by Shirl Henke
* * * *
Alex was able to give her mumbled vague directives about how to make the cherry-bark infusion that she sat spooning down his throat all through the night. She sponged his brow and changed the dressing on his wound, using his grandmother's healing ointment that they had employed so successfully on Poc. As she worked, she was able to study him without those devilish dark eyes to fluster her. He looked so young and vulnerable, almost boyish as he slept.
Thick golden lashes rested against his cheeks and the slashing, expressive eyebrows above them for once were not raised in sardonic amusement. His mouth, so wide and dazzling when he smiled, lay barely closed. She could not resist tracing over his eyebrows, then down his high cheekbones to where the thick gold stubble of his beard abraded the sensitive pads of her fingertips. His lips moved soundlessly, drawing her irresistibly to touch them and wonder how such a mobile, expressive mouth would feel pressed against her skin.
Joss jerked her hand away, scalded by the very thought, a thought that had never entered her mind about any other man she had ever met. I'm a silly old tabby, she scolded herself as she stood up and paced across the room. It was time to check the patients in the ward. The work would keep her foolish hands busy and give her time to get her mind in sensible order once more.
Alex awakened as the first pale rays of sunrise inched over the sill of the narrow window, bathing his face in light. He looked around the bare, unfamiliar room, thoroughly disoriented for a second. Other than one crude wooden chair and a small splintery table, there was no furniture. He lay on a narrow lumpy mattress. When he squirmed, trying to find a more comfortable position, a sharp pain lanced from his upper back straight down his spine. Then he saw Grandma Charity's medicines sitting out on the table and remembered where he was.
Joss stepped into the room at that moment, carrying a tray with fresh water and clean bandages on it. A merry smile, uniquely her own, split her face. "So you're awake. Fever's broken."
"How can you tell from across the room?"
She came in and set the tray down on the table. "After one spends hours nursing feverish patients, one learns to mark the signs—clear eyes, good color, a degree of alertness in expression."
"How long have you been working in this place?" he asked.
"I began to work with Dr. Atherton when I was around thirteen. Then Dr. Byington replaced him."
"Thirteen!" he echoed, appalled at the thought of hours,
much less years, in such a hellish environment. "Why, you were only a child."
'That was before I began helping with Papa's missionary work among the climbing boys and prostitutes. After helping to found the shelter, I grew up."
"Why do you do these things—I mean devote your entire life to charity?"
"I want to be useful, to make a difference in this world, Alex. Besides, it's not as if I were offered a carriage load of choices," she added dryly. "Bookish young women with neither beauty nor dowry to recommend them scarce have suitors beating down their doors."
"You have other qualities to recommend you besides a dowry, although your uncle should have seen to that."
"Bother the earl, he disowned his only brother," she said testily. "Besides, I would not want a man who'd wed me for an inheritance."
"What for, then—your mind? You have an agile one. Being bookish is not all so bad a quality if a sense of humor accompanies it."
"Considering your earlier confession about being sent down from university for not attending your studies, that is a remarkably turnabout opinion."
He shrugged, then winced when his stitches pulled. "Believe it or not, I have read a book or two between bouts of debauching."
Her expression was dubious as she began to change his dressing. "So pray tell me about these two books."
One gold eyebrow arched. "You wound me."
"La, your companions of the evening have already done that. At least I gave you the benefit of the doubt and allowed two books, not just one."
He squinted in mock concentration. "Let me see if I can recall them. There was Mr. Franklin's remarkable autobiography."
"A pro-French libertine."
"President Jefferson's essays, Tom Paine's pamphlets, Washington Irving's new satire."
"You have read more than I would have credited," she conceded, concentrating on tying off the fresh bandage, "but they're all Americans."
"How about Andrew Marvell?"
She sniffed. " 'To His Coy Mistress' is too risque to edify the mind or uplift the human spirit. I prefer Wordsworth's 'Intimations of Immortality.' "
Waggling his eyebrows he replied, "Ah, yes, I did experience a bit of 'splendor in the grass' growing up in the Georgia backwoods."
"Somehow I don't believe we experience it in quite the same manner here in England." Bantering like this was truly delightful. She could enjoy matching wits without engaging her heart... or so she hoped.
Alex laughed heartily. "Being a lover of all manner of strays, I suppose you enjoyed ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’."
"As a matter of fact I did, even if Mr. Coleridge is an opium eater."
He shrugged, carefully this time. "No one's perfect."
"My real love, since you mentioned political tracts earlier, is the writing of Olympe de Gouges and Mary Wollstonecraft." She waited to see if he even knew who they were.
He tsked mockingly. "I might have known you'd favor women's rights apologists."
"You don't look at all horrified. Most men—even my father and his friends, are quite appalled that I advocate economic, political and social equality between the sexes."
"I come from a revolutionary country, if you recall," he said, chuckling. 'To give your father the benefit of the doubt, perhaps it is not Miss Wollstonecraft's ideas on women's rights he rejects, but those on free love."
She bit her lip consideringly. "Yes, he has mentioned it
a time or two, even though I've assured him I do not share that view with her."
"I'm certain he was much relieved," Alex said dryly. "You are a woman of many parts, Miss Jocelyn Woodbridge."
"And you are an utter charlatan, feigning ignorance of literature and ideas as if you cared more for gaming hells and Cyprians."
He rubbed his chin. "If I had to choose, my dear Joss, I fear you'd be much disillusioned with me. Since discovering all the lusty vices of the Great Wen, I'd be hard pressed to give them up."
"Perhaps some day you shall, Alex." When you find the right woman. But Jocelyn Woodbridge knew it would never be she.
Chapter Five
Joss stood by the window gazing out into the warm spring sunshine where the children scampered about Alex. Their squeals of delight had drawn her from her preparation for the afternoon classes. She watched in amazement while Alexander Blackthorne, resplendently dressed in cream doeskin trousers and a deep bottle green jacket, picked up little Verity Blaine, one of the most destitute of the children, and let her grimy little fingers tug on his snowy white cravat, pulling it loose. He seemed unconcerned, laughing and teasing the crowd of urchins surrounding him. They seldom saw a toff in these mean dirty slums. When they did, the "gentlemen" drove recklessly past, cursing, and sometimes running them down as they begged for coins.
But Alex was different. He drew them to him like a golden beam of sunshine. Children had a way of sensing the goodness—or evil—in adults. The moment he'd appeared at the schoolyard gates, they had responded to his warmth and laughter as he asked their names and answered their awestruck questions. Shortly they had gathered from all around the small bare yard to hear stories of his adventures with his Muskogee relatives. He tossed stones with the boys and even joined the girls in a game of hopscotch.
Joss could have stood all day simply basking in the pleasure of watching him. His way with the children did not surprise her. Everything about Alex Blackthorne was magical. She had seen little of him in the months since his awful brush with death. Yet each time when she became certain he had forgotten a boring spin
ster such as she, he would turn up, enchanting her with charm and laughter. Perhaps it would be better if he did not come by ever again. I am losing my heart more each time he reappears. Joss started guiltily, knowing that her heart must have been on her sleeve.
When Mary Breem walked up to her and stared out at Alex and the children, she opined, "A wastrel rogue such as that shouldn't be mixing with young impressionable minds." Mary sniffed primly, her thin, pinched lips compressed in a harsh line.
"Considering that most of their mothers are prostitutes and their fathers—if one could even find them—are probably cutpurses, I doubt Mr. Blackthorne will be much of an additional corruption," she replied crisply.
Mary stiffened indignantly. "The reverend would be shocked to hear you speak of such lascivious matters. 'Tis most indelicate."
" 'Tis the truth, Mary," she answered gently this time, striving for patience. Mrs. Bleem had volunteered long hours helping her organize the school for these children born into hopeless poverty. If Mary was a bit on the priggish and judgmental side, she was a tireless worker and zealous member of her father's congregation.
"I know his type and they prefer the pleasures of the flesh to being about the Lord's work. Why does he come around here?"
"Mr. Blackthorne is a good friend ... of the reverend's
as well as mine. He saved Papa's life on the docks."
Excusing herself, Joss walked outdoors to greet Alex, fighting the urge to straighten her hair. The knot of braids had come loose earlier when she'd had to break up a fight between two of the boys. Now it hung askew in a most ungraceful clump against her neck. What difference did it make? she chided herself. No matter what she did with her hair, it could add nothing of charm to a squint-eyed, gawky creature such as she.
Alex listened gravely as Tessa Jones explained in a piping lisp how she had lost her two front baby teeth. She looked worshipfully into his face, then giggled at his whispered confidence.
Do I reveal such puppyish adoration? Praying not, Joss cleared her throat as she approached him, calling out for the children to return to the classroom for their noon meal.
"I would not have expected a rakish gamester to have such rapport with children," she said, teasing.
Dusting off his pants, Alex chuckled. "Remember, I grew up in a large family with two little sisters and two elder ones. Believe me, I much preferred the younger ones," he added dryly.
"You mentioned before that you had sisters. Have you any brothers?" she asked, hungry for information about his American family.
"Alas for my poor parents, no. I am my father's sole male heir, a fact my mother loves to tease him about whenever he complains of my roguish proclivities."
"Like father, like son?" she ventured.
"In his day Devon Blackthorne cut quite a swath across the backcountry. His reputation as a brawler and rogue was legendary from the Muskogee towns all the way to Charleston. I am his penance—or so mother would have him believe."
"Mrs. Breem thinks you've come here to corrupt the children," she said with a chuckle.
He shrugged, raising his hands in mock guilt. "Caught out again. I was, in fact, enlisting them to snatch fat purses and gold watches for me in Mayfair."
"Their skills in that area need little sharpening, I fear. Most of them come from families where the law is an enemy and food and coal are scarce as violets in January."
"But you help them."
Joss blushed as he looked at her with frank admiration in his gaze. While his attention lacked the teasing charm and sexual magnetism he reserved for women to whom he was attracted, she knew he liked and admired her. "Yes, I do what I can, as do the others in the charity school movement. Education provides the only hope these children have to escape a life on the streets."
Alex grinned. "And who better to teach them than you?"
She fell in step beside him as they strolled around the schoolyard. "Well, I did learn to read when I was three, mastered Latin at seven and Greek by ten," she replied solemnly.
"Egad! You are a bluestocking indeed!"
"Caught out, too," she said with a sigh, then laughed. "What has brought you here today, Alex? We have a vacant position as schoolmaster for the older boys."
A look of extreme horror crossed his face; then he threw back his head and laughed heartily. "Me, a schoolmaster! As a lad my parents could scarce keep me at my books an hour a day. They'd relish the notion of me as a pedagogue. So would Mellie and Charity."
"Your elder sisters?" she ventured.
"Bookish wenches, both of them."
"So am I. 'Tis not a bad thing for a woman to love books," she said defensively.
"Ah, but you have a sense of humor, which they sadly lack."
"Are they still at home? Did you come to England to escape them?" she asked as she ushered him into the side door of the dilapidated frame building that housed the makeshift school.
"No, both are wed. Mellie's husband, Toby, has become indispensable to my father. He oversees a good portion of the shipping business in Savannah, leaving Papa free to spend more time in the Muskogee towns. He and Mama love to summer in the high country at Grandma Charity's place," he said with fond remembrance of childhood days past.
Joss offered him a seat on one of the small room's two rickety chairs, then set to preparing a pot of tea for them as he talked. Next door the children's voices seeped through the thin walls as they devoured lunch. "It's difficult to imagine an English lady living in the wilderness," she said.
"Equally difficult to imagine one teaching slum children their letters," he replied, accepting a chipped cup of tea, waving away the small scrap of sugar loaf she offered.
Joss was curious about his family. Sitting down, she said, "Lady Barbara must love your father very much."
His expression grew thoughtful. "As a child I never considered what she must have given up for Devon Blackthorne. We were all happy. And as Papa's inland trade and foreign shipping grew, we became prosperous. If Mama ever pined for England, she never indicated it in any way."
"It all sounds very romantic," Joss said with a small sigh that he did not hear.
Alex chuckled. "One never thinks of one's own parents that way, but I suppose it was true. What of your parents, Joss? Were they happy?"
"My parents gave up a great deal to marry. As the second son of an earl, Papa was expected to wed a woman of his class. The family didn't disown him for marrying a governess, although they made their displeasure known and ostracized her shamefully. He was expected to take a vicarage in the established church, which would have provided him and his wife a livable income. It was his conversion to Methodism that led to the final split with his family. But she held fast to him through terrible privations."
"What was she like?" Alex asked, touched by the poverty and hardship of her life.
"I know little. When I was only three she died of childbed fever after a breech birth. My brother Samuel died too. All I can remember is a soft voice singing hymns and lullabies."
"I'm sorry. It's difficult for me to imagine not being surrounded by family. Although I often complain of them, I do miss not having them about now and then."
"Surely not when you're having a streak of luck at the hazard tables," she teased. Her sad past did not bear dwelling upon.
"I confess I've found compensations here in the Great Wen that offset the temporary loss of my family, but I did receive a letter from home this morning. One of the reasons I came to visit you."
She paused with the cup halfway to her lips. "And what was the other reason, since I know you did not intend to volunteer tutorial assistance?"
He placed one hand over his heart theatrically. " 'Pon my honor, Miss Woodbridge, you do me grave injustice. Can't I simply wish the pleasure of your company? You're a refreshing tonic after three days of playing whist at Brooks with Drum and his chums."
"Thank you ... I think," Joss replied dryly. "You mentioned a letter from home. Not bad news, I hope?"
"Nothi
ng ill's befallen my immediate family, no. It's the political situation that worries me. If war comes, I'll be forced to return home."
Joss paled. "Surely your president wouldn't declare war against his majesty's government while Britain has her back to the wall fighting that despicable Napoleon?" she said with righteous indignation.
Alex's expression grew uncharacteristically grim as he
considered how to explain the complexities of American politics. "Yes, from what my father writes, it's very possible."
"Over the Royal Navy's search of American ships and impressment of sailors? The French have seized as many American ships as has Britain," she protested.
'True, and war against Napoleon is a possibility as well. But freedom on the seas is only the smallest part of the problem. Most of the war pressure is internal, having more to do with Spain hemming in land-hungry American settlers to the west and south."
"And Spain is Britain's ally." She nodded in understanding. "With a declaration of war, the Americans could sweep down into the Floridas and west into Texas."
Alex grinned in spite of the gravity of the situation. "I should've realized a true bluestocking would understand geography as well as politics."
"Would you join the Americans and fight?" Joss asked, her fear for him written plainly on her face as she reached out and touched his coat sleeve.
"No, I would never do that. It would be a betrayal of my father's people."
"Now I truly don't understand," she replied.
"Since the days of the American war for independence, all the great Indian nations have been sympathetic to the Crown. What little protection they ever received from white squatters on their land came from the British government."
Joss understood European politics, but she knew little about the loose tribal organizations of wild red Indians. "What does your father think will happen now?"
"The situation is like a powder keg sitting next to a hearth. The British have sent ships into the gulf and have men garrisoned at various Spanish forts. They're sending agents to stir up anti-American feeling among the tribes. My father is afraid the Creek nation—of which the Muskogee are a part—may decide to join their old allies the British once again. Uncle Quint just returned from Washington to inform him that the western congressmen—war hawks they call them—are pushing hard for a fight."