“They won’t get far,” growled Hamish, his face dark with anger.
“They’re gunners, probably all from the same outfit. It shouldn’t be hard to trace them.” His side felt oddly cold. Glancing down, he was surprised to find his uniform dark and wet.
“Easy lad,” said Hamish, starting forward. “You’re bleeding like a leaking levee there.”
But it was the widow who reached him first, one arm coming around his waist to catch his weight on her surprisingly strong shoulders. “I thought you’d been hurt.”
“It’s nothing,” he said, his hand closing tight about her upper arm, her flesh feeling warm and solid through the cloth of her mourning gown.
“Nothing, of course,” she said dryly. “That’s why your entire side is wet with blood. Here.” She handed him something rolled into a tight wad that she pressed against his cut, something he realized must be her cloth handbag. “Hold this tightly against the wound. It will help stop the bleeding until we get to the hospital.”
He looked down into her upturned face, glowing pale and smooth in the lamplight. He expected to find both hostility and contempt there, but was surprised to see only a frown of gentle concern he found disconcerting. “It’s not deep,” he said gruffly. “I can see to it later.”
“Don’t be a fool. The Hospital de Santerre is just around the corner.”
“Go on, lad,” said Hamish, squatting down beside one of the dead soldiers. “I can manage better here if I don’t need to worry about you bleeding to death on me.”
She tilted her head, that challenging smile Zach knew so well playing about her lips as she stared up at him. “Or don’t you think me capable of dealing with this?”
And so of course he went with her, her arm still about his waist, the sweet scent of her mingling in his head with the smell of jasmine and warm night air and freshly spilled blood.
CHAPTER NINE
Emmanuelle turned their steps toward the rue Bienville, her arm around the Union major’s waist as she held the makeshift pad to his wound, his weight resting lightly on her shoulders. The evening breeze rattled the banana fronds in a nearby walled garden and brought her the murmur of distant voices and the splash of an unseen fountain. Such familiar sounds, she thought, and yet there was nothing familiar about this moment at all.
“Why?” he said at last, as they turned the corner and a large, three-story Spanish-style house finally hid from view the carnage he had wrought. “Why are you doing this?”
She kept her gaze fixed straight ahead. “Because I know how quickly even the simplest of wounds can fester in this climate. And because I also know how careless—and stupid—men can be when they think they’re not seriously injured.”
“And you would care? I’m flattered.”
“Don’t be. I’ve also been known to tend mangy dogs and a lame skunk I once found in the street.” She felt the quiver of silent laughter that ran through him, and knew an unwanted and frighteningly powerful response that quickened within her. She was suddenly, acutely aware of his nearness, of the beat of his heart and the intake of his breath and the strength of his body, so hard and vitally male beneath the fine cloth of his hated blue uniform. That she should react in such a way to any man appalled her. That she should respond, thus, to the nearness of this man filled her with shame, and fear.
“It was an admirable thing you did back there,” she said after a moment. “Rescuing that colored man from those soldiers.”
“Why? Because he’s a Negro?”
“That’s not what I meant and you know it. Those Yankee soldiers you fought, they obviously can’t accept the idea of an educated, affluent man with dark skin. They’d probably never even seen one before. But here in New Orleans, there are almost as many gens de couleur libres as there are black slaves.”
“And they’re still not allowed to vote.”
“I am not allowed to vote,” she said softly.
“I don’t think that’s right, either.”
It was so simply said, it took her utterly by surprise. Most men—most people—laughed at the suggestion of extending the right to vote to women. But not this man.
It had been a mistake, she thought, her arm still tight around his warm man’s body. It had been a mistake to offer to help him, to touch him like this, to hold him close to her, to walk with him, talking, through the gently scented night as if they were lovers instead of enemies.
“You enjoy it, don’t you?” she said suddenly. “Killing, I mean.”
He was silent for so long, she didn’t think he was going to answer her. His sigh, when it came, surprised her, for there could be no mistaking the weariness and regret it echoed. “No, I don’t enjoy it.”
Her mind resurrected for her an image of him surrounded by that pack of men, his teeth bared in a frightful smile, the bloodied steel of his saber slashing, and slashing, and slashing. Not even Henri Santerre’s murder, with its terrorizing suddenness and haunting anonymity, had prepared her for the cold savagery of those few deadly moments in the rue Conti. She might have seen the results of such carnage in the past, but she had never actually witnessed its creation. “You were smiling.”
“I was angry. I don’t like people who try to kill me.”
She glanced up at his dark profile, silhouetted against the dim light spilling out through a nearby shuttered window. “That’s what war is about, isn’t it? Killing.”
“This wasn’t war. This was just men being stupid.”
“So you only enjoy war?”
“I didn’t say that.”
They had reached the front steps of the Hospital de Santerre. Stretching out her free hand, Emmanuelle gave the bell a hard yank that set it to clanging violently. “You must enjoy it. You made it your career.”
He let his arm drop from her shoulders and turned to face her. “You wanted to become a doctor. Does that mean you enjoy death?”
She stared back at him, but the gas lamp mounted beside the hospital’s wide entrance threw only shadow across his features. She could see nothing but the sharp angle of his cheekbone and the powerful, hard line of his jaw.
With a sudden creaking of hinges, the massive door beside them swung inward. “Lieber Gott,” said the tall, lanky young man who stood there, his dark brown eyes widening in surprise at the sight of the bloodied, blue-uniformed man before him. He was just nineteen, Hans, and he’d come to America less than five years before with his mother and four brothers, all trying to avoid being caught up in the wars of unification sweeping Germany. Only, instead of fighting the French, Hans had simply ended up losing part of his foot—and very nearly his life—in a bloody little engagement with a Yankee patrol in the back swamps of the Bayou Crevé.
“Do you need me to help you with him?” Hans asked, although with his accent it came out sounding like vith him.
Emmanuelle struck a match to light one of the lanterns that stood in a row on the long table just inside the door. “I can manage, thanks. But I could use some hot water from the kitchen.”
“I’ll get it.”
“Who’s he?” said the major, his gaze following the young German as he swung away with an awkward maneuver of his crutch.
“Hans?” She turned, the lantern in hand, to lead the way down the hall. “He does light nursing work around the hospital, and keeps an eye on the patients at night.”
“On a crutch?”
“Where else is he likely to find work—on a crutch?” She pushed open the door to the sparsely furnished, well-scrubbed room across from the office. “You’ll need to take off your jacket and shirt.” She found she couldn’t look at him as she said it, as if she were suddenly shy or embarrassed, as if she had never before seen a man’s naked flesh. “And your saber, of course.”
The scabbard rattled as he unbuckled its belt and turned in a slow circle, his gaze studying the high-ceilinged, bare-floored room with its unadorned, whitewashed walls and stone-topped table and curtainless windows showing only the black of the night beyo
nd. “This is where you do your surgery?”
She hung the lamp from the hook beside the table, then quickly stripped off her hat and gloves and laid them aside. “What do you think we do here? Dissections?”
“If that’s meant to scare me,” he said, his fingers going to work on the brass buttons of his uniform, “then you’ve succeeded.”
He had fine-boned hands, long-fingered and elegant, and she found herself watching them, watching him as he eased open the last button of his coat and began to peel it off. She thought of those hands, tightly gripped around the pommel of his sword. Maiming. Killing. “Try to keep the pad pressed against your wound,” she said, and swung away to go wash her own hands at the sink in the corner.
“Has he been here long?”
“Who?” she said, busy with the pump.
“Hans.”
“Almost three years. He worked as a nurse before he was wounded.”
“Which was when?”
“May.” She took a cloth from the stack kept wrapped up, clean, on a shelf near the sink. “I want to wash that wound before I bandage it. You may have bits of thread from your uniform caught in it. . . .” Her voice trailed off as she turned to face him again.
He stood at his ease with one hip hitched on the edge of the table, an outstretched arm braced at his side, the other hand holding the blood-soaked, makeshift pad pressed to his ribs. He was built long and lean, with sinewy arms and shoulders and an exquisitely molded chest that gleamed golden and naked in the soft lamplight, and the sight of him, the sheer beauty of him, momentarily took her breath. Around them, the night seemed strangely still, the soft rustle of the breeze through the leaves of the Chinaball tree in the courtyard outside an intrusion.
“Your water, madame,” said Hans from the doorway.
She jerked away to take the white enamel basin of hot water and close the door behind him with a murmured thanks. Then she stood for a moment, one hand splayed against the door panel, the other holding the basin of water against her hip as she asked herself what was wrong with her. She was as familiar with men’s bodies as any fille de joie out of a riverfront bordello. There was no excuse for her reaction to this man, no excuse for her exquisite sensitivity to his nearness, no excuse for her unprofessional awareness of his half-naked body. It must be the strain of these last few days, she decided—the fear and uncertainty. It was making her act like some bizarre cross between a shivering coward and a love-struck schoolgirl.
“I don’t smoke,” said the man behind her.
She spun about fast enough to send the water sloshing over the cobalt rim of the basin, wetting the bodice of her gown. “Monsieur?” She met his dark eyes to find them gleaming with amusement and something else, something he hid with a downward sweep of those impossibly long lashes.
“In case you should be tempted to take a peek at my lungs.”
“Humph.” She pushed away from the door and went to set the basin on the table beside him with a clatter. “I generally don’t kill my own cadavers.”
“Now that’s reassuring.”
She pushed away the hand holding the blood-soaked pad to his wound. “Let me see this.”
The knife had caught him high in the side to slice through flesh and sinewy muscle in a long, ugly gash that oozed fresh blood as soon as the pressure of the cloth was removed. “You’ve lost a fair amount of blood,” she said, “but it looks as if your ribs kept the blade from cutting deep enough to do any real damage.” She put her hand on his side, just above the wound. His flesh felt warm and smooth to the touch, the muscle beneath it hard, powerful. She heard his breath catch. “Does it hurt?”
He gave a low, hoarse laugh. “Not really.”
“It will.” Reaching out, she dipped the cloth into the water and, wringing it out only slightly, began carefully to clean the edges of the cut. She was aware, once again, of the silence of the night around them, of the trickle of water in the basin when she rinsed the cloth, of the sound of his breathing, and hers.
“Where did you learn to do all this?” he asked, breaking the tense intimacy of the moment.
She went to get a bottle of alcohol from the cupboard near the door. “Do what?”
“This,” he said when she bent over his wound again. “Those two medical schools you were telling me about? I checked. Neither of them admits women.”
“Of course not.” Grimly, she pressed a pad soaked in the alcohol to his wound. The sting of it in the open flesh brought the breath hissing out of him. “Why would they, when a woman can only be licensed as a midwife?”
“So where did you study? Paris?”
She straightened sharply and swung away again. “I always planned to go back to Paris to study,” she said, replacing the alcohol and gathering the bandages and curving needle she would use to suture the wound.
“But you didn’t?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Dumping the bandages on the table, she stood before him, the silk-threaded needle in one hand, the other fisted on her hip. “I really don’t see how that is any of your business, Major.”
Hard and compelling, his gaze met hers. “Henri Santerre’s murder is my business. And you were with him the night he was killed.”
She bent over his wound again to draw the edges together with her free hand. “That makes me your business, does it, monsieur?”
“Yes.”
Without warning, she thrust the needle through his skin, and was feeling mean enough to smile when he flinched.
“I think you’re enjoying this,” he said. “And you didn’t answer my question.”
“Which one?” She drove the needle, again, through first one side, then the other of the cut flesh. As she worked, her hip pressed against the hard muscle of his thigh. She could feel the strength of him, the heat of him, through the blue cloth of his uniform, distracting her, disconcerting her, so that she had to force herself to focus. It was rather like sewing a seam, this suturing of wounds. She wasn’t particularly clever with a needle, not compared with most women. But her sutures had always been much neater than either Henri’s or Philippe’s. “You’ve asked a great many questions.”
“Where did you learn medicine?”
She shrugged. “Officially, enrollment in the medical schools here is limited to men only. But anyone willing to pay the professors twenty dollars a course can attend their lectures.” She worked a small knot into her thread, and cut it. “Even women.” She reached for the clean bandages. “Although I learned far more from my father and Henri Santerre than I ever learned in those lecture halls.”
“And from your husband.”
“Hold that,” she said briskly, and pressed a clean pad against his wound.
“It’s unusual, isn’t it,” he said, reaching up to hold the pad in place with the splayed fingers of his right hand, “for the only son of such a wealthy family to become a doctor?”
“Not so unusual.” She began to wrap the bandages around his ribs. “There are other planters who are also doctors.”
“The de Beauvaises aren’t just planters.”
She shrugged. “Philippe was the fourth son. He never expected to inherit everything.” She tied off the ends of the bandage and straightened. “As it turned out, of course, he never did.”
Against his flesh, the bandage shone startlingly white, for his skin was the deep warm golden color usually seen only in those of Mediterranean blood. He sat very still on the edge of the table, his arms hanging loosely at his sides, his bare chest lifting slightly with each indrawn breath. And she was aware of it again, of the intimacy of being here with him, of the strange, forbidden pull of his naked body, of her dangerous fascination with this hard, frightening man.
“Who do you know who uses a crossbow?” he asked quietly.
The suddenness, the complete unexpectedness of the question caught her by surprise, so that she took a step back, her lips parting as she sucked in a quick gasp of air. “Monsieur?”
“I
t’s an uncommon weapon,” he said, his eyes bright with a calculated gleam. “Yet you’re familiar enough with it to recognize a bolt when you see one. Even an unusually small, silver-tipped bolt.”
Impossible to deny any real knowledge of the weapon, Emmanuelle thought; impossible, too, to admit the truth—or at least all of it. She watched him reach for his shirt and wince as he began to pull it on. His movements were slow and awkward, for if his wound hadn’t been hurting him before, it would be now. If he’d been any other man, she would have helped him dress. She didn’t move.
“Philippe,” she said at last, her hands fisting in her black skirts. “Philippe often hunted with a crossbow. It . . . intrigued him.” Many things intrigued Philippe, the more unusual and bizarre, the better, but she didn’t say that.
She saw his brows draw together in a frown. “Your husband?”
“Yes.”
He finished buttoning his coat and straightened slowly. “Are you sure he’s dead?”
It was a simple, chance question, but the effect on her was like a physical blow, bringing with it a blinding flash of possibility and fear. All day, she had been asking herself, over and over again, just one question: Who? If Henri had, in fact, been hit by mistake, then the question became, not who had wanted to kill Henri, but who wanted to kill Emmanuelle? And it occurred to her now, as the seconds stretched out silent and damning, that Philippe . . . Philippe might have believed he had a reason to kill her.
But Philippe was dead.
Her gaze fell to where the Yankee’s cavalry scabbard rested, shining and deadly. She bent swiftly to pick it up. “If you’re asking did I see his body, then the answer is no. No, I didn’t. You’ll need to talk to the Yankees on the Bayou Crevé. They’re the ones who killed him.” She thrust the saber into his arms. Her gaze met his, and she let all of her loathing, all of her contempt for this man and his uniform and his violent ways leach into her eyes and into her voice. “They killed him,” she said again. “And they buried him.”
Midnight Confessions Page 9