As they neared the door, Odette’s plump figure loomed before them like a giant lemon colored hourglass. “It’s almost time for your medicine, Alex. You mustn’t leave.”
“Medicine for what?” Claudine asked.
“The pain,” Odette replied dramatically.
Claudine turned to her cousin. “Does your hand still hurt you?”
He nodded dimly.
“All the more reason you should see a doctor,” Madame Barnett said to Alex. “We must hurry or we’ll be late for our appointment.”
Alarm flashed across Odette’s exquisite face. “You made an appointment for Alex without my permission?”
Madame Barnett lifted one finely arched eyebrow. “I wasn’t aware that I needed it. Are you his keeper?”
Odette swayed closer to Alex and cupped his cheek. “He’ll only raise your hopes and disappoint you. I guarantee he’s a quack or a crook or both.”
“What do I have to lose?” Alex said in a dejected tone more to himself than anyone else.
“He might leave you worse off!” Then she pressed her hand to her large bosom and added in an ominous whisper, “He might kill you.”
“I highly doubt that,” Madame Barnett said. “The advances made in medicine these past few decades are astonishing: painless surgery with anesthesia, lower risk of infection due to antiseptics, specialization. Dr. Dixon is an expert in his field.”
“What would you know about medicine?” Odette sneered.
“Madame Barnett runs a settlement house,” Claudine said. “She knows a great deal about helping people find the means to improve their lives.”
Odette’s stunning face contorted with contempt. “You mean she knows a lot about meddling. We don’t need your help or your opinions here.” She noticed the sheet music Claudine was holding. “Who said you could take those? They’re mine!”
Odette reached for the papers, but Claudine evaded her with a quick turn and a jutting elbow. “You don’t own these songs anymore than you own my cousin! You’ve stolen enough from him: his work, his career, months of his life.”
Something flashed in the woman’s tip-tilted eyes. It was just a spark, but Claudine knew it was guilt. And the fear of discovery. “I wasn’t certain until this exact moment, but I think your husband told me the truth for once.” Her throat was so dry her voice sounded raspy. “You did this to Alex. You arranged for his hand to be destroyed!”
Odette gasped. Madame Barnett gasped. Alex only stared at his lover with an incredulous expression. Claudine was shaking with outrage, but she held the other woman’s gaze, waiting for the inevitable denial.
Odette’s manner changed instantly. Her posture relaxed. The lines of tension on her forehead eased. She even smiled. “What an appalling and absurd accusation. I was the one who cared for him after the accident.”
“How convenient that you were there immediately after it happened,” Claudine said calmly. “It’s almost as though you had notice.”
Odette looked only at Alex. “Don’t you see what she’s doing? Casting doubt so she can tear us apart?”
Alex seemed not to hear her as he lumbered toward the door without assistance. She dashed in front of him, reached for the doorframe, and blocked the exit. “You can’t leave. You’re not well enough to go out.”
“Get out of my way,” he said in a low tone of contained fury.
Her eyes widened and she moved aside instantly. As Alex proceeded into the hallway, she called after him, “When will you return?”
He did not reply.
As the three of them proceeded down the stairwell, a screech came from above. “If you leave me, you’ll be sorry!” The shrillness of the woman’s voice startled Claudine and Madame Barnett. They both looked back in concern, but Alex, already well ahead of them, kept moving.
* * *
Since their explosive encounter in the dressing room at The Crystal, Leo had decided to give Claudine time to reach her own conclusions and decide what she wished to do. She was, after all, an adult. Questioning her judgment and trying to control her had only made her run in the other direction, heedless of danger. So he was keeping his distance and working himself to exhaustion in order to crush the urge to seek her out.
But every day when he returned to his house, he kept hoping to find her waiting for him. So when Trilling greeted him in the vestibule and informed him he had a visitor waiting in the parlor, Leo’s spirits soared.
Then he noticed the normally unflappable Trilling looked agitated. “He’s looking for a young lady, and he insists you have her.” The butler plucked a gilt-edged cream-colored card from a tray on the occasional table and handed it to him.
Rage flashed through his chest at the sight of the neatly scripted title, baron de Malliffet. This had to be the man who’d forced himself upon Claudine. He took a deep breath to stem the madness building inside him and entered his parlor.
The baron’s dark hair was graying at the temples, and his skin was beginning to sag around his mouth, but his prominent brow and straight nose, gave him a distinguished, though dissipated, appearance overall. He stood before one of the windows, spinning a custom-made standing globe like a toy top. Leo fought the impulse to batter him with it. “What business do you have with me?”
He slapped the globe with his gloved hand, bringing the world to a crashing halt. “I’ve come to collect my beloved, Mademoiselle Valencourt. Don’t pretend you know nothing about her. Her parents informed me of your telegram, and I have a report that she journeyed here from Le Havre with you under a different name a few weeks ago. She’s young and easily led. I have no doubt you coerced her.”
Bitterness welled in Leo’s throat, making his speech guttural. “That’s more in your line, I think. Has it occurred to you that if she wished to be with you, she would not have fled her homeland and changed her name? Why bother to pursue her?”
“Because I have decided to make her my wife. If you hand her over to me now, there will be no need to make an allegation of your crime.”
Leo dismissed the threat out of hand, but he poured himself a drink while he absorbed the new information. Yet another detail Claudine had altered or omitted? “She did not mention any engagement to me.”
“I haven’t proposed yet, but I have every confidence she will be thrilled to learn of my decision. Her consent is just a formality.”
“From what I gather, her consent is a great deal less than that to you.”
The baron held his gaze and smoothed his gloved fingers along the inner curve of the piano. “We had a lovers’ quarrel which would have been easily resolved had you not absconded with her, cur that you are.”
Leo hadn’t had a fistfight in years, but now his blood surged with the impulse to break something. “Pity that. I’m afraid you’ve come all this distance for nothing because she has already agreed to marry me.”
“You?” The shock on the baron’s face felt almost as satisfying as hitting him would have. “She is the daughter of a count, and you apparently are a former circus entertainer.” He waved some papers in the air as though he wielded a weapon. “How can you hope to gain her parents’ consent?”
Leo doubted he had any hope there. “I’d rate my chances higher than yours.”
The man smirked. “I already have it. They were overjoyed at the news of our engagement.”
That gave Leo pause. He supposed the baron had the sort of credentials he lacked. “As I said, the lady has already made her choice so unless you’re planning to marry her parents, you’re out of luck.”
The baron’s mouth turned down, making him look quite jowly. “I’m not about to take your word for it. Where are you hiding her?”
“You should leave now.” His control was fast reaching its limit.
But the other man didn’t take heed. “I don’t know what she told you about our love affair, but I assure you the girl was beyond eager for my attentions.”
Leo knew the man was baiting him, but his fist clenched all the same.
>
“Did she tell you how she repeatedly lured me to her home while her parents were away? How could I resist?”
Leo let go of restraint and embraced his aggression. He allowed himself only one swing, aimed at the man’s pronounced chin. The impact brought considerable pain to his hand and enormous satisfaction.
The baron’s head jolted backward, smacked the gilded molding behind him, and ricocheted forward again in a gratifying display of Newton’s third law of motion. Blood spattered to the Persian rug. Leo clasped his bruised knuckles as he watched the baron press a handkerchief to his gushing nose and repeated the sentiment. “How could I resist?”
Chapter Nineteen
The glare of the late afternoon sun seemed to rob Alex of the little strength he had left. Struggling to catch his breath, he leaned one arm against the brick exterior of his apartment building and absently watched a group of children playing on a fire escape. “I don’t think I can do this.”
Claudine touched his arm. “Of course, you can. I know you’re tired, but we’ll help you. We only have a few small errands to do before the consultation at four o’clock. After that, we’ll take you to Ardaut House to rest. Madame Barnett has already prepared a room for you there.”
“What sort of errands?” he slurred.
“Small ones, related to personal grooming. I think a haircut might be nice for you.”
He showed no reaction to that idea as he watched Madame Barnett attempt to hail a cab with little success. It seemed this neighborhood was not on the preferred route of carriages for hire.
“I can’t afford a haircut any more than I can afford to see a doctor. Don’t you understand? I have no money. I’ve lost everything.”
“Never mind that. I have money.”
He shot her a dark look. “From taking off your clothes for strangers?” Madame Barnett and a passing pushcart vendor turned to stare at her.
“It was a glove or two, at most,” Claudine retorted.
“I’ve seen the sort of entertainment they offer at The Crystal.”
“You weren’t bothered that Odette sang there.”
“That was different. She was part of that world when I met her. You went there because of me. I brought that scoundrel into your life.”
Jonas Fowler’s parting words echoed ominously through her mind. Scoundrel didn’t even begin to describe what sort of man he was. How was she going to escape him? She gave her cousin a reassuring smile. “It’s all in the past.” He did not look reassured.
Their plan was to take Alex to a barber and a tailor in order to make him presentable prior to the consultation, but Madame Barnett altered the schedule the moment they stepped inside the hansom. “You don’t need me for those tasks, and I have some arrangements to make.”
“What arrangements?” Claudine asked.
“Why don’t you leave that to me? You have quite enough problems to occupy your mind right now.” She scrawled an address on the small sheet of paper she had removed from her reticule. “I’ll meet you at Dr. Dixon’s surgery in a few hours.”
Claudine wasn’t at all certain she could handle her brooding and inebriated cousin on her own, but he was surprisingly willing to sit down in the barber’s chair. She felt some relief in seeing her cousin begin to resemble his normal handsome self though he was still pale and gaunt.
If Alex was pleased by his transformation, he showed no sign of it. He scarcely spoke to the tailor at the menswear store she randomly selected, and he avoided looking at his reflection in the mirror, just as he had during his haircut and shave. Fortunately, they were able to find him a plain black suit requiring minimal alterations.
As they walked the remaining distance to Dr. Dixon’s practice, Alex began to ramble. “I wanted to see a doctor directly after it happened, but Odette kept saying it was hopeless. Instead, she gave me medicine for the pain. For a while, it was wonderful. The pain faded, and I felt so full of energy that I couldn’t sleep. I wrote so many songs. But sometimes the medicine made me anxious and irritable. I couldn’t stop thinking about the night I was attacked and wondering if they would come for me again. So I drank gin.”
“Which she so generously supplied to you,” Claudine said, keeping her focus on passing pedestrians and cross street traffic.
“I knew it was bad for me, but nothing else would calm me down after one of my bouts of restlessness, and I truly believed she was trying to help me. I would sleep for long periods of time and then she would give me more medicine to take away the pain and lift me out of my depression.”
Their relationship sounded even more twisted than Claudine had suspected. “No wonder you lost track of time. At least that’s over now.”
“I never should have gotten involved with her in the first place. I knew there was something unbalanced about her, but I thought that made her exciting, dangerous. That she was,” he said bitterly. “My disastrous choice will impact the rest of my life, and I have no one to blame but myself.”
Claudine clasped his hand as they walked. “We can never know what the rest of our lives will bring. Let’s just see about today.”
They arrived for the consultation twenty minutes early. Dr. Dixon’s practice occupied several adjoining rooms in a Murray Hill brownstone used for professional offices. Madame Barnett was waiting for them under the arched portico at the top of the stairs. She offered no further information about her pressing arrangements, only praise for Alex’s improved appearance. Once inside, they climbed the cantilevered stairs to the third floor in tense silence.
The oak paneled waiting room was almost full, but conversations were brief and hushed. Madame Barnett spoke with a stern-looking brunette woman seated behind a fortress of a desk while Claudine and Alex sat down in two of the wooden armchairs, which bordered a scuffed parquet floor. A young woman across the room kept stealing glances at Alex, but he was oblivious.
Claudine had anticipated a long wait, but no more than five minutes had elapsed when the female assistant returned from the examining room and aimed her sharp gaze at them. “The doctor will see you now.”
“It was so good of you to see us on such short notice, doctor,” Madame Barnett said as soon as they entered the examining room, which contained a sink, a tiger oak bureau with many rows of drawers, and an examination table. Sunlight reflected off the white walls and varnished wood floor, making the room almost blindingly bright. The sweet, rather nauseating smell of ether mingled with the vinegary scent of carbolic acid.
“I’m honored to be of service to you in any way I am able.” The man gazed at Madame Barnett in the manner of one hopelessly smitten. Then he turned to wash his hands.
Claudine realized she wasn’t the only one with secrets. Madame Barnett had always had a slew of male admirers, but she’d never acknowledged an involvement with any particular gentleman. To Claudine’s knowledge, Leo’s mother had never sought a divorce from her unfaithful husband. She was now a widow in any case.
The doctor studied Alex’s hand at length. Then he looked up, frowning. “The incident must have occurred some time ago.”
“Three months or so, I believe,” Alex said, no longer slurring his words.
“You’re uncertain?”
“I haven’t been able to keep track of time since it happened.”
“Whom did you consult at the time?”
“No one. I was in a great deal of pain. My fiancée found a medicine for me and that helped.”
“Do you recall the name? Some medicines are addictive.”
Alex shook his head.
The doctor nodded gravely and continued his examination. After a series of tests, he concluded, “The good news is you still have sensation in your hand so the nerves are not completely damaged. I cannot repair nerves, but I can realign these fractured bones.”
He pointed to a puffy yellow area. “This abscess will need to be drained immediately, and some damaged tissue may need to be removed in order to improve circulation, prevent further loss of function, and redu
ce the pain you must be experiencing. More than one procedure may be required, but I think there’s an excellent chance for improvement in those areas, as well as range of motion.”
Alex looked incredulous. “I might be able to use my hand again?”
“I have no way of predicting the extent but yes, I believe so,” the doctor said. Claudine released the breath she’d been holding and gave Madame Barnett a look of extreme gratitude.
“I’ve had much success with my techniques, but I never make promises, especially in severe cases such as yours,” the doctor continued. “There are simply too many variables involved. I must warn you there is always a risk that you could suffer further loss of sensation and function. You will need to follow my post-surgical instructions to the letter to reduce the likelihood of blood clotting or infection.”
“Will the surgery be painful?” Alex asked.
“I’ll use anesthetic during the procedure itself, but the recovery will be difficult. I can offer you medicine to make the next few weeks easier for you. But as the pain lessens, so should your reliance upon the medicine. The dressing will reduce the swelling, but it must be changed regularly. As this is an urgent matter, I can arrange to perform the procedure tomorrow at six in the morning before I see my regular patients. Would that be acceptable to you?”
Alex hesitated and looked to Claudine for guidance. She nodded emphatically. “It will,” he said. “Thank you, doctor.”
The physician’s fee was the next big surprise of the day. The money Claudine had earned at The Crystal did not begin to cover the cost. “Could I pay by installments?” she asked the assistant, wondering just how many years it would take her to pay off the debt.
“Payment has already been arranged,” she announced in a cherry manner that took Claudine by surprise. Oddly, her cheeks were glowing.
Claudine turned to Madame Barnett. “I can’t let you pay for this.”
“I didn’t.”
“He did.” The assistant turned her beaming face toward the far end of the room.
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