Fletcher's Woman (30 page)

Griffin drew a deep breath, nodded. “I'm going to get some sleep. Thanks, John.”

O'Riley smiled. “You do that. And make sure you eat something, too.” Then, seeing Jonas's approach, the old man
scowled and walked away, toward one of several buggies waiting on the road.

Jonas grinned. “Unlike you, my friend, I had the good sense to hire a rig. Shall I give you a ride to the O'Riley place, or are you dead set on walking?”

Griffin swore. “All right—Rachel is staying with John and Joanna, damn it! And Jonas, God help you if you go near her.”

Jonas raised an eyebrow. “You don't trust me?”

“Why the hell should I?”

Jonas shrugged, but the look in his eyes was serious. “I guess I don't blame you—we have had our moments, you and I.”

“Like now, for instance. Are you going to keep our agreement, or not?”

Jonas was striding toward a battered buggy that was hitched to an equally worn-out horse. He climbed into the seat and took the reins, smiling acidly as Griffin joined him. “I'm keeping the bargain, Griffin—but I'm doing it for Rachel, not you. Once she's well, all deals are off.”

Griffin sat back, his eyes on the road. “Fair enough,” he said.

•   •   •

Rachel had never, in all her life, known such luxury. But now, thanks to the infinite kindness of Joanna O'Riley, it surrounded her.

The first marvel was a pot of spiced tea, complete with supplies of sugar and cream, brought to Rachel's room on a tray and left on her bedside table. She was to drink as much as she wanted, Joanna informed her, for John believed that sick people needed to take a great many fluids.

With lunch came another wonder—cinnamon pears. Of course, Rachel had eaten pears on occasion, the kind that were plucked from a tree and still wearing their splotched, leathery skins. But these fruits were another matter; they had been peeled and cooked, and the sweet, cinnamon-flavored sauce they floated in was ruby red.

Joanna was amused by her delight. “Rachel, I do believe you could be maintained on pears and sweet tea alone!”

“Ummm,” replied Rachel, closing her eyes in reverence as she chewed the last, sweet morsel. “I never want to eat any other kind of pear.”

Joanna laughed. “That's a pity, because we have a whole pantry full of mint pears. They're in an emerald green sauce.”

Rachel stared at her, wide-eyed, and the answering laughter
was still ringing in the room when Griffin came through the open doorway.

Joanna leveled a playful look at him and intoned, “Griffin, my love, if your intentions toward this young lady are serious, you'd best plant a grove of pear trees.”

He looked so confused by this advice that a torrent of giggles swelled into Rachel's throat and escaped.

Griffin scratched the back of his head in comical bewilderment and muttered, “I wish you two would cheer up.”

Joanna made a face at him, took Rachel's denuded lunch tray, and left the room.

She took the laughter with her.

Griffin sat down on the edge of the bed, and his face was suddenly bleak and weary. Without thinking, Rachel reached up, and caressed his cheek with her hand. “What is it?” she asked softly.

Griffin's voice was hoarse, and while he did not turn from her touch, he did avert his eyes. “Rachel, I have to go back to Providence tonight.”

Slowly, Rachel lowered her hand, sank back onto the pillows. “Oh.”

Griffin's index finger came to rest under her chin, raising it slightly. “My patients, Rachel. I've got to get back to them.”

Rachel nodded. “Yes.”

He stood up again, suddenly, and for a moment, he looked angry. But his words belied anger; they reached into her spirit like fingers and took hold, never to let go again.

“Rachel, I love you.”

Rachel was speechless; her lips moved, but there was no sound. Crazy, delightful feelings whirled inside her, in kaleidoscope colors.

Griffin laid a gentle finger to her mouth. Then he took a tiny parcel from his pocket, laid it in her hand, and said, “I'll be back late next week, Rachel. Get well.”

He bent, and his lips brushed hers; then he was walking away. The bedroom door closed softly behind him.

Rachel stared at the door of her room for a long time, hardly daring to believe what she had heard. Griffin Fletcher
loved
her—it was incredible.

She remembered the small package he had pressed into her hand, and with trembling fingers, she opened it. Nestled in the brown paper was a delicate gold bracelet, with one golden charm dangling from it—a tiny, perfectly detailed crosscut saw.

Rachel laughed; then she cried. And then she slipped the bracelet onto her wrist and admired it, suspending her arm so that the light streaming in through the windows caught in the metal and turned it to fire. He did love her, and the night of lovemaking in the lumber camp had meant as much to him as it had to her. In this tiny, significant charm was the proof.

She slept, and when she awakened, the house was quite dark. For one terrible moment, Rachel thought she had only dreamed that Griffin had said he loved her; but then she remembered the charm and sought it with her hand, and it was there, dangling from her wrist. She traced the jagged teeth of the tiny saw.

Rachel reached out and lit the lamp beside her bed. She had Griffin's words to remember, and she had the bracelet; but he was gone. She could feel his absence echoing through the O'Riley house like the toll of a great, sad bell.

A week. He had promised to be back in a week. Rachel dried the tears that had gathered in her lashes, and when Joanna came in with a dinner tray, Rachel was very careful to smile.

Probably sensing Rachel's carefully concealed loneliness, Joanna sat down and knitted in silence while her friend ate. After that, she took a book from a shelf beneath the windows, opened it, and began to read softly from
A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Rachel slept, and when she awakened from her own dreams, June had brought the summer. She concentrated hard on getting well.

It seemed that Griffin's love and the special bracelet had combined to work some indefinable magic. By the next day, Rachel was well enough to leave her bed for short periods of time. By the day after that, she had recovered to such an extent that Dr. O'Riley grudgingly gave permission for her to take a brief carriage ride with Joanna.

Almost immediately, Rachel's great joy at the prospect gave way to despair—she had nothing fresh to wear. In a miserable whisper, she admitted this to Joanna.

“That is certainly no problem,” Joanna said, with brisk kindness. Opening a pair of doors at the far side of the bedroom, she disappeared for a few moments, into a closet. She came out carrying a lovely pink- and white-striped shirtwaist and a gray flannel skirt.

“Wear these,” she said, laying the splendidly made garments over the foot of Rachel's bed.

I'll die if they don't fit
, she thought, taking the beautiful clothing into her hands and delighting silently in the incredible softness of it.

“They were Athena's,” said Joanna, and there was a look of sadness and distance in her dark blue eyes.

“Athena?” Rachel asked gently, not certain that she should have spoken at all.

But Joanna smiled warmly and gestured with good-natured impatience toward a folding screen near the bed. “Athena was—is—our daughter. Hurry, Rachel, before John changes his mind and forbids you to leave the house today.”

Like the clothes Jonas had given Rachel, Athena's flannel skirt and gaily colored shirtwaist fit her perfectly. And even though she was relieved at that, she was vaguely discomforted, too.

There had been that peculiar look in Joanna's eyes when she'd mentioned her daughter's name. And she'd hesitated in an odd way, too, as though she wasn't certain whether Athena was a part of the past or a part of the present.

And there was something more, something that lurked in the corner of Rachel's mind like a cat cowering in the darkness beneath a bed or a table, something that she couldn't identify.

“Where is Athena now?” she dared, as she and Joanna made their way down a graceful, winding stairway to the floor below.
And why did she leave her clothes behind?

Joanna said nothing until they reached the marble-floored
entry hall below. There was a strain in her smile, and the tiny lines around her eyes seemed deeper somehow. “Our daughter is in Europe, Rachel. I'm afraid life in Seattle is a little too raw for her. Now,” Joanna patted Rachel's arm, and there was a plea in her eyes, behind the lame smile. “Why don't you wait right in there, beyond those doors, while I ask Cook what to bring back? There is a lovely view from the front windows.”

Feeling sorry, and more than a little ashamed that she had pried the way she had, Rachel nodded mutely and walked off to pass through a giant set of French doors.

The window drew Rachel immediately, for through it, she could see a patch of aquamarine water.

She drew in her breath at the beauty of the sight that awaited her beyond those gauzy, white curtains. All of Elliott Bay lay spread out before her, sparkling blue in the bright sunshine. There were boats of all sizes and sorts: fast, noble clipper ships and hardworking tugs, fishing boats and steamers, specks that must surely be rowboats and canoes. Beyond all this rose the ferocious, snow-capped beauty of the Olympic Mountains. On the land lining the bay were millions of evergreen trees, standing so close together that it didn't look as though there could possibly be room for even one more.

Rachel closed her eyes for a moment, overcome. The scene was exactly like the one she'd dreamed that first miserable morning in Tent Town. How she'd longed to live forever in a house just like this one!

But now— Oh, now she would have given anything to be in plodding, unremarkable Providence again. To be near Griffin Fletcher.

She opened her eyes and turned from the window to look at the room itself.

It was magnificent, with its polished crystal chandeliers; its bright, costly rugs; its beautifully upholstered furniture. Everything seemed mammoth, in comparison to the ordinary rooms of Rachel's experience—particularly the gigantic fieldstone fireplace.

Rachel approached it in wonder, and as she raised her eyes to see whether it stretched all the way to the ceiling without narrowing, she saw the portrait for the first time.

It was a stunning work—probably the canvas was as tall as Rachel herself—framed in gilded wood.

The subject was a woman more beautiful than Rachel had
ever dreamed a mere mortal could be; blond hair, so pale that it was almost silver, billowed around an impish, hauntingly perfect face. The eyes were wide and astonishingly blue, and they seemed to be teasing the viewer somehow, as did the impertinent smile that did not quite reach the delicate lips.

But it was the dress she wore that made Rachel's breath catch, fiery, in her throat. It was the very rose taffeta dress that Jonas had given to her, the dress that had stirred such confounding madness in Griffin on that awful night when he'd spoken so cruelly and caused Rachel to flee to her mother's building and hide.

What did it mean? Feeling wretched, Rachel groped for a chair and sank into it, covering her eyes momentarily with one hand. But the portrait seemed to be exerting some mystical force, compelling her to look at it again.

Athena.
Of course, this impossibly lovely creature had to be John and Joanna's daughter.

Rachel imagined that she saw challenge in the thickly lashed, mischievous indigo eyes—and a certain hint of malice, too.

By an act of will, she tore her eyes from the goddess's face and looked instead at the golden bracelet on her own wrist. And even as she turned the miniature crosscut saw in her fingers, she knew that Griffin Fletcher had loved this woman, Athena—or hated her. Either way, his emotions must have been violent, or he wouldn't have reacted the way he had to the sight of that pink taffeta dress.

Joanna was beside her chair before Rachel realized that she was back from the kitchen.

“Rachel, dear, are you—” Joanna's voice broke off as she raised her eyes to the portrait of her daughter. “Oh,” she said, after a long, lame silence.

Rachel raised glistening eyes to the face of this woman who had been so unfailingly kind. “Griffin loved her, didn't he?” she whispered, in the voice of a wounded child.

Joanna perched on the arm of Rachel's chair and gently laid her hands on the girl's tear-dampened face. “Yes, Rachel,” she said, very gently. “Griffin did love Athena very much at one time. They were to be married, in fact.”

Rachel closed her eyes against the impact of those words, then opened them again. “What happened?”

There was pain in Joanna's beautiful face and shame, too. “I can't tell you that, Rachel—it would be unfair, and Griffin might never forgive me. You must ask him.”

Brokenly, Rachel held up her wrist to display the cherished bracelet. “He said—he gave me this—”

Joanna nodded, releasing Rachel, and there was an unquestionable certainty in her voice when she spoke. “Sweetheart, if Griffin Fletcher has declared himself to you, he meant it. He and Athena parted ways two years ago, after all. And I don't mind telling you that there were no romantic farewells.

“Now—are we taking that carriage ride, or am I to forget my important business on Pike Street?”

The sound Rachel made was somewhere between a sob and a giggle. She rose from the chair and, without looking back at the portrait even once, followed Joanna out into the sunny magnificence of the day.

But the battle was only half won, for if Rachel's eyes had not betrayed her by seeking Athena's image, her mind had. All during the ride downhill, when she should have been admiring the scenery and enjoying the warm, fresh air, she thought of that beautiful woman in the portrait. Athena was certainly an apt name for her; she was the closest thing to a goddess Rachel had ever seen.