Captain Still spoke for all of them. “There have been some civil disturbances in Spain since the peace agreement. But you know as well as I do, Gibraltar has one of the largest British military presences in the world. I’ve asked the governor to forward a message to my attention on the Arethusa if any more details are uncovered concerning Dr. MacCloud’s attack. We’ve done all we can, Willa.” He reached out and covered her hand with his. “I promise.”
Captain Woodall remained with the captain after Sergeant Claridge offered to escort Willa back to her quarters.
“Bad business that, with his wife left to piece together what’s to be done, and him not even able to tell her the truth of what happened.” Marine Captain Woodall took a long sip of Madeira and leaned toward Captain Still. “Why do you think he was there?”
“I would not want this to leave my quarters, but I’m afraid our former passengers probably had a hand in this tragedy. I hope to God my surgeon survives, but there’s not much anyone can do for a severe head injury like his. Except wait.”
The marine commander, Woodall swallowed the last of his wine and bid Captain Still good night before heading back to the ward room below.
Willa sat on a stool by Cullen’s hammock in sick bay and leafed through a book of compounding directions for tincture preparations for the ship’s medicine kit. His chest still rose and fell in steady inhales and exhales, but there was no sign he had any knowledge of her presence. She touched the backside of her hand to his bruised forehead, but could not detect a fever through the bandages still wound around his skull. She was about to stand to put the heavy book away when one of his eyelids not hidden by the linen bandaging seemed to flicker.
She sat back down and began to read to him…the endless, boring lists of ingredients of the routine medications they dispensed to sailors every day. The surgeon’s mate about to retire from the first watch gave her an odd look before finishing his duties, but she kept on reading.
She’d gone through ten pages of the bone-numbingly boring lists, when the surgeon’s mate for the middle watch arrived. She gave him an idea of what patients needed attention during the night and then returned to Cullen’s side. The mate had no more than settled in to his rounds than the ship’s purser, Horace Baker, appeared at Willa’s side.
He leaned down, hands on his knees, and spoke low to Willa. “It’s Kathleen. It’s her time. The babe…it’s coming early.”
Sweat beaded on his forehead in the lantern light, and he was breathing heavily as if he’d run down to the surgery from his quarters. Willa grabbed her father’s old medical bag and an armful of clean linens from the fresh laundry basket she’d not yet stowed away and nodded for him to lead on. The purser’s cabin was close to the captain’s quarters, near the stern of the ship.
As soon as they approached, his older daughter, Mary, opened the door, her eyes wide in the candlelight. “Mama’s making a fearsome noise, Papa. Will she be all right?”
Willa touched the girl’s arm and held her back a bit as Mr. Baker entered ahead of them. “I’m going to help your Mama,” she said. “Go to the galley and see if you can bring back some water from the still on the stove.” Willa would not lie to the young girl. She had no idea if her mother would be all right, but she would do her best.
Chapter Seventeen
When Willa entered the cabin part of the purser’s suite where the couple slept, she was surprised to see Mrs. Baker sitting on a stool with her dressing gown on, brushing out her hair in front of a small, round mirror attached to the bulkhead.
She turned at the sound of Willa shutting the door behind her. “I am so glad to see you. Are you sure you can be spared from the surgery?”
“Your husband and daughters were worried about you. I came as soon as I could.”
“Oh, falderal!” He only thinks he knows when this baby is due.”
“How long has it been since your last courses?” Willa winced at the intimate nature of the question.
Kathleen laughed. “I have no idea. Maybe eight months?” She tilted her head and gave Willa a considering look. “Just wait till the babes start coming. You won’t have time to track the rising and setting of the sun, let alone when you miss your courses. Dr. MacCloud will be on his own in the surgery. No time for anything but cooking, laundry and chasing the little devils away from mischief on the ship.” She abruptly stopped talking, sucked in a breath, doubled over, and grunted. After a few moments, she straightened again. “And be sure to save as much as you can for peace time and ha’pay.”
The woman’s stomach was hugely swollen, and Willa could see a tiny fist pushing out against the skin near the base of her protuberant belly. At least from the looks of the babe, the head and shoulders were in a good downward position. Willa prayed he or she would stay that way until she could coax the newest Baker into the world.
Willa’s heart had crawled up into her mouth and was acting as if the coward wanted to plunge to the cabin floor and race away. She’d assisted her father at a number of shipboard births, including that of Kathleen’s younger child, six-year-old Anna, but never on her own. She opened her bag and laid out a metal forceps as well as two short pieces of cotton string on the chest next to the bunk. Some of the laundered linens she used to cover the bunk mattress and stacked the rest nearby for swaddling the baby.
Kathleen pulled herself up with Willa’s help and moved toward the bunk against the wall with a slow, rolling gait. “It’s time to get this business done.” When Willa tried to help her lie on the bunk, she shook her head hard and lowered herself to a low stool. “No time for that.” And then with a final three or four groaning pushes, the two Baker sisters had a brother.
Willa’s mouth was so dry, she could barely speak, so she set to work tying off the umbilical cord near the mother and near the baby before cutting the cord in the middle with the long scissors the way her father had shown her when she’d assisted at Mrs. Still’s disastrous delivery. She could scarcely believe how easily this child had come into the world. She took the baby and with the help of his sister, Mary, cleaned him up and swaddled him in linen before moving to her patient’s side. Together, Willa and Mary massaged the new mother’s belly to ease the expelling of the afterbirth.
Later, when Willa returned to the sick bay and sat beside her husband’s hammock, she didn’t need to read boring instructions from the tincture book. She was so exhilarated from her first delivery on her own, she chattered low into his ear for at least an hour before planting a kiss on his bandaged head and slipping away to her own bed.
When at last she fell into their bunk, sadly more spacious and lonely than when shared with her stubborn Scot, she felt the comforting lift and roll of the Arethusa. They were sailing away from Gibraltar with the rising tide.
After Willa and Surgeon’s Mate Parker finished sick call the next morning at the main mast, Willa knocked lightly at the purser’s cabin.
Mary Baker opened the door with a wide grin and gave Willa a hug. “Come see him. He’s so big, and he hardly ever cries. Papa is so proud. He…”
“It sounds as though you are proud as well.” Her younger sister, Anna, joined them and plucked impatiently at Willa’s skirts to follow her.
When she trailed behind the girls to find their mother and the new babe, she was taken aback to see Kathleen already up and about, sitting at the table in the main cabin, mending stockings and absently rocking her son’s cradle with one foot.
“Are you well enough to be on your feet so soon?” Willa’s tone of concern elicited a laugh from the new mother.
“It’s like any other day. ‘Himself’ made sure Polly fed the girls this morning before he left, so I did get to sleep a little longer this morning. But that will be the last of any effort he’ll put forth. Can’t lay abed all day. The girls need tending. I’m teaching them their letters.” She pointed toward her swaddled son. “And that one. He’s as demanding as his papa. I no more than get him fed, than he’s hungry again.”
Willa b
ent over the cradle and lifted the baby to her shoulder. She sat on a bench with him and listened to his breathing and heartbeat. When he began to whimper, she handed him back to his mother. “He’s a fine, healthy boy, Kathleen. You’re a lucky woman.”
The purser’s wife gave her a quirky smile. “Thank you for coming to help me in the middle of the night. Your brother Wills helped your father deliver my last one. I’m lucky you’re as well trained as he was.” She gave Willa a slow wink when she stood to leave. “Please, come back to see us any time.”
Willa climbed down the companionway ladders to the lower levels of the ship before returning to the sick bay to check on Cullen. She mulled over Kathleen Baker’s parting words. Was there no one on this ship who didn’t think she and Wills were one and the same? And the most confounding part of that knowledge? Nobody seemed to care.
Of course, there was nothing she could do about what others on the Arethusa thought. They would gossip and think what they would. Her biggest concern now was bringing her husband back from the insensibility brought on by his mysterious beating on Gibraltar. His breathing was still even and deep, but there was no way to get clear broths or other liquids into him while he was unresponsive. He’d already lain unconscious in his sick bay hammock for several days.
She pulled a stool over to his side and opened the book she’d retrieved from the shelf of medical tomes near the door. She’d found the well-worn copy of “Gulliver’s Travels” at the bottom of her father’s sea chest. She’d shoved his old, battered chest to an empty corner of the surgery and had been going through the contents little by little since his death. He’d saved her favorite childhood book that they’d read together over the many miles at sea.
“You’re going to love this story, Dr. MacCloud,” Willa began. “It’s about an unwary surgeon who fancies himself a traveler. We’ll start with ‘Part I, A Voyage to Lilliput.’”
And so, she began:
My father had a small estate in Nottinghamshire; I was the third of five sons. He sent me to Emanuel College in Cambridge at fourteen years old, where I resided three years, and applied myself close to my studies; but the charge of maintaining me, although I had a very scanty allowance, being too great for a narrow fortune, I was bound apprentice to Mr. James Bates, an eminent surgeon in London…
After a half hour of reading, Willa noticed Cullen’s eyelids fluttering more than usual. She marked her place in the dog-eared book and removed the wrappings from his face. He still had good color, and the bruises around his eyes and his cheeks were healing from the deep shades of dark purple and blue to a yellow-green.
She rose to soak a flannel rag in a bit of water to wipe some of the dried blood from beneath the bandages before winding his head again with fresh linens. When she returned with the basin of water, his eyes were wide open, blinking in the light of the hanging sick bay lantern.
She dropped the basin, sloshing water on her slippers and stockings. “Oh,” was all she could manage.
Senior Surgeon’s Mate Parker joined her at Cullen’s bedside and offered to fetch some clear broth from the galley. “Is there anything else I should get for him?”
“Maybe a bit of distilled water from the stove, but I think for now, the clear broth would be best.”
Her husband had remained strangely silent while Mr. Parker took instructions. But now that they were alone, he grasped Willa’s wrist in a tight hold. “What happened? Why am I here?”
Willa’s gut clenched. He didn’t remember.
Cullen struggled to comprehend where he was and why. He was apparently a patient in his own damned surgery. What the hell had happened? Willa, his wife, was bending over him trying hard not to cry, but he knew well the look of unshed tears. Yes, this woman was his wife. That much he could remember, thank God.
Willa? Something about Willa was the last thing he could clutch from the jagged images blowing through his mind like fallen leaves in a late October wind storm back in the Highlands. He remembered well the look and feel of the tall, dark-haired, slender woman next to him. And those eyes, those seductive pools of gray a man could drown in.
He remembered arguing with her, always arguing. He remembered how stubborn she could be during their days together, only to fall apart in passion in his arms at night. But for the life of him, he could not remember what it was about Willa that had led to his current helpless state in a hammock in sick bay.
“You insisted on going in to Gibraltar our last day in port. Why? I was with a marine escort at the market. You couldn’t have been worried about me. Was it Ariadne? Did you need to meet with her one last time for some reason before she left the port?”
“Madame de Santis? Why would she be on Gibraltar? When did you meet her?”
“You don’t remember her and her partner, Monsieur Duvall? They were the only reason we were sidetracked to Gibraltar. They were the special diplomatic passengers we had to transport. While you were in Gibraltar, someone beat you nearly to death. You were found lying in the cemetery north of the city gates.”
He shook his head wearily and lay back down on the flat-bottomed hammock. “I don’t remember.” Suddenly, his eyelids felt as heavy as fireplace andirons, and when he closed them, a thick cotton fog like morning in the channel off Portsmouth obliterated what little memories he’d been able to grasp before.
He let go of the wisps of thought and drifted back to sleep only to be jarred awake in what seemed like seconds by his now-annoying wife and Mr. Parker.
Willa pulled a chair close to Cullen’s hammock and with Mr. Parker’s help, managed to awaken him again. The surgeon’s mate pulled off Cullen’s stockings and poked at the bottom of his bare feet to prod him awake. Once they had him in the chair, the mate kept him upright while Willa patiently fed him spoons full of the clear beef broth the Poppy kept in supply in the galley for patients in sick bay.
The short roundtrip from the hammock to the chair and back seemed to have left her husband as weak as a puppy. He could barely hold his head up, so they eased him back down onto his swinging cot.
When his eyes immediately closed as if to sleep, Willa shook him hard. “Not so fast, Dr. MacCloud. Stay awake, damn you. I’m not going to lose you again.”
He stilled and remained quiet, but his eyes flew back open when she retrieved the copy of “Gulliver’s Travels” and began to read again:
For my own part, I swam as fortune directed me, and was pushed forward by wind and tide. I often let my legs drop, and could feel no bottom; but when I was almost gone, and able to struggle no longer, I found myself within my depth; and by this time the storm was much abated. The declivity was so small, that I walked near a mile before I got to the shore, which I conjectured was about eight o’clock in the evening. I then advanced forward near half a mile, but could not discover any sign of houses or inhabitants; at least I was in so weak a condition, that I did not observe them.
Cullen flung his arm outside the hammock and felt for Willa. He grasped her arm and lifted himself a bit. “That’s what I was hearing when I thought I was dreaming. You’ve been reading to me.” His comical accusatory tone made Willa laugh. “Of course, you silly man. How else was I to steal your attention?”
She continued again:
I was extremely tired, and with that, and the heat of the weather, and about half a pint of brandy that I drank as I left the ship, I found myself much inclined to sleep. I lay down on the grass, which was very short and soft, where I slept sounder than ever I remembered to have done in my life, and, as I reckoned, about nine hours; for when I awaked, it was just day-light. I attempted to rise, but was not able to stir: for, as I happened to lie on my back, I found my arms and legs were strongly fastened on each side to the ground; and my hair, which was long and thick, tied down in the same manner.
From the corner of her eye, Willa noticed Lieutenant Dalton standing outside sick bay, sending pointed looks her way. Now what? She waved a hand to get the attention of one of the surgery mates who was attending to a
landman who had caught a foot in a loop of rope in sail drill and broken his ankle. “Could you come sit with Dr. MacCloud for a bit while I see what Mr. Dalton wants?”
“But, Mrs. MacCloud, beggin’ your pardon, I can’t read.”
“Then recite some poetry.”
“Don’t know any…” He hung his head.
“Then how about a bawdy tune? Every sailor knows a bawdy tune or two.”
The man shocked her by immediately launching into “Good Ship Venus” in a rich baritone voice more suited to the singing of hymns. The ploy worked. Cullen’s eyes flew open, and Willa fled away from the bawdy lyrics, outside into the orlop deck where Lieutenant Dalton stood in the shadows.
Chapter Eighteen
“What’s wrong?” Willa swept a glance around the darkened orlop deck. They were alone.
“Have you forgotten?” He waited a long moment, then began again. “I know what you and Madame de Santis got up to. I saw that packet of powder hidden in the locket in your sea chest.”
“What powder?” Panic filled her throat like acid.
“You didn’t know? She’s using you.”
Her mind raced, trying to make sense of his accusation. “What makes you think it has some dark purpose? And, furthermore, you have no business sneaking around our quarters. For all you know, the locket is mine, and that packet contains only a sleeping powder.”
He grasped her wrist in a tight grip. “What I do know is that miniature on the locket has to be a dead likeness to someone in that bitch, Ariadne’s, family. All you have to do to prove the powder is harmless is to take me to your cabin and swallow the powder yourself right now.”
When she tried to jerk away, he stepped back into even deeper shadows between two guns and pulled her with him.
Pride of Duty (Men of the Squadron Book 2) Page 14