Twin of Fire Read online

  Listlessly, she sat on one of the sofas.

  “Have you seen the dress, Blair?” Houston asked as she turned around, holding a big cut-glass bowl that must have cost someone the earth.

  “What dress?”

  “Our wedding dress, of course,” Houston said patiently. “I’m having yours made just like mine.”

  Blair felt that she couldn’t stand to be in the room with so much enthusiasm. Maybe Houston could be put in a thrill of delight by a few presents, but she couldn’t. “Mother, I don’t feel too well. I think I’ll go to bed and read for a while.”

  “All right, dear,” Opal said, as she dug into yet another box. “I’ll send Susan up with a tray. By the way, a young man called and said he wouldn’t be at the hospital tomorrow. A Mr. Hunter, I believe,” she said.

  If anything, Blair began to feel worse. She’d neglected Alan shamefully in the last few days.

  The morning came all too soon, and Blair’s mood wasn’t much improved. At least, the patients at the hospital kept her mind off her own problems—that is, until Leander came. His black mood made hers seem like a beam of sunshine. Within two hours, he managed to yell at her four times, telling her that if she wanted to be a doctor, she had to learn a few things. Blair wanted to yell back at him but, after one look at his face, she wisely said nothing except, “Yes, sir,” and tried to do what she could to obey his orders.

  At eleven, she was bending over a little girl whose broken arm she’d just set, when Alan came up behind her.

  “I thought I’d find you here—with him.”

  Blair gave the little girl a smile. “Alan, I’m working.”

  “We’re going to have a talk now, in front of the entire hospital or alone.”

  “All right, then, come with me.” She led him down the corridor to Leander’s office. She didn’t know the hospital very well, and it was the only place she knew where they could be private. She just hoped that Lee wouldn’t come back and discover them in there.

  “I should have guessed this is where you’d go. His office! You must feel comfortable in here. No doubt you’re in here often enough.” To his consternation, Blair collapsed in a chair, put her hands to her face and began to cry.

  Alan was on his knees before her in an instant. “I didn’t mean to be cross with you.”

  Blair tried to control her tears, but couldn’t. “Everyone is cross with me. I never seem to please anyone. Mr. Gates never leaves me alone. Houston hates me. Leander can barely speak to me, and now you…”

  “What’s Westfield got to be angry about? He’s whining hands down.”

  “Whining?” Blair pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and blew her nose. “He’s not even in the competition. He said he could see that I loved you, and so he was no longer going to compete.”

  Alan stood and leaned against the desk. “Then why are you spending day after day with him? You haven’t been two feet from his side for a week.”

  “He said that he’d like to work with me for the few days left of my stay. He said he’d never worked so well with anyone before. And he extended the invitation to both of us.”

  “Of all the underhanded—,” Alan began, pacing the room. “He is lower than I thought. I never heard of such a sneaky, dirty trick.” He looked back at Blair. “He knows you’re infatuated with anything to do with medicine, so he uses that to get near you, and of course he’d invite me! The man’s had years of experience and training over mine, so he looks great while I look like an idiot.”

  “That’s not true! Leander said he wanted to work with me, and we do work well together. It’s as if we, read each other’s minds.”

  “From what I hear, it’s been that way since the first night you went out.”

  “Now who’s being underhanded?”

  “No more than he is,” Alan shot back. “Blair, I’m tired of looking like a fool. I’m a student doctor competing in an operating room with a man with years of experience. I grew up in a city, but I’m competing in a canoe and on horseback. There’s no possible way that I can look good against him.”

  “But you don’t understand. Leander isn’t competing. He no longer wants to marry me. I’m staying in Chandler until my sister gets married, and then you and I will leave together. I still have hopes that Houston will marry Leander.”

  He watched her for a moment. “I believe that some part of you actually believes what you’re saying. Let me tell you something: Westfield has not left the race. The poor man is competing so hard it’s a wonder he has any breath left. And if you believe you’re not getting married on Monday, why haven’t you put a stop to all the wedding plans your sister is making? Do you plan to sit in the front row and watch your sister get married while you’re surrounded by two of everything? What are you going to do with all those presents?”

  He put his hands on the arms of the chair and leaned his face into hers. “As for Houston marrying your beloved doctor, I don’t think you could sit there and watch that.”

  “That’ll be enough, Hunter,” came Leander’s voice from the doorway.

  “It’s not nearly enough,” Alan said, advancing on Leander.

  “If it’s a fight you want—.”

  Lee stopped when Blair placed herself between the two men.

  “Blair,” Alan said, “it’s time you made a decision. I will be on the four o’clock train out of this town today. If you’re not there, I’ll leave alone.” With that, he left the room.

  Blair stood there alone with Lee for a moment and neither said anything, then Lee put his hand on her arm.

  “Blair,” he began, but she moved away.

  “I think Alan’s right. It’s time I made my decision and stopped playing childish games.” With that she swept past him and walked the two miles to her house.

  When she got home, she very calmly took a pen and paper and began to make a list of the pros and cons of leaving with Alan. There were five good, strong reasons that she could come up with of why she should leave with him. They ranged from being able to get out of this bigoted town to allowing Houston to no longer feel pressured to marry her millionaire.

  The only reason she could think of for not leaving with Alan was that she’d never get to see Leander again. She’d not be able to work with him on that new infirmary of his—of course, if what Alan had said was true, maybe Leander had shown her his plans just as a ruse to win the competition.

  She stood. If she didn’t get to work on the clinic here, in Pennsylvania, St. Joseph’s Hospital was waiting for her.

  She glanced down at her uniform and knew that that one garment was the only thing that she’d take with her. She couldn’t walk out the door carrying a bag other than her medical bag, or there’d be questions. All she could take was what she was wearing. She crumbled the list in her hand and kept it there. She might need it to remind her why she was doing this.

  Downstairs, her mother was arranging gifts, and Houston was out. Blair tried to say a few words to her mother, to say good-bye without saying the exact words, but Opal was too busy counting pieces of silver.

  With her chin in the air, Blair went out the door and walked the long way to the train station. As she walked, she looked at the bustling little town with different eyes. Maybe it wasn’t as bad as she’d originally thought. It wasn’t Philadelphia, but it had its compensations. Three carriages rattled by carrying people who called out to her, “Hello, Blair-Houston,” and the double name for once didn’t seem so bad.

  As she neared the train station, she wondered what would happen after she’d gone; if Houston would marry Lee, if her mother would understand Blair’s disappearance, if Gates would hate her more than he did already.

  She arrived at the train station at three forty-five and quickly saw that Alan wasn’t there yet. She stood on the platform, her medical bag beside her, fiddled with the list in her hand, and thought about how this could be her last few minutes in the town named for her father. After the scandal she’d caused—stealing her sister’s fia