by Lynda J. Cox
“Abigail, no matter where I sleep, there’ll be no turning back here. I will have spent the night in your home.”
She came to her feet, moving in closer to him with the same fluid motion. “I’m aware of that. Even if I made you sleep out here on the porch—”
“I thought we had moved past your desire I sleep outside.” He added what he hoped was a teasing quality to his voice.
“We have. But, even if you did sleep out here, everyone in town would be wagging their tongues that you spent the night with me.” She brushed her slender hand across his chest, finally lowering her gaze. “I don’t want to wake up alone.”
The woman went to his head like a mellow, smooth whiskey. Mathew glanced down at her, reminding himself this was still a marriage in name only and likely to remain that way for some time, and castigating himself for allowing her to go to his head. “Is there a door between the two rooms which can remain open so if Ethan wakes, I’ll hear him?”
MATHEW GRUMBLED AT whatever woke him from his slumber, pulled the warm quilt over his shoulders, and burrowed under the thick pillow, hoping to catch just five more minutes of sleep.
Thick pillow...He bolted upright into a sitting position, staring at the unfamiliar surroundings for several heart-stopping moments. Where was he and where was Ethan? For the previous six months, the boy hadn’t been out of his sight. Ethan even slept next to him, Mathew’s frock coat serving as both pillow and blanket for the boy.
The events of the last day washed over him, jarring and confusing. Mathew dropped his head onto the dark wood of the headboard and forced his breathing to level. His heart slowed from its frantic beating. He was in Abigail’s home. His gaze drifted over the black wainscoting that divided the pristine white walls of the high-ceilinged room, recalling her words that this had been a second, less formal parlor—if there was formality in brothel. Sheer lace curtains fluttered in the slight breeze making its way in through the opened windows and transoms and threw dancing, shifting patterns of shadow and light into the airy room. Heavy velvet curtains in a dark shade of burgundy had been drawn back from the windows. A massive armoire dominated the far corner, flanked by two small and decidedly delicate chairs. A rocking chair and accompanying small table filled another corner.
His gaze fell on the thick quilt she had rolled into a divider for the bed last night. The sound of her steady breathing had been a balm to his soul and lulled him into a deep sleep—the first he’d had in months.
Mathew leaned over and looked into the other parlor. The small couch where Ethan slept was empty. Panic rose again, only to be tamped down when laughter from the far end of the house—the kitchen actually—reached him. He rolled out of the bed, scanning the room in a cursory search for his shirt. Unable to find the garment, he tugged his suspenders up and pulled the quilt off the bed.
Another laugh rolled through the house—and he had to catch his breath. Ethan was laughing.
He shook the quilt out and draped the bedding around his shoulders and made his way to the kitchen. With each step closer, the aroma of rich, strong coffee increased. He stumbled to a halt in the doorway, uncomfortably aware he wasn’t clad enough to be seen by Abigail’s guest. He stepped back, hoping he hadn’t drawn anyone’s attention.
No such luck. Abigail glanced in his direction, the smile breaking across her features as bright as the dawning sun. “Mathew. Good morning.”
Ethan, Abigail’s guest, and the other small boy sitting at the table all turned to the doorway. Both boys had a white powder on their lips, and they held what appeared to be a pastry of some sort.
“Good morning.” Mathew pulled the quilt more tightly around his shoulders, keeping his left arm and hand hidden within the draping material. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll wait in the parlor until your guests leave.”
“Won’t you join us, Dr. Knight?” The woman at the table gestured to a plate of the pastries. “I brought café au lait and beignets.”
“Thank you but I have to decline. I’m afraid I’m not properly attired.” He met Abigail’s gaze across the room. “When you have a moment, will you please bring my shirt to me?”
“About your shirt...I scrubbed it, but the stains were set. I hung it to dry in the bathing room.” Abigail stood and tilted her head toward the small room off the kitchen. “Molly brought over two shirts and a pair of black trousers that were her husband’s. They don’t fit Mr. Reed, but she thought they might be suited to you.”
“Mr. Reed?”
Bright rose color flooded Molly’s face. “Mr. Reed. He’s been working for me at the restaurant as a cook, but he’s more a chef. He’s just brilliant with the foods he makes. How he does it with only one hand, I truly don’t know.”
The gentleman who stepped into the altercation with Roden... Mathew recalled the man who was about the same height but had a more substantial frame. “Thank you, again, Miss...”
He trailed off, not sure of her last name. She had a child, so perhaps he should have used “Mrs.” And that still didn’t answer the question of her last name.
She waved her hand in a gesture he recognized as an attempt to minimize his formality. “Not ‘Miss’ anything. It’s Molly. You’re very welcome. I’m glad that someone can get some use out of the clothing. I’d hate to see practically new garments be turned into rags.”
Knowing there was nothing he could say that wouldn’t be either trite or impolite, Mathew just dipped his head to acknowledge her generosity and made his way back to Abigail’s bedroom. His pride smarted, that once more, he was reduced to accepting charity.
He threw the quilt onto the bed, grabbed up his low-topped boots and looked around for his socks. As with his shirt, they were nowhere to be seen. Had she taken those, too, to wash them? A groan broke from him as he sank into the rocking chair in the corner of the room. His gaze lowered to a spot on the floor, tracing the shape and whorls of a knot in a plank between his bare feet. He didn’t look up when he heard Abigail enter the room or when she set something on the small table at his elbow, though the aroma of the strong and bitter café au lait wafted to him.
“Mathew?”
His only response to Abigail’s soft query was a slight shake of his head.
“I brought you some coffee and a couple beignets.”
“Just coffee, please.” The knot continued to hold his attention. “Where are my socks?”
“When I got your shirt to wash it, I took your socks, too. After I washed them, I realized they needed darning.” The gurgling of coffee being poured underscored her words. “And, when I tried to darn them, it occurred to me they couldn’t be fixed.”
“They are my only pair.” Even he heard the growl in his voice.
A small click, a sound he recognized as a china cup being placed on a metal tray, gave way to a squeak. The doors of the armoire opening caught in the corner of his eye. The protest of wood grating on wood announced a drawer pulled out.
“One of the things some of us did to keep our hands busy and to keep from worrying—as much as we could stop worrying—was to knit socks to send to the Confederate troops that we were told had so very little. We didn’t get to send all of them.”
She dropped a pair of the discussed clothing onto his knee. He didn’t move. He couldn’t. To take those finely knit articles into his hand would be the final blow to his pride. The hem of her skirt blocked his view of the whorled knot in the floor, before she dropped to her knees in front of him. She took his hands into hers.
“I understand this must be incredibly difficult for you. You don’t strike me as the type of man who ever needed charity before that blasted war forced you into such straits.”
He raised his head in minute degrees until he met her gaze. The pity he was expecting to see there was absent.
“The people here don’t have a lot of money, but what we do have is the same as you—pride. And a lot of it. Most of the folks here couldn’t pay Sam in cash. We never went hungry. Sam’s horse never went without shoe
s. His buggy got fixed every time something broke. I’ve always got at least a dozen eggs.” Her grip on his hands tightened. “Consider the clothing Molly brought over as payment in advance, in case she ever needs a doctor for Abe.”
“Roden was the first person I’ve treated in more than two years.” Mathew glanced at their joined hands, shocked he made that confession so easily. “I haven’t considered myself a doctor in almost four years. I couldn’t save those men who trusted me at Camp Douglas. During the war, I was little more than a butcher. Now, if I have to do surgery, I can’t. I can’t manage it with only one good hand.”
“You said last night you had nothing to treat those men at the prisoner camp. How could you save them if the Yankees gave you nothing? Because you had nothing to help those men in that prisoner camp didn’t make you any less a doctor, and I’ll bet it didn’t stop you from trying to keep them alive.” She shook her head in what he could only define as wry disbelief. “Saving a man’s life by amputating his arm or his leg makes you a butcher? I don’t think a butcher would know how to tie off veins and arteries to prevent a man bleeding to death after an amputation.”
Her words recalled the horrors of a battlefield surgical tent: the literal piles of amputated limbs, blood smelling like wet iron, sinking into mud created from all that blood ... and other bodily fluids which didn’t bear deep contemplation. His stomach had turned with each limb he removed. Worse was the recollection of a frigid December day along the Stones River. He’d used the excuse of trying to save a man’s life by pushing the intestines into the body, just so he could warm his own hands, stiff and unsteady with the cold. He’d needed warm hands to amputate a leg. He had justified the ghoulish behavior with the reasoning he couldn’t save the man with the belly wound, but he could save the one with the leg wound. Men were reduced by their wounds—not their names, not their rank, not even the side they fought for.
Abigail had no idea what kind of a monster he was. Not the kind who would ever harm a child, but one much worse. The kind who chose which men lived or died. He tried to extract his hands from hers, stopping when she gripped his fingers more tightly. “I let men die because there was nothing to be done for them.”
“That still doesn’t make you a butcher. Or a killer, like Robbie accused you of last night.” The accent she tried to keep hidden sounded in her words. “I’ll never forget the first letter Sam sent home. He wrote me he was horrified and sickened with the things he had to do after that first battle. He prayed God would forgive him for lying to a soldier with a gut-shot when he said that he was going to get better. He knew that man knew he was lying, but he was calmer after Sam said they was goin’ to fix him. He said as long as he lived, he would hear their screams and hear those young men, not much more than boys, callin’ for their mommas.”
“I took an oath to do no harm.” The choices he’d made, the selections of who lived and who died, crushed his soul with the gravity of those decisions.
“So did Sam. Did you deliberately end someone’s life? Or did you make a bargain to lessen a dying man’s pain so you could focus on saving the life of another?” If she heard how thick her accent had become, it didn’t slow her words. “Because that’s the devil’s bargain Sam said he was forced to make again and again. You tell me, Mathew Knight, if that makes you any less a doctor.”
A devil’s bargain...that’s exactly what it was every time he stood in surgery and deliberated who he could save and who he couldn’t. He eased his breath out and said, “Sam was a lucky man.”
“You’re laughin’ at me, ain’t you?”
He shook his head. “I’m admiring your common sense.”
“As long as you don’t think I’m a backwoods cretin.” The accent was suddenly quelled, as if she realized how heavily it colored her words.
“A cretin?” The faint aroma of vanilla and roses wafted from her hair when she snapped her head back to fully meet his gaze. Mathew leaned closer to her, noting the defiant sparks flashing in the cinnamon depths. The color washing over her face darkened the freckles smattering along the ridge of her cheekbones. “From the backwoods, yes, however, you are neither an imbecile nor are you suffering from a lack of intellectual capabilities due to a hereditary defect.”
The smile lifting her lips appeared tenuous, at best.
He nudged his head toward the small table at his elbow. “Do I have time to drink a cup of coffee and savor a beignet before we have to leave for church services?”
Abigail released his hands and pushed herself to her feet. Her angry strides carried her to the door. “I’m not attending church this morning. Not after the manner Pastor Grisson accused you of being untruthful and then did not apologize for that unfounded accusation.”
Her anger wasn’t directed at him. Mathew leaned back in the rocker. “Then, I have plenty of time before I have to go to the jail to check on Mr. Roden as I told the sheriff I would be around after church services.”
“How is he?” Abigail hesitated in the open doorway.
Mathew spooned sugar into the coffee. “The bullet grazed his buttock, little less than a flesh wound. He’ll make a full recovery. His pride, on the other hand, was seriously injured. I don’t have a course of treatment for such severely wounded conceit.”
“Well, now he’ll have a scar to go with his tall tales of serving with Hood and being injured, though it will be an interesting tale to explain how he got wounded.” Her soft laughter faded down the hall.
Mathew caught himself chuckling with her infectious laughter and forced his humor to bay. He shouldn’t be laughing. It was unprofessional. He pulled on one of the clean, white linen shirts that had belonged to Molly’s deceased husband. Better to dwell on the sobering cost to the widow who gave up her husband’s belongings.
How many men had this town lost? How many small towns in the south were like Brokken, bereft of their men? While he had noticed most of the women at the dance last night were partnered, the men all appeared to be courting the ladies. If he had to say for certain, the only men who weren’t mail-order grooms were the pastor, Yancy, and Roden.
He turned his gaze down the hall, toward the kitchen. They could have left, all these women in Brokken, though he admitted where they could have gone to after leaving the town would have been limited. Here, in their own town, they knew one another and could protect each other. They took over the professions and positions their husbands left vacant. In other towns, they would be restricted to the usual employment available for a woman—seamstress, laundress, maid, and a few other forms of employment that didn’t bear contemplation.
Mathew nodded to himself. Sending off for men to come to Brokken to fill those positions the women had been occupying and even for the men to become spouses had been a rather unique and intelligent solution, as intelligent and unique as his wife.
Chapter Thirteen
Abigail looked up from her coffee cup when Mathew entered the kitchen again, this time fully dressed and carrying the black doctor’s satchel. He set the satchel on the counter. Without a word, he left the kitchen, walking in the direction of the front of the house.
Molly glanced across the table, a teasing grin dusting her lips. “He’s not anything what Victoria thought he would look like.”
Abigail couldn’t contain her laugh. “Oh, my goodness. Did she tell you what she thought about why he didn’t send a picture or a description of himself?”
“Um-hum.” A deceptive innocence colored Molly’s words. “I’ll bet you were glad she was wrong.”
Abigail sent a furtive glance up the hallway toward the parlor, grateful Mathew was out of earshot. She held her coffee cup between her hands, rubbing the pad of one thumb over the raised floral motif glazed onto the porcelain. She couldn’t deny she was thankful Mathew wasn’t anything as Victoria had teasingly envisioned. “Looks aren’t everything. We both know that.”
“You want to try to tell me you haven’t thought at least once since he got here yesterday that he is mighty fine t
o look at.” More of that deceptive innocence, coupled with another teasing grin.
“Molly!” Abigail nudged her head at the two boys sitting at the table, both of them devouring their third beignet. Her cheeks warmed with the recollection of her first impression of Mathew when she saw him at the train station. “Little pitchers...”
Mathew returned to the kitchen, this time carrying the tray Abigail had brought into the parlor earlier. He set the tray on the counter and carefully lowered the porcelain cup, saucer, and empty plate into the washbasin. Molly nodded in what Abigail could only define as approval. She didn’t want to contemplate if that approval was for his consideration in bringing the service into the kitchen, his care with the porcelain, or the manner his frock coat defined the width of his shoulders, length of his back, and the trim of his waist. Realizing she was staring at the broad back by the sink, she dragged her gaze from Mathew and caught Molly’s knowing grin.
Mathew turned from the washbasin, seeming oblivious to the interplay between the two women. “Thank you for the café au lait and the beignets.”
“I can’t take credit for the beignets. That was all Mr. Reed.” Molly put her cup down and stood. She gathered Abe into her arms, grunting a little with the effort. “I have to get back to the café. Abby, any time you want to bring Ethan over or want me to bring Abe here, just let me know.”
Mathew picked up the doctor’s bag. “Don’t cut your visit short on my account. I have to see to Mr. Roden and then make a visit to Miss Melody’s.”
“Mr. Reed is alone in the kitchen and I feel guilty leaving him to do all the preparation for the after-church crowd by himself.” Molly hesitated, and Abigail shook her head in warning with the sudden devilish expression that skipped across Molly’s features. “Why don’t I take Ethan with me for a little while? He and Abe can keep each other occupied, and then you can go with the doctor, Abby.”