Pure Sin

by Susan Johnson

  The doctor was waiting when their railcars were detached onto a siding at Walker. She was a tall, strong, forthright woman who took one look at Lucie’s blue coloring and dry skin and pronounced the dread word “cholera” without evasion. “It’s prevalent this time of year,” she said with matter-of-fact clarity. “August and September are our worst months, but if we keep everything absolutely sanitary, make sure the water is boiled, and see that this little girl keeps down some liquids,” she went on, the certainty in her tone bringing immediate comfort to everyone, “we’ll manage to have you on your way in a week.”

  The doctor was rummaging through her bag as she spoke, searching for some aromatic powder of chalk. “Knew I had some,” she exclaimed, pulling out a glass bottle. “Just a touch of opium in the chalk will allay the pain and help the medicine to stay in her stomach,” she declared. “How are you feeling, Mr. Serre?” she inquired, her voice casual but her gaze clinically acute.

  “I’m fine,” Adam said. “Particularly now,” he added, his heartened spirits obvious. “Now, are you certain the medicine will—”

  “She’s a sturdy young child, Mr. Serre,” the gray-haired doctor interrupted. “Helps a lot when they’re not frail. She’ll be better in a few days. Looks like you need some rest too.”

  “Lucie’s my only child.”

  It was an answer the doctor understood. “Once she’s kept some water down, you might want to think about some sleep,” she suggested. “The next few days will be tiring.”

  “Could you stay here until Lucie is well?” Adam asked.

  He didn’t say “Name your price.” because he was too courteous, but plainly that’s what he meant, Dorothea Potts reflected, and one glance around the elegantly appointed railcar gave graphic indication of his wealth. Not to mention his stable car alongside on the siding. Or the beautiful English lady who had been introduced without explanation simply as Lady Flora Bonham. Decidedly these were people of means.

  “I can stay as long as other patients don’t need me, but I do keep office hours, Mr. Serre. This community depends on me.”

  “Of course, I understand,” he politely said. “Whatever you can arrange will be appreciated.”

  A short time later, after Lucie had taken her medicine, kept it down, and fallen back to sleep, they were seated in the small parlor going over the general progress of the disease.

  “Her normal color will start coming back first,” Dr. Potts said. “We should notice that by tomorrow. Another day or so and she’ll feel like some food again. Something simple and plain. And I don’t want to be alarmist, Mr. Serre,” the doctor went on, “but you’re going to be mighty sick too from the looks of it. Feeling nauseated, I’d bet,” she added, gazing at him with a practiced eye.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Can’t fight it off that easily, Mr. Serre. Here, let me take your pulse.” And after monitoring it for an interval, she said, “Why don’t I have some nursing help sent out here? You’re going to be down in bed by nightfall. We don’t quarantine anymore, but it’s hard work keeping everything clean.”

  “I have to take care of Lucie,” Adam replied, his voice carefully modulated. “I can’t afford to be sick.”

  The doctor smiled. “Whatever you say, Mr. Serre, but your daughter will most likely be sleeping peacefully through the night now. How are you holding up, Lady Flora?” Dr. Potts asked.

  “I still feel well. I think it’s possible pink lemonade may have been the culprit. Adam and Lucie drank some from a vendor at the station in Chicago,” Flora explained.

  “You might be lucky enough to avoid it, then,” the doctor declared, “but sanitation is absolutely essential. Carbolic acid, lots of soap and water, boiled water for everything.”

  “I’ll be scrupulously careful,” Flora promised, already aware of the merits of sanitation with cholera. She and her father had stayed with one of three Russian regiments bivouacked near Samarkand in the summer of sixty-five, when cholera was rampant and killing so many. But the officer in charge of the regiment hosting them had sentries guarding the stream running through camp, allowing no one near the water; all water for washing and drinking had to be boiled first by the cooks. Not one member of his regiment contracted cholera, while half the men in the other two regiments camped in the same vicinity died.15

  The doctor stayed with them until Henry appeared with two nurses he’d been sent to fetch—two hearty farm girls who looked so capable, Flora’s fears were instantly allayed.

  Adam had insisted on sitting with Lucy until her breathing stabilized, although he looked increasingly afflicted. At midnight he’d collapsed precisely as the doctor had predicted.

  The course of his illness was as swift as it had been with Lucie, and by midmorning Adam was reduced to a state of prostration. He called for Lucie in his opium dreams, his anxiety poignant, and when Flora took his hand and spoke to him, he opened his eyes and whispered in a thready rasp, “Lucie has to get home.”

  “In a few days we’ll all be home,” Flora reassured him. “Lucie’s much better.” She hadn’t vomited since morning, and her skin was less blue.

  “Have to get there before Ned,” he muttered.

  “Ned Storham?”

  “Have to get there before Ned.” He seemed not to have heard her. His gaze turned suddenly lucid. “How’s Lucie? Is the doctor here?”

  “Lucie’s improved,” Flora gently said, having repeated her message numerous times already. “The doctor’s sitting with her.”

  “Good.” Grimacing as cramps attacked his arms and legs, Adam groaned deep in his throat, a tormented sound, and then his eyes fell shut again, overcome by the opium in his bloodstream.

  The next three days were a regimen of medicines and forcing liquids as the effects of the disease ran its course, of snatched sleep and vigilance to see that neither patient relapsed—a possibility, Dr. Potts warned. Without proper convalescence patients could relapse up to three weeks after an apparent cure. The doctor stayed as often as she could, and the local ladies saw that food was prepared, linens were clean, the patients bathed. Flora first knew with certainty Adam was on the mend when he opened his eyes the morning of their fourth day in Walker, looked up at the strange woman bathing him, and shouted, “Flora!” in a powerful voice that had none of the husky whisper synonymous with cholera.

  When Flora appeared at a run, he politely said to the stranger, “Excuse us for a moment,” and when the lady left the bedroom, he relaxed his grip on the sheet pulled up to his neck and murmured, “Who the hell was that?”

  “A nurse. You’re feeling better,” Flora replied with a smile.

  “Not quite well enough for that kind of shock,” he grumbled. “I’ll bathe myself from now on. Where are we? Is Lucie all right?” He tried to sit up as he suddenly remembered his daughter’s illness, but weakened by the disease, he fell back in a sprawl. “Is she alive?” he whispered, the strain of any sudden moves more than his ravaged body could sustain. “Tell me.”

  “She’s very much alive, darling, and feeling very well. We’ve had to try to keep her out of your room since yesterday, when she decided she’d been in bed long enough.”

  “I want to see her.” An intense longing resonated in his voice.

  When Lucie came running into his bedroom a few moments later, he smiled and opened his arms. Lucie had the rosy glow of health again, and with a cheerful smile and her black curls bouncing, she threw herself into his arms.

  “It was so-o-o scary, Papa, when you were sick,” she lamented, hugging him tight.

  “I know,” Adam murmured, holding her small body close. “You were sick first, and I was scared too.”

  Flora swallowed a lump in her throat, the two dark heads pressed together, the small arms wrapped tight around Adam’s neck a poignant sight. Aware of her own special bond with her father, she understood how Lucie depended on Adam’s love.

  “Flora took care of us, Cook said,” Lucie proclaimed, turning around to beam at Flora,
her exclamatory delivery restored with her health. Bouncing into a comfortable position beside her father, she said, bright-eyed and cheerful, “You should marry her, Papa, and then we can always be together. Wouldn’t that be perfect?”

  Adam’s smile touched Flora, its message private, bewitching. “That would be perfect,” he softly said.

  “You can get ’vorced,” Lucie proposed, dangling her legs over the side of the bed and swinging them beneath the ruffle of her nightgown. “Montoya’s ’vorced and so is Ben or he was. He’s not ’vorced now,” she emphasized in case her father wasn’t following her explanation. “He’s married to Cook. So why don’t you, Papa?” she casually said, having found what she considered a perfectly workable solution.

  “It’s a good idea, darling. We’ll have to think about it.”

  “I’m hungry,” Lucie proclaimed, jumping from the bed, divorce abandoned to more important considerations. She stopped as if remembering her manners. “Would you like something to eat, Papa? Cook has chocolate cake, and the doctor said I can have one teeny piece if I eat all my broth.”

  Chocolate cake was beyond his palate at the moment; Adam was thinking more along the lines of a glass of water. “Maybe later,” he answered, smiling at the familiar image of his daughter bouncing from foot to foot. “Enjoy your treat.”

  “You definitely look on the mend,” Flora said when Lucie had gone. “How do you feel?”

  “Almost good enough for chocolate cake,” he said lightly, and then he added in a more grave tone, “I can’t thank you enough for all your help. You’ve had an ordeal.”

  “The nurses did most of the work.”

  “So modest,” he said with a smile. “When did you sleep last?”

  She shrugged. “I slept.”

  “I’m not used to this, you know. You’re spoiling us.”

  Leaning against the doorjamb, one of Mrs. Richards’s aprons over her couturier gown, Flora said with a faint smile, “Anyone would do the same.”

  No, he thought, Isolde would have jumped ship at the first sign of illness. She’d never sat with Lucie even when Lucie was healthy. Children annoyed her. “No, they wouldn’t,” he quietly said. “I’m very grateful and I’m very lucky to have found you,” he softly added.

  “We found each other,” Flora replied, smiling. “With a little help from Papa and Aunt Sarah.”

  “An energetic family,” Adam teased.

  “We believe in results,” Flora said with a grin.

  “Then I’d better get well,” Adam lazily drawled.

  By the next day Adam’s recuperation had progressed so well, he was taking issue with the convalescent diet of light soups, milk, and farina. “I think Dr. Potts has been an angel of mercy, but she probably has other patients who need her more,” he pointedly remarked, gazing at his bowl of cooked farina with a critical eye. “I’ll thank her when she returns from her office hours today. Why doesn’t Henry go into town and get a bank draft to cover her charges?” He pushed the bowl away. “You have to be sick to eat this. I don’t suppose there are buffalo ribs in town,” he said.

  On Adam’s orders Henry made arrangements at the station that afternoon for their railcars to be attached to the morning train. Luckily the doctor pronounced them healthy enough for travel, for Flora had the distinct impression they would be leaving regardless of her opinion. Shortly after five the following day, just as the sun lightened the sky, they resumed their journey home.

  That put them two days behind Isolde, who was also traveling west on the Union Pacific. The Comtesse de Chastellux had a variety of reasons for returning to Montana, and none of them included divorce.

  A coffin containing Frank Storham’s body was transported in the baggage car of the same train Isolde occupied, while his brother Ned was riding south to the railhead to pick up Frank’s remains.

  James and the Earl of Haldane had arrived in Cheyenne only to find a second telegram waiting at the Forsyth Hotel with news of the delay due to illness. The postponement increased the chances that Ned Storham might arrive at the railhead before Adam.

  James was hoping to avoid that volatile confrontation.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  The risk became serious when Ned rode into Cheyenne two days later escorted by his hired guns. Over breakfast the next morning James and the earl considered their options.

  “This isn’t the place for a battle,” James said. “We have to see that Lucie and Flora are out of danger. Once they’re secure, we can deal with Ned Storham and his men. We should have killed them all last spring,” he softly murmured, adding another spoonful of sugar to his coffee. “But”—he sighed—“Adam held a more benevolent view.”

  “And we have no idea when Adam and Flora are arriving,” George Bonham thoughtfully remarked. “Only that they’re delayed.”

  “A damnable tightrope.”

  “So we just wait?” The earl abruptly rose from the table and walked to the window overlooking the street. Gazing down on the busy thoroughfare fronting Cheyenne’s best hotel, he softly queried, “What of the local sheriff?”

  “He won’t do anything.”

  George Bonham turned back at James’s blunt answer. “You’re certain?”

  “To take on Ned’s bunch is virtual suicide, and he knows it. The courts might convict one or two of his killers, but that wouldn’t help him once he’s dead. And the courts out here are fairly … shall we say, flexible in their verdicts. Hell, we don’t even need courts to convict and hang in these territories. The Vigilantes hung thirty-two men a few years ago in Virginia City.16 No one stopped them; no one even mentioned bringing them to justice.”

  “How many men do we have in town?” Their main force of Absarokee was camped well off the trail in the hills north of town. Those who’d accompanied them into Cheyenne were ranch hands who wouldn’t cause as much notice.

  “Eight. It should be enough, provided we have an idea of Adam and Flora’s arrival time. I’d rather not meet every train en force and in the process alert Ned to the fact Adam hasn’t reached Cheyenne yet. I’m hoping he’s assumed Adam preceded Frank’s body home.”

  “You have Curly watching the station?”

  James nodded. “Let’s hope he can give us sufficient warning.”

  Instead a brief telegram arrived at the hotel on Saturday: “30 LL 8.” It was signed “CiCi.”

  “Adam’s not coming into Cheyenne,” James said, smiling as he handed the telegram to the earl. “We’re meeting him at eight, the morning of the thirtieth at Lucas Landing, the last stop east of town.”

  “You’re sure it’s from Adam?” The cryptic message had an ominous tone.

  “CiCi is a name only I’d recognize. He’s being cautious … thank God … seeing how Ned Storham’s paid guns are keeping the station under tight surveillance.” James didn’t mention that the nickname was a phonetic allusion to the initials of Adam’s title, Comte de Chastellux—a playful one having to do with a beautiful lady’s licentious coaxing “ci-ci” (here, here) to attract Adam’s attention at a Parisian revel one night. She was successful, of course, at catching his notice, and the sportive name took hold.

  “Will it be possible to leave undetected?” Although James and the earl had kept to their rooms, their presence in town might have been known to Ned.

  “Our men can ride out of town singly over the course of the next twenty-four hours. I’ll have Joseph give them the message when he comes up later today. You and I will leave late this evening, and we’ll all meet at Lucas Landing tomorrow night.”

  But when Joseph came up to James’s suite, he had news of his own. The train had just deposited a stylish lady on the platform, Curly had reported. The Comtesse de Chastellux had disembarked into the August dust and heat, modish and grand with her silk parasol shading her from the hot sun, and before she’d walked more than a few yards toward the station, a familiar figure had intercepted her path. The two seemed to find much to talk about, Curly had said. And then Ned Storham and Isolde
had departed in the same carriage. They were at the Palace Hotel now.

  James swore.

  “She wasn’t expected?” the earl inquired. In his experience women like Isolde never relinquished money and title without a protracted struggle.

  “Adam wired that he’d paid her to leave—permanently. Apparently she arrived in Saratoga; I don’t know the details.”

  “That should have been interesting for Flora,” her father said with a smile.

  James groaned. “More than interesting, if I know Isolde.”

  “Her presence doesn’t change our immediate plans, does it?”

  “No, but there’s always hell to pay when Isolde’s in the vicinity. I hope Adam has some idea how to deal with her, because my impulses tend toward the draconian.”

  The morning of the thirtieth was bright with sunshine and shimmering heat already at eight in the morning when James, the earl, and a small escort watched from a distant ridge as Adam’s two carriages were unhooked onto a siding. Nothing moved in the two railcars until the train disappeared from sight, and then the doors to the stable car slid open, the ramps were set into place, and the horses led out.

  James watched Adam carry Lucie down, while Henry helped Flora onto the ground. Mrs. Richards was the last to leave the coach. Adam looked directly up at James and smiled into the telescope lens. Then after everyone was mounted, with Lucie in Adam’s arms, the small party made for the ridge where James and the earl waited.

  James had remained out of sight so the train crew wouldn’t report that Adam had been met by an armed escort. Every advantage mattered in their journey north; they were only three hours ahead of Ned Storham. Traveling as they were with women and a child, those few hours would be critical against a pursuing party that could ride faster.

  But Isolde was a wild card in the equation.

  Her presence might change everyone’s plans.

  Adam greeted James with a smile, said, “Good morning, sir,” to Flora’s father, and thanked everyone for riding south to see them home. Flora added her thanks, kissed her father hello, murmured, “Saratoga was smashing,” and grinned when Lucie said, “Georgie, we’re going to get ’vorced and then marry Flora.”