I just pray she isn’t desperate enough to marry him.”
“He could make her a fine husband,” Ansel said in Frank’s defense, while Abby prayed her father would get started with the day’s service. “And she’d never want for anything.”
“Anything that can be bought or sold in the mercantile, anyway,” Emily agreed, as if that were a terrible thing, as if Abby were even considering that anyway.
“She could make him a good wife,” Ansel said, and Abby sat all the straighter for her brother’s defense. “She’d be an asset to the store, and—”
“Welcome to the fourth from last service we will hold in this building,” her father finally said, raising his hands to his congregation. “Of course, not counting our Wednesday night services, since not all of you attend them. And then of course there’s Maundy Thursday coming up, and Good Friday the next day, which too many of you also skip, and well, anyways, Mr. Youtt has purchased a money order for the plans for the new church, which are being mailed to us. Isn’t that right, Mr. Youtt?”
Mr. Youtt stood and agreed that a money order had been cut for pre-drawn plans and sent to Peabody and Sterns in St. Louis.
“And Mr. Waitte has offered to go to Des Moines for any wood we need, and I expect that we’ll be raising the rafters and frame in less than two weeks or even before that time. Right, Walt?”
“If I don’t have what we need, I’ll get it,” Walter Waitte agreed.
“The steeple will be built from California redwoods, which reach as close to heaven as a tree can go, and the bell is going to be cast in Philadelphia and shipped here by rail. Then Frank Walker’s going to arrange to get it here, right, Frank?”
There was silence in the grange hall, as heads turned this way and that, looking for Frank Walker. Most heads turned. But not Abby’s.
“Frank’s sleeping in this morning,” Frank Walker, Sr., said, after rising and clearing his throat. “He wasn’t feeling too good.”
Abby sank a bit in her seat and put her hand to her head.
“Nothing serious, I hope,” the reverend asked.
“McGinty’s influenza,” the elder Mr. Walker said with a grimace on his face.
“Maybe the doc’s with him,” someone said. “Don’t see him here, neither.”
Abby slid farther down in her seat.
“Well, he was with him last night in McGinty’s,” someone else hollered. “They just mighta given each other that flu!”
“Something else to pray for, then,” Abby’s father said. “Let us bow our heads and pray that McGinty’s closes early on Saturdays so that we can have a full congregation on Sundays.”
Abby joined the other women in loud prayer. The men had apparently elected for the silent variety, if they were praying at all.
When the service was finally over, Abby stood and took a deep breath before facing the congregation. There was always the chance that Seth had come in late. Turning around, she saw that she had clearly wasted a Please God! on Seth’s being there, but it didn’t stop her from casting a second silent prayer that he be waiting for her outside the grange hall in his buggy.
“Morning, Miss Abby,” Emmet Sommers said, tipping his hat to her politely, the way Seth never did. Seth never treated her like a lady. In fact, last night Seth had treated her like the hussy she was. And there was no sign of him this morning.
“Morning, Emmet,” Abby said, but Emmet had already moved on and was helping Abby’s sister Patience into her spring cloak and offering to see her home. Her nephew Michael was climbing Abby’s leg, and she lifted him up into her arms, hugging him so tightly that he pushed at her chest and complained.
“I’m sorry,” she said, sitting back down in the chair with Michael on her lap. “I guess I needed a squeeze more than you did, huh?”
“Grandpa says we can love you again,” Michael told her
. Then he pushed the hair away from her ear and whispered so close to her that it was hard to understand, “Don’t tell him, but I never stopped, Aunt Abby.”
Again she hugged him, this time not so tightly that he would object. “Grandpa was mad at me, but he never stopped loving me.”
“How did you know, Aunt Abby?” Michael asked her.
“How do you know that when you turn on the faucet in the bathroom, water is going to come out of the spout? It isn’t there until you turn it on, but you know it’s just waiting, don’t you?”
“Why didn’t you just turn it on?” he asked her. “Didn’t you want to get loved?”
“Yes, I surely did,” she answered him, ruffling his sandy hair. He looked a lot like her brother-in-law, Boone, and Abby couldn’t help but wonder if someday he’d break a woman’s heart just the way Boone had done when he’d run off and left Pru and the children. “But with love, it takes two to turn the faucets on,” she said, floundering with her explanation as she looked around for Seth.
“Otherwise someone might get burned,” Michael said wisely.
“Exactly,” she told Michael. Despite the words of encouragement she’d repeated to herself over and over again in the night, there was no sign of a loving, sober Seth Hendon. “You’re a very wise little boy.”
And then Gwendolyn took one of her hands and Michael took the other and they pulled her out of her chair and led her down the aisle to the back of the grange hall.
Outside there were plenty of buggies and the day was glorious.
But Seth wasn’t there, and it was raining in her heart.
ON MONDAY MORNING SETH STOOD IN Walker’s Mercantile with two oranges, a box of candy, some pink writing paper with little flowers down the edge, and two leeks. He dropped one of the oranges and it rolled several feet, coming to rest by Frank Walker’s big toe.
“Need some help there, Dr. Hendon?” Frank asked. He seemed to have recovered more fully than Seth had, but then, at twenty-two, the body was more resilient. That was why the Lord made man wiser as he got older, to compensate for the body’s shortcomings. Of course, it hadn’t helped in Seth’s case—he might have been wise enough to know that Saturday’s drinking would lead to Sunday’s puking, but it hadn’t stopped him.
Stephanie Mittman Page 13
