Crescent City Courtship

Abigail nodded, a rather contemptuous jerk of her severely coifed brown head, but moved to obey.

John knelt beside his patient. “Where are your clean clothes?” He touched her shoulder again, aware of the awkwardness of the gesture.

Her anxious dark eyes followed Abigail’s ministrations to the child. She shook her head. “I don’t have any.”

John sat back on his heels and looked around. Other than the cookstove, a shaky three-legged table shoved next to the far wall and the two straw-filled cots, there wasn’t a stick of furniture in the room.

His sister, Lisette, had two armoires stuffed with more dresses than she could wear in a year. Her shoes lined a dressing room shelf that ran the entire length of her bedroom.

The abject poverty of these women filled him with guilt. Releasing a breath, he gathered Tess up in his arms, ignoring the blood on her skirt that soaked through his sleeve and the shabby shoes tied to her feet by bits of rope. He concentrated on rising without disturbing her sutures.

The girl let out a gasp of pain and clutched his neck.

“It’s all right, you’re all right,” he muttered.

“Be careful!” Abigail turned, clutching the blanket-wrapped bundle close. “Should I go look for help?”

The last of John’s patience fled. “Just open the door,” he said through his teeth.

Those light eyes narrowed. She gave John a mocking curtsy as he passed with Tess in his arms. “Your lordship.”

He was grateful to find the cart still tied in front of the building. Equipages had been known to disappear during calls in this part of the city, especially after dark. Thank God he had decided at the last minute to bring it. Riding would have been faster, but one never knew when a patient would have to be hauled to hospital.

Hitching her skirt nearly to mid-calf, Abigail climbed into the back of the cart with a lithe motion that gave John an unobstructed view of trim ankles and a pair of down-at-the-heels black-buttoned boots. She sank cross-legged onto the clean straw and opened her arms. “Here, lay her head in my lap.”

Swallowing a time-wasting retort, John complied. Later he would impress upon her who was in charge.

Abigail stroked Tess’s damp reddish hair off her forehead, a tender gesture at odds with her brisk, no-nonsense manner. She looked up at John, brows raised. “Let’s go.”

Scowling at her presumption, John climbed onto the narrow bench at the front of the cart and flapped the reins. With a snort the mule jerked into motion. As the cart bumped over the uneven bricks of Tchapitoulas Street, John could hear an occasional groan from his patient, accompanied by hisses of sympathy from Abigail.

“Can’t you be more careful?” she shouted over the clop of the mule’s hooves and the rattle of the cart.

He stopped, letting another wagon and several pedestrians pass, and stared at her over his shoulder. “Would you care to drive, Miss—?”

“Neal.” Darkness had nearly overtaken the waterfront, but John detected a hint of amusement in her tone. “My papa often asked my mother the same thing when I was a little girl.” All traces of levity vanished as she sighed. “Forgive me. I know we have to hurry.”

“Yes. We do.” Surprised by the apology and puzzled by an occasional odd, sing-song lilt in the girl’s cultured voice, John stared a moment longer, then turned and clicked his tongue at the mule. He would question Abigail later—after the baby was buried.

A grueling ten minutes later, the cart turned a corner onto St. Joseph Street, leaving behind the waterfront’s crowded rail depots, dilapidated shanties, cotton presses and towering warehouses. Inside the business district, two-and three-story brick buildings hovered on either side of the narrow street like overprotective mammies. Streams of green-slimed water, the result of a recent rain, rushed in the open gutters beside the undulating sidewalks. Businessmen intent on getting home after the day’s work hurried along, ignoring the stench of decayed vegetation, sewage and shellfish that permeated everything.

John frowned, unable to overlook the city squalor. He had tried to convince his father that a platform of sanitation reform would solidify his mayoral campaign. The senior Braddock preferred more socially palatable topics of debate. If all went well, John’s father would be elected in November.

If all did not go well, the pressure would be on John to quit medical school, go into the family shipping business and try for political office himself. Phillip Braddock often opined that power was a tool for good; he meant to grab as much as possible, even if it had to come through his son.

Because John had no intention of becoming anyone’s puppet, he was concentrating on getting his medical diploma and staying out of the old man’s way. As much as John admired him, his father had a great deal in common with the new steam-powered road rollers.

As he guided the cart onto Rue Baronne, he wondered what his father would have to say about these two passengers. Probably shake his leonine head and expound at length on the wages of sin.

He glanced over his shoulder again. Abigail had rested her elbow on the side of the cart and propped her head against her hand. She seemed, incredibly, to be asleep, with Tess dozing in her lap.

What set of circumstances had brought the two of them to such a pass? He saw women like them often, when he and his friends did rounds in the waterfront, but he’d never before had such a personal confrontation with a patient. Or a patient’s caregiver.

“You just passed the hospital,” Abigail said suddenly.

“I thought you were asleep.” Annoyed to have been caught daydreaming, John flipped the reins to make the mule pick up his pace. “We’re not stopping at the hospital. Dr. Laniere has a clinic and a few beds at his home. Tess will be better cared for there.”

“I see.” Abigail was quiet for the remainder of the trip.

The professor’s residence on Rue Gironde was a lovely three-story brick Greek revival, with soaring columns supporting a balcony and flanking a grand front entrance at the head of a flight of six broad, shallow brick steps. Wrought iron graced the balcony and the steps, lending a charming whimsy to the formal design of the house.

John bypassed the curve of the drive circling in front of the house and took a narrower path that passed alongside and led around to the back entrance into the kitchen and clinic. The house and grounds were as familiar to him as the home he’d grown up in. The Braddocks and the Lanieres had maintained social ties since John was a boy, despite the fact that the Lanieres’ loyalties to the Confederacy during the “late upheaval” had been in serious doubt. It was even rumored that Gabriel Laniere had been a Union spy and had fled prosecution as a traitor, leaving Mobile with his wife and a couple of body servants in tow. Phillip Braddock chose to discount such nonsense; ten years ago he had been appointed to the board of directors of the medical college, and remained one of its main financial contributors and fund-raisers.

John drew up under a white-painted portico designed more for function than elegance, which opened into a tiny waiting room off the clinic. He got out and tied the mule, then went around to reach for Tess and the baby. As he slid his arms under her back and knees, Abigail stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. An oil lantern hanging beside the door illuminated a surprising sprinkle of freckles across her formidable nose.

“Thank you for bringing us here,” she said. “You didn’t have to.”

And why had he? John studied the anxious pucker between her level brows. He frowned and straightened. “Hope Willie’s still here,” he muttered to himself. “We’ll need to send the baby to the hospital for burial preparation while we get Tess settled.” He shifted his burden and stepped back. “She needs a clean gown and I want to check her sutures after that ride.”

Abigail struggled to her feet, apparently numb from having sat in one position so long. “Who’s Willie?”

“House servant. Butler, coachman, a bit of everything.” John moved aside as Abigail swung over the side of the cart to the ground. When she appeared to be steady on her feet, he jerked his chin at the door. “Ring the bell and somebody will let us in.”

Abigail pulled the tasseled bell cord and moments later the door opened with a jerk.

“Winona.” For the hundredth time John shook his head at the waste of such exotic loveliness cooped up in a kitchen and doctor’s clinic. “Is there an empty bed in the ward?”

The Lanieres’ young housekeeper’s smooth dark brow folded in instant lines of concern. “Mr. John! What you doin’ here so late?” Clucking her tongue, Winona moved back to let him enter with his slight burden. “Of course there’s a bed. Nobody else here, in fact. Who’s this poor lady?”

She led the way out of the waiting room into the well-stocked dispensary, then into a third room. She lit a gas lamp on a plain side table. Bathed as it was in quiet shadows and antiseptic odors, the room looked inviting enough. John was glad he’d elected to come here, rather than the hospital.

“A maternity call I made late this afternoon. Breech delivery.” As Winona turned down one of the four beds with movements unhurried but efficient, John kept an eye on Abigail. She stood just inside the room, hands clenched in the folds of her skirt. She looked more than out of place. She kept looking out the window as if expecting to be followed. “This is Abigail Neal,” he said.

Winona, in her unassuming way, exchanged nods with the other woman.

“We lost the baby,” John said as he laid his burden on the smooth, clean sheet.

“Bless her heart,” Winona breathed, touching Tess’s wan face and pulling up the top sheet.

“She’ll be fine, but we need to arrange a burial in the morning.” John took the baby out of Tess’s arms. “Where’s Dr. Laniere?”

“Gone to deliver another baby.”

John winced. “Gone how long?”

“Maybe an hour. He’d just come back from the hospital and sat down to supper. Miss Camilla’s upstairs puttin’ the children to bed.”

“All right. I’ll stay until he comes back.” John glanced at Abigail, who looked like she might topple over, if not for the wall behind her. “Winona, could you fix Miss Neal a cup of tea and a biscuit or two? Maybe find her a clean dress and a nightgown for the patient?”