Crescent City Courtship (18 page)

Laughing, Abigail caught his shoulders for balance. “Are you sure? Put me down!”

“No. I mean—yes, I’m sure, but I’m not putting you down until you kiss me.” He whirled her around again until she was dizzy, dancing her down the hall.

Her heart was pumping like a locomotive engine and she felt a ridiculous smile taking over her face. “When did it happen? How?” Her arms involuntarily slid behind his neck to keep from being slung into the wall with his wild waltz. “I don’t think I believe you.”

“I’m to bring you back to meet with the faculty. They’ll tell you.” He finally stopped spinning, staggering to a halt at the end of the hall. He dipped his knees to reach the doorknob without letting go of her and opened the door. Ducking inside, he backed against the door and shut it. “Here we go.”

Abigail found herself locked in a most improper
embrace in an empty room with a tall, strong, overexcited young man. A small frisson of…something shook her. Anxiety? Excitement? She looked him in the eyes and halfheartedly pushed at his chest. “John, we shouldn’t be here like this. People will think—”

“They’ll think I’m going to kiss you. Which I am.” He grinned at her.

Her fear dissipated. “You’re incorrigible,” she said, squelching laughter. “I suppose you think you had something to do with my happy news.”

“Of course I did,” he boasted. “Prof was about to ruin the whole thing, being all truth, justice and the American way in his presentation of your case. Those boys weren’t going to fall for that—they’re entirely too selfish.” He laughed and shoved a stack of papers out of the way, then set Abigail on the desk. He planted his hands on either side of her hips and leaned in close to her ear. “But I,” he whispered, “convinced them of the
benefits
of having a woman in our class.”

“Oh, really?” She turned her head and found his mouth half an inch from hers. “And what would those benefits be?”

“I’ll tell you…” He kissed her cheek. “After…” He kissed her nose. “You kiss me.” He kissed her chin.

Abigail felt like a puddle of warm butter. She had never been this close to a man who was not her father, particularly one with gold-flecked hazel eyes and golden skin and a gravelly whispered voice. She knew she was in deep trouble because her reputation was paper thin as it was. He could walk out of here and tell everyone that the stories about women brazen enough to apply for medical college were absolutely true. They were women who could be coaxed into kissing men they weren’t married to, in closets.

“John.” She swallowed, looking at his chin instead of his warm, inviting mouth. There was a small shaving cut in its shallow cleft. “Please think of my reputation.”

Slowly he straightened. He sighed as he put his hands in his pockets. “Double drat. I keep forgetting.”

Ashamed that she was sorry he’d backed off, Abigail twisted her hands together in her lap. “Thank you. What do you keep forgetting?”

“That it’s no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me, and the life I now live, I live by faith in the son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me.” He sounded so glum that Abigail laughed. “It’s not funny.” He wheeled to look at the door. “It’s going to be dashed hard to keep my hands to myself when you’re at school and the hospital every day.”

“John, are you telling me you’ve given your heart to the Lord?”

Joy soared inside her breast again when he nodded and looked over his shoulder. “I suppose it was inevitable, with Prof preaching at me all the time and you looking so beautiful and passionate and prim.” He turned toward her again, his gaze fixed on her face. “Just look at you! Who could see that and not believe in God?”

Tears suddenly blinded Abigail. No one had ever, in her entire life, called her beautiful. “Come here,” she said huskily, holding out her hands.

He stared at her for a moment. “What about your reputation?”

“I won’t tell if you won’t.” She tipped her head. “Will you kiss me, John?”

A slow grin took over his face. He bent his head, smiling lips capturing hers softly. A moment later he jerked away
and backed against the door. “That’s enough,” he said hurriedly. “I have to take you back to the college and I don’t want there to be any question—” He picked her up by the waist and lifted her to her feet. “You’re right. No more sliding into offices until—Never mind.” He yanked open the door. “I have to take you back.”

Abigail suffered herself to be hustled down the hallway toward the stairs and then unceremoniously bundled into the carriage he’d left waiting on the street. She kept staring at John as he drove them the two blocks over to the college. He seemed preoccupied and a little embarrassed and wholly unlike himself. Changes in him—changes in her. She could hardly comprehend the magnitude.

She’d made it into medical school, an amazing feat by any standards. An answer from God bigger than she’d dared to dream. But…she had to keep reminding herself that the last hurdle had not been passed.

She still had to deal with the consequences of her flight from China.

F
reedom. John was as happy as he’d been in his life. But he still had to deal with his father. He’d considered asking Abigail to come with him or Professor Laniere. A bit of moral support would have made the coming confrontation easier to contemplate.

But something about hiding behind a woman’s skirts, or even asking his mentor to step in to speak for him, seemed cowardly. So he’d dropped Abigail off at the college, leaving the carriage he’d borrowed from one of the professors, and walked the three blocks to his father’s office. Alone.

But not alone, he remembered as he waited for the street car to rattle pass, then crossed Common. The Lord had promised to be with him. He smiled to himself, turning north toward Rampart Street.

He said the word to himself again, relishing its new meaning.
Freedom.
Freedom from that restless feeling of always reaching for something beyond his grasp. Freedom from the pressure to perform. Freedom from looking over his shoulder to see who was catching up.

He slowed as the row of offices where his father leased space came into view, well-kept brick buildings with the trademark French wrought iron gracing their balconies.

John had heard the story a thousand times, how the old man built Crescent City Shipping from the ground up, starting as barely more than a teenager with a couple of dray carts and three mules. He’d delivered supplies for storekeepers and bricklayers, iron foundries and printing companies, running back and forth between the docks and the business district until he’d earned enough to invest in a couple of small boats which could make the run out to ships at the mouth of the Gulf of Mexico. Eventually the boats had turned into ships of his own and Phillip Braddock opened the office on Common near Basin.

John had spent hours here as a child, climbing under and around the big mahogany sea chest that served as his father’s desk; picking up the spyglass on the table under the window to look out over the city; begging exotic treats from the businessmen who came to visit. As a teenager he’d lost interest in the shipping side of the family income, preferring to experiment with his chemistry set. Unaware of the obsession he was about to release, his father had given the apparatus to John for his fourteenth birthday and had a workshop built for him off the kitchen.

He opened the front door, setting its bell jingling. Nowadays he and the old man were as different as night and day—except, perhaps, for that characteristic streak of obstinacy. He smiled at old Mr. Starkey, who sat on his stool with a ledger open on the counter in front of him, his spectacles propped on top of his shiny head. The lack of hair on top was more than made up for by the luxuriant gray side whiskers framing his full face.

“Johnny-boy!” The Scotsman slammed the ledger shut and came from around the counter to shake John’s hand. “Hain’t seen ye in a coon’s age. How goes yer experimenting these days? Blown up yer ma’s kitchen lately?”

John shook his head. “The last time I did that, she told me she’d put me out to sleep in the stable if I ever brought chemicals into the house again.”

The old man cackled. “You was always an enterprising young pup. Hear yer growing up to be a fine medical man, top of yer class, right? Yer da talks about you all the time.”

It was the first John had heard of any interest of his father in his studies. “Well, I’m working hard. I like what I’m doing.” He looked around the otherwise empty office. “Is my father here? I wanted to speak to him.”

Starkey’s smile faded as he glanced at the stairs leading to the upper floor—his father’s lair. “Crapaud’s in with him. I was just about to leave for the day, but you can wait if you want, they should be done soon. They been locked in there for nearly two hours.”

John frowned. He’d met his father’s new agent, a nondescript roustabout with an ugly, smashed-in face, once or twice over the last couple of years and was not impressed. A man of little education and no refinement, he was not a man one wanted to engage in conversation. John supposed Crapaud must serve some redeeming purpose in his father’s business.

“I’ll wait.” No sense putting off a bad job.

Fifteen minutes later he was still cooling his heels staring out the window at foot traffic, battling rising impatience. A clatter of boots on the stairs brought his head around. It was the agent, followed closely by John’s father.

“Follow up on the problem,” Father was saying. He
stopped two steps from the bottom when he saw John. “Johnny! Why didn’t you let me know you were here?”

Distracted by Crapaud’s quickly masked expression of contempt, John yanked his thoughts back to the subject at hand. “I needed to speak to you about something that has just come up.” He wiped a sweaty hand down the side of his trousers. “Something important.”

A frown darkened his father’s heavy brow. “It must be important to interrupt your studies on a Monday afternoon.” He reached the foot of the stairs and turned to Crapaud, who hovered, clearly interested in the exchange. “Crapaud, I’ll release you to take care of your errand.” He paused, a peculiar weight lending force to his words. “To this point you’ve not failed me. I rely on your discretion—understand?”

Crapaud dipped his squashed chin, a sardonic acknowledgment of authority. “I understand more than you think.”

Dismissing his underling with a curt nod, John’s father beckoned him toward the stairs. “Let’s have this burning conversation, then.”

John followed his father to the upstairs office, noting the fine wainscoting of the walls, the new carpet on the stairs. How could Father afford upgrades to the office and a seven million-dollar donation to the medical college as well? The business must be going very well. He trailed his hand along a fine ebony side table in the upstairs landing, new since he’d last been here nearly three months ago.

Their last conversation had been that head-on confrontation over Abigail’s admission into medical school.

Breaking free wasn’t going to be easy. He might resent his old man, but there was a deeply seated respect that had always kept him from permanently severing their relation
ship. And then, there was the need for his money, even though he’d insisted he wanted to make his own way. Praying for wisdom, John firmed his backbone. With God’s help he’d stood up to his fellow students on Abigail’s behalf. He could buck his father as well.

Freedom.

Leaving the door open behind him, symbolic of his intentions, he ignored the chair in front of his father’s desk. Looking down at him might give him an advantage.

Father sat down heavily behind the desk. “Where are your manners, boy?”

“I’m not going to be here long.” John tapped his hat against his leg. “Considering your unusual interest in the results of the vote regarding Miss Neal’s application to the medical college, I thought I should be the first to inform you of its outcome. The students voted to endorse her application.”

There was a frozen pause as his father stared at him. “And how did
you
vote, may I ask?”

John shrugged. “I may as well tell you—you’ll hear it eventually—that I felt compelled to come to Miss Neal’s public defense. I’m proud to say—I hope, I mean, that the results of the vote can be directly attributed to my remarks to the student body.”

“Are you telling me,” John’s father’s voice was ominously quiet, “that you publicly flouted my wishes?”

“Father, your interference has gone too far. Abigail Neal is more than qualified to pursue a medical degree, whatever the inconvenience to myself and my fellow students. And what is more, it’s because of her influence that I’ve come to my senses and realized my need to surrender my life to Christ. I probably don’t deserve her—and I have no idea
how this is going to work out in practicality—but I plan to ask her to be my wife.”

He’d almost said that out loud to Abigail, barely restraining himself with the realization that his proposal would be better offered somewhere besides an empty office. But articulating his desires to his father seemed necessary. His personal declaration of independence.

He had no idea how he was going to fund the remainder of his education. But if he had to give up his room at Clem’s, move into the hospital and eat off the dole from the Church so be it. He braced himself for the explosion.

He should have known his father would never play by the rules of normal human discourse. His father began to chuckle. “Well, well, well. My own fire-breathing preacher, taking the pulpit under my very nose. I suppose I have Gabriel Laniere to thank for this. He’s been trying to convert me for years. Now he’s got hold of my boy.”

“I made my own decision,” John said with dignity. “But I wish you’d helped steer me toward God a little sooner.”

The laughter on his father’s face disappeared. He had that
look
in his eyes. The one that had taken him from a straw-tick bed in a boilermaker’s shed to a desk at the helm of the wealthiest shipping empire on the Gulf Coast. “All right, you hardheaded young whelp. Propose to her if you insist. But you’ll end by thanking me for my
interference.
” He stood, leaning over the desk, knuckles planted. “Now get out. I’m busy.”

John opened his mouth to argue, but his gaze fell on the shipping manifest beneath his father’s hand. It contained some odd items, which he promptly memorized. Abigail was right, but the answers had been here, rather than in the office at home.

Cold apprehension settled in his gut. Clearly his father was in no mood to listen to reason and threats would do no good. He’d said what he came to say and broken with his father. There was nothing else to be gained by staying. He clapped his hat on his head and wheeled for the door.

Abigail’s skirts blew around her legs as she walked along the darkening levee toward Tess’s room. The street was deserted, as businesses had closed for the day and most folk were inside preparing for supper. They were smart enough to get out of the cold.

She pulled the shawl Camilla had loaned her tighter around her shoulders. The erratic December climate had finally tilted toward winter, replacing the damp chill of November with a bone-deep icy wind that blew off the river and shoved its way into every pore of a person’s skin. Abigail was remembering with something akin to fondness the suffocating heat of summer. When she got to Tess’s, they’d pull close to the little cookstove for a bit of warmth. She couldn’t wait to tell Tess what had happened. Maybe this enormous miracle would be the tipping point to convince Tess that God did indeed have good plans for His daughters.

The meeting with the medical college faculty had been awkward in the extreme. By the time she’d arrived, the eight professors had been apprised of the outcome of the vote. Judging by the generally acidic expressions, there had ensued some kind of battle over their promise to honor the students’ wishes. When she’d taken her seat at the table in the first-floor conference room, only Professor Laniere had greeted her with his usual smile. Girard, Pitcock and Cannon clearly wished her at the devil.

“What’s she doing here?” Dr. Lewis had demanded in his trumpeting voice.

“The students voted her in,” explained Dr. Harrison, looking as if he’d swallowed embalming fluid.

“Nonsense.” Dr. Lewis looked confused. “We don’t have girls in medical school.”

“We do now,” said Dr. Harrison glumly.

In the end, they’d made her acceptance official—perhaps only because Dr. Laniere reminded them all of their word as gentlemen. In any case, Abigail was presented with a stack of matriculation tickets permitting her to finish out the remainder of the term with six courses of lectures, and including the right to accompany any of the eight attending physicians on their daily rounds at the hospital. She was to have full privileges in the chemistry and dissection laboratories. All eight professors agreed that if she refused to fully participate in what was expected of any student, she would be expelled.

Dr. Laniere had looked at her apologetically when that pronouncement was made by Dr. Girard. “I’m afraid that’s a nonnegotiable, my dear.”

Putting up her chin, she’d stared them down. “And it’s a reasonable rule. I see no reason I cannot comply with all requirements of the degree.”

Afterward, when they’d dismissed her, so they might continue arguing over the particulars of the practical dilemmas created by their new student, she’d rushed outside and cast up her lunch in the bushes.

Now, attacked by doubts, she wondered if she hadn’t been overly ambitious. How on earth was she going to anticipate every stumbling block put in her way by a hundred fifty resentful male students? And though Dr. Laniere had
assured her that fellowships for worthy students were already in place, the financial aspect of the venture was frightening.

Lost in her tumbling thoughts, she barely had time to register the scuffling step behind her before a hand was clapped over her mouth, jerking her against a rough woolen coat and scarf. The impulse to scream burst against her throat, but the callused hand tightened, forcing her to gag instead. Before she could do more than awkwardly jerk her heel backward into her attacker’s shin, she was hauled into a waiting closed carriage and thrown onto the seat.

“If you say a word I will kill you,” growled her attacker and slammed the door.

Immediately she lunged for the door. It was locked from the outside, a cloth covering the window. The carriage lurched into motion, throwing her to the floor.