“Can’t ye, lass?” Bournestein’s thin lips pulled back in a false smile—the smile she had seen him flash a hundred times in the past just before he would strike. “The man was under your care, Mrs. Morton, and then he disappeared.” He jabbed his eagle-headed walking stick onto the floor, the sharp gold tip just missing the tip of her boot. “Ye can’t imagine that I would have a hard time believing that ye don’t know how a man escaped my guard in your hospital?”
Bridget sighed. She wasn’t getting rid of him as quickly as she needed to. He had caught her just as she’d left the room where she’d had to amputate three of a young mother’s fingers after they got caught in a machine at the mill. The mother had not shed a tear. For all the pain, the woman had just held onto the hand of her four-year-old boy, smiling, assuring him all would be well. Bridget had seen resolute stoicism before, but this woman had broken her heart for how grimly invincible she had been.
All Bridget needed was fresh air, or as fresh as it came in this part of town. But Bournestein had interrupted her in the hallway and maneuvered her into an empty room.
The last thing she had the energy for at the moment was dealing with Bournestein. She hadn’t given herself any time to recover from the knife wound in her side, and her loss of blood the night before had slowed her steps all day.
She bent, setting her bucket of water that held her soaking tools down onto the floor. Water sloshed over the edge, droplets splashing onto Bournestein’s cane “I don’t have an answer for you, Mr. Bournestein. The man must have left the hospital when I was injured. Have you checked the surrounding buildings?”
“Ye be injured, Mrs. Morton?”
“Did Freddie Joe not tell you? I was in a rush and I accidentally bumped into him in the stairwell. We tumbled down the stairs, and his blade cut into my side.” She pointed to the left side of her ribcage.
“Prove it.”
Her head jerked back. “What? No. Most certainly not. You can ask Freddie Joe the truth on the matter.”
“He’s indisposed at the moment, Mrs. Morton. You will recall he was the one on watch when the man escaped.”
She drew her eyebrows as high as she could. “You don’t believe me?”
His beady eyes bored into her.
Bridget spewed an audible exhale, her hands reaching behind her to unbutton her dress. Her movements jerking, she stripped down the top of her black cotton dress, yanking her left arm out of the sleeve. She whipped to the side, pulling her shift close to the side of her torso just below her short stays. “Look, you can see the bandage along my ribs. Freddie Joe’s blade cut into me during the fall. He landed on top of me and almost crushed me. And I had a devil of a time stopping the blood.”
The snake smile disappeared from Bournestein’s face as his eyes strayed to her breasts concealed by her stays. “Put your dress back on, Mrs. Morton. Your skin is not for my men to witness.”
Her look flew past Bournestein to the two guards that stood by the doorway of the room.
Not for them to witness, but he could see wherever the hell he wanted to?
She bit her tongue.
Shoving her arm back into her sleeve, Bridget yanked up the front of her dress, her hands quick to the buttons on her backside even though the motion tugged at the scab on her side. “So whatever you imagine transpired here, Mr. Bournestein, you can see I was indisposed for most of the night.”
“Then I be looking to yer staff, Mrs. Morton.”
Her fingers fell from her buttons, the dress only partially secured closed. She took a step closer to him, her voice hardening. “You will do no such thing, Mr. Bournestein. If you feel that someone needs to be punished for that man escaping, then you punish me. My staff is off-limits.”
He stared at her, his beady eyes pulsing, pushing, challenging.
She took one more step to him, her chest almost touching him, and her voice dipped to a furious whisper. “I will not tell you again. My staff is off-limits.”
The tight set of his lips eased, a furious smile cutting across his face, straining his jowls. He inclined his head. “As you wish it.”
Without another word, he spun to the door and exited the room. His men followed him down the hallway.
She waited. One. Two. Three minutes.
He was gone. He liked to pop back in on her after an altercation such as that. Pop back in just to make sure she was well aware who was in charge. Who was keeping her hospital open. Who was the reason she hadn’t been shoved into one of his brothels.
Bridget staggered a step backward and collapsed onto a chair, her elbow landing on the adjoining table with her hand clutching her forehead.
Blast it.
The last thing she had intended was for Freddie Joe to pay the price for Aldair’s escape. Freddie Joe hadn’t been to the hospital for treatment just yet and she feared that meant that he was beyond saving. For as brutal a human being as Freddie Joe was, she had just traded one life for another. Something she had no right to do.
Her fingers tapped against her forehead.
But she had an even bigger problem.
Bournestein didn’t believe her. Didn’t believe her for a second that she had nothing to do with Aldair’s escape.
And one never knew what Bournestein would do next.
{ Chapter 7 }
He’d forced himself to stay away from Bridget for two days.
Two days for her to calm, to realize that he was merely an idiot of the highest order to ask a question such as he had of her. For only an idiot would insinuate she would ever have an affair with Bournestein. The further Hunter got from the moment the question crossed his lips, the more he wanted to kick himself.
Stupid.
So he’d stayed away for two days. Two days so that her first reaction when she saw him again wouldn’t be to instantly spin and storm away.
Two days was plenty. It had to be.
Two days was all he could take.
Two days had to be enough.
Hunter pushed himself away from the shadow of the brick wall of the building next to the Thames.
He had followed Bridget as she left the hospital. Today he had stood at the ready at the end of the street, waiting for Bridget to appear, whereas the day before, he had sat in a hack all day, observing the comings and goings of the hospital, watching the rhythm of the injured and sick streaming into the building. Far from the clientele the hospital serviced the other night, daylight brought mothers and children and the elderly through the door. Poor, in rags, all of them looking for the smallest slice of respite.
When Bridget had stepped through the front door of the hospital, her shoulders slumped, her feet slow and weary, he’d had to hold himself back from rushing to her. Hold himself back from pulling her onto his chest—from dragging her back to his townhouse again and hiding her away from the world.
Instead, he followed her. Her slight form moved through the crowds and the wagons and the carriages, a black shawl wrapped over her black dress. Her apron absent, the whole of her looked dark, even the black cap she wore covered much of her light brown hair.
Black was practical for what she encountered at the hospital, he knew that, but he also wondered if she ever wore color. In Spain, Bridget had always tried to wear some color, even if it was a simple kerchief about her head. She said it cheered the patients. And she was right. That small beacon of light, it had been hope to many a man.
Street after street Bridget had weaved through until she was walking along the edge of the Thames. With low tide, the water lapped along the muck of the mud splattering up the bankside.
An eighth of a mile she had walked, and then suddenly she stopped, pulling up her skirts and moving to sit along the edge of the stone wall that lined the Thames, her legs hanging over the side.
Leaning against the building directly behind her, he had watched her sitting there for ten minutes before he could bring himself to approach her. Once he could finally move his feet toward her, he stood behind her for a long mo
ment before clearing his throat.
“You were half naked in my house and I wanted to kiss you, Bridget, and that was what came out of my mouth instead, because I knew I couldn’t do it.”
Her body jerked, startled. “Kiss me?” Her torso twisted so she could look up behind her.
“I wanted to kiss you—to touch you—but I couldn’t so idiocy left my lips instead. Idiocy driven by jealousy. I very well know you would never trade yourself for favors. Especially with a man like Bournestein. I cannot take back the words, but I do apologize for them.”
Her neck still craned back to him, she offered a slight nod, and that was when he noticed it—streaks of wetness on her face, tears welled in her eyes.
Hell.
His chest twisting, constricting deep within, he moved to sit down next to her before she could say a word, before she could protest his presence.
He tugged her left hand up from the stone wall and clasped it between his palms, careful to not pull it too far from her side that it would tug at her wound. “Tell me.”
She tried to smile, failing. Her free hand went to her face, her palm wiping away the moisture as she looked away from him.
A shout rang out from below their feet, and five sets of eyes, the whites of them stark against the mud-strewn faces, looked up from their searches. All mudlarks, the five young children scrambled in the thick mud to clamor around the little boy that had shouted, looking at what he held in his hands. Pats on the back, toothless smiles, and they scattered with renewed vigor as their hands dunked into the black muck.
Bridget pointed with her right forefinger, her voice raw with the tears she had been crying. “The mudlarks. I always enjoyed watching them. The joy when a shilling is found—or a hefty chunk of driftwood. And the sly way they tuck away something really valuable when they find it—a ring, a guinea—they don’t want to have to defend it. It’s all they know. A fight every day. Defending what little they can call their own. Fighting for the tiniest scraps of our world. But they tromp on, day after day. Surviving. Determined.” She sighed. “Watching one of them find a treasure—it was magical, as magical as one could get with mud up to their knees.”
Hunter eyed the group of children as they moved past their feet, poking and prodding at the sludge. “You used to enjoy it?”
Her left hand clasped between his palms twitched. “I did, until a group of boys stumbled into the hospital, three of them carrying one of their friends. He had drowned, his foot wedged under an iron bar in the mud. They hoped I could help him. Bring him back to life. But I couldn’t do anything.”
“That must be harsh—to look into the eyes of the living and banish hope?”
Her head bobbed in a quick nod. “It is. The hope is the hardest to deal with. When people come in with hope—especially children—and I have to take it away from them.”
“You feel like the bearer of death?”
“I am the bearer of death.”
He stared at her profile. The delicate lines of her face, the slight curve at the end of her nose, the dark lashes framing her green eyes—all of her looked smothered by unyielding tragedy. His palms flattened her hand between his. “You weren’t always that, Bridget. There was a time when you brought life. Brought life to everyone you touched in that hospital. Brought life to me.”
A sad smile lifted the corners of her mouth and she looked at him, her voice weary. “Those were different times, Hunter. A different place. A different me.”
“Are you truly that different?”
Her lips drew inward, the smile vanishing.
What he wanted to do was slip off his coat and wrap her in it. Pick her up and carry her away from the city. Away from the squalor. Away from the death. Away from everything that had ravaged her spirit in the years they had been apart.
He settled for slipping his arm around her back. A bold move, for he feared she was not ready to accept anything from him yet.
To his surprise, she didn’t lean away, didn’t resist. She settled against his arm, leaning into his chest just as easily as she had years ago. Like she belonged there. Like ensconced in his arm was the one spot in this world that belonged to her and no one else.
The rock that lodged in his throat was hard to dislodge. “What happened today, Bridget?”
Her shoulders expanded and contracted against his chest with each trembling breath she took.
Her chin dipped downward, her look following. “A woman died under my hands in childbirth. They brought her in too late—if they had come earlier, I could have turned the babe.” She paused, her breath catching. It took a long moment for the air to leave her lungs in a low exhale. “The husband…he…he…he loved his wife. He didn’t want to let her go. Wouldn’t let her go. And she held on for him. She held on for so long just for him.” She swallowed back a gasp and then shook her head in a quick snap. “It was hard. That is all. It was hard.”
His arm tightened around her. “Bridget, this hospital, it was your father’s dream—but was it ever yours?” He said the words softly, not wanting to spark her ire. In the past, he had never worried about curbing his words with her, as they had thrived on direct and uncompromising conversations. No topic had been too hard. No words had needed to be hidden.
But now. Now he didn’t know.
Her shoulders quivered, and Hunter could feel her body fighting the sob that rolled through her chest. For long breaths, she didn’t speak, just held fast against the tears threatening to consume her.
Her head suddenly tilted back, pressing on the front of his shoulder as her green eyes opened to the sky. “No. It’s never been mine. But it became mine the moment he died. He taught me everything he knew about surgery, about medicine. So I help because I can. But you cannot imagine how this tears me up every single day. Starving babies. Women that have been beaten to within an inch of their lives. I have never admitted this—because I want to be that champion people think I am. But I’m not that champion, and I don’t want the death of this place. The sadness.”
Her head dropped forward, her look trained on the children now a furlong away. “There are days when I walk back to my house here, along the Thames, and I watch the mudlarks. I see them on the edge of the tide, playing with their lives. How deep they’ll go into the water. How far they dare to chance it. And I think about crawling down there with them. Letting my foot slip into the mud where I cannot free it.”
“Bridget—”
She shook her head. “I would never do it. But the hurt, the pain I see every day, it becomes mine. My father was a master at it. He could see all of it—the pain, the death—and not only help, but then come home and sleep at night. I cannot. Every time I see the death of an innocent—I die a little inside. And some days…I just…I just want it to stop.”
“So leave. Stop.” The words came out harsh, yet he couldn’t control it. Not when his entire being had turned to fire, aching to pull her away and protect her from everything that damaged her soul.
She angled her face to look up at him. “How can I walk away when I know what exists? The horrors. What kind of person am I if I walk away, if I ignore the destitute?”
“You are a person that is staying alive. That isn’t killing herself, little by little, day by day, until you reach that one moment when disappearing into the Thames seems like the best option.”
She shook her head, looking away from him. Leaning away from him.
He grabbed her chin, forcing her to look at him. “So let me take you away. There are people that need help everywhere, Bridget. And in a place that won’t break your spirit.”
“Let you?” She scooted to the side along the stone wall, breaking his contact with her. “I can’t, Hunter.”
“Bridget, it goes beyond just the people—it goes to Bournestein.”
“Don’t speak to me of Bournestein, Hunter. I already know your thoughts on the man, and I don’t want to argue it with you.”
“Then don’t argue. Listen. You have to hear what I’m telling y
ou, Bridget. You have to leave this place—you cannot work with Bournestein. He is the devil.”
“He gives us the resources to help—”
“He gives you the resources so he can maintain control. Why do you think people even need to come into your hospital with the beatings and the broken limbs and the hunger?” His voice went to a growl. “Bournestein orchestrates it all. Break them. Mend them. Own them. He knows exactly what he’s doing, Bridget, and it doesn’t have a thing to do with benevolence.”
Her head shaking, she scrambled to her feet. “You know nothing of it, Hunter. And I can’t—I can’t stop. So you can cease. Just leave me be—leave me in peace.”
She ran across the street, veering to the left and moving onto a lane leading from the Thames.
Gone. Again.
A heavy sigh sat in his chest and Hunter lifted himself to his feet.
He had better hurry, or he wouldn’t be able to make sure she made it safely to back to her house.
{ Chapter 8 }
“He’s here, Bridget.”
At Marjorie’s whisper, Bridget’s head swiveled, her look lifting from the yellowed eyes of the boy in front of her to the doorway of the hospital.
Bournestein strutted down the left aisle between benches, his purple overcoat swishing against the knees of people sitting. A repugnant peacock pecking over his domain.
It was early in the day for him to be making an unexpected visit.
For the most part, Bournestein avoided the hospital when he could. She had witnessed time and again the derision in his eyes every time he was surrounded by the sick in the hospital. The handkerchief that he would unfurl with grandeur, pressing it over his nose and mouth. Disgust. Pure disgust.
Bending at the waist, Bridget looked at eye level to the little boy sitting on the bench before her. His hands nervous, he fidgeted until he gripped the worn edge of the bench, all energy moving down to his swinging legs.
To Capture a Warrior: Logan's Legends (A Revelry’s Tempest Novel Book 5) Page 7
