Crescent City Courtship (5 page)

He stared at her, a hint of the old arrogance drawing his brows together. Or perhaps, Abigail thought, it was simple embarrassment. “I don’t need your money,” he said.

“Then perhaps you’d care to bring your laundry by.” Rose’s soft chin went up. “I’m considered the best in the neighborhood.”

Catching Abigail’s warning look, John shrugged. “I’ve no doubt you are. We’ll see. But I promised to return Miss Neal to the clinic before noon, so we’d best hurry. I or one of the other fellows will stop by here tomorrow to check on Paddy. I’ll send some bleach to wipe down the floors and ceiling. Some say that keeps down the spread of croup.” He gave Rose a quick nod and offered his hand to little Sean. “Help your marmee out by playing quietly when the baby’s asleep, won’t you, old man?”

Sean nudged his sister. “Would you bring more candy when you come back?”

John winked. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Goodbye, Rose.” Abigail smiled at her neighbor as she followed John out to the entryway. “Don’t forget about the fish.”

“Thank you, Abigail.” Rose’s expression was considerably less troubled than when they’d first arrived. “I don’t know what else to—just thank you.” She shut the door hurriedly.

As they began the long walk back to the Lanieres’, Abigail took John’s proffered arm and sighed. “She’ll listen to you, I think.” She glanced at him. “You were very sweet to the children.”

She knew she’d used the wrong word when his fine eyes narrowed. “Perhaps you’d expected me to growl at them.”

Smiling, she shrugged. “You did surprise me a bit. I confess your motivations confuse me, John. People like Rose—and Tess and me, for that matter—cannot pay you in coin, and you seem to have a rather contemptuous attitude toward our entire class. Why do you want to be a doctor? Is it simple scientific hunger?”

He didn’t immediately answer. “Imperfections bother me,” he said slowly. “I suppose that could be considered a character flaw. But I see no reason for those little ones to suffer from hunger and disease if there’s anything I can do about it.” He glanced at her, cheeks reddened, she thought not entirely from the wind whipping off the river. “I don’t mean to be arrogant.”

An inappropriate urge to giggle made Abigail look down, pretending to watch her step. “Because imperfections annoy me as well, I’ll take it upon myself to correct you as needed.” She gave him a mischievous glance from under her lashes.

To his credit, John laughed. “Magnanimous of you, Miss Abigail. You’ll give me lessons in social intercourse,
and I’ll keep your considerable predisposition for interference well occupied. We should get along famously.”

Almost lightheaded with the unexpected pleasure of intelligent repartee with an attractive—if slightly prickly—male, Abigail turned the conversation to his background with the Laniere family. John Braddock was like no man she’d met in her admittedly abnormal life. Perhaps she had more to learn than she’d thought.

“It’s got to be here somewhere,” John muttered to himself that evening as he skimmed through the last of six pharmaceutical books he’d borrowed from Marcus Girard. He sat on his unmade bed, his back propped against the wall, a cup of stout Creole coffee wobbling atop the tomes stacked at his elbow.

The cramped and exceedingly messy fifteen-by-fifteen-foot room on the second level of Mrs. Hanley’s Boarding House for Gentlemen was one of John’s greatest sources of personal satisfaction. It hadn’t been easy to endure his mother’s tearful accusations of ingratitude nor his father’s blustering threats of disinheritance. But in the end, John’s determination to live on his own had worn them both down. Two years ago, on his twenty-third birthday, he had packed his clothes and books into four sturdy trunks and had them carted to the boarding house. He then rode his black mare, Belladonna, to the livery stable around the corner on Rue St. John—another serendipitous circumstance which afforded him no end of amusement.

Mrs. Clementine Hanley insisted on absolute moral purity in her lodgers—the enforcing of which she took quite seriously and personally. She also set a fine table and could be counted upon to provide fresh linens daily.

Unfortunately, she was not so dependable in the matter of functioning locks.

John looked up in irritation when the doorknob rattled. The key worked its way loose and hit the floor with a clank. “Girard, if you come in here again, I’m going to souse every pair of drawers you own in kerosene and set them on fire.”

The door opened anyway and Marcus’s ingenuous, square-cut face insinuated itself in the opening.

John glared. “Go away!”

Marcus leaned over to pick up the fallen key and tossed it at John. The key plunked into the half-full coffee cup. “Oops.” He gave John an unrepentant grin. “A little iron supplement for your diet, old man.”

Snarling under his breath, John used his pillow case to mop up the sloshed coffee. “You’d better have a good reason for interrupting me again.” He fished the key out of his cup.

Marcus swaggered into the room with his usual banty-rooster strut, hands thrust into the enormous pockets of a peacock-blue satin dressing gown. He paused in front of the skeleton spraddled in a straight chair under the room’s tiny, solitary window.

“Hank, old bean.” Marcus bowed, sketching a salute. “I trust this evening finds you hale and hearty.”

John resisted the urge to laugh. Encouraged, Marcus could go on for hours in that oily false-British accent. He closed the book on his finger. “What do you want, Girard?”

“Stuck-up rotter, ain’t you?” Giving the skeleton a thump on the cranium, Marcus hopped onto the window sill and folded his arms across his barrel chest. “Came to rescue you.”

“Rescue me? The only way you can rescue me is to find me another pharmacy book.”

“Braddock, I’ve lifted every book m’father has on the subject. If what you’re looking for ain’t there, it just—ain’t there. Come on, I know you’ve memorized the lists for the test. Let’s toddle over to the District and slum a little.”

The notorious red light district was located a few blocks from the medical college and Mrs. Hanley’s Boarding House. It also happened to be where John had encountered Tess and Abigail. Yesterday’s experience had destroyed whatever appeal the District once had. And going back with Abigail this morning to visit the McLachlin family had turned it rather into a source of conscience.

John opened the book again. “I’m busy. And if you had even half as many brains as Hank, you’d take one of these books down to your room and have a look yourself.”

Marcus gave John a puzzled look. “What’s got into you today? You didn’t go to church this morning, did you?”

John gave a bark of laughter. “Not exactly. I attended a funeral.”

Marcus sat up straight, his thin, sandy hair all but on end. “I’m sorry, Braddock! Who died?”

“Nobody you know.” John had no intention of exposing the life-changing experiences of the last two days to Marcus’s inanities. “I’m just—not in the mood.
Comprendez-vous?
”

Marcus pursed his lips. It was common knowledge that John’s family ties took him in directions that less well-connected students could only dream of. “Certainly. I understand. Death and all that.” He slid off the window seat and sidled toward the door. “You were my first choice of companion, but I guess I’ll head down to Weichmann’s room to see if he’d care to get his head out of the books for a bit.” He paused with his hand on the doorknob. “If Clem asks, tell her we’ve gone on a call.”

Mrs. Hanley would certainly ask, should John be so foolish as to stick his nose outside the room. He gave Marcus an absent wave as the brilliantly hued dressing gown disappeared into the hallway. There had better be no emergency calls tonight.

He took a sip of the stone-cold coffee, then propped the cup on his chest, dropping the book onto the floor. He’d been studying the composition and medicinal uses of opium for hours and there was still no conclusive evidence that Abigail Neal was wrong. It was true that opium and all its derivatives—including morphine and laudanum—could be addictive when consumed even once. Certainly the substance was effective as a painkiller, but were the side effects worth it?

John didn’t know. He was discovering there were a lot of things he didn’t know. The more he studied medicine, the more he realized its practice was largely in the realm of guesswork, intuition and trial and error. Frequently even mysticism. Even Dr. Laniere, his favorite professor and mentor, sometimes made fatal judgments. He had as good a record of success as any physician John had yet to meet, but…people did die under his care.

Why didn’t God just tell people how to go on? Why did they get ill and injured in the first place? If he could heal at all, why didn’t he heal everybody?

Irritated at the intrusion of such unscientific thoughts, John slung his coffee cup onto the bedside table and got up off the bed. He took a deep breath and bent to touch his toes a few times.

He’d been entertaining a lot of God-related meanderings ever since the delivery of that stillborn baby. All day he’d had a sense of someone looking into his mind, prodding
his thoughts and feelings. One of the main reasons he’d taken Abigail back to visit that croupy baby was to escape the strong urge to go to church.

Just a bit spooked, he turned a full circle, taking in his familiar surroundings. Nothing out of order. The narrow, tumbled bed with the coffee stain on the pillow. The square table holding a pile of anatomy textbooks and the Tiffany lamp his mother had given him on his twenty-first birthday. Sepia-toned photographs of his parents and her sister Lisette on the mantel above the tiny fireplace. Hank holding court in the chair under the window. The plain mahogany chifforobe with its mirror reflecting his confusion back at him.

John thrust both hands through his hair and stared at his own reddened eyes. Not enough sleep lately. That was all it was.

Then he looked at his hands. They shook. The nails were immaculate, the signet ring on his left little finger dull gold with a garnet set into the family crest. Rich man’s hands? Healer’s hands?

He hurried to the window, leaned out and sucked in a draft of thick, clammy, November air. He’d lived in New Orleans all his life and the humidity had never bothered him before, but he found himself struggling for a breath. No wonder little Paddy McLachlin was so sick.

John looked down, watching passersby fading in and out of the pools of gaslight spotting the sidewalks. When had it gotten dark out? Maybe he should try to catch up to Girard and Weichmann after all.

He pulled his head back inside the room, banged down the window sash and yanked the curtain closed. He sat down to tug on his boots, decided against a coat and tore out of
the room, slamming the door behind him. He pounded down the stairs, shoving the useless key into his pocket.

God couldn’t influence his thoughts if he wasn’t there.

T
he next morning John slumped at a table in a nearly empty classroom, listening to the heavy marching of the clock on the wall behind him. Traffic clamored from the street outside the open window to his left.

He stared at the test in front of him and wondered which of the medicines he’d just listed would be the quickest remedy for acute hangover. Maybe he should go straight for the arsenic. Quelling a strong desire to hang his head out the window and heave, he contemplated the top of Dr. Girard’s bald head, visible behind the Monday morning
Daily Picayune
.

Marcus’s father was a cold-hearted old goat, a brilliant lecturer whose written tests had been known to reduce grown men to tears. He sat at the front of the lecture hall, behind a bare table which exposed his short legs, stretched out and crossed at the ankle. His scarlet-and-lemon-striped waistcoat, half-inch-thick watch chain and green paisley ascot revealed the source of Marcus’s love for sartorial splendor.

John wished the professor had his son’s amiable temperament.

He was one of only two students left in the room. Everyone else, including Marcus himself, had either completed the test or given up in despair. He glanced across the room at Tanner Weichmann. Weichmann had not indulged in spirits last night, but had come along more or less to keep Marcus out of trouble. In fact, it had been he who put both Marcus and John to bed, after paying for a hack home and supporting the two of them up the narrow stairs. Good thing Clem slept like the dead or they might all have been out on the street tonight.

John supposed he should be grateful not to have awoken in a gutter somewhere, robbed of his clothes and money. Weichmann was a serious pain, but he was dependable. Perhaps not as gifted a scientist as John, not nearly as much fun as Marcus, but methodical to the point of insanity. John was certain he’d finished the test long ago, but Weichmann would check his answers to make sure every word was spelled correctly and all sentences complete.

Weichmann suddenly looked up, his dark eyes probing John’s. He wiggled heavy black brows and elaborately pulled out his watch.

John couldn’t resist looking over his shoulder at the clock. Nearly noon. Time was almost up. He suppressed a groan, bent over his paper again and dredged up the therapeutic and alterative uses of mercury. By the time he finished his answer, Dr. Girard had folded his paper in a neat square and waited, stubby fingers linked and his brow creased in impatient lines. John looked around. Weichmann had disappeared.

“Braddock, you seem determined to make me miss my noon meal,” growled Dr. Girard. “Are you quite finished?”

“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.” John rose and clattered down the steps of the amphitheater, sticking his pencil stub behind
his ear. He reluctantly handed over his paper. “When will you have them graded?” If he failed this test he would have to repeat the course. Pharmaceuticals tended to be his downfall because of the spellings.

Without looking at him, the professor stuffed John’s test into a leather portfolio. “You’ll know soon enough.” He rolled out of the room without a backward glance.

John ran a hand around the back of his neck, popping the joints to relieve tension. At least it was over. Pass or fail, there was nothing he could do about it now. He needed to go lie down.

He headed for the door and nearly jumped out of his skin when someone grabbed his arm as he passed into the hallway.

“How did you do, Braddock?”

John wheeled. “Careful, Weichmann, or you’ll be cleaning your shoes. I’m still a bit unsteady this morning.”

Weichmann gave an evil chuckle. “Speaking of morning, you missed rounds. Prof wasn’t happy.”

Dr. Laniere wasn’t the only professor, of course, but every med student distinguished him with the title. No one wanted to disappoint Professor Laniere.

John lifted a shoulder and continued down the hall toward the stairs. “Couldn’t be helped. What did you tell him?”

“Told him you had a previous engagement.”

“You did not.”

“No. But I should have. Braddock, you never drink. What’s gotten into you, old man?”

Since the words were almost a direct quote of Marcus’s the day before, John hurried down the marble stairs without replying. He wasn’t going to admit that a prostitute’s dead baby had resulted in his hearing from God.

Weichmann’s long, skinny legs had no trouble keeping
up. “There’s a few minutes for lunch before anatomy lab. Want to go for a beignet and coffee?”

John’s stomach revolted. “No!”

“Oh, sorry…Didn’t think.”

John sat down and planted his elbows on his knees, laying his pounding head in his palms. He could feel Weichmann hovering behind him on the stairs, his breath wheezing and whistling. It took little to get the young Jew’s asthma kicked up.

“No,
I’m
sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” John stared at the gray squiggles in the white marble between his feet. “Weichmann, has God ever communicated with you? You know, like Moses and the burning bush?”

Weichmann didn’t answer for a long moment. John could hear the clatter of students changing classes down in the east wing and, through the open windows, the rattle of carriages passing in the street. The heavy odors of mildew and chalk and the stench of the dissection lab drifted from two floors up. He looked over his shoulder and found Weichmann staring at him as if he’d lost his mind.

“Maybe you’d better go home and go to bed,” suggested Weichmann.

John’s head fell back against the wrought-iron spindles of the stair rail. “I was planning to.” He got to his feet and descended the remainder of the stairs. At the bottom, he turned to Weichmann, who followed tsking like an agitated squirrel. “Don’t tell anyone I asked that, would you?”

Weichmann shook his curly head. “Nobody would believe me if I did.”

The haunting strains of a hymn sung in a rich, throbbing contralto drifted through the kitchen and clinic/dispensary
to the ward, where Abigail was feeding Tess her evening meal of barley soup. In the daylight, Abigail had discovered the ward to be a large, airy room with doors opening into the kitchen on one side and the clinic on the other. The three long, curtainless windows of the third wall looked out on the garden, where even in late fall birds sang in tall flowering shrubs and fruit trees gave off an intoxicating scent. Lined up on the interior wall of the room were four narrow cots, each with its own bedside table holding a small basin-and-pitcher set, with a chamber pot underneath the bed.

“I know not what the future hath of marvel or surprise,” sang the unseen singer, “assured alone that life and death His mercy underlies.”

Sighing, Abigail spooned soup into Tess’s mouth. The song brought to mind a vivid image of her mother, singing over her fine embroidery, dressed in the traditional Chinese wide-sleeved, knee-length cotton overshirt and loose trousers. Darling, vulnerable Mama, trying to fit in despite her “devilish” blue eyes, red hair, and normal-sized feet. Papa had thought to have Abigail’s feet bound, but Mama managed to convince him that, at the age of five, too much growth had already taken place.

The Chinese women had been repelled by such foreign females. Abigail, always tall for her age, got into the habit of slumping. Only since returning to America had she trained herself to stand upright.

The words of the hymn seemed a symbol of all Abigail had run away from, a mockery of the dire circumstances of her life.

Tess had awakened off and on all day, slowly gaining strength. Still, Abigail couldn’t help worrying. She had been much safer in the relative anonymity of the District.
Besides, if she and Tess didn’t report for work tomorrow, they might return to find that they had been replaced. Their miserable jobs in the sail loft were all that stood between them and starvation—or prostitution. The Lanieres seemed to be kindhearted folk, but there was a limit to most people’s charity, as she knew only too well.

“Who is that singing?” whispered Tess, pushing away the spoon. “Thank you, but I don’t want any more.”

Abigail set the bowl on the floor, leaning over to lay her head on the sheet beside Tess. She was so tired. She’d been up until dawn this morning, giving cornstarch baths to Diron and his ten-year-old sister Lythie, also discovered to be stricken with chicken pox. Camilla had been occupied with the fussy and equally poxy baby Meg. After Abigail snatched a few hours of sleep, Tess had wakened and called for her. She’d sat trying to stay awake in this uncomfortable wooden chair all day.

Winona came back yesterday afternoon to take over the household duties, but Abigail had seen little of her, other than at mealtimes.

Abigail yawned. “Sounds like an opera singer. Do you suppose the Lanieres hired someone to entertain us?”

Tess giggled, gladdening Abigail’s heart. It had been a long time since Tess had anything to laugh about. “Go and see, Abby. I want to meet her.”

“All right.” With mental reservations that any guest of the Lanieres would care to meet two women from the District, be they ever so inwardly genteel, Abigail picked up the half-empty bowl and pushed to her feet.

She found Winona straining cooked pears into an enormous pot on the kitchen stove. All Abigail could see of her was the mane of inky curls cascading down her
slender back, a pair of café-au-lait-colored arms, bare beneath the rolled-up sleeves of a coarsely woven blue-and-white-checked blouse, and a plain brown gathered skirt.

But the voice. Abigail marveled as it poured from the woman’s tiny body like the throaty eulogy of a dove: “I know not where his islands lift their fronded palms in air; I only know I cannot drift beyond his love and care.”

Abigail wanted to weep at the beauty and hope of the words and melody.

Winona turned around to dump the pear pulp into a bowl next to her elbow. When she saw Abigail, a smile lit her face, turning the dark eyes to black gemstones. Her features had an exotic sort of elegance, more interesting than any pale perfection. “Ooh, you startled me!” She laughed, giving the sieve a good shake with competent, blunt-fingered hands, then set it down to wipe her fingers on a towel tucked into the waistband of her apron.

“I heard you singing.” Odd to hear such a glorious sound from a servant. On the other hand, who was she to look down her nose at anyone?

“Pshhh, I’m sorry. Miss Camilla said not to disturb you, if you and the lady patient was asleep.” Winona gave a rueful shrug. “I get carried away.”

“Oh, no, it was lovely.” Abigail smiled. “We—Tess and I—thought it was an opera singer.”

Winona went off into gales of throaty laughter. “Me? Oh, help us, that’s a good one!”

Abigail found herself joining in. “Your voice is finer than a woman I know who once sang on the stage in Paris.” Amusement died as Abigail pictured poor Delphine’s perpetual drug-induced stupor. These days her voice was rarely lifted in anything other than black despair.

“I wish I could learn from a real teacher.” Winona turned as an insistent knock sounded at the kitchen door. “That would be Mr. John. He’s the only one of Dr. Gabriel’s students who comes direct to the kitchen. Can’t nobody talk him into coming to the front door.” She went to open the door.

Abigail found her heart clanging around in her chest like the Vespers bell in the tower of St. Stephen’s. She’d wondered when Braddock would deign to bestow his presence upon them again.

“Afternoon, Mr. John.” Winona moved to let him in.

He came in, hatless and stock askew, his coat shockingly draped over his arm. His tall form was backlit by the late afternoon sun that streamed across the kitchen courtyard and gilded the top of his head. He stopped and stared at Abigail for a long moment.

She touched her hair, then cursed herself for such a ridiculous, feminine instinct. She snatched her hand behind her back.

He shifted his attention to Winona, who had gone back to her preserves. “How is Tess?”

Winona looked around, amusement curving her lips. “I don’t know, Mr. John. You better ask Miss Abigail here. I been so busy helping Miss Camilla with the children and tending to the laundry, I ain’t had time to even look in on her. Miss Camilla say the lady’s been in good hands.” She smiled at Abigail.

“Tess is a little stronger.” Warmed at Winona’s praise, Abigail lifted her chin. “Even without the opium, she slept well last night and most of today.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” He gave her a curt nod and stalked off toward the clinic.

Abigail gave Winona a wry glance. “Is he always this charming?”

An inscrutable smile played around Winona’s full mouth. “He can turn it on when he wants to.”

Abigail didn’t want to know what that meant. “When will Dr. Laniere be home?”

“Oh, right about—” The kitchen door rattled and opened—” now.” The doctor came in whistling, with his hat under his arm, and Winona reached to take it from him. “Miss Camilla said to tell you she’s up in the nursery when you get home. The two older boys’re down with the pox now. It’s a mess for sure.”

The doctor’s cheerful expression fell. “All five of them? Poor Camilla.” He sighed. “All right. I’ll just check on Miss Montgomery, then I’ll see about the children. I’m sure Camilla’s got things under control.”

Abigail followed him into the clinic, where she was just in time to witness the unhorsing of Sir John the Terrible, who had leaned over to grasp Tess’s wrist between thumb and two fingers.