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Winifred began gathering up the playing cards.
“Maybe it’s just as well,” he said. “I haven’t lost this many hands playing cards since my medical school days.”
“I’ll wait up for you and make some coffee.”
“Don’t. Might be gone all night and tomorrow, too.”
“Is Mrs. Johnson at the hospital? I could bring—”
“Nope. I’ll take a horse and ride out to their place. Go to bed, Winifred. Get some rest. Tomorrow is Rooney and Sarah’s wedding. Four o’clock at Rose Cottage. I’ll try to be there.”
She watched him step into his office for his black leather medical bag, then heard him move through the kitchen and out the back door to the barn. No sooner had the door closed than Sam appeared.
“Boss go out?”
“Yes. A baby is on the way.”
“Work too hard,” the houseboy observed.
“A physician has no choice, Sam. Medicine is his chosen calling.” Just as music is mine. But I do have a choice. I haven’t sworn a sacred oath, as Zane has.
She packed the deck of cards into the walnut holder and stashed it on the bookshelf between Wordsworth and Sir Walter Scott. Sam disappeared into the kitchen and, she supposed, back to bed with Yan Li. How wonderful it must be to have each other, to talk to each other every day and be with each other every night for the rest of their lives.
Upstairs, she undressed and crawled into bed to find her cheeks wet. Just fatigue, she told herself. Fatigue and...and what? Well, she had been quite sick with pneumonia; perhaps she was not yet fully recovered. Perhaps her nerves had been affected by her illness. Or perhaps winning so many hands of whist had tired out her mind.
Still, the last time she had wept was at Papa’s funeral, when she had felt overwhelming emptiness, the aching loss of someone she loved. And she had felt so terrible, so guilty, when she couldn’t be at Cissy’s funeral. She lay down on her narrow bed and swiped her hand across her eyes.
* * *
At a quarter to four the following afternoon, Zane had not returned. Winifred walked down the hill to Rose Cottage for the wedding of Sarah Rose and Rooney Cloudman, sending a silent prayer for Ellie Johnson’s safe delivery. Sam had unearthed a blue lace-trimmed parasol of Cissy’s, for which she was grateful; the sun was scorching.
On the front porch of the boardinghouse, which Sarah ran, Winifred folded the parasol, then walked through the wide open front doorway and gasped. Huge bouquets of roses, crimson, yellow, even lavender, sat on every available table and swathed the fireplace mantel. Smaller vases of orange zinnias and black-eyed Susans decorated the dining table in the next room, surrounding a spectacular many-layered wedding cake. Oh, it was so beautiful she wanted to cry.
Dr. Samuel Graham, Zane’s partner, greeted the arriving guests. “Zane isn’t back yet, I gather?” the graying physician asked.
“Not yet. I hope everything is all right.”
“It will be. I’ve never known Zane to lose a mother, except for—” He snapped his mouth shut and took her hand. “I beg your pardon, Miss Von Dannen. I recall now that Celeste was your sister.”
Winifred nodded and moved on into the parlor. Jeanne and Wash Halliday were there with their young daughter, Manette. Winifred guessed this was the girl who had fallen out of the tree some months before. Leah MacAllister stood with them.
How lovely she was, with her almond-shaped gray eyes and alabaster skin. And such cheekbones! Her husband, Thad, was deep in conversation with the groom, Rooney Cloudman, who looked rigid as a department store floorwalker in his dark suit and tie.
Rooney looked up and started across the room toward her. “Glad yer here, Miss Winifred. Thought ya could give me some advice about my nerves. Stage fright, I guess you’d call it.”
She grasped the hands he extended toward her. “Why, Rooney, you’re not nervous, are you?”
“Never been so scared in all my life, not even fightin’ Indians with Wash Halliday. Never been really married, ya see. My first wife was Cherokee. Indians don’t go through all this...” He gestured to the milling townspeople in the room. “Fol-de-rol, I guess you’d call it.”
“Don’t think about the crowd, Rooney. Just take a deep breath and keep breathing in and out, nice and slow. Think about Sarah.”
“Hell’s bells, Miss Winifred, that’s what got me so scared. I’d do most anything for Sarah and I surely want her to be happy. With me, I mean. I mean married to me.” He wiped his tanned face with the handkerchief he snatched from his breast pocket.
