by Rose Lerner
If that wasn’t church-like, he didn’t know what was.
He felt rather church-like himself. The cowardice of last night washed away by a new purpose.
James did not dream of redemption; he was not that much a fool.
But he would get some answers regarding the Northern Spy.
He was alone, though the coffee pot on the edge of the bar with the mugs set up beside it told him that Delilah was around here somewhere. She slept less than he did, unless it was one of the few nights she took a man and a bottle of sherry up to her room. On those nights, it was Kyle down here in the morning, pacing and cleaning and shrieking at his kitchen boys like a fishwife.
James poured himself a cup of coffee and walked back toward the kitchen, looking for Delilah.
Walking past the door to the storeroom, he noticed in the darkness that the door to the courtyard was open, a steady draft seeping through the sunlit crack.
Delilah must be getting some air. She’d built the courtyard so she and her girls could go outside without the stares of men and the sniffs of women. So they could sit in their wrappers and feel the sunlight on their faces.
Two weeks ago when he woke up in the afternoon, pale and shaking in damp sheets, but having exorcized the opiate from his system, the first thing Delilah did was get him dressed and take him to her courtyard.
Shivering in the hot sunlight, he’d wept.
He’d wept for things he’d forgotten about. Childhood miseries and memories from the war he’d buried under chloroform. He’d wept for the years he’d wasted and the people he’d hurt.
All in all a miserable day.
For all of that, the courtyard was actually a lovely spot and he detoured from the kitchen, pulling open the door and stepping out into the sunlight and glittering snow.
A woman sat in one of the chairs by the table in the corner, a mug of coffee steaming next to her elbow. Despite the hood on her red cloak, he knew in a heartbeat it wasn’t Delilah.
“Good morning, Doctor,” Helen said, pushing back the hood. Her blue eyes and black hair against the red cape were quite arresting. He was…arrested.
“Helen.” That was all he said. All he really could say. His failure last night was an embarrassment he meant to correct today. But this woman looked nothing like the wild and wretched creature who’d snuck into his room.
She was in fact so different that it was hard to put the two events side by side and say they were the same woman.
“Beautiful morning.”
“I suppose. If you like snow.”
“I do,” she said with a smile.
It was a stunner, that smile, capable of stopping a man in his tracks, of halting brain function. In an instant he understood how she might have been a Northern spy. He could imagine her in some hot, muggy Charleston ballroom, charming secrets from the Southern officers who, dazzled by that smile, did not notice the calculation behind it.
It was also not the smile he expected from the woman who had been in his room last night.
“Though I’ve never experienced such a dry snow,” she said, picking up a handful of snow on the lip of the table. It fell like ice crystals from her gloved fingers.
“There’s a scientific reason for that, I’m sure. Altitude or something.”
“You don’t know?”
“Am I supposed to?”
“You’re a doctor. They are often the smartest men in the room.”
“Yes, well I’m afraid I’ve never been accused of that.” This banter could go on for days. He was very good at it, even now in his post-chloroform state. He could be witty and charming and empty forever.
But last night cast a grim pall over the courtyard.
“Helen,” he said in his best doctor voice.
“Oh, such a serious tone. Am I dying, Doctor?” She wrinkled her nose, mocking him.
“Well, I feel...” What was she doing? “We have something serious to talk about.”
“What is this serious thing?” She did a fairly good imitation of his baritone voice.
“Last night? You were in my room-”
“I was?”
He blinked, stunned. “You…you don’t remember?”
She shook her head as if she were racking her brain. He would not have thought the memory of begging for his help while he stood naked pressed to a window so forgettable a thing.
“Are you sure it was me?”
“Sure it was… Yes!” he cried. “Yes, I’m quite sure it was you. It was you, and you were begging me for help until Guy came in-”
“Oh, well, that explains it. I’m…” She took a small breath, her smile slipping into something chagrined. Something small and slightly embarrassed. Ashamed.
This woman, he thought, is a chameleon.
“I am…excitable. Prone to hysterics. Without my medicine, I have terrible fits.”
“Fits?”
“Delusions. A doctor called them something once… What was it? Paranoia? Yes. I have fits of paranoia. I’m sure I was very upset? Very…convincing? Telling you perhaps that I had no money but that I would pay you some other way?”
His blush was so hot it could have melted every inch of snow. The memory of his dumb beast desire was embarrassing. “You…yes…you implied that.”
“I’m terribly sorry to have worried you.”
Paranoia? It made sense. The product of a nervous breakdown, perhaps. A residue of the war.
But she seemed so coherent this morning, and she did not appear to be dosed. Her eyes were exceedingly bright and clear. Very…blue.
“You really don’t remember?” he asked.
“I’m sorry. I hope I wasn’t too alarming. Guy usually keeps a better eye on me.”
“You begged him to let you go.”
“I’m sure I did. I am not always fond of Guy in those moments. Surely you understand.”
“He asked you if you remembered-”
Her lips went white, she pressed them together so hard. “Doctor… I’m sorry, what is your name?”
“James. Dr. James Madison.”
“Like the President?”
“Like my mother’s grandfather.”
“Your mother’s grandfather was the President?”
“No. He just had the same name. It’s a rather common name.” And he’d had this conversation roughly a thousand times. A name is just a name until someone with it becomes president.
“Well, then, Dr. Madison-”
“Call me James.”
“Dr. Madison, this conversation is rather upsetting.”
That she didn’t use his given name was an insult he admired. She was done talking about this. And to push would be unwelcome and unseemly.
“Of course, I’m… My apologies. If you have concerns about your condition. Or questions-”
“Oh, you are kind, but I have been living like this for a long time. And it’s far too lovely a day to talk about such sad things.” She glanced up, closing her eyes against the sunlight. “Let’s just enjoy this courtyard and this strange snow.”
Oddly, she wasn’t entirely dismissing him. Now he wasn’t sure what to do. After discussing a beautiful woman’s mental illness, where did conversation go?
He realized in a strange start that this was his first conversation with a stranger since leaving the chloroform behind.
Suddenly, all his patented sarcasm vanished and left him feeling beached like a giant bloated whale on the shores of her company.
“Well…” He very nearly stammered. Honestly, James, your mother taught you better than this. “I understand you are to sing tonight.”
“I am.”
“What will you sing?” The cold had put roses in her cheeks and her blue eyes snapped. She was all things vibrant and alive.
“I have not quite decided,” she said. “Do you have a request?”
“It’s Christmas soon.”
She tipped back her head and laughed, a beautiful sound even though it was at his expense. “No, sir. I wil
l not sing Christmas carols in my birdcage. Think of something else.”
“My mother used to sing ‘Aura Lee.’”
“A sad song. It will make all the boys cry.”
“Crying boys are not good for business?”
“On the contrary. I’ll add it to my act.”
“I look forward to it.”
“And well you should. I’m very good. My mother trained me herself before she died, and she sang opera in New York for many years.”
“You’re lucky,” he said, “to have such memories.”
“You don’t have fond memories of your mother?”
Dear God, how did we get here?
“It was a complicated relationship.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I didn’t mean to turn the conversation to such serious topics.”
“Would you like to talk about the snow again?” she teased, and a rough laugh barked out of him. He very nearly startled at the sound.
“Guy tells me you were a surgeon for the Union Army.”
“I was.”
“I can’t imagine Charles appreciated that.”
James shrugged.
“I rather like it,” she said. “Charles tends to gather Confederates wherever he goes. But only the volatile ones, as their nostalgia is easily turned to hate. He likes that. What about you? Do you gather like-minded former soldiers around you?”
“I prefer not thinking about the war at all,” he said. That had been the point of the chloroform. Steven and Kyle got together every once in a while to talk, when they felt some internal wound needed to be lanced. Perhaps he would have to do that, now. Instead of walking. Instead of chloroform.
“You are not comforted by the fact that you fought on the side of right?”
He blinked. “Not much comforts me, I’m afraid. No country’s wealth should be made upon the backs of forced, unpaid and kidnapped labor. And no man should own another. I was ready to fight to the grave for those beliefs, and would do so again. But being right does not keep away the nightmares.”
Those were more words regarding the war than he’d said in years. It was shocking.
“Were you really a spy?” he asked her.
“Why would you doubt it? Because I’m a woman?”
He smiled at her outrage. “Because you sing in a cage in saloons. I’m asking if it’s just an act.”
“No, it’s not just an act.”
“Then are you comforted?” he asked the former spy. “By having fought on the side of right?”
“Yes.”
“Then I am glad for it.”
Her eyes… He could not get over the color. Like the sky on the coldest days in February. The air so cold it felt like it could be snapped between fingers. “You have very pretty eyes,” he said, and then wished he could bash his head in with his coffee cup.
“Thank you,” she said. “Yours are lovely too. Like whiskey.”
He blinked, slightly startled. Women had been admiring his eyes since the moment of their opening, something he’d used to his advantage more than once. But a compliment from her…in this new life of his—it was unheard of.
But if he was startled, she was clearly stunned to have said it. She flushed bright pink and looked anywhere but at him.
He was…charmed. By her. Truly, charmed.
First desire? Now this?
If he’d been a different kind of man, he might have been excited. Relieved that he was still somehow human.
Instead it made him vaguely nauseous.
Luckily, Guy saved them both.
“Helen,” he said, standing at the entrance to the courtyard. He wore the same dark suit as yesterday. His white shirt beneath it was rumpled. James wondered where he’d slept last night, because the man’s red-rimmed eyes would indicate he hadn’t slept at all.
“We need to test the birdcage,” Guy said, watching James watch him.
“Of course. Thank you, Dr. Madison, for the company. Perhaps I’ll see you again.”
James got to his feet as she all but ran past him.
“Good day, Helen.”
With a swirl of her skirts and her cheerful red cape she vanished through the door into the building. He watched her until he couldn’t even see her shadow.
Guy surprised him by stepping further into the courtyard toward him. “Do not look at her like that,” he said in French.
“Like what?” he said, deflecting because he was embarrassed his lust was so plainly seen.
“Like you are thinking of trying to save her.”
“I’m thinking”—exactly that—“no such thing.”
“She is Mr. Park’s ward. And he takes that seriously.”
“Yes, I could tell by the way he left her here in a drugged stupor while he went to a hotel.”
Guy exhaled heavily through his nose, making his nostrils flare, and James realized he was angering the giant man. And that probably wasn’t a smart thing to do.
Funny, he thought, last night he’d been trying for just that thing. To anger this man enough that he might hit James and end this cycle of crave and deny. That course of action no longer seemed so helpful.
That seemed indicative of something, but he didn’t know what.
“The last person who looked at her like that, who thought of ‘helping’ her get away from Mr. Park…I held a knife to her throat while Mr. Park beat her husband unconscious and then took all their money, burned down their barn and pissed on the settee.”
Hearing that was not entirely as shocking as it should have been. Mr. Park was a repugnant creature who gave the impression of hidden cruel depths.
“Lovely. I must get to know Mr. Park better.”
For a moment Guy looked like he might laugh, but the moment was gone quickly. “Well, they’re your balls.”
“She snuck into my room last night, asking for help.”
There was no more laughter. Guy crossed the courtyard in three steps and for a moment James thought the man was going to lift him up in his big fists. “You don’t talk about it,” he said. “You can’t say those words out loud.”
“I can’t?”
“Not if you want to live.”
“If I want to live?” he asked, incredulously. “This has escalated awfully fast. I was only in my room.”
“Naked.”
“That’s hardly a life-threatening condition.”
“With Helen.”
“Ahhh…I begin to understand.”
“Good. I know she is…captivating. But she is made to be that way. Do you understand? It is all the act. Not unlike the whores here who pretend to care for the men who pay them money.”
James felt those words like a slap, like he’d been dreaming and someone had just forced him awake.
“Of course,” he said. Glancing away from Guy, down at the roses. A puppy who’d been rolled by a bigger, badder dog.
“Good. Because, I don’t want to hurt you, doctor.”
“But what of Helen?”
“Oh, she’ll cut your heart out.”
“She said something last night about Park losing the poker game but not losing her. What does that mean?”
“It means the game is not about poker.”
Guy went back inside before he could clarify, leaving James in the courtyard, unsure of what to do while the morning sun crept out over the edge of the rooftop, bathing him in blinding light. Quickly, like a heretic in church scared of the sizzle of holy water against his skin, he dumped what was left of the cold coffee onto the frozen rose bushes and went inside, where he found a small group of men hoisting the cage up from the floor.
The cage was gold. And inside of it, with her red cape and her blue eyes, was Helen.
“How much do you know about this?” Kyle asked, coming to stand next to him. He pointed to the cage and the men pulling it toward the ceiling through a system of pulleys that had been screwed into the wood. Delilah wasn’t going to appreciate that.
For a moment James
almost told Kyle all of it. Kyle was the kind of man who would do something about it. He’d go around with fists flying, bashing his hard head into things, trying to make things right. It would be simple for a man like Kyle. And it would be a relief to give Kyle the worry of it all, to just wash his hands of it and get back to walking and craving and hating himself.
But something kept him quiet.
Something told him that hard heads and flying fists wouldn’t make anything right. And could, in fact, make things much worse.
And perhaps, he hoped it was all paranoia. Yes, Park was repugnant, but so was James. Perhaps Helen was actually better off with Park, singing in a cage, guarded by Guy.
And as awful as the arrangement might be, it was certainly better than an asylum.
If it was as they said. Paranoia and hysteria?
But he had his doubts.
So James kept his mouth shut about last night’s incident, the nudity and the begging. He didn’t know what part of her behavior—if any of it—was real or a product of her supposed paranoia.
But setting Kyle into the middle of all of this didn’t seem wise.
“Not much,” he lied.
“I don’t like it,” Kyle said. “I don’t like any of it. I don’t like that Park man, or her guard. But I really don’t like the way that girl looks at the doors. Like she’s dreaming of what’s on the other side.”
“You’re so hard to please,” James said flippantly.
“Fuck you, James. You’re such a goddamned disappointment.”
Kyle left, vibrating with his distaste. James poured himself another cup of coffee and lifted it in a hollow toast.
“I’ll drink to that.”
Chapter 5
* * *
The closet they gave Helen to sleep in didn’t have a window. That was nothing new.
The room’s door led to a second-floor hallway in the brothel, and the only exit was down the stairs into the saloon. At that point, should she get that far, she had few choices. Front door, or out the back, through the courtyard.
The livery was four doors down to the left—a young boy told her that when he brought her food she didn’t eat.
Helen could steal a horse from the livery and ride east.
Money, clothes, food were problems she could solve later.
