Dawn of the Golden Promise (58 page)

“How long have you known?”

His answer was slow in coming. “A few weeks. Not long.”

A few weeks…

“The poems…you started sending me the poems…a few weeks ago…”

His gaze was steady, gentle. “That's right, lass.”

“You
knew…
and you wrote such poems to me anyway?”

He said nothing, merely nodded, his eyes still holding hers.

Quinn's chin began to tremble. “How?” she choked out. “How could you write such words…knowing what you knew?”

Again a look of pain swept over his features, then ebbed. “The only thing I knew that mattered at all was the fact that I love you, lass.”

This could not be happening…such a thing could never be. Not for her. Never for the likes of Quinn O'Shea.

He paused, passing a hand over his eyes. “You might want to know, just for the knowing, that the talk about the town was all in your defense, that you acted only to save your life—and that the man had it coming long before. The thought is that it was a miraculous thing entirely that Jupe had not murdered
you
before that night.” He stopped, then added, “There is no offense on the books for you, lass. No charges against you—none.”

Quinn's legs shook beneath her. She was chilled and she was on fire, all at the same time. She wanted to laugh. She wanted to weep.

Once more the man held out a hand to her. Quinn stared at it, then searched his eyes.

“Give me your hand, Quinn O ‘Shea.”

Quinn bit her lip till the pain made her stop. Then she stretched out her hand.

He clasped it gently, then just as tenderly drew her closer to him, close enough that she could see more clearly the entire tide of feelings that had risen in his eyes.

“Listen to me now, Quinn,” he told her, still in that same soft voice. “Listen to me closely. I have loved you for a long, long time. I cannot keep it to myself any longer. I am asking you, Quinn O'Shea, to be my wife.”

Quinn gasped. She tried to pull her hand away, but he would not let her go. “Wait, now,” he said. “Wait. I am asking you to marry me…when you are
ready.
Until then—and forever after—I will be your friend. I am a patient man. I will give you all the time you need, however long it might take, for you to come to love me. And even if you never do—well, then, Quinn O'Shea, I expect I will still be your friend.”

His eyes probed hers, and after a moment, as if he had seen what he was looking for there, he drew her closer, gathering her in his arms and holding her lightly, carefully, much as he might have held…a friend.

With her mind still reeling, her heart racing, Quinn stood very still, scarcely daring to breathe. For the first time, a man's touch felt almost safe, even welcome.

“I will never hurt you, Quinn O'Shea,” he murmured, smoothing her hair away from her face. “And neither will anyone else. Upon my life, no one will ever hurt you again.”

With only an instant's hesitation, Quinn pressed her face against the fortress of his sturdy shoulder. At last she allowed the tears to fall free and, as they flowed, to wash away her yesterdays.

41

What does he see, this peacock of a man,
when he looks at me through his proud, condescending eye?
Am I flesh and bone, or merely a dot
on the map of his achievements?

MORGAN FITZGERALD (1850)

J
akob Gunther was even more of a surprise than his dimly lighted saltbox of an office near the East River.

With Sandemon, Morgan had been waiting for the esteemed surgeon for nearly an hour. For the last twenty minutes or so he had felt his patience unraveling one thread at a time. His self-composure throughout the morning had been tenuous at best; at the moment he wanted nothing more than to go charging out the door and book the first available passage back to Ireland.

They were the only ones in the pantry-sized waiting room, which to Morgan's thinking made Gunther's self-endorsed skills highly suspect. Where were the patients of this great surgeon, if not clamoring for his attention?

The door finally flew open to admit a blast of cold air, followed by a lean, black-cloaked figure. As Morgan watched, the new arrival kicked the door shut behind him with a long, narrow foot, then flung off his cloak with a careless toss before turning to face Morgan.

“You are Fitzgerald, I presume? I am Dr. Gunther—Jakob Gunther.”

At first Morgan could only stare at the man in surprise, biting back the urge to make a cutting remark. For some reason, he had concluded that Jakob Gunther would be well past his middle years, most likely balding and rotund. Perhaps because of the arrogant tone of the surgeon's letters, he had conceived the image of an aging eccentric, and a self-indulgent one at that.

But the man who now stood appraising him with undisguised boldness and a kind of clinical interest looked to be near Morgan's own age, certainly no older than his late thirties. He was fairly tall, angular, his face sharply molded—lightly scarred as well, probably from an attack of smallpox at some time in the past.

It took a minute for Morgan to recover. He might have been wrong in his assumptions about the doctor's age and appearance, but he was certainly
not
mistaken about Gunther's arrogance. The iron-gray eyes flitted over him as if he were a questionable side of beef, of no particular value except as a suitable subject for research. The fleeting glance the surgeon afforded Sandemon registered nothing but utter indifference.

“I am quite late. It could not be helped.” The surgeon was abrupt, even in his speech, the words shearing the air like hailstones. The accent of Vienna was still evident, but considerably Americanized. “So, then—let us begin. I will need your man's help in the examining room, large as you are. In here,” he instructed over his shoulder as he whisked through a curtained doorway on the right.

And that was that. No word of apology. Not even the slightest sign of human warmth or interest.

Morgan ground his teeth as they followed Gunther through the doorway. His first impression of the man who might hold the power to change his life was anything but reassuring.

The examination itself required far less time than Morgan would have anticipated and seemed much too uncomplicated to be reliable. Neither was he prepared for Gunther's gentleness. Given the surgeon's earlier rudeness and brusque manner, it would have come as no surprise had the man taken to kneading him and punching him down like a stubborn loaf of bread dough. Instead, the hands that explored him were deft, but sure and gentle, the instruments carefully placed. Gunther even seemed to suspend his brusqueness, if only for the moment.

The surgeon hinted at nothing during the examination, other than to make an occasional soft utterance, the meaning of which defied interpretation. When he had finished, he left the room, allowing Morgan time to dress in private.

“What do you make of him?” Morgan muttered as Sandemon helped him back into the wheelchair. “Aside from his charm, that is, about which I cannot say enough.”

Sandemon chuckled softly, waiting until Morgan was completely settled before replying. “Certainly, his manners could do with some improvement. But his hands are skillful, powerful. And his eyes hold the fire of genius.”

“Or madness,” Morgan said dryly. “Your sense of him is that he is capable, then?”

“More than capable.” The black man's voice was quiet, his tone thoughtful. “Dr. Gunther would seem possessed of both confidence and competence.”

“You failed to mention arrogance.”

Morgan would have gone on, but Gunther swept back into the room at that moment. Seated across the desk—a Spartan, scarred piece that somehow fit Gunther to perfection—Morgan had a good opportunity to notice the man's hands. Splayed palms down on top of the desk, they did indeed convey the impression of strength and agility that Sandemon had observed. The fingers were unusually long and tapering, with large, rough knuckles and slightly reddened skin.

Morgan realized with a jolt that these were the hands of a man who was no stranger to physical labor. He remembered James Dunne remarking at some time in the past that the actual meaning of the word
surgery
had to do with “laboring by hand.” He was struck by the seeming appropriateness of those words as they related to Jakob Gunther.

The surgeon lifted a hand and passed it through his straight, sand-colored hair, disheveling it even more than it had been. “So, then—if I might ask, how well do you endure pain, Mr. Fitzgerald?”

Unprepared for the surgeon's bluntness, despite his earlier behavior, Morgan tensed. “As well as the next man, I expect,” he said guardedly.

“The procedure your condition seems to suggest would involve a great deal of discomfort and pain. Not so much in the surgical process itself, you understand, for I would employ ether as an anesthetic.”

It was the period of recovery—which would be quite extensive, he went on to explain in his terse manner—that would be most difficult. “While you would seem to be in remarkable physical condition for a man with your injury, surgery has a way of breaking down the body's natural defenses, depleting you of your stamina, and weakening you in general. Recuperation would undoubtedly be long and difficult.”

The entire time he spoke, Gunther's eyes probed Morgan's as if taking his measure. If he had arrived at any conclusions, he was keeping them carefully masked.

Morgan's mind fumbled to grasp the details of Gunther's explanation. Although he had heard the surgeon's warnings about pain and discomfort, at the moment he could not seem to move past the words, “a surgery such as the one I am proposing.”

“Are you telling me then that surgery is possible?” Morgan abruptly broke in.

Gunther continued to hold his gaze. “Possible, perhaps. But highly risky and with no guarantees whatsoever.”

Morgan slumped back in the chair. He felt Sandemon's strong hand on his shoulder and was infinitely grateful for his friend's presence in the room.

He let out a long breath. “Tell me all of it, if you will. Spare me no detail, please.”

Gunther propped his elbows on the desk, his hands forming an arch in front of his face. “To be altogether honest, you would be an experiment. This sort of surgery has never been performed in the States. I know what I'm doing, of course, but there is no convincing the plodding old men who govern the medical profession in this country—or in Europe, for that matter—that we must take risks if we are to learn. In Europe they are not quite so timid, but neither do they understand the value of research and experimentation to our work.”

Morgan sat up. “Do I understand that you have never
performed
such a surgery?”

Gunther actually smiled—a quick, thin slash that did not approach his eyes before it disappeared. “You would be the first. Let me explain that our knowledge of anatomy is still severely limited by poor educational methods. The entire surgical field suffers from a lack of subjects on which to experiment, not to mention a dearth of professors who know anything more than a first-year student. That's why students are stealing cadavers from the famine hospitals on which to study, a practice that will no doubt be sharply curtailed once the authorities catch up with them.”