The Doctor Takes a Wife

“I loved Jesse,” she said simply. “I…I can be your friend, I suppose…that is to say, we don’t have to be enemies. But you came in town to court me, isn’t that right? How can I keep company with someone who fought with the Union, when they killed my Jesse? And don’t tell me that you were just a doctor, caring for the wounded,” she said, when she saw he had opened his mouth to speak. “You wore blue.” All the old grief swept over her, threatening to swamp her, and she bent her head, struggling against tears that escaped anyway. She put a hand to her mouth. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I…I thought I was over it.”

Now it was Nolan’s turn to sigh. “I know,” he said, shifting his gaze to the daguerreotype on his desk. “Mostly, I only have pleasant memories about Julia and Timmy…but once in a while someone will walk like her, or a little boy will remind me of him… But I know they wouldn’t want me to mourn forever, Sarah.”

She noticed he had switched to using her first name, but she didn’t correct him.

“It’s been over five years now since they died,” he said. “I want to go on with my life. I…know it might be too soon for you.”

“I wanted to go on with my life, too,” she said. “Meet a good man, get married… That’s why I agreed to join the Spinsters’ Club when my sister started it.”

“But you didn’t want to meet a Yankee.”

She let the statement stand. “You’re free to court any of the other ladies in the group, or find someone elsewhere, you know.”

“I know,” he said. He raised his head to look at her, and it was a long silent moment before she found the strength to look away.

“We’re friends, at least. That’s something.” He gave her a half smile. “Here’s some bandages,” he said, reaching inside a box and taking out several rolls of bleached linen. “Keep the arm clean and dry and change the dressing every day. Will you come back in a couple days, so I can satisfy myself that it’s healing properly?”

She nodded, thinking she could bring him that cake then, and offer to pay him something, also. “Do you have to take out the stitches?”

He shook his head. “No, they’re catgut—made of sheep intestines, really—so they’ll absorb on their own inside, and the part that’s showing will disintegrate and fall out.”

She stared at the bandaged wound and shuddered. “Sheep intestines?”

He chuckled. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have told you that.”

Then he smiled at her, and she was so struck by what a compelling smile he had that she forgot all about sheep and their insides.

Chapter Six

“Oh, Sarah, that looks divinely delicious!” Prissy gushed two days later, watching as Sarah put the finishing touches on her blackberry jam cake with pecan frosting. “Will you teach me how to make that one for the New Year’s Day party?”

Sarah looked up from her work, pushing back a stray curl which had escaped from behind her ear. “What New Year’s Day party?”

“The one my parents are giving. Remember the afternoon party on New Year’s Day my parents always gave before the war? The whole town came, and everyone from the nearby ranches. Papa wants to start having it again as a sign that things really have gotten back to normal. I meant to mention it sooner,” Prissy said with an airy wave of her hand. “You know, it’s really the last big social event till spring for the whole town, if you think about it,” Prissy went on. “You can’t plan on anything big for certain, what with the unpredictability of winter weather, though we might manage something smaller with the Spinsters’ Club, if some candidates show up. Que sera, sera, as the French say.”

What Prissy was saying was true. The Spinsters’ Club had been started in the summer, when it was relatively easy for an interested candidate to travel to Simpson Creek. They had a taffy pull coming up, but that was all until at least March.

Oh, well, it didn’t matter to her anyway. Even before her sister had founded the Spinsters’ Club, Sarah had been a homebody, content to wait on the Lord to provide her a beau if He willed it so.

“But at least all the ladies of the Spinsters’ Club will be coming, and the ones who are being courted will bring their beaux. You never know who might bring an eligible man to the party as a guest,” Prissy said, still thinking out loud.

“Oh, and I told Mama we’d bring a couple of desserts.” It was a typical Prissy-style change of subject. “Why don’t you bake your cherry upside-down cake, and I’ll make one like this—” she pointed to the one Sarah was completing “—if you’ll teach me, of course.”

“Sure I will.” Sarah vaguely remembered attending some of those extravagant open-house parties the mayor and his wife had hosted in those halcyon prewar years, though she had barely been old enough to put up her hair before the last of them.

Mentally, she readjusted her plans. She’d been thinking of asking Milly if it was okay if she and Prissy came out to the ranch for dinner for New Year’s. Now, of course, she’d have to think about what she was going to wear, as well as making a dessert to contribute. Perhaps Milly and Nick would come into town for the party.

“Or maybe you should make the biscuits. I declare, yours are the lightest, the fluffiest…I don’t think I’ll ever be able to make biscuits like that.” Prissy let out a gusty, dramatic sigh.

“Oh, I don’t know…the ones you made this morning were…um, much better,” Sarah told her with a grin.

“You mean they were almost edible this time, as opposed to the lead sinkers I made last night for dinner,” Prissy said, with a rueful laugh. “Your sisters’ pigs probably wouldn’t eat them.”

“It just takes practice. You’ll be making fine biscuits before long, I promise.”

Prissy seemed reassured. “Is that for the mercantile, or the hotel?” she asked, gesturing at the cake.

“Neither. I promised to see Dr. Walker so he could check my wound, so I’m going to take it with me when I go to the office this morning.”

“Ohhhhhhh!” Prissy said, drawing the syllable out, her eyes dancing with glee. “So your heart has thawed toward the handsome Yankee.”

“It’s done no such thing,” Sarah said quickly. “At least not the way you mean.” She avoided her friend’s knowing gaze. “It’s just the polite thing to do. He was very kind to me that day.”

“Hmm,” Prissy murmured, clearly unconvinced by Sarah’s casual words. “It must be nice to have a knight in shining armor. Oh! You might as well deliver his invitation to him personally,” Prissy said.

“Invitation?”

“To the party, silly. Mama had asked me to take the invitations around town this afternoon, but you can save me that stop, at least.”

Before Sarah could say anything else, Prissy dashed into her bedroom and was back in a couple of minutes, waving the cream-colored vellum envelope with its handwritten invitation inside. Of course Dr. Nolan Walker is to attend the party like everyone else. Suddenly attending the party had become much more complicated. How was she to act around him?

“So what are you going to wear?” Prissy asked.

Sarah shrugged. “I don’t know…I suppose you have a suggestion, now that you’ve seen the entire contents of my wardrobe?”

Prissy giggled. “I think you should wear that lovely red grenadine dress with the green piping. Very festive. And men like red dresses.”

“I don’t give a fig what color Dr. Walker likes!”

“Ah, but I said ‘men.’ You applied my generalization to Dr. Walker.”

Caught. Sarah tightened her lips and glanced at the clock on the mantel as she reached for the cake cover. “This is a silly conversation, Prissy Gilmore,” she said primly, “and I’m going to be late if I don’t leave now.”

The sound of her friend’s giggles followed her out into the street.

Really, she was going to have to warn Prissy to cease and desist with her matchmaking efforts, Sarah thought as she walked down the street, avoiding ice-rimmed puddles—she didn’t want to fall again. She was not going to change her mind about Nolan Walker, she really wasn’t, and the sooner her friend understood that, the better. She didn’t want to be embarrassed at the party. Perhaps she would wear the red and green dress, but really, her selection had nothing to do with the town doctor… When she’d pointed out he was free to court anyone else, he’d simply said, “I know,” so surely that meant he realized she was never going to reconsider her position with him, and he was now considering other options….

She’d said they could be friends, hadn’t she? Had she been too hasty to indicate there could be nothing more? Even with all she’d had to do in the last few days because of her move into town, Nolan Walker had seldom been far from her mind.

So intent on her thoughts was she as she turned and strode up the walk that led to the doctor’s office that Sarah almost bowled right into a figure descending the steps.

“Oh!” she cried, tightening her grip on the cake plate and looking up at Ada Spencer. “I’m sorry, Ada, I didn’t see you. I’m afraid I was lost in thought.”

The other woman gave a short laugh. “That was certainly obvious!” Her eyes narrowed as they focused on what Sarah was carrying. “A treat for the good doctor? My, my, he’s going to grow fat with all the goodies the ladies of the town are bringing him,” Ada said archly. “Why, just the other day I brought him pralines myself. Have a nice visit with Dr. Walker. I must be getting home—we spent far too long chatting, the doctor and I. I don’t know where the time went.”

Sarah stiffened as the other woman stepped past her and went out into the street. So “all the ladies in town” were bringing treats to the doctor, were they? Or was it only Ada? Suddenly Sarah felt foolish and pathetic carrying the beautiful cake, like a schoolgirl with a silly infatuation. She could turn around now and take the cake back down the street to the mercantile and sell it. Yes. That’s what she’d do, and then return to the doctor’s office and have him check her wound, as she had agreed.

“Well, good morning, Miss Sarah,” Dr. Walker said, opening his door. Through the window, he’d seen her coming up his walk right after he’d just closed the door on Ada Spencer. Surely Sarah’s coming was his reward for being patient and kind during Ada’s unexpected visit, made under the pretext that she’d felt something was wrong with the baby. It had taken him an hour to calm her and send her on her way, and now here was Sarah Matthews, looking lovely in her loden green shawl and navy holly-sprigged wool dress. And bearing a gift, he thought, spotting the covered plate she carried. Well, well.