Choices of the Heart (32 page)

The answer doubled Esther over as though she too had received a knife thrust in the middle, right through her vital organs—Zach had stopped believing in peace between the families when she came along and he fancied himself in love with her.

Keep running.

The one who had penned that note was right. She should go, and keep going. Change her name so as not to accidentally shame her parents. Let them believe she died. It would hurt them for a time, but they would recover. The townspeople would be sympathetic to parents who had lost their daughter to a tragic accident or illness, unlike losing her to sin.

“How long do we leave him in?” Gosnoll asked.

Esther started upright. She touched Zach’s brow. It felt cooler. So did his shoulder. Suddenly his teeth began to chatter as they often had during the fever. So strange, the body, with teeth chattering from too much cold and too much heat.

“Not any longer,” she said, “or we risk a lung fever.”

They wrapped him up again and carried him back. Once he lay on the mattress, Esther asked for another quilt, then another. Still he shivered.

“Let’s get some hot tea in him.” She kept her tone neutral so as not to show her fear that she had gone too far in her treatment in taking him to the pool. “Any kind of tea.”

“I’ll fetch it.” Hannah scurried away.

“We don’t have any real tea,” Mrs. Brooks said. “There’s some of your herbs and the like.”

“It doesn’t matter. Plain hot water will do.” Esther chafed Zach’s hands. They were beautiful, long-fingered hands like Griff’s, like their mothers’. Holding them triggered a warm glow of affection like she held for her four brothers. Only touching Griff’s hands made her feel like she was a Lucifer match and he the rough surface needed to strike a flame. “Stay with us, my dear friend.”

His eyes fluttered open and looked straight into hers for a moment, then drifted shut.

“He knows you, girl,” Mrs. Brooks said. “He told me how he feels about you. You save his life and he’ll be wanting you around forever.”

“If he gets well,” Esther said with care, “he’ll owe it to the Lord, not any skill of mine.”

“True, true.” Mrs. Brooks nodded. “But he won’t see it all thatta way.”

Hannah entered the room carrying a pewter mug from which steam rose. “This was all I could find to use. There weren’t no broth left over.”

Esther’s nostrils flared. Poor Zach. It was willow bark tea and without any honey. It hadn’t seemed to help him much before, not being strong enough to ease his pain for long, but it was hot and wouldn’t hurt him.

She took the cup and, with Gosnoll holding Zach upright, guided the rim to his lips. “Just a few sips to warm you. It’s that awful bitter stuff, but it’s warm.” She talked and cajoled in her sweetest fashion, and the contents vanished down Zach’s throat a few drops at a time.

Gosnoll lay Zach down and stared at Esther with a bemused expression. “You’re good at this.”

“I’ve had a great deal of practice.” She fussed with Zach’s covers and with his hair. Still Gosnoll gazed at her. The more he gazed, the more she took up little things to occupy her.

And the further across the room Hannah retreated until she perched on the edge of the sofa beside her dozing father and brother.

They all looked exhausted. None of them had known much sleep over the past two weeks. The floor, even without rug or blanket, looked appealing. Esther sat cross-legged and made notations in her midwife’s notebook.

Soaked in cold natural pool for thirty minutes. Removed when shivering grew intense. Wrapped in blankets and gave one cup of white willow bark tea.

And right before dawn, Zach’s fever broke.

Griff reached Christiansburg in two days. He and his horse both dropping from fatigue, he spent money on a room and slept until hours past daybreak. From the one other time when he’d gone to the bank—that time with Zach and Henry Gosnoll—to open accounts for themselves and the mine, he knew to dress in a linen shirt and a coat and trousers made from wool despite the heat of the day. The other men wore neck cloths. Griff didn’t own one. Perhaps he should purchase one. And since he was there, he would buy ribbons for the girls, one for Esther too, some of that fancy thread Momma and Liza liked, and new slates and chalk for the schoolroom.

If they still had a teacher when he returned.

He certainly wanted her back. So did the children. Even Brenna admitted she missed the stories Miss Esther read to them, and Ned liked the way she let him bring bugs and things into the classroom if he could tell her something about them. Griff missed her voice when they sang. It was so rich and pure and smooth like fresh cream. He missed her woodland flower scent, her light step, the way she spoiled the stray cats like they were beloved relatives. He missed all the kindness she was lavishing on Zach.

If only the ridge had a doctor.

As though he conjured it from his imagination, he saw the shingle announcing that a doctor’s place of practice lay within. A rather good doctor, judging from the size of the house beyond the surgery—two stories and painted white with green shutters, two chimneys, and a profusion of roses in the front garden. A man like that would never come to the ridge to see the victim of a family feud. But Griff could ask him questions, perhaps buy some fancy medicine, anything to free Esther from her sense of obligation to remain at Zach’s bedside.

If she wanted to be free.

If she did, then he would find the opportunity for her. If she did not, he wouldn’t have wasted his time and would have aided his cousin.

He knocked on the door to the office.

A young woman perhaps three or four years older than Liza opened the door. She had eyes the color of moss and hair like the red stones they sometimes dug from the rocks, a startling and pretty combination. “I’m so sorry. I was expecting someone else.” Her voice was pretty too, lighter than Esther’s but just as smooth. “If you want to see the doctor, he’s still up at the house. Momma just got home from a lying-in and they’re having breakfast.” She looked him up and down. When her gaze reached his face again, it held interest. “You don’t look injured or ill. Can you wait a wee bit?”

Ears hot from her perusal, Griff shifted from one foot to the other and shoved his hands into his pockets. “I can come back later. I have some business that I can do first.” He started to turn away.

“Whom should I tell him to expect?” she called after him. “I’m forever forgetting to ask people their names.”

“Tolliver. Griff Tolliver.”

“Oh?” The little word held a page of curiosity.

Griff nodded and went about his business at the bank. They remembered him and ushered him in with the same respect they showed other customers, but he noted the differences in his appearance and theirs. Besides no neck cloth, he wore boots, not shoes, beneath his trousers, and he’d forgotten to cut his hair again.

On his way back down the street, he saw a barbershop and considered going in for a haircut, but the memory of Esther’s fingers twining through the hair on the back of his neck, then smoothing it down again, stopped him. If she liked it, he would leave it. If she liked it and it wasn’t just a distracting ploy on her part.

He continued to the doctor’s office.

This time a different woman answered the door. She was in early middle age, also strikingly pretty with dark red hair and brighter green eyes than the younger female. “Are you the Mr. Tolliver here to see my da?” she asked in a Scots burr.

Griff blinked. “Yes’m. Um, yes, ma’am. Doctor—” He hesitated, not sure he knew how to say the name on the door.

“Docherty. He’s waiting for you. I’m his eldest daughter, Melvina Docherty McWythie.” She led him along a narrow corridor with doors closed on either side until it reached an open room at the end. She dragged one foot a bit but otherwise moved with grace. “Da, this is Mr. Tolliver come back to see you.”

A big man rose from behind a desk. Light from the windows shone on gray hair still bearing enough red to show where the daughters had gotten theirs, but the eyes were pure, winter-day gray. He held out a broad hand. “I’m Rafe Docherty. How may I assist you?” He too spoke in that broad Scots burr so common in the mountains. “As my daughter said, you look hale and hardy to me.”

“I saw your sign and thought to ask for my cousin’s sake.” Griff glanced at the woman.

“I’m going back to my ledgers so you two can talk.” She smiled at Griff. “Do not let my da frighten you. He has not been a pirate for nearly thirty years.” With that odd remark, she swept from the room.

Griff arched one brow at the older man.

Docherty laughed. “I was ne’er a pirate, only a privateer. Now sit you down and tell me what you are asking for your cousin.”

“He’s got an infection from a stab wound,” Griff began.

“That sounds bad. Where is it?”

“Right above the hip.” Griff touched his own side. “Got a wound there myself but didn’t suffer from the infection.”

“Odd, that, the two of you getting stabbed in the same place, no?” The gray eyes fixed on Griff, piercing as arrowheads, as Docherty picked up a quill pen and uncapped an inkwell.

Griff met the gaze and ignored the implied question. He wasn’t about to tell an outsider about the feuding. “The best thing to a doctor we have is a midwife with some healing skills.”

Docherty’s hand stilled in the act of dipping the quill. “A midwife, you say? An older lady then?”

“No, she’s right young. A bit younger than me.”

“So nae so much experience.” Docherty wrote something on a clean sheet of paper before him, his head bowed. “And you’re asking advice on how to treat a wound sepsis?”

“He has a fever eating away at him.”

“Ah, then ’tis throughout the body. Ver’ bad. We have not the medicines to treat such systemic fevers. We can only treat the symptoms and trust in God and the strength of the patient.” Docherty dipped his pen, wrote another word, then looked up. “What has this midwife healer young lady done for treating the fever?”

“I . . . don’t know.” Griff shifted on his chair, suddenly uncomfortable in his middle as though his breakfast weren’t settling well. “Wiping down with cold water. Some hot drinks.”

“Some willow bark tea, some cinnamon perhaps.” Docherty rose and crossed the room to a cabinet with dozens of tiny drawers. He began drawing them out and scooping fragrant powders into paper pokes. “I doubt she has much of the willow or cinnamon with her. What else? Feverfew? Aye, for certain.” He continued in this manner for several minutes, rattling off names of powders and liquids, until he had filled a basket with paper packets and tiny vials. Griff watched, his gut and mouth growing tighter by the moment.

Finally, Docherty carried the basket back to the desk and set it before Griff. “There now. That’ll suit her fine.”

“Will she know what these are all for?”

A stupid question. Of course she would.

“Aye, I am thinking she will. Now then, do you leave for home straightaway?”

“Yes.”

“Then come up to the house for some coffee and food before you go. My wife and other daughter would like to be meeting you, I am thinking.”

Him? A common man from the mountains, who didn’t know the right way to talk or dress? Griff eyed the basket, his hand twitching with the urge to grab it and bolt for the door before he learned what was wrong here.

But hot coffee and food sounded good before he made the long journey back into the mountains.

He followed Docherty to the house, where a pretty woman whose hair still showed flashes of its former gold greeted them with a warm smile and curious sidelong glance at Griff. The flirtatious younger daughter kept her gaze demurely downcast in front of her parents.

“Sit down, Mr. Tolliver,” Mrs. Docherty told him in a honey-and-cream voice like Esther’s. “Do you like anything in your coffee?”

He said he didn’t. He sat at a fine walnut table before a deep window overlooking the red and pink roses and other flowers he couldn’t name. Mrs. Docherty served him coffee. Miss Docherty served him warm rolls with butter and strawberry jam, slices of ham, and fresh raspberries. They gathered at the table, Dr. Docherty asked a blessing upon the meal, and four pairs of eyes fixed themselves upon him.

“Tell us about your mountains.”

“Tell us about this young midwife.”

The two eldest women spoke at the same time.

Griff looked to the doctor for help.

He smiled. “I’d like to know where you’re from first, Mr. Tolliver. Where is it?”

“Southwest of here,” Griff answered with care. “Along the New River. Some surveyor told us once it was seventy-five miles from here.”

“And no roads?” Miss Docherty exclaimed.

“Just a track,” Griff admitted.

“Do you have wild animals there?” Miss Docherty persisted.

“Sounds to me,” Mrs. McWythie murmured, “like they have some wild people.”

Griff’s fingers tightened on his knife. Fixing the elder daughter with a fierce glare, he said in his best mountain drawl, “We’re gettin’ civilized, ma’am. My family owns half a mountain and half a lead mine.”

“And you hired a teacher.”

Griff’s head snapped around to face Docherty. “You’ve . . . heard?”