The Surgeon. Kate Bridges

so much at him? Not that he minded, in fact, he was enjoying it…but who was she?

      The minute they were out the door, John growled at Reid. “What do you know about her?”

      Reid squirmed. “I have to get the laudanum.”

      John cursed. “You better tell me right now. Who is she?”

      Reid’s face paled. He lurched and hurried down the aisle.

      “Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea,” he called over his shoulder. “Come to think of it…” Reid gulped and John felt a shiver of dread race through him. “Maybe it got out of hand…. We all chipped in for the newspaper advertisement and her train ticket…and ordered her for you.”

      John stalked after Reid. “Ordered her?” Was she a painted lady?

      Reid began to run toward the doors of the hospital ward.

      John said after him. “What the hell does that mean? You ordered her?”

      Reid dove through the doors, escaping John’s fury, shouting the explanation just before the thick door slammed in John’s face. “She’s…your mail-order bride!”

      What? Stumbling back, John slumped against the hard wall.

      What…in hell…had his men done?

      They’d sent for a mail-order bride? For him?

      After his criticisms to Wesley, was this some kind of joke? John had thought he’d seen it all in the fifteen years he’d been here. The pranks, the initiations, the tricks on the new recruits…

      So help him God, he’d string them up one by one!

      What decent man could do this? This was someone’s life they were playing with! Maybe they thought it’d be a funny prank to play on him, but what about the poor woman in his bedroom?

      He groaned. She was too innocent-looking to be a painted lady, to be part of a hoax. And Reid had been too scared to be lying.

      Where had she come from? What was he supposed to tell her? How could a simple apology be anywhere near enough?

      And why should he have to do it? The men responsible should. But…they were busy, and she was waiting.

      She deserved an explanation—right bloody now.

      Bracing himself, John walked back down the hall, rapped on his bedroom door, then entered.

      She was standing at the window, letting the breeze roll over her face. Turning around, she met his awkward gaze with an awkward one of her own.

      That’s why she was so dressed up, he realized, glancing at her cinched waist. She thought she was coming to meet her groom. Just watching her, he felt his muscles tighten.

      The air grew still between them. When her gaze hesitated over his bare shoulders, he wondered what she was thinking. That they would soon be married? That the two of them would soon be very intimate?

      The thought brought a surge of heat to his own flesh. Then shame found him again, for how his men had tricked her. Looking down into her expectant eyes, he felt the hairs at the back of his neck bristle.

      He tried to ease the news. “I’m not who you think I am.”

      “You’re not?” Her generous mouth opened and she colored fiercely. “But you’re John Calloway.”

      “Yes, but—”

      They were interrupted again, this time by a sergeant running through the open door. “Dr. Calloway! You better come quickly! Pawson’s tryin’ to get up! The stitches in his legs are comin’ apart!”

      John leaped into action. “Get two more men to help us. We’ll need to hold him down.”

      He grabbed a clean shirt from his closet and tugged it up his arms. “I’ve got to go,” he yelled to Miss O’Neill, leaving her standing in his turbulence. “Wait right here till I get back! Don’t go anywhere!”

      What did he mean, I’m not who you think I am?

      He was John Calloway. He’d sent for her! She had his four letters in her satchel to prove it. But an hour had passed and Sarah was getting the eerie impression something wasn’t right.

      Feeling ill again, she pressed a hand to her corseted stomach and tried to ease her nervousness. It was the same way she’d felt the whole eight days on the train. Motion sickness, the conductor had told her. There hadn’t been much she could do except lay her head between her knees whenever she’d felt the urge to vomit. She did so now until the feeling passed. If she were already married, she might have confused her symptoms for those of childbearing, but she knew that was impossible.

      Hopefully it would happen soon. A husband and children, a family of her own.

      Maybe John was trying to tell her something minor. Maybe he wanted to clarify something he’d written in one of his letters. Looking at him in his undershirt had had her imagining what it’d be like to be his wife in the ultimate sense of the word. Oh, my. Sarah fanned her hot face. Rising from the chair, she walked to the window. As she leaned forward, it blessed her with a cool gust of air.

      Why would a man like that need to find a woman by mail? She’d asked the troublesome question in one of her letters. He’d responded that he was looking for someone Irish, like himself, and there were no suitable choices in Calgary. When she’d read that, she’d felt as if her dearly departed father himself was guiding her.

      The fact that John lived in Calgary was why she was initially attracted to his advertisement. It was rumored that her brother Keenan had moved West. Calgary, one of his friends had finally admitted to her. If she couldn’t locate Keenan here, then she’d find a way to search other prairie towns.

      The ache to find her missing brother wove around her heart. At first she’d search discreetly because she wasn’t sure if Keenan was still in trouble with the law. She knew marrying a Mountie might help her search, since they kept records of settlers in the area, but she wasn’t using John Calloway to find her brother. She wanted this marriage. John seemed like a kind man, writing about the busy frontier town and how much he appreciated finding a woman like her. After dealing with her father’s sudden passing, then her mother’s brutal decline, Sarah was ready for a new start. She ached to see the wide-open prairies for herself, to smell the flowers of the Rocky Mountains, to see an eagle or a wolf, to live in a place she’d only daydreamed of, in a house that didn’t smell of sickness.

      She had value and emotions and skills to offer the world.

      Please let there be more to my life than what’s been already.

      In the West, she’d heard women had more freedom. When John had written that many women couldn’t handle the danger and isolation of being a policeman’s wife, she’d written back that she’d marry him on the condition he’d let her work. It would keep her busy when he traveled, and more independent.

      She’d do everything in her power to be a good partner to John. She envisioned the intimacy of a lasting, bonding friendship that might someday grow into love. A love that had sadly escaped her parents.

      Glancing around the room, she tried not to be intimidated. From her training, she always noticed two things when she entered a room, besides the people in it.

      The guns and the clocks.

      John had a pretty good gun. A great gun. The Enfield six-shot revolver sat in full view, slung in its holster over the dresser mirror. The beautiful contour of the mahogany stock glistened like new, but the tiny medallion screw needed tightening, and the holster hadn’t been oiled in weeks.

      Didn’t they have a gunsmith who made regular checks?

      Then again, what doctor would make his guns a priority?

      Compared to his gun, his wall clock was in precise order. It was Austrian with a gold-leaf frame, likely thread suspension with four quarter striking on coiled gongs.