Read Online Liz Ireland by The Outlaw's Bride - Free Book Online Page B

let out a bark and scratched his rough gray grizzled face. “Women these days! I guess I’ve lived to see everything!”
    Emma smiled placidly. “Doc always said he’d never live in a house without a bottle of spirits. It has many medicinal properties, you know.”
    As always when she spoke of her father, Joe looked more reverent. “Doc said that, did he?”
    “Yes, indeed. It does a lot more for headaches and insomnia than those pink pills you’re selling. And as for female complaints—”
    Joe, horrified at the thought of having to hear one word about “female complaints,” raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. “All right, all right,” he muttered, turning and reaching for what looked like a gallon jug. “I suppose old Doc knew what he was talking about. Not his fault he couldn’t do nothin’ for my lumbago.”
    “Maybe you should take a sip now and then,” Emma suggested pertly.
    He snorted. “I might try a slug, at that.”
    Mrs. Dunston sidled closer to Emma. “I’ll just bet your buying spirits has to do with that McCrae girl!”
    Joe, who had butted heads with Emma on the subject of Lorna once before, nearly dropped the large glass bottle as the ladies circled around her like a hostile tribe.
    “ Lorna doesn’t imbibe,” Emma assured them, attempting to hold on to her temper.
    The three ladies exchanged skeptical glances, and the thin-lipped Constance smirked. “It’s comforting to know there’s something she’ll say no to.”
    Emma’s blood reached boiling point.
    “Here’s your bottle, Emma!” Joe interjected from behind the counter, obviously trying to avoid bloodshed in his store. Or maybe he was just trying to angle for a better view.
    Emma wasn’t ready to walk away from the self-righteous cluster. What did they know of Lorna and her problems? “Lorna has been so kind and helpful to me, I’m going to ask her to be my assistant.”
    Three unblinking sets of eyes—not to mention that bird on Constance’s hat—gaped at her in astonishment. “Your assistant in what? ” Mrs. Dunston asked.
    “The hospital I intend to start here.”
    The store fell so silent one could have heard an ant cough.
    “You, Emma?” Sara piped up. “A hospital? Here?”
    Emma’s lips turned up in a grin. “Yes, Sara. And when my facility is up and running, you might consider coming by to have your hearing checked.”
    Constance bustled forward, wagging a long bony finger in Emma’s face. “That’s the most outrageous idea I’ve ever heard! Why does Midday need a hospital? Folks around here get taken care of just fine at home, by their own people, just as it should be.”
    “Not all of them, Constance.”
    Sara put a hand on her arm condescendingly. “Naturally, Emma, since your dear father died you’ve been lonely, but there’s no call for you to start taking up queer notions.”
    “That’s what I told her,” Joe said, “but she don’t listen.”
    “Lord-a-mercy!” Mrs. Dunston cried, as if the horror of it was just beginning to sink in. “A hospital, right here in Midday. Why, I’ve got a cousin from Philadelphia and she said those places do nothing but attract riffraff and breed pestilence!”
    They all needed a good bashing on the head with a Florence Nightingale primer.
    Constance’s thin lips twisted sourly. “It would set a bad example for a young gentlewoman like yourself to work alone among sick people all day, Emma. I’m not sure it’s even proper!”
    “No one mentioned propriety when I used to make the rounds with my father,” Emma pointed out.
    “Well, no…naturally,” Mrs. Dunston stuttered in response. “Your father could be trusted to know what was best, of course.”
    But she couldn’t, was the implication. Emma began to see red again. How were women alone supposed to make useful lives for themselves if the world wouldn’t allow them to make their own decisions? She supposed that’s why single women like Constance were encouraged to embrace the