After a while, Blair stopped trying to eat. She didn’t like food flying toward her or the silverware jumping or the way that loud, overbearing man monopolized the conversation. Conversation ha! He might as well have been giving a speech.
The worst part was the way Houston, her mother and Gates hung on his every word. You would have thought his words were gold. And perhaps they were, Blair thought with disgust. She’d never thought much about money, but perhaps money was all-important to other people. It certainly seemed to be so important to Houston that she was willing to subject herself to this awful, hideous man for the rest of her life.
Blair grabbed the candelabra before it fell over, as Taggert reached for more gravy. Cook must have made it in a wheelbarrow, she thought.
Just then, Taggert paused long enough in his proposal of allowing Gates to buy in on a land sale to glance at Blair. Suddenly, he stopped talking altogether and pushed back his chair.
“Honey, we better be goin’ if you wanta get to the park while it’s still light.”
Heaven help, Blair thought, that he should have manners enough to ask if anyone else was finished eating. He was ready to leave, and he autocratically demanded that Houston leave with him. Dutifully, Houston followed him.
“Why, Lee,” Opal said with a smile, twisting her neck around to look up at him, making the little oak rocker creak. “I didn’t hear you come in.” She took a closer look at him. “You look happier than you did a few days ago. Has something happened?” There was a hint of an I-told-you-so look on Opal’s face.
Lee gave her a quick peck on the cheek before sitting down in the chair next to her on the back porch. He was tossing a big red apple back and forth in his hands. “Maybe it’s not that I want your daughter, it’s that I want you for a mother-in-law.”
Opal kept on sewing. “So, today, you think there’s a chance that you’ll get my daughter. If I remember correctly, the last time we talked, you were sure you could never win her. Has anything changed?”
“Changed? Only the entire world.” He bit into his apple with gusto. “I’m going to win. I’m not only going to win, but it’s going to be by a landslide. That poor kid Hunter doesn’t have a chance.”
“I take it you’ve found the key to Blair’s heart, and it isn’t flowers and candy.”
Leander smiled, as much to himself as to her. “I’m going to court her with what she really likes: gunshot wounds, blood poisonings, respiratory infections, amputations, and whatever else I can find for her. She’ll probably love spring roundup around here.”
Opal looked horrified. “It sounds dreadful. Must it be so drastic?”
“As far as I can tell, the worse the going is, the better she likes it. As long as somebody’s there to make sure she doesn’t get in over her head, she’ll be fine.”
“And you’ll be the one to take care of her?”
Leander rose. “For the rest of her life. I believe that’s the sound of my loved one now. You’ll see, in less than a week, she’ll be runni
ng down the aisle to me.”
“Lee?”
He paused.
“And what about St. Joseph’s?”
He winked at her. “I will do my best to never let her find out. I want her to turn them down. Who are they to say that she can’t work for them?”
“She’s a good doctor, isn’t she?” Opal beamed with pride.
“Not bad,” Lee said, chuckling, walking back into the house. “Not bad for a woman.”
Blair met Leander in the parlor. Yesterday had turned out to be awful. Alan had not called, she’d heard nothing from Lee, and all day, she’d worried about Houston and that awful man she was selling herself to. So it was with some trepidation that she met Lee now. Was he going to be the doctor Lee or the one who insulted her at every turn?
“You wanted to see me?” she asked cautiously.
Leander wore an expression that she’d never seen before, one of almost shyness. “I came to talk to you, that is, if you don’t mind listening to me.”
“Of course not,” she said. “Why should I mind talking with you?” She sat down on a red brocade chair.
Leander had his hat in hand, threatening to twist it into shreds, and when Blair motioned for him to sit, he merely shook his head no.
“It’s not easy to say what I’ve come to say. It’s not easy to admit defeat, especially in something that has come to mean so much to me as the winning of you for my wife.”
Blair started to say something, but he put his hand up. “No, let me say what I must without interruptions. It’s hard for me, but it has to be said because it’s all that I can think about.”