The Doctor's Wife Page 12

  Benjamin set down the empty plate just as Flynn returned with lemonade sloshing over the brims of two glass cups. “I got one for Lucy, too, since she’s so little an’ all. It’s kinda hard for her to carry stuff without spillin’ it.”

  “Thank you.” Lucy’s polite words and shy smile would have pleased her mother, even if the bare feet and grass-stained dress would soon give her a conniption. She took the cup and sipped daintily as she’d obviously been coached.

  “Flynn likes me though,” she said in a stage whisper.

  Ellie chuckled and sat listening to Lucy and Flynn’s childish conversation while she watched the party milling on the lawn. She’d been everywhere but with her new husband—the word lodged uncomfortably in her mind—and the guests were starting to cast her odd looks.

  “I’d better get back,” she said finally, picking up Ben’s plate and fork and the two cups.

  “Whoa, you’re not supposed to be doing this on your wedding day,” a pretty fair-haired woman said, taking the dishes from Ellie. She smiled, showing nice teeth and attractive smile lines in her glowing cheeks. “I’m Eva Kirkpatrick.”

  “The dressmaker under Caleb’s office?”

  “That’s me. But I make more than dresses. I made all of the doctor’s baby’s flannels. Sewed all of his little clothes, too.”

  “They’re beautiful!”

  “Thank you. I have a full-time job making dresses and aprons and the like for Mrs. Connely, though,” she said with a grin. “The woman has grown a dress size every year since I’ve been in business. And you don’t find her size in the Montgomery Ward catalog.”

  Ellie recalled the robust woman who’d flown past her leaving Caleb’s office once. Caleb had spoken of his concern for her health.

  “I didn’t bring a wedding gift,” Miss Kirkpatrick said. “I’d like you to stop by and let me measure you for something special. We can select a color and a pattern that will compliment your hair and eyes. That will be my gift to you.”

  Ellie didn’t know how to respond. She’d only had a dress sewn for her once in her entire life and now she already had so many nice clothes. She gave the woman a hesitant smile. “All right.”

  “Wonderful. Stop by whenever you have a free hour. I’ll make tea.” She hurried off toward the house with the dishes.

  In the parlor Ellie dipped a cup of lemonade and looked around for Nate, finally finding him sleeping on his grandmother’s lap. Laura Chaney sat in Caleb’s overstuffed chair, fanning herself with a tasseled fan. She motioned for Ellie to draw closer.

  “I know it’s warm in here, but sit for a moment.”

  Ellie perched on the clawfoot ottoman and sipped the sweet refreshment.

  “Caleb says your brothers are your only family.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Your parents are dead.”

  Ellie nodded.

  Laura glanced around, noting no one was paying any attention to them. Most everyone had gone outside to catch the breeze. “I know it’s late for a mother-daughter chat, but I wondered if perhaps you needed someone older to talk to.”

  Ellie blinked.

  “You’re young. Caleb’s been married once before. It would be only natural to have some qualms about your relationship.”

  “Well.” Ellie didn’t know what to say, especially to Caleb’s mother. Surely she knew this was an arrangement of convenience on both their parts. After all, they’d only known each other a few weeks. “I think we’ve both made the right choice.”

  “Caleb wouldn’t have made the commitment if he didn’t believe it was the right choice.” The fan fluttered the silver hair at her temples. “There’s no way to say this but to be blunt. Have you any questions or concerns about what’s to happen in your marriage bed? I remember I was a tangle of nerves, not knowing what to expect on my wedding night. I almost fainted on poor Matthew when the guests departed and we were left alone. You must be assured that it’s not as ghastly as you’ve probably been led to believe, in fact, the physical relationship can sustain a marriage through many other problems that can arise. Why I recall…”

  Her words continued but Ellie shut them out and stared hard at Nate’s cherubic face and damp hair. She couldn’t be talking about the same thing Ellie assumed.

  Not as ghastly as she’d been led to believe? The woman had no idea what she was talking about. Ellie had learned about sex as a part of growing up. Her mother had allowed men into her bed at all hours of the day or night, not caring which of her children were present. Ellie had awakened to the sounds. She’d walked in on the disgusting act. Once she’d beaten a naked drunk man over the head with a chair leg, then dragged him down by the creek where he could sleep it off.

  She’d cleaned up her mother after brutal attacks and she had delivered Flynn as well as a baby sister into this miserable world with no more than a bucket of stale water with which to wash them and old rags in which to wrap them. She’d buried that starved and sick baby girl herself.

  Oh, she knew what happened. And it was more ghastly than this genteel woman could even imagine. And she wanted no part of it. Ever. She didn’t know what Caleb’s mother was referring to, but it wasn’t the same thing Ellie had had experience with.

  “Well, thank you,” she said, finally meeting the well-meaning woman’s eyes.

  A commotion outside caught her attention and she stood and moved to the window, pushing aside the curtain to see what was happening. A tall, well-dressed man stood on the lawn and the wedding guests had cleared an opening around where he stood.

  A few of the women whispered among themselves and several of the men listened and nodded. Caleb appeared in the shade of the porch and stood with one hand in his pocket, the other holding a cup of lemonade. Ellie set down her empty cup, made her way to the front door and slipped out to see what was going on.

  Heads turned at her arrival and she moved self-consciously closer to Caleb.

  “Well, well, is this the new Mrs. Chaney?” The man walked closer to the house, shading his eyes with his hand. “Another wife for you, Caleb? Are you going to kill her, too?”

  A murmur rolled through the crowd. Caleb’s body tensed.

  The man’s words had shocked Ellie. “Who is he, Caleb?”

  “My former father-in-law,” he replied in a regretful tone.

  “She’s a pretty one. Young, too.” The man had reached the bottom of the wooden stairs.

  Caleb strode to the top step and looked down at him. “I hardly think this is the place or the time for you to voice your doubts about my medical abilities.”

  “Don’t want your new bride to get worried?” he asked, squinting up through the bright sunlight. “Don’t worry,” he called to her. “You’re safe as long as you don’t get sick or try to have a baby. If you do, take my advice and seek a physician elsewhere. He let his last wife die.”

  His mocking voice was hauntingly familiar, and threaded a frisson of dread along Ellie’s spine. She took a few more steps closer to Caleb and looked down at the face of the man who had accused Caleb of such a despicable act.

  The late afternoon sun beat down unmercifully. A few guests spoke in hushed voices and someone’s crinoline skirts rustled. The porch floor seemed to shift beneath Ellie’s feet and the sweet lemonade she’d enjoyed only moments before turned sour in her stomach. She tasted bile.

  She recognized him a second before he recognized her. He looked a little older, though his hair was still dark, and anyone who didn’t know him would consider him attractive.

  “Now if this isn’t a pleasant surprise,” he said, shaking his head and grinning dangerously. “Look at little Ellie all grown up and dressed like a virtuous woman.”

  A loud buzz sounded in her ears and she watched his lips move, but the words didn’t follow until a few seconds later. “Your taste in women has gone downhill, Chaney.”

  Caleb gave her an apologetic glance. “You two know each other?”

  “Oh, Ellie and I go back a long way, don�
�t we, darlin’?”

  Ellie wished the searing heat in her stomach would just burst into a fireball and turn her to ashes on the spot.

  “I used to run into her when I had business in Florence.”

  Caleb studied Ellie with a frown, and she knew her face must have paled. All her fear and self-loathing and hatred were reawakened and intensified, and she struggled to grasp a clear thought.

  She’d never feared anyone as she feared this man. She’d never hated anyone as she did him. She’d never again wanted to set eyes on him—the man who had raped her.

  Chapter Nine

  If there was a God, and Ellie doubted that possibility more today than she ever had, then He was out there somewhere in the Great Beyond rolling dice to see what awful thing happened to torture her next.

  Caleb descended the stairs. “If you’d like to eat, Winston, there’s food laid out in the house. There’s cake and coffee and you’re welcome to join our gathering. But I must insist that you not spoil our wedding day by standing out here spouting your inexhaustibly poor opinion of my character and my skill.”

  “I don’t think I’ll risk the food.”

  One of the ladies sputtered at that. Ellie couldn’t believe her ears. Did they think Caleb would poison them, for goodness’ sake?

  “But I would like to kiss the bride.” Winston placed his foot on the lowest step.

  “No!” Ellie had finally found her voice. “No,” she said again firmly, and turned and fled into the house.

  Her heart hammered painfully. Her head swam with every unspeakable thought and memory she’d ever banished. She ran through the house, out the kitchen door to the outhouse and, finding it occupied, threw up in the tall grass behind.

  Head throbbing, she retched until her stomach was empty and her torso muscles ached. Shaking uncontrollably, she wobbled back to the house and kept her head down and her face away from the two women in the kitchen who were stacking clean dishes. She dipped water into a pitcher and carried it upstairs, trembling so fiercely that the liquid sloshed as she went.

  In her room, she propped the chair beneath the knob before washing her face and shaking hands and rinsing her mouth.

  Winston Parker. Even thinking the name was vile.

  She’d never told anyone what he’d done. There’d been no one to tell, no one who cared. The person who should have cared already knew. She’d tried to forget. But there was no erasing his cruelty. The scars were on her heart, in her soul.

  Even if she told someone now, they’d never believe her. It was her word against his. A whore’s kid or a respectable banker—whom they would believe wasn’t much of question. How could she stay here now? How could she live in this town, sleep at night, wake up in the morning, knowing he was here? She couldn’t live with herself if Caleb or his family found out.

  A rap on the door startled her, and she stifled a shriek. “Ellie?”

  Caleb’s voice. The voice of reason and sanity. She placed a hand on her chest and willed her racing heart to still. “Yes?”

  “Are you all right?”

  She looked at herself in the mirror, a stricken, hollow-eyed girl, and ludicrously straightened her hair and her dress before going to the door, removing the chair as quietly as she could, and opening the barrier.

  “Are you sick?” A characteristic look of concern graced his features.

  “I think it’s the heat.” She stepped back and he entered.

  He reached for her wrist and pressed it gently between his thumb and fingers. “Perhaps that and all the excitement,” he agreed after a minute. “You should probably get some rest. People are starting to leave.”

  Ellie had to keep up appearances for his sake. “What should we do?”

  “I can see them out if you’d like to rest.”

  “Is he gone?”

  He nodded.

  “We’ll see them off together, and then I’ll lie down,” she suggested. To her own ears she sounded so calm.

  Caleb didn’t make a move to leave. “I’m sorry about Winston.”

  Her heart lurched and she was grateful he hadn’t been checking her pulse just then. She rationalized his words and realized he meant the incident just now on the porch. “Don’t apologize for him.”

  “I wanted this day to be perfect.” His deep soft voice held regret.

  She met his earnest gaze.

  “For you.”

  She’d never known anyone like Caleb in her life. She hadn’t known anyone like him existed in this foul world. She would never be able to face him again if he found out. “It was perfect. Thank you.”

  His posture relaxed. “And the ring? Do you like it? If not I can exchange it.”

  “Oh, no—I mean yes, I like it very much. But I didn’t expect something so—so…” She lifted her cast and looked at the sparkling ring on her hand. She’d never dreamed she’d have anything so beautiful.

  “Symbolic?”

  “No.”

  “Permanent?”

  “No, well, yes it’s that, but…I meant so grand!”

  “Just so you like it.”

  “I like it.”

  “Good. Let’s go say goodbye.”

  He guided her down the hallway and she descended the stairs ahead of him. Still shaky, but with a smile plastered on her face, she thanked each person who had come and accepted their good wishes.

  She was a phony, but she was getting pretty good at it. It took a lot of evasive tricks to keep from losing one’s mind, but she’d learned to hide and block out and pretend so well that it took a day like today to bring it all sharply back into focus.

  She spoke harshly to herself, remembering the rare gift of opportunity that she’d been given so recently. Was she going to let that man scare her into losing all she’d gained for her family?

  Winston Parker couldn’t hurt her here. He was her past, and as long as she kept him there she was safe. She was safe in Caleb’s house and as his wife. This was her refuge, and she meant to hang on to it.

  He can tell Caleb who you are. He can tell Caleb’s friends and family what kind of person he really married.

  She wanted to clamp her hands over her ears, but the warning voice was in her head. She never wanted to bring shame on Caleb and his family. She couldn’t bear the thought of the citizens of Newton learning that Caleb had aligned himself with Florence’s trash family, with a whore’s daughter.

  He already had enough troubles getting people to trust him and come to him for medical attention. As it was, they liked and respected him as a person, if not as a doctor. If they knew the truth about her, he would lose that esteem, too. She wouldn’t let that happen. Somehow she’d keep the secret.

  All the guests were gone, and the women from the restaurant finished cleaning up and packing their wares and left, too. Ellie gave Benjamin a spoonful of the powdered laudanum mixed in water and got him settled in the bedroom he and Flynn were to share.

  “It’s been a big day,” she said. “Get some rest now.”

  Benjamin looked at her with weary eyes and a grave expression only someone much older should wear. She didn’t know how much he knew or remembered about Winston Parker, and she’d never asked him. If he didn’t know—and she fervently hoped he didn’t—then she didn’t want to plant any questions in his mind. And if he did know, nothing either of them said would change what had happened.

  He’d been aware of the baby growing in her belly—that wasn’t something easily hidden and he’d been old enough to understand her condition. But he’d never asked her about the child, about what had happened to it, if it had survived the birth or died. And she hadn’t told him because she’d feared her mother finding out where the baby was or, worse, Winston learning. The less Benjamin knew, the better off he was, the more he could protect himself and Flynn.

  She didn’t see any hope in his eyes and that frightened her. She might have been jaded and pragmatic from a young age, but Ellie had always harbored a twinkle of hope that their situation could get b
etter—that if she did all the right things and worked hard, someday, some way, she and the boys would have the life they deserved.

  Ben’s bleak attitude showed he didn’t share her same vision. At least not yet. “Life is going to be good here,” she assured him. “I hate how you had to grow up, how we all grew up. It wasn’t normal, Ben. Other people don’t live like that. Other people live like this.” She gestured to the bed beneath him, the papered walls and the curtains at the window. “And now we live like this, too.”

  “You sold yourself for all this, Ellie.”

  Her ears rang. Her heart constricted, but she bristled and denied that hurtful accusation. “I did not sell myself! I am going to be Nate’s mother. That’s it.”

  “He’s a man, Ellie. You know what men want.”

  Why had he spoiled everything and said that? Her own fears had touched on that, but she’d stashed them and believed in Caleb’s sincerity. “He’s not like that. He’s not.”

  Benjamin’s icy blue gaze rankled her further. She stood. “Rest now. I’ll bring you some milk or tea later—which do you want?”

  “Don’t care.”

  “All right then.” She turned and left the room.

  Caleb poured water from a tub that had held ice into the azalea bushes behind the house.

  “You sure have a lot of friends,” Flynn said from behind him. He’d changed into a cotton shirt and a stiff new pair of denim pants that had to be rolled at his ankles, and he tagged alongside Caleb as he carried the tub through the deepening twilight to the back porch.

  “Yeah, I guess I do. Acquaintances anyway.”

  “What’s acquaintances?”

  “Those are people you know, but who are not necessarily your friends. I know a good many people. Few of them have proved to truly be friends.”

  “How can ya tell the diff’rence?”

  Caleb sat on the back steps and pondered that question. “Friends forgive you when you make a mistake. They believe the best of you and trust you. They listen if you have something you want to talk about.” He glanced at the boy when he said that, and Flynn seated himself with one foot on the second step and the other on a lower one, just like Caleb.