Bicycle Built for Two (31 page)

Good Gad, but Kate Finney had taught him a
lot of things about himself. Many of them were dashed
uncomfortable, too.

A strange sound from the room next door had
just penetrated Alex’s concentration when Kate sat up with a jolt.
“Ma!” She scrambled toward the edge of the bed.

Understanding struck Alex. Kate’s mother was
in distress, and Kate, whose senses had been honed during
months—perhaps years—of listening and worrying, had discerned it in
her sleep before Alex, fully awake, had done so. He reached out and
caught her before she could fall out of the bed.

“What?” She turned to look at him,
groggy-eyed, then shook her head as if she didn’t know where she
was.

“You’re all right, Kate. Here, let me help
you out of bed. The bed’s tall, and you’re not, so you might have a
drop.” With exquisite care, Alex lifted her down from the bed. She
swayed slightly, but steadied herself at once. Again, Alex got the
feeling she’d had lots of practice in bounding out of bed and being
alert. She’d had to be.

“It’s Ma,” she said in a voice gravelly with
sleep.

“Yes,” said Alex. “Here, take my arm.”

“I don’t need help.”

Alex sighed. “I know. Take my arm anyway.
It’s dark, and I know my way around the house better than you
do.”

Evidently that made sense to her, because
she didn’t argue, but hurried to the door, not quite allowing him
to lead her, but not trying to shake him off. The lamp in the hall
had been turned down. Alex didn’t bother to turn it up, figuring he
could do that after he got Kate to her mother’s side. Mrs. Finney
was still coughing and gasping. It hurt to hear her. Alex knew how
exhausting these coughing fits were for her. She had so little
strength to begin with, and then to choke like that seemed to sap
what energy she had left. He discovered himself sucking in breath
in an attempt to help the sick woman, and made himself stop.

“I should have made her sleep sitting up. I
know better than to let her lie down flat like that.”

“It’s not your fault, Kate. You always do
the best you can,” Alex assured her. “You can’t think of everything
every time.”

“I should have thought of that this time.”
She pushed the door open and rushed inside, bumping her hip against
a table set against the wall next to the door. She didn’t even seem
to notice, so Alex winced for her. He almost grinned, thinking what
useless occupations wanting to breathe for her mother and assume
Kate’s pain were.

“Ma!”

Mrs. Finney couldn’t talk for coughing, so
Alex turned up the light. It didn’t illuminate the room much, but
he could see that Kate had flung herself on the bed and put her
arms around her mother. She lifted Mrs. Finney into a sitting
position and held a handkerchief to her mouth. Mrs. Finney’s eyes
didn’t open, although tears of stress leaked out through the
tightly squeezed lids. Watching and wishing he could do
something—anything—to help, Alex understood that the ordeal of
Hazel Finney’s life was almost over.

What an awful pity her life had been, too.
Until this minute, he’d never fully understood how cruel and unfair
the fates could be. He allowed himself to wonder if there was any
order to the universe, or if everything worked by chance. He didn’t
like thinking of life as a haphazard affair, over which one had no
control. Shaking off the thought, he asked, “Is there anything I
can do, Kate?”

Kate didn’t turn around. “No. Thanks,
Alex.”

“Some hot tea with honey? Something to
soothe her chest?”

“Tea? Yeah. Sure. That would be nice.
Thanks.”

She was humoring him in the hope he’d go
away and quit pestering her. Alex heard the impatience in her
voice. With a short shake of his head, he did her a favor, left the
room, and went downstairs to the kitchen. He was by no means an
expert on where things were stored in that room, but he found the
brandy bottle his mother kept in a high cupboard for medicinal
purposes. Alex was absolutely certain that Kate wouldn’t approve of
dosing her mother with alcohol, but he figured Mrs. Finney wouldn’t
live long enough to become addicted to the demon that had ruined
her husband, and he’d heard more than once that brandy soothed a
cough.

In fact . . . Drawing from snippets of
conversations he’d heard between his mother and Mrs. Gossett, Alex
poured some brandy into a glass, stirred in some honey, boiled some
water in the kettle, added hot water to the mixture, stirred, and
shrugged. Couldn’t hurt. Might help. If anything at all could help
Hazel Finney, Alex would like to provide it for her. This was
little enough, God knew.

He trotted back upstairs and into Mrs.
Finney’s room. She’d stopped coughing in favor of gasping for
breath. His soul hurt for both of the Finney ladies when he saw
them. Kate still held on to her mother as if she didn’t want to
release her for fear she’d slip away from her forever. Mrs. Finney
looked as if she were dead already, although she fought hard for
breath. He walked softly over to the bed. Kate wasn’t crying. As
far as he knew, Kate never cried unless she was caught unawares or
so overwhelmed as to forget herself.

“I brought some medicine,” he said,
wondering if he were lying. Deciding it wasn’t quite a lie, he
amended it. “I mixed up a tonic.”

Shaking her head, Kate said, “She can’t take
anything yet.”

Without arguing, Alex pulled up a chair.
“I’ll set it on the table. Perhaps she’ll be able to drink it in a
while.”

Kate nodded her acquiescence. Alex allowed
himself a very short feeling of triumph. At least she hadn’t
hollered at him to take the glass away and lose himself somewhere.
Knowing he was courting a sharp retort, he asked his next question
anyhow. “How’s she doing?”

Kate didn’t snap at him. “Not very well.”
She turned bleak eyes to him. “Not well at all.”

He shook his head, knowing any words from him
would be superfluous.

Thirty minutes later, when Mrs. Finney was
nearly unconscious with fatigue, Kate managed to pour a little of
Alex’s tonic down her throat. “Does that help any, Ma?”

Alex was amazed at how firm and jolly Kate’s
voice sounded. The circumstances were so dismal, he’d have expected
them to vibrate in her tone of voice. Not with Kate Finney. Kate
was superior to circumstances, sort of like she was superior to
logic. He’d have laughed at his little joke if it weren’t for the
aforementioned circumstances.

A murmur of assent came from Mrs. Finney.
Alex hoped she wasn’t just agreeing because she thought she should.
Before she offered her mother his tonic, Kate had forced her to sip
from her flask. It was almost empty, and Alex’s heart suffered a
sharp spasm when the knowledge that the medicine, which was
supposed to have lasted all weekend, had been consumed in a mere
day. She was sinking fast, there was nothing anybody could do about
it, and the knowledge ate into him like acid. He couldn’t even
imagine what Kate must be going through.

At last, Mrs. Finney fell into an exhausted
sleep. Watching her and listening to her labored breathing, he knew
what he had to do. He reached for Kate, but she shook her head.

“I’d better stay here for the rest of the
night, Alex. She’s in pretty bad shape tonight. I guess the day was
too much for her.”

A pang of guilt smote him. “I’d hoped the
country air and relaxed country living would help her.”

“It’s not your fault. She wanted to come out
here. She loves it out here. The trip helped her heart and mind,
Alex. At this point, that’s the most important thing.”

“Thanks, Kate. That’s a generous thing to
say.”

As he might have predicted, Kate said,
“Nuts.”

Acting upon his prior resolution, Alex said,
“Stay here with her, Kate.”

“That’s just what I said I was going to do.”
She rubbed eyes that must have been gritty with lack of sleep.

“That’s not what I meant. What I meant was
that you should stay with her and not go back to Chicago. You can’t
go back to the city and leave her here, and you can’t take her back
to Chicago with you. The trip might— It might be bad for her
health.” He’d been going to say that the trip might kill her, but
good sense kicked him in the head and he modified the statement
before it left his lips.

Kate bowed her head. “I can’t let you take
over my responsibilities, Alex.”

Dash it, there she went again. With rather
more force than was necessary, Alex hauled another chair up next to
Kate’s. Fortunately, a thick braided rug, pieced together by his
grandmother more than forty years before, prevented the chair legs
from clunking against the wood floor. He placed a hand on her arm,
squeezing slightly so she wouldn’t try to escape before he’d said
his piece. “You’re going to marry me, Kate Finney, and I’m going to
take care of your mother and you from now on.”

That caught her attention. Her head jerked
up so fast, Alex was surprised he didn’t hear her neck snap.
“What?” Fortunately for her mother and Alex, a frog had taken up
residence in Kate’s throat, so the word didn’t come out as a
shout.

“You heard me.”

She blinked at him, as if she were in a
thick mist. “I— I don’t think so.”

“You don’t think what? You don’t think you
heard me, or you don’t think you’re going to marry me?”

After a significant pause, Kate muttered,
“Both.”

He was having none of that. “You heard me,
and you are going to marry me. You have no choice. I won’t allow
you another choice.”

“Alex . . .”

“No arguments, Kate. You need me. I want to
help you. You’re going to marry me. I’ll help your mother and your
brothers and you, and my mother will be ecstatic. She thinks you’re
a peach.”

“She doesn’t know me.”

He grinned. “True, but I won’t tell
her.”

Her eyes narrowed and her face began to take
on its customary rebellious cast. Alex braced himself. This was one
argument he didn’t plan to lose.

“I can’t marry you, Alex.”

“Why not?”

Again, she stared at him for several seconds
before answering. Then she spoke judiciously. It was the first time
he’d ever heard her be judicious. “Marriage is a lifetime
commitment. It’s not something to be taken lightly.”

“Marriage to me would mean a lifetime of
comfort for you.”

She shook her head. “You don’t know what
you’re talking about if you think marriage is comfortable for a
woman, even if you’re rich.” Her tone was as dry as her mother’s
flesh.

He felt his lips tighten and endeavored to
relax them. He didn’t appreciate her sarcasm under these
circumstances. “Dash it, Kate, you know very well that I can offer
you a better life than the one you have. And I’ve already told you
I’ll help your mother and your brothers, too.”

“Marriage is about more than helping people,
Alex.” She’d adopted a lecturing tone, as if she were trying to
impart a lesson to a slow student.

“Of course, but it encompasses helping each
other, too.”

Although he couldn’t account for it, she
seemed to be getting angry. Now why, he wondered, should a proposal
of marriage from a personable and well-to-do young man create a
mood of anger in a young woman who needed help? He knew the answer
to that one. It was because this was no ordinary young woman. This
was Kate Finney, a female who carried a chip on her shoulder the
size of Gibraltar and who was about as irrational and outrageous as
a young woman could get. It was good luck for him, he supposed,
that they were in her mother’s sickroom, or she’d probably have
started hollering at him by this time.

“Marriages are supposed to happen between
people who have affection for one another, Alex. And you can’t very
well say you have any affection for me.”

“That’s not true, Kate. I have a good deal
of affection for you.”

She eyed him skeptically, which irked
him.

“I do,” he declared. He didn’t dare say he
loved her. While it was true—or he thought it was—he was absolutely
positive she wouldn’t believe him. He didn’t quite believe it
himself.

“Well,” said she, “I still won’t marry you.
I guess it would be best if Ma stayed here, but I won’t stay with
her. I need to get back to Chicago and my jobs. I’ve never depended
on anyone else in my life, and I don’t intend to start now. I—” She
sucked in air thick with her mother’s illness and her own despair.
“I can’t.”

“Nonsense. I’m offering you a much better
life than you can achieve on your own, and you know it.”

She eyed him as if she didn’t know what to
make of him, and Alex thought suddenly that she might have a point.
He wasn’t altogether sure what to make of himself, actually.
Although her hesitation aggravated him, it did serve to point out
to him, as if he need another pointer, that marriage to Kate Finney
could easily turn out to be a mighty uncomfortable proposition.

He hadn’t intended to take no for an answer,
but her refusal, while irritating, had also served to shake his
confidence. All of the obstacles to a happy union between them rose
up in his mind’s eye. He stood suddenly. “I want you to think about
it, Kate. Seriously.” She still looked skeptical, so he growled, “I
mean it, Kate.”

“Right.” She saw him bridle and hastened to
add, “I mean, I will, Alex. I will. Honest.”

He stood looming over her for another minute
or so, but she didn’t give any hint that she aimed to change her
mind any time soon. Again Alex wondered if this might not be a
lucky escape for him. He shook his head hard, not liking the
implications of that thought. After hovering for long enough to
make himself nervous, although his tall presence didn’t seem to
trouble Kate, he turned on his heel and marched out of the
room.

Kate stared after him, not sure if she was
awake or asleep. She feared she was asleep, since she couldn’t
honestly believe Alex English would have proposed to her in real
life. If that could be considered a proposal.