“Leander has studied all over the world. I’m quite sure he’s as at home in a ballroom as on a horse,” she said as she cleaned off her racquet.
“A Renaissance man?” Alan said archly, an edge to his voice.
Blair looked up at him. “Alan, you look as if you’re angry. You know how I feel about the man.”
“Do I? What I know are the facts, that you went out with him once and ended up spending the night with him, yet when I touch you, you seem to have infinite control.”
“I don’t have to listen to any of this.” She turned away.
He caught her arm. “Would you rather that Westfield said it? Would you rather that he were here now with his blazing six-guns and his ability to trick a gullible young medical student?”
She gave him a cool look worthy of her sister. “Release my arm.”
He did so immediately, his anger leaving him. “Blair, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean what I said. It’s just that I’m so tired of looking the fool. I’m tired of staying in my hotel room and of not being allowed to meet your parents. I feel like the one who’s unwanted, rather than Westfield.”
She felt herself giving in to him. His anger was perfectly understandable. She put her hand to his cheek. “I wanted to leave with you that first day, but you wanted a competition. You agreed to it, and now my future life as a doctor is in jeopardy. I can’t leave Chandler with you until the twentieth. But have some faith that I will leave with you.”
He escorted her to within a block of her house, and when they parted, Blair felt the tension in Alan. He was worried and nothing Blair said seemed to make any difference.
At the house, she went to her room, glad for once that her mother didn’t give her an itemized list of the flowers and candy that Leander had had delivered while she was out. Instead, Opal merely greeted her pleasantly and went back to her sewing, while Blair had to practically drag herself up the stairs.
She was determined not to spend the afternoon crying, as she’d spent the morning, so she stretched out on the bed and tried to read a chapter about burn victims in a book that Alan had lent her.
At three, Susan, the upstairs maid, came in with a tray of food. “Mrs. Gates said I was to bring this up to you and to ask if you needed anything else.”
“No,” Blair said listlessly, pushing the food out of reach.
Susan paused at the door, running her apron along the door frame. “Of course, you heard about yesterday.”
“Yesterday?” Blair asked, without much interest. How could Alan think that she was interested in Leander? Hadn’t she made it clear to everyone involved that she wanted nothing whatever to do with him?
“I thought maybe since you were asleep when Miss Houston came in last night, and then you left so early this morning, that you might not have heard about Mr. Taggert and the awful mess he made at the garden party yesterday, and how he carried Miss Houston out, and then he came here and I do believe that your mother almost fell in love with him, and he’s going to buy her a pink train and—.”
Susan had Blair’s attention now. “Slow down a minute and tell me everything.” She curled her legs on the bed and began to eat the food in front of her.
“Well,” Susan said slowly, obviously enjoying being the center of attention. “Yesterday, your sister showed up at Miss Tia Mankin’s garden party—the one you were invited to but didn’t go to—and standing next to her was this divine man, and at first no one recognized him. Of course, I was only told this because I wasn’t really there, but I got to see him later and everything they said was more than true. I never thought that that big dirty man could look so good. Anyway, he came to the party and all the women gathered around him, and then he took food to Miss Houston and spilled it in her lap. Nobody could say a word for a minute, but somebody started to laugh, and the next thing you know, Mr. Taggert picked Miss Houston up and carried her out of the garden and put her in that pretty new buggy he bought her.”
Blair had a mouthful of sandwich and tried to wash it down with milk. “Didn’t Houston say anything? I can’t imagine her allowing a man to do that in public.” Truthfully, she couldn’t imagine her sister allowing that in private, either.
“I never saw anything like that with Dr. Leander, but not only did Miss Houston allow it, she brought him here and asked your mother to entertain him in the parlor.”
“My mother? But she cries every time she hears the name of Taggert.”
“Not after yesterday. I don’t know what it is about him she likes, other than his looks, because the man scares me to death, but she almost fell in love with him. I helped Miss Houston change clothes, and when we got downstairs, your mother was asking him to call her Opal, and he was asking her what color train car he could buy her.”
Susan took the empty tray off the bed. “But something awful must have happened after Miss Houston left with the man, because she came home last night in tears. She tried to hide it from me when I helped her undress, but I could see that she was crying. And today, she hasn’t eaten and she’s stayed in her room all day.” She gave Blair a sly look as she paused at the doorway. “Just like you. This house ain’t a happy place today,” she said just before she left the room.
Immediately, Blair left her room and went to her sister. Houston was lying on the bed, her eyes red and swollen and looking a picture of misery. The first thought that Blair had was that her sister’s unhappiness was her fault. If she hadn’t come back to Chandler, Houston would still be engaged to Leander, and she wouldn’t be considering marrying a man who spilled food all over her and mauled her in public.
Blair tried to talk to Houston, telling her that if she made it clear that she still wanted Lee, she could probably still have him, and she wouldn’t have to sacrifice herself to that man Taggert. But the more Blair talked, the more Houston closed up. She would say nothing except that Leander no longer loved her, and that he wanted Blair in a way that he’d never wanted her.
Blair wanted to tell her sister that if she’d just wait until the twentieth, she could have Lee. She wanted to tell about the blackmail scheme, and about Alan and how much she loved him, but she was afraid that would make Houston feel worse, as if she were the consolation prize. All Houston could seem to talk about was the fact that Lee had rejected her, that he wanted Blair, and that Taggert was making her miserable, although she wouldn’t tell Blair exactly what the man had done to her.
And the more Houston talked, the worse Blair felt. She’d gone out with Leander in the first place because she’d been worried that he wasn’t good for her sister. She’d been worried because Houston hadn’t been upset after Lee had been angry with her. But now, Houston had a totally different kind of man and she spent the entire day in misery. If only she hadn’t interfered!
Houston was standing by her bed, trying to stop the flood of tears cascading down her face.
“You may think that you failed with Leander, but you didn’t. And you don’t have to punish yourself with an overbearing oaf. He can’t even handle a plate of food, much less—.”
Blair stopped because Houston slapped her across the face.
“He’s the man I’m going to marry,” Houston said, anger in her voice. “I’ll not let you or anyone else denigrate him.”
With her hand to her cheek, Blair’s eyes began to fill with tears. “What I’ve done is coming between us,” she whispered. “No man anywhere means more than sisters,” she said before leaving the room.
The rest of the day was even worse for Blair. If she’d had any doubts as to why Houston was marrying Taggert, they were put to rest just before dinner when a dozen rings were delivered from the man. Houston took one look at them and her face lit up like a gaslight on high. She fairly floated from the room, and Blair wondered if the presents of the carriage and thirteen rings were going to be enough to make up for having to live with a man like Taggert. From the look on Houston’s face, it seemed as if she thought so.
Dinner came, and Houston’s cheerfulness made Blair
feel terrible, but she knew the uselessness of trying to talk to her sister about anything.
When the telephone rang during dinner, Gates told the maid to tell whoever it was that no one was going to talk on the newfangled thing. “Think they have the right to make you talk to them just because they can make that thing ring,” he grumbled.
Susan came back into the room and her eyes were on Blair. “It’s very important, the caller said. I’m to say it’s a Miss Hunter.”
“Hunter,” Blair said, her soup halfway to her mouth. “I’d better answer it.” Without asking Mr. Gates’s permission, she half ran to the telephone.
“I don’t know any Hunters,” Gates was saying behind her.
“Of course you do,” Opal said smoothly. “They moved here from Seattle last year. You met him at the Lechners’ last summer.”
“Maybe I did. I seem to remember. Here, Houston, have some of this beef. You need fattening up.”
“Hello,” Blair said tentatively.
Instead of Alan’s voice as she expected, she heard Leander. “Blair, please don’t hang up. I have an invitation to extend to you.”
“And what do you plan to do to Alan this time? You’ve used guns, horses, you’ve nearly drowned him. Did you know that we played tennis today? You could have thrown balls at him or hit him with the racquet.”
“I know that my conduct hasn’t been the best, but I’d like to make it up to you. I’m going to be on call all day tomorrow to handle any emergencies that come up, and I have several patients in the country that I need to see. I thought you might like to go with me.”
Blair couldn’t speak for a moment. To spend the entire day doing what she was trained for? To not have to loll about, going from one pastime to another, but to learn something?
“Blair, are you there?”
“Yes, of course.”
“If you’d rather not, I’ll understand. It’ll be a long day, and I’m sure you’ll be exhausted by the end of it, so—.”
“You pick me up whenever you need to. I’ll be ready at the crack of dawn, and tomorrow we’ll see who gives out first.” She hung up the telephone and went back to the table. Tomorrow she’d be a doctor! For the first time in days, she didn’t feel the burden of the weight of responsibility for hurting her sister.
* * *
Nina Westfield heard the pounding on the door for some minutes before someone answered it.
A white-faced maid came into the parlor, her hands trembling. “Miss, there’s a man out here, he says he’s Mr. Alan Hunter, and he says he’s come to kill Dr. Leander.”
“My goodness. Does he look dangerous?”
“He’s just standin’ there and bein’ calm, but his eyes are wild and…he’s very handsome. I thought maybe you might be able to talk to him. He doesn’t look like the killin’ kind to me.”
Nina put her book aside. “Show him in, then get Mr. Thompson from next door to come over, and send someone to get my father. Then send someone to keep Lee at the hospital. Invent an illness if you have to, just keep him away from home.”
Obediently, the maid left, and in a moment she escorted Mr. Hunter into the parlor.
Nina didn’t think he looked like a killer at all, and she extended her hand to him in friendship, ignoring the maid’s gasps when she closed the door to the room. When Mr. Thompson showed up a few minutes later, Nina sent him home, saying that it had all been a mistake, and when her father came, she introduced Alan and the three of them sat and talked until late.
Unfortunately, no one thought about Leander, who was trying to help the man who’d been their family butler for sixteen years. The butler was writhing with pains that no one could pinpoint, although Lee kept trying. And every time Lee left the room, the butler called the Westfield house and was told that the dangerous man was still there, so the butler went back and developed a new symptom.
Which was why Leander got only four hours sleep before the first emergency call came in, and since it was four thirty he hesitated to awaken the entire Chandler family, and instead he climbed the tree to get into Blair’s bedroom.
Chapter 11
There was only the faintest hint of bluish-gray dawn when Leander climbed the tree and crossed the porch roof to Blair’s bedroom. He felt like a schoolboy about to get caught in a prank. Here he was, twenty-seven years old, a doctor; he’d spent years in Europe; had visited some of the grand salons, but now he was climbing a tree and slipping into a girl’s bedroom as if he were a naughty boy.
But when he entered the room and saw Blair outlined by the thin sheet, he forgot all inhibitions. The last few days had been miserable. He’d found her and knew that, as he wanted his own soul, he wanted this woman, but he could see her slipping away from him. Something about her made him clumsy, awkward, and everything he did was wrong. He’d tried to impress her, tried to make himself look good compared to that incompetent, weak, frightened little blond mouse she thought she loved. Lee knew Hunter wasn’t man enough for her.
For a moment, he stood over her, liking that she was soft and sweet, as she had been the one night when she hadn’t been angry with him.
That night had changed his life, and he was determined to have her like that again.
With a smile, and a feeling that he couldn’t help himself, he pulled the sheet back and slipped into bed with her, shoes and all. There wasn’t time for prolonged lovemaking and now, before she woke, while he could still think, he knew that the third floor of Duncan Gates’s house was not the place.
He kissed her temple as he pulled her into his arms and, sleepily, she snuggled closer to him as he kissed her eyes and cheeks. When he touched her lips with his, she slowly came awake, moving her body nearer his, her thigh sliding between his as his hand moved down to draw her gown up and caress her bare flesh.
His kiss deepened, his tongue touching hers, and she responded eagerly, pushing at him as she tried to get closer.
It was Lee’s watch fob piercing her stomach through her thin nightgown that made her waken—but not fully.
“I thought you were a dream,” she murmured, as her hand caressed his cheek.
“I am,” Leander said hoarsely. Never in his life had he been required to use such control. He wanted to take her gown off, to caress all her warm, lovely flesh, to feel her skin against his. He wanted to run his unshaven cheeks against the soft flesh of her stomach and hear her squeal in feigned protest.
Blair suddenly sat straight up. “What are you doing here?” she gasped.
He put his hand over her mouth and pulled her down beside him, where she began kicking her heels and pushing at him. “If you want to go with me, you have to go now, and since it’s not daylight yet, I didn’t want to bang on your front door and wake the whole house. Will you stop making so much noise? Gates will be in here, and if he sees you like this, he’ll probably parade you downtown in sackcloth and ashes.” He moved his hand away as she calmed.
“That’s preferable to what you have planned,” she said in a loud whisper. “Get off me.”
Leander didn’t move an inch. “If I’d had time, I would have climbed in here without my…ah, shoes,” he said, rubbing his leg up and down between hers, still holding her quite close.
“You are a vain, lecherous—.”
She broke off because he pinned her arms above her head and kissed her, gently at first, deepening until she couldn’t breathe, then gentle again. When he pulled away, there were tears in her eyes as she turned her head aside. “Please don’t,” she whispered. “Please.”
“I don’t know why I should have any mercy,” he said, releasing her hands but keeping her trapped under most of his body. “You’ve shown me no mercy in the last few days.” At the look in her eyes, he moved off her. “If I leave the way I came, down the tree, will you get dressed and meet me out front?”
Her eyes lost the look of a trapped animal. “And we’ll go on call?”
“I never saw a woman look forward to blood and gore before.”
&
nbsp; “It’s not that, it’s the helping of people that I like. If I can save one life, then my life—.”
He kissed her quickly before climbing out of the bed. “You can give me the new doctor speech on the way. Ten minutes, all right?”
Blair could only nod and was out of the bed almost before Lee was out the window. She didn’t give a thought to how unusual their behavior was, because nothing in her life had been ordinary since she’d returned to Chandler.
Out of the small closet in her room, beside some of Houston’s stored winter clothes, Blair took a garment that she was very proud of. She’d had it made in Philadelphia by the old, established tailoring firm of J. Cantrell and Sons. She’d worked with them for weeks on designing and fitting a suit that would fill all the needs she could imagine in future emergencies as a doctor and yet remain modest. In the tailor’s shop, she’d tried wearing it astride a wooden horse, making sure that it was short enough to be safe and long enough to be respectable.
The jacket was cut with perfect military simplicity; the skirt looked full and feminine, but it was actually divided into two so it had the safety and comfort of bloomers. The suit was made of the finest, most closely woven, navy blue serge that money could buy, with several deep pockets that disappeared into the folds of the fabric, a buttoned flap over each pocket so that no precious instruments could be lost. There was a simple red cross on the sleeve to designate the suit’s purpose.
Blair tied on a pair of high laced black calfskin shoes—boys’ style rather than the fashionably narrow shoes that tortured women’s feet into submission—grabbed her new physician’s bag, and hurried downstairs to meet Leander.
He was leaning against the carriage smoking one of his thin little cigars, and for a moment, Blair dreaded going anywhere with him. No doubt she’d spend all day fighting his hands moving all over her, and she’d never get to do anything to help with a patient.
He took one quick look at her outfit and seemed to nod in approval before jumping into the carriage and leaving Blair to help herself get in.