Twin of Fire Read online

  “Of course they do,” Houston said with some anger in her voice. “They’d ‘love’ you, too, if you did as much for people as I do. Someone will say, ‘Let’s have a social,’ then someone else will say, ‘We’ll get Blair-Houston to do all the work.’ I was too cowardly to ever say no. I have organized socials that I didn’t even attend. How I dreamed of telling them no. I used to imagine packing a bag and climbing down the tree outside your bedroom and just running away. But I was much too cowardly. You said I had a useless life and it has been.”

  “I was jealous,” Blair whispered.

  “Jealous? Of what? Surely not of me.”

  “I didn’t realize I was until Lee made me see it. I’ve won awards, scored high on tests, had many honors, but I know I’ve always been lonely. It hurt when Mr. Gates said he didn’t want me, but he did want you. It hurt when you wrote me of all the men you danced with one evening after another. I’d be studying a chapter on the correct way to amputate a leg, and I’d stop and reread one of your letters. Men have never liked me as they have you, and sometimes I thought I’d give up medicine if I could be a normal woman, one who smelled of perfume and not carbolic.”

  “And how many times I’ve wished I could do something important besides choose the colors of my next dress,” Houston sighed. “Men only liked me because they thought I was, as Leander once said, pliable. They liked the idea of a woman they could browbeat. To most of the men, I was a human dog, someone to fetch their slippers for them. They wanted to marry me because they knew what they were getting: no surprises from Houston Chandler.”

  “Do you think that’s why Lee asked you to marry him?”

  “Sometimes, I’m not sure he did ask me. We saw each other a few times after he returned, and I guess I so expected to marry him that, when the word marriage came up, I said yes. The next morning, Mr. Gates asked if it was time yet for the announcement in the paper. I nodded, and the next thing I knew the house was full of people wishing me a lifetime of happiness.”

  “I know about the citizens of Chandler and their curiosity. But you loved Lee all those years.”

  “I guess so, but the truth is, we never seemed to have much to say to each other. You and Lee talked more than he and I did.”

  Blair was quiet for a long while. It seemed ironic that all these years she’d envied her sister, and at the same time her sister was envying her.

  “Houston, you said you used to have dreams that you were afraid to pursue. What were they?”

  “Nothing much. Nothing like you and medicine. But I did think I might be able to write—not a novel or anything grand, but I thought I’d like to write articles for ladies’ magazines. Maybe about how to clean silk charmeuse or how to make a really good facial mud.”

  “But Mr. Gates would hate that, wouldn’t he?”

  “He said those women who wrote were probably adulteresses who’d been thrown out by their husbands and had to support themselves.”

  Blair’s eyes widened. “He doesn’t mince words, does he?”

  “No, and I let him bully me for years.”

  Blair ran her finger along a cabinet top. “And your husband doesn’t bully you? I know you said you loved him, but now it’s…I mean, it’s after the ceremony and you’ve lived with him.” No matter how many times Houston said she loved the man, Blair would never be able to believe her. Yesterday, she’d seen Taggert in front of the Chandler National Bank. The bank president, half Taggert’s size, was looking up at the big man and talking as fast as he could. Taggert had just seemed bored as he looked over the man’s head at some place down the street, then he’d taken out a big gold pocket watch, looked at it, then down at the little bank officer. “No,” Blair’d heard him say before he walked away. He was impervious to the man’s entreaties to stay and listen.

  And that’s how Blair thought of him: impervious. How could Houston love a man like him?

  When Blair looked up, Houston was smiling. “I love him more every day. What about you and Lee? At the wedding, you said you didn’t believe he loved you.”

  Blair thought of this morning, of their exuberant coupling that had tumbled them out of bed, and of later when Mrs. Shainess had nearly slammed breakfast on the table. When the woman’s back was turned, Lee had rolled his eyes in such a way that Blair had started giggling. “Lee’s all right,” she said at last and made Houston laugh.

  Houston began to pull on her gloves. “I’m glad everything worked out as it did. I’d better go. Kane and the rest of my family will be needing me.” She paused a moment. “What a lovely word. I may not have a medical degree, but I am needed.”

  “I need you,” Blair said. “Was it you or Mother who organized all my ‘patients’?”

  Houston’s eyes widened. “I have no idea what you mean. I merely came here because I was hoping I was expecting. I plan to come back at least once a month, or any other time I’m not feeling well.”

  “I think you should visit your husband more often, not me, if you want a baby.”

  “Like I hear you’re exhausting Lee every night and morning?”

  “I what?” Blair began, then remembered her telephone boast. Of course it was all over town.

  “By the way, how is Mrs. Shainess working out?”

  “Dreadful. She doesn’t approve of me.”

  “That’s nonsense. She’s bragging to everyone about her lady-doctor.” She kissed Blair’s cheek. “I must go. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  Chapter 29

  The next morning, early, Blair looked up from her desk to see Nina Westfield, now Hunter, standing before her.

  “Hello,” Nina said softly, her eyes half pleading. “Wait,” she said, when Blair started to rise. “Before you say anything, let me do some explaining. I just got off the train and came directly here. I haven’t seen Dad or Lee, but if you say you can’t bear the sight of me, I’ll leave on the next train and you’ll never have to see me again.”

  “And miss thanking you every day for the rest of my life?” Blair asked, eyes sparkling.

  “Thanking…?” Nina said, then realized what Blair meant and, the next minute, she was pulling her sister-in-law out of the chair, hugging her and crying on her neck. “Oh, Blair, I’ve been so worried that I haven’t really enjoyed what I’ve done. Alan kept saying that you loved Lee but just didn’t know it. He said you and Lee were much more suited to one another than you and he were. But I wasn’t sure. To me, Lee’s a brother. I couldn’t imagine choosing to live with him. I mean—.” She pulled away, blowing her nose and sniffling.

  Blair was smiling at her. “I’d offer you tea, but we don’t have any. How about a cup of cod liver oil?”

  That made Nina smile, as she sat down heavily in an oak chair. “I think this may be the happiest moment of my life. I was so afraid you’d be angry, that the whole town would be angry with me.”

  “But no one in town knew Alan and I were engaged. They thought Lee and I were to be married.”

  “But you wanted Alan,” Nina persisted. “I know you did. I know you went to meet him at the train.”

  Blair’s curiosity was peaked. “I want to hear the whole story.”

  Nina looked down at her hands. “I really hate to tell you everything.” She looked up, tears beginning to form again. “Oh, Blair, I was so unutterably devious and underhanded. I did everything I could to get Alan. You never had a chance.”

  “If I shoot you, I promise I’ll sew the wound myself.”

  “You can joke, but you won’t after you hear about the things I did.” She blew her nose again, and, while looking at her hands, she began. “I met Alan the night he decided to kill Lee.”

  “What? Leander? He was going to kill Leander?”

  Nina shrugged. “He was just angry, and I understood so well how he felt. Lee has such a highhanded way about him. When I was little, he used to decide what was good for me and what was bad. It used to make me so angry that I wanted to strangle him.”

  “I know the feeling,” Blair