Free Healing Hearts (Easton Series #2) by Anna Murray Page A

his chair and sashayed to the door. “I’ve gotta get over to
the schoolhouse for the morning roar. Emily is letting the students in.”
       “Right,” Jed mock saluted as Roy
Easton hurried out the door.
       As soon as the door slammed behind
him Hannah sputtered. “He stirs things up.”
       Jed’s mouth twisted in amusement. “That’s
his job. He’s the town meddler. In a small town the only news is petty stuff.
You know, who visited whoever last Sunday, who bought a new suit, that sort of
thing. You’re a big item in the Wounded Colt press, and Roy will work the angles.”
       “Your defense of Mr. Easton is
noble, but it doesn’t make it better.”
       “It will pass. Everyone knows his
game, and they play along, except his brother, who fell into Roy’s trap. Cal
married the woman Roy set up for him. The rest of us are too smart to be
victims of his scheming.”
       “I’d say he did his brother a
favor. I met his wife at the wedding, and Sarah’s very nice. What if it doesn’t,
sir?”
       “Doesn’t what?”
       “Pass.”
       His hands flew up in the air and
he grinned.   “I’ll have to marry
you,” he teased.
       Hannah laughed. His good humor
made one dish of meat into a feast. “Only after a fifty-year courtship, sir.”

 
 
 
    Chapter 11

       J ed was
restless as a new colt. He paged through a research tract as he lay on the
blanket in the shade of the oak tree. He looked up, and he smiled when he spied
Hannah wiping a smudge of charcoal across her cheek. He reveled in watching her
openly, as she was rarely distracted from her canvas.
       She gazed down at him. “What are
you reading?”
       “ Boston Medical and Surgical Journal . It’s a review of Lister’s germ
theory of putrefaction.”
      Hannah’s head bobbed eagerly. “Yes, yes.
It’s why sanitation is critical.”
       “I agree. But how to prove it? We
learned from the bedside during the war, but more work remains to be done in
the laboratory.”
       “It’s complex. Cole wants to go to
Germany to learn their experimental methods.”
       “To my mind there’s no risk in
assuming they exist. We must learn how to avoid and eliminate these germs, as
they are quite possibly the cause of diseases.”
       “I’m with you. Forward thinking is
best. It must be a cornerstone of our practice.”
       Hannah turned her intensity back
into sketching the scene. She didn’t take the wonders of nature for granted.
       He wanted to ask about the scars
on her legs, and as a doctor he routinely asked such questions, but now he
remembered his mother’s rule: Take care to gaze not on the marks or blemishes
of others and ask not how they came. He decided to draw her out with talk of
her childhood.
       “When did you learn to draw?”
       She captured the tree outline
before looking up. “Since I could hold a pencil, and my father paid for art
lessons, but only after I begged for six months running.”
       “You are persistent,” he remarked
from his position on the blanket.
       “My mother badgered him to send my
art supplies after I wrote her, and I was happy when Roy delivered them. I like
to sketch, and then paint. I love landscapes.”
       Jed had, at first, protested against
going on the picnic, calling it “utter nonsense”, but she’d prevailed when she
packed the cooling chicken into a basket. He’d have no dinner if he’d stayed
behind, and he couldn’t let a green woman take a jaunt into the wilderness alone.
The whole town would have his hide for neglecting such a duty.
       Now they sat on a grassy hill on a
beautiful June day. Bees were buzzing and a jay called out from a high perch in
the tree above their nesting place.
       “I can create a world, and escape
into it for a while.”
       “Escape?”
       “Work. Worries,” she stared at him
with wide eyes. “Everyone needs a pastime. Relaxation.”
       “Yes, everyone should recreate on