The Surgeon

He exhaled. “Eight…” His brown eyes sparkled. “Straight from…the east coast…?”

“Well, of course. Direct from Halifax.”

“No one to talk to for eight days?”

“I met a few nice folks.” Two very kind elderly women in particular, Sarah thought, who were staying at one of the local boardinghouses. Sarah usually kept her private matters to herself, but over the course of several days, the two women had pried it out of her—that she was a mail-order bride coming to meet her husband. Once discovered, she’d been eager to share her news, and they eager to listen. Although surprised when she’d told them it was John Calloway who’d sent for her, they congratulated her with the warmest wishes.

Walking in anxious silence beside her tall surgeon, Sarah followed him onto the grassy path. It wound along the gently flowing Elbow River, leading to the steel bridge. The moving water whispered by. Blackbirds sang in the aspens. The fragrance of old summer leaves drifted between them.

John dropped her satchel beneath an overgrown willow tree. He moved with a restless energy and she was struck by a strange discomfort.

“Sarah, I don’t know how to tell you this, other than to just say it.”

Her smile faded. “What is it?”

“It’s not good news.”

She peered at his face, at the firm strength she saw in his eyes. There was a deeper significance to what he said. Her hands began to tremble. “You’re not well?”

“No, no…it’s not about my health.”

“Then what? I surprised you. I came at a bad time.”

“That’s not it exactly, either.”

She tried to force her confusion into order. Her pulse hammered at her throat. Something was terribly wrong. “We’re soon to be married. Soon to be husband and wife. Please tell me what’s troubling you.”

Her words cut deep into his composure. His expression faltered and he looked suddenly off balance. Pulling in a deep breath, he struggled with the emotion in his husky voice. “It wasn’t me who wrote to you.”

Chapter Two

“Then who was it?” Nausea welled up the back of her throat. Sarah gulped to stay the taste of bile. Her fingers raced nervously over the pleats of her red jacket. She yanked back her shoulders and stepped away from John Calloway.

Struggling for words, he tilted his rough beardless face toward her.

She stared back, desperate for a plausible explanation.

“I’m not sure who wrote to you.”

She staggered back in disgrace. “Are you trying to get out of the marriage?”

He shook his head in dismay, then nodded, then shook it again.

“Yes or no?”

Shrugging his wide shoulders, he lifted his hands high in the air. “I didn’t propose to you.”

Now that he’d met her, he no longer wanted her. Deep humiliation stung her cheeks. With a sharp click of her tongue, she hoisted her satchel to her hip and marched toward the steel-and-iron bridge, heading for the center of town. Lights twinkled in that town’s direction. He didn’t want her. Her eyesight blurred with the sting of tears. What would be so terribly wrong to have her as a wife?

Even with his long stride, John had a hard time keeping up to her. “Sarah, it wasn’t my doing. I only found out about you the instant you arrived. It seems my men…the officers…got together. As a prank, they wrote to you—”

“A prank?” She took a moment to digest it. “A prank?”

He looked at her with such pity in his eyes that before she realized what she was doing, her hand came up to slap him. He ducked and she cuffed his nose with a loud thwump.

“Ow-ww…” He cupped his nose. “What’d you do that for? I didn’t orchestrate this, my men did.”

“Well, pass it along!”

Spinning back to the path, she cursed under her breath in the same coarse language his men had used earlier. As her father would say, she felt like a whistlin’ jackass. Not a penny to her whistlin’ name.

Where to now?

Through watery eyes, she looked up past the bridge toward the plank buildings. Lamplights lined the dirt street, illuminating the crowd and the horses and buggies. The clatter of hooves and saloon music competed with the thudding of her heart. Her stomach fluttered with turmoil. Where to?

“Sarah, please, can we talk about this?” John dabbed at his nose. He swore when he saw blood. Served him right. Fixing a bloody nose was easy. Traveling eight days across the country for nothing wasn’t!

Well…She’d return to the railway station to collect her luggage and make plans. That’s what she’d do. Maybe at the boardinghouse, she’d locate the two women she’d met on the train. They might help her. Through a haze of distress, she realized she’d then have to explain that her marriage to the dashing John Calloway was a joke. Oh, and could they please pass the marmalade?

And how long could she get by, with only five dollars in her pocket? She’d done everything she could to speed her journey here, to pay the back rent she owed, to pay the creditors for her mother’s funeral.

Much to her irate displeasure, John Calloway wouldn’t let her escape. His long, limber body swung into step with hers. Blocking her path, he propped his hands on his lean hips. “Are you planning to ignore me?”

“Darn right! Maybe you’re not used to being ignored at the fort, but I’m not one of your subordinates!”

She clamped her lips and stalked by him. In the adjacent pasture, plump brown-and-white cows peered at them over a dilapidated cedar fence, munching loudly, gazing as if they could understand the argument.

John raced along, stepping into her blasted path again. His massive shoulders blocked out the sun’s dying rays, so she couldn’t see his face. It was an etched block of darkness. “Let’s talk about this, about what you’re going to do.”

She shifted her heavy bag from hand to hand and hip to hip. The future tumbled around her. Nowhere to go. Her dreams dashed. The utter shame of being fool enough to fall for this prank. Thank God her folks weren’t alive to witness this. “Leave me alone.”

She kept walking, her high-heeled boots echoing off the creosote railway ties of the bridge, but he shouted after her.

“I can’t!”

She pivoted around to glare at the stubborn man at the other end of the bridge. “Why not?”

“Because…goddammit! I feel responsible!”

Her nausea took over. If she didn’t get something into her stomach soon, she’d collapse. Slumping to the cement wall of the bridge to steady herself, she lost the satchel. It slipped out of her grasp, thudding onto the boards. She cradled her temples in the palms of her hands. When she opened her eyes again, John’s boots were standing on the ground before her.

“Go away,” she commanded the boots.

“I’m sorry. It’s awful what the men did. There’ll be hell to pay when I get my hands on them.”

“It doesn’t make me feel any better.”

“But I’m still sorry.”