The Drifter

by Susan Wiggs

  She was shocked that his touch had this effect on her, even here and now. “I’d be an idiot if pirates didn’t frighten me.” She regarded him with his wild hair spilling over the canvas, a half smile even now inching up through his pain. “And I suppose the sight of you lying senseless wasn’t particularly welcome, either.”

  “I’ll try not to lie senseless too much longer,” he promised. True to his word, he braced his hands on the deck and pushed himself up, chest muscles straining. “Damn. I see stars.”

  “Lie back down,” Leah said, alarmed. He had no idea how serious a blow to the head could be. “Jackson...”

  He sank back, wincing when his head met the canvas. “I finally get her to say my name, and I’m too weak to do anything about it.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s—”

  “Dr. Mundy!” Davy Morgan’s voice called out through a fog of smoke. “Dr. Mundy, can you come? Mr. Rapsilver burned himself real bad!”

  She shot to her feet. “Stay still,” she cautioned Jackson. “I’ll be back when I can.”

  If he said anything in reply, she didn’t hear. She raced down the dock to find the harbormaster wrapped in old blankets, the edges black and smoking. He lay on his side, teeth chattering, small moans issuing from his throat.

  “He needs to be taken to the surgery to get these burns cleaned and dressed,” Leah said.

  Sophie Whitebear came running. “Leah, you’d better come to the surgery, too. There’s a lot of folks waiting.”

  A cold ball of horror tightened in her gut. This was no storybook pirate adventure. This was real violence, and people were getting hurt.

  “Dr. Mundy!” called a desperate voice. “Doctor, can you help?”

  Feeling torn, she looked down at the man shivering on the dock. “Davy, make a litter and get him up to the house. Be very careful not to jar him.”

  The youth spread out a blanket. “I don’t think I can carry him on my own.”

  Leah gritted her teeth and bent to help Davy shift Rapsilver onto the blanket.

  “Here,” said a gravelly voice behind her. “Let me.”

  She glanced up to see Jackson—unsteady on his feet, still bare-chested and barefoot. With the fire and smoke lighting him from behind, he looked magnificent. She should have protested, should have told him he was too weak and too badly injured to be up and about, but she knew he’d argue.

  “Be careful with him,” she said.

  “We will, Doc.” He nodded in the direction of the boardinghouse. “Just go.”

  * * *

  No one in town slept that night. The able-bodied battled the flames and bore the wounded up to Leah’s house. She tended the most gravely injured first; then, as dawn tinged the eastern sky over the Cascades, she cleaned and bandaged the lesser wounds.

  She knew she should feel tired, but she didn’t. The stress of working all the night through and into the morning sustained her.

  Battle Douglas and Zeke Pomfrit tried to keep matters in hand on the porch and in the yard. “In all my born days, I’ve never seen a pirate attack,” Battle commented, lighting his morning pipe.

  Leah joined them on the porch, rubbing the small of her back and stretching. She’d spent hours bent over the examining table, teasing debris out of wounds and stitching them, dressing burns. Her eyes smarted and her neck ached.

  “Why would pirates attack?” Zeke asked.

  Battle nodded in the direction of the harbor. “I guess that’s what the argument’s about down there.”

  In front of the sheriff’s office, Jackson and Sheriff St. Croix stood nose-to-nose, their faces red, their fists clenched. After a moment, Jackson made a frustrated gesture with his hand and stalked toward the house.

  Leah leaned against a side column and watched him. Battle Douglas was saying something, but she didn’t listen. She was entranced by the sight of Jackson Underhill in the morning light. He had a reddened hole torn in his trousers. He’d pulled on a plaid shirt, but hadn’t paused to do up the buttons so that the edges flew back as he walked. In that moment, he was as fine to her as the rising sun.

  Only hours ago, she’d sat on this porch and vowed not to succumb to his spell. Yet she couldn’t help being drawn to his roguish allure, his gambler’s smoothness, the dark mysteries that gave depth and texture to his charming exterior. She couldn’t help feeling a physical ache for which she knew no tonic or cure.

  She forced herself to put aside fanciful notions. Forced herself to fold her arms protectively in front of her and wait calmly as if his arrival was no more remarkable than seeing Iona make a trip to the well.

  “It was about the guns,” Jackson said, clearly having no notion of her thoughts.

  “The attack, you mean?” Leah pushed away from the column and came down the stairs.

  “When the stolen guns weren’t where they were supposed to be, they attacked the town.”

  “But that makes no sense. How could they have guessed the guns were in the town?”

  “I doubt there was any guessing about it.”

  She shuddered as a chill of suspicion swept over her. “Someone told them.”

  “That’s what I think. I swear, this town has the sorriest excuse for a sheriff I’ve ever seen.”

  “Until tonight we didn’t seem to need someone stronger.”

  “Yeah...” Jackson swayed on his feet.

  Leah cursed herself for forgetting his head injury. “Come inside,” she said. “You’ve been rushing around all night. You need tending.” She slid her arm around him. “Lean on me.”

  “I thought you’d never ask.” He leaned a little, then a little more until he shoved her to the ground. Battle Douglas hurried down from the porch, pipe clamped between his teeth.

  “I’ll be jiggered,” the older man said. “He’s out cold.”

  “He is.” Leah struggled out from under him. “Help me get him inside.”

  “To the main guest room?”

  She was swept by unpleasant memories of Carrie’s illness and treatment, the harsh words she and Jackson had exchanged in that room. “Yes,” she said.

  Once they got him into bed, she stood looking at him for a long time, letting relief and fear and wanting roll over her in great painful waves. He could have died last night. She could have died.

  She had a number of regrets about her life. But at the moment, she could only remember one of them. She hadn’t let Jackson T. Underhill make love to her.

  Eleven

  Jackson awakened to find Leah Mundy bending over his private parts. Just for a moment, he felt a fine rush of satisfaction. But the pleasant feeling was quickly obliterated by a tide of excruciating agony.

  “I can’t say it’s the first time I’ve been in this position,” he said. “But it is the first time I’ve wished it could be over quicker. What the hell are you doing, Doc?”

  Her attention never wandered from his upper thigh. Her hands, clad in rubber gloves bright with blood, never faltered. “Why didn’t you tell me you were injured here?”

  He had his teeth clamped together so tightly that for a moment he couldn’t speak. “Too much going on,” he managed. “You sound mad. Seems to me—ouch!—I’m the one with the right to be mad.”

  “You spent the night with a filthy metal splinter embedded in your thigh. That’s a risk of gangrene, and a bad case of gangrene can mean you’ll lose this leg.”

  That shut him up but good. He stared at the ceiling, recognizing the room where they’d brought Carrie. It seemed a lifetime ago. He wondered what became of a person like Carrie when she died. Did she ascend like a zephyr to the stars, or... “Damn, I’m three sheets in the wind, Doc.”

  “I gave you a shot of morphine.”

  The bed linens beneath him rustled, crisply clean, and he felt like an abom
ination atop them, blood and sweat and smoke and ash soiling them. Beneath his left leg, Leah had placed a thick pad, and for modesty, a sheet lay draped over his middle. Beside her was a tray of instruments that shone with a deadly glare in the midmorning sunlight.

  “So when did this happen?” she asked.

  He frowned up at the white crown molding. “I heard a shot, then something exploded on my boat. More damned repairs to make.”

  “You’d better hope there isn’t lead in this metal. I’ve removed about thirty slivers.”

  I should learn to mind my own business, thought Jackson. That was what he was best at. Getting involved with these townspeople and their storybook seaside village brought nothing but trouble.

  He could feel her instrument digging deeper. To distract himself, he stared at her intently. Leah Mundy was never more beautiful than when she was totally absorbed in her work. If she would look at him that way—not just at his open wound, but at all of him—he’d be lost forever. It had almost happened yesterday. There had been a moment when he’d touched her, and he’d seen that look on her face, that near rapture...but then in a wave of self-consciousness, the look had disappeared.

  “Am I naked beneath this sheet?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “How did I get that way?”

  “Mr. Douglas did the honors.” The tiniest of smiles pulled at her mouth. “Don’t worry, Mr. Underhill, your virtue is still intact.”

  “Sugar, I wasn’t worried about my virtue.”

  “Hold still,” she said in a low, even voice. “Don’t tense your muscles.”

  “I wasn’t tensing them.”

  “You were.”

  “Was not.”

  “I’m a doctor, Mr. Underhill. I know when a muscle is tensed.”

  “Well, I’m the owner of the muscles, and I say they aren’t tense.” He propped himself up on his elbows. “I can’t believe we’re arguing about this.”

  “Lie down,” she said, but it was too late. Half-sitting, he stared with dawning horror at the open wound on his thigh.

  “Jesus, Doc, you’re butchering me.” His head felt wobbly on his neck. The sight of his own blood and sinew—and was that a glimpse of bone?—and her sharp, probing instruments nearly undid him.

  “Lie down,” she said more forcefully.

  He sank back onto the bed. “Damn, that’s a bad wound.”

  “You should have told me about it sooner.”

  “You were busy.”

  “I would have made time. Hold still,” she cautioned. “Right now. Very, very still. There’s a big sliver of something—dear God.”

  “Dear God? That’s bad. You wouldn’t say ‘Dear God’ if it wasn’t bad.”

  “The sharp end of this metal is touching the bone, I’m afraid.” She turned to him briskly and put a black rubber ring with a cup over his mouth and nose. “Breathe in.”

  “What the—”

  “Breathe in, damn it,” she said.

  Cussing. Leah Mundy was cussing. This must be worse than he’d thought. He inhaled.

  Within seconds, an airy sensation lifted him off the bed. He smiled. “What is this?”

  “Nitrous oxide. Also known as laughing gas.”

  “I like it.”

  “I thought you might. But you must remember to stay still. Ready?”

  “Ready for what? For you?” The fuzzy sense of well-being loosened his tongue. “Honey, I’ve been ready for you since the first moment I saw you.”

  “You were a married man.”

  “Was I? Funny, I don’t recall getting married.” There. That got a reaction out of the intractable Leah Mundy.

  “I have no idea what you mean,” she said.

  “What I mean is, I wanted you even with the ice in your veins. And every time you put me off makes me want you more. What will it take for me to have you, Leah?”

  “I need you to hold still so I can get this last sliver out. Stop moving!”

  “I wasn’t moving.”

  “You were. I’m serious.”

  “How serious?”

  In a funny conversational tone, she said, “You know, before doctors learned to control pain, speed was of the essence. That’s why surgery was so dangerous. I read of a doctor who operated with a scalpel held between his teeth. They say he once amputated a leg in two and a half minutes—and, in the rush, cut off the patient’s testicles.”

  Jackson held very, very still. “Take your time, Doc.”

  “Don’t worry. I shall.”

  His mind drifted as she worked, removing the last of the splinters. He smiled benignly into the rubber mask—until she began washing the wound with a solution of carbolic acid and linseed oil. His howl brought Sophie Whitebear running. Then came Bowie, his skinny arms pumping the wheels of his rolling chair.

  “Holy cow, Dr. Mundy! Look at all that blood!” the boy blurted out.

  Jackson’s howls subsided to tortured moans.

  “He’ll be fine, Bowie,” Leah said without looking up. “I just need to sew him up.”

  “Holy cow! That’s a big needle!” Bowie exclaimed. “Why’s it curved like that?”

  Just what I needed to hear, Jackson thought.

  “Sophie?” Leah didn’t have to say more. Her assistant herded Bowie out of the doorway.

  Leah stitched the wound, then put a pad over it, soaking the pad with more carbolic and covering it with tinfoil.

  “Tinfoil?” Jackson asked weakly.

  “To prevent the disinfectant from evaporating.”

  He heard a light clatter as she put her instruments into a shallow pan. As she was peeling off her rubber gloves, she seemed to be studying his face in that assessing way of hers.

  What did she see? he wondered. Did she see Jackson T. Underhill, knight in tarnished armor, determined to rescue a lady who didn’t want rescuing? Or did she see the outlaw Jack Tower, gambling and fighting his way to a freedom that probably didn’t even exist? Or—and God help her if she did—did she see little Jackie Hill sitting on the stoop of St. I’s and watching his mother walk away?

  Leah touched him, her hand cool against his brow. “No fever. I must watch you for infection.”

  “Thanks.” He wished she would keep her hand there all day.

  She pushed away from the bed, piling bloody linens into a basket. “You should rest,” she said over her shoulder, blowing a wisp of hair away from her brow.

  “So should you.” He grabbed her hand. “Lie down with me.”

  She pulled away. “I have things to do.”

  “I could make you forget them.”

  “That’s just the problem, Mr. Underhill. Ring for Perpetua if you need anything.”

  Something about her dismissive tone enraged him. It blew like a winter wind through him, clearing away the blurry warmth of the laughing gas. “All I need, lady, is to get the hell out of here. I’ve found nothing but trouble in this town.”

  She dropped her soiled gloves into an enameled pan. “Perhaps that’s because you go looking for it.”

  “I stopped here for help with Carrie.”

  “And you got it.”

  “And lost Carrie in the process,” he snapped.

  The color dropped from her face. Without another word, she turned on her heel and left the room.

  Jackson lay still for a while, feeling the swish of powerful narcotics in his lungs and bloodstream and trying like hell to justify his behavior. The truth was, Leah Mundy scared him. She made him want a home, a family, a future. It was dangerous to want such things because he couldn’t have them.

  He should have figured that out a long time ago.

  * * *

  The day after the attack, Leah slept the sleep of exhaustion and awok
e late in the morning to find everyone in the household tiptoeing around.

  Before she’d come fully awake, she thought of Jackson. But as soon as her mouth began to curve into a smile, she remembered his bitter words. She was irritated but not surprised to learn that he’d gone back to work on his boat, probably tearing the stitches she’d sewn so painstakingly.

  She stared at the clock on the wall opposite her bed. One minute. She would give herself one minute to think about Jackson T. Underhill, and then she would think of him no more for the rest of the day.

  She failed miserably. Picking at the breakfast of porridge and marionberries Perpetua had set before her, she recalled their picnic on the beach, the way he’d unfolded his lanky length on the old blanket and savored every bite of his lunch. Later, on her way to the Rapsilver house to check on the harbormaster’s burns, she caught herself gazing off between the pricked ears of the buggy horse and thinking about the day she’d helped Jackson work on his boat, how agreeable it had been to do something as mindless and undemanding as sanding a rough spot on the deck.

  She pulled the buggy off by a pond so the horse could drink. She watched the wind ripple across the surface and heard the breeze sing through the high alder tops and thought irresistibly of the time at the forest house when they’d almost made love.

  Even the mere memory made her flush with warmth. Her breasts tingled and she felt a sweet heaviness deep in the center of her, a throbbing summoned by the thought of his big, callused hand skimming over her breasts. She should have let him. She should have let him. The thought pulsed through her until she wanted to scream with frustration.

  Stooping, she picked up a handful of rocks and flung them into the pond, shattering the pretty reflection of blue sky and clouds that had held her mesmerized.

  She spanked the horse smartly and headed home. Her rounds were finished for the day, and it would soon be suppertime. She even had an hour to stop at the bathhouse for a good long soak. But the moment the silky warm water slipped over her nude body, she broke her vow yet again. She thought of Jackson.