Banner O'Brien (10 page)

Adam chuckled and shook his head and immediately became embroiled in an incomprehensible exchange with the Indian—Banner now remembered him as the man who had driven away the children that were tormenting the small Chinaman in Port Hastings—and she found herself wishing that she understood Chinook rather than just its history.

To distract herself, Banner looked upon the children, many of whom were nearly naked in that bitter cold, and shivered. As they were propelled toward the center of the village in a red swell of humanity, she ventured, “How do they bear going almost without clothing in this weather?”

“They’ve had centuries of practice,” responded Adam. “And if you can’t speak decent Chinook, kindly keep your very lovely mouth shut. It is impolite to converse in a language your hosts do not understand.”

“You did.”

“When?”

“Just a moment ago. You said ‘God forbid’ and the man understood!”

“He doesn’t know the half of it. Be quiet, Shamrock, or I’ll trade you for two goats and a berry basket.”

Banner blushed and bit her lower lip, temporarily defeated.

As they approached the doorway of one of the lodges, which had only a bearskin curtain to keep out the cold wind, a younger man approached, authoritative in his buckskins and braids, and spoke to Adam in swift, quelling Chinook.

Adam listened soberly and answered in kind. Again the word for “wife” was mentioned, again Adam vigorously denied the assertion.

The Indian gave Banner a speculative look, his dark eyes lingering long at her fiery hair, and spoke again.

Adam turned to her and grinned. “I’ve just been offered four dried salmon and a cedar canoe for you,” he said. “What’s your counter offer?”

Banner reddened and drew nearer to Adam, even though she was certain, now, that she hated him. “I beg your pardon?”

“What will you give me to keep you?”

“Bastard,” replied Banner.

Battling to suppress his amusement, Adam turned his blue gaze back to the Indian and spoke words of apologetic tone.

The brave looked disappointed and stomped away.

But the other tribesmen were eager to talk with Adam, and they drew him inside the lodge, leaving Banner to stand, befuddled, among the women.

Quickly enough they surrounded her, touching her clothes, smiling gapped smiles, showing her the baskets of which they were justifiably proud.

Banner felt herself warming to them for, after all, they were Jenny’s people and their culture was an ancient one, deserving of respect.

After a time, though, Banner began to grow impatient. There was much laughter, inside the log walls of the lodge, and Adam did not come out.

Why were they here, if not to treat patients?

Her medical bag heavy in one hand, Banner wandered toward a stone hut near the water. “What’s this?”

Several of the women offered answers, but only one was in English.

“My people use to drive out sickness—bad
tamanous”
offered an older woman who wore an outsized brown sateen dress and a patched paisley shawl.

The
tamanous
again. Banner shivered and went to the hut’s arched doorway to peer inside.

The voice at her side startled her. “They heat stones
and drop them into cold water inside the hut,” Adam said. “And when the patient has been properly cooked by the steam, they carry him down to the shore and drop him into the sound.”

Banner was horrified, though she did feel a measure of relief that Adam was no longer secreted away in that masculine stronghold, the lodge. “Saints in heaven!”

Adam looked at the hut as though he’d like to tear it apart, stone by heavy, rounded stone. “They rarely use it unless there’s an outbreak of smallpox. Shall we go, Shamrock?”

The idea was appealing, even though visiting the Klallum camp had been a memorable adventure. “No one is sick?”

He smiled and reached out to catch her hand in his, and the innocent contact gave Banner a certain sweet, piercing pleasure. “No one is sick,” he confirmed, and then they were on the way back to the horse and buggy that awaited them on the ridge.

“Did they really offer you fish and a boat for me?” she asked when they were on their way again.

Adam grinned. “Yes. The bargaining got pretty interesting inside the lodge, as a matter of fact.”

“How interesting?”

“Two of their women, a horse, and all the canoes I could ever want.”

Banner suppressed a smile. “Why didn’t you trade?”

Suddenly, Adam’s eyes were serious. “For the same reason I didn’t press my advantage when we stopped on the way,” he said.

“And what reason was that?” Banner blurted out, before she could stop herself.

He held the reins in one hand, caressed Banner’s cold-pinkened cheek with the other. “I didn’t have the right,” he answered hoarsely.

Banner lowered her eyes, but he only forced her to look at him again.

“Did you think I didn’t want you?” he asked.

Color pounded in Banner’s cheeks at her own brazen reply. “Yes,” she said.

“You were wrong, O’Brien. So very wrong.”

Banner was still confused, though the knowledge that he had wanted her was soothing. Had he restrained himself out of respect for their professional relationship, or because he thought she was a virgin?

And what was she wondering such scandalous things for anyway?

Banner had a sudden need to tell Adam about Sean—all about Sean. About the beatings and the heartbreak and the terrible fear. “Adam, I—”

But his hand fell away from her face and his eyes were suddenly very faraway. Was he thinking of the woman she was certain he kept somewhere nearby, remembering that she loved him and trusted him to be faithful?

Banner swallowed a cluster of tears, and neither of them spoke until they had reached the Corbin house again.

Even there they were drawn into the boisterous celebration of the midday meal, and the few words they exchanged were polite, superficial ones.

*  *  *

It was foggy on Puget Sound, and the masts creaked in rhythm with the tide. The great sails of the
Jonathan Lee
were useless.

Temple Royce grasped the railing and swore. Where the hell was the wind?

The first mate was peering through the shifting gloom of snow and murk. “That’s a cutter, all right,” he said. “We’re in dutch, Cap’n, if they catch us with all them Chinks below decks. And what about the rum and them bolts of wool cloth?”

What, indeed. “You’re sure that’s a revenue cutter?” Temple asked, wondering how the man could recognize any craft in that weather.

“I’ve been runnin’ one kind of smuggle or another
for forty years,” replied the mate. “And yes, sir, that’s a cutter for certain.”

Temple sighed. His head ached and sickness churned in his stomach, rising and falling like foam on an unsettled sea. “Tell the men to dump the cargo,” he whispered.

“All of it?”

“All of it. And be quick, damn it.” With that, Temple hurried into his cabin and shut the door tight.

Even so, he could hear the shrieks as the Chinamen were flung overboard, into the swallowing, frigid waters of the sound.

Trying to console himself with the fact that some of the men would make it to shore, despite all odds, Temple found a bottle, opened it, and drank deeply. If there really was a hell, he thought, it would not consist of fire and brimstone. No, it would be a place where he was forced to relive this day, over and over again.

*  *  *

Stewart Henderson returned first thing Sunday morning. He was a small, plump, avid-looking man with moons of grime under his fingernails and a complicated system of wires holding his jaw in place.

Because of this appliance, he spoke in a mumbling monotone. “You’re more than welcome to stay right here, little lady.”

Banner drew back, her hand at her throat, and then recovered herself enough to smile. “I couldn’t do that,” she said reasonably.

Dr. Henderson stomped the snow from his boots before stepping into the house, and his colorless eyes assessed Banner briefly, then scanned the spotless little parlor. “Somebody really cleaned the place good.”

Jenny had vanished at the first appearance of Dr. Henderson’s buggy, and some instinct warned Banner not to mention her. Since she couldn’t very well take credit for the appearance of the house, she said nothing at all.

Henderson sank into a chair before the fire, where Banner had been sitting reading Melissa’s epic adventure only moments before. With a grunt, he kicked off his boots and settled himself.

Immediately a dense, cloying odor filled the room, and Banner stepped back, her oversensitive nose twitching.

He smiled at her in a familiar way. “You’re a pretty one,” he must have suffered to say, considering his wiring. “Prettiest sawbones
I
ever seen.”

Something within Banner rebelled at saying the expected “thank you.” She clasped her hands together and wondered when the boor had last changed his stockings. “I—I was given to understand that you would be away for some time,” she ventured.

Henderson touched the wires along his jaw and tried to laugh, and the effort was painful to watch. “Takes more’n a little set-to with a whippersnapper like Corbin to run
me
off,” he said.

Odious as this man was, irresponsible and even criminal as it had been to attempt surgery using opium as an anesthetic, Banner could not countenance the violence Adam had done him. “I’ve met Dr. Corbin,” she said, unwilling to express her private opinion.

“I don’t wonder. Ain’t much happens in this town that he don’t know about.” Henderson tried to look gallant. “He didn’t bother you, did he?”

“No,” lied Banner. “He didn’t bother me.”

Henderson shook his balding head. “He’s got a wicked soul, that Adam Corbin. Wicked and hateful.”

Banner knew better, but she refrained, of course, from saying so. And something inside her was overjoyed at the prospect of shocking this man. “I’ve agreed to join Adam’s practice,” she said.

The little man glared at her. “That’s a mistake,” he said, after a rather disturbing interval.

“I don’t think so,” argued Banner in moderate tones as she took her cloak down from a peg on the wall and
put it on. That done, she found her bag and started for the door. “I’ll send someone for my things,” she said, and then she was, blessedly, outside, where the air was fresh and yet another snowfall was beginning.

She hurried toward the center of town, on foot, mentally counting and recounting the few dollars hidden away in the bottom of her medical bag. They would be enough, she hoped, to rent a decent room.

It was the very worst of luck that Banner fairly collided with Jeff Corbin in the doorway of the town’s one hotel. “Banner?” he breathed, squinting at her.

Banner wondered distractedly if this dashing sea captain needed spectacles. “Hello, Jeff,” she said, trying to make her way around him and inside.

He would not permit her to pass. “What are you doing here?” he demanded with typical Corbin directness.

Banner lowered her eyes. “I plan to live here,” she said. “If there is a room available, that is.”

Jeff caught her elbow in a grasp reminiscent of his brother’s and tugged her a little way down the board sidewalk, where those coming to have Sunday breakfasts in the hotel dining room would not overhear their conversation. “Here? I thought you lived—”

Banner was wildly impatient. It seemed that she was always being dragged about or propelled these days—by a Corbin. “Dr. Henderson is back,” she snapped in a furious whisper. “Do you expect me to stay in his house with him there?”

“Of course not. That’s ridiculous. Our house—”

Banner shook her head. “No, Jeff. I can’t stay at your house.”

“Why not? You work there, don’t you—in the hospital, I mean?”

Honesty seemed the only viable course, though Banner would, under the circumstances, have preferred to lie. “Adam is there,” she reminded him miserably.

Understanding registered in Jeff’s bruised face, along with a certain quiet pain. Still, he was obviously reluctant to give ground. “Let’s go inside and talk—please?”

The hotel’s dining room was a modest place overlooking the water, and the tablecloths and implements were clean. Banner breathed a little sigh as a waiter set heavy mugs of coffee before them.

“Banner,” Jeff began gently, his hand coming to close over hers in a brotherly fashion, “do you love Adam?”

She took distracted note of the scrapes on his knuckles and then forced herself to meet the ink-blue eyes. Eyes like Adam’s. “I don’t know,” she hedged.

“But?”

She blushed. For heaven’s sake, what did the man want her to say? “There are problems.”

Jeff’s grin was rueful and totally disarming. “With Adam, there always are,” he said. “But he’s a good man, Banner.”

She took in his injuries with pointed interest. “Look what he did to you, Jeff. For that matter, look what he did to Dr. Henderson.”

Jeff smiled and the greenish-yellow flesh on his battered cheekbone nearly eclipsed his right eye. “It isn’t Adam’s temper that worries you, is it, Banner?” he asked with uncanny insight. “You must know that all brothers fight sometimes, and you’re a doctor yourself, so you surely understand how he felt, seeing someone die in terrible pain because of blatant ignorance.”

“It’s the woman,” mourned Banner, unaccountably.

“What woman?”

Heat throbbed in Banner’s face. What had she
said?
Her suspicions that Adam had a woman and perhaps even children tucked away somewhere were woven of fancy and hearsay, not fact. And even if her guesses were correct, what right did she have, after knowing Adam not quite five days, to consider such things at all?

“Banner,” Jeff prodded gently.

To her mortification, she began to cry. “Please—I’m sorry—I had no right—”

“You do love him,” said Jeff in gentle, decisive tones. “I’ll be a—”

Ever conscious of her dignity, Banner took up a red-and-white-checked table napkin and dried her tears. “I am an utter fool,” she lamented, more to herself than to Jeff.

He chuckled. “No.”

“I was always so practical!”