The Christmas Brides by Linda Lael Miller Page B

Morgan, wasn’t locked away in the third-floor nursery with some tutor. Those excursions had been happy ones for Morgan, and he’d seen enough suffering, visiting Elias Shane’s patients, most of them in tenements and charity hospitals, to know there were worse fates than growing up with a spoiled, disinterested and very wealthy mother.
    He’d had his father, to an extent.
    He’d had Minerva. She’d been born a slave, Minerva had. To her, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was as sacred as Scripture. She’d actually met the man she’d called “Father Abraham,” after the fall of Richmond. She’d clutched at the sleeve of his coat, and he’d smiled at her. Such sorrow in them gray, gray eyes, she’d told Morgan, who never tired of the much-told tale. Such sadness as you’d never credit one man could hold.
    Morgan withdrew from the memory. He’d have given a lot to hear that story just one more time.
    Lizzie bit her lip. Took fresh notice of his threadbare clothes, then caught herself and flushed a fetching pink. “You’re not poor,” she concluded, then colored up even more.
    He laughed, and damn, it felt good. “Oh, but I am, Lizzie McKettrick,” he said. “Poor as a church mouse. Mother didn’t mind so much when I went to Germany to study. She figured it would pass, and I’d come to my senses. When I came home and took up medicine in earnest, she disinherited me.”
    Lizzie’s marvelous eyes widened again. “She did? But surely your father—”
    â€œShe showed him the door, too. She was furiouswith him for encouraging me to become a doctor instead of overseeing the family fortune. Minerva opened a boarding house, and Dad and I moved in as her first tenants. We found a storefront, hung out a shingle and practiced together until Dad died of a heart attack.”
    Sorrow moved in Lizzie’s face at the mention of his father’s death. She swallowed. “What became of your mother?” she asked, sounding meek now, in the face of such drama.
    â€œShe sold the mansion and moved to Europe, to escape the shame.”
    â€œWhat shame?”
    God bless her, Morgan thought, she was actually confused. “In Mother’s circles,” he said, “the practice of medicine—especially when most of the patients can’t pay—is not a noble pursuit. She could have forgiven herself for marrying a doctor—youthful passions, lapses of judgment, all that—but when I decided to become a physician instead of taking over my grandfather’s several banks, it was too much for her to bear.”
    â€œI’m sorry, Morgan,” Lizzie said.
    â€œIt isn’t as if we were close,” Morgan said, touched by the sadness in Lizzie McKettrick’s eyes as he had never been by Eliza Stanton Shane’s indifference. “Mother and I, I mean.”
    â€œBut, still—”
    â€œI had my father. And Minerva.”
    Lizzie nodded, but she didn’t look convinced. “My mother died when I was young. And even though I’m close to Lorelei—that’s my stepmother—I still miss her a lot.”
    He couldn’t help asking the question. It was out of his mouth before he could stop it. “Is money important to you, Lizzie?” He’d told her he was poor, and suddenly he needed to know if that mattered.
    She glanced in Carson’s direction, then looked straight into Morgan’s eyes. “No,” she said, with such alacrity that he believed her instantly. There was no guile in Lizzie McKettrick—only courage and sweetness, intelligence and, unless he missed his guess, a fiery temper.
    He wanted to ask if Whitley Carson would be able to support her in the manner to which she was clearly accustomed, considering the fineness of her clothes and her recently acquired education, but he’d recovered his manners by then. “Miss