Mistletoe Courtship (20 page)

F
riday morning, before he opened his offices for morning patients Ethan paid a visit to the sheriff's office. After the rotten fruit basket Tuesday evening and Clara's transformation the previous night, he could no longer justify a private investigation on his own. But as he drove the buggy through the almost deserted streets he continued to second-guess himself.

He should have tried harder to secure a few moments' privacy with Clarence Penrose, subtly pick his brain about Clara's childhood.

He should have conducted the Tuesday afternoon visit with Clara like a medical visit, not a blasted confessional.

If only he knew
why
she'd transformed herself the previous night—a joke on him, for ignoring her most of the evening? A ploy to force his attention? Prove he was as helpless against feminine wiles as the next man?

He had spent another sleepless night, fighting all those ‘if onlys,' shadows he couldn't touch, feelings he couldn't ignore.

Whatever alchemy Clara had contrived with her hair, the result had taken his breath away. She had looked…beautiful. Bewitching.

And he was questioning her sanity.

God help me,
he prayed the last four blocks to the town hall, where the sheriff's office resided.

Canterbury did not have a jail; on the infrequent occasions when confinement was required, law enforcement transported miscreants to the jailhouse in the town of Fairfax. Ethan pulled the horse to a stop in front of the sturdy redbrick building, for several moments staring blindly between the horse's ears before he heaved himself out of the buggy. Sheriff Millard Gleason's office was on the first floor, where tall windows allowed him to survey the busiest blocks of Main Street. When Ethan pushed open the door, the sheriff had just poured himself an earthenware mug of eggnog.

“Morning, Dr. Harcourt. What brings you to town so early in the morning?”

“My first appointment's at nine, so I'll need to head back shortly. But I…” he fought, and lost, the final battle with his heart “…I need to alert you about a…I'll call it a situation.”

The sheriff's congenial expression disappeared. “What are you saying here, Dr. Harcourt? I take it this is an official call, then?”

Ethan crossed his legs, fingers hovering at his waistcoat pocket before he reluctantly pulled out the notes. “I might have a problem. But my, ah, dilemma, seems to have progressed from mischief or medical, to legal, and I don't like my conclusions. Someone's been leaving me these notes.” With a sinking sensation hollowing his gut, he handed them to the sheriff. “No signature, no return address. Only the first one was postmarked.”

Gleason swiftly read them, shaggy eyebrows drawing together. “Hmmph. By themselves, benign. Read all together, I can see why you're concerned. One with the postmark's from Washington, D.C. Inconclusive as far as tracking it down. What happened to this one?” He held up a discolored, rumpled note.

“Tuesday night when I returned home from evening rounds, I almost tripped over a basket of rotten fruit. That missive was stuck between two rotten apples. There were also rotten potatoes, moldy bread—and two rotten eggs. The stench was so bad I had to hire a man to scour the entire porch.”

“I can imagine. Note still stinks a bit, too.” Scowling, Gleason read through all three again, grunting a bit over the last one. “‘More will be coming, because you deserve more,'” he read, his frown deepening. “Considering the mode of delivery, I'm inclined to agree with you, Doc. This constitutes more of a threat than a malicious prank. So why didn't you bring this to my attention first thing Wednesday?”

Ethan shifted. The back of his neck felt as though an iron spike was shoving its way to the base of his skull. “Because until the rotten fruit, it was just the notes, and they're phrased very…ambiguously. I tried to fob them off as trivial incidents, annoying rather than posing any sort of problem. When I was a congressman, this sort of thing happened all the time—the price one pays for serving the public. You learn to ignore most of them unless a specific threat is tendered.”

“You're no longer a congressman.” The sheriff's fingers, thick as cigars, were nonetheless nimble as he spread each note out on the desk. “So. I think the reason you've waited until now to bring those notes to me is because you have an idea who's behind this.”

“I do.” Ethan sat forward, while inside the sickness swam in tightening circles. “Evidence is circumstantial, a bit of conjecture. The last thing I want to do is impugn the reputation of a lady.”

Gleason rumbled an agreement. “Handwriting's definitely female. From what I hear and see, there's not an unattached woman in Canterbury who hasn't eyeballed you for potential husband material, you being a fine-looking fellow and a
widower. You don't strike me as a man who deliberately tramples a lady's delicate feelings, but it appears you have ruffled a feminine feather or two?”

“Not intentionally, except for…one.”

“Ah.” The sheriff picked up his mug of eggnog. “Well, get on with it, then. Do what you came here to do. Who's the suspect, Doctor?”

Ethan closed his eyes, braced himself, then faced the sheriff and stated flatly, “Clara Penrose.”

“What!” Gleason choked on the eggnog. “Clara Penrose?” he spluttered after he quit coughing. “Clara's about as sly and secretive as a brass band. Woman's got a mouth on her, that's a fact, and she's never been shy about stating her opinion. But she's a
Penrose.
I mean, the family helped found this town. Their roots go back to the Revolution. Her father's law firm is one of the most respected on the east coast.”

“Don't you think I know all that?” Ethan stood, paced the room. “Albert Penrose is my friend. I've eaten meals with the family, I've observed them in social settings. I worship with them.” He whirled around and pounded his fist on top of Gleason's desk. “I feel like a Judas! But she's…she's…There are indications. Habits—”

He couldn't do it. He simply could not break confidence, not with Clara.
Even her family doesn't know.
Yet she'd bared her heart's passion for writing…with him.
But why? God? Why?
“I'm a physician,” he ground out. “Regardless of the improbability, if Clara Penrose wrote those notes, my first priority is to determine the motivation. To diagnose whether her actions are malicious rather than medical. Then, if possible, to help her. But without proof, provided by trained officers of the law, I can confront neither her nor her family with any authority.”

“Take it easy, Dr. Harcourt. I see your point. You're in a difficult position. Come on, have a seat. Drink some eggnog. I'll
tell you what I'm going to do.” The sheriff snagged a second mug from a shelf, then poured some eggnog out of a large mason jar. “I won't mention any names, but I'll have a word with Donald Fitzwalter—he's Canterbury's postmaster. Ask him to keep an eye out for any correspondence mailed to you without a return address. Also, either myself or one of my deputies will immediately commence keeping an eye on your place. Discreetly, mind you. No names will be mentioned to anyone but my two deputies. If anyone comes snooping around, we'll catch 'em in the act. But I can pretty much guarantee it won't be Clara Penrose.”

 

By Saturday afternoon, while carefully packing fruitcake, snickerdoodles and two jars of preserves into a basket, Clara finally admitted the truth—she had fallen in love with Ethan Harcourt. Instead of the heavens opening with golden trumpets, her eyes stupidly teared up.

Her fingers fumbled with a silver ribbon she was weaving around the handle of the basket; twice she had to wipe her cheeks with the back of her hand. Despite Louise's overly romantic soul, despite the evidence in literature, poems—even Bible stories—Clara had never believed love rendered a person brainless. Yet what else could account for her stubborn refusal to scrap her “counter-courtship campaign” after Ethan had left the dinner party Thursday night with that barely civil departure?

“Intolerably rude,” her mother had pronounced after the door shut behind him. Then she turned a glacial stare upon her two daughters. “As for you and your sister, I trust there will be no repeat of this ill-timed and inappropriate conduct.”

“But, Mother, did you see the look on Dr. Harcourt's face?” Louise unwisely pointed out. “I think Clara poleaxed him. That's why his leave-taking smacks of rudeness.”

After her mother had excoriated Louise for her vulgarisms, she'd swept out of the room. Clara had hugged her sister and escaped to the sanctuary of her cottage.

Miserably, she finished her first “secret gift” basket by covering it with a bright red tea towel, newly decorated with green holly leaves embroidered in each corner. She'd stayed up until three in the morning doing the needlework, her eyes burning along with her heart.

She wanted to believe Louise was right about Ethan's expression; it was difficult, however, when Clara felt more like the ugly duckling who had grown into an equally ill-favored duck instead of a swan. Here she was, thirty-one years old, supposedly content to be the erudite spinster of the family.
Quit lying to yourself, Clara.
Ethan's ice-tipped comment, shorn of any emotion—
She looks lovely
—had wounded her deeply. If she hadn't cared so much, if his earlier honesty and tenderness had not tricked her into trust, she wouldn't have cared two figs about his indifferent reaction to Louise's handiwork.

Love. One either soared on its wings, or sank like a stone into a bog of self-pity.

Rubbish.
Next she would pen bad poetry instead of competent prose. Sigh over sunsets, weep by a window—a reluctant smile at last brightened Clara's mood.

Well, then. Tonight she had promised to join a group of carolers, comprised mostly of members of various church choirs, along with other townsfolk who, like Clara, possessed some level of musical training. Unless she quit mooning over her basket of goodies and instead set about delivering it, she wouldn't make it to the meeting spot on the front steps of the town hall by seven o'clock.

Moments later she let herself out of the cottage and set off down the street. The afternoon was cold, but not unpleasant. With sunbeams slanting sideways through the elms, Clara
made her way to the livery stable on the edge of town, basket clutched firmly in her gloved hand. She could have walked the mile or so to Ethan's house, but she risked being seen by too many people, all of whom would ask too many nosy questions. She also refused to borrow the family runabout, because a family interrogation was worse than good-natured nosiness. Amos Todd would rent her a hack, no questions asked. She would simply tell any loiterers who perpetually gathered around the stable to gossip that she had walked to town, then decided to follow up on some duty calls which required a buggy.

Truth sometimes served better than sleight-of-handing explanations.

By the time she pulled the trap to a halt a block away from Ethan's house, streaks of red-orange and salmon pink fingered across the western sky; shadows had lengthened, allowing Clara to dart from tree to tree as she approached the house from the side opposite the door to his offices. A fine sense of the absurd fluttered beneath her breastbone, along with a recklessness that throughout her life presaged nothing but trouble.

She ducked behind the screen of some unpruned English boxwood, waiting for a carriage to roll by in the street, then two schoolboys furiously pedaling bicycles to disappear around the corner. Perhaps she would write her next letter to the editor of a ladies' magazine, warning about the irrational behavior precipitated by a heart in the throes of love.

Her family and friends…heavens, the entire community, would never believe that Clara Penrose could skulk through the bushes outside a gentleman's home. Grinning now, she hurried across to Ethan's front porch. It was half past four, and she knew his Saturday hours ran late, usually until almost six. He would still be busy with patients, all of whom would use the door on the other side of the house, leaving the front porch nicely deserted.

After some swift internal debate, Clara deposited the basket in the middle of the porch, beside the afternoon paper. The recklessness shimmied through her in a delicious shiver; she dashed back toward the boxwoods, her mind on her next “Ethan Project” until from the corner of her eye she spotted movement in the shadows off to her right. Seconds later Deputy Michael O'Shea stepped out from behind the trunk of a white pine. Arms dangling, mouth half-open in disbelief, he gawked at her as though he couldn't decide whether to socialize—or flatten her with his billy club.

Thoughts scattered, Clara gathered her skirts in her hands and ran for the rental buggy.

S
aturday proved to be a viciously long day for Ethan. First patient of the morning was Saul Porter, who had to be told the pain was due to an incurable cancer. After that he treated seven cases of chicken pox, two of mumps, set one broken arm and two broken fingers, then puzzled over an inexplicable rash. A little past five o'clock he was about to draw his first deep breath of the day when Patricia Dunwoody dropped by with a trumped-up complaint about a dry cough.

“Tonight I'm going caroling. I was afraid not to see you, in case there's something wrong.”

Ethan avoided the sweetly smiling eyes, examined her, and pronounced her in perfect health, the cough likely due to dryness in the air. “Suck on some peppermint drops,” he suggested. “Take in as many fluids as possible. Nonalcoholic, of course.”

She colored up prettily, and a coy smile tipped the corners of her mouth. “Of course, Dr. Harcourt. Um…would you like to join us with the caroling this evening?” she tried next. “We're always in desperate need of gentlemen who can carry a tune, and I've heard on good authority that you've a fine tenor voice.”

Now his face heated. “I don't think so, Miss Dunwoody.”

“Please reconsider. There's something wonderful about singing Christmas carols on a clear winter's night, bundled up with all your friends and neighbors, strolling the streets.” She paused before adding casually, “Clara will be there. She doesn't have much of a voice, but she does have a good ear. You know she teaches piano?” Ethan managed a nod. Patricia finally picked up a fur-trimmed wool coat and slid her arms into the sleeves. “It's none of my business, of course, but I've known Clara all my life. Underneath her bluestocking ideas and annoying habits is a very nice person, Dr. Harcourt. She and I butt heads a lot, but…I wouldn't want her to be hurt by misunderstandings, or expectations fueled by erroneous gossip.”

“I don't know, or care, about town gossip.” Teeth grinding, Ethan restrained his temper. Barely. Protestations and denials would only fan the flame, so he mustered up a smile. “I'm pretty rusty at it these days, but I used to enjoy singing. Perhaps I'll join you after all, Miss Dunwoody. Thanks for the invitation.”

Surprise flared in her face. While he maintained the upper hand Ethan, plying her with questions about the caroling, managed to usher her out to her waiting runabout. Dusk had fallen, the air turning colder. Streetlights threw out yellow smears of light against a darkening sky. Shivering a little, Ethan waited until Patricia expertly backed the horse, and waved as she drove away.

Clara will be there,
Miss Dunwoody had slyly informed him. Might as well slice open a vein and let his blood drip down the middle of Main Street, since apparently nothing about his life passed unnoticed. In a burst of unspent fury he scooped up a couple of acorns, and hurled them across the street. He was no longer a politician—he was a physician, for crying out loud. What gave these people the right to poke about his private life,
speculate on his personal relationships with others? Skin crawling, Ethan stalked around to the front porch to fetch the afternoon paper, and found Mick O'Shea, the deputy sheriff, sitting in one of the old cane-bottom rocking chairs the previous owner had left with the house.

O'Shea tipped his bowler back and nodded to Ethan, a grim look carving deep lines on his weather-beaten face. “Dr. Harcourt. Been waiting for you a spell.” Lackadaisically he struck a match on the bottom of his shoe, lit a kerosene lantern sitting beside the chair. Light spilled across the porch, limning a wicker basket covered with a red cloth, sitting beside the paper some six yards away from Ethan. “Saw the person who left that there basket, I did. And I wouldn't be wanting to alarm ye, but 'twould seem you had the way of it. Miss Clara Penrose left it, and she wasn't wanting to be seen committing the act.”

If O'Shea had punched him in the solar plexus with his billy club, Ethan couldn't have felt more sickened. With a feeling of unreality he walked across to the basket. A perky silver ribbon had been wound around the handle, ending with a fancy bow at one corner. The faint aroma of some kind of spice tickled his nose when he hesitantly picked the thing up.

He supposed he should be grateful that she hadn't left rotten fruit this time.

“You wanting me to examine that for you first, Dr. Harcourt?”

He hadn't even noticed that the deputy had approached, and now hovered at his side. “No, thanks. I'll do it. Put the lantern on the railing, if you don't mind, so I can see.” Fingers numb, Ethan fumbled the cloth aside, then stared at the contents, a lump swelling in his throat. Silently he carried the basket back over to the rocking chairs and sank down in the one O'Shea had vacated. One by one he lifted out the objects, holding them where the lantern light fell. A sack full of cookies, dusted with
sugar sprinkles. A loaf of fruitcake, which he quickly set aside, his stomach turning over. Fruit…Two jars of preserves.

No note.

“Thanks for waiting,” he told the deputy. “I'll come by in the morning to talk to the sheriff. I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't mention this to anybody.”

“I'm to stay hereabouts till midnight. If you're of a mind, I'll ask the sheriff to send along a replacement. Don't be needing mischief to befall ye, Doc.”

“That won't be necessary. And you may as well go home to your wife. I'm…not going to be here this evening. I'm going caroling.” Bitterness lapped over him at the prospect of singing merry Christmas melodies elbow to elbow with Clara.

Bitterness, however, was preferable to despair.

After the deputy reluctantly clumped down the porch steps and vanished into the gloom, Ethan carried the basket inside. In the silent house, the steady tick-tock of the handsome cherry wall clock he'd inherited from his father only magnified his isolation. Ignoring the time—he needed to leave in half an hour to make it to the town square by seven—he dumped the contents of the basket on the kitchen table. For some moments he sat, chin resting on the heel of his hand while he contemplated the condemnatory evidence.

Eventually he gave in and selected one of the cookies, sniffed it. If she'd laced it with some kind of poison, or any of several noxious substances designed to incapacitate but not kill, he wanted to find out now. Memories danced in ethereal will-o'-the-wisps around his head—Clara, talking to a pile of leaves with a real or imagined turtle buried in them; Clara, walking in graceful solitude to the front of the church to lay the charm on the corner of the dais; Clara, listening to him bare his soul….
Dear God. I don't know what to do.
He had no choice but to believe O'Shea, yet he could not abandon entirely his own ob
servations, or yes, blast it, his feelings, which insisted that Clara Penrose was not capable of this level of deceit. All the evidence accumulated against her remained circumstantial, not definitive enough to convict her of any crime but driving
him
crazy.

If amoral thieves and murderers hadn't hanged him in the southwestern desert, surely God did not intend him to perish at the hands of a spinster who talked to cats and turtles. A spinster whose personality shone with the brightness of the North Star…His free hand fumbled inside the pocket of his vest, closing around the tiny silver charm.

Abruptly he bit off half the cookie, chewed and swallowed.

Flavors exploded in his mouth—of nutmeg and sugar and vanilla, a delicious concoction too irresistible for a man who hadn't eaten since breakfast, not to mention a man who stood on the brink of destruction. Five minutes later he'd eaten every one of the cookies. As he poured himself a glass of tepid limeade from the bottle the housekeeper had left in the icebox, he finally faced a truth far less palatable than the cookies.

He'd fallen in love with a woman who baked like an angel, yet who might very well be clinically insane.

 

Clara shifted from foot to foot, shivering a little despite the smothering confines of coat, hat, muff and a muffler wound at the moment over half her face. It was five past seven and Jeremiah Fiske, choir director at the local Catholic church, was, with limited success, attempting to arrange the milling carolers.

“…so that each group of four comprises a harmonious whole. Please remember this endeavor will offer much more musical satisfaction to the listeners when sung in harmony.”

“I only know the melodies,” one of the men called out.

“Can I stay with my aunt? She sings off-key if I don't help her…”

“I have to leave by nine….”

Finally everyone was collected to Mr. Fiske's satisfaction. Clara was paired with another alto because her voice, though true, possessed little carrying power. The other three members of her little ensemble worshipped at the Methodist church; Clara had a nodding acquaintance with them but set off gamely despite learning on their first carol—“Lo, How a Rose e'er Blooming”—that Mr. Klausner, the tenor, sang with more force than purity.

It looked to be a long, chilly night.

Halfway through “O Little Town of Bethlehem” she sensed movement in the darkness to her left, and Mr. Klausner's voice faltered. She heard the rumble of a whispered exchange as another man pressed against her shoulder close enough that she felt him inhale a deep breath before he joined the carolers with a magnificently pure tenor that tripped Clara's heart. Almost unconsciously she angled her head to better blend her light alto with the new man's voice.
“No ear may hear His coming,/But in this world of sin,/Where meek souls will receive Him still/The dear Christ enters in…”

She lost herself in the sheer joy of singing beside a man who surely must have Irish in his blood, so reverentially soaring was his voice. When Mr. Fiske signaled the carolers to move along, Clara twisted her head to compliment the newest member of her little ensemble. “You've a marvelous tenor,” she began, except the group passed beneath one of the wreath-decked streetlamps, and she caught a glimpse of the singer's face. The rest of the words caught in her throat.

“I'm glad you think so,” Ethan returned, light and life now stripped from his tone. “You're a marvelous cook, Miss Penrose. I ate every one of the cookies, which is why I was late arriving. I, ah, persuaded Mr. Klausner that his services had been requested for a section lacking a strong tenor voice,
because I wanted to let you know my feelings about your anonymous gift.”

The cookies? He must have discovered the basket, then. Should she be warmed or piqued that he had instantly divined the identity of the giver? “How do you know I left the basket?”

Above her head a sound like a hiss escaped. A strong hand clamped down on her shoulder. Even through the thick wool caplet draped over her long coat she felt the commanding strength of his grasp. “I'd like to say I recognized your handiwork. But the truth is—”

“All right, everyone,” Mr. Fiske announced. “For our next song, ‘It Came Upon a Midnight Clear,' we'll start with just the ladies. Gentleman, join in on the second verse.”

He hummed the starting note, and all female voices save one launched into the song. Ethan's hand slid down her arm, burrowed beneath the cape so that he could grasp her elbow. “We're going to have a little chat,” he whispered into her ear as he relentlessly herded her away from the carolers.