Crescent City Courtship

He got to his feet. “We need to let the water cool a few minutes. I want to wash my hands and instruments. Do you have lye soap?”

She frowned. “We need to hurry. She’s not going to be able to stand another contraction like that.”

Braddock scowled. “I’ll remind you that you came to me for help. Professor always washes everything.”

Abigail stared at him. If she argued with him, he would stand there until Kingdom Come, and Tess would die. Tight-lipped, she found him the soap, then knelt beside Tess to bathe her head with a cool cloth. “Hold on,” she murmured. “Just a few more minutes.”

Behind her John Braddock doused his instruments one by one in the boiling water, then returned them to the clean cloth. After removing the pot from the stove, he stood waiting for it to cool, hands in the pockets of his trousers, staring at nothing.

Abigail watched him. His body was tall and strongly built inside those fashionable clothes. He’d laid the beautiful hat on the shaky pine table, revealing a headful of wavy golden brown hair. She supposed one could call him good-looking, although her perspective on handsome men was admittedly skewed. She had yet to see him smile, but his nose was firmly arched, with fine nostrils, and the eyes wide-set and intelligent.

His brain was the most important part of his body as far as she was concerned.

Finally, just as Tess started screaming again, he decided the water was cool enough to the touch and proceeded to thoroughly soap and rinse his hands. Catching Abigail staring as he dried them, he gave her a mocking bow.

“Now, your ladyship, I’m ready.”

Chapter Two

John knelt beside his moaning patient and stared at the baby in his hands. For the first time in his life he uttered the name of God in prayer. He’d never lost a life before—at least not on his own.

He laid the stillborn infant on a ragged towel, then turned to the woman who had been quietly hovering behind him for the past two hours. He held out a shaking hand. “Give me that needle and suture.”

She handed him the implements he required, watching his every movement with vigilant, protective eyes.

He began the job of sewing up the woman’s torn body. “Here, hold this sponge.”

His provisional nurse knelt and followed his gestured instructions. “What about the baby?”

“You can bury it later. It’s more important to take care of your friend.”

Abigail gasped, dropping the sponge. “The baby’s dead? How could you let it die?” She picked up the infant and cradled it against her bodice. Her face twisted and silent sobs began to shake her thin body.

John swallowed against a surge of sympathy but kept stitching. Crying wasn’t going to bring the baby back to life. He finished the sutures, efficiently mopped the wound and sat back on his heels. He studied his patient’s chalky face. At least she was still breathing, harsh painful gasps between bloodless lips. Her eyes squeezed shut as he drew her dress down over her knees. She would live.

“Where’s her husband?” He got up to rinse his hands in a bowl of sterilized water, wiped them on the last clean towel, then opened his bag to stow his instruments.

“I’m not married.” The gritty whisper came from his patient. Grunting, she tried to sit up. “Abigail, let me see the baby.”

“Here, lie down or you’ll start the bleeding again.” John knelt to put a hand to her shoulder, which was almost as thin as the skeleton that sat in a spare chair in his boarding house bedroom.

The patient speared him with pain-clouded eyes. “I have to see him.”

“It’s—it was a girl,” John stammered. “She didn’t make it.”

“A girl. Please, let me hold her just a minute.”

John met Abigail’s eyes for an agonized moment. She looked away.

“Give it to her,” he managed.

His patient took the infant’s naked, messy little body against her own, cuddling it as if it were alive and ready to suckle.

What was a fellow supposed to do? He was no minister capable of dealing with these depths of grief. Inarticulate anger seized him as he took a deliberate look around. The tiny, shabby tenement room was scrupulously clean—apparently the lye soap had been put to use—but the odor of mildew and age infused every breath he took. This was no place for two young women to live alone, no matter what their morals.

Dr. Laniere would have known exactly how to deal with the situation. But back at the hospital, Crutch had interrupted the professor demonstrating the amputation of an infected finger for a ring of medical students. The professor had sent John, assuring him he was perfectly capable of delivering a baby.

Eagerly he’d accepted the assignment. John had always assumed he could do anything he set his mind to. But his confidence had diminished as he realized the breech presentation had left the baby in the birth canal too long.

Capable. A crack of despairing laughter escaped him. Lesson learned.

Unfortunately, there was nothing more he could do here. Snapping the latch of his bag, he turned toward the door.

He’d taken no more than a couple of steps when he found himself deluged from behind by lukewarm water. It streamed down the back of his neck, plastered his hair to his forehead and nearly strangled him as he took a startled breath.

With a choked exclamation, he turned to find Abigail glaring at him, the cracked pottery bowl held in her hands like a battle mace.

“Where do you think you’re going?” she demanded, looking as if she might fling the bowl at his head, too.

Speechless, John dropped his bag and swiped water out of his eyes with his sleeve. Intent on getting to the patient, he hadn’t properly looked at the woman who had summoned him. For the first time it dawned on him that the woman’s few words had been spoken in cultured tones, rather than the typical Creole waterfront accent. And although she was dressed in a ratty brown skirt and blouse, she had the tall, sturdy build of a warrior princess. Nobody would call this woman beautiful, but it was a face a man couldn’t forget once he’d seen it.

A furious face. Light green eyes glittered with the flame of peridots set in gold.

John found his voice. “How dare you.”

It wasn’t a question. It was his equivalent of a bowl of water dumped over the head, uttered in a drawl cultured by a lifetime spent in the elite drawing rooms of New Orleans.

“How dare I?” She bared a set of lovely white teeth, but it was not a smile. She clonked the bowl down on the table and stalked up to him. He was a tall man and her eyes were on a level with his lips. “I’ll tell you how I dare. I prayed for you. Not for Tess and the baby, but for you! I could tell you were scared spitless, you stuck-up beast.” She sucked in a breath. “You laughed.”

Stung to the heart, John sucked in a breath. Of course he hadn’t been laughing at her or Tess, but at the irony of his own impotence.

“What do you want me to do?” he said through stiff lips. He could hardly let her see his humiliation, but perhaps he could redeem himself somewhat.

The girl studied him, taken aback, as though she’d expected him to either hit her or leave without a word. “You could at least help me bury the baby.”

“I’m a doctor, not a grave digger.”

“You’re not much of a doctor, either.”

John flinched at this brutal truth. “Is there a…graveyard nearby?”

The girl shook her head. “We’re nearly underwater here. The charity burial grounds is on the north side of the city.”

Tess began to cry, clutching the child closer.

John didn’t know what to do with this slide into helplessness. Despite her derisive words, Abigail looked at him as if she expected him to do something heroic. Clearly he had a maudlin trollop, a corpse and an angry Amazon to deal with before he could go home and go to bed. And he’d been up since before dawn.

With a sigh he walked toward a rusty sink in the corner of the room and activated the pump. He stuck his head under the anemic stream of murky water, rubbed hard, and came up dripping. His coat was ruined, but that was the least of his worries at the moment. Slicking his hair back with both hands, he turned. “Abigail, wash the baby and wrap her in a blanket. We’ll take Tess to Dr. Laniere. Then I’ll send someone from the hospital to take care of the burial.”