by Diana Palmer
She never lost consciousness, but she heard a metallic sound through the commotion of loud voices. She rolled to avoid being stepped on, and as she did, her arm was hit a mighty blow. It throbbed, and even though the light was dim, she could see that the sleeve of her jacket and blouse seemed to be ripped through.
Two policemen were on either side of her when she looked up again. One of them, kindly and older, assisted her to the sidewalk. Muttering about people who couldn't live and let live, he left her on the stoop of an apartment house. Two small boys played with a hoop and gave her curious stares.
She wished that she could open her blouse and look at her arm because it felt wet as well as bruised under her torn jacket, but to do something so indecent in public would start another riot. She wondered how she was going to find the carriage and driver Matt had insisted on hiring to take her to and from the hospital and her suffragist meetings as soon as she'd received the nursing position and found the group of women she wanted to join. Her driver, Mick Kennedy, was a prince of a fellow, and she'd asked him to wait a number of blocks away from the demonstration for her. Now the streets were in such an uproar and she was feeling so very disoriented that she wasn't sure precisely where he was or how to find him.
As luck would have it, Mick Kennedy found her. Worried by what he'd seen on the fringes of the demonstration, he'd hitched his team to a Street lamp, plunged into the crowd, and spent the last fifteen minutes or so searching for her. He was visibly relieved to find her.
"Hurt in all this, were you?" At her nod, he added, "Some mess, I'll say. Shall I get you back to your boardinghouse?"
"Oh yes, thank you, Mick."
"Well, now, just take me arm and I'll have you back there in no time, or me name's not Mick Kennedy!"
In short order they were out of the crowd, and Mick was helping Tess into the carriage. His fine team was swiftly under way, drawing the impressive black carriage through the thinning crowd.
By the time they reached the boardinghouse, Tess's arm was much worse.
"Shall I help you up to your door, ma'am?" Mick offered.
"No, thank you. I can manage." She smiled, then made her way slowly up the steps.
Mrs. Mulhaney met her at the door. At the sight of Tess, dirty and disheveled, her hat askew and her hair coming down, she exclaimed, "Why, Miss Meredith, whatever has happened?"
"A man from the workers' party infiltrated our ranks and provoked one of our number to violence." Tess groaned. She leaned against the wall, wincing and nauseated, as she regarded the staircase with uneasy eyes and wondered how she was going to get to her room.
"Is my cousin Matt in this evening?" she asked suddenly.
"Why, I'm sure he is. I haven't seen him go out. You wait here, my dear; I'll fetch him!"
Mrs. Mulhaney rushed upstairs and quickly came back down with Matt, who was shrugging into a jacket as he walked. He eyed Tess with an expression she was too wounded to contemplate.
"Are you hurt? Where?" he asked immediately.
"My arm," she said, breathing unsteadily. "I was trodden on, and I think it may be cut, as my sleeve is."
"Can you send for Dr. Barrows?" he asked Mrs. Mulhaney.
"I can—and shall. At once. Can you take Miss Meredith to her room?"
"Yes."
Without another word, Matt swung Tess up in his arms and climbed the staircase as easily as if he were carrying feathers.
She clung to his neck, savoring his great strength as he covered the distance to her door.
"Who did this?" he asked under his breath.
"There was a riot," she explained. "I don't know whodidit. Several people were fighting, and I seem to have got in the way. My arm throbs so!"
"Which one?"
"The left one, just above the elbow. I didn't even see how it happened. I rolled away from a very heavy man who was about to step on me. I remember a man with a cane looking at me before I fell, just before something stabbed at my arm. I think it might have been his cane. I wish I'd bitten his ankle."
The mental picture of Tess with her teeth in a man's ankle amused Matt and he chuckled softly.
"Here, open the door for me, can you?" he asked, lowering her.
She turned the crystal knob with her good hand and pushed the door open, trying not to notice the faint scent of his cologne and the warm sigh of his breath close to her lips. Matt shouldered into the room and carried her to her bed. He put her down very gently on the quilt that covered the white-enameled iron bedstead.
Wary of Mrs. Mulhaney's return, he closed the door and then matter-of-factly began taking off Tess's jacket.
She was panting, but not from the pain. "Matt, you…mustn't!" She feverishly tried to stay the lean, strong hands that were unfastening her blouse.
His black eyes met hers with a faint twinkle. "Feeling prudish, Tess? You saw as much if not more of me after I was shot atWounded Knee."
"I was fourteen then," she said, aware even as she spoke thatitwas a nonsensical answer. "And you mustn't handle me…like this."
"Where are all those slogans you were spouting about a woman's rights?" He glanced down again at the buttons. "Don't your more radical sisters even advocate free love?"
"I am not…that radical! Will you please stop undressing me?"
He didn't even slow down. "With the best of luck, it will take the doctor a little time to get here," he said as he worked buttons through the dainty holes. "I smell the blood."
She started, having forgotten about Matt's remarkable sensory powers, honed from childhood. If he'd ever been a child. Sioux males trained to be warriors from a very early age, learning the knife and bow and horsemanship as young boys, and getting a taste of battle by accompanying war parties as water carriers.
"Matt…"she protested, both hands going to the buttons to stop him.
He brushed her fumbling fingers aside. "I never imagined you to be such a prim woman," he chided. "You and I know more about each other than many husbands and wives do."
That was true. Intimacy had been forced into their relationship because she nursed him so long after his devastating wounds. Not that her father hadn't had many qualms. It violated his sense of morality and decorum, but he had been unable to withstand her tearful pleas to be allowed to help.
"But this is…different," she tried to explain.
His hands stilled for an instant while he looked into her eyes and saw the shyness there.
"I would do the same for anyone," he said evenly.
She bit her lower lip.
He moved her hands aside very gently. "No one will ever know," he said softly. "Does that reassure you?"
It was odd that she trusted him so much. The thought of any other man's hands on her was sickening. But not Matt's. They were immaculate hands, always clean and neat and so very strong, yet gentle.
The problem was that her heart reacted violently to the touch of those hands on her bare skin over her collarbone. She ached for him to do more than unbutton her clothing, though she couldn't imagine what that "more" might be.
He pretended not to notice, and unbuttoned the last of the buttons on her blouse. Visible beneath it was a whalebone corset and, above that, a lace-decorated muslin chemise. At the sight of the dark points of her nipples through the muslin Matt's hands stilled. A faint glitter claimed his dark eyes for an instant.
"You mustn't stare at me like that," she whispered.
His eyes lifted to hers. "Why not?"
She wondered that herself. While she was struggling for a rational reason, his eyes went back to her bodice and seemed bent on memorizing how she looked.
"Oh, this is very unconventional," she protested weakly.
"And wickedly pleasurable," he murmured. His hand slid from the buttons of her blouse to the edge of the muslin and she jumped as if his lean fingers burned her soft skin.
"You rake!" she gasped, catching his hand.
"All right." He chuckled, letting her move his curious fingers back to the task at hand. "If I had a
ny lingering doubts about your modern ideas, they're gone now."
"What do you mean?" she asked indignantly.
"All that talk about free love and liberated morals," he chided. "You're a fraud."
She glowered, but she didn't deny it. He lifted her and moved her arm gently to free it from the long sleeve of her blouse. It hurt dreadfully.
He whispered to her in Sioux, a tender command to be still. Once the arm was free, leaving her only in the sleeveless muslin chemise, he turned her arm gently so that he could see the wound. It was a long, deep cut on her upper arm, made not by a cane, but almost certainly by a sword. A sword concealed in a cane? Whoever had wielded it had meant to do damage, perhaps even more damage than he'd accomplished with this wound.
"This is deep," he said angrily. The rent in her otherwise perfect white skin was sluggishly discharging blood. He took a cloth from the washstand, applied pressure, making her wince, and held it until the bleeding began to stop.
"I wish I knew who did it," she muttered.
"No more than I do." He held her hand above the cloth he'd placed over the wound and left her long enough to fetch a basin of water and soap and a fresh cloth. He bathed the wound gently, watching her posture go rigid as he performed the necessary chore. He put the basin aside to fetch a bottle of rubbing alcohol and some cotton flannel. "This is going to hurt like hell," he told her.
She held her arm steady and looked at him with her teeth locked, then nodded.
The sting was almost unbearable. She made a sharp little cry andbither lip as he flooded the wound with the alcohol.
"Sorry," she said at once, pale but game. "That was shameful, to cry out like that."
"Considering the pain, it was hardly shameful," he said honestly. He covered the wound with another piece of clean flannel and went to fetch her lacy robe from the clothes closet. Gently, he enfolded her in it.
"No, Matt, it's the only one I have! The blood will stain it!"
"Robes are easily replaced," he said indifferently. "Put it on."
And without argument she did so, docile, he supposed, because of the pain. He drew the front edges together, his knuckles just barely brushing the curve of her breasts above the chemise, and she gasped at the contact.
He hesitated, searching her eyes. Under his hands, he could feel the frantic whip of her heart; he could see the erratic beat of the pulse in her neck. Her lips parted and everything she felt was suddenly visible. A scarlet flush ran from her cheeks down her white throat to the silky white skin of her throat and shoulders and breasts.
Something was happening to her. She felt her breasts draw, as if they'd gone cold. Inside her, there was a burst of warmth, a throbbing that made her feel tight all over. Matt's hands contracted on the lace of the robe, and if she wasn't badly mistaken, they moved closer to her skin, the warm knuckles blatantly pressing into the soft flesh.
His eyes were on a level with hers, and her heart raced even faster as she saw the heat in them. They were a liquid black, steady and turbulent, unblinking on her rapt face. For seconds that dragged into minutes, they simply looked at each other in hot silence.
Just as his hands moved again, just as she felt the chemise give under their insistent but almost imperceptible downward pressure, footsteps on the staircase sounded like thunder, breaking the spell.
Matt stood up at once and turned away from her, leaving her to close the robe and fasten it frantically. Her hand went protectively to the flannel she was holding over the wound.
There was a perfunctory knock and the door opened.
The doctor glanced from one to the other. "Matt Davis? And this would be your cousin?" he added with a smile, closing the door behind him. "What happened?"
She told him in a jerky voice.
"Ibrought her some water and soap to bathe the wound and some flannel and alcohol to clean it thoroughly," Matt said. "But it will need more tending."
"Of courseitwill. Wait outside again if you don't mind, young man," he added, assuming, as Matt had meant him to, that Tess had done the treatment herself.
"Certainly," Matt said formally, and went out of the room.
The doctor pulled the robe aside and probed the wound carefully. "What did this?"
She winced at the unpleasant examination. "A cane, I believe."
"No, ma'am. More probably the point of a sword cane," he corrected. "A nasty deep cutting wound, too. I'll do what I can, but you're going to be very sick for a few days, young woman. This wound will have to be carefully watched for sepsis. I'm to be called at once if you see red streaks on your arm…or a greenish discoloration around the wound."
"I'm a nurse, sir," she said in a strained tone. "My father was a physician."
"Indeed!"
"I work in theCookCountyHospital," she added.
"I thought you looked familiar. What a small world. And how fortunate that you knew what to do for this. I shan't need to lecture you on how to tend it, shall I?" he added with a small chuckle.
He swabbed the wound with more alcohol, then began to take stitches while she recited the alphabet through gritted teeth.
"I have only a small amount of suturing material with me," he explained. "That wound could do with a few more stitches, but I think the three I've made will hold just fine." He applied a neat bandage.
"You'll send for me if there are any problems," he said, rising. "And you won't work until the wound heals," he added firmly.
"Yes, sir," she said with a resigned sigh, wondering how she was going to earn her crust of bread. She still had a little of the nest egg her father had left her. Hopefully, she wouldn't have to use too much of it. "You'll send your bill?"
"My wife will," he said kindly. "And now I'll give you something to make you sleep."
He left a bottle of laudanum with instructions on its use, gave her a polite nod and a smile as he snapped his bag shut, and left.
Somber and quiet, Matt entered only minutes later. "The doctor said that he gave you something to make you rest."
"Yes. This." She indicated the cork-stoppered brown bottle.
"I'll fetch a spoon."
"Can't I have it in water?"
"All right."
There was a glass carafe near the bed. He poured water from it into its matching cup, mixed the drug for her, and watched her gulp the bitter-tasting draft.
"If you have fever, and you probably will, you'll have to be sponged down," he said. "I'd prefer to stay with you myself, but it just wouldn't be acceptable, Tess. You know that. Mrs. Mulhaney already has complained about your nursing and your work in the women's movement. We don't dare make matters worse."
She felt very sick, and her arm was hurting badly. She looked up at Matt, only half hearing him. "I feel terrible."
"No doubt." He brushed wisps of hair back from her face. "I'm going to find someone to sit with you. I'll be back as quickly as I can."
Her hand caught his, and she held it to her cheek. "Thank you," she whispered wearily.
His face was unreadable, but his fingers lightly caressed her cheek before he drew them away. "Try to sleep," he said. "The laudanum should help."
"Yes."
He eased out the door and closed it behind him, his dark face taut with anger. It made no sense at all that someone should deliberately stab her, but that was the only logical explanation for what had happened. And he had a sick feeling that wounding her had not been the goal of her attacker. Far from it. She'd mentioned rolling away from trampling feet just before she felt the pain. Had he been aiming at another target on her body? If she hadn't rolled over, would she be dead now?
He was being fanciful, he told himself. Tess had been inChicagoa very brief time. Why would anyone want to kill her? No, it had to have been some renegade, perhaps a disgruntled husband or son who hated all women and found an outlet for his anger in attacking a member of the women's movement. But why Tess?
* * *
By the time Matt located an elderly woman who made her living cari
ng for the sick and infirm to sit with Tess, the patient was long since fast asleep on her pillows, still in her clothing. Matt looked in on her briefly and then left her with the sitter, Mrs. Hayes, confident from his knowledge of the woman that she'd take good care of Tess. It was much too late for him to be sitting in the room, and Tess still had to be put into her night clothing, asleep or not. He didn't like leaving her, but there was very little he could do for her right now. He daren't risk her reputation.
On his way back to his own room, he was intercepted by a flustered Mrs. Mulhaney.
"Mr. Davis, two of my tenants are very, very upset by all this," she said worriedly. "Please don't think that I haven't every sympathy for your cousin's wound, but these suffragists do bring such things on themselves…marches and torchlight parades, and working around hospitals and living alone. It's so scandalous!"