Читать книгу The Drifter - Сьюзен Виггс - Страница 9

17 April 1894

My dear Penelope,

I debated quite a bit with myself about whether or not I should relate what happened to me in the wee hours of the morning. The temptation is great to stay silent.

But since you are determined to become my partner in the practice when you complete your medical studies, I feel I owe you an unvarnished picture of what a physician’s life is truly like.

Sometimes we are called upon to treat cases against our will. Such was the circumstance around three o’clock this morning when a man abducted me at gunpoint.

Somehow I managed to keep my wits about me. The scoundrel forced me aboard his ship to treat his ailing wife, who is with child. His intention was to sail away with me aboard so that I could tend to the unfortunate woman.

Naturally, such a criminal had no care whatever for my other patients and would not listen to reason, so I took matters into my own hands. When he locked me in a stateroom with his wife, I used a scalpel to slice through a rope, thus disabling the steering and stopping our departure. After the mishap, my abductor burst into the stateroom, roaring with fury and actually threatening to use me as an anchor.

He is an uncommonly large man, broad of shoulder, with a lean and dangerous face and terrible eyes, but I refused to flinch. In my travels through the untamed West, I learned early to hide my fear. Thanks to my late father and his constant schemes and intrigues, I am no stranger to gunfighters and bullies. In my heart I knew my abductor would not harm me because I have something he needs—my skills as a physician. It is a great virtue to be needed. Greater, even, than being liked. For of course, the outlaw does not like me at all. But he needs me. And this prevented him from shooting me on the spot.

Instead, cursing so profusely I swear the air turned blue, he anchored his broken ship and together we bundled his wife into a dinghy. By sunup, we had her in a proper bed here at the boardinghouse in the main overnight guest room. Though her condition is still grave, I know she has a better chance to recover here. As for the husband, I can only wonder what sort of life it took to mold a man into such a hard-edged desperado.

Hoping I’ve not frightened you away from joining me upon completion of your ward studies, I remain as always,

Leah Jane Mundy, M.D.

Leah rolled a velvet-wrapped blotter over the page to soak up the excess ink. The heavy-barreled roller with its engraved pewter handle reminded her of earlier times.

She would have sold the ink blotter along with everything else if she could have gotten a decent price for it. But it was old and battered, and the initials stamped into the handle had meaning only to her.

G.M.M.

Graciela Maria Mundy. The mother Leah had never known.

A wave of sentiment washed over her as it often did when she was fatigued. She had no memory of her mother, but she felt a tearing loss all the same. Or more accurately, an emptiness. The absence of something vital.

Although it seemed nonsensical, she had an uncanny feeling that if only her mother had lived through childbirth, she would have taught Leah the things textbooks couldn’t explain—how to open her heart to other people, how to live life in the middle of things rather than outside looking in, how to love.

She stared at her face in the barrel of the blotter. Her features had the potential to look exotic, owing to her mother’s Latino heritage. But Leah worked hard to appear ordinary, choosing the plainest of clothing and scraping her hair well out of the way into a bun or single braid. She could do nothing to change her eyes, though. They were large and haunted, the eyes of a woman who knew someone had taken a piece of her away, and she’d never gotten it back.

Regaining a firm grip on her emotions, she thrust the blotter into a drawer, folded the letter precisely into thirds, and sealed it with a blob of red wax. “Work hard, Penny,” she murmured under her breath. “I shall be glad to have your company soon.”

She and Penelope Lake had never met face-to-face. Leah had contacted Johns Hopkins Medical College, newly founded the year before. The college had opened its doors to women from the very start, so Leah had asked to sponsor a promising young female medical student. Her father had sworn he wouldn’t tolerate yet another woman in the practice.

In a rare act of defiance, Leah had persisted. She’d been put in touch with Miss Penelope Lake of Baltimore, who showed signs of becoming a gifted physician and who was interested in moving west. Away, as she hinted in her letters, from the cramped confines of settled society.

The correspondence grew surprisingly warm and intimate. Leah could well imagine Penny’s world because long ago Leah had once been a part of it—cavernous homes like mausoleums, grim social visits, mannered conversations that went nowhere. And always, always, the unspoken expectation that any woman of worth would concern herself with home and family, not a profession.

Leah and Penelope Lake seemed to be kindred spirits. Why was it so easy to write openly to Penny, Leah wondered, when she was so guarded with the people she saw every day? She lived in a busy boardinghouse filled with interesting people, yet she could find no true friend among them. Even Sophie, her assistant, maintained a cordial distance. Leah wondered if it was simply her destiny to be alone in a crowd; never to know the easy familiarity of a close friendship or the quiet comfort of a family.

Even less likely was the possibility of intimacy with a man. Her father, always formal, demanding and distant, had made such a thing seem impossible. That was his legacy. With his pride, his expectations and his tragic shortcomings, he had left her as a creature half-formed. He had taught her that appearances were everything. He’d never shown her how to dive beneath the surface to create a rich inner life. Some parents crippled their children by beating and berating them. Edward Mundy was far more subtle, molding Leah’s character with undermining phrases that slipped in unnoticed, then festered into wounds that would never heal. He sabotaged her self-confidence and he limited her dreams.

“What a charming frock,” he used to say to her when she was small. “Now, do you suppose Mrs. Trotter would fix that unruly hair in order to do the dress justice?”

And later, when she was a schoolgirl: “There are a hundred ways to be mistaken, but only one way to be right. You have your mother’s looks and—alas—her contempt for conventional wisdom.”

When she became a young lady and a social failure, he had said, “If you cannot attract a decent husband, I shall permit you to assist me in my practice.”

By the time she recognized the harm he’d done her, it was too late to repair the damage. But he was gone now, and maybe she could find a way to move out from under his shadow. Maybe the world would open up for her.

“It’s not fair for me to pin so much hope on you, Penny,” Leah said, shaking off her thoughts.

She placed the letter to Penelope Anne Lake on a wooden desk tray, then checked her register. Mrs. Petty-grove had sent her houseboy with a list of the usual complaints, all of them imaginary, all treatable with a cup of Sophie’s mild herb tea and a bit of conversation. The Ebey lad, the one who had been kicked by a horse, had passed a quiet night.

Unlike Leah. Her own head throbbed—not from an iron-shod hoof, but from a man with an iron will.

And the most frightening eyes she had ever seen.

Just the thought of those hard gray eyes brought her to her feet. Restlessly, she paced the surgery, scanning the bookshelves and the framed certificates hanging on the walls, trying to construct her day in some sort of orderly fashion. But the extraordinary night she’d passed destroyed her concentration.

Memories of the man’s bleak gaze troubled her as she stopped at the coat tree behind the door and put on a white muslin smock. The garment had been laundered and starched and fiercely pressed by Iona, the deaf-mute girl abandoned by her parents three years earlier.

Over her father’s protests, Leah had taken in the girl. Other women marry and have children of their own. But you have to adopt someone else’s damaged goods.

Leah wished she could forget her father’s bitter words. But she remembered everything. Her blade-sharp memory was both a gift and a curse. In medical school, she’d been renowned for her ability to commit the most minute detail to memory. Yet the curse of it was, she also recalled every slight, every slur, and they hurt as fresh as yesterday. Leah Mundy, too busy doing a man’s job to remember she’s a woman… Her childhood friends had gone to parties while Leah had stayed home, memorizing formulae and anatomy. Her classmates had married and become mothers while Leah doctored people and delivered other women’s babies.

Resolutely, she filled a small earthenware churn with vinegar heated at the kitchen stove. She added sassafras and mint, then a pinch of ground cloves, and put the container on a tray to take upstairs.

As she passed through the hallway, she heard the sounds of clinking dishes and silver from the dining room, the clack of the coffee grinder in the kitchen. Smells of sizzling bacon and baking biscuits wafted through the house. Eight o’clock, and Perpetua Dawson would be serving breakfast.

Leah rarely took the time to sit down for a meal with the boarders. When she did, she felt awkward and intrusive anyway. She had never learned to be comfortable in company, even among people she encountered every day. For most of her life, she’d been regarded as an oddity, an aberration, sometimes an absurdity: a woman with a mind of her own and the ill manners to show it.

She paused in the grand foyer. Perhaps this was the area that had deluded the outlaw into thinking the house fancy. High above the front door was a wheeled window of leaded glass depicting a ship at sea. The colored panes with their fanciful design served as a reminder of bygone days when the owner of the house had been a prosperous sea captain. A railed bridge, reminiscent of a ship’s deck, spanned the vestibule from above, connecting the two upper wings of the house.

By the time Leah’s father had bought the place, it had been an abandoned wreck for many years. He’d gone deep into debt restoring it, but impossible debt was nothing new for Edward Mundy.

She went up the main staircase, noting with satisfaction the sheen of verbena wax on the banisters. Iona kept the house immaculate.

Leah stopped outside the first door on the right. She tapped her foot lightly against the door. “Carrie? Are you awake?”

No sound. Leah shouldered open the door, the tray balanced carefully in both hands. Silence. Heavy drapes blocked out the morning light. She stood still for a moment, letting her eyes adjust to the dimness. The room had a fine rosewood bedstead and, when the curtains were parted, a commanding view of Penn Cove.

Carrie lay unmoving in the tall four-poster bed. Alone. Good God, had the husband abandoned her?

Leah turned to set the tray on a side table—and nearly dropped it.

The gunman.

He dozed sitting up in a chintz-covered chair, his long legs and broad shoulders an ungainly contrast to the dainty piece of furniture. He still wore his denims and duster, his hat pulled down over the top half of his face.

Held loosely in his hand was the Colt revolver.

Leah gasped when she saw it. “Sir!” she said sharply.

He came instantly alert, the hat brim and the gun barrel both lifting in warning. When he recognized Leah, he stood and approached her, raising one side of his mouth in a parody of a grin.

“Morning, Doc,” he said in his gravelly voice. “You look mighty crisp and clean this morning.” Insolently, he ran his long, callused finger down her arm. The forbidden touch shocked Leah. She flinched, glaring at him. Before she could move away, he cornered her. “Uh-oh, Doc.”

“What’s the matter?” She forced herself to appear calm.

“You missed one.” Before she could stop him, he reached around and fastened the top button of her shirtwaist.

A man should not be so familiar with a woman he didn’t know. Particularly a married man. “Sir—”

“Do you always look so stiff and starched after wrecking a man’s boat?”

Ignoring his sarcasm, she moved past him. “Excuse me. I need to check on my patient.” She deposited the tray on the table. “Did you find a bottle of your wife’s tonic? I need to know what she’s been taking.”

“All our things are on the boat.”

“I wish you’d remembered the tonic.”

“We had to abandon ship pretty fast. It was all I could do to keep myself from choking you to death.”

“That wouldn’t do Carrie much good, would it?”

“Damn it, woman, you could have killed us all.”

“Perhaps you’ll consider that the next time you try to kidnap me.” She took the lid off the medicine crock.

He crossed the room, boots treading softly on the threadbare carpet. “What’s that?”

“An inhalant to clear the lungs.”

“So what’s wrong with her?” he asked, and she heard the anxiety in his voice. “Besides…you know.”

“Yes, I do know.”

“She’s got the croup or something?”

“Or something.” Leah folded her arms. “I’ll need to do a more thorough examination. Her lungs sounded congested last night. She’s in danger of developing lobar pneumonia.”

His ice gray eyes narrowed. “Is that bad?”

“It can be, yes, particularly for a woman in her condition. That’s why we’d best do everything we can to prevent it from happening.”

“What’s everything?”

“The inhalant. Complete bed rest. Plenty of clear liquids and as much food as we can get her to eat. She must regain her strength. Pregnancy and childbirth are arduous chores, and they take their toll on frail women.”

He glanced at the sleeping form in the bed. So far, Leah had not seen him touch her, and she thought that was strange. None of her affair, she told herself.

“Carrie doesn’t eat much,” he said.

“We have to try. Since she seems to be resting comfortably, don’t disturb her. When she wakes on her own, help her sit up. Have her inhale the steam and try to get her to take some broth and bread. Mrs. Dawson will have it ready in the kitchen.” Leah turned to go. He stepped in front of the door, blocking her exit. He was one of the tallest men she had ever seen—and one of the meanest-looking. She folded her arms. “If you dare to threaten me again, I’ll go straight to Sheriff St. Croix.”

Her warning made no impression on him—or did it? Perhaps his eyes got a little narrower, his mouth a little tighter. “Lady, if you know what’s good for you, then you won’t breathe a word to the sheriff.”

She hitched up her chin. “And if I do?”

“Don’t take that risk with me.”

The icy promise in his voice chilled her blood. “I don’t want any trouble,” she stated.

“Neither do I. So I’ll be spending the day working on the boat you wrecked last night.”

“That boat was a wreck long before I disabled the rudder.”

“At least I could steer it.” He hissed out a long breath, clearly trying to gather patience. Then he dug into the pocket of his jeans and took out a thick roll of bills. “What’s your fee?”

She swallowed. “Five dollars, but—”

He peeled off a twenty-dollar note. “That should take care of the fee, plus room and board. I ought to be able to get the steering fixed today, and then we’ll be off.”

She stared at the paper money but made no attempt to take it. “I’m afraid you didn’t understand. You have to stay here and take care of your wife. Not just for today, but until she gets better. You can’t just go sailing off into the sunset.”

“But you said—”

“I said she needs complete bed rest and plenty of food and care. She won’t get that on your ship. She won’t get that without you. You’re staying here, Mr….” She floundered, realizing he’d never told her his name.

“Underhill. Jackson T. Underhill. And I’m not staying.”

“What’s your hurry, Mr. Underhill?” Leah demanded. As if she didn’t know. He was a man on the run. A fugitive. From what, she didn’t care to speculate. None of her affair. Her gaze flicked to the twenty dollars in his hand. Was it stolen?

“I don’t have time to lollygag on some island.”

She felt a niggling fear that he’d go off and leave Carrie. “You cannot abandon your duties,” she stated. “I simply will not allow it.”

“I’ve got business to take care of.”

“You’ve got a wife to take care of.”

He waved the money at her. “That’s what I’m hiring you to do.”

“I’m a doctor, not a nursemaid.” Leah planted her hands on her hips and wished she were taller so she could face him down, eye to eye, nose to nose. “Good day, Mr. Underhill. I’ll look in on your wife this evening. If you need anything before then, tell Mrs. Dawson. She’ll instruct Mr. Douglas to fetch me.”

She reached past him for the doorknob. He seized her wrist.

Something happened; she wasn’t sure what, but his touch sparked a hot and alien sensation within her. His grip was strong, though it didn’t hurt. His gaze was brutal and uncompromising. And in spite of it all, she felt a curious breathlessness, a quickening in her chest.

“If I need anything?” he repeated. “Lady, there are a lot of things I need.”

She snatched her hand away, mortified by the forbidden sensations his touch had caused. “I wasn’t speaking of your needs, but Carrie’s. I’ll treat your wife to the best of my abilities.” She hoped he didn’t hear the slight tremor in her voice. “Beyond that, I can promise you nothing.”

Face flaming, she pushed past him and left the room.

The Mundy place had a real honest-to-God bathhouse, Jackson was pleased to discover. Apparently, this had been a fine estate at one time, and the previous owner had spared no expense in endowing it with luxuries. Perpetua Dawson, the small, busy woman who ran the kitchen, had shown him to the bathhouse, pointing out the deep zinc tubs and the furnace-heated water supply.

After laboring to bring the crippled boat into harbor, Jackson had looked in on Carrie, finding her listless and vague. Trying to calm the panic beating in his chest, he went to the baths to enjoy the first good soak he’d had since…Santa Fe, was it? No, there was that night in San Francisco not so long ago. A frizzy-haired whore, wet-brained from too much beer, had careered right into Jackson and landed in his lap. Laughing, Carrie had struck up a conversation with her and blurted out that they’d bought passage to Seattle. He’d thought the whore was too far gone to hear. He hoped he was right.

Carrie had cajoled him into spending his winnings on a room at the Lombard Hotel. She had exclaimed gleefully over the luxurious velvet draperies, the champagne and oysters, the tray of chocolate truffles….

But then she’d looked at the fancy grille on the window and shivered. “This is a prison, Jackson. They’ll never let me out of here. I’ll never be safe. Never.”

“Hush now, Carrie,” he’d said, repeating an age-old pledge. “I’ll keep you safe.”

“Build up the fire,” she had begged. “It’s too cold in here.”

The thought ignited an old, old memory that raised a bittersweet ache in his chest. The years peeled away and he was a boy again, sitting on the wet brick pavement in the moldering courtyard of the St. Ignatius Orphan Asylum of Chicago. Through a grille-covered window he could hear a little girl sobbing, sobbing.

Carrie. With shaking hands, Jackson had held the bundle of sweets he’d stolen from the pantry of the refectory. The sweets were never given to the children, of course. Brother Anthony and Brother Brandon saved them for themselves.

Holding a little cloth bag of gumdrops, Jackson started to climb. His feet, in worn and ill-fitting shoes, wedged into the gaps left by crumbling mortar. His wiry arms trembled as he pulled himself up. A sliver from the windowsill stabbed into his hand. He ignored the pain. At St. I’s, kids knew better than to cry over a sliver.

“Carrie,” he said, finding a toehold on the rain gutter. “Carrie, it’s me, Jackson.”

Her sobbing hiccuped into silence. Then she spoke, her little-girl’s voice clear as a crystal bell. “They locked me in. Oh, save me, Jackson. I’m so cold. I’ll die in here.”

“I couldn’t pick the lock,” he said apologetically. “I tried and tried.” He pushed the bag of sweets between the rusty bars of the window. “Gumdrops, Carrie!”

“Red ones?”

The silence spun out. A distant horn blew, signaling the end of the shift for Chicago’s dockworkers at Quimper Shipyards. The swampy smell of Lake Michigan blew in on a cold wind through the courtyard. “Carrie?” Jackson strained to see inside the locked room, but spied only shadows. “You all right?”

“No,” she said, the word muffled by a mouthful of candy. “What’s this, Jackson?”

“Something I made for you. Carved it out of firewood.”

“It’s a bird.”

“Uh-huh.” He imagined her turning it over in her small hands. He was proud of his work, his attention to detail. It was a dove; he’d copied the stained glass Holy Ghost in St. Mary’s Church. At Christmas and Easter, the brothers scrubbed the orphans up and paraded them to church, and Jackson had always spent the hour staring at the jewel-colored windows.

“Oh, Jackson.” Her voice came through the barred window. “I’ll keep it with me always.”

“I put a hole in the back so you can wear it on a string around your neck.”

“It wasn’t my fault,” she said, and he had the eerie impression she wasn’t speaking to him. “I just wanted to hold the baby, just wanted to be warm by the fire, but they blamed it all on me, put me here in the cold. I’m scared, Jackson.”

His legs began to tremble from the effort of holding himself up. “Carrie—”

“You there,” barked a deep, familiar voice. “Get down from there, boy!”

Jackson didn’t have to look back to know Brother Anthony stood below, flexing a knotted belt while his eyes gleamed with hell’s fury and his costly ring of office flashed in the light.

“Are you deaf, boy, or just stupid? I said get down.”

He tilted his head up. Just a short reach away loomed a drainpipe. If he could grab onto that, he’d climb up to the roof, maybe find a way down the other side. He leaned toward the rusty pipe, closed his eyes, and leaped. The ancient iron groaned under his weight, but it held. He began to climb, up and up, ignoring the wrathful commands of Brother Anthony. Jackson kept climbing toward the pigeon-infested ledge above him. How he wished he were a bird. He’d fly away free, soaring…

“If you won’t come down, I’ll give your punishment to that little devil-spawn girl you like so much,” Brother Anthony promised.

Jackson stopped climbing. His brief fantasy of freedom flickered and died. He blew out a long, weary breath. He slid down the drainpipe and dropped to the cracked brick yard, stumbling a little as he turned to face Brother Anthony.

The portly warden backhanded him across the face. Jackson’s head snapped to one side; he saw a spray of blood fly out. Brother Anthony’s ruby ring had cut him above the cheekbone.

He knew from years of observation that the warden would go easier on him if he cried and begged for mercy. But he’d never been able to plead. Instead, he wiped his bleeding cheek with his sleeve, then clawed off his shirt even before Brother Anthony commanded it. With a cold gleam of defiance in his eyes, Jackson turned, braced his hands against the wall, and waited for the first blow to land.

In the detention room, Carrie was strangely silent.

In the bathhouse, many miles and many years away from that moment, Jackson plunged his head into the lukewarm water and scrubbed hard, wishing he could wash clean the past. But he couldn’t, of course. The past would always be with him, just as the scar from Brother Anthony’s ring would always be with him. Just as Carrie would always be with him.

Pregnant. God Almighty, Carrie was pregnant.

She had awakened briefly this morning. Like a petulant child, she had turned up her nose and complained about the sour smell of the vinegar and herbs, but she seemed to breathe easier after the treatment. He had managed to get her to eat a bit of bread sopped in warm milk and flavored with cinnamon and sugar.

“You’re good to me,” she had murmured. “You’re always good to me.” And she’d reached her hand out for the bottle of tonic she needed.

“I left it on the boat, honey.”

He’d taken her hand in his. Her fingers tightened into a fist, and she knocked his arm away. “I need it, Jackson. I need my medicine now.”

Resigned, he’d rowed out to the schooner. He planned to bring her in to dock anyway. He’d paid the harbormaster, then returned to Carrie. He should have talked to her about the pregnancy, talked about what it would mean to bring a baby into the world. Their world. Instead, he watched her grab the bottle, watched her drink greedily until her eyes grew dazed with a sated look.

“Save a little of that,” he said. “The doctor wants to know what’s in your medicine.”

“I need it,” she mumbled, visibly calmer. “I always do.”

He’d sat with her and held her hand until she slept again. All in all, it had been an easy day with Carrie. Not every day was like that. Her moods had always been unpredictable, but lately her spirits had spiraled downward at an accelerated rate. He supposed the pregnancy explained that, but what the hell did he know of female things?

For that matter, what did he know of anything the future held for him and Carrie? He knew better than to expect love and security, a settled life, a home. That was something that didn’t happen to people like them. They were too desperate, too damaged. He would simply drift along with Carrie, taking each day as it came.

He’d never done a lot of planning for the future. He’d always lived for the moment. Decisions that had altered his life had turned on a single moment. A three-year stint on a whaling ship? He’d gone simply because his bed in the flophouse where he was staying had been lumpy. Ownership of a broken-down seagoing schooner? He’d won it with a single hand of cards.

Good or bad, it was the way he had lived. If you don’t expect anything out of life, he reasoned, then life won’t have a chance to disappoint you.

It was enough to simply stay ahead of the law. Drifting along had never bothered him in the past, though today it preyed upon his mind. There was something about that lady doctor that made him wish he could be something more than a wanderer. Made him weary of always being on the wrong side of the law—even when he was trying to do right. If he could get Carrie away to a safe place, maybe they could start over again, settle down, get a house and some land like regular folks.

He dried himself with a clean towel and wrapped it around his waist. The timid deaf girl called Iona had set out some shaving things for him. Peering into a small, oval mirror, he lathered up. He’d gotten careless the past few days with Carrie being so sick. He had to stay clean-shaven because the Wanted poster showed him with a beard.

His mood rose a couple of notches. The likeness and its screaming headline hadn’t been posted in Seattle, so he guessed the search wouldn’t reach this far north. Not anytime soon, he figured.

By the time they traced him here, he’d be long gone, thanks to a lucky hand of cards dealt at a tavern on Yesler Way in Seattle. A timely quartet of queens had won him the schooner.

The thought of the boat almost brought a smile to Jackson’s face. He’d always dreamed of having a boat. When he was a boy, he’d stolen a copy of Treasure Island—everything worth having was stolen. Late at night, burning a contraband candle in the boys’ dormitory at St. I’s, he had devoured the adventure story with his eyes, his mind, his heart. Against all odds, he had learned how to dream. Ever since reading that book, he’d wanted to sail away, wanted the freedom, wanted the sense that he was in control of a world of his choosing.

Jackson T. Underhill had never found that. Not yet. He was still looking.

The whaling ship had not been the answer. He’d hated the tedium, the rigid pecking order among the crew, the sick cruelty of the second mate, the grim violence of the hunt. As in all the things Jackson had done in his life, he’d gleaned important skills from the experience; then he’d moved on.

The schooner was a new—if leaky—start. But it had problems. The damage done by the lady doctor was only the beginning. Once he’d docked the boat, the harbormaster’s assistant had given him a depressing litany of repairs to be made before she was seaworthy again.

If he could just get her running well enough to make it to Canada, he’d take his time, maybe make a plan. He had only the vaguest idea where he would go; all he knew was that he needed to find a place where Carrie would feel safe, where his face wasn’t known, where a man could be judged by the hard work he did, not by a past he couldn’t change.

He cleaned off the razor, wiped his chin, and turned to reach for the pile of freshly laundered clothes in the dressing room.

Instead of the clothes, he saw a woman’s backside.

Dr. Leah Mundy was coming into the bathhouse, shuffling backward, bent over and talking softly to someone in a rolling wood-and-wicker chair. “Just a few steps more. There we are,” she said.

Her voice was incredibly sweet and coaxing, devoid of the acid, scolding tone she used with Jackson.

“You’ll feel like a new person when you’re in the bath,” Leah Mundy said. She brought the rolling chair fully into the room and swiveled it around.

“Dr. Mundy, who’s that man?” asked a child’s voice.

She glanced up, and her eyes grew wide and panicked, the eyes of a doe caught in a hunter’s sight. “Mr. Underhill!”

He bowed from the waist where the towel was knotted precariously. “Ma’am.”

He was impressed by the way she regained control without even moving a muscle. The panic in her gaze subsided to a detached authority. In her profession, she probably saw male bodies all the time. Half naked or not, he was no more than an anatomy specimen to her. She straightened her shoulders, folded her lips into a humorless line, and cleared her throat.

“I didn’t expect to find anyone here,” she said. Jackson could tell she was trying not to look at his tattoo. “I was bringing Bowie for his therapeutic bath. He’s Mrs. Dawson’s boy.” Her voice softened a little as she glanced down. “Bowie, this is Mr. Underhill. He was just leaving.”

The child in the chair smiled shyly. Jackson felt his heart squeeze with an odd feeling of longing and loss. Bowie had fair hair and pale skin, and a face stamped by an invalid’s patient resignation. He was painfully thin, with a blanket draped over sticklike legs.

Jackson managed a friendly grin. “How do, youngster. Pleased to meet you.”

He glared at Leah, his gaze never leaving hers as he gathered up his things and stepped behind a trifold screen. He whistled as he dressed, savoring the feel of clean clothes against clean skin. He noticed that his shirt button, which had been broken for weeks, had been replaced. Leah Mundy might not be all that friendly, but she employed good help.

Every so often, it was possible to feel respectable, just for a minute or two.

As he was leaving the bathhouse, he happened to glance into the bathing chamber. Leah had managed to get the boy out of his clothes except for a pair of drawers for modesty.

“Sophie’s away, so it’s just the two of us,” she was saying. “Can you hang on to my neck?” She burrowed her arms around and under him.

Bowie complied, linking his bony wrists behind her neck. “Where’s Sophie?”

“She took the side-wheeler to Port Townsend.” Leah lurched as she stood up with the boy in her arms.

“Here, let me help,” Jackson said gruffly, striding toward them.

A flash of surprise lit her face. She gave the briefest of nods. “Just take Bowie’s legs and we’ll ease him into the bath.”

The legs were even paler than the rest of him, flaccid from lack of use. Jackson took careful hold and slowly bent, easing Bowie into the water.

“Too hot for you, son?” Jackson asked.

“No. Just right…sir.”

“You don’t have to call me sir. Call me Jackson.” It just slipped out. Here he was, running from the law, and he was supposed to be keeping a low profile. Being friendly only brought a man trouble. The lesson had been beaten into him by all the hard years on the road.

The boy seemed happier once he was in the bath. He rested his head against the edge of the basin and waved his arms slowly back and forth.

“You like the water?” Jackson asked, hunkering down, ignoring Leah as she seemed to be ignoring him.

“Yup. I keep telling Mama I want to swim in the Sound, but she says it’s too dangerous.”

Leah scooped something minty-smelling out of a ceramic jar and started rubbing it onto Bowie’s legs. “It is too danger—”

“Just make sure you’re swimming with someone real strong,” Jackson cut in.

“Don’t put ideas into the boy’s head,” Leah snapped.

“If a boy doesn’t have ideas,” Jackson said, “what the hell is he going to think about all day?”

“And don’t swear,” she retorted.

Hell’s bells, she was a bossy stick of a woman. “Did I swear?” Jackson asked. “Damn, I never even noticed.”

He found a sea sponge and playfully tossed it to Bowie. The boy looked baffled for a moment, then tossed it back.

“Anyway, son,” Jackson continued, “when I was your age, I was full of ideas.”

“What sort of ideas?”

Like how to escape the orphanage. How to forget the things fat Ralphie made him do in the middle of the night. How to turn a deaf ear to the cries of the younger boys…

Jackson thrust away the memories, hid them behind a broad grin. “Ideas about sailing off to paradise. I had me a favorite book called Treasure Island. It was by a man called Robert—”

“—Louis Stevenson!” Bowie finished for him. “I know that book. He wrote Kidnapped, too. Did you read that one, Jackson? I have heaps of books. Dr. Leah always gives me books, don’t you, Dr. Leah?”

“You’re never alone when you’re reading a book,” she murmured, and Jackson looked at her in surprise.

For the remainder of the bath, he and Bowie discussed all sorts of things from storybooks to boyish dreams. Jackson couldn’t believe he’d actually found something in common with a little crippled boy who spoke properly and owned a roomful of books. And all the while, Leah Mundy looked on, her expression inscrutable.

She probably disapproved. He didn’t blame her. She didn’t know him, and what she’d seen of him did not inspire trust. He’d taken her away at gunpoint, would have kidnapped her.

In a way, he was glad it hadn’t come to that. The idea of spending days with her cooped up aboard the schooner gave him the willies. Still, a sense of urgency plucked at him. The past was nipping at his heels.

“Ever been sailing?” he heard himself asking.

“No, sir.”

“It’s a fine thing, Bowie. A damned fine thing.” Jackson shot a glance at Leah. “Of course, you have to make sure you don’t have a mutineer aboard who’d sabotage the steering.”

“Who’d do a thing like that?” Bowie asked. “Pirates?”

“A crazy woman,” Jackson said casually.

Bowie laughed, thinking it a great joke. Leah ducked her head, but Jackson noticed the hot color in her cheeks. She didn’t look half so harsh when she was blushing.

“One time,” Bowie said, “Mama was going to take me on the steamer to Seattle, but she changed her mind. Said it was too far from home.”

“Maybe your daddy—”

“His father’s been dead for years,” Dr. Mundy said. She spoke with a peculiar icy calm that sat ill with Jackson.

He kept his eyes on Bowie. “Sorry to hear that. But be glad you have a place to call home. Maybe you’ll go swimming in the Sound one of these days.”

“Maybe,” Bowie said, slapping his palms on the soapy surface of the water.

“I’d better go.” Jackson lifted him out of the bath, and Dr. Mundy wrapped him in a towel. “You keep reading those books, you hear, youngster?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Dr. Mundy.”

“Good day, Mr. Underhill,” she said stiffly.

He left the bathhouse, shaking his head. What the hell was it with her? She’d gotten her way, forced him to stay here on this remote green island, yet she refused to drop her mantle of self-righteousness. Something about her taunted him, challenged him, made him want to peel away that mantle and see what was underneath. He told himself he shouldn’t want to know her. He wondered why her opinion of him mattered.

Damn. He’d met scorpions and prickly pears that were friendlier than Dr. Leah Mundy.

By sunset, Leah had finished with Bowie, lanced a boil for the revenue inspector, visited elderly Ada Blowers to check on her cough, and set a broken arm for a drunken lumberjack who swore at her and refused to pay a “lady sawbones” for doing a man’s job.

But Leah’s long day wouldn’t end until she paid a visit to her newest patient. She stood for a moment at the bottom of the wide hardwood staircase, resting her hand on the carved newel post and listening to the sounds of the old house at evening.

Perpetua hummed as she worked in the kitchen, a little worker bee at the heart of the house. In the parlor, the boarders sat after supper, the men smoking pipes and the women knitting while they spoke in muted voices.

This was Leah’s world, the place where she would spend the rest of her life. The light from the lowering sun filtered through the circular window high above the foyer, and to Leah it was a lonely sight, the symbol of another day gone by.

She didn’t know how to talk to these people who lived under her roof, didn’t know what dreams they dreamed, didn’t know how to open her heart to them. And so she lived apart, working hard, keeping to herself, an outsider in her own house.

She smoothed her hands down the front of her white smock. The starch had wilted somewhat during the day, and she knew the ribbons straggled down her back.

Have a care for your appearance, girl. No wonder you haven’t found a man yet.

Shut up. Shut up, shut up, shut up. She wished she could close out the memory of her father’s voice. She had loved him with all that was in her, but it was never enough. Even at the end, when he’d lain helpless and needy on his deathbed, her love hadn’t been enough. She couldn’t save him, couldn’t make him say the words she’d waited a lifetime to hear: I love you, daughter.

Pressing her mouth into a determined line, she climbed the stairs, her skirts swishing on the polished wood. She tapped lightly at the door.

“Mrs. Underhill? Are you awake?”

The sound of a male voice—his voice—answered her, but she couldn’t make out the words.

“May I come in?”

The door opened. Jackson T. Underhill stood there hatless, his blond hair mussed as if he’d run his fingers through it. “She’s awake, Doc,” he said.

No one had ever called her Doc. She realized that she rather liked the homey, trusting sound of it. She found herself remembering the incident in the bathhouse. What a shock it had been to see him standing there, naked except for a towel around his middle. Even without the gun belt slung low on his hips, there was something dangerous and predatory about him. Something she shouldn’t let herself think about. She forced her attention back to where it belonged—her patient.

Evening light spilled through the dimity curtains framing the bay window. The glow lay like a veil of amber upon the reposing figure on the bed. Carrie Underhill wore the shroud of gold like a mythic figure. How lovely she was, the fine bones of her face sharpened by light and shadow, her milk-pale skin and fair hair absorbing the pinkening rays of the sunset.

She turned her head on the pillow and blinked slowly at Leah.

“Mrs. Underhill, I’m glad you’re awake.” Leah took the slim hand in her own. Immediately, the pathologist in her took over. The first thing she noticed was how cold the hand was. Too cold. “How are you feeling?”

Carrie pulled her hand away with a weak motion. Her eyes, blue as a delft dessert plate, were wide and wounded. “I feel awful, just awful.” Her gaze sought Jackson, and she seemed to calm a little when she spied him. “Is this a safe place, Jackson? You said we were going to a safe place.”

“You’re safe here, sugar,” he said. His voice was so gentle that Leah almost didn’t recognize it.

“Hurts,” she said with a whimper, and her perfect face pinched into a wince of pain. “Hurts so bad.”

A chill rose up and spread through Leah. Her suspicions, the ones she had been beating down since first laying eyes on Carrie Underhill, came back stronger. She moved the coverlet aside.

Carrie clutched at the quilt. “Jackson!”

“She doesn’t like being uncovered,” he said. “Likes being wrapped up tight.”

“I need to examine her,” Leah snapped. Then, collecting herself, she turned back to Carrie. “I’ll be quick,” she promised. As gently as she could, she palpated Carrie’s abdomen through the fabric of a clean flannel nightgown.

An outlaw who did laundry…

What was a ruthless man like Jackson T. Underhill doing with this fey and delicate creature?

The scent of laundry mingled with something sharper, an odor that was rusty and unmistakable.

She looks to be about three months along…

Leah’s hand touched the abdomen low. Carrie screamed. Her legs came up to reveal an angry smear of fresh blood on the sheets.

“Jesus!” Jackson grabbed Leah’s arm and yanked her back. “You’re hurting her.”

Leah drew him away from the bed and into the recess of a dormer window. Lowering her voice so Carrie wouldn’t hear, Leah leaned toward Jackson. “When did the bleeding start?” she demanded. “Why didn’t you call me?”

“I didn’t know she was bleeding.” Fear edged his words. “I thought she was doing better, just sleeping.”

“She didn’t tell you?”

“No. She—I don’t think she knew, either.”

“I’m afraid she’s miscarrying,” Leah said.

“What’s that mean?” he demanded, clutching her arm, holding tight.

Leah wrenched her arm away. “She’s losing the baby.”

“So fix it.”

The chill inside Leah froze into a ball of fear. “It’s all I can do to save the mother.”

“So save her. Do it now,” he said, raising his voice above Carrie’s high, thin keening.

“I don’t think you understand, Mr. Underhill. It’s not that simple. She might need surgery.”

“Surgery. You mean an operation.”

“I have to stop the bleeding.”

His face paled. “Surgery,” he repeated.

“Yes, if the bleeding doesn’t stop.”

“No.”

She could see the shape of his mouth, but she made him say it again. “I didn’t hear you, Mr. Underhill.”

“No. You aren’t going to hurt her anymore.”

Furious, she tugged on his hand, leading him out into the corridor.

“You aren’t operating on Carrie,” he repeated, his voice low and threatening. “She’s not some critter for you to experiment on.”

“How dare you,” she shot back. “I’m a healer, Mr. Underhill. Not a butcher. Believe me, I would give anything not to have to do anything invasive to your wife, and I will try to stanch the flow as best I can. But if we ignore the problem, the bleeding will continue. Toxins will spread through her body, and she’ll die. A slow, painful death.”

He pressed himself against the wall of the corridor, leaning his head back and closing his eyes. “Damn it. God damn it all to hell.”

“Mr. Underhill, this isn’t helping your wife. You have to make the decision.” A thin wail of pain drifted from inside the room. “You have to make it now.”

He moved so fast that Leah didn’t even realize it until he was clutching her by the shoulders, shoving her up against the wall. The desperate strength in his fingers bit into her upper arms. He put his face very close to hers. She caught his scent of bay rum and leather.

“Look, lady doctor. You’re telling me she could bleed to death?”

“That’s correct.” She tried to glare him into releasing her, but he only held her tighter. She moistened her lips, trying not to let the fatigue of a long day bother her. “An infection could take hold, and she’s too weak to battle an infection.”

“Then you fix her.” He spoke in a low, icy undertone. “You do it now. You stop the bleeding and you make her well. Or I swear to God I’ll kill you.”

Leah and her father had argued long and loud about outfitting an operating theater in the surgery. Edward Mundy claimed to scorn the fancy, big-city ways of modern medicine. In truth, what he scorned was spending money on anything but himself. Leah rarely won an argument with her father, but when it came to her profession, she found strength in her passion for healing.

In the end, she had prevailed and was rewarded with a tiny but innovative theater adjacent to the main suite. It was nothing so grand as the busy hospital theaters where she had learned her brutal craft in Denver and Omaha, but it was an impressive facility for a small island town.

She religiously followed the antiseptic methods of Dr. Lister of Great Britain. Lister had proven beyond a doubt that sterilizing the operating theater reduced the risk of infection. Penny Lake had written to say that all the surgeons of Johns Hopkins were using rubber gloves during surgery. Leah willingly embraced the technique.

Her assistant, Sophie Whitebear, had returned from Port Townsend. With quiet competence, she sprayed the chamber with carbolic acid solution until a fine mist hung in the air. Everything—their gowns, their hair, their sleeping patient, the instruments, the walls and the floors—grew damp and acrid-smelling.

When all was in readiness—the light in place, the patient draped, the dressings and instruments at hand—Leah closed her eyes and said a quick prayer. She had done this many times, had probed dozens of bodies in search of bullets or gallstones or bleeding tumors, but each time, she was overwhelmed with the enormity of invading the sanctity of the human body.

Dear God, please guide my hand in this. Please….

Holding her breath and her nerves perfectly steady, she began.