The Drifter. Сьюзен Виггс

slightly off center. “You’ve come to help.”

      “You look as if you could use it.”

      “You’re not too busy?”

      “I’ve already made one call today. If no emergency comes up, I’m free for the time being.”

      “Well, thanks. That’s real nice of you, Doc.”

      She shrugged. “I thought it was the least I could do, since…” She let her voice trail off.

      “Since you’re the one who broke the steering,” he finished for her.

      “You’re the one who tried to kidnap me,” she shot back.

      He nodded. “You’re not one to own up to things, are you?” He handed her a wood spanner.

      She snatched the tool from him. “And you’re not one to apologize for your actions.”

      “Here, hold this steady. Yeah. Just like that.” He put a peg into a freshly drilled hole and tamped it tight with a mallet. “Some landlubber used iron bolts on this mast stepping and they rusted. I have to replace them with wood fastenings or the aft mast could come down.” He repeated the procedure several more times, but each time he tamped down a peg, the opposite one came up. He cursed fluently and unsparingly through gritted teeth.

      She watched him for a while, holding the pegs and holding her tongue until she could stand it no more.

      “May I make a suggestion?”

      The mallet came down squarely on his thumb. He shut his eyes, jaw bulging as he clenched it. “Shoot.”

      “Why don’t you cut the pegs a longer length, then after they’re all in, trim the wood flush with the deck?”

      He stared at her for a long moment. She thought he was going to argue with her or ridicule her. That was what men always did when a woman dared to comment on their work. Instead, he said, “Good idea. We’ll do it your way.”

      She still had to hold the pegs for him, and he had to lie on his side to reach all the fittings, but his mood lightened as the work progressed. He had a long frame, lean and sinewed, and appeared to be remarkably healthy. The human body was her calling, her obsession, and it pleased her to watch him.

      More than it should have.

      “So,” he said at length, and she started guiltily, certain he knew she’d been studying him. “How is it you came to be a female doctor?”

      She let out a relieved breath. “How I came to be a female is by accident of birth.”

      He laughed. “I guess I deserved that.”

      “How I came to be a doctor is by reading, hard work, a rigorous apprenticeship, and ward study in a hospital.” And how did you become an outlaw? she wanted to ask—but she didn’t dare.

      His eyes narrowed as he sealed one of the pegs with glue. “You sure talk a lot and say nothing.”

      His observation startled her. “I suppose you’re right.”

      “So what’s the real story?” He stood and brushed off his leather carpenter’s apron. She liked it better than the gun belt.

      “Why do you want to know?” Why on earth would it matter to you? she wondered.

      “Just curious, I guess. Is it some big secret?”

      “No. I’m just not used to being asked.”

      He swept a mocking bow, the tools in his apron clanking with the movement. “So I’m asking.”

      She caught herself smiling at him.

      “You ought to do that more often,” he said.

      “Do what?”

      “Smile. Makes you look downright pretty.”

      “Looking pretty is not important to me.”

      “That’s a new one on me. You didn’t have the usual kind of mama, I guess.”

      “Actually, I was raised by my father. Since he had no son, I suppose you could say he pinned his aspirations on me.” She paused, gazing out a portal as she collected her thoughts. In the faraway past, she heard a voice calling, “Dr. Mundy, can you come?”

      Leah, no more than ten at the time, went along with her father, holding the lamp in the buggy and then squashing herself into a corner of the sickroom at the patient’s house.

      She could not bring herself to admit to this stranger, this friendly man with secrets of his own in his blue-gray eyes, that her father had been the worst sort of doctor, a quack, a purveyor of questionable potions that often did more harm than good.

      “I learned much from being in practice with him,” she said. It was not quite a lie. She’d learned there was nothing more precious than human life. That people needed to look to a physician for hope. That a good doctor could do much to ease suffering while a bad one got rich from it. Her father had given her one gift. He had made her determined to succeed where he had failed.

      She made herself remember the pain and the horror and the fact that even as he was dying, Edward Mundy had withheld his love. She swallowed hard. “He died of complications from an old gunshot wound.”

      He gazed at her thoughtfully. “I take it that’s why you’re not real fond of guns.”

      “A gun is the tool of a coward,” she snapped. “A tool of destruction. I’ve seen too often what a bullet can do.”

      “Touché, Doc, as the Three Musketeers would say.” He changed tools, selecting an awl. “So you became a doctor just like your papa.”

      “Not like my father.” She flushed and looked away. “We disagreed often about courses of treatment.” For no reason she could fathom, she added, “We disagreed about everything, it seemed.”

      “Such as?”

      The proper way for Leah to dress. And talk. And behave.

      The way to snare a wealthy husband.

      Where they would flee to each time one of his patients expired due to his incompetence.

      “Well?” Jackson prompted.

      She already regretted the turn the conversation had taken. Yet it was surprisingly easy to talk to him. Probably because she knew that he was only here for a short time; then she’d never see him again. He couldn’t use the things she told him to hurt her.

      “He never quite understood my insistence on practicing medicine for the good of humankind rather than to make money. He thought I should spend my leisure time pursuing drawing-room etiquette. He was disappointed when I failed to marry well.”

      “What the hell’s that supposed to mean—marry well?”

      “My father thought it meant marrying a man who’d settle his bad debts for him.”

      “And you? What do you think it means?”

      “Finding a man who will l—” she didn’t dare say it “—esteem me.”

      “So why haven’t you done it yet?”

      “Because such a man doesn’t exist.” The old ache of loneliness throbbed inside her. “I’ve yet to meet a man who would give me the freedom to practice medicine. Men seem to want their wives to stay at home, keeping the hearth fire stoked and darning socks instead of healing the sick.”

      “It all sounds like a damned bore to me.”

      “Healing the sick?”

      “No. Stoking the hearth and darning socks.”

      She laughed. “Did your mother never teach you a woman’s place is in the home?”

      All trace of pleasantry left his face. “My mother never taught me