Fletcher's Woman by Linda Lael Miller

seem particularly concerned, one way or the other. He was already striding up the neat little walk leading to the cottage door.
    Rachel scrambled to close the distance between herself and this arrogant, confusing man. As she fell into step beside him, she was reminded of the castles she’d read about in books. He was like one of those grim, forbidding structures, this man—cold and aloof and surrounded by a moat as real and impassable as any made up of crocodiles and water. She wondered if he had ever allowed anyone—man, woman, or child—to climb the high, thick walls of his fortress and venture into the passageways of his heart.
    Rachel realized that she was being fanciful, but she didn’t care. It was her affinity with the world of whimsy that made the real one bearable.
    The inside of the cottage was clean and warm, but very dimly lit. The specter of death was lurking in that pleasant house; Rachel sensed its presence and drew the doctor’s coat closer to her body.
    A thin, exhausted man stood near the crackling fire on the hearth, his shoulders stooped, his features hidden in shadow. Rachel’s lower lip trembled as she realized that he was weeping; the soft, ragged sound said too much about life in and around the lumber camps.
    Dr. Fletcher moved across the room silently, disappearing through a doorway and leaving the shattered man and Rachel alone.
    After just a moment, though, another man, tall and pleasant-looking, came out of the room Dr. Fletcher had entered. His smile was sad as it touched Rachel. “Hello,” he said, walking toward her. He extended a hand, and she found that it was hard and calloused.
    She took in his worn, clerical collar with confusion. In her experience, preachers talked a lot, and they talked loud; but they seldom did real work. Yet the skin on his hands belied that idea. Here was a man who had swung an ax times withoutnumber and probably had strained on one side of a crosscut saw, too.
    The gentle eyes smiled at Rachel, even though the mouth was sad. “I’m Reverend Hollister,” he said. And then, without waiting for Rachel’s name, he left the room, only to return a moment later with a warm blanket and a hairbrush.
    Rachel remembered her tangled, still-wet hair and blushed, but she accepted the items gratefully, with a whispered, “Thank you.”
    The man beside the fireplace stopped weeping, braced himself with visible determination, and went out of the house, leaving the door open behind him. He seemed heedless of the rain as Rachel watched him hurry down the walk and bolt over the gate.
    Reverend Hollister explained softly as he closed the door. “Sam’s baby was stillborn,” he said, his kind face contorted with shared pain. “A few minutes ago, we lost his wife, too.”
    Rachel felt stricken tears gather in her eyes. “Oh, no,” she said, feeling the loss of this strange woman and her child as keenly as if she’d known them.
    There was a short, dismal silence. Then Rachel turned away, hung the doctor’s suit coat on a wooden peg near the fireplace, and wrapped herself in the woolen blanket Reverend Hollister had provided. Standing beside the fire, she began to brush her hair with fierce, determined strokes choreographed by her grief.
    It seemed like a very long time before Dr. Fletcher came out of the death room and stood close beside her, before the fire. In a sidelong glance, Rachel saw that his shoulders were taut under his sodden white shirt and that his magnificent, ferocious eyes were haunted.
    â€œI’m sorry,” she said.
    For just a moment, she thought she saw a weakening in the immense walls that enclosed him; but he seemed to feel her scrutiny, and he stiffened. There was no emotion whatsoever in the look Griffin Fletcher gave her, and though his throat worked, no words passed his lips.
    A horrible thought swept over Rachel, weakening her knees. “W-Was it because you had to