Virginia Autumn (Sinclair Legacy Book 2), page 31
Jacob wondered himself at the inexplicable urge to have a part, if he was honest about it, in Fiona Carlton’s healing. But how to tell her, when he didn’t fathom it himself? He tugged the drooping lock of hair on his forehead, scratched behind his ear, then gave up the struggle for discretion in favor of plain speech.
“You bother me, and have since first I came upon you that night on the grounds, draped in moonlight and shadows. ’Tis shameful of me, to be sure, to pry into your affairs when you’re a captive audience.” He inhaled, then let his breath out in a sustained sigh. “It seems I canna help myself. I . . . care about you. My family cares about you. I would like it very much if you would call me Jacob and consider me a friend. A trustworthy friend you don’t turn your face away from, nor hide from behind pretense—or a veil.”
“I haven’t been allowed to wear that veil since I arrived.” She was regarding him with that smile barely curving her lips, but a frown lurked behind her eyes. Her fingers lay statue-still amid the lacy folds of the collar she’d been fashioning.
For several moments she did not respond further, and Jacob was content enough to wait. Through the window thin winter light touched her profile, turning once golden hair to a silvery flaxen hue, softening the fine lines about her mouth and eyes. She’d braided her hair today, he saw, winding it about her head in a coronet that gave her an almost regal air.
He was seven kinds of a fool, to be entertaining these thoughts. Just as he was about to apologize, however, Fiona spoke.
“I would be honored to call you Jacob,” she said, “if you will call me Fiona. As for friendship, for most of my life I’ve had little practice at being a friend, and few friends I wouldn’t consider threats to my peace of mind.”
“I beg your pardon?” The woman was daft. Or rather, she was about to make him so. “From what Leah has shared, before your illness your days were filled with people, people who like and respect you. She told me you were seldom home at all. And surely after these past weeks you don’t think you’ve been naught but a-a patient.”
The smile twisted. “There is a difference between friendship born of pity and guilt on one part, need on the other—and friendship between equals. I’m afraid what I do was never intended to cultivate friendship. That changed over the years, of course. I’m older now and, I hope, content with my lot. I do care about the people I visit, very much. I like to think I’ve offered a bit of brightness in their lives. But if my visits ceased, they would transfer their affections elsewhere. My life is not vital to anyone, even Maisie.”
Jacob scowled. “That girl dotes on you, for all she’s as rough around the edges as a shagbark hickory. You’ve a poor opinion of those brightened lives—and of yourself, I daresay.”
Fiona shook her head. “I offer Maisie a modicum of respectability. But if something happened to me, she’d return to a back-alley saloon somewhere, because no one is willing to accept those rough edges, and she’s too contrary to smooth them. You’ve a very idealistic view of humanity, if you think it would be otherwise.” Placidly she resumed her needlework. “You see what a difficult sort of friend I might prove to be? My view of humanity is hopelessly jaded.”
She worked her fingers to the bone, expended all her energy making rounds of no less than four different homes for the needy, Leah told him. Every week from October through May, she devoted her days to teaching blind and bedridden women how to crochet, reading to the sick and elderly, feeding the helpless . . . being Jesus as it were. Yet she proclaimed herself a cynic? Aye, Lord, she’s going to make me daft.
“So you’ve a jaded view, whilst I try to maintain a more hopeful one. We offset one another nicely then, don’t we?” He hesitated before deliberately adding, “Fiona?”
For a moment she did not respond. Then, “Yes, we do . . . Jacob,” she managed, the words husky. “I would very much like to count you as a friend.” Her fingers fluttered in a helpless gesture. She ducked her head.
“Well, then.” Brisk for both their sakes, he rubbed his hands together. “ ’Tis settled. Now, until you’re well enough for a buggy ride, how do you feel about checkers? Before you answer, I’d best warn you that I’ll not be a gentleman. If you want to win, you’ll have to earn it.”
“I . . . why, I’ve never played checkers, or any other manner of game,” Fiona said, looking as flustered as a girl.
“Time you learned.” Pleased with himself, Jacob rose. “Finish your sandwich. You’ll need your strength. I’ll be back in a moment.” He returned shortly with Robbie’s checkerboard and a tin box of checkers.
“Jacob?”
He paused in the midst of setting everything up on the table he’d cleared of tray and food. “Yes?”
“You should know . . . I’ve a very competitive streak.”
“Ah. No wonder you and Leah get along so well.” He beamed at her. “That should make up for my skill.”
She laid aside her needlework and sat forward, her gaze on the board, her face close enough that Jacob could brush his fingers across the long ragged line of that scar. He wondered what her reaction would be.
He knew what his own was, at the mere thought of it.
I’m too old to be feeling like this, Lord.
As he began to explain how the game was played, he could almost hear the sound of a heavenly chuckle floating light as a snowflake into his ear. A question breathed through the very pores of his skin, into his heart: And how old does one have to be, to be too old? The nation of Israel was born of a woman pushing the century mark, and the father of John the Baptist wasn’t exactly a lad in the first bloom of manhood.
It wasn’t the Lord who limited love between a man and a woman to the young.
“I’m ready,” Fiona said, meeting his gaze with only a snippet of bravado shadowing her lovely light eyes.
Och, Jacob thought, awareness fogging his brain, I’m not so sure that I am, Fiona lass. I’m not so sure that I am . . .
Thirty-Seven
Tom’s Brook, Shenandoah Valley
December 1895
The season’s first snowfall blanketed the Valley that night. From the Turkish tufted sofa beneath her window, Fiona watched entranced as millions of madly whirling flakes transformed the earth from bleak and black to sparkling white. She was alone, having sent Maisie off to bed a half-hour earlier, and the rest of the house was quiet. Presumably the Sinclairs were tucked away as well.
Fiona could revel to her heart’s content in the majestic silence of the storm.
Once, when she’d been a small child, younger than eight because by the time she turned nine Fiona had discovered that piano keys were even more magical than snow, she remembered sneaking outside in a snowstorm. Oblivious to any hazard, she’d whirled round and round, pretending to be a snowflake.
How lovely it would be to resurrect that innocent child, just for a little while, so that she could once again lose herself in a world that, for a brief instant, had become a fairyland.
“Mrs. Carlton? Are you all right?”
Surprised, she glanced over her shoulder to where Garnet hovered inside the doorway, Phineas at her feet. “I’m fine, dear. Just enjoying the snow.”
Garnet joined her at the window, her expression troubled. “I’d enjoy it more if Sloan were safely home.”
Fiona paused from scratching the fox’s thick ruff. “I hadn’t realized he was still out.” It was almost eleven—Sloan had been gone for more than nine hours. She straightened, offering Garnet a comforting smile. “Try not to fret. Last week he was gone from dawn till suppertime, remember. Surely this is familiar territory for a physician’s wife, but I suppose you could ask him to keep banker’s hours. Or—let’s be magnanimous—office hours until dusk.”
“I know, I’m being silly.” She hesitated.
Fiona suppressed a sigh, then gestured to the sofa. “Would you and Phineas like to keep me company for a while?” She was surprised by the lightness that filled her when Garnet’s face lost much of its drawn look.
“Are you sure? You probably ought to be in bed. Rest is the most important restorative, remember.” But she perched on the end of the thick cushion when Fiona moved her feet out of the way. “Mercysake, it’s coming down so thick you can’t see the barn.” Biting her lip, she ran distracted fingers through her unbound hair, her gaze never leaving the window.
“I enjoyed visiting with your father today,” Fiona said, searching for a distraction. She had plucked the words out of the air, but realized they were true, rather than merely polite. The realization was even more disconcerting than her easy acceptance of Garnet’s company.
“I’m glad. I hope he didn’t make a pest of himself. I wanted to box his ears for openly gloating because he beat you three checkers games out of four. I never thought Papa would be so ungallant.” Phineas laid his narrow snout across his mistress’s lap and whined.
“Well, I’m afraid I deserved it. I was equally annoying, the one game I managed to trounce him.” Smiling down at the fox as well as the memory of Jacob’s poorly concealed frustration, Fiona patted the cushion. “Come on up, there’s a good boy. A little fox fur never hurt anyone.”
“Not according to Maisie.”
They both laughed then. If Phineas elected to nap the day away with Fiona, Maisie filled the air with dire predictions and surly grumbling.
“Phineas likes you,” Garnet observed, sounding puzzled. “Always has. He’s not usually so friendly to strangers.”
“Nor am I. Perhaps that’s why we tolerate each other.” The fox nudged her hand, begging for more scratching. “I never had a pet. My parents thought animals were unsanitary. I never realized they would offer such companionship.”
“Yes, they do. But your parents weren’t entirely wrong. I don’t normally allow him access to this room, since it’s designed as a sickroom for Sloan’s patients.”
“Which is why I need to think about going home,” Fiona began. “I’m no longer ill.”
“Flumadiddle. Don’t start that again. You’ll stay until Sloan pronounces you fit to travel, and if that’s not until spring I’d be delighted. Truly.” She flashed a quick, shy smile. “I’m being selfish, you see. I’ve enjoyed your company, especially the time or two I’ve been able to draw while you crochet. It’s been”—she seemed to fumble for words before finishing simply—“lovely.”
All the more reason for her to leave. She was dangerously vulnerable: Affection, she was learning, could be as insidious as anger. It had taken years to rid herself of anger and reach a state of grace that allowed her a modicum of tranquillity. She wasn’t sure she possessed the strength, physical or emotional, to endure the process again, especially when—this time—her heart longed to reciprocate an emotion instead of rebuff it.
This would not do. Think of the little boy. Did she really want to be around Robert, so like Harry in his ways her heart came near to exploding every time he reached up for a hug? God. Dear God . . . I cannot.
The armor slid into place like an old pair of slippers. Slippers fashioned from Pittsburgh steel.
“I’ve enjoyed my time here as well, and I wish we might have shared it under different circumstances.” There. Reserved warmth, which gave no cause for offense yet shielded her from true intimacy. “Phineas is a delightful creature, even though he does make for an odd sort of pet.” Fiona lifted her hand from the thick rust-colored fur and let it drop to her lap. “In my own way I suppose I’m as much of an oddity.”
“No more than the rest of us,” Garnet told her, a troubled frown growing between her eyes. “As you say, a fox isn’t exactly a tabby cat or a lap dog, though Phineas thinks he’s both on alternate days. Then of course there’s my flaming hair”—she gathered a handful of red tresses and thrust the mass behind her shoulders—“Sloan’s infamous temper, and Papa’s Scottish burr. Of course you only hear it when his composure is rattled.”
The child was a dear. Like her father, a warm, compassionate young woman who did not deserve Fiona’s chilly reticence. Before she could halt the gesture, she was patting Garnet’s arm. “Thank you, dear. You’re quite right, of course. Everyone has his own splinter to fret over.”
“You’re mixing your biblical metaphors.”
“So I am. Must come from being an oddity.”
She may as well pray to stop the sun from rising in the east as to hope to protect herself from this family. Their warmth was too genuine, their every action imbued with the kind of unselfish caring that could only spring from an all-loving Creator. Resigned, Fiona yielded to a Will more powerful than her own, and the tension she had fostered melted away. In unspoken accord the two women turned their attention back to the snowstorm raging outside.
The mad swirl of white flakes proved hypnotic. Within moments Fiona was struggling to keep her eyes open.
“May I ask you something, Mrs. Carlton? It’s rather personal, and I’ll understand if you tell me to mind my own business.”
Jolted awake, Fiona contemplated Garnet in silence. “Since I’ve been living off the goodness of your hearts for these past weeks, I’d say that entitles you to a personal question or two,” she finally said. “Ask me anything you like, my dear.”
“All right.” She smiled sheepishly. “But I wish you wouldn’t sound as though you’re steeling yourself for the guillotine. I’ve been thinking—well, no. Actually I’ve been praying, for Sloan, hoping he’ll return soon, and safe. Then my mind sidetracked, as it tends to do whenever I pray.”
She drew in a deep breath, and shook her head. “What I wanted to ask you is—why don’t you trust doctors? Don’t worry, Sloan’s not said a word to me,” she hastily added. “But when Leah first wrote us about your illness she did comment on your . . . your intransigency, she called it, about summoning a physician. Considering how debilitated you were when Sloan first arrived, it seems incomprehensible. You could have died.”
“Looking back, I realize that.” Another sin laid at her door, though it was possible that there had been a bit of divine interference in her behalf. “Please believe that my aversion has, and had, nothing to do with your husband. He’s unlike any physician I’ve ever encountered.”
“I know.” Tears brightened Garnet’s eyes, but she blinked them back. “When he’s doctoring he’s more like the Great Physician than any man I’ve ever known. Of course, when he’s not being a doctor, he can be as hardheaded as old Mrs. Pritchett’s mule. And when he loses his temper, even Phineas stays out of his way. I say that,” she finished with a watery smile, “so that you’ll see that though I love him with all my heart, I’m certainly not blind to his faults.”
“They were very much in evidence, the first time Leah dragged him into my parlor,” Fiona said dryly. “He didn’t want to be there, of course. As poorly as I was at the time, I could still sense it from all the way across the room. Then . . . ” She hesitated, remembering with a sort of wonder that moment when he had leaned over her, the gray eyes warmer than a goose-down comforter. “It was a . . . revelation. He was the first doctor to treat me with dignity. With caring.”
She gestured to her scar. “I might have been surrounded by the best physicians New York had to offer—my husband wouldn’t countenance anything else—but not a single one of them treated me as though I were a person, with feelings and fears.” The copper taste of that night could flood her mouth to this day.
“Will you tell me about it?”
Startled, Fiona glanced down and saw that Garnet had covered her clenched fist with a gentle hand. “I don’t think—”
“It might help you.” She removed her hand and sat back, waiting, her expression earnest.
At that moment Phineas sprang up, ears pricked as his head swiveled toward the doorway.
“Mama!” Robert pulled free of Maisie’s hand and pelted across the room. “I woke up. I couldn’t find you, so I went to Maisie like you told me. She said we would find you together.” He landed in a tumble of arms and legs on the sofa, his pale, freckled face alight. “She didn’t want to wake up, but I made her. Look at the snow! Can we go outside? Where’s Father?”
“That varmint’s likely to bite.” Her eye on Phineas, Maisie stood over them with folded arms and a truculent expression. “Risking rabies, right enough. And look at you, sitting by the window with nothing but that wrapper. Catch your death . . . shouldn’t be up in the first place.”
Nobody grumbled better than Maisie.
As though he’d understood her words, Phineas hopped nimbly to the floor, then retreated in silent dignity, disappearing through the doorway. Robert burrowed between Garnet and Fiona, whispering in a voice audible to them all, “Maisie’s cross. Should we pray for her, Mama?”
“Certainly, darling.” Garnet cupped his chin. “Why don’t you give Mrs. Carlton another good-night kiss and hug, and I’ll take you back to bed. We can pray for Maisie then. You didn’t wake your brother, did you?”
“Huh-uh.” Shyly Robert turned to Fiona and lifted his arms.
Heart clenched, Fiona gathered him close because she could no more spurn the gift of his trust than she could restrain the weather outside. “Go to sleep,” she murmured against his flushed cheek. “Morning will come faster that way, and perhaps you can make a snowman.”
“Look, Mamá, I made a snow lady!” His precious face was red with cold, the straight little nose running freely. But his eyes shone with pride, so she glanced through the door as she patted his head, mindful of the effect of wet snow on the lace flounces of her silk gown. If only she didn’t have the concert tonight . . .
“Miz Carlton! Snap out of it, ma’am. Time for you to go to bed.” Fiona shook her head but released the memory reluctantly. She focused on the blinding scarlet and royal blue dragons embroidered in Maisie’s wrapper. “Yes, I suppose it is.” Because she knew the girl, she rose and drew the drapes. “Go on yourself. I’m fine, I promise.” Whether she slept peacefully or not was none of Maisie’s affair.
