Fletcher's Woman by Linda Lael Miller Page B

disquieting there, too. “Yes?”
    â€œIt was all very innocent—I’d gotten muddy, you see, and there was no place else to bathe! In any case, Griffin—Dr. Fletcher—came storming in there and dragged me out, and he’s been giving me orders and insulting me ever since!”
    Molly sat back in her chair and folded her arms across her chest. “Tact has never been one of Griffin’s outstanding gifts. He is a very direct man.”
    â€œWhat right does he have to tell me where I can stay and where I can’t, to bring me here?”
    â€œNone, I suppose. But the doctor and your mother were good friends, Rachel. And he promised her that he would protect you.”
    â€œFrom what?” Rachel demanded, her voice sharp with frustration.
    â€œFrom Mr. Jonas Wilkes,” replied Molly evenly. There was a darkness in her shamrock eyes, a shadowy remembering.
    Rachel heard again her mother’s words. “ There’s a man, a terrible man.” Had she referred to Mr. Wilkes then, rather than Dr. Fletcher? It was all too confusing. “Why would Mr. Wilkes want to hurt me?”
    Molly looked distinctly uneasy, and she lowered her voice. “We don’t know that he does, Rachel. From what I gather, he fancies you—and that’s a dangerous thing.”
    Rachel sighed. Had everyone gone mad? What would a man of Jonas’s wealth and power want with a sawyer’s daughter? “Dr. Fletcher hates him—and I think Mama did, too.”
    Molly nodded. “Aye. It’s my guess that Becky thought Jonas would get even with her for some differences they had by striking at you. As for Griffin, he has good reasons for what he feels, though I wish he’d forget them.”
    â€œWhat differences did Mama and Mr. Wilkes have?”
    A patch of sunlight glimmered, square, on the table between them, and Molly’s features were hidden by the brightness of it. “Jonas Wilkes is one of the most powerful, influential men inWashington Territory, Rachel. And he was never able to control your mother, as he does so many other people. She simply didn’t fear him—not until you came along, that is.”
    Rachel was silent for a time, her mind busy absorbing this peculiar information, but finally, she spoke again. “Is that why he hates Dr. Fletcher—because he can’t control him?”
    â€œI’m sure that’s a measure of the problem,” agreed Molly, as the sunlight dimmed and her features were visible again. “But there’s far more between those two, and it began long before Jonas inherited the mountain.”
    Something in Molly’s manner made Rachel frame her words carefully. “It has something to do with the pain inside Dr. Fletcher, doesn’t it?”
    Molly was suddenly fretful, rising from her chair, straightening her spotless apron, tying a yellow kerchief over her bright hair. The straw hat lay, forgotten, on a sideboard. “I’ve said too much as it is, and there’s gardening to do. You’re to rest quietly, but we’ve hundreds of books in the doctor’s study, if you’ve a mind to read.”
    Rachel welcomed the prospect of losing herself in a novel or a volume of epic poetry—if, indeed, the forbidding Dr. Griffin Fletcher possessed any such flighty books.
    Thoughts and feelings were swirling inside her as she made her way back through the house, toward the closed room she suspected was Griffin’s study. Molly clearly knew so much more than she was willing to tell, and Rachel was frustrated by her silence.

Chapter Eight
    Rachel paused in the study doorway, enchanted. Molly Brady had not exaggerated; there were, indeed, hundreds—perhaps thousands—of books here. They were packed tight on shelf after shelf, stacked precariously on chairs and tables, piled high on the massive desk occupying the center of the room.
    And yet, conversely, the place had an air of