Aether Spirit

by Cecilia Dominic

  Forgetting her is impossible. Remembering him could kill her.

  Aether Psychics, Book 3

  When Chadwick Radcliffe arrives at Fort Daniels to assume the position of medical chief, the prejudice against his mixed heritage is no surprise. But he never expected to encounter the one woman who’s beyond his reach—medically and emotionally.

  A steamcart accident stole three years of Claire McPhee’s memories, and now as she helps soldiers cope with combat-related neuroses, she secretly hopes to find the key to filling that gaping hole.

  There’s something vaguely familiar about Dr. Radcliffe, but every time she comes close to determining why, he pushes her away—and her hypnosis-induced memory blocks explode with pain.

  Chadwick knows the Eros Element can heal, but its unintended side effects are too dangerous to risk using it to bring Claire’s memories out of the shadows. But with the key to the Union’s victory buried in Claire’s mind, Chadwick and Claire are forced to push past the boundaries others have placed on them—even if rediscovering their love risks their lives.

  Warning: Vast amounts of Victorian mental health geekery and copious amounts of tea were poured into the writing of his book. No matter how pretty the aether is, the author cautions readers not to try using it to manipulate others’ emotions. The side effects could be atrocious.

  Aether Spirit

  Cecilia Dominic

  Dedication

  Some of my greatest teachers have been my clients, and I will always have a special place in my heart for active duty military and veterans. This book is dedicated to the men and women who put their lives in danger to keep our country safe and suffer the consequences long after. Thank you!

  Author’s Note

  I have treated and do treat posttraumatic stress disorder. It was a completely unheard of concept in the nineteenth century, and I had to tweak some history to make Claire’s role seem believable. The origins of our empirically-supported treatments were still a long way off, so the treatments Claire uses at Fort Daniels are not at all representative of the time or of what we do now. She barely takes the first step of establishing rapport with her patients, which is necessary but not sufficient for successful PTSD treatment. Please don’t take any of the methods portrayed in this story as accurate of what our mental health practices look like today, even though the author is a psychologist.

  I did, however, enjoy researching the medical history to see what practices were in place at the time. I would particularly like to thank the Dekalb History Center. Their Civil War exhibit, which included information on mental health care, was timely and very helpful. Freud was still a teenager in 1871, so psychoanalysis, the precursor to talk therapy, hadn’t even been invented yet. That makes Claire very ahead of her time.

  Chapter One

  Fort Daniels, Tennessee, 22 February 1871

  Am I seeing a ghost?

  Doctor Chadwick Radcliffe couldn’t take his eyes off the young woman who had just pushed through Distillery Hospital’s pitted wooden doors. She looked and moved so much like Claire—his Claire—down to how she shook the water out of her umbrella with three open-shut pulses. The watery light dulled her copper penny hair, but she still had the one wisp that wouldn’t stay contained in her simple hairstyle, and she wore the same rectangle-rimmed spectacles that gave her blue-gray eyes and oval face an air of perpetual curiosity.

  He shook his head. It was just fatigue and the fact he had been back in the Union States for a month and hadn’t heard anything of Claire’s whereabouts in spite of repeated letters and telegrams to his contacts in Boston. Six years had passed since the accident. What were the chances her appearance hadn’t changed? He looked back at the young woman, expecting her to have transformed into someone unfamiliar, but she glanced around, her bottom lip between her teeth in her habitual thinking expression.

  An accidental resemblance, then. His Claire would never have ventured so close to an active front, one of the few left in this stalemate between the Union States and Confederate States. Her family would never have allowed their precious daughter and niece so close to danger. He motioned to one of the nurses, who approached with swishing skirts.

  “Yes, Doctor Radcliffe?”

  “Find out who that young woman is and what she wants. She doesn’t belong here, must have made a wrong turn in town and gotten lost.”

  The nurse’s huff caught his attention. Ah, right, Nanette. The dark-haired beauty had paid extra attention to him since he arrived, but he’d ignored her. His heart was spoken for, although it would kill his beloved to claim it.

  Nanette returned with an amused expression. “She says her name is Doctor Claire McPhee. She’s the neuroticist sent by the University of Pennsylvania to help the soldiers recover from their mental wounds.” Her mouth twisted around the word, “neuroticist”.

  Chad forced his hands to unclench, but not because of his hatred for neuroticists, who had been instrumental in keeping her away from him so her injured psyche could repair itself. It was her. She had arrived to find him completely unprepared.

  “She asked for the chief of medicine. I told her it’s you.”

  “I guess I am.”

  Dammit.

  The former chief had accidentally crossed the border too close to a Fort Temperance sniper. That was how things went these days—few battles, but they picked each other off whenever they had the chance. As Chad was the only other physician there at the time—Perkins having been on a much-delayed leave—Chad had assumed the chief position. For some reason, the powers that be decided to keep him there in spite of Perkins’s objections when he’d returned two weeks later.

  Chad approached Claire with what he hoped was a professional air, but his heart beat a charged tattoo in his ribs. Would she recognize him? Would it injure her to do so? What did he hope would happen?

  Above all, he didn’t want to hurt her.

  Claire studied him with her intense gaze under a slight frown, although without a flicker of recognition.

  It wasn’t supposed to be like this. He swallowed the lump in his throat and resisted the urge to tuck that stray strand behind her ear.

  “I’m Doctor Chadwick Radcliffe, the chief of medicine. How can I help you?”

  Again, nothing except an odd, measuring gaze. “I’m Doctor Claire McPhee,” she finally said. Instead of holding out her hand for him to take it, she rubbed at her right temple with two fingers. She wore tan kid gloves that screamed “city girl”.

  “What brings you to Fort Daniels and Distillery Hospital? Were you looking for Danielsville? It’s just over the ridge.”

  “I just came from Danielsville. Is that what you call this place—Distillery Hospital?” She grinned, and her careless amusement—the same that had attracted him to her in the first place—nearly doubled him over with grief.

  Instead he straightened his spine. “Beggars can’t be choosers when you’re on a war front.” His statement came out as a growl, but he had to get away from her before he accidentally damaged her. Or shredded his heart further.

  “True.” She took a deep breath, and he knew she was about to try to convince him of something. “I suppose you got my telegram? Well, not mine. The one about me. To you, the medical director.”

  “No. It’s possible one arrived, but we’ve had some personnel changes.”

  “I see.” Another breath—even under her prim jacket he could see the movements of her chest—and she launched into her spiel. “I’m here on a grant through the University of Pennsylvania to work with soldiers who show signs of nervous disease like nightmares, feeling like they’re back in the situation, being easily startled, memory pro
blems…” She rattled off a list of symptoms, and Chadwick had to remind himself to pay attention to her words, not her full lips. Plus, she described most of the young men who were there, their minds as broken as their bodies after years of tense anticipation punctuated with brief skirmishes.

  “Did your superiors realize they were sending you into a war zone?” he asked and gestured around him. “It’s dangerous—one well-aimed shell from just over the border, and we’re toast. Plus, we don’t have private consulting rooms here, just a surgery suite, and it’s not someplace that will speak of comfort to a soldier.”

  “Oh, I recognize that, and they knew. Sometimes you don’t have much to lose, you know?”

  Her question, more than anything, tore his heart. What did she mean? He knew her father had died, but wasn’t her mother still alive? And her evil aunt, Eliza, who adored Claire to the point of wanting to make her life perfect, at least according to Eliza’s desires?

  “Not really,” he said, hoping she’d elaborate.

  Instead, she pressed on. “The grant is to find out if we can make a difference with sympathetic conversation rather than procedures, which is the European model, and you probably know better than I how mental healing can promote physical healing.”

  More than you know. The elbow he’d landed on when he was thrown from the steamcart had refused to heal completely. It still ached on rainy days like this one, as did his heart.

  She waved a hand in front of his face. He’d drifted again, dammit. Perhaps he had some of the symptoms she’d come here to help the soldiers with, but he’d never admit to them.

  “I’m sorry, Doctor Radcliffe, but does my being here bother you? I know neuroticists still have a poor reputation in the medical world, but this work is important. This war is too close to finally being over to lose soldiers to their worst fears.”

  And I can’t sacrifice these boys to my fears. Or the mistakes they made with her. “Fine, Doctor McPhee. I can find you a spot for your work, but every soldier you treat has to be medically cleared. By me personally. I won’t let you damage them physically by digging around in their psyches.”

  “That’s fine.” Her eyebrows curved above the rims of her glasses. “Well, then, I promise I won’t get in your way. If you’ll have one of the nurses show me to the women’s quarters so I can settle my things? I can manage my own trunk.”

  Nanette hovered nearby, as always. Chadwick jerked his head at Claire. “Nanette, show her around.”

  After the nurse took Claire out, Chadwick had to breathe slowly and evenly for a count of ten. What have I done to deserve this? And how can I get her to agree to her own treatment?

  * * * * *

  “Women’s quarters are this way. They stick us at the end as far away from the soldiers’ barracks and prisoners as possible.”

  Nanette didn’t look at Claire as she talked. Claire trotted behind her and dragged her trunk on its little wheeled clockwork cart over as much stone-paved path as she could find. By the time they reached the squat, two-story building on the opposite end of the fort from the battle front, Claire’s arms ached, one from pulling the trunk and the other from holding her umbrella aloft against the driving wind and stinging raindrops.

  Claire sensed the waves of resentment coming from the dark-haired nurse who led her to the women’s quarters, so she didn’t ask for a tour of the fort. It seemed pretty self-explanatory, and she was good at finding her way around. Once Nanette left her to their shared room—an unfortunate happenstance that the only empty female bed was with such a reluctant roommate—Claire unpacked as quickly as she could. She hadn’t brought much, having had to sneak out of her mother’s house in Boston, now shared with her least favorite aunt. She’d had to keep her whereabouts a secret from most of her friends and acquaintances, who would have ratted her out to her family, especially her aunt and brother. Her family wanted to stick her in an uncomfortable marriage with a man she hardly knew.

  Hell, she hardly knew herself. Her memory held huge gaps from her life from when she’d been sixteen to when she’d come aware on a neuroticist’s couch in Vienna when she’d turned eighteen.

  The only thing she was sure of was that the man she dreamed about—but whose face she never saw—had existed, and she wanted to find him again. She hadn’t encountered him in her mother’s circles in Boston, so she thought he must have gone to be a soldier of some sort. She believed in the underlying order of the universe, hence why she put herself in a position to be sent to the front. She had faith she’d find him, whoever he was, if she put herself in the right place. The grant award had seemed a long shot, but she’d gotten it, so he must be here.

  Of course she couldn’t start up something romantically with one of her patients, but she knew she’d recognize him when she saw him, and she’d feel all the love and affection he’d been keeping for her these six years.

  Or maybe she was just a silly girl with a dream. Either way, she’d be helping people, which was all she’d ever wanted. Her neuroticist had told her to focus on that, not finding the man she missed but wasn’t sure why.

  She changed out of her wet clothing and into her work blouse and skirt. Hanging her clothing in the wardrobe allowed her to bring her attention to what she was doing. But thoughts swirled around in her head like the icy raindrops that had plagued her on the wagon ride from the station to the fort and after. She’d been lucky in that she’d arrived with a shipment of medical supplies, so she was able to get to the fort that day, unlucky that the freight wagon’s covering was for boxes, not people.

  And the unenthusiastic welcome from Doctor Chadwick Radcliffe hadn’t helped. She guessed that even with his apparent expertise, he’d had to fight hard to stay in his position, or perhaps he was an interim chief. As much as the Union States may embrace the idea of emancipation, they didn’t necessarily espouse the principles of equality necessary for a dark-skinned man to be accepted as a medical chief of a major fort, and she brought potential controversy with her. She wondered if he’d trained in Europe. They certainly seemed more welcoming over there, although there was still plenty of racism.

  Still, she’d been more than kind and didn’t think she’d given him any reason for his coldness.

  Not cold, exactly, but fearful. Why was he afraid of her? He certainly hadn’t been happy to see her, but nothing about what she was there to do should inspire fear, and she’d been approved by the previous director. She was there to help Radcliffe. In fact, his antipathy to her had been almost visceral, his emotions too strong to sort it out. This led to one conclusion—he, like many, had been traumatized from his time at the front. Or he was afraid she’d damage his patients. She’d have to spend more time with him to reassure him. There was no sense in getting turned away until after she’d found her hero, whoever he was.

  “Oh, there she is.”

  Claire turned around to see Nanette and two of the other nurses waiting in the front hall of the quarters.

  “Hello,” she said. “Thank you, I’m settling in nicely. Is dinner this way?”

  “You’re not going unescorted, are you?” Nanette asked. “It would be very forward of you.”

  Claire pressed her lips together so her upper one wouldn’t curl in disdain at the idea that a woman couldn’t go to dinner by herself. This was a war zone, not a society matron’s house, for goodness’ sake.

  “Are you waiting for someone?” she asked. “Perhaps I could tag along.”

  “Yes, but only three men are coming. You’d look a strange odd one out.”

  One of the other nurses, a blonde, tittered. “More than you already do. What kind of woman wears spectacles?”

  “Well, thank you for your advice, but I’m going to head along. Perhaps I’ll find my own escort on the way.”

  She thought she heard one of them say, “Not likely.” She told herself she didn’t care, that the pricking in her eyes was from the rain
. How could she have made a misstep so soon?

  It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter. But she knew from experience it did. Alienating the nurses at a hospital was a one-way ticket to failure.

  When Claire walked out of the front door, the inviting smells of the dining hall beckoned her. Relieved that her destination was upwind so she wouldn’t have to wander around completely lost, she opened her umbrella and stalked into the rain. Whatever she did, she wouldn’t allow a grumpy doctor and resentful nurse to deter her from meal time.

  The more emotions she soaked up, the hungrier she got, and she had missions to fulfill, both personal and professional.

  * * * * *

  “You seem perturbed,” Patrick O’Connell said to Chad that night as they ate in the mess hall. “A waste of good food, you are. Missing the French siege diet and Ottoman spice?” He held up a beer-braised sausage on a fork, and a strand of onion dripped juice on to his arm. The Irishman licked his hairy wrist.

  “And you seem to have lost any refinement you may have gained in our travels.”

  But Chad was relieved that Patrick’s humor had returned, especially since Paris. Patrick had always been more of a doer than a traveler or thinker, and he was happiest in his workshop.

  “You’re grumpy tonight.”

  Chadwick shrugged.

  “There’s the difference between us, my friend. I don’t let gun problems ruin my appetite.” His eyebrow wiggle confirmed the double entendre. “Not that I have any.”

  “You’re stretching with that one.” Chad shook his head and pushed the greasy food around on his plate. It was fine, better than he’d expected when he arrived. The speed with which his superiors had summoned him back to the front had surprised him. But then, he’d lost track of the news in besieged Paris, and the situation in the States was becoming desperate. Public opinion was for halting the war effort and negotiating with the rebels.

  In other words, against the continued sacrifice of sons who had barely been out of diapers when the war began and the guaranteed spinsterhood of a generation of daughters.