“He’ll be all right,” Harper said. “I’ll take care of him.”
Johanna knew when she had run out of choices. “I will ask Mrs. Daugherty to take charge of Irene, but it will be up to you to keep Lewis quiet and hold things together while I am gone.”
“To find May?”
“We will wait for Mrs. Daugherty’s news,” she said, “and then I shall decide what to do. But I need you here, Harper. I’ll leave the gun with you, but I must go alone.”
Harper touched the handle of the knife. “Me and Bridget will do what needs to be done.”
Johanna had no doubt that he meant what he said. Fighting exhaustion, she tended Irene and went back to the kitchen to await Bridget’s return. Everything within her screamed to ride out again, in any and all directions. She knew the utter futility of such a plan.
Three long hours later the buggy drew up in the yard and Mrs. Daugherty climbed out. Johanna met her at the front steps.
“I came back as quick as I could,” she panted. “The town’s abuzz with talk of the wolf. People who weren’t here think the rest of ’em’s crazy. No wolf’s been seen in these parts in years.” She shook her head, unable to believe it herself. “Some are saying the wolf must have kilt Ketchum, and they’re gathering men to hunt it down.”
No worse than Johanna had expected. “And Bolkonksy?”
“Well, it appears he and Ingram lit out of town this morning, just before the mob came. No one’s seen ’em since.”
So Bolkonsky must have left straight after “warning” Johanna about the mob. But he apparently hadn’t summoned the authorities to search for May, which bought her a little time.
Time for what? She was no closer to being able to locate Quentin than she’d been before. And she had assumed that Quentin had May.
There was another explanation for those bare footprints intermingled with May’s. Fenris. He arose from Quentin’s mind when Quentin was threatened. What better time than after the mob’s attack to seize Quentin’s body?
And if he had, what did he want with May? Were Quentin’s protective instincts enough to arouse like instincts from Fenris’s dark, twisted heart? Or had he some unfathomable, fell purpose of his own?
Johanna sat down in a kitchen chair and bent her head low between her knees. This sickness and dread and terror were only the beginning of her punishment.
She had transgressed. She had sinned far worse than Lewis, with all his warnings of Biblical wrath, could imagine. Her deadly sin had been her arrogant presumption that she understood the human mind and its frailties, that she could cure illnesses that daunted far better doctors than she. She had ridden high and serene on the crest of her own wisdom, her own faith in the infallibility of science.
Above all, she had forgotten the sacred trust of every physician. She had allowed herself to fall in love, to become personally involved, with a patient. The very weakness she had deplored in other females had entrapped her. Had she remained pure, true to her calling, she would have kept a closer eye on Irene and Lewis, protected May, dealt effectively with Fenris, and found Quentin’s cure. In her blind passion, she’d thrown all that away.
Love had not healed, but destroyed.
“You need rest, Doc Jo,” Mrs. Daugherty said. “I’ll see that everyone gets fed. You take care of yourself.”
Hadn’t she done too much of that already? The others, even Harper, were counting on her to remain strong. She had no right to indulge in hysterics or personal grief.
But she did need rest; she’d be useless without it. A little more patience might turn up the one piece of information she needed to make the next crucial decision.
After that, common sense be damned. She would find May and Quentin—or Fenris—if she had to search every inch of this Valley, and beyond.
“Thank you, Mrs. Daugherty,” she said. She made her rounds like an automaton, went to her room, and fell facedown on the bed. And she wept. She wept until the pillowcase and the pillow beneath were soaked, so silently that no one came to inquire. Afterwards she washed her face, visited her father, and returned to her room to pace the floor through the long, excruciating night.