After her students' play-acting about the wedding the week before and the wholehearted celebration after the ceremony, Christy had no idea what to expect for the return to school. She'd deliberately timed her arrival a little early, and when the children saw her, they raced over to escort her the rest of the way. Through the rush of questions and comments, a few caught her attention.
"You bein' back, does that mean we still gots to 'member our verses?"
"We thought you was gon' take off fer the whole week, Miss Christy!"
"Dr. MacNeill still has patients to see, and I missed you!" she answered, turning to look at Creed (of course it was Creed). "What verses?"
"Preacher gave us a verse to read back next mornin', but he ain't here!"
"Well, it's Thursday, do you think you can still remember that verse for Sunday?" Creed frowned, but nodded. Then he lit up like a struck match. "So Teacher, turned out your weddin' weren't gossip after all!"
She'd worried about this. As Christy started to refute him, the rest of the students crowded around.
"That's just not true, Creed Allen. What if someone was really sick and the message spread through the Cove that they'd died on a Monday, but they actually passed away on the Thursday instead? Just because they did end up dying doesn't mean that they really died on Monday!"
Creed's grin was indelible. "S'not gossip, that's spreadin' a prayer request!"
She was not, not going to tell Neil he might have been right about what David had been teaching in her absence.
The questions about the wedding continued, with comments about the two of them being sweet on each other, admiring her dress, and so forth. Christy was surprised that none of the questions hinged on the actual reason they'd been compelled to marry, but she wasn't about to 'look a gift horse in the saddlebags,' as Ben Pentland would say.
"Miss Christy, is yer momma comin' back?" This was from Mountie, and it was particularly touching, given the way Julia Huddleston had handled her visit to the O'Teales.
"I very much hope so! There wasn't enough time for her to come on Sunday," Christy said, keeping her tone light.
"Was yer weddin' the first time you gots t'kiss the doc, Teacher?" a voice behind her asked. Christy spun around to see who it was, but all her students were looking around in surprise, just like she was.
"That's an inappropriate question, and I'm surprised your teacher is even allowing this discussion!" David said from the doorway. His voice was stern, and she looked over with some worry to find him frowning, but not overly so. From her knowledge of him, Christy would have to say he was wearing his 'social' mask, the one that brooked no vulnerability.
He was carrying a familiar notebook in his hand, and when he got closer, he handed it over to her, flipping it up to where a thin piece of wood held his place. "I noted down what we talked about while you were gone," he said. "I think we went through a lot more Hamlet than you planned, but I couldn't find your math notes, and I didn't want to disrupt your progression."
She was touched, both by his earnest tone and the care he'd taken to use the notebook she kept in her desk. "Thank you! Children, take your seats and clap your thanks to Reverend Grantland!" Her students did as they were told, but as they did so, they still whispered and giggled amongst themselves about the wedding and its possible causes.
"The student who can recite the memory verse most perfectly this Sunday after church will win a piece of hard candy my sister sent me all the way from Anaheim, California!" David announced over the applause.
At this, the children started to beg and plead with the students who still had the written-down verse so they could study it, finally changing the subject.
Grateful, Christy walked slowly down the center aisle, looking over the two pages he'd written notes on. At the doorway, she looked over at David, almost stunned. "This is so thorough! You didn't have to-"
"I did. You didn't have any warning; I didn't want you to lose any momentum, for the… adjustment period." David sounded like he was being meticulously careful with his phrasing, and she could see that his left hand was moving restlessly at his side.
She wanted to tell him he was a good friend, but that would just make things worse. "I really appreciate your help. Talk later?" That last part came out without her meaning to say it, but it was out there now, and she couldn't take it back. David looked both relieved and a little sick, but he nodded once, twice, and then a third time, before jogging down the stairs without a word.
oOoOoOo
On the way home from school, Christy really felt the weight of the changes in her life. She'd very deliberately restricted herself from thinking too much about Miss Alice's words on her wedding night, conscious of how her unhappiness over them might look to Neil. Margaret would have loved the chaos she'd sown, not just between Miss Alice and Neil, but for Neil's ability to move on. The result, though, was a temporary severing of her connection to her mentor, and she was starting to feel it quite keenly.
Then there was David. Despite the undercurrent of possessiveness she'd often sensed in his behavior, he really had been her rock ever since arriving in Cutter Gap. He was the person she went to with concerns that weren't consequential enough for Miss Alice's particular brand of spiritual realism, the person she'd joke with, the person she felt comfortable around. Her weekday meal, of sorts.
Neil had been the holiday dinner- a challenge, sometimes a thrill, definitely more rare; meeting with him was an event she always looked forward to and sometimes left feeling confused by.
Now she felt uneasy after speaking to David and couldn't wait to come home to Neil. She wanted to see the happiness in his eyes when he looked at her, wanted to learn more about his life and their future, wanted to hide her face in his chest and let him argue away her uncertainties (only to replace them with other, more exciting ones).
"Your metaphors are a mess," she muttered to herself. Christy stopped under a warm ray of sun shining through the trees to breathe in the fresh scent of the forest for a minute before continuing. Minutes later, she wished she could carry those wholesome smells around her like a warm fur coat, because the air outside the cabin was fishy and foul.
"There you are!" Neil smiled.
Christy came to a halt, taking in the scene in front of her. Neil had brought down a table from the porch, and on it lay various knives, multiple fish… parts, and a frightful amount of blood. The only good thing about what she was seeing was the large leather apron he was wearing to protect his clothes.
He started to chuckle.
"What could possibly be funny?"
"That look on your face, you had the same one on your first visit to the cabin." He cleared his throat and had the grace to look down at what he was doing with a newly-formed apologetic expression. "I did think I'd be finished by now, but the spine on that last-" Neil stopped himself, but it was too late. She was no longer looking forward to hiding her face in his chest, that was for certain.
"I'm going inside," Christy said diplomatically. At the top of the newly-constructed porch stairs, she paused. "Have you ever gone on a patient visit after… that particular task?"
"You're asking, 'has anyone recoiled at my horrid smell?' No, Christy, I know how to clean it up properly. I promise you won't have to sleep with a fish-man."
"Thank the Lord!" she said with probably too much vehemence, if the powerful laughter that chased her into the house was any indication.
oOoOoOo
Dinner was fish, prepared by Neil. She didn't have much of an appetite.
oOoOoOo
Her husband disappeared for a while after their meal, and when he came back to find her on the porch darning his socks, his hair was wet again.
"You-" She blinked at him, stunned that he'd gone to bathe again. "You didn't smell at dinner! Seeing what went into cleaning the food on the same day we ate it was just too real for comfort."
"Better safe than sorry," he shrugged. "I soaked the clothes, as well. In the past I'd put them with the others for the week, but that didn't seem like a good idea." He went inside to set some things down, then came back out and tipped his head sideways, looking more closely at the sock she was working on. "I already fixed that one!"
"I'm not trying to insult your sewing skills, doctor, but…" Christy tried to think of the best way to describe what she wanted to say.
"Out with it."
"You kept pulling at the toes the last time you wore these. I thought maybe you folded in too much fabric before sewing it up, and that kept getting in the way." She was finished with the one she'd been working on, so she turned it inside out and handed it over.
"Oh."
"I'll do you the professional courtesy of assuming you repair skin and socks differently," she teased, picking up that sock's mate to examine it. His silence pulled her gaze, and Christy found him regarding her with such affection that it flared heat in her chest.
"Is there anything you can't do?" Neil asked, somehow making the question sound genuine.
"Yes. I can't soothe David Grantland's rejected heart," she sighed. "I recognize that his disappointment will take a while, but I miss my friend."
"I imagine it will take a very long while," he said quietly. "One can only hope he doesn't quite understand what he's lost."
The words were both sincere and romantic, and Christy took a few seconds to recover before looking over to see that Neil was running his finger over the neat line of stitches in his sock. The two of them sat in companionable silence as the sun set and the porch grew too dim to see what she was doing. She'd meant to ask him about the visit he'd made to the Cox homestead that morning, but instead she decided to maintain the contemplative atmosphere and packed up her things.
When she walked past Neil on the way to go inside, she chose the path that led behind his chair, setting her hand on his shoulder and smoothing a caress across his back. He made a pleased noise and reached up just in time to stroke his fingertips along her hand before she fully passed by.
Once she was inside the house, Christy actually had to stand still and concentrate to remember where she'd planned to put away her sewing supplies. This delayed her evening routine, as did the various times she got derailed thinking about the moments they'd shared that evening.
She was upstairs slipping off her chemise when Neil walked into the bedroom without knocking. Christy snatched up her nightgown to cover her bare breasts, catching her undergarment from falling to reveal anything further.
He didn't say anything, just stood completely still, eyes closed, his hand still on the doorknob. Neil looked like he was struggling with himself, and she genuinely didn't know whether she wanted him to succeed or not. The moment lengthened, ramping up her anticipation, until finally he turned and left, pulling the door carefully shut behind him.
Christy let out her held breath and sank onto the bed to compose herself. She wasn't scared of what might have happened, but she was disappointed. Her whole body burned from the missed opportunity.
She wondered what would happen if she just… did nothing until he came back.
The thought that he would be sleepy and frustrated with her prompted her to rush through the process of dressing and taking down her hair. She was huddled up on her side of the bed and almost asleep by the time Neil came back.
oOoOoOo
Christy woke to movement in bed the next morning, noting by the scant daylight visible through the window that it was very early.
"Is there an emergency?" she mumbled, loath to wake too far if she didn't have to.
"Early lesson with Dan. I forgot to tell you," Neil said, his voice getting nearer with each word. "Go back to sleep," he told her, completely undermining his words by bending down to kiss her cheek while running his fingers along a curl that had draped itself on her shoulder.
Christy's hand was too sleep-slowed to catch him before he walked away and shut the bedroom door.
oOoOoOo
School dragged all day, and Christy was in such a hurry to get home that she almost ran into Zady Spencer at the bottom of the schoolhouse stairs.
"Oh, goodness, I'm sorry!" she said, sidestepping the young woman so she could continue to hurry home.
"Uh, Miss Christy?"
Christy felt a powerful stab of guilt, not just for missing a student wanting to ask her something, but for hoping the question would be brief. "Yes, Zady?"
"We was wonderin' if you and the doc would like to come by for dinner sometime this week?"
"I'm sure we'd be delighted, but I'll have to figure out which day based on his schedule," Christy said warmly. It was nice of the Spencers to ask, and even nicer of them to let their oldest daughter extend the invitation. "Thank you. Can you tell your mother I'll talk to her about it on Sunday?"
"Oh! Yes, yes'm, of course." Zady ran off, leaving Christy a little curious as to her confusion.
On her hurried walk home, she contemplated what the reason might be and came up with something sobering, though probably not surprising. Christy usually spoke to Fairlight more often than she had for the past few weeks. She suspected her wise, gentle friend had set up the dinner as a way to gauge how much longer to wait before pushing to visit again.
Neil wasn't home when she got there. She found a note on the porch telling her not to expect him that night, possibly not until the next afternoon, after a large fire in a community three hours away.
The note was terse, the handwriting sloppy, so she knew he'd been in a rush when he'd written it. After taking some time to pray for the lives of those affected by the fire (and the people there to help), Christy decided to make the most of the solitude. Besides her walks to and from school, she hadn't had much time to herself lately.
She first set to work weeding the garden, avoiding any plants she didn't recognize for fear of misidentifying something important. As she worked, she contemplated her idea about passing along health information. Creed's comment regarding 'prayer requests' made her think about how sharing such things was already part of the community. How much time could she save Neil by having a designated messenger who could tell him little things like whether someone's baby finally sleeps through the night, or another person's teenager seemed to stop growing? She pictured another one of his patient records books filled with status information, gathered up by… who, though? And how would they know which information was valuable?
Christy stood up and surveyed the work she'd done before deeming herself finished. She went to wash her hands in the river, still contemplating her idea on the way. The last thing she wanted to do would be to get Neil too much information, or create some sort of expectation that he would do something with the data she was thinking of collecting.
She spent the rest of the day doing various tasks around the house, including putting away her suitcases in the back of the bedroom closet, despite the obvious signs that he'd been moving things around in there without having put them back. When she was finished, Christy found that she didn't feel all that hungry, so she decided to go to bed early. It had been forever since she'd hiked up to watch the sunrise over the mountains, and if Neil wasn't going to be home, she could just go without qualms.
The next morning was brisk and cool, a sign that autumn had begun. She got dressed in lamplight, making the bed and leaving a slice of rhubarb bread under a napkin for if he came home while she was out. Her rule for the walk was to empty her mind and just enjoy nature, to set aside her wounded feelings about Miss Alice in particular. Most of all, she told herself to lock away the exciting, confusing whirlwind of her new life with Neil- no thinking about him at all.
It was one of the most beautiful sunrises she'd ever seen, and as soon as it started, Christy broke her rule.
She resolved that next Saturday, she was going to bring her husband.
oOoOoOo
As it turned out, Neil didn't get home until she was nearly finished making herself dinner. She'd just carried her plate out onto the porch to eat when he rode up, utterly filthy with soot and other substances she didn't want to examine too closely.
"Go eat, I'll take care of the horse," she said, rushing down the stairs to come over to him.
It was a measure of just how tired he was that he didn't argue with her, just made his way to the table and sat down.
Neil hadn't shown her the inside of his small stable yet, but she found everything necessary to care for his horse, including a trough for feed and water. She made a mental note to come back later and do a better wipe-down of the animal, but as soon as she'd found the food, Neil's horse made it quite clear where her priorities ought to be.
Just outside, there was a large cauldron anchored over a firepit, and a quick peek back into the stable revealed some other supplies for washing up. Christy stood thinking for only a few seconds before she decided that yes, she was going to be the very best doctor's wife she possibly could be.
Her goal: Neil MacNeill was not going to scrub himself clean in the river tonight.
First she gathered up the double bucket that was clearly designed to bring water over from the river. After slowly dumping it into the cauldron (in a completely ridiculous attempt to keep her activities quiet enough that Neil didn't hear her and drag himself over to investigate), she lit the fire from the lamp she'd brought over to the stable, making sure to clear away any drifted brush that might have accumulated since the last time he'd used the equipment.
She'd seen Fairlight do this once. As she understood it, you heated up the water in the cauldron, then you scooped up some of it to mix with riverwater, so you didn't scald yourself when you scrubbed yourself or your clothes with it. Christy was pleased to see steam rising, but when she looked inside, she realized she'd made a tactical error.
The water level was so low she'd burn herself on the side of the metal container trying to scoop any of it out. It would take at least three more loads of water to get up to a level that would be safe to pull out.
She got to work.
oOoOoOo
"Christy?"
She'd just finished dumping in the last of the water, so Christy made her way back to the porch to see what he needed.
"That was delicious and unexpected, thank you," Neil said, rubbing a finger along his temple and leaving a soot streak. "I'll just sleep for a spell out here; the weather should be warm enough."
"You won't have to." She picked up one of the other chairs and headed for the area she'd set up by the stable. He'd be able to lean against the sturdy wall, with a table for the soap and washcloth." When she turned around, though, he hadn't followed her. That meant he really was exhausted, because his curiosity was only rivaled by his obstinacy. She hoped those two traits wouldn't oppose each other tonight. Neil deserved to sleep in bed, not on a hard chair on the porch.
He had his head pillowed in his arms on the table when she got back. If he weren't so filthy, she'd have woken him with a gentle touch. As it was, she stood close by and spoke softly.
"What clothes would you like to change into?"
"Mmm?"
"Do you want me to pick something out?"
"Dun' worry, I'll jus' sleep out here," he mumbled.
New plan, Christy said to herself. She gathered up his dinner dishes from where he'd pushed them out of the way to lay his head down. After taking them inside, she went up to grab his nightshirt, and a few other soft-looking things for him to wear to sleep. When she got back outside, she set them down on the far side of the table, then went to the back to put out the fire with dirt and water.
She was proud of the cheerfully warm bucket of water she brought onto the porch to set beside him. Bracing herself for the grime and smell, Christy leaned against his back to get her hands around him, so she could start unbuttoning his shirt. Neil caught her hands against his chest, moving faster than she'd have thought he could, in this state.
"What-"
"I have all this practice with your buttons," she said lightly. "Sit up. There's warm water, soap, a washcloth, and a change of clothes. You should get to sleep in a real bed tonight. With me." Adding that last part was an act of defiance, and Neil recognized it as such, because his grip on her hands tightened when she said it.
"You don't have to-"
"Two months ago, how would you have handled this?" she interrupted, tugging back on him and pulling her hands free when he sat up. Christy walked around and leaned over to unbutton him further, but he shot her a cross look and did it himself.
"I would have been perfectly fine sleeping out here for a few hours, if not all night. Just as I would today." He scooted his chair back to give himself enough room to strip off the shirt, but instead of handing it to her, Neil tossed it over the side of the porch in his own act of defiance. By looks and smell, he'd worn that shirt the entire time he was gone; the soot line at his neck was remarkable.
She soaped up the washcloth after dunking it with the warm water and held it out.
"Christy," he started, but she just leaned over and started on his neck. Swiftly, he stopped her with a hand at her wrist, gently pulling the wet cloth away and resuming the task. "All right, point made! You don't have to-"
"I know I don't have to. I want to. This is your life now," she said, bustling over to where his clean clothes were so he could see them. Her briskness had nothing whatsoever to do with seeing him with his shirt off again. Nothing whatsoever. "I'm going to grab some of the warm water for the dishes and give you some privacy." Before he could see that she was getting emotional about the opportunity to show him care and attention, Christy hurried down the stairs and did as she'd said, getting a bucketful of still-warm water from the cauldron.
Neil was standing and scrubbing at his arms when she hauled the water into the house. After a time, she was just rinsing the last dish when she heard a splash of water outside. Christy dried her hands and walked outside to see Neil half-dressed on the chair with his feet sticking out and his hair dripping onto his bare back and shoulders. The bucket was tipped over, the last remnants of soapy water flooding over the side of the porch.
"Lost my balance," he said ruefully. "More tired than I thought."
"Let me help." Christy picked up the towel from the table nearby. It was mostly dry, so she draped it over his head and started kneading the water from his hair.
"Dreaming," Neil whispered.
Pulling the towel free from his damp hair, Christy set about drying off his shoulders with long gentle swipes. "Hmm?"
"I've dreamed you up," he said, dragging the towel out of her hands and looking up at her with simple gratitude mixed with the kind of weariness that didn't just come from what he'd seen at that fire.
"You didn't, and I can prove it," Christy said. She wanted him to sleep, but not in that mood. Not morose and romantic and self-destructive. Neil had shown her his low, and he was nearing it again- and what was a wife for if not to redirect away from such things?
"Can you?" he whispered, reaching up to tuck a wayward lock of hair behind her ear.
Christy nodded, setting her hand on his at her cheek in a sort of reassuring hand clasp. "Your hair still smells absolutely terrible. Go on in to bed, I'll come up in an hour or so."
The frozen look of surprise on his face was so perfect she leaned over and pecked an impudent kiss on his lips before grabbing the washcloth and the bucket and dashing off to the stable to put them away.