by Rose Lerner
Right through him.
“You look like hell. Are you O.K.?”
He very nearly smiled because he liked her so damn much, but behind her Steven cleared his throat and James was reminded of how much his relationship to Annie had cost her. How it had almost killed her.
He stepped back, away from her and all her fierceness.
“Couldn’t be better. You?” He clung to manners with the strength of a shipwreck survivor on a fragment of hull.
“James,” she sighed, as if urging him to let go of his little piece of wood.
She reached forward with her gloved hand, about to touch him. Embrace him. About to act in a way that would reach into their past and require him to be a friend to her.
“Miss Denoe.” He used her last name and his firmest doctor-with-a-raving-patient voice.
She stiffened as if he’d slapped her, and James didn’t know what to do. How to not hurt her. How to not hurt everyone in his life.
The urge to turn on his heel and walk away, into the night and perhaps not come back, was not insignificant.
“I came to visit you weeks ago,” she said. “To see if you were all right. Delilah wouldn’t let me see you.”
He could almost imagine it. The two fiercest women he knew head to head at the door of his sick room. It made him wretched with guilt.
“She said you were very sick.”
He didn’t remember much of that first week as the drugs left his system. The pain was the only thread he could follow.
“As you can see, I am fine.”
“You’re too thin,” she said.
Ignoring her assessment, he smiled over Annie’s shoulder at Steven. “Mr. Baywood, a pleasure to see you again.”
Steven simply nodded.
“Ah, I had forgotten the pleasure of your conversation. Out for a stroll?” James asked. “Past the brothel? Not my first choice, but to each their own.”
“Delilah sent a note that she needed my help.”
“Your help?” Annie’s help? Never. Not ever again.
“She said she wanted a doctor.”
“You’re not a doctor.”
James had allowed her too much freedom as his assistant. He’d rented the first floor of her home as his office, and she’d quickly gone from landlady to reliable assistant to…pretend doctor. Because she was skilled and smart and eager to learn, and he was a little enchanted, a lot lazy and above all a terrible human. And now people treated Annie like a doctor. Which was dangerous. For her. A month ago she’d been here as a “doctor” when she’d been pulled into a room with a madman holding a gun who’d killed himself inches from her face.
And she’d only gone because James had been passed out in a drugged stupor.
She could have died, and it would have been as if he’d pulled the trigger.
Steven’s steely gaze in the shadows, filled with disdain, agreed with his thoughts.
“Which is what I said in my answering note,” Annie said. “I said in fact that she had a doctor under her roof. But apparently you are too busy stitching up stray cats to do whatever it is she needs help with.”
The burning slash of her tongue delighted some deeply hidden and perverse place in him. It always had.
The back door opened, and Delilah stood in the slice of light from the doorway in her feathers and rhinestones. A far cry from the aproned nursemaid who’d kept him alive. If she was surprised to see all of them standing there among the cats her perfect face gave no indication, but he suddenly felt an anger bloom through him like blood hitting water.
“Do you remember what happened the last time Annie came here because you needed a doctor?” he asked Delilah.
“Do you mean when you were too unconscious to do your own job?” she asked. Her eyebrow arched at his tone. “Is that the time you’re referring to?”
He could feel the blood beat hard in his face. “Yes.”
“I need a medical-”
“She’s not a doctor.”
“Yes, well, neither are you these days.”
“There are other doctors in this city.”
“None that I trust.”
True, Whitmore was a prig who liked to sermonize the girls as he felt under their skirts.
“It’s fine,” Annie said, stepping toward Delilah as if she meant to go inside.
“It’s not fine.” He lifted his hand to physically stop her. But it was an error, he knew that the moment he did it, he did not need Steven’s heavy hand on his shoulder to remind him.
“Do not,” Steven said, his voice low and menacing, “raise your hand to her.”
James shrugged off Steven’s hand, angrier than he’d been in years. “Don’t you have a railroad empire to run?” he snapped.
“Not at the moment. No.”
“Well, if you’re so concerned why are you allowing her to come here?”
“He does not allow me to do anything,” Annie said.
Steven, who did not smile, smiled. The happiness between them nearly sparkled and filled James with such an ache.
“How forward thinking of you,” he said without any heat. “The problem remains, Annie, you shouldn’t be here.”
“Neither should you,” she said, clearly trying not to show her pity, but unable to keep it all covered. “It will be Christmas soon, no one should be alone at Christmas. You can come back-”
“Annie, stop.” He would not go back to the rooms he’d rented from her. His office and the examination rooms. The location of all his worst moments.
Christmas. He could have laughed.
If it were possible to never see Annie again, he would do it.
Yes. That was a fabulous idea.
“Go home,” he said to Annie and Steven. “I’ll handle whatever medical emergency is happening here.”
Annie looked from James to Delilah. “Are you sure?”
“Quite. Now, get out of here,” he snapped, letting for just a moment his raw edges show.
If whatever needed doing inside this whorehouse happened to kill him, all the better.
Annie watched him for a long, assessing moment, and then Steven touched the edge of her cape. The warm woolen one she’d gotten last year. She’d been so pleased with it, the braided trim.
“Annie,” Steven said, all warmth and knowledge.
“Go!” James yelled and she stepped back, stricken, and Steven was there to hold her, to put his arm over her shoulder, keeping her safe.
“You needn’t shout.”
I do. Otherwise you don’t listen.
“Our connection was born out of convenience. And our desperation—mine to be useless, and yours to be useful. Those days are over and I am no longer in need of your…usefulness.”
I am a stone, he thought, hardening himself against that look on her face. A stone that you will tie to your shoe and drag around because you are too kind.
“My rooms, you mean,” she murmured.
“Your rooms, your money, your willingness to do my job and turn a blind eye to my inebriety. I mean all of them.”
She waited for him to take it back. To laugh or apologize, and he did none of those things. Finally he saw it register—the last hope for whatever decency or kindness she wanted to attribute to him was destroyed.
“Come on, Annie,” Steven whispered, turning her toward home.
James very nearly sighed with relief. He very nearly put his hands on his knees and wept with sour gratitude. But she turned, glancing over her shoulder at him, and so he only stared back. Arranging his features into some kind of indifference. He might have smirked.
And so the two of them, Annie and Steven, followed their own footprints back through the snow toward the end of Market Street where her house sat on the edge of town.
“She was your only friend,” Delilah said after they were gone.
“I don’t have friends.” He turned back to Delilah, with all her pain that no amount of feathers or gilt could hide. “People like us are not friendly.”
/> In her silence he wondered if she was thinking about Kyle. If she ever thought about Kyle.
“No, we’re not,” she finally agreed.
“So.” He took a deep breath and stepped toward the open door. She shifted out of his way as he came inside. She did it with aplomb, but he noticed she did it with everyone, not just him. She constantly managed the space around herself, not letting anyone too close. “What is this medical emergency?” he asked.
“The Northern Spy,” Delilah said. That rang some bell in his brain, but he didn’t put much energy into sussing out why.
“There is no North and South. The war was over years ago,” he said.
“Not for the man who claims to be her guardian and acts as her agent.”
“Guardian? Is she a child?”
“No.”
“Is she hurt?” He covered his momentary lapse in not caring about anything by pulling off his glove, one finger at a time. The gloves had been expensive, a relic from his fine life before the war. Sooner or later he was going to have to think about how to survive. Walking around Denver did not make him a wage he could live on.
“Not that I know of.”
“Then there doesn’t seem to be much of an emergency.”
“Not medical, perhaps.” Delilah shut the door and the two of them stood in a dark hallway. She opened another door on the other side and they walked through her courtyard, made ghostly by the white moonlight.
They passed through another door and they were in the back storeroom of the whorehouse. It was hot and loud and he wanted to shrink deep inside his skin. He wanted to turn around and head back out into the icy cold.
But instead he followed Delilah into the main room of the brothel, which was rank and full. The giant birdcage sat center stage with its red velvet cover. It was mysterious and titillating. Everyone in the room was abuzz about it. Men could not look away from the cage.
The Northern Spy, that’s what Kyle had said earlier. The cage was for the Northern Spy.
His stomach turned.
“Delilah,” he said. “What are you doing?”
She blinked over her shoulder at him. “Whatever it takes.”
He couldn’t be sure what she meant. That Delilah would do whatever it took to survive. To succeed. To numb the pain. Silence the ghosts. Empty what was left of her soul.
All of it, he thought. She meant all of it, and as his soul was already empty, he followed her up the stairs.
Chapter 2
* * *
“So if the emergency is not medical, what do you need a doctor for?” James asked. They were standing outside the closed door to Delilah’s own private rooms, where apparently there was a former Northern spy waiting. A female Northern spy.
Who would at some point sit in a birdcage.
The world really was a depraved wonder, wasn’t it?
“Janey,” Delilah said to a tall woman adjusting her breasts inside her red-and-black silk corset. “Please take the doctor’s things to his room.”
He was vaguely reluctant to shrug out of his coat and hand Janey his hat, only because it meant that he was staying. That the day was over and there was no more walking to be done. The worst part of his current life started now.
The night.
But he gave Janey his things and thanked her.
“So?” he asked when it was just him and Delilah alone in the hallway again.
“The arrangement is this. Charles Park, a former landowner outside of Charleston, has been touring the West with a woman he claims was a Northern spy living in Charleston during the war.”
“Well, that’s quite exciting isn’t it?”
“She is from all accounts very beautiful.”
“Of course she is. What’s the act? She sits in a birdcage decoding old Confederate battle plans? I can hardly wait.”
“She sings.”
“Well, that’s fitting I suppose.”
“She’s here for three nights. Singing. And on the fourth night, Charles Park hosts a poker game. The winner wins a night with his songbird, The Northern Spy.”
“That’s…imaginative.”
“Apparently no one ever wins. No one beats Charles.”
“Sounds rigged.”
“Oh, I’m sure it is. There are rumors that he’s lost a few of the games, but somehow manages to get Helen back before she spends the night out of his care.”
“That doesn’t answer why you need me.”
“He claims she’s a virgin.”
The penny finally dropped and he shook his head. “No, Delilah, I won’t-”
“You will. Because you owe me. Because it’s either you or I ask Annie to come back.”
He held up his hand, stopping her. He thought briefly of his mother. His sisters laughing on the porch, their dark heads bent over their embroidery.
If they saw me right now … If they knew what I’d come to …
Shame again, so sharp for a moment he thought it might stop his heart.
Well, he thought clearing away those memories, good thing I’ve already been disowned.
She propped open the door to her room, which was dark except for a small circle of light from a lamp in the corner.
“You want me to examine her to see if she’s intact?” he asked, lifting his eyebrows. “That’s quite medieval even for you.”
To say nothing of being rather medically inconclusive, but that never stopped anyone in the Dark Ages, did it?
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She blinked her blue eyes in some pantomime of innocence.
“Whatever allows you to sleep at night,” he said and stepped into the room.
There was a small, person-sized lump on the couch, which he assumed was The Northern Spy, and sitting in the wing chair beside the couch was a delicate man dressed impeccably in a gray suit with matching boots. He wore a hat and gloves—all gray. The color of fog.
For a moment, the dandy in James was very jealous of that suit.
“I suppose you are the doctor?” the man asked with an accent that dripped Spanish moss.
“I am. Dr. James Madison.”
“Like the President?”
“I am named after family. Not the President.”
“By your accent, I gather you’re a Yankee.”
He glanced sideways at Delilah. “I am from Massachusetts.” “And tell me sir, were you a doctor in blue?”
“I was a surgeon for the Union Army. 102nd Infantry.”
“I’m Charles Park.” He pronounced his name like there were no r’s. Charles was very slight and looked like he might have a pot of gold somewhere.
He came to his feet and James held out his hand for the requisite handshake, but Charles ignored it.
“I don’t suppose there is a doctor in this city who served with the Confederacy?”
“There’s me,” James said. “And that’s it.”
Delilah was not exaggerating when she said the war was not over for this man.
Charles sniffed and said, “Well, I am hoping you can convince Delilah here that this little charade is unnecessary.”
“It’s not a charade,” Delilah said with that knowing Mona Lisa smile that seemed to get her everything she wanted from a man. Which, as far as James could tell, was distance and money. A tricky combination in a whorehouse. “You claim she is a virgin and I’m protecting my patrons.”
“A man’s word-”
“Means nothing to me.” Delilah dropped the smile. “And your protestations make me believe this girl hasn’t seen her virginity in years.”
James looked down at the couch and the virgin in question. She was sleeping. Raven-black hair was pulled into a bun at the back of her neck. Her skin was fair and clear, nearly impossibly so. Out here in the frontier, no one had skin that untouched by sun. No matter how hard they might try.
Curled up on her side, she looked very young.
“How old is this girl?” he asked.
“Twenty-five,” Charles answered
.
“You have proof of this?”
Charles flashed an empty smile. Meaningless and bordering on cruel. “I don’t normally have to work quite so hard to earn people money. Between the split on the poker game winnings and what you’ll make at the bar, I don’t understand your suspicions.”
James felt something very much like hate toward this little gray man.
He knelt down beside the couch and pressed his fingers against the girl’s wrist. Her pulse was thready. Strange.
He lifted her eyelid only to find her pupil dilated.
In an instant his dislike turned to rage.
“She’s drugged.”
“Of course she is,” Charles said, holding out his cane. “She is about to be probed by a complete stranger. What woman of any breeding would want to be conscious during such a thing?”
“What did you give her?”
“A thimble full of laudanum.”
Thimbleful, my ass.
James turned to look at Delilah, who seemed unconcerned that she was asking him to vaginally examine a young, drugged woman.
A few weeks ago he would have been too altered himself to care.
You would have been too inebriated to do it, and it would be Annie here facing this situation.
He clung to the old shame, far more comfortable than outrage at this current situation.
“We’ll leave you to the exam,” Delilah said. “Mr. Park?”
“Well, I’m certainly not leaving her alone in the care of a stranger.”
“I’m a doctor.”
Charles smiled. “Yes, but you are a man, and we all know what men are capable of, don’t we?”
“I will not perform this exam for an audience,” James insisted. “This is not part of your act.”
“Then it seems we are at an impasse.”
“Your man can stay,” Delilah conceded after a moment.
“What man?” James asked, and the shadows on the edge of the lamplight shifted and took the shape of a giant. A white man with a bowler hat and an expressionless face.
He was outrageously threatening.
“Guy,” Charles said, giving the name the French pronunciation. “He looks after Helen.”
“Helen?”
“My songbird.” He stroked the girl’s dark hair with his gloved fingers, and James felt his skin crawl.