Would-Be Wilderness Wife

“You could do a lot worse, Drew,” Levi agreed.

Drew shook his head. “You’re mad, the lot of you. I’m not getting married.”

“Suit yourself.” Simon rose and went to the fireplace to scoop up a handful of kindling. “We’ll draw straws. Short straw proposes.”

Drew stared as his other brothers, except Levi, rose to their feet. “Don’t be ridiculous. She wouldn’t have any of you.”

James shrugged. “Doesn’t hurt to try.”

Simon squared up the sticks and hid all but the tops in his hand, then held them out to his brothers. “Who wants to go first?”

Drew strode into their group. “Enough, I said. No one is proposing to Miss Stanway, and that’s final.”

His brothers exchanged glances. Simon lowered the sticks. “Very well, Drew. For now. But you have to marry someday if you want kin to inherit your land. You’ll never build that town for Pa unless you do. I think you better ask yourself why you’re so dead set against her.”

“And why you’re even more set against us courting her,” John added.

Chapter Four (#ulink_48fd258b-37da-5e79-9de2-1a13840df4c7)

So one of the Wallin brothers was going to marry her. Catherine shook her head as she crossed the floor to the big bed. Either they didn’t know voices carried in the log cabin or they didn’t care that she realized their intentions. It truly didn’t matter which was the truth. She wasn’t getting married.

“Do you think bonnets or hats are more fetching on a lady?” Beth asked, following her. “I’m of a mind for bonnets. They cover more of your face from the sun, and they have extra room for decorations. Feathers are ever so flattering.”

She was chattering again, voice quick and forceful, but it seemed a bit more strained than usual, and Catherine couldn’t help noticing that Beth’s color was high as she joined Catherine. Was she trying to pretend she wasn’t aware of her brothers’ intentions?

Her patient was awake, green eyes watchful. “You mustn’t mind Simon,” Mrs. Wallin murmured, proving that she, too, had heard at least part of the conversation downstairs. The ribbon ties on her nightcap brushed the skin of her cheek. “Being the second son after Drew has never been easy. He tends to assert himself even when there’s no need.”

As Beth tidied up the room, Catherine raised her patient’s wrist to check her pulse. It seemed just a little stronger, but perhaps that was because Mrs. Wallin was embarrassed by her sons’ behavior.

“And there is no need to assert himself in this situation,” Catherine told her as she lowered Mrs. Wallin’s hand. “I’m here to help you. Nothing more.”

Mrs. Wallin shivered, and Catherine touched the woman’s forehead. Still too hot, but did she perhaps feel a little cooler than earlier? Was Catherine so desperate to see hope that she had lost her ability to be objective?

“Am I going to die?” Mrs. Wallin whispered.

Beth gasped. Catherine pulled back her hand. “Not if I can help it.”

As Beth hurried closer, Mrs. Wallin reached out and took Catherine’s hand, for all the world as if Catherine was the one needing comfort. “I’m not afraid.” Her eyes were bright, and Catherine told herself it was the fever. “I know in Whom I’ve put my trust. But my boys and Beth, oh, I hate the idea of leaving them!”

Beth threw herself onto the bed, wrapping her mother in a fierce hug. “You’re not leaving us, Ma. I won’t let you!”

The room seemed to be growing smaller, the air thinner. Catherine pulled out of the woman’s grip.

“Now, then,” she made herself say with brisk efficiency. “I see nothing to indicate your mother must leave you anytime soon. The best thing now would be for her to rest. I’ll be right here if she needs me.”

Beth straightened and wiped a tear from her face. “Yes, of course. I’ll just go help Drew.” She hurried from the loft.

“She’s a dear child,” her mother murmured, settling in the bed. “She’ll need someone besides me, another lady, to help guide her.”

Someone besides Catherine. “Rest now,” she urged, and Mrs. Wallin nodded and dutifully closed her eyes, head sinking deeper into the pillow, face at peace.

A shame Catherine couldn’t find such peace. She perched on the chair beside the bed and tried to steady her breathing. Still, the woman’s fears and Beth’s reaction clung to her like cobwebs. Who was Catherine to promise Mrs. Wallin’s return to health? Only the Lord knew what the future held. Her earthly father had drummed that into her.

We may be His hands for healing, he’d say as he washed his hands after surgery. But He will determine the outcome of our work.

And the outcome of a life.

Did he have to go, Lord? Did You need another physician in heaven? But why take Nathan, too? Did You have to leave me alone?

The tears were starting again, and she blinked them fiercely away. She’d had her fill of them months ago. She couldn’t look at the sunny yellow rooms of their home in Sudbury without seeing the book her father had left before going to war, the galoshes her brother had forgotten to pack. The polished wood pew in their community church had felt empty even though another family had joined her in it. Every time she’d walked down the street, she’d seem nothing but stares of pity from her neighbors.

Still, her father had taught her well.

You cannot let sorrow touch you, Catherine, he’d admonished. You are here to tend to their bodies. Let the Lord heal other hurts. Remember your calling.

That was what she’d done in those dark days after her father and brother had died. None of the other physicians in the area had wanted to attach themselves professionally to an unmarried nurse. Even the big cities like Boston and New York had been loath to let an unmarried woman practice. Widowed men who had known her father well offered marriage, the opportunity to mother their motherless children. Even her minister had counseled her to find a good man to wed.

When she’d seen the notice advertising Asa Mercer’s expedition to help settle Washington Territory, she’d known what to do. She’d put the house up for sale and donated their things to those in need. Then she’d packed her bags and sailed to the opposite side of the country.

All her experiences had taught her how to wall off her emotions. It did no good to question her past. She must look to her future, to the health of the community she could improve, the lives she could save. She had no intention of entering into marriage, with anyone.

For once she opened the door to feeling, she was very much afraid she’d never be able to close it again.

* * *

At the far edge of the clearing in his own cabin, Drew yanked a pair of suspenders off the ladder to the loft. As he tidied the place so Catherine could sleep there that night, all he could think about was Simon’s ridiculous demand that one of them must marry the pretty nurse.

He ought to be immune to such antics by now. But after years of proximity, his brothers knew just how to get under his skin like a tick digging for blood.

Oh, he’d heard ministers preach on the subject. A man had a duty to marry, to raise children that would help him subdue the wilderness, make a home in this far land. Children were one way a man left a legacy. To him, the fact that his brothers had reached their manhood alive and ready to take on the world was enough of a legacy.

He knew the general course of things was for a man to find his own land, build a house, start a profession and marry. He had this house and was top in his profession, but he couldn’t simply leave his mother, Beth or his brothers to fend for themselves. They were his responsibility, his to protect. That was what any man did who was worthy of the name. That was what his father had done.

How could he call himself a man and leave his family to tend to a wife? In his mind, a wife took time, attention. She’d have requirements, needs and expectations. He already felt stretched to the breaking point. How could he add more?

Oh, he had no doubt Simon and James were looking to marry one day, and John and Levi would eventually follow. But to stake a claim on a lady after a few hours of acquaintance? That was the stuff of madness.

Or legend.

He snorted as he gathered up the dishes he hadn’t bothered to return to the main house. Their father had claimed he’d fallen in love with their mother at first sight when he’d met her at a barn raising. Her hair was like a fire on a winter’s night, calling me home, he’d told his sons more than once.

Before his father had died, Drew had dreamed it would happen that way for him. Though there were few unmarried ladies in Seattle, he’d thought someday he might turn a corner, walk into church and there she’d be. But at twenty-nine, he knew better. Love was a choice built from prolonged presence. And with six lives already depending on him, he had chosen not to participate in adding more.

“Hello, brother Drew!” Beth sang out as she opened the door of his cabin, basket under one arm. She stepped inside, glanced around and wrinkled her nose. “Oh, you haven’t gotten far, have you?”

Drew looked around as well, trying to see the place through Beth’s eyes. He’d built the cabin himself, his brothers lending a hand with planing and notching the logs and chinking them with dried moss and rock. He’d crafted the fireplace in the center of one wall from rounded stones gathered along the lake. As his father had taught him from what he’d learned in his homeland of Sweden, Drew had built a cabinet for his bed tick, setting it next to the hearth for warmth. A table and chairs of lumber cut from trees he’d felled rested on the rag rug his mother had woven for him. A plain wood chest sat against the far wall, waiting for him to start carving. All in all, his cabin was a solid, practical place to sleep between long hours of working. Very likely, Beth considered it far too plain.

But it didn’t matter what his sister thought. It mattered what Catherine Stanway thought, and he had no doubt she’d find it lacking.