He saw her dart a glance at the neatly sutured wound before she raised her gaze back to his face.
“This may scar a little,” he said, “but not as much as if we’d just bandaged it. And you’re going to have to watch it for infection. Any red streaks or swelling or drainage, you come back to see me immediately. I’m going to rebandage it,” he said, and took up a roll of linen, which he circled around her forearm and tied by the ends as he had at the store. “Now I’ll get that coffee I promised you.”
“Oh, but you needn’t bother—” she began, but he cut her off.
“No bother, I want some, and I need to see a little more color in those cheeks before I let you out of that chair. If I let you get up now, you’ll collapse like a wilted lily.” Wishing he could invite her back to his kitchen but knowing it would seem improper to her, he left without waiting to hear any further protests.
He returned a moment later, carrying two sturdy crockery mugs full of steaming coffee.
“I took the liberty of putting sugar in yours,” he said. “I didn’t know if you take it that way, but you need the sugar for energy right now.” Then, a little less certainly, he said, “It’s probably a little strong for you. I could get some water—”
“No, it’s fine,” she assured him. “Josh, our foreman, always says it isn’t ranch coffee unless it’s so strong the spoon stands up in the cup.” She took a tentative sip, then another deeper one before he spoke again.
“Is this a good time to have that talk?”
“T-talk? What talk?” Sarah stammered. She should have known he would take advantage of being alone with her like this to claim the fulfillment of her promise. She could hardly refuse to talk to him, now that he’d played the Good Samaritan and taken care of her wound.
His expression told her that he knew she’d been playing for time to think, that she knew exactly what talk he meant. “The talk you promised me at the wedding, even said you’d look forward to, and have avoided ever since. The talk in which you’re going to explain why you don’t like me.”
“I haven’t avoided you,” she protested. “I’ve been very busy at the ranch, what with Milly being off on her honeymoon and all. I haven’t come into town except to deliver my pies and cakes, go to church and attend a meeting of the Spinsters’ Club.”
He raised an eyebrow as if to imply that if she could do all that, she could have made time to talk to him. “So why don’t you? Like me, that is. You seemed to like me well enough when we were corresponding, but as soon as you set eyes on me, you no longer did.”
Sarah sighed. She was trapped and there was no getting around it. She’d promised to do this and she had to honor her word. She owed him her honesty, at least—but now that it came down to it, and especially after what he’d done for her today, she didn’t feel as righteous about her dislike as she had before. Or as certain.
“Perhaps you find me a homely fellow, not much to look at,” he ventured, but there was a twinkle in his eye.
She met his gaze head on. “Dr. Walker—”
“Nolan,” he corrected her. “We’re not speaking as doctor and patient now.”
“I’m sure you have some sort of a mirror,” Sarah said, “so you know very well you’re not ugly.” Quite the contrary, she thought, looking into his deep blue eyes and studying his strong, rugged features. She took a deep breath. “All right, but remember you asked to hear this. I didn’t like you because you’re a Yankee.”
Understanding dawned in his eyes. “So you thought well enough of me until I spoke to you.”
“Yes, and that’s your fault. You never said you were a Yankee. By writing to me from Brazos County, you allowed me to believe you a Texan.”
“So you dislike me strictly because I come from the North,” he stated. “Doesn’t that sound rather arbitrary on your part, seeing as the war’s over? As I mentioned, it hasn’t prevented the rest of the townsfolk from accepting me. Why is it so important to you?”
Sarah sighed again, steeling herself to the pain of talking about Jesse. “I was engaged to a wonderful man before the war began,” she said. “Jesse Holt. He…he died in the war—at least, I have to assume that, since he never came back. The men who did come back said…” She looked down as she struggled to finish. “Sometimes when men were killed, they…they…couldn’t be identified.”
Nolan’s eyes, when she looked up, were unfocused, haunted, as if he was remembering that and worse.
“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.