“I don’t think they’d like to do that, dear,” said Lee from behind her. His face was flushed and he looked tired—but then, so would a man who’d just made vigorous love to his wife. “I believe I heard you say that I was somewhere else an hour ago.” He moved to stand beside Blair and, to the men below, she must have looked as if she were leaning against him, but in truth she was supporting him.
For a few moments, there was silence in the dark little house, and Blair and Lee held their breaths as the men paused, glaring up at them. Finally, the man who was the leader gave a sigh. “You may think you’ve tricked us, Westfield, but you haven’t. We’ll get you yet.” He looked at Blair. “You wanta keep him alive, you better keep him at home.”
Neither Blair nor Lee said a word as the men left the house, slamming the door behind them. Blair ran down the stairs to lock the door, and as she turned back, she saw that Lee was growing paler. She hurried up the stairs and helped him to bed.
Blair didn’t sleep anymore that night. After she got Lee to bed, she sat by him, watching his every breath as if he might stop breathing if she weren’t there to protect him. Whenever she thought of how close those bullets had come to his heart, she began shaking again, and she clutched his hand harder.
He slept fitfully, a couple of times opening his eyes and smiling at her, then sleeping again.
Blair’s emotions ranged from terror that he’d come so close to death, to a realization of how much she loved him, to fury that he was doing something that could possibly get him killed.
When the early morning light filtered into the room, Lee awoke at last and tried to sit up. Blair opened the curtains.
“How do you feel?” she asked.
“Stiff, sore, raw, hungry.”
She tried to smile at him, but her lips wouldn’t work properly. Every muscle in her body ached from having been held rigid all night. “I’ll bring you some breakfast.”
She gathered up the bloody rags and Lee’s shirt to take downstairs with her. One good thing about a doctor’s house was that no one would notice a trash barrel full of blood-soaked rags.
It was too early yet for Mrs. Shainess, so Blair fried
half a dozen eggs for the two of them, cut inch-thick slices of bread and filled big mugs full of cool milk. She carried the big tray upstairs, and when she found Lee already out of bed and half dressed, she said nothing but began to set the little table by the window.
Lee painfully sat in the chair and began to eat while Blair sat across from him and moved her food about on her plate.
“All right,” Lee said. “Tell me what’s on your mind.”
Blair took a drink of milk. “I have no idea what you mean.”
He took her hand. “Look at you. You’re shaking as badly today as you were yesterday.”
She jerked her hand away. “I guess you’re planning to go to the hospital today.”
“I have to show up. I have to pretend that nothing’s happened. I can’t let people know where I was last night.”
“Not anyone,” she spat at him as her fist came down on the table, and the next moment she was on her feet. “Look at you, you can barely sit up, much less stand in surgery all day. And what about your patients? Can you wield a scalpel accurately? Where were you last night? What is worth risking your life for?”
“I can’t tell you that,” he said, as he turned back to his eggs. “I would, but I can’t.”
Tears began to close her throat. “Yesterday, you were furious with me because I’d risked my life. You ordered me to stop risking it, but now the tables are turned, and I’m not allowed the same rights. Same! I’m not even allowed to know what I may lose my husband for. I’m just to be a good girl and stay home and wait and, if he comes home bleeding, I’m to patch him. I’m allowed to flirt with Pinkerton men in the middle of the night, but I don’t know why. I’m allowed to watch you suffering, but for what I don’t know. Tell me, Lee, do you shoot back on these forays? Are you in a kill or be killed situation? Do you murder as many people as you repair?”
Lee kept his head down, eating deliberately and slowly. “Blair, I’ve told you all I can. You’re going to have to trust me.”
For a moment, she turned away, trying to control her tears. “That’s what a good little wife would do, wouldn’t she? Sit at home and wait and ask no questions. Well, I’m not a good little girl! I’ve always been defiant. I’ve always been a participator and not an observer. And right now, I want to know what I’m participating in.”
“Damn it, Blair,” Lee shouted, then closed his eyes against the pain at his side. He looked back at her. “Maybe for once you should be an observer. I’ve told you what I can. I don’t want you involved any more than you are.”
“So, I’m to stay innocent, is that right? At your trial, I can honestly say that I know nothing, that even when my husband came home with two bullet wounds, I remained innocent.”
“Something to that effect,” Lee mumbled, then put down his fork and looked at her. “You say you love me, maybe that you’ve loved me for years; well, now’s the test. If you do love me, you’ll have to trust me. For once in your life, you’re going to have to put aside your defiance and your participation. I need you now, not as a colleague or an equal, but as a wife.”
Blair stood looking at him for a long time. “I think you’re right, Lee,” she said softly. “I think that maybe until now I never realized what a wife was supposed to be.” Her voice lowered. “But I’m going to try to learn. I will trust you, and I won’t ask you again where you went. But if you want to tell me, I’ll be here to listen.”
Much of the pain began to leave Lee’s face as he leaned his left hand on the table and raised himself. Blair went to help him.
“Lee,” she said. “Why don’t you go to the clinic today? You won’t have any surgery to do, Mrs. Krebbs will be there to help you, and it will be easier. Besides, a Pinkerton man will look conspicuous amid all the women.”