Tempted

by Molly O'Keefe

  “Can't we just...?”

  “Fuck?”

  He swallowed and nodded.

  “Not without telling me what's got you tied in knots. Sad sex is not interesting sex.”

  “I have an…aversion.”

  “Aversion, perversion, they are much the same.” She stroked his shoulder.

  At her touch he jerked back so hard he nearly knocked a lamp off a table.

  Mistake, he thought, panting in the humid, close little room that smelled like woman and his fear. This was a goddamn mistake.

  “An aversion,” she said, her eyes wide. “To touching?”

  “Not…” He had not looked at it this way. He had not taken it apart like this. It was all just a blank horror. “I can tolerate touching her, I think. But I can’t tolerate… to be… touched by her.”

  “Why aren’t you with this... her? To work on your aversion.”

  “I can’t,” he whispered. “If I fail, it will hurt her so much.”

  Her smile was startling. And pretty. “Well, I do love a challenge. May I help you take off your coat?” she asked, but before he could answer she reached for his buttons. The pressure of her fingers against his ribs made it suddenly impossible to breathe, and he flinched away.

  “I’ll do it.” Carefully he took off his coat, laid it across the chair near the table with the lamp.

  “Your vest,” she said. There was a secret tension in her body. And he could suddenly feel her interest.

  It was not uncomfortable.

  He took off his vest, and then he was standing there in his shirtsleeves and suspenders.

  “Would you like to touch me?” she asked, holding out her hands, those moonlight arms.

  Trembling, he reached for her fingers. They were warm from being in the gloves. Her palms were damp. His fingers traced the tendon under her wrist, and her breath came in slowly. He got to her elbows, and her fingers brushed the insides of his arms, and he stopped for a moment. He didn’t flinch, which was an improvement, but the instinct was one he had to fight.

  “What happened?” she asked. “That you're like this?”

  For a moment the memory was too strong. The crush of the bodies. The wet thickness of blood and shit seeping into his clothes. His skin.

  He lurched back, sucking in air.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, her hands up. “I’m sorry I asked.”

  He stood just outside the brightest circle of light from the lamp. His shoes were cut in half by it.

  He needed to give up on this idea of Anne. Of being anything of use to her besides a friend.

  But that, of course, would be over too. Once she was married. There would be nothing of them when she married.

  And that, more than anything, made his decision for him.

  “Shall we try again?” Delilah asked.

  Anne, he thought. Anne was worth it.

  He nodded and stepped back into the light.

  And then the screaming started.

  Chapter 6

  Anne put the last of the re-laundered and rolled bandages into the dresser in the room they used for surgery and exams. She blew out the lamp, and the curl of smoke and the smell of extinguished flame followed her out the door.

  It was past time for her to go to bed, and she’d exhausted all of her distractions.

  I could ask for a lesson in setting bones, she thought, looking down the hallway at Dr. Madison’s shut door. But he’d gone into his room, sweating and shaking, a few hours ago and she did not have the wherewithal to face him. Not his addiction. Not his piercing eyes. Not after Steven.

  In the back, there was a baby's soft cry and the thump of Elizabeth's feet on the floor.

  I could see if she needs help. Surely, she thought, someone needs help.

  A sudden pounding on the door made her jump, her heart in her throat.

  “Doc!” a man yelled, and he pounded again. Frantic. “Doc! We need you!”

  There was no movement, no sound from Dr. Madison’s quarters, so she stepped toward the front door and opened it, letting in moonlight and cold air.

  And Tell Garrity.

  “What’s happened?” she asked. All thoughts of Steven and Dr. Madison gone. “Is it Sam?”

  Tell’s thin, dirty face was streaked with sweat and tears. “There’s a problem at Delilah’s. Sam… Sam did something to one of the girls, and he’s got himself locked up in the room, and he’ll only open the door for Dr. Madison. People are threatening to kill him if he doesn’t open the door…”

  Oh, God. She’d wanted a distraction, but not this.

  “One minute,” she murmured, already halfway down the hallway. Dr. Madison’s door was locked, but she had a key and she used it, slipping into the doctor’s rooms.

  In the dark, she could see his long body stretched out on the settee. Quickly she lit the candle on the table near the door and approached him. The chloroform and towel he used to administer it were tipped over on the floor next to his slack hand.

  Thank God his chest was moving. Lifting and falling in a comforting repeating pattern.

  But those breaths were deep. And she did not think she could wake him.

  “Dr. Madison!” she cried, and shook him. Nothing.

  “James!” she yelled, and smacked him across the face. He didn’t so much as flinch.

  “What’s wrong with him?” It was Tell, seeing far too much, standing in the shadows of the doorway, the door she hadn't closed cracked open.

  “The doctor suffers from migraines,” she lied. Pulling together a plan out of desperation and bravado, she blew out the candle and pushed past Tell in the doorway. She grabbed her coat from the stand by the door. “I’ll go see Sam.”

  “You…?” Tell said. Even this illiterate boy who’d been raised on the battlefields and then in a silver mine knew what she was doing was far beyond acceptable.

  “The girl in the room with Sam, is she dead?”

  “No. Not…I don’t know. Sam sounded real cut up about whatever he done to her.”

  “And what will happen to Sam if we don’t get there soon?” she asked.

  “Someone is going to kill him.”

  “Exactly. It’s me or Sam, and probably that girl dies.”

  Still Tell hesitated, but Anne had no more patience. She grabbed her cane and stepped out the front door. Moving as fast as she could toward disaster.

  Tell led her through the back entrance of Delilah’s. She hadn’t known there was one, but a door from the back alley surrounded by cats led them into a small, dark room. There was another door, and they walked through a moonlit courtyard. A silver surprise. She had no idea this courtyard, with its garden, existed.

  But then they were through another doorway. The sounds of voices and singing and shouting, a sharp piano came muffled through the walls, and the warm light from a hundred candles fell through the doorway.

  Delilah stepped out of the shadows, giving every impression of being calm, but Anne could see otherwise. The feather in her hair was shaking.

  “Madison?” She asked. Anne shook her head.

  “Damn him.”

  “My sentiments exactly,” Anne said. But she reached out and squeezed Delilah's hands where they were clenched in her skirts. They had grown to be friends of a kind during Anne's monthly visits with the doctor to check on the girls.

  Delilah squeezed Anne's hands back. Hard.

  “Do you know Sam?” Delilah asked.

  Anne nodded. “Where is he?”

  “Follow me. Try not to draw attention to yourself. Kyle's giving away drinks and my girls are doing their best to create a diversion, but everyone can sense something is happening.”

  Anne followed Delilah through the doorway and immediately up the steps to the second floor. At the top of the stairs were Janey, Rose and Bea. When they glanced over at her, she gave them her best reassuring smile. Dr. Madison, for all his flaws, would be able to convey a certain amount of calm. Authority. She was trying to do the same, but judging by the
terrified expressions on Bea and Rose’s faces, she could only assume it wasn't working.

  “Who is the girl in the room with him?”

  “Stella,” Delilah answered in a cold voice. She played the part of reluctant mother very well, but Anne was not fooled. Not right now. Delilah was scared. Everyone was scared. She squeezed Janey's hand as she walked by.

  “There is a customer talking to Sam through the door. A solider, like him.”

  “Is it helping?”

  “How do I know?” Delilah said.

  “No one is dead,” Anne replied, meeting Delilah’s eyes.

  “Then yes, so far it is helping.”

  Anne got to the top of the stairs and lifted her head enough to look down on the room below. Whatever debauchery she’d expected from a whore house in full swing, this seemed... not it. Tension over the room was palpable.

  "Stop staring," Delilah said, and Anne pushed herself into motion.

  Down the hall there was a knot of people gathered outside the door, and as Delilah and Anne approached they all separated, revealing a man crouched down, speaking into the keyhole.

  It was Steven.

  She knew in a heartbeat.

  She knew by the color of his hair. The bend of his spine. The width of his shoulders.

  She knew because she would know him anywhere. Even here—where it seemed impossible that he could be.

  The pain was cataclysmic.

  Because Anne had believed him when he said it wasn’t just her whose touch he could not abide. But clearly, as his presence at a whore house indicated, that was not true.

  What had Delilah called him? A customer. Yes. There was only one kind of customer at Delilah’s.

  Her broken heart and shattered pride meant nothing in this terrible moment, but she could not stop the pain. It was like blood from an artery.

  “Steven,” Delilah said. “The doctor’s assistant is here.”

  “Assistant,” he said in that familiar voice. He turned his face sideways, and she had to glance away. At the ceiling. Anywhere but at him as he came to his full height and turned to see her.

  “Anne,” he gasped.

  Angrier than she’d ever seen him, he crossed the hallway to her and grabbed her arm, nearly dragging her a few steps away from the crowd watching them with wide eyes.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked through his teeth, and she became just suddenly, just all at once, so angry it hurt. Everything she felt for this man hurt, because it had nowhere to go—it just stayed inside of her body, poking and jabbing and sinking, and she was tired of it. She hated it.

  Hated him.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, unable to stop herself. He blushed—Steven, whose life she’d saved. He blushed and for a moment could not look at her. She curled her hands into fists, her blunt nails digging into her skin, the pain sharp enough to keep the angry tears at bay.

  “The doctor is seeing other patients,” she said in her coldest, most professional voice. And his head snapped back around, his blue eyes pinned her to the wall.

  Fury, a great blast of it from him, made the hair on her arms stand up.

  Steven leaned down, looming over her, so close she could smell whiskey on his breath. So close she could see the hair of his beard coming in on his cheeks. So close she could feel the heat of his chest against the bare skin of her face.

  The air smelled of him and as it crossed her tongue—it tasted like him.

  “Where is he, Anne?”

  “At the house,” she whispered, unable to meet his eyes. Feeling the heat of his attention through her clothing. “He’s…indisposed.”

  “I will kill him. To put you in this situation—”

  Finally Anne shook herself free of his hand and stepped away from his body. She could see his chest through the open neck of his shirt, and she remembered it from the days in the clearing. Smooth and wide, thick with muscle.

  “The situation I am in is of my own making. Just as yours is.” He stepped back and she gave him her sharpest smile. Inside she was trying to staunch the blood from the wound he’d given her, but she would not show him that. Not ever.

  We can no longer be friends, she thought.

  “How gratifying that you have found someone you can bear to touch. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to try and save Stella.”

  “It is not… My being here is not as it appears.”

  “I’m sure that is what many men here say.” She brushed past him, back toward the door with the people gathered around it. They made way for her, and soon she was at the closed wooden door. She lifted a trembling hand and knocked.

  “Mr. Garrity?” she asked, trying to keep her voice level. “Who is it?” His voice, muffled through the wood, sounded frantic and wild. She put a hand to her throat, gathering what courage she had.

  “It’s Anne Denoe,” she said. “From Dr. Madison.”

  “You…you alone?”

  She gave everyone around her a hard look and they backed up. “I am, Mr. Garrity. Can I come in? To see Stella?”

  “Oh, Mrs. Denoe, I think… I think I done something real bad.”

  She closed her eyes and pressed her forehead to the door. “Is she breathing?”

  “I think so.”

  “Let me in, Sam, so I can check on her.”

  “Anne.” It was Steven behind her, urgent and scared. “You can’t go in there.”

  But then the door cracked open and the barrel of a gun came out. It was not the first time a gun had been pointed in her face, but she imagined that it never got less terrifying.

  Sam’s wild eye appeared behind the barrel.

  “Please, Annie,” Steven said, and the barrel of the gun swung over her shoulder towards Steven’s face.

  “Sam,” she said, stepping sideways between the barrel of the gun and Steven. “Sam, it’s just me. Just me coming in.”

  His wild eye trained again on her face. Over his shoulder, she was able to see just a small slice of the bed and on it, Stella’s legs. Unmoving.

  “Let me come in,” she said. “Sam. Let me see Stella.”

  The door eased open just a small crack and she slipped in, but Steven grabbed her hand.

  “Please, Anne,” he whispered. “Please don’t do this.”

  Her heart hammered in her chest, like a fist against her ribcage, and she didn’t turn back. Not at all. She just pulled her hand free, inch by horrible inch, from Steven’s touch.

  And walked into the room with the madman, his gun and the unconscious prostitute he may have killed.

  The room is not all that different from mine.

  Except for the man with the gun and the unconscious prostitute. And the smell. Blood and rose water and the urine and sweat that clung to Sam. To his clothes and hair. His dirty body.

  It was choking in this airless room.

  “Did I kill her?” Sam asked, pointing to the bed.

  Anne shifted Stella on the bed, so she wasn’t lying across it with her head hanging off the side. She pulled down Stella’s petticoats, covered her knees, offered her what little modesty she was able.

  Stella’s breathing was fine. Her pulse was fine.

  “She’s not dead.”

  There were no broken bones. No wounds but a gash on her forehead that was bleeding profusely. Annie used the edge of the pillowcase to clear the blood off her forehead and her hairline. Her face was already bruising. Her eye was swollen. Her lip split.

  Sam had beaten her.

  Her awareness of Sam was prickly and painful. She could feel him behind her pacing back and forth, gun in one hand, chewing the fingernails of his other hand.

  Sweat rolled down her back, under her arms.

  “Sam,” she said, unable to take it anymore. “Please stand still.”

  “Is she all right?” he asked.

  Anne poured tepid water from the pitcher into the basin and submerged the gray but clean cloth.

  “I won’t know until she wakes up,” Anne said, pres
sing the compress gently to Stella’s forehead and eye. There could be lasting damage to the eye. One of Father’s patients got kicked in the eye by a mule and he never saw out of that eye again.

  But she didn’t know enough to be able to tell if that would happen to Stella.

  Very suddenly she realized she didn’t know enough about anything that was happening in this room.

  What made me think I could do this? That I could handle any of this?

  Oh, why is it so hard to breathe?

  Stop, Anne, she thought. There is only room for one hysterical person in this room.

  Once she had watched Dr. Madison lift Sam’s eyelids when he came in unconscious. So she did the same to Stella. Her eyes looked normal. Pupils were the same size.

  That’s good, she thought. That’s one good thing.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “I hit her.” Sam’s voice broke. “I hit her because she kept talking. She was talking and talking and she wouldn’t shut up. She wouldn’t.” He began to hit himself on the head. Over and over. Flat-handed and hard. “Shut. Up.”

  “Please,” she whispered. “Please, Sam. Stop it.”

  He turned to her, bones inside skin. Eyes so deep inside his skull they looked like holes. And madness. Nothing but madness keeping him on his feet. His clothes hung off his body like he was a skeleton.

  A chill raced over her skin and she realized the danger she was in. Steven’s fear made terrible sense now.

  “How?” Sam asked, a child in front of a parent. “Tell me how to stop it and I will. Tell me how to stop it…” He lurched toward her and she flinched away, falling back on the bed, against the body of the woman he’d beaten.

  Stella stirred beside her. She groaned, shifting her legs. “Sam?” she breathed.

  Like paper left in the rain, Sam’s face dissolved in front of Anne. And he collapsed across the bed, pulling Stella’s legs toward him as if he could climb her prone body.

  “C...careful,” Annie said, the stammer impossible to control. But he was pushing her aside and she slipped off the silk covers on the bed, landing in a heap on floor.

  “I’m sorry,” Sam said, clutching at Stella’s petticoats, her thin skirts. “Do you hear me?” he asked. “I’m sorry. Stella, baby… I’m so sorry.”