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“How much does it matter?”
“It matters a lot.”
“Winifred, I’m offering you everything I have, everything I am.”
“I know, Zane. And it still matters.”
Chapter Sixteen
Winifred heard the crash of the front door and a thump as Zane dropped his medical bag in the hallway. He strode through the dining room and into the kitchen, and the splash of water told her he was scrubbing his hands. When he reappeared, he sank into his place at the dining table with a ragged sigh and dropped his head in his hands.
She stared at him as if he’d dropped from the moon. “Zane? Are you all right?”
“I know I must look awful,” he grated. “Haven’t slept, haven’t shaved in twenty-four hours and my sanity is hanging by a thread.”
His face looked gray with fatigue. “Whatever is wrong?”
He groaned. “Two new cases of cholera and an accident at the sawmill. Man lost the fingers of one hand. Damned dangerous blades on those belt saws.”
Sam set a large bowl of hearty stew in front of him and a smaller bowl for Winifred. The warm bread that accompanied it she had made herself that morning. She opened her mouth to mention it, then changed her mind. A man this tired hardly cared who baked the bread, or who made the stew or the apple pie they would have for dessert.
He polished off his bowl of stew and Sam instantly refilled it. Zane smiled wearily. “Where is Rosemarie?”
“She’s asleep upstairs in my room,” Winifred said. “She’s fine, Zane. We are all fine. You need not worry about us.”
“I worry anyway.” His eyes were red-rimmed but his gaze was steady. “Dr. Graham thinks we’ve got the cholera outbreak under control. We’ll know for sure in the next twelve hours if no new cases come in.”
“Can you rest before you go back tonight?”
“No. Samuel’s there alone and it’s too much for one doctor.”
To take his mind off the hospital and the grim battle against the cholera epidemic, she told him about Rosemarie’s day, how she had gobbled down some cooked carrots and smeared bread dough in her hair—little things that might distract him. He ate while she talked, smiling every now and then.
“Good stew,” he said when he finished his second bowl. He looked up at her. “Good bread, too. You make it?”
Winifred nodded. “Sam says my baking is almost as good as Uncle Charlie’s.”
“I don’t suppose there’s much you can’t do, if you put your mind to it.”
“We’ll see. I’m in charge of the conservatory’s summer concerts in the park this August. I’ve only performed in them, but I’ve never been in charge before.”
His face changed subtly, the warm light fading from his gray eyes. “August,” he repeated. “That’s in two weeks.”
“One week. I must return early to chair the planning meetings.”
He said nothing else, but she knew he was disappointed, that he wanted her to stay until...well, for Zane there was no “until.”
He ate four bites of her apple pie and left for the hospital again.
* * *
At three in the morning, Zane dragged himself up the stairs and stumbled into his bedroom. Without lighting the lamp he shed his clothes down to his drawers, but when he turned toward the bed he realized he wasn’t alone.
“Winifred! What on earth? I didn’t expect—”
“I know you didn’t. But you looked so tired at supper it decimated my resolve to stay away.”
He sank down on the bed beside her. She had on that soft silky gown again, the one with seventeen buttons up the front, and he had to smile. “Oh, my dearest girl,” he breathed. He was so exhausted he doubted he could undo a single one.
She pressed her fingers against his lips. “Don’t talk, Zane. You need to sleep.”
With a groan he shucked his drawers and crawled in beside her. She smelled so good, like violets or roses, or both. He didn’t care, as long as it wasn’t hospital soap and carbolic.
She reached for him, pulled his head down onto her breast and stroked her fingers through his hair. He hadn’t had a chance to shave; maybe it didn’t matter.
“Winifred.” He murmured her name again and again until he let sleep take him.
Lying close beside him, Winifred felt tears sting behind her eyelids. She loved him. And she couldn’t stay in Smoke River.
