A Dream Rides By

by Tania Anne Crosse

  ‘No. Not carried away.’ Her voice was small, her words slow and carefully chosen. ‘I wasn’t, anyway. I love you, Elliott. I think I always have. Ever since you rode past me on Ghost. Even before you rescued me from under the train.’

  Elliott blinked at her, and his eyebrows shot up towards his hair. ‘Do you really think so?’ And then he suddenly laughed aloud. ‘And when I saw this lanky young wench with a halo of chestnut hair, I really thought she’d taken me to heaven with her, and I’ve thought of no one else ever since! All those years in London, when I longed to receive a letter from you so that I could write back. If only . . .’

  He stopped short, and their broad smiles slid from their faces. ‘If only Barney had given me your note,’ Ling finished for him.

  They stared at each other for a full minute, their young hearts racing and ready to explode. Then Elliott sucked in his lower lip. ‘We must think this through carefully, Ling. We must both decide what we really want.’

  But, in truth, they both already knew.

  Twenty-Six

  When Elliott opened the front door the following Thursday afternoon, he had his answer. No sooner had he closed the door behind her than Ling was wrapped in his embrace, and the intense joy of being with him again galloped up and down her spine. He kissed her tenderly, ecstatically, without the deep force of the previous week, but just as passionate for that.

  The kettle was already singing on the range in the back room, cups arranged on their saucers, and Ling felt the pulse that pounded at her temples ease with a touch of amusement. The English idiosyncrasy of the obligatory cup of tea was clearly deep-rooted with Elliott. Perhaps he was as nervous as she was, but he was certainly a gentleman, and he pulled out a chair for her at the table. Then he picked up a pair of oven gloves, opened the oven door and removed a bun-tin with six sad-looking mounds of cake mixture in it.

  His face fell. ‘Oh dear,’ he mumbled. ‘Aren’t they supposed to expand or something?’

  Ling gazed at him, her hesitation fleeing as she tried not to laugh at his crestfallen expression. ‘They’re not cooked yet, and I don’t think the oven’s hot enough. Put them on the top shelf, and maybe by the time we’ve made the tea they’ll be ready. They mightn’t rise, though, now you’ve taken them out. And, well, to be honest, I’ve only just had lunch with Agnes,’ she concluded.

  ‘Yes. Of course you have.’ His eyes met hers, suddenly dancing rakishly, and he threw up his head with that wonderful, soft laugh. ‘Oh dear, what an idiot I am, trying to impress you with my non-existent culinary skills! I’ve never baked a cake in my life. Casseroles and stews are more my line.’ He paused, his eyebrows raised quizzically. ‘What am I doing, babbling on about my dietary arrangements when the loveliest woman in the world has come to visit me?’

  It was Ling who was grinning now at his boyish expression. ‘No!’ She giggled, light-hearted now the initial tension had subsided. ‘I want to know everything about you. What you were like as a little boy, for instance.’

  ‘As a boy?’ he asked in surprise as he proceeded to make the tea. ‘Quite serious and well-behaved, as I remember. It was as an adolescent that I began to rebel. I mean, not seriously. But I began to see beyond my mother’s circle of friends. Tight-laced lot they were. Are. My father, now, I’ve always got on rather better with him. He’s more open-minded about people. But,’ he said more sombrely as he poured the scalding liquid into the cups, ‘what about you? What was your childhood like?’

  Ling tipped her head sideways. ‘Hard,’ she replied thoughtfully. ‘My father was a quarryman at Foggintor all his life. We always had the open moor to play on, and I’ve always loved living there. But, I don’t know how to put it, you can feel trapped up there. Until the railway came. And I met you.’

  She saw the muscles of his handsome face tighten, and she lowered her eyes as doubt clouded her resolve once more. What was she doing here? She had Barney. But Barney had betrayed her all those years ago. Or had it merely slipped his mind? She supposed she would never know.

  ‘Come and see what I’ve done in the garden.’

  Elliott’s voice was expressionless as if he, too, could make no sense of his conflicting emotions. Ling followed him outside, her legs unsteady. On the upper two terraces, Elliott had hacked the waist-high growth down to ground level, and the first flat surface beyond the yard had been worked to a perfect bed of finely raked earth.

  ‘I’m going to sow grass seed,’ he told her. ‘At least then I’ll have somewhere to sit out. When I have a spare moment,’ he added with a grimace. ‘And when it’s not raining.’

  He raised his eyes towards the dark sky as rain started to fall in large, heavy droplets, and they both instinctively turned back into the house. As they went inside, the familiar churning gripped Ling’s stomach. They had both been delaying the moment, knowing what it was they truly wanted but also knowing it was unutterably wrong.

  ‘You’d better take off your jacket. Hang it on the back of the chair to dry. I must say, you look very smart.’

  ‘Mrs Warrington, you remember? She gave it to me. She’s very generous.’

  Ling arranged the tailored jacket so that it did not crease and found herself facing Elliott across the small room. She saw the smouldering fire in his eyes, his face creased with the same pain of self-denial that was tearing her apart. The space between them suddenly disappeared and he was kissing her lips, soft as the touch of gossamer, her forehead, the tip of her nose, the fine line of her jaw. She felt his fingers fumbling with the buttons of her blouse and his hand slipped inside, gently cupping the swelling of her breast through her chemise. She could feel her heart pounding beneath his touch. Oh, Elliott! She loved him with a passion that confounded her own understanding, a passion against which she was powerless. Her own fingers entwined in his thick hair, her mouth seeking his again, her mind, her body, totally ready to give herself to him.

  ‘Damn!’

  So lost had she been in that state of frenzied euphoria that she had not heard the frantic knocking on the front door at first. But Elliott had, and he quickly smoothed down his hair as he rushed to the front door.

  ‘Oh, Doctor, ’tis my little girl!’ Ling heard a desperate voice say as she buttoned up her blouse. ‘She cas’n breathe!’

  ‘Give her to me.’

  Elliott’s efficient tone drew Ling to the door. A short, thin woman clad in little better than rags was standing on the doorstep, relinquishing a small child into Elliott’s arms.

  ‘Please save her!’ the woman squealed as she tottered inside on the brink of collapse. ‘I cas’n bear to lose her.’

  The young mother’s howl of despair wrenched at Ling’s heart. She knew herself the agony of losing a child, even if her own had been a tiny, lifeless form when it had entered the world. She instinctively put her arm around the stranger as they followed Elliott into his consulting room. The little girl was already lying on the couch, her body writhing as she fought to draw breath and her pinched face turning blue.

  ‘Has she swallowed a solid object? Or some sort of poison?’ Elliott asked swiftly. ‘Or has she been unwell? She feels really hot and her pulse is racing.’

  ‘She came over sick yesterday,’ the woman answered with a moan. ‘And she said this morning her throat were really bad.’

  ‘Glands are hugely swollen,’ Elliott muttered almost to himself. ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Maggie,’ her mother sobbed. ‘Oh, my little cheel . . .’

  ‘Maggie, can you hear me? I’m Doctor Franfield. I need to look at your throat. Can you open your mouth for me? Ling, can you light that lamp and bring it over here?’

  Ling caught her breath. There was something about Elliott’s attitude that invaded her own being, and she quickly and calmly obeyed Elliott’s instructions, holding the lamp while he struggled to look into the restless child’s mouth.

  He glanced at her with a deep frown. ‘Diphtheria. Get three masks out of the middle left-hand drawer of the desk and giv
e one to the mother.’

  Ling found herself moving as if she assisted Elliott every day. When she returned with the linen masks, he was withdrawing a needle from Maggie’s arm and the girl was instantly relaxing.

  ‘I’m going to make a hole in the windpipe and insert a tube so that she can breathe,’ Elliott told Ling quietly. ‘Get your own mask on first, then mine, if you would. And then hold that lamp for me. You won’t faint on me, will you? If you think you might, just don’t look.’

  She nodded, amazed at herself and ready to follow his advice. But it wasn’t necessary. Within a matter of seconds, the incision in Maggie’s neck was made, the tube inserted, and the horrendous wheezing in her throat ceased as she breathed more normally.

  Elliott released a massive sigh. ‘Right. It’s got to be the workhouse infirmary. The cottage hospital doesn’t take infectious cases. But we go now!’ he commanded. ‘Ling, can you bring my bag? Oh, and my keys. Make sure the house is locked. The medicines, you see.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  Elliott scooped Maggie in his arms and hurried out of the front door with the child’s mother following, and Ling was left alone in the little house. The entire episode had taken less than five minutes, and she felt stunned, unreal. To think that only moments before she had been about to go upstairs and make love to Elliott. Was fate trying to tell her something?

  She donned her jacket and hat, secured all the doors and windows, and picked up Elliott’s medical bag. He had not stopped to put on his coat and had gone out into the rain in his shirt sleeves. He would be wet through, so she rummaged through his wardrobe for a clean shirt, grasped his coat from the hall stand, and, stepping outside, locked the front door behind her.

  ‘Will she be all right?’ Ling sprang to her feet as Elliott walked into the cold and unwelcoming hall where she was waiting. She watched as he slumped down wearily on the hard wooden bench and exhaled heavily.

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve removed as much of the debris from the poor child’s throat as I can, but heaven knows if it’ll work. With careful nursing, and God willing, she might recover. But even after five or six weeks, when they seem over it, a patient can suddenly die. Terrible thing, diphtheria.’ He shook his head in bitter frustration and turned to Ling, his solemn gaze meeting hers. ‘I’ve been exposed to it quite often in London, so I’ve probably built up an immunity. But you haven’t. It’s highly unlikely that you’ll catch it from such a short exposure, but promise me that if you feel at all unwell, with even a hint of a sore throat, you’ll send for William. Or the prison surgeon. They’ve got a new one now, thank God, so I don’t have to act as locum any more.’

  Ling bit on her bottom lip. The incident with little Maggie had brought the gravity of Elliott’s responsibilities home to her. Life and death decisions were part of his daily routine. And this hardly seemed an appropriate moment to start – oh, she could scarcely bring herself to think the word – an affair with him.

  ‘Yes, I promise,’ she answered gravely. ‘But I must go now. Barney . . . will be wondering where I am.’

  Elliott drew in a deep breath and nodded. ‘Yes, I know. And I want to stay on here for the next few hours at least. I’m sorry, Ling.’

  ‘Don’t be.’ The compassion on his face brought a soft smile to her lips. She loved him so much she felt her heart would break. She turned and made for the door. When she glanced back, Elliott was already marching briskly towards the wards.

  Twenty-Seven

  ‘Ling!’ Elliott gave a delighted grin. ‘I didn’t know if . . . Come in, come in!’

  She stepped over the threshold, and all at once the qualms and misgivings that had been trundling round in her head were chased away by the sheer jubilation of being with him again. He lifted her hands to his lips, turning her palms upwards and softly brushing his mouth and tongue over the inside of each wrist in turn. The sensation that shot down her spine took her breath away.

  ‘I . . . I had to know how little Maggie is,’ she stammered, still taken aback at the effect his kisses had produced throughout her entire body.

  ‘Holding her own, poor mite. But it’s early days. We’ve put notices up in the town and in the Gazette for people to be vigilant, but there’ve been no more cases reported. Thank God it’s the school holidays or it’d be spreading like wild fire. But, as it is, I don’t think we need worry.’

  Elliott gave her that calm, reassuring smile, driving away the concern that had begun to grind in her heart. Into its place leapt the reason why she was there as the clear brilliance in Elliott’s eyes seemed to deepen. He was still holding her hands as if he could not bear to let them go, but now he released one of them to gesture tentatively, hesitantly, towards the stairs. ‘Shall we?’ he barely croaked. ‘If . . . if it’s really what you want?’

  Ling felt the lurch of her heart and she was sure it missed a beat. She swallowed, and nodded since her voice had suddenly become trapped in her throat. Elliott led her slowly and regally up the stairs and into the front bedroom. She gained a fleeting impression of the vast changes in the room, but she was blind to any detail as Elliott drew the curtains and stepped back across the room. She stood, still as a statue, as he removed her hat. Then his fingers in her rebellious hair found the pins that secured it, and it fell down around her shoulders in a foam of chestnut curls. He cupped her chin in one hand, tilting her mouth towards his, and they met in a soft, moist, lingering kiss.

  At last, he drew away and she opened her eyes as she was aware of him unfastening her jacket and the blouse beneath. His brow, though, was furrowed as he glanced at her face, seeking her consent and ready to stop if she so asked. She didn’t. She knew it was wrong but she was lost in this heady passion, this desperate, overpowering yearning. She had never felt this way with Barney, not even on that inebriated evening all those years ago that had ruined all their lives. The mere shadow of remorse flickered across her mind, but was at once obliterated by the here and now, the need, the love that beat so furiously in her breast. Elliott slipped the jacket and blouse from her shoulders, and his fingers searched for the buttons at the waist of her skirt, which an instant later joined her other garments on the floor. There was no going back . . .

  ‘I’m glad to see you don’t wear a corset,’ Elliott muttered under his breath. ‘So bad for the internal organs.’

  The comment seemed so absurdly out of place and yet so typical of Elliott, ever the physician, that it made Ling chuckle. Or was it the perfect release as the tension drained away, leaving her body malleable and open to whatever Elliott wanted to do to her? He sat her on the edge of the bed and knelt at her feet, deftly removing her shoes and stockings, his eyes dark and smouldering as he lifted his hands to run them, soft and leisurely, down her arms. Her flesh tingled at his touch and she nearly swooned as, in one swift movement, he whisked her chemise over her head, exposing her firm, naked breasts. She could feel herself quivering, the fire spiralling down to her loins, as Elliott stroked her shoulders, played his mouth over her neck, the well at her throat, tracing his tongue over the top of her breasts and sensitively drawing a nipple between his lips. Never, never, had Barney treated her like this, loving every inch of her. The sensation was intoxicating, and she began to give herself entirely to its glory, dropping her head back as she moaned with desire.

  The slight pressure of his hand on her shoulder had her lying back on the bed, and his caresses stopped briefly while he took off his own clothing. She feasted her eyes avidly on his naked torso. He wasn’t heavily muscled like Barney, rather his shoulders rippled with a hard, wiry strength, his waist retaining the slenderness of youth that Barney had long lost. He stood beside the bed, his own excitement well in evidence, allowing her to inspect him, his chin slightly raised as if he shared that bewildering mix of desire and embarrassment. And then he reached out, carefully untying the strings of her drawers and slid them down over her knees.

  A shiver tumbled down Ling’s spine and crept, strong and tantalizing, into that secr
et place that was only hers and Barney’s. And yet she yearned for it to be Elliott’s, instinctively knowing by the way he had coaxed and enticed the rest of her body in a way Barney never bothered with, that he would bring that innermost part of her to some fever-pitch she had never known before. He lay down beside her, drawing her body against the hard length of his own, flesh against flesh, kissing her, the fragrance of fine lemon soap on his closely shaven jaw wafting into her nostrils as her hands sought his smooth, warm shoulders. She flinched as his fingers crept sensuously over her thighs and she saw his eyebrows tighten in a quizzing frown.

  ‘Oh, God, what if I get pregnant!’ she suddenly gasped in sickening terror. ‘What if after all these years of trying with Barney—’

  ‘You won’t.’ Elliott was smiling faintly, his eyes a deep aquamarine she could drown in. ‘It would hardly be right for me to preach contraception to my patients and not use it myself. You . . . do trust me, don’t you, Ling?’

  She blinked at him. Oh, yes, deep in her soul, she trusted him with all her heart. Trusted him and loved him. He encompassed her in his arms, comforting and reassuring her, soothing away the doubt. She whimpered softly as he began to lead her on once more, enticing her, exploring her body until it cried out with eager need, an urgent desire to reach some frenzied height of rapturous wonderment. And when he slipped inside her, it wasn’t the quick, painful thrusting that she was used to, but a slow, languid pulsing that sent exquisite ripples through her being until she suddenly exploded with an indescribable joy that flooded into every inch of her body. She gasped aloud and then, in that same split second, Elliott became rigid and then juddered against her. And they were clinging to each other, shocked, amazed, glorying in the natural intensity of their love. Was that what she should have felt each time she granted Barney his conjugal rights? And Elliott had not turned his back, leaving her in some cold shadow now that it was over. He was kissing her, holding her, and muttering endearments against her cheek.