Crescent City Courtship (4 page)

Abigail suddenly remembered where she was. Winona’s little room off the clinic, just a few steps from Tess’s bed in the ward. This must be one of the Laniere children.

She sat up. “I’m not Winona, I’m Abigail. But I’ll get you a drink of water—just a minute, let me light a candle.”

“Ooh! Just like Goldilocks! What’re you doing in Winona’s bed?”

Abigail laughed. “Winona will be back tomorrow.” Swinging her legs off the side of the bed, she lit the candle and held it up so she could see the wide, bespectacled eyes of a little boy who looked like his mother—probably around seven years old, judging by the missing front teeth. His hair curled in every direction but down and his nightgown was buttoned two buttons off, so that the hem hitched crookedly around his knees.

He poked his spectacles up on his button nose with one finger. “You ain’t Goldilocks. Your hair’s brown.”

Abigail tugged the braid hanging over her shoulder, wishing for a proper nightcap. “It is indeed. What’s your name?”

“Diron. Are you gonna get me a drink or not?”

Since Camilla had thoughtfully provided a pitcher of clean water and a cup for her guest before retiring, Abigail smiled and poured a drink for the boy. Diron downed it quickly and held out the cup for more. It was then that she noted the small red blister on the child’s forehead.

“Just a minute.” She reached out to push back the bright curls. His forehead was warm.

Enduring her touch with a long-suffering frown, Diron scratched his stomach.

“How long have you been itching?” she asked.

“I dunno. I must’ve got a bunch of mosquito bites. Can I
please
have some more water?”

“Certainly. But I want to see your tummy.”

She poured the water, then while he drank it, matter-of-factly unbuttoned his nightgown. His chest and upper abdomen were covered with the tiny red blisters. Chicken pox.

No wonder the poor child was so hot and thirsty. Camilla was busy with the baby, but she would want to know.

When Diron finished his water, Abigail took him by the hand and led him into the clinic and through the kitchen. The sound of both of their bare feet slapping against the wooden floors tickled her sense of humor and she enjoyed the feel of his small warm hand in hers. He was a trusting little fellow.

In the carpeted hallway she saw the stairs to the upper
floors. It was a large, airy house, bigger than anything Abigail had been inside before, with lots of screened windows and light, gauzy curtains stirred by a cool nighttime breeze.

On the first landing she felt Diron tug her hand. “Miss Lady. I’m tired.” He gave an enormous yawn.

“Would you like a piggy-back ride?” He nodded and she walked down a few steps to let him climb on. “Goodness, you’re a big boy.” She grunted as he clutched her around the neck and waist. “Hold tight now.”

As Abigail trudged up the remaining steps to the first floor, Diron leaned around. “Where’d you get that funny accent?”

“China,” she replied without thinking.

“Oh, pooh. I didn’t believe you was Goldilocks, neither.”

A
chill had sneaked across the river during the night, sending fog drifting across the graveyard, twining through Abigail’s hair and muting her and Dr. Laniere’s footsteps. The ground was soft, even on this elevated patch a mile or so away from the river, and she had to step over puddles of water in the shallow hollows of sunken graves.

Abigail carried the baby, dressed in a tiny white gown worn by Meg just a few months ago. Camilla would have attended the funeral service, but she’d had to remain with the feverish and itchy Diron. Tess was induced to remain in bed only by Abigail’s promise of writing down exactly what was said at her baby’s interment.

They were to call her Caroline.

“Here we are,” said Dr. Laniere, halting beside a tiny fresh grave, barely three feet long and a couple of feet wide. He opened the lid of the small wooden casket he’d carried from the house and looked across the top of it at Abigail. “It’s time to put her in the casket.” His deep-set dark eyes were somber, filled with sympathy. “Remember—”

“I know. She’s with the Father.” Abigail closed her mind against the instinct to pray. She’d been brought up to talk to God at every turn and the habit kicked in at moments of stress. But it was difficult to believe God was really interested in either her or this small wasted life.

Placing the baby in the box, she arranged the lacy white skirts in graceful folds. She was glad Tess couldn’t see this. She could remember Caroline cuddled in her arms like a white-capped doll.

Dr. Laniere placed the lid on the box and was about to lower it into the grave when pounding footsteps approached.

“Wait!” John Braddock ran out of the mist, panting. In one hand he carried his black medical bag. “Professor, I want to see her again before you bury her.”

Dr. Laniere straightened.

Abigail hadn’t expected the young doctor to actually come for the burial. She was even more surprised that he’d apparently already been on a medical call. “What are you doing here?” she blurted, sounding perhaps more defensive than she’d intended.

“I’ve a right to be here,” he said breathlessly. “I delivered this baby, and—” He swallowed. “Let me see her, please.”

When the professor opened the box, Braddock removed his hat, clutching it as he stared at the baby. “I’m so sorry,” he muttered. “I promise I’ll learn to do better.”

Abigail’s throat closed. She didn’t want to like this privileged rich boy. Pressing her lips together, she looked away.

She heard the lid go back on the box and then the gritty sound of wood landing on sand and clay. The two men picked up the shovels left by the grave diggers and began to fill in the small hole in the ground.

The job took less than a minute. She made herself look
at the mound of fresh dirt, the only visible trace of Tess’s baby—except the scars on her friend’s body. She thought of her father’s pontifications on Scripture. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The Lord cherishing the death of his beloved.

She couldn’t find anything particularly precious about this stark moment.

“Oh, God, we know you’re here.” Dr. Laniere lifted his resonant voice. “We know you give and you take away and you are sovereign. We pray you’ll remind us of your presence even in the darkness of grief. We pray you’ll be ever near to Tess as she recovers. Please champion these young women and help them find real help as they seek you. Please use Camilla and the children and me to meet their needs. And I pray you’ll hear and meet young Braddock’s desire to be a healer, even as you heal his heart.”

What about
my
desire to be a healer?
Abigail thought as the professor paused.
What about
my
wounded heart?
She opened her eyes and looked up just as a ray of sunshine broke through the patchy fog. An enormous rainbow soared from one end of the graveyard to the other. She caught her breath.

“In the name of our Lord, who takes our ashes and turns them to joy…Amen.”

The professor and John replaced their hats. Abigail, shivering in the cool morning dampness, hurried toward the cemetery entrance. She wanted to get back to Tess, to write down the words of the service before she forgot them.
Ashes to joy…

“Wait, Abigail.” Shifting his medical bag to the other hand, John caught up with her, took her hand and pulled it through his elbow. “I thought you should know I went back to the District last night.”

“Did you?” Stumbling on the soggy, uneven ground, she
reluctantly accepted the support of his arm. “Needed a bit of alcoholic sustenance?”

“No, I—” He gave her an exasperated look. “Must you assume the worst?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know many men who lead me to expect anything else.”

“Well, in this case you’re wrong. I went back there because I’d heard a child coughing in the apartment next to yours. The walls are so thin—”

“Yes, they are.” She didn’t need to be reminded. “That would be the McLachlin baby. He has chronic croup. I’ve tried to get Rose to move him out of that mildewy apartment, but she can’t afford anything better.”

“Well, I went back to see about him. Stupid woman wouldn’t let me in, even though I
told
her I was a doctor.”

Abigail looked up at him. “To the contrary. For once she was using her head, not letting a strange man into her apartment.”

There was a brief silence. “I see your point.” John opened the graveyard gate and held it as Abigail passed through. “Then perhaps you’d agree to return with me this afternoon and persuade her of my good intentions. I’d like to look at the baby to see if anything can be done about that cough.”

Abigail hesitated. “She can’t afford to pay you.”

“I know that.” He let out an exasperated sigh. “Prof encourages us to see charity cases when we have time. It’s good practice.”

“Oh, well, then. For the sake of your education, I suppose I’d best come with you.”

He stiffened. “Miss Neal—”

“Mr. Braddock.” She squeezed his elbow. “I was only tweaking you.”

He looked at her for a moment before a slow grin curled his mouth. “Were you, indeed? Then for the sake of
your
education, I’ll allow you to observe a man who practices medicine for more than money. Perhaps you might learn something.”

His eyes held hers. Something shifted between them. Abigail looked over her shoulder to find the professor’s reassuring presence several paces back.

John followed her gaze. “Prof, I’m going back to Tchapitoulas Street with Miss Neal to look after a sick little boy.”

“Fine. Just bring her back before noon and you may stay for dinner, too.” Dr. Laniere waved them on and turned off toward Daubigny Street, where his family attended church.

For the next couple of blocks, Abigail maintained a tense silence. In the distance church bells began to ring. “Are you a church-going man, Mr. Braddock? Perhaps your family will wonder where you are.”

“My family would be quite astonished to see me at all on Sunday before late afternoon,” he said easily. “I don’t live at home.”

“Oh.” When he didn’t elaborate, she looked at him. “Then a wife or—or sweetheart?”

“I assure you I am quite unattached at the moment. Are you trying to get rid of me?”

“Of course not.” Abigail looked away, blushing, as they turned the corner at the saloon. “I agreed to come with you to check on the baby.” Her relief that he was unattached was absurd. There was nothing personal whatsoever in his escort.

“Yes, you did. And here we are.” He stood back as Abigail opened the outer front door and knocked on the door across the entryway from her old apartment with Tess.

She could hear the baby crying inside, Rose’s anxious voice, the other two children giggling and shrieking. “Rose?” She knocked again. “It’s Abigail.”

The door jerked open and Rose appeared with the baby on her hip. A little girl and a little boy of about four and five clung to her skirts, one on each side. “Abigail—what are you doing here? Is something wrong?”

Abigail glanced at John over her shoulder. “I brought Dr. Braddock with me. He wants to look at Paddy.”

Rose’s big blue eyes widened. “Paddy’s fine.”

Abigail laid a hand on the baby’s back and felt the rattle of his lungs as he breathed. He’d tucked his face into Rose’s shoulder, but Abigail could just see the curve of a feverish cheek. “Rose. Please let us in. Denying trouble never made it go away.”

Rose stared at John, one hand clasping the baby, the other protectively on her daughter’s head. Abigail knew she must be thinking of the drunken husband who had brought her and the children over from Ireland and abandoned them two months ago. As she’d told John earlier, Abigail herself had little reason to rely on any man’s trustworthiness. But some tiny part of her insisted on giving this one a chance to prove himself.

John seemed to realize he was here on sufferance. “Mrs. McLachlin, I think I know what’s causing Paddy’s cough. If you’ll just let me look at him for a minute, I can give him some medicine and he’ll feel much better tonight.” His tone was, if not exactly humble, moderate enough to reassure.

Baby Paddy suddenly erupted in one of his fits of croupy coughing. Rose took a flustered step back. “All right. Come in, both of you, but don’t look at the mess. The children have been playing all morning.”

Abigail would not have increased Rose’s embarrassment for the world, but she couldn’t help marveling that the young Irishwoman had survived this long on a laundress’s wage with three small children. Clearly she was in dire straights. Except for two dolls made from bits of yarn and a pile of rusty tin cans the children had been playing with in the center of the room, there was little difference between this apartment and the one Abigail had shared with Tess. Poverty had a way of leveling the ground.

To her surprise, as she and Rose seated themselves on the two wooden chairs, John took off his hat, sat down cross-legged on the floor and opened his bag. He produced a couple of splinters of peppermint candy wrapped in waxed paper and smiled at the two older children, who stared at him from behind Rose’s chair. “Look what I’ve got here, widgets. I’ll give it to you, but you have to open your mouths wide and let me see if there’s room for it to go in.”

The little girl, Stella, glanced at her brother. “It’s candy,” she whispered.

“I want it,” he whispered back. The first to conquer his shyness, he edged toward John, who held the candy just out of reach. Apparently seduced by the twinkle in John’s eyes, he dropped his jaw and stuck out his tongue. “’ee? ’ere’s ’oom.”

John laughed and deftly plied a tongue depressor as he peered down the little boy’s throat. “There is, indeed. Here you go.” He laid the candy on the boy’s tongue. “What’s your name?”

“Sean.” The boy danced backward, eliminating any chance of the candy being snatched away. His eyes closed in ecstasy. “Marmee, I like this.”

“Me! Me!” Stella gaped wide as she crowded close to
John, gagging slightly as he depressed her tongue. But she patiently held still to let him look at her throat. When she received her candy, she sucked on it furiously, gazing at John with adoration. “Can Paddy have some too?”

John shook his head. “Paddy’s too little. But maybe he’d let me look at his throat anyway?”

By this time, Rose was thoroughly disarmed and handed over the baby without further protest. John took him with a gentle competence that reminded Abigail of the way he’d held poor little Caroline that morning. Her throat closed as Paddy blinked up at the doctor’s handsome young face.

John examined the baby thoroughly, laying his ear against Paddy’s chest and back to listen, gently moving his arms and legs, palpating the glands beneath the soft little chin. He tracked the movement of Paddy’s eyes by moving his finger back and forth, grinning when the baby grabbed it and tried to suck on it. “No, no, boo. Dirty.” He looked at Rose as he lifted Paddy onto his shoulder and patted his back. “Definitely teething, which causes fever. But the cough worries me. It means there’s mucus draining into his stomach, maybe collecting fluid in his lungs. You’ll need to suction out as much of it as you can, keep him at a comfortable temperature, wash everything that goes in his mouth. Keep him fed—which means taking care of yourself.” His eyes softened as he looked around at the bare room. “Do you get enough to eat?”

Distress took over Rose’s worn young face. “I do the best I can, but there aren’t many vegetables available this time of year, and meat…” She swallowed. “I can’t afford—”

“Fish,” Abigail blurted. “Tess and I used to go to the docks early in the morning and ask for whatever wasn’t quite good enough to send to the market. You can make stews and gumbo, rich in good stuff.”

Rose blinked back tears. “Maybe I could ask Tess to bring back extra…in return for laundry service.”

Abigail exchanged a smile with John. “I’m sure she’d be happy to when she’s back on her feet.”

John handed the baby back to his mother and began to repack his bag. “Yes, that’s a good idea. And meantime, wrapping the baby up and taking him outside for cool night air will ease his breathing and help him sleep. Just be sure he doesn’t get too cold.”

Rose stood up and swayed with Paddy clasped to her bosom. “Dr. Braddock, thank you for coming back. I shouldn’t have been rude to you last night.” She hesitated as John rose and dusted the seat of his trousers. “I’m sorry I can’t…I don’t have the money to pay you for your trouble.”