by Tara Johnson
His focus drifted toward the little ones. “It’s all right. You can come closer.”
James and Penelope moved near the bed, though Etta stayed firmly tucked behind her brother, her thumb ensconced in her rosebud lips.
James frowned. “You gonna be okay, Papa Gish? Penelope said this lady took the bullet out.”
Joshua smiled weakly. “That she did. She’s a good nurse. I trained her myself.”
Penelope grasped his fingers. “Is there anything I can get you?”
He moved his hand to cup her freckled cheek. “Not a thing, dumplin’. Just help Miss Piper out with whatever she needs.”
Cadence cleared her throat. “Penelope has been an excellent help already. She assisted with your surgery, preparing the hot water, towels, soap . . . she did all of it so I could focus.”
Penelope’s cheeks tinged pink, but her eyes shone with pleasure at the praise. Joshua beamed through tired eyes. “That’s my good girl.”
“Me, me!”
Little Etta must have come to life, for she pushed past her brother and jumped up and down.
“Yes.” Joshua smiled. “You’re my good girl too.” He looked at James. “Where’s Miriam?”
“In the kitchen, preparing supper for later. Etta and me just returned from the market with her.”
He nodded and let his eyes slide shut. “Good. Tell her Miss Piper is here and that she removed the bullet. You three go play for a little bit. You can come eat supper with me.”
They murmured their agreement, but before leaving, Penelope leaned over and placed a kiss on his cheek. “I’m praying for you, Papa Gish.”
“Thank you, dumplin’.”
They departed, leaving only silence in their wake. Cadence felt strange. Her hands suddenly seemed too big. He owed her no explanations, no answers, yet she craved them all the same.
Spinning from his perusal, she rifled through his bag.
“What are you doing?”
“Looking for an envelope of pain powders for you. You need them.”
“I need to talk with you first.”
Her breath hitched. Did she want to know? “You don’t need to tell me.”
“Perhaps not, but I want to.”
She stilled and waited.
He sighed. “In Richmond you wanted to know how I learned to play street tricks like I did. How I could command the crowd and sweet-talk them into giving away their coinage.” He swallowed. “It’s easy enough to do when it’s all you’ve grown up knowing.”
Her lips parted.
“I was a child of the Philadelphia streets, Cadence. My father abandoned my mother and me when I was just a small boy. When my mother died, I lived in alleys, foraging for food, begging.” His jaw tightened and he looked away. “As more than one person reminded me, I was gutter trash.”
Shards of pain sliced her heart afresh. What he must have suffered. A knot lodged in her throat.
“Hunger causes you to do strange things.” He offered a sad, lopsided smile. “I began to watch the shysters and pickpockets. Studied the card sharps and gamblers. As I grew, I learned the art of deception. I had no conscience to sear as I lined my pockets because filling my belly was all I cared about. That, and sharing food with the other kids just like me who lived in the alleys.”
The light in his eyes shifted to something soft. “That all changed one day when I picked the pocket of the wrong man.” A brief chuckle shook him and he winced. “John Hopper caught me. Instead of dragging me to the authorities or thrashing me as he should have done, he brought me to his house, where his wife, Ann, fed me. His children welcomed me with smiles. John and Ann were Quakers, and they told me about God and his love. Told me it didn’t matter what I had been told about who I was or where I belonged.” His eyes glassed. “John said throwing a work of art in the trash doesn’t devalue the work of art. It only shows the lack of wisdom and judgment in the person who so carelessly tossed it aside. For the first time I realized just because people had told me all my life I was worthless didn’t mean it was true. Jesus had died for me, and that made me priceless.”
Tears ran in rivulets down her cheeks. She tasted salt and wiped them away with shaking hands. “What a beautiful gift.”
“The Hoppers adopted me as their own. Father Hopper was a healer of sorts, a wonder with herbs, and had a rudimentary knowledge of medicine, especially with animals. He taught me much and encouraged me to pursue an education in medicine when he saw my interest. They sacrificed and saved to send me to medical school. When I came here to work at the hospital, I was shocked to find so many homeless children running the streets of our capital.” He paused. “I couldn’t ignore them. That had been me. In some ways, it’s me still.”
Her lips trembled. “You began taking them in, caring for them, didn’t you?”
“Yes. I gave them medical care. Providing food whenever I could. Finding them homes. And when I discovered abandoned children hiding in broken crates and barrels, their bellies bloated for want of food, I knew I had to do something. The organization I work with provides the funds and the network to get them into free states. Still—” he glanced down at his bandaged middle—“we draw the slaveholders’ ire. Abolitionists always do. Father Hopper always did too.”
She leaned forward. “And Penelope, James, and Etta?”
His eyes slid shut. “Children I found abandoned in the slums of Washington upon my arrival here. They had nowhere else to go. So I brought them here and hired an older woman I trust named Miriam to care for them while I work or am away.”
“I see.” She sat back, stunned by all he’d revealed about his past. “They called you Papa Gish.”
A small smile tugged. “Gish was my nickname growing up. Don’t know why. I guess some of the smaller children couldn’t say ‘Joshua.’ Came out as Gish and just stuck that way. Seems safer to let my children call me that. The more identities, the less likely rabid slaveholders will come gunning for me and them, don’t you think?”
She’d not thought of that. “I suppose so.”
He sobered, his expression grave. “You are one of the only people I’ve entrusted with this information. Please, tell no one. Not your father or brother. No one.”
She braved a touch, reaching out to grasp his fingers. His hand curled around hers.
“I promise.”
He relaxed into his pillow. “Thank you.” A shadow crossed his features. “And now I must beg you to leave.”
Leave? “I will do no such thing! You need proper care. You’re running a fever, and the children—”
“Have Miriam.” His eyes flashed. Even ill, she knew the stubborn jut of his jaw meant no good would come of the conversation. Still, what could he do this time? Nothing. He was as weak as a newborn lamb.
“I’m staying.” She crossed her arms and glared. Daring him. She expected to see anger, rage, but something altogether different clouded his expression.
“Please.” His voice was hoarse. “If something happened to you because of me . . .”
“Hush.” The admonition came out harsher than she intended. “What harm could befall me here? Besides, the best way for you to throw me out is to heal quickly, which you need my skills to do. Then you can boss me and be back to your grumpy old self and toss me out on my ear.”
He blanched. “I really was insufferable, wasn’t I?”
“You still are,” she teased. Spying a glass of water on the table, she offered him a drink and replaced it before straightening. “Sleep. I’ll go home, pack a bag, and return shortly.”
His eyelids drooped with fatigue. “Stubborn woman.”
She paused with her hand on the doorknob. “I should be. I learned from the best.”
Chapter 15
“‘AND SO, THE PRINCESS TRIED HER BEST to convince the old queen she was a real princess, but the old queen did not believe her, soaked as she was from the terrible storm. Water ran down from her hair and clothes. It ran down into the toes of her shoes and out again at the
heels. No matter how regally she acted, nor how she displayed her royal lineage, the old queen was not persuaded.
“‘“But I am a real princess,” the drenched princess protested.
“‘Well, we’ll soon find out, thought the old queen.’”
Penelope looked up from the thick tome containing “The Princess and the Pea,” opened wide on Cadence’s lap, and asked, “How could the old queen ever manage such a thing?”
Cadence tugged the girl’s red braids. “You’ll have to listen and see.”
James frowned. “Seems to me the queen shouldn’t’ve been so worried ’bout whether the girl was a real princess or not. Who cares if her son wanted to marry a real princess? The girl was cold and wet. She needed shelter. Just give her a bed and food.”
Cadence grinned at him. “You’re a very wise boy, James.”
Little Etta snuggled against her chest, her pudgy body warm and soft. “’Tory.”
Penelope giggled.
Cadence laughed. “Forgive me. I forgot I was supposed to be reading a ’tory.” She cleared her throat melodramatically and continued.
“‘The old queen said nothing but went into the bedroom, took all the bedding off the bedstead, and laid a pea on the bottom. Then she took twenty mattresses and laid them on the pea, and then twenty eiderdowns on top of the mattresses. On this the princess had to lie all night. In the morning she was asked how she had slept. “Oh, very badly!” said she. “I scarcely closed my eyes all night. Heaven only knows what was in the bed, but I was lying on something hard so that I am black-and-blue all over my body.” Now they knew she was a real princess because she had felt the pea right through the twenty mattresses and the twenty eiderdowns. Nobody but a real princess could be as sensitive as that.’”
James grunted. “That’s silly. Why would feeling a pea through a bunch of mattresses make you a princess?”
“Because it meant she had a sensitive heart.”
The masculine voice in the parlor caused all four of them to turn. Joshua stood there, his complexion still pale, but blessedly alert. He had managed to don pants and a shirt over his bandaged torso but gripped the doorway. The past three days had been precarious as he fought off fever and recovered from the bullet extraction.
“Papa Gish! You’re up!” Penelope bolted from the floor and ran to his side, gripping his free hand. He looked down at her and winked.
“Of course I’m up. The Almighty knows you three need someone to keep you out of trouble.” They laughed as Penelope led him to a chair. He captured Cadence’s gaze.
She asked, “No dizziness?”
“Only at first. Not now. Just a little weak.”
“Miss Piper is reading us a story.” James grinned.
Etta pulled her thumb from her mouth as she burrowed deeper in Cadence’s lap. “’Tory.”
He gingerly settled into a chair. “Don’t let me keep you from finishing.”
Cadence glanced back down, suddenly uneasy as she felt Joshua’s gaze upon her. “‘So the prince took her for his wife, for now he knew he had a real princess, and the pea was put in a royal museum, where it still may be seen. They lived happily ever after.’”
Penelope sighed. “So romantic.”
James huffed. “Seems like a waste of a pea to me.”
Cadence laughed. “In the few days I’ve been here, I’ve noticed you’re awfully fond of food, young man.”
“Of course.” His white teeth flashed. “Girls only cause trouble. Food is lots better.”
“You don’t have a romantic bone in your body, James Ivy!” Penelope glared. “The point of the story isn’t the pea. It was about discovering the identity of the princess.”
Joshua interjected, his voice low. “In some ways, you could say it was about the princess laying aside the need to prove herself and rest in the knowledge of her royal identity, whether anyone else knew it or not.”
Cadence looked up to find him watching her. Her skin warmed. Was he speaking to her? “Laying aside the need to prove herself and rest in the knowledge of her royal identity . . .”
She swallowed.
Miriam bustled into the room. “All right now, children. You done wore out Miss Piper. I’ve got some shortbread and milk on the table for you. Go on and eat some and then it’s time to get back to working on your sums.”
With a groan, they plodded from the room, all except for little Etta, who turned to study Cadence. Her fingers cradled Cadence’s face before she planted a sticky kiss on her lips.
“Tisses.”
Delighted, Cadence wrapped her arms around the plump body. “I love your kisses, sweetheart.”
Squealing, Etta toddled from the room, chasing after her brother and sister as fast as her dimpled knees could carry her.
“You’re good with them.”
She smiled, toying with the edge of the book of fairy tales. “They’re delightful.”
“How old are you, Miss Piper?”
He’d dropped the use of her first name the past several days, a change that had not gone unnoticed.
“Nineteen. And you?”
“Five and twenty.” He closed his eyes. “Some days I feel older.”
She laughed lightly. “A man of five and twenty with a daughter of ten.”
“I suppose they are more like adopted sisters and a brother, but I believe they like thinking of me as their father. Makes them feel safe somehow.”
“I can understand that. There’s a measure of protection only a father or husband can provide.”
Her thoughts drifted to her conversation with Father only two days before when she’d returned home to pack her bag. He’d accepted her explanation that she was needed to nurse a dear friend and take care of her friend’s children. Guilt pricked. She’d led him to believe the friend was a fellow nurse at the hospital and he’d not questioned her further. Still, he’d been too busy gushing about Tate’s new position working for Congressman Ramsey to pay Cadence much mind. If she thought to move his heart by showing him her compassion for the ill, she’d been sadly mistaken.
Anymore she resembled a wandering soul, a child without a home, desperate for the approval that never came.
Pushing aside the gloomy thought, she rose and moved to Joshua’s side. “Let me check your wound.”
“It’s fine.”
She gave him a pointed look, and he clenched his jaw. With short, jerky movements, he unbuttoned the lower portion of his shirt, exposing the bandage that swathed his middle. As gently as possible, she curled the cloth back. The flesh was healing nicely. No infection or oozing fluids.
She didn’t realize how close their heads were until she heard his hoarse whisper.
“Cadence.”
Her gaze slowly lifted. His dark eyes were mere inches from her own. Something indefinable pulled between them. Her breath caught, suspended. Her pulse pattered an uneven staccato as his fingers reached up and tenderly brushed wayward tendrils of hair from her face. His fingertips trailed down her cheeks to the hollow of her throat. His gaze dipped to her lips and lingered. Warmth twisted her insides.
“What does one do when he has a real princess in his grasp but he himself is not a prince?”
Her heart felt bruised at the pain lacing his voice. “I see a prince before me.”
His eyes flickered. “I’m no prince, but I see your worth. There’s no need to prove it to me.”
His thumb roved over her lips. A heady rush filled her senses as his lips nuzzled her hair, her forehead . . . trailing down to her ear. Her skin prickled with the sensations flooding her.
“Cadence . . .” He breathed her name like a caress. “Promise me something.”
She leaned in to his touch, their lips not yet meeting, yet chasing, drawing . . . so close.
“Anything.”
“Stay away from Congressman Ramsey.”
Her eyes flew open.
Joshua reached to trace the curve of her cheek, his dark eyes intense. “Promise me.”
“But why?”
“There are things about him you don’t know. I care about you too much to see you tangled up in something you don’t understand. Please. For me?”
“Something you don’t understand.” Did Joshua believe her to be a simpleton too?
Pulling away from his touch, she stiffened. “Congressman Ramsey has been nothing but kind to me. And you want me to discard him on a whim?”
Joshua glowered. “Not a whim. Because I’m asking. I overheard him threatening someone at the benefit. Please believe me. To blindly tie yourself to him would be foolish!”
Stung by the harsh edge of his tone, she fumbled to her feet and forced down the ache in her throat. Joshua was just like Father. Just like the phrenologist. Viewing her as too dull-witted to make decisions. To think. To be of use.
“So I’m foolish?”
“No, I didn’t say—”
Her stomach tightened. “Congressman Ramsey has been the only one who has treated me as an equal. The only one who has lifted me up instead of belittling me and telling me I’m too inept to rise to whatever the occasion might demand. I will not cast him aside merely because you said I’m too simple to understand.”
“Would you let me speak?” Joshua’s nostrils flared. “You didn’t hear what I heard. Ramsey is not the man he pretends to be in public. He’s using you. Having you sing for patriotic events to disguise his true agenda.”
Cadence propped her hands on her hips. “Which is?”
Joshua cast about for words. “I—I don’t know yet.”
“You want me to discard him based on conjecture?”
“I want you to leave him be, based on my wishes.”
Cadence crossed her arms. “Lest you forget, Dr. Ivy, I no longer work for you. You cannot order me about and expect me to fall into line.”
A muscle twitched near his eye. “You’re right. I don’t need you as my nurse, nor does Congressman Ramsey need you to sing. You’re nothing more than his puppet, Cadence!”