Crescent City Courtship

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.”

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.”