Loving Linsey (2 page)

He shook his head and continued up the weather-warped stairs. God, it had been a long day. And it would prove even longer before it was through. He still had today's shipment to record in the books, instruments to clean, vaccinations to prepare for tomorrow's visit to Jenny Kimmell's, Reginal Fitz's article on typhlitis to study . . .

Yet Bleet had been his patient, and in all good conscience Daniel couldn't let the day end without stopping by to pay his last respects.

He nodded a greeting to the trio of men loitering at the corner of the L-shaped porch, enjoying their cigars and pipes, then stepped inside an entryway where people were clumped together as tight as wet batting. Not surprising, considering Horseshoe sat smack in the middle of cattle country—a whistle-stop between the rolling hills of central Texas and the piney woods of the eastern stretch—and any occasion, even the dismal ones, beckoned to folks like sharp whiskey after a trying day.

Still, the thought of including himself in the
mass seemed about as appealing as operating with a cross saw.

With a weary sigh, Daniel squared his shoulders and worked his way through bodies trussed, tied, and stuffed into varying shades of dark calico, gingham, and broadcloth. Humid heat rose from the press of people, making it as hard to breathe as it was to move. But he figured the faster he offered his condolences to Widow Haggar, the faster he could leave.

Daniel fielded a dozen or more greetings, as well as enduring the usual, “Hey, Doc Jr., think you could look at my . . . ?” He'd long since gotten used to the annoying nickname his neighbors had dubbed him with, but getting used to it and liking it were two different bottles of tonic.

Just as he started past the kitchen doorway, a raspy, “If it ain't the devil himself,” drew his attention inside, where he spied two friends sitting at a polished pine table, staking claim to what Daniel suspected was the only uncrowded spot in the house.

“Me and Oren were just wonderin' if you'd show up today.” Robert Jarvis waved him over. “Join us for a spell.”

Daniel allowed himself a momentary reprieve from the crowd and detoured in their direction. The faint odors of lamp oil and horse hide mixed with lye soap and spiced meat, and grew stronger as he moved into the dingy room. “I didn't think this house could hold so many people.”

“It can't—that's why we're in here.” Grinning
with typical good nature, Oren Potter stretched out his hand in greeting. “How do, Daniel?”

The blacksmith's meaty grip nearly crushed Daniel's hand, yet he grit his teeth and bore the man's strength. “Fair to middlin', Oren. How's that boy of yours?”

“That tonic you gave him has been workin' wonders. No more coughing.”

The unmistakable pride and relief in Oren's eyes and voice sent an unexpected pang through Daniel. God knew he'd never hear anything like that from his own dad. Daniel, Sr., was a crotchety old coot who rarely spared a kind word for anyone, much less his own son. Daniel knew it was just his dad's way. Nothing to do but accept it. But sometimes, when he watched Oren and Bryce Potter together, or heard Oren talk about the boy, he couldn't help but envy them their relationship.

“Glad to hear he's doing better,” Daniel said with a tight smile, though the sentiment came from the heart. Oren had all but destroyed the Rusty Bucket Saloon a few years back when his wife died. Daniel didn't want to think about how his friend would react if anything happened to his only child.

Steering the topic to lighter matters, Daniel curled his fingers around the back of a vacant chair and told Robert, “I saw you at the depot earlier. Did your mysterious package finally arrive?”

The thin wiry man slumped back and snorted. “He-ell, no. It weren't on the train again.”

“Don't know why you're keeping it a such a confounded secret,” Oren grumbled. “Just tell us what the dad-blamed thing is.”

“Wouldn't be much of a surprise then, would it now?”

“Surprise, my Aunt Wilhelmina! How long ago did you send for it? Six months ago? I'll bet your three hundred greenbacks are supplying some slicked-down swindler with all the fine liquor and fancy women he can handle.”

“You'll eat those words when it shows up on next week's train.”

Oren harrumphed. “That's what you said last week.”

“Ladies . . .” Daniel held up a palm and interrupted, “as much as I enjoy listening to the two of you whisper sweet nothings to each other, I'll have to take my pleasure another time.” Jarvis's package had his curiosity roused, too, but his work wouldn't get done by itself. Daniel scowled. Hell, he was starting to think like his father. “Any idea where I can find Emmaleen in this mob?”

“Last I saw, she was in the parlor,” Oren said.

Daniel nodded his thanks, then turned just as five feet, two inches of head-bent haste burst through the doorway and slammed into his front. He grunted at the impact; the black-clad figure bounced backward. Daniel reached out reflexively, closing his hands around slim shoulders that could only belong to a female.

Recognizing the fragile construction of flesh and bone under his hands, Daniel instinctively
drew her to him. The sweet scent of lavender filled his senses; a lush cushion of breasts pressed against his chest.

Ah, woman.

It had been so long since he'd held a woman this close that he'd almost forgotten what it felt like. That was the trouble with being one of only two physicians in the entire county: his responsibilities didn't allow time for much more than a passing greeting with the local ladies. But if one of life's finest pleasures insisted on throwing herself against him, he'd hardly object.

Especially if she happened to be a redhead, he decided, an appreciative smile inching across his face. He'd always had a weakness for women with red hair, and hers was the color of shimmering copper. A double row of thick ringlets tumbled down her back from the complicated knot at her crown.

All right, maybe he could squeeze a moonlit stroll into his schedule. It wasn't as if he'd be marrying the girl, or even courting her, God forbid. Just spending an evening with someone who wasn't bleeding, broken, or in need of a remedy.

Oh, yes, the idea was sounding better and better.

Until she tipped her head up.

Daniel's smile shrank.

Words he'd been told could charm water from a dry well died on his lips the instant he looked into the face of his own tribulation.

Linsey Gordon.

She stared up at him, her expression dazed,
green eyes glazed and blank, her complexion pale as bone china. . . .

Daniel released her as if she were made of carbolic acid. He'd never touched her before, not once in the ten years he'd known her, and the shock of it made his pulses jump like cold water on a hot skillet.

Despite his best effort, Daniel felt the old resentment surfacing inside him. Swift. Bitter. Uncontrollable. His hands—his prized hands, usually so sure and steady—began to shake. A film of fire crept across his vision. Even his head started reeling.

The strength of his anger toward her, even after all this time, rattled Daniel. He took a step backward, then another. The edge of the door frame finally jabbed him in the back, stopping his retreat. Nothing cowardly about it, he told himself, feeling a muscle in his eye twitch. Not when it took all the control he could muster not to throttle her.

The temptation must have shown in his eyes, for her gaze fell to the floor. A mumbled excuse he couldn't make out—didn't want to make out—cut through the silence in the room just before she dashed past him and the other men, out the back door.

Oren glanced at Robert and jerked his thumb toward Linsey's fleeing form. “What's got her so spooked?”

“Ole Bleet's ghost?” Jarvis snickered as if he'd actually said something funny. Neither Oren nor Daniel laughed.

Instead Daniel glared out the back door, his soul simmering at the sight of the woman running
across the yard, petticoats flapping, bustle bobbing. He couldn't begin to either guess or care about whatever force had sent her fleeing from the house. The woman could be running from death itself and he'd be damned if he'd lift a finger to stop it.

As far as he was concerned, Linsey Gordon had earned his malice the day she'd dumped his dreams into Horseshoe Creek.

Blindly, Linsey raced to the top of Briar Hill Road, not stopping until she reached the two-story Victorian-style house built by Great-Grandaddy Gordon nearly fifty years ago. Once she let herself inside, she pressed herself against the heavy oak door as if to barricade herself from the repugnance in Daniel's eyes. Of all the people to run into on the most tragic day of her life, why did it have to be him?

Oh, Lordy, she could hardly believe that for a moment there, she'd almost given into impulse, thrown herself into his arms, and begged him to set her broken world to rights.

How could she have been so desperate?

Worse, how could she have been so tempted?

With a distressed moan, she shut her eyes, then wished she hadn't. Her mind instantly filled with a picture of her laid out in a casket like Bleet Haggar's, wearing her daisy-chain necklace and best blue watered silk gown—the one she hoped to marry in someday. Her hands were crossed over her chest, her face pasty white. She saw Aunt Louisa and Addie clinging to each other, tears tracking down
their faces, the sound of weeping rolling down the grassy slopes of the Horseshoe cemetery. . . .

Her eyes snapped open. Oh, Lord, what had she done?

Somehow her legs brought her into the front room, past the massive blond fireplace of native stone to a damask settee surrounded by rose-printed armchairs. She sank down on the cushion, her black skirts billowing about her. Catching a glimpse of a white ribbon peeking out from beneath the sofa, Linsey bent low. A humorless laugh escaped her as she pulled the amulet from its hiding place. Tears sprang to her eyes, and through misty vision, Linsey traced the lucky shamrock trapped between two thin sheets of crystal rimmed in gold. Her Token of Good Fortune. The day she'd found it, Aunt Louisa had told her it would bring her luck. That day it had brought her Addie, the sister she'd always wanted but never thought she'd have. And over the next fifteen years, the good fortune had kept coming.

Where had the four-leaf clover been when she needed it most?

So much for her pocketfuls of charms. All of them had been utterly useless today, for despite them, she had done the unthinkable. She'd looked in a mirror in the house where a corpse had been laid out. She'd seen her reflection.

And now, before the end of the year, she . . . was going . . . to die.

Should you look in a mirror

in the house where a corpse does lie,

you'll see the reflection of the next to die.

“Y
ou did
what
?”

The exclamation resounded through the lace and light oak decor of Linsey's room late Sunday night.

It had taken two days to build up the courage to tell Addie the news. Two full days of anguish, misery, woe, and desperation.

Now as Linsey looked at the fair-haired woman sitting beside her on the canopy bed, she wished with all her heart that she could spare her sister this knowledge. But they had never kept a secret from each other before; this wasn't the time to start. If anyone had a right to know the truth, Addie did. Just because they'd become siblings by marriage rather than blood didn't make the bond between them any less strong. In fact, Linsey often wondered if they weren't closer than true sisters, because Adelaide Witt had been a wish granted rather than
a relative forced—proof positive that portents could be wonderful as well as dreadful.

Linsey reached over to clasp Addie's cool hand with her own. She looked deeply into the innocent hazel gaze fixed on her and calmly repeated, “I looked into a mirror at Bleet Haggar's wake.”

A taut stretch of silence followed, broken only by the steady tick-tock of the brass clock on her vanity table. Linsey didn't bother expanding on the statement. She didn't need to. The growing look of horror on her sister's face told her that Addie understood the ramifications of what she'd done.

“How could this possibly have happened?” she asked, her tone half disbelieving, half distressed.

Linsey spilled the sordid details, leaving out nothing. Well, except for her encounter with Daniel. Not only did it have no real bearing on the issue at hand, but neither did Linsey wish to relive what a fool she'd made of herself when she'd run into him. Thank God he'd pushed her away before she'd given into the temptation to throw herself into his arms and beg him not to let go. She'd done some embarrassing things in her short twenty years but that would have topped the list—because for all his healing ways, Daniel Sharpe was the last person she could ever, or would ever, go to for comfort.

When she finished relating the events, she folded her hands in her lap and waited, braced for Addie's response. One advantage to knowing someone for so long was being able to
anticipate how they would react in certain situations.

She wasn't disappointed.

“I can't believe this!” Addie cried. “How could you do such a reckless thing? You're usually so careful!”

“How was I supposed to know there was an uncovered mirror in the bedroom? All the others had sheets draped over them.”

“You shouldn't have been in the bedroom in the first place.”

Linsey crossed her arms in a pose of defense. “You'd rather I let Mrs. Harvey trap me into a corner and wax poetic about her darling Bishop?”

“Considering the consequences, yes!” Addie sprang off the bed and began to pace the room in agitation. “There must be something we can do to stop this. Some way to counteract—”

“Don't you think I've tried?” Linsey interrupted. She didn't blame Addie for asking; hadn't she asked the same question herself a dozen times or more? She'd even spent the better part of the weekend searching through Aunt Louisa's book of divinations for possible solutions. Still, it all came down to the same answer. “This isn't something that can be stopped, Addie. It's not like a magic spell that can be reversed, or a contract that can be negotiated: it's an omen. A foreshadowing of a future event. The most I can do is make the best of what time I have left.”