Twin of Fire Read online

  Leander was grinning at her. “I thank you for the compliment.” He leaned across the couch and began to toy with the curls that were escaping the neat chignon that Houston had fixed that morning, and, slowly, he began to remove the pins from her hair. “Opposites always seem to attract. Look at you and me. Here I am a fine surgeon, and you’re going to be a fine wife and mother and put all my socks in their proper place, and you’ll see to the house so it’s a comfortable place for a man to come home to and—.”

  Blair nearly choked on the champagne. “Are you saying that you expect me to give up medicine to wait on you?” she sputtered. “Of all the misinformed, stupid ideas I have ever heard, that one is the worst.” With a great deal of anger, she slammed her glass down on a side table and stood. “I always tried to tell Houston that you were like Gates, but she wouldn’t listen. She said you weren’t at all like him. I’ll tell you one thing, Leander Westfield, if you married me thinking that I’d give up medicine, we might as well call this whole thing off now.”

  Leander sat on the couch as she stood over him raging, then, halfway through her speech, he slowly rose to stand in front of her. And when she began to wind down, he smiled at her. “I think you have a great deal to learn about me yet. I’m not sure why you’re so ready to believe the worst about me, but I hope to prove to you that I’m not what you think. And I plan to spend the rest of my life teaching you. But lessons don’t start until tomorrow,” he said, as he put his arms around her and pulled her to him.

  Blair clung to him, and when his lips touched hers, she felt as if she never wanted to let go. She knew that she knew nothing about him. She didn’t know why he’d wanted to marry her, whether he had merely tolerated her working with him so that he could win the competition as Alan had said, or if he had enjoyed that time together as much as she had.

  But right now, she didn’t care. All she thought about was his arms around her, his body near hers, the heat he was producing that was making her feel wonderful.

  “I’ve waited a long time for this to happen again,” he said, wrapping her hair about his wrist, his other hand caressing her neck and cheek. “Go upstairs and get ready. I’m going to be a gentleman tonight, but I’ll never be one again, so you might as well take advantage of this once. Stop looking at me like that and go. I’m sure your sister bought you some outrageous—but proper—nightgown for tonight, so go get it on. You have about ten minutes. Maybe.”

  Blair didn’t want to leave him, but she did and she went upstairs, around the narrow, curving stairs and into the bedroom. There were three bedrooms upstairs: the master bedroom, one for guests and one a tiny nursery. Her clothes were hung in the closet, all her shoes beside Leander’s, and for a moment she thought she’d never seen anything as intimate as those shoes next to each other.

  On the bed was indeed a beautiful robe of white chiffon with swan’s-down about the hem and sleeves, a gown of white satin to go under it. Blair shook her head at the extravagance of the things, but the next moment she was dying to get into them. Sometimes, she was frustrated by Houston’s seemingly useless life, but this wedding made her admire her sister as nothing else had. The wedding itself had required the planning of a military general and no detail had seemed too small to attract Houston’s attention. She’d even remembered to have her sister’s clothes moved to her new house during the wedding, so they’d be here when she returned with Leander.

  Blair was only half into the robe when Lee came up the stairs and, by the look in his eyes, he didn’t seem to care that it was hanging off her shoulder in a very unkempt way. He bounded across the room and had her in his arms in seconds. In fact, his enthusiasm was so great that Blair took a step backward, tripped on the hem of the robe, and fell back onto the bed. Lee went with her and they fell into the feather bed, bits of swan’s-down from the robe floating around them.

  They started to laugh, and Lee rolled over, his arms still about her, pulling her with him, kissing her, tickling her, making Blair squeal with delight. The lovely robe came off and she was in the thin satin gown, and he was nibbling at her shoulders and growling like a bear, making her laugh harder. His hands went up and down her thighs while she made halfhearted protests about nothing in particular.

  The telephone downstairs began to ring before their play turned serious.

  “What’s that?” Blair asked, lifting her head.

  “I don’t hear anything,” Leander murmured, his face buried in her neck and travelling lower.

  “It’s the telephone. Lee, you have to answer it. Someone may be ill and need you.”

  “Anyone who’d disturb a man on his wedding night deserves what he gets.”

  Blair pushed away from him. “Lee, you don’t mean that. When you became a doctor, you did so because you wanted to help people.”

  “But not tonight, not now.” He tried to pull her back into his arms, but she resisted and the damn telephone kept ringing. “Why did I have to marry a doctor?” he mumbled, as he stood and adjusted his clothes while giving Blair looks that made her giggle and look away. “Don’t you go away. I’ll be right back,” he said before he went down the stairs. “Right after I kill whoever it is on the telephone.”

  As soon as he picked up the receiver, the operator began to talk. “I hate to disturb you tonight of all nights,” she began, “but it’s your father, and he says it’s urgent.”

  “It’d better be,” Lee said. Then she put Reed on the line.

  “Lee, I hate to bother you, but it’s an emergency. Elijah Smith is about to die of a heart attack if you don’t come right away.”

  Leander drew in his breath. Elijah Smith was their code name for trouble at the mine. Reed often reported to Lee over the telephone while Lee was at the hospital, and they’d worked out a series of messages. Poor Mr. Smith got everything from poison ivy to smallpox, but a heart attack was what they’d agreed to use to signal the worst that could happen: a riot.

  Lee rolled his eyes toward the ceiling, toward the room where his bride waited. “How much time do I have?”

  “They needed you an hour ago. Lee, don’t go; someone else can take the case.”

  “Yeah, like who?” Lee spat, taking his anger out on his father. There was no one outside the mines who knew what was going on inside them. And Lee felt responsible for any rioting, since he was the man who brought the unionists in. “I’ll be there as fast as I can,” Lee said before he hung up the telephone.

  As he went up the stairs, feeling as if the worst thing in his life had just happened, he suddenly realized that he had to give Blair a reason for leaving. He was no longer a bachelor who answered to no one. He now had a wife who deserved an explanation as to where he was going. At the moment, he was feeling so miserable that he couldn’t think of a lie—and heaven forbid that he should tell her the truth! With Blair’s total lack of a self-preservation instinct, she’d no doubt insist on going with him. And if he didn’t have enough to worry about, he couldn’t have her in danger, too.

  The best way was to do it quickly and get out of the house.

  He had never moved faster in his life, and considering that there were what seemed to be tears fogging his eyes as he looked at Blair lying there in that thin little piece of cloth, every nook and cranny of her delicious body showing, he should have been given an award. He didn’t say much at all, except that he had to go and he’d be back as soon as possible. He ran down the stairs and was out the door before Blair could even move.

  At his father’s house, he was still feeling miserable and thinking that the miners could riot all night as far as he was concerned.

  Reed told Lee that an informer had let the guards know about the unionist, and that the stupid man had gone back into the camp without Lee. He’d sneaked down the back side of the mountain and was being very bold when the guards heard about him. Now, the armed guards were searching each house and making threats against innocent people.

  Leander would be able to get into the camp, and if he could find the u