by Shirl Henke
Chapter Four
Drum heard the sounds of the scuffle coming from the dark alleyway, the yelping cry of a street tough being cut, the breathless hiss of steel on steel. The latter sound was intimately familiar to him. Swiftly and silently he made his way to the fight, withdrawing a gleaming blade from inside his fashionable silver-handled walking stick.
As he approached, Drum saw Alex on his knees, crumpling to the ground. The brute behind him started to lower his knife to deliver the final blow when he felt the prick of cold steel puncture the side of his neck. He started to turn, but the blade only sliced further.
"I wouldn't try it, old fellow. Stand up and move away from Mr. Blackthorne, there's a lad," the dandy offered with mocking encouragement as the huge prizefighter stood.
Deprived of his prey, the assailant snarled an oath when he recognized the little toff. He moved his head to evade the sword, intent on lunging in under it. He had a good eight inches' advantage in reach, not to mention being at least four stone heavier. It should have worked. But Jackie Elem underestimated his slightly built foe's skill with a blade. Alvin Frances Edward Drummond had trained with the finest French fencing masters. Lightning swift and effortlessly Drum ran the sword directly into Elem's heart.
As the East End cutthroat fell, already dead before hitting the ground, Drum withdrew the blade with a moue of distaste. "At least you stood up. I do so hate to dispatch a man on his knees. Isn't sporting."
He withdrew a snowy handkerchief from his jacket and cleaned the blade with a quick practiced stroke, then tossed the linen in the dirt with a sigh. After glancing at the other two men, he replaced the sword inside the cane. "Dead as a ducat," he muttered. The Yankee Doodle had done well, considering all. Now if only he was not done himself.
Kneeling beside Blackthorne, Drummond touched his chest to feel for a heartbeat. The American emitted a low moan and tried to move. "Ah, you're still ticking, I see, but in bad loaf all the same."
The dandy observed the widening puddle of blood trickling from beneath Alex's body. Grimacing with distaste he reached out and tugged at the much larger man's jacket in an attempt to pull him up. "You'll have to help me, my good fellow."
Alex sat up, wincing at the sharp stab of agony in his back. "Damn, those bastards ruined a perfectly tailored jacket. I only picked it up from Schweitzer and Davidson's yesterday."
"Your assailants could not ruin it, my good man. You already succeeded in doing so yourself, stuffing the pockets with blunt. Quite destroys the lines, you know," he sniffed.
"Please forgive my vulgar display," Alex said with a chuckle that ended in a gasp of pain, "and accept my thanks for saving my life. This is twice I'm indebted to you... and in only one evening."
"Then think how far into dun territory you'll be after
we've been friends for a fortnight or two," Drum replied genially.
This time Alex stifled the laugh, mindful of his throbbing back. Bent Nose lay spread-eagled in the alley with a red stain blooming across his chest. "How the deuce did you do that?" He saw no place to conceal a weapon in the toff's exquisitely molded jacket or breeches.
"Sword cane," was the succinct reply as he helped the much larger man to his feet. "You really should acquire one. Knives are so frightfully declasse, even for an American."
"Ah, but I'm not just an American, I'm one of those wild red Indians. We like knives," Alex replied with a grin.
For once Drum had no instantaneous retort. "A blond red Indian. How extraordinarily colorful," he grunted as Alex leaned on him.
"I fear I'm ruining your jacket," Alex said when the little toff placed his arm around Alex's waist to help him walk.
"Not to worry, I've outrun the constable most of my life. Another tailor bill will scarcely matter, considering the prodigious amount I already owe. I'd rather say our concern should be finding you a physician lest you bleed to death." He sacrificed his last clean handkerchief, stuffing it up inside Alex's jacket and pressing it against the wound. "That will have to serve," he murmured at his friend's hiss of agony.
Alex squinted at the sky when they reached the open thoroughfare. "Not quite dawn. Pretty hard to find a physician's office open."
"Or even a hackney," Drum added bleakly. "This certainly isn't Mayfair."
"No, but then being a rude colonial, I'm used to frequenting low places."
"As am I when the lombard fever overtakes me. Boredom, old chap," he added by way of explanation, then cocked his head decisively. "If memory serves me, there is a hospital for the indigent nearby. Considering our present appearance, we should gain easy admittance. Come along."
They made their way down the street and around the corner to a dingy gray stone edifice situated between rows of decaying houses. In spite of the chill late fall air, windows in the residences were without panes, the glass broken. Here and there ragged curtains flapped in the brisk breeze and the sound of a baby crying broke the eerie stillness. The hospital, too, looked grim and forbidding. An unadorned wooden sign unevenly lettered in black hung over the entrance: charity hospital of London.
The smell of sickness and unwashed flesh assaulted their nostrils the moment they stepped inside the front door. A long bleak hallway stretched before them. Sounds of groaning emanated from the distant end of it. Drum called out, "Is there a physician present?" There was no response so they began to make their way down the corridor, looking into each door they passed. The small, spartanly furnished cubicles were all empty. "I say, there is a man wounded here—bleeding all over your demned clean floor," he added as Alex's legs suddenly started to give way.
"I think I'd ... better sit down," Alex rasped, blinking to clear his muzzy head. "Dizzy. So damned dizzy ..."
Drummond started to guide him into one of the deserted offices, but just then a woman's voice called out from down the hall. "Not in there, across the hall. There is a table to lay him on."
Joss had heard the commotion from the far end of the ward rooms and rushed to see what new emergency had arisen. The best nurse, Peggy Halloran, was home with her sick aunt and Dr. Byington had not yet arrived, leaving only her and one other neophyte volunteer to care for a ward with over twenty people in it. In the dim light she could make out little about the two men. Upon reaching the doorway she could see by the cut of their clothes they were hardly the sort who frequented a charity hospital. A pair of elegant young bucks.
Both were blood smeared, but the small one blocked her view of his compatriot lying on the table. "We need a physician here," Drum announced peremptorily. "Summon one at once."
"Dr. Byington will return in an hour, perhaps two. He's delivering a baby. I'm trained as a nurse. You'd best let me have a look." Her tone matched his, brooking no opposition. She also towered over him by a good four inches. When the little dandy stepped back, she gasped in shock. "Alex!"
"You know my friend?" Drum asked incredulously. Whatever would a flashy cock-of-the walk like Alex Blackthorne do with a long Meg such as this scarecrow?
"Yes, we're friends," she replied, biting her lip as she touched Alex's cheek. There was blood all over him. "Where is he hurt?"
"Summon the physician. Alex has more need—”
"Do not try my patience, sir, nor waste any more time. The doctor is not available."
"Then I suppose you'd better look at my back," Alex said, struggling to sit up.
Joss turned to him, ignoring the scowling little toff. "Lie still," she commanded.
"Can't until I get this damned jacket and shirt off," he replied, turning his back to her as he tried to ease his left arm out of the jacket. Drum assisted him.
"What happened?" she asked tersely, taking the blood- soaked coat and tossing it in the corner. When he peeled the ruined shirt off, she gasped. "You've been stabbed!"
"Excellent diagnosis, but I suspect it must be a frequent one in a place such as this," Drum said dryly.
Joss took a deep breath, both to calm herself and for patience. "Yes, we often see victims of
taproom altercations," she replied, sniffing the pungent odor of gin and cheap perfume about Alex. The rotter, he'd been slumming in some gin mill about here and gambling, too, from the looks of the wads of banknotes stuffed in his pockets! A square of blood-soaked linen was stuck to the wound. When she removed it he winced.
"Serves you right for breaking at least half the Lord's commandments," she said sweetly. The wound was jagged. Thank heaven a lung wasn't punctured. If one was, he would most certainly be spitting up blood and be unable to speak without a rattle in his throat.
"Lie facedown on the table," she instructed. "I'll have to cleanse the wound and perhaps stitch it."
"Now see here, m'dear. The need is not for a laundress and seamstress," Drum said. "We need a surgeon."
Alex swallowed a chuckle as he repositioned himself on the table. Joss and Drum faced each other like a pair of mismatched prizefighters. Although she was half a head taller than he, he remained coolly undaunted. "Forgive me for not making introductions earlier. Miss Jocelyn Woodbridge, may I present Mr. Alvin Frances Edward Drummond, Drum to his friends."
"You may call me Mr. Drummond," he replied without missing a beat. "Your servant, Miss Woodbridge." He clicked his heels and made a sketchy bow.
Ignoring his antics, she said "I'm going to get water and bandages. Hold this on the wound until I return." Joss seized Drum's hand and pressed it over the bloody linen she had replaced on the injury.
"Bossy chit," he sniffed.
"You should see her in a fight. She doesn't even need a knife—or a sword cane."
"A veritable Amazon," Drum said sourly.
Joss returned with medical supplies and began to cleanse the jagged puncture wound. "You must have moved just as
he struck the blade into you," she said, biting her lip in concentration.
"I regret I didn't hold still but I had other things on my mind, such as the other fellow who was trying to gut me," he gritted out as she poured some wickedly burning solution into the wound.
"Probably it's as well you did not, else you might have had your lung punctured by a deeper blow. As it is, the cut is jagged and messy but I don't think lethal—unless you take a fever."
As Joss stitched him, her hands touched the bare skin of his back, so dark and sleekly muscled. She occasionally assisted the doctors in surgery. The unclothed male body—at least the upper half of it—was no novelty to her. Yet Alex affected her far more than any other. When she had first recognized him lying caked with blood, her heart had frozen in her chest. How dare he risk his life in a wastrel's lark? She willed herself to anger, hoping it could drive away that other unnamed and terrifying emotion.
He is my friend. Of course I'm concerned for him. One thing Jocelyn Angelica Woodbridge had never done before was deceive herself. She knew the trembling that traveled up from her fingertips to form a knot in the pit of her belly was far, far more than concern over a friend. But she dared not admit it.
"The medicine I brought from the Muskogee will guard against fever," Alex said to keep his thoughts off the pain. "You know, you're almost as good at sewing me up as Grandma Charity."
"I take it she had a deal of practice working on you," she replied evenly. "I see you have scars aplenty from brawling."
"A few are from chunky, er, a Muskogee athletic contest ... close enough to brawling by your standards," he murmured, feeling light-headed from the pain in his back.
When she had finished stitching him, Joss enlisted Drum's aid with the bandaging, beginning by helping Alex to sit up so they could wrap the linen around his torso tightly to prevent more bleeding. She had to admit that for all his fussy ways and superior airs, the dandy was calm and not at all squeamish when it came to doing what needed to be done. Once she had finished with the dressing, she pulled a clean nightshirt from the chest in the corner.
Seeing it, Alex nodded. "Good. I'll need something to wear under my coat. That shirt is beyond repair."
"Surely you don't think you can walk out of here?" she replied incredulously.
"Certainly you don't expect a gentleman to remain in a charity ward?" Drum inteijected, equally incredulous.
As Drum picked up his jacket, Alex pulled the shirt over his head. The garment was frayed and much mended but clean at least. "There's no need for me to lie abed, Joss, although I do thank you for stitching me up." The lightweight shirt had been bearable but when he tried to pull the stiff, blood-caked jacket over his shoulder, a blinding wave of dizziness followed the pain. He persevered as Joss stood glaring at him.
Drum assisted him in donning the coat but when he swung his legs off the table and tried to stand up, his knees did the most peculiar thing. Suddenly they weren't there. He felt as if he were floating on his way down to the floor. Drum's oath and Joss's cry as they reached out to break his fall seemed to come from a distance.
Glaring at Alex's companion from behind her thick lenses, Joss said, "Men! Now see what you've done, encouraging his folly. If those stitches have broken open I shall take that walking stick of yours to both of you!"
"Not before I withdraw the sword inside of it to defend us, my good madam," Drum retorted as they helped Alex back onto the table.
"I am not a madam. I am a miss."
"And not a good one either. Little surprise no man would
wed a long Meg with the disposition of a fishmonger," he muttered sotto voce as Joss stormed from the room, calling for Liddie to prepare another bed.
"You'd best keep your thoughts to yourself. She isn't bluffing about using that cane on you," Alex said groggily.
"Us, old chap, us. She threatened you as well—but 'pon my honor I would defend your life to the bitter end," Drum replied with a dramatic flourish, adding, "and with that forward baggage it would be a bitter struggle indeed."
Within the hour Alex was dozing on a bed set up in one of the cubicles at the far end of the hall and Drum had departed. Joss, who had been working since the previous night, returned to the Fin and Feather for a few hours of sleep after Dr. Byington arrived and pronounced her work on the injured American's wound to be as well done as he could have managed himself. She had an afternoon meeting at the homeless shelter, then a prayer vigil at Mrs. Wallace's home. By evening she was once again hovering over Alex's bed.
"He looks flushed and feverish," she said worriedly, touching his forehead. It was scalding hot to the touch in spite of the chill in the big old building.
"The wound was a nasty 'un, Miss Jocelyn," Nurse Hal- loran replied. "Fever's ta be expected, but 'e's a strappin' lad, 'e is. Should pull through if any can."
Joss knew many people with injuries far less serious had died of fevers. Remembering his grandmother's Muskogee remedies, she made a decision. "Please inform the doctor that I shall be gone for an hour or so."
Only the thought of Alex lying feverish back at the hospital gave her the courage to approach the Caruthers’s elegant brick house and knock, imperiously insisting that the disdainful butler summon the baron. Her manner—or Alex's name—must have worked, for she was quickly ushered into an opulently appointed sitting room to wait
When his lordship entered the room, Joss noted there was little family resemblance between Alex and his uncle. The first time she had seen him, the baron had been at that ghastly riot when she was too bedazzled by Alex's golden spell to take note of anyone else, the second at Goodysale's when Poc was bleeding in her arms. Montgomery Caruthers was certainly not an ill-favored man with his graying sandy brown hair and chiseled features. He was tall and slim yet not quite as tall as his nephew. Nor did his pale patrician face have the bold masculine vigor of Alex's swarthy countenance. His light blue eyes lacked warmth. But the chilly smile was the greatest contrast of all.
Monty inspected the gangly ape leader who was Suth- ington's niece. Small wonder the old boy never arranged a come-out for her, not that he could do so with that addle-pated nonconformist preacher dragging her about on his crusades. Lud, she looked even worse than she had earlier, if su
ch were possible. Those thick eyeglasses, slightly askew, reflected the candlelight eerily and the faded yellow dress hanging on her was a shapeless horror.
He had an uneasy suspicion he would not like what she had to say about Alex. "Good evening, Miss Woodbridge."
"I know it is presumptuous of me to call unannounced this way, milord, but the matter is most pressing." When he raised his eyebrow sardonically she could see the family resemblance to Alex.
"I fear you've come with ill tidings about my scapegrace nephew. Pray, out with it, Miss Woodbridge. I don't doubt but he's in the suds once more. Tell me, has he sent you for a loan to carry him over at the gaming tables?"
Joss knew Alex did not want his family to know about his injury or that he lay in a charity hospital. She had equally selfish reasons for keeping his guilty secret. She wanted him to remain under her care. "No, milord, Alex has not had an unsuccessful time at the tables. Indeed he's been winning quite steadily. That's why he sent me. He brought with him from America some of his Grandmother Blackthorne's Indian remedies and I have need of them at the charity hospital where I work."
"Indian remedies? Well, if they can cure dogs, then perhaps they can cure the indigent. Lud knows nothing else can."
"Education and a fair wage would do wonders for those of them who are in good health," Joss replied before thinking.
Monty was amused at her impertinent response. "You are Elijah's get, no doubt about it. Never saw two brothers less alike than your father and the earl."
She raised her head. "I take that as a compliment, milord."
He chuckled. "You would."
"If I might have the herbals, milord, I shall trouble you no further."
"Why is it, my dear, that I feel you shall trouble this family a very great deal before we're quits, hmm? Very well," he replied, ringing for a footman to fetch from Alex's room the pouch she described.
