by Carla Kelly
“He survived yellow fever,” the woman said as she tidied the room. “Tough as an old boot, is Phil.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” Laura countered, and told Aunt Walters about his kiss on Davey Dabney’s forehead.
Aunt Walters nodded. “He suffers agonies when they die. I wish he had a wife to talk to, for comfort.”
Laura tried to compose herself. Her back still ached from bending over so many wounded men for so many hours; she wasn’t sure she could lie flat.
Aunt Walters was about to close the door when Laura stopped her. “Tell me something. I looked up once at the jetty and saw Sir David Carew standing at a window. Why didn’t he help?”
“And get his uniform mussed?” Aunt Walters muttered something low in her throat. “He’s a physician, Lady Taunton, with a medical degree written up on parchment in Latin no one can read, a head full of theories that probably never saved a tar on the jetty, and no skill at all with capital knives. I doubt he could dismember a chicken bone at the dinner table.”
That was an image Laura found vastly unappealing. “I’m not certain I care to see anyone carve poultry right now! Do you think…does your nephew get used to what he does?”
Aunt Walters shrugged. “How could he? Good night, Lady Taunton.”
She went to sleep at once, and would have slept all night, if she hadn’t been wakened by the sound of someone sobbing. Maybe they will stop, she thought, as she tried to burrow under her pillow and block out the sound.
It continued louder than before, irritating her, until she realized she was the one crying. Unnerved, she wiped her eyes on the sheet, just as the door opened.
“I’m all right, Mrs. Walters,” she said. “It’s nothing.”
Lt. Brittle sat on the edge of her bed and handed her his handkerchief. She blew her nose, sobbed again, blew her nose again, then made not the slightest attempt to keep herself from leaning against his leg.
He must not have minded, because he put a gentle hand on her head. He tried to prop himself against the headboard, moving a little more onto the bed until she sat up, and without a word, pulled back the coverlets.
He was still fully dressed, but he unbuckled his shoes, took them off, then lay down next to her, gathering her close to his side as she threw her arm across his chest and cried. He held her close, saying nothing and doing nothing more than running his hand over her arm until she stopped crying and sat up again. He stayed where he was, practically asleep himself.
“Have you been in Block Four all this time?” she whispered.
He pulled her down and she found that same nice spot against his shoulder.
“Blocks Three through Six. We’re stretched thin, Lady T. I came home two hours ago, changed clothes and went to Captain Brackett’s quarters, where I pronounced his wife dead. He needed to talk then, as you might surmise. There are days I wish I had never left Jamaica.”
She wasn’t even sure of that last sentence, because his voice trailed off and he slept. She sat up, careful not to disturb him, and watched his face relax and his hands open up. Carefully, she settled him on his back, then loosened his neckcloth, sliding it slowly from his neck. As he breathed evenly and deeply, she unbuttoned his shirt, then removed his cufflinks, reaching over him to set them on the nightstand. Her breasts grazed his chest as she did that, but he did not even stir.
She hesitated a moment, then decided in for a penny, in for a pound, and unbuttoned his trousers. You’d be an easy man to seduce, she thought, smiling at the idea. She knew she should retreat to the downstairs sofa, but she didn’t. I’ll cry again if I do, she reasoned, as she tucked her nightgown tidily around her ankles, lay down, hesitated for only a second, then backed up against the surgeon, who responded by turning sideways, draping his arm over her and breathing steadily into her ear. She never slept better.
Laura dreamed of nothing for the remainder of the night, and woke just before dawn to the sound of seagulls this time, quarreling down by the jetty. She shivered involuntarily, trying not to think what it might be they found so attractive, then suddenly remembered she was sharing her bed with Lt. Philemon Brittle.
She turned slowly, and stared into his blue eyes. They were even sharing the same pillow. As her face grew red, his did the same. She knew the only way they could have been closer was if they were making love. As she watched his face, she felt almost as though they were.
She was relieved he didn’t leap up with a horrified expression, and stammer something stupid. He stayed where he was, observing her in a way that softened her heart, peeling away layers of calculus that had formed there since her discovery, at age eighteen, that she had not one advocate in the entire world.
He spoke finally. She knew one of them had to say something.
“I should have left last night before paralysis overtook every limb.”
It was a guileless apology, explaining exactly how he felt. It would have been almost clinical, if he hadn’t pulled her hair back from her face.
“There is nothing to apologize for,” she told him. “I could just as easily have gone downstairs, but I knew I would only be crying down there.”
He turned onto his back. “I have used you abominably, these past two days.”
She flopped on her back, too. Their heads touched on the pillow but neither of them moved away. “I don’t recall complaining.”
“You’re dotty, then,” he joked.
“Completely. Think how cheap you are getting my services. Come to think of it, both of my dresses, ruined now in the service of poor King George, would make a huge dent in my twenty-five-pound salary. They were made by a modiste of the first rank! See there, at this rate, I will use up my entire annual salary, just trying to replace my wounded wardrobe. Tell me. If I land in debt to the Navy Board, must I work for them forever?”
He laughed softly, and twined his fingers through her hand, holding it up. “You have better hands than I do for surgery. Look how long and narrow your fingers are.”
She thumped him with her other hand. “There are limits to what I will do for the Royal Navy!”
“Very well.” He released her hand. “Since I doubt I will have another opportunity today, let me tell you what I need from a matron. Every building has its own kitchen on the ground floor. All the food is uniformly bad. I said yesterday I wanted to try two things with Davey Dabney. You saw the first one.”
She interrupted him. “Please tell me he is still alive.”
“He is. When I left him at midnight, he told me to tell you thank’ee.”
“I did so little.”
“Saving his life?” Lt. Brittle took her hand again. “The second thing is this—somehow, you are to make good food come out of that kitchen. I am going to dispense with that low diet that the sickest are fed.”
He turned to face her again, his expression animated. “No one can get well on that! It’s folly to think that a gruel of milk and breadcrumbs will ever give men like Davey the strength they need to recuperate. Laura, for the most part, these are strong, healthy men. They’ve been subjected to serious bodily insult, but they are not weaklings.” He made a sound of disgust. “At least, not until they spend time in a hospital. It’s all backward.”
She was facing him now, too. “Better food. What else?”
His face fell. “That will be hard enough. I am slave to the almighty budget.” He lay back again, staring at the ceiling. “I’m willing to use some of my own salary, but it’s not exactly magnificent.” He propped his knees up then, and noticed that the fall front on his trousers was unbuttoned. “No wonder I was so comfortable last night,” he said as he buttoned them.
She knew she should have been embarrassed, but he was so matter-of-fact she decided not to waste her time with nonsense. This is a man with no spare time, she thought. I doubt there has ever been a more unusual employment consultation in the history of the universe.
“Where was I?” he asked, putting his hands behind his head.
“I belie
ve finance had reared its ugly head,” she reminded him, hugely amused by this whole experience, especially since it didn’t seem to faze him at all.
“Ah, that. There is no delicate way to say this. I want Davey to have rich food. He needs meaty food, food with fresh vegetables, but nothing so rich as to make him uncomfortable.”
She couldn’t help herself; she was so excited she wanted to bounce on the bed. “I can do this! For three years, what do you think I was feeding my very late, my extremely late, husband? I have pages of receipts back at Taunton which are, if I may say, just what the doctor ordered. And as for the extra expense, Lieutenant, I can pay it. In fact, I insist.”
He looked at her in amazement, then covered his eyes with his hands, saying nothing. He worried her, so she timidly took his hands off his eyes. “Lieutenant?” she whispered, then dabbed his eyes with a corner of the sheet. “It’s a small thing.”
He did not speak. Laura decided they were just two people tired of bearing heavy loads, and that was enough. Another thought struck her.
“Lieutenant, I have a cook. No, a chef.”
He got to his knees then on the bed and planted a whacking kiss on both cheeks that made her laugh, and then smother her laughter in his shirt because she remembered—and reminded him, too—that he had an aunt in the house.
“She insists on sleeping downstairs in the room off the kitchen,” he said, “and she’s not an early riser.” His face was still close to hers. “You have a cook,” he repeated reverently.
“I do. Pierre Gagon is an émigré who hates Napoleon about as much as those men in Block Four, I imagine. I can have him here in a day or two, along with a scullery maid. If you want a really good housekeeper, I have one of those, as well.”
He took it all in and leaned against the headboard again. “A housekeeper would free you for the other task I have in mind.”
“You are a wicked hard taskmaster,” she commented amiably.
“Too right. I want you to ward walk with me every day. My mates on duty accompany me, but you should, too. I want you to become acquainted with the men and their injuries.”
“What do you do?”
“We walk through each ward, stopping at each bed, checking each chart. We compare notes, and I make assignments. Everyone knows what is going on.”
She nodded, tucking her nightgown around her and drawing her knees up to her chin. She knew there wasn’t any point in standing on ceremony with this man ever again. He would engage her in discussion during any free moment, obviously. What a relief he hadn’t found her in the bathtub.
“If you can convince your cook and housekeeper to come, they can take charge of meals, and counting linen, and keeping things clean—all the scut that must be done. You might actually have time to sit with the men, write letters for them, listen to them—oh my God, listen to them!—and just be your cheerful self.” He smiled at her then, and she could tell he was becoming conscious of where they were, even though he plunged ahead. “You have no idea how much good a pretty face can do.”
“All my face got me before was trouble,” she reminded him, amazed she had the courage to say that.
“Things have changed,” he told her. “Maybe you’ve noticed?”
He got out of bed and stretched, then rotated his neck until it cracked. “I just came in here last night to check on you,” he said, sounding mystified. “And now it is morning, and I have not slept better in years. Odd, that.”
I haven’t slept better, either, she thought, as she pulled the covers over her again and settled herself down on the pillow they had so recently shared. She already knew he could manage more frankness than most people.
“Lt. Brittle, I know this will embarrass you, but you are the only man who has ever slept in my bed all night.”
He was at the door, but he turned around in surprise. “You were married all those years!” His face turned red. “I mean, he was not always an invalid.”
“No. I told you of his single-minded efforts to get a son.”
She put her face into the pillow, shy now. She nearly stopped breathing when Lt. Brittle came back to the bed, and sat down. “Keep going,” he said, his voice soft.
“He would finish, then go back to his own room,” she said simply. “I was happy last night.”
“I was, too.”
He left the room then. A smile on her face, she listened. Sure enough, there it was. He startled whistling before she heard the door to his room close.
She completely lacked the courage to go down to breakfast. Then the matter was moot, because she had no dress, anyway. She stayed in bed until she heard the front door close, then got up and looked out the window. There he was, uniform on, running a hand through his short hair and then slinging an apron over his shoulder. His jaunty walk made her smile.
In her robe, she padded downstairs and found Mrs. Walters. She followed her into the small laundry room, where she produced yesterday’s dress, stained but serviceable. “I couldn’t do any better,” Mrs. Walters said, as she handed it over. She took a surgeon’s apron from a peg. “Phil told me to give this to you. He hopes you can come to B Ward soon, and he suggested you have some plain black dresses made.”
“Not black,” Laura said firmly. “I told myself, never again. Dark blue, perhaps.” She held out the dress she had been wearing when Davey hemorrhaged. “Mrs. Walters, do you know of a seamstress who could use this sorry thing as a pattern, and turn it into five dresses just like it? No stains, though.”
“Happen I do,” the housekeeper said, fingering the fabric. “Dark blue?”
Laura nodded. “I have money upstairs. Please, Mrs. Walters, there is one more thing I need.”
“A mirror to see if you have lost the top of your head and all your brains?” the housekeeper teased.
“A copy of Robinson Crusoe.”
He knew better than anyone how much he had to do this day, but Phil took a moment to look back at the row of surgeons’ quarters, his eyes going to the black wreath on the door of Captain Brackett’s quarters. There would be no help from Owen for at least a week. It was a good thing he had trained his mates well.
He looked to the first-floor window of his quarters’ guest room, Laura’s room. “Lt. Brittle, you deserve an award for keeping your mind on business this morning,” he told himself.
He looked around. It was still early and no one was in sight, so his self-congratulations were for his ears only. No need for anyone else at Stonehouse to have an inkling how besotted he was. No need for her to know how long he had been lying there that morning, watching her sleep, touched beyond measure with all the ways she had tried to make him comfortable when he so stupidly fell asleep in her bed.
Good God, Phil, only a man in a million, or one other overworked surgeon, would ever do what you did, he scolded himself as he started walking again. Thank the Lord she did not seem to mind. Why, he couldn’t imagine.
It would be a memory to keep him warm. No need for anyone but him to know his keen pleasure at wakening in the middle of the night, rising up carefully on one elbow and watching Lady Taunton sleep. At first she had slept with her back to him, hunched over as though protecting herself. What had actually awakened him—and if he was to be perfectly honest, aroused him—was what happened when she must have felt cold, and moved toward his warmth.
True, she still kept her back to him, but she moved close until he was obliged—it was a privilege, he knew—to pull her close to his own body and share his heat. Gradually, she seemed to soften and straighten out, pillowing her glorious hair on his outstretched arm with a little sigh of contentment that made him grin in the dark.
He had slept with women before. When he decided not to let yellow fever kill him, Jamaica’s lovely dark women had been the perfect prescription for convalescence. What they offered him, he took, with not one single scruple.
Last night had been different on all levels, except the most basic one: he had yearned to make love to Laura Taunton. Maybe there was
a more elemental level, he decided, as he walked to Ward Block Four. As much as he wanted her body, he had a feeling that any overt moves in that direction would only have played with her brain and heart in ways that would just hurt them more. This was not a woman to toy with; this was one to cherish.
And how will I ever do that? he thought as he opened the door. Even in the best of times, it would take a brilliant lover. These are the worst of times, and I am no Don Juan; I’m just a surgeon.
He pulled his apron over his head and tied it in back, ready to begin his day. Now it was time to concentrate on the collapsed lung in C Ward, the puzzling scrotal infection in A Ward, and the unsearchable wonders of the Almighty’s hand in keeping Davey Dabney breathing. He smiled. He would rather think about Laura Taunton’s legs and the length of them.
He ward walked with Edward, his night surgeon’s mate, bleary-eyed and ready for the rack. They both agreed that perhaps the trocar and cannula was the next thought for the collapsed lung. The rare scurvy case was ready for discharge and return to sea, after a strongly worded reminder to take his daily lime juice without fail. The scrotal infection was still a puzzle. Could there be new infections from Plymouth’s whores? Perhaps it was time to clinically examine the local doxies again. He smiled at the thought of telling that to Admiral Sir David Carew.
His smile faded. He had to face the old boy now and tell him of his decision to hire Lady Taunton as a hospital matron. As intelligent as the whole matter had seemed in Laura’s comfortable bed, he had not a hope in Hades that Sir David would see it in the same light.
When he finally got to B Ward after a detour to Block Three, she was already there, sitting beside Davey, who looked more bright-eyed. What man with red blood cells wouldn’t? Phil thought as he observed them from the doorway. True, her dress was stained and that apron of his was cumbersome, but there was no denying Laura Taunton was an inspirational woman for sick men to contemplate.
