Lucky Bride. Ana Seymour
the room. They pulled the stack of covers off him, leaving only the quilt and one blanket. Almost immediately his tossing and moaning subsided. As the room cooled, Molly felt calmer. She put another coat of glycerine over the swollen ears and wiped his face again with the cool cloth. His breathing grew deeper, more even.
After several minutes Molly said in a soft voice, “I think he’s fallen asleep.” She looked around the room. “Why don’t you all go to your rooms and get some rest? I’ll sit with him.”
“You were up with him last night, Miss Molly,” Smokey protested. “I’ll stay by him tonight.”
Molly shook her head. “I’m not tired. If I need you during the night, I’ll knock on your door.”
“You can knock on mine, too, Molly,” Susannah said in a subdued voice.
Molly looked up at her sharply. Even when their father had been so sick, Susannah had not been willing to allow her beauty sleep to be disturbed.
“I’d not mind sitting up with him,” Susannah added. Her eyes regarded the sick man with concern and something more.
“He’s breathing easier now,” Molly said, motioning toward the bed. “I think I’ll be all right with him.”
With final glances at the sleeping man, her sisters and Smokey left the room. Molly pulled the rocker close to the bed and sat down. She hoped she’d done the right thing by cooling down the room, she thought groggily as she pushed the chair back and forth. She hoped the fever would break overnight. The old rocker creaked rhythmically…. She hoped she wouldn’t have to cut off her patient’s ears…. Her head lolled against the chair cushion…. She hoped she had misread the look in Susannah’s eyes….
Parker’s mouth tasted as if he’d eaten a dead squirrel. His head pounded, and his ears felt as if someone had stuffed them full of cotton. He was still in the bedroom of the Hanks’s deceased father, even though the sunshine through the slats of the window meant that the storm had long since ended. He must have been so plumb tired that the fierce Miss Hanks had decided to extend her charity a few more hours. For some reason, he could remember little of the previous day, other than the fact that Molly Hanks had threatened to turn him into buzzard meat if he touched her sisters. He smiled. She had a right tender way about her, that one.
After a moment of debate he decided he would have to move his head. The prospect did not please him, but he had to move some part of his body, and he might as well just start right in where it hurt. Nausea hit him as he turned to one side, but he controlled it as he focused on the woman in the chair beside him. Not the termagant older sister, but Susannah, looking pretty as spring in a bright yellow dress with flounces of lace from the high neck to just above where the tightly fitted bodice showed off her full… Parker blinked twice. He was in a strange place, coming out of some kind of delirium, weak and disoriented, yet he could feel his body reacting to Susannah’s female perfection. Perhaps her sister had been right. Perhaps he should be left for buzzard meat.
“You’re awake,” Susannah exclaimed.
“Have I…” Parker stopped to swallow down the fuzz in his mouth. “Have I slept long?”
“You were out of your head yesterday afternoon and into the night. We didn’t know if you were going to make it. Smokey wanted to cut off your ears, but Molly wouldn’t let him.”
She had jumped up and come to the side of the bed, speaking excitedly. Parker’s head throbbed. “Cut off my ears?” he asked, not certain he had heard correctly.
“They’re frozen,” Susannah said with a frown, her excitement decreasing.
He raised a hand to the side of his head and encountered a large, sticky mass that seemed to have no relation to the rest of his body. He looked up at Susannah in dismay.
“Don’t touch them or they might fall off,” she said quickly, and he pulled his hand away as if he had been burned.
He tried to bring the rest of the room into focus at the same time as he tamped down another wave of sickness. “Have you been beside me all night?” he asked her.
She hesitated a moment. “Molly was helping, too,” she said finally.
He smiled. “I owe you a big debt.”
She stood and leaned across the bed, putting a cool hand against his forehead. “Last night you were burning up with fever. You seem cool enough now.”
He wasn’t feeling cool. Her chest pressed gently against his arm as she bent over him. She smelled faintly of lemon. Even still weak from a night of fever he felt a surge of desire. He bit his lip until she pulled back. It might be harder than he had thought to keep his promise to Molly Hanks through the long winter.
She was looking at his ears. It was odd, but he couldn’t feel them. He carefully touched first one side, then the other. “You were serious about cutting them off?” he asked.
Susannah nodded. “They’ve got the chilblains, Smokey says, and the pizens are what made you go out of your head.”
“Do you have a mirror?”
“I… I don’t think you want to see them, Mr. Prescott. They’re just about every shade of the rainbow this morning.”
Parker grinned. “Sounds pretty. But didn’t we agree that you’re to call me Parker?”
Susannah nodded. “Molly might have something to say about it, though. She gets nervous when we start getting too familiar with anyone wearing pants—except for her, of course,” she added with a giggle.
“Well, at least you can call me Parker when we’re by ourselves, Susannah.”
“Which isn’t going to be often,” a blunt voice said from the doorway.
Parker jumped, sending a spiral of pain from the base of his neck up to the top of his head. Molly Hanks stalked across the room and looked down at him. “You look as if you plan on sticking around for the winter after all, Mr. Prescott,” she said. Her blunt comment from the door had made him expect to see her upset, but she actually sounded pleased to see that he was recovering.
“Thanks to you and your sister,” he said. “I’m beholden to you both.”
“Just get yourself healthy enough to help out around here and remember what we talked about yesterday. That’s all the thanks I ask.”
He started to nod but thought better of it. He wouldn’t move his head again unless he had to. “I probably owe you my life,” he said. “And I understand that I definitely owe you my ears.” Smiling didn’t hurt, so he turned the full force of one of his best on Molly. He saw immediately that it had some effect. She might dress tough and talk tough, but he had the feeling that underneath, Molly Hanks was not so very different from her two sisters.
“We’ll keep putting on the glycerine,” she said, ducking her head to hide the flush that had crept over her face. “But the swelling’s gone down some from last night. I think they’ll be all right.”
Smokey appeared in the doorway. “He’s doing better?” he asked in his gravelly voice.
Molly turned around with a smile.. “Yes. I think we’ve got those pizens on the run.”
The cook gave a satisfied nod. “You’ve got a visitor.”
“A visitor? Through this snow?”
“Mr. Dickerson. The son.”
“Jeremy or Ned?”
Smokey grimaced. “Mr. High-and-Mighty. Jeremy.”
Without appearing aware of her actions, Molly smoothed her hair with both hands. “Tell him I’ll be down directly,” she said.
“I told him to wait in the parlor, but he says he wants to come—”
From behind him an authoritative