“Her name’s Doreena,” Dr. Hart began. “She’s very pretty, blond hair, kind of.well, I suppose petite is the right word.”
“Little bitty thing, huh?” Tim asked, nudging Hart with his elbow.
The doctor grinned, which made him look even younger than he did already. “About this high,” he said, touching his arm halfway between his elbow and his shoulder.
She was probably twelve, Jane thought uncharitably. Though she herself was an inch or two taller than the Cartlands, she had never felt overly tall. Never until now, anyway.
“She’s accomplished on the piano,” Adam added, obviously warming to the subject, to the neglect of the roasted chicken on his plate. “She paints a little and is a wonder when it comes to making all the arrangements for a party.”
“Throws a good bash, does she?” Tim queried. “Sounds like quite a catch.”
“Sounds like she’s rich,” Jane said. Just why she felt compelled to enter the conversation, she didn’t know. Was she trying to offend a paying guest?
Instead of being offended, however, the doctor laughed and nodded. “That, too.”
“Then she’s definitely a catch,” Tim said, joining in the laughter.
Jane forced herself to laugh, too, and wondered why she cared at all what the future Mrs. Hart was like.
The merriment died down rather abruptly, and Jane knew her final guest had arrived.
“Here you are,” Naomi said in a voice that dripped with sweetness. “I was beginning to worry about you.”
“The novel, you know. The term will start soon and there will be no time to work on it.”
“This is Lawrence Bickford, our schoolmaster,” George said. “Have you met Dr. Hart?”
Bickford shook his head as he took his seat. “I understand you’re from Philadelphia.”
“Dr. Hart was telling us about his fiancée,” Naomi said as she made sure all the bowls and platters were passed to the late arrival. Jane doubted if he noticed her efforts.
“Don’t get discouraged, lad,” Bickford said as he filled his plate. “Your year in the wilds will fly by and you’ll be together again.”
“Actually, I’m hoping she’ll join me in a few months,” Adam said. “I want to make a home here.”
Jane tried to work up some irritation toward the prospect of a piano-playing, party-planning neighbor. Instead she felt an odd pain at the thought of seeing the perfect Doreena at Adam’s side.
“A wedding,” Naomi cooed. “Isn’t that romantic?” She asked the question of the table at large, but her eyes had turned to the schoolmaster. He made no response.
Jane might have enjoyed Naomi’s attempts to gain Mr. Bickford’s attention if she weren’t feeling somehow ill at ease. Because of her grandmother, she told herself, though to be honest she had nearly forgotten the poor woman for a few minutes. Concentration seemed to be a casualty of sleepless nights.
“Please, excuse me,” she said, coming to her feet. “I must check on Grams. Enjoy your dinner and stay as long as you like.” Being careful that her glance never met the doctor’s, she left the room. She was afraid his eyes would be condemning. He knew she had chosen to let Grams die.
Grams was sleeping, but Jane sat down beside her anyway, dampening the cloth and returning it to her forehead. She lifted one of Grams’s hands, thinking how hot and brittle it felt. The old woman’s pulse seemed to flutter beneath her fingers.
“I shouldn’t have even sat down with them,” Jane whispered. “I should have stayed with you.”
Voices drifted in from the other room, George’s primarily. She didn’t try to understand what was being said. She wanted to be alone with Grams.
“Remember when we first came here, Grams?” she asked softly. “I wanted to go home. You said, ‘This can be home, Janie. Anywhere someone loves you is home.’“
Jane felt her eyes burn. She hadn’t come in here to cry. But she had fought the tears so often the last few days there was no strength left to fight them. “Don’t go, Grams,” she whispered, lowering her face to her hands. “Don’t go.”
Adam lost interest in dinner shortly after Jane left. He would have excused himself as well, but the Cartland sisters were extremely interested in his wedding plans, which were few, and his plans for decorating the house, which were even fewer.
Tim Martin began describing a wedding he had attended in another part of the state, and Adam struck on a plan. He could almost convince himself he was being professional.
“Friends,” he said when Martin gave him an opening, “I believe I’ll check on Miss Sparks’s grandmother, then call it a night.”
“Why, that’s so kind of you,” Nedra said.
He gave her a polite smile as he rose. She had been batting her eyes at him all through dinner, and he didn’t want to encourage her. The others, except for Mr. Bickford, wished him good-night as he left the dining room.
The kitchen bore the evidence of the huge meal Jane had recently prepared. Adam wondered if her entire store of pots and pans had been called into service. Still, the room seemed clean in spite of it, a trick of organization, perhaps.
He moved cautiously toward the little bedroom. He didn’t want to startle Jane, yet he didn’t want to disturb the sick grandmother by calling out to them. At the doorway he paused. Jane sat beside the bed, her face in her hands. She was crying softly. He could hear the grandmother’s labored breathing above the quiet sobs.
He felt like an intruder, but he couldn’t make himself leave. He moved to the far side of the bed and lifted Grams’s bony hand, feeling for the pulse. It was faint and rapid. He gently returned the hand to its place on the sheet.
He should leave. There was nothing he could do for the old lady. Nothing he could do for the granddaughter, either, he told himself. Wrapping her in his arms and letting her cry on his shoulder didn’t seem very professional. Besides, judging by the cool glances she had given him at dinner, she wouldn’t be disposed to accept.
He rested his hand gently on the cloth that lay across the woman’s forehead. It was cool and damp. Even in the state she was in, Jane hadn’t neglected this small service.
She would be embarrassed if she looked up and found him watching her, Adam knew. He ordered his legs to take him out of the room, but found himself stopping beside Miss Sparks instead. His hand was drawn to the narrow, slumped shoulder.
At the moment of contact her head jerked upright. “Doctor. I didn’t hear you come in.” She brushed frantically at her tear-streaked face.
Adam crouched down beside her. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“Is she…?”
“Not much change from this afternoon. Are you all right?” He wanted her to say no, to ask him to stay with her.
“Of course.” She sniffed once. “Did somebody need something?”
He shook his head. It seemed to him she was the only one who needed anything, and he didn’t know how to give it. “Let me ask the folks out there to clean up for you.”
“Oh, you can’t do that,” she said, rising to her feet. “They’re paying guests.”
Adam straightened slowly.