Murder in the North End (26 page)

It has taken all my strength of will to commit these words to paper, Nell, and it will take even more to leave this letter on your pillow tonight. You befriended me when I was in dire need a friend, you saved me when I needed a savior. Your presence in my life has shone a light upon my soul that will never be extinguished. For that precious gift, I shall forever be in your debt.

Yours in undying affection,

Will

Nell could barely breathe by the time she finished the letter. It felt as if there were a giant iron clamp around her chest, squeezing, squeezing...

She re-read the letter through a sheen of tears, sorting it all out in her mind—the things he’d said, and hadn’t said, the nuances and implications. Unmentioned was her marriage to Duncan, yet Nell couldn’t help but suspect that, if she could only free herself from it, Will would have chosen to remain in Boston rather than risk his life in a war that meant nothing to him.

She refolded the letter and crawled back into bed, shivering in her thin night shift, although the breeze fluttering the curtains was a mild one.
Don’t cry,
she told herself even as the tears pooling in her eyes spilled down her cheeks. She scrubbed them away, thinking,
Don’t cry. He’ll hear. He’s trying to be strong. So must you.

She tried to draw a calming breath, but it snagged in her throat, emerging as a sob that she muffled by turning her face to the pillow. Another wrenched itself out of her, and another, and another, silent but wracking.

“Nell.”

She felt the mattress dip with his weight. He lowered himself atop the quilt behind her, banding an arm around her waist as he tucked his long body, clad in loose linen drawers, against hers.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, his breath hot in her hair, his arm tightening around her. “I’m sorry, Nell.”

He snugged himself closer, draping his outside leg protectively around hers as he murmured things she couldn’t hear. As she absorbed his warmth, his tenderness, her crying ebbed, leaving her limp in his arms. She loosed a hand from the bedcovers to lace her fingers with his. It was the kind of thing lovers did, she realized, but she was beyond caring about appearances and repercussions.

She was losing him yet again—to a war this time.

“W-will it—” Her voice caught. “Will it be like...like it was during the War Between the States, where battle surgeons aren’t supposed to be fired upon?”

He took his time answering. “I don’t know.”

She closed her eyes and gripped his hand harder, feeling a terrible, black foreboding. “Don’t go.”

He nuzzled her head, sighed. “I’ve given the president my word. It can’t be taken back.”

She shook her head, her eyes stinging with fresh tears. “I hate this.”

Propping himself up on an arm, Will eased Nell onto her back and brushed away the hair that clung to her damp face. The moonlight shadowed his eyes and silvered his skin, throwing the bruise and scrape on his face into sharp contrast. She breathed in his familiar scent, trying to store it away in her memory—Bay Rum, warm skin, and a hint of tobacco; he must have smoked a cigarette, probably while he was in his father’s library writing that letter.

He blotted her face with the edge of the sheet, then lowered his head until his forehead rested against hers. She heard him swallow. A hot little droplet struck her eyelid and trickled down the side of her face.

She freed both arms from the quilt and gathered him to her, their mouths meeting as naturally, as ardently, as if they’d done so a thousand times and not just once, during another anguished parting half a year before. The kiss stole her breath, her senses. The world, with all its conventions and expectations, dissolved away, leaving just the two of them alone in this room, this bed.

“I should go,” he said hoarsely, his hands tangled in her hair.

“No, don’t.” The softspoken plea resonated between them before she even realized she’d spoken.

Will searched her gaze, his eyes dark and shimmering.

Nell drew in a breath, willing herself to take it back, to bow to her mind and not her heart, to do the right thing, the prudent thing, but when the air left her lungs, it emerged in a whispered, heartfelt, “Stay.”

###

Other Electronic Books by Patricia Ryan

Nell Sweeney Historical Mysteries by Patricia Ryan writing as P.B. Ryan:

Still Life With Murder

Murder in a Mill Town

Death on Beacon Hill

Murder on Black Friday

A Bucket of Ashes

Medieval Romances by Patricia Ryan:

Falcon’s Fire

Heaven’s Fire

Secret Thunder

Wild Wind

Silken Threads

The Sun and the Moon

After returning home with a battle injury, Will helps Nell to investigate the mysterious death of her long-lost brother in

A BUCKET OF ASHES

by Patricia Ryan writing as P.B. Ryan

August 1870: Cape Cod, Massachusetts

“Miseeny, who’s that man?” asked breathless little Gracie Hewitt as she treaded water in Waquoit Bay flanked by the two young women charged with her care.

“What man, buttercup?” Nell Sweeney, standing waist-deep in the placid water, followed Gracie’s gaze toward the Hewitts’ colossal, cedar-shingled summer “cottage.” Shielding her eyes against the late afternoon sun, she saw a man walking toward them across the vast stretch of lawn that separated the shore from the house. Lean and with a graceful gait, he wore a well-tailored cutaway sack coat and bowler. It wasn’t until he removed the bowler and smiled at Nell—that warm, genial smile she’d once known so well—that she recognized him.

“Oh, my word,” Nell murmured.

“Who is he, then?” asked Eileen Tierney in her softly girlish brogue.

“He’s, um, someone I used to know when I lived here on the Cape. I haven’t seen him for some time.”

It had been three years since Nell, who lived in Boston with the Hewitts except for summers here at Falconwood, had last crossed paths with Dr. Cyril Greaves. In July of ‘sixty-seven, she had accompanied her employer, Viola Hewitt, to a charity tea in Falmouth, and he’d been there. Their conversation had been cordial—affectionate, even—but as if by unspoken agreement, neither had made any move to resume their acquaintance. Two summers before that, they’d passed each other on Short Street in Falmouth, he in his all-weather physician’s coupé and Nell in her little Boston chaise, and had chatted for a minute until a salt wagon rumbling up behind Dr. Greaves had forced him to move on.

For him to actually seek her out this way was unusual enough to be disconcerting.

“Och, but he’s a handsome fella,” whispered Eileen.

“He’s married,” Nell said. “And he’s older than he seems.”

The first time Nell had seen Dr. Greaves, she was struck by his resemblance to a statue of St. Francis of Assisi in front of St. Catherine’s, her parish church. Born with patrician good looks, expressive eyes, and that ready smile, he was further blessed by being one of those lucky men who didn’t seem to age much in their middle years. His light brown hair had but a whisper of gray at the temples, and he still moved like a man in his twenties.

“Is he nice?” Gracie panted, switching to a dog paddle to keep up with Nell as she waded toward shore.

“He is very nice.”

“Can I meet him?”

“
Can
you?”

“
May
I?” asked the child with a put-upon roll of the eyes.

“You
have
met him. You just don’t remember.”

“I’d like to meet him again.”

Nell paused at the edge of the bay to wring out the sodden, knee-length skirt of her bathing costume as Dr. Greaves crossed the sandy stretch of beach. She looked up to find him taking in her attire—the puffy cap, black wool sailor dress, matching pantaloons, and lace-up slippers—with a contemplative smile that made her cheeks bloom with heat.

“Oh, do stop gaping at me,” she said through a flutter of embarrassed laughter.

“Is that any way to greet an old friend?”

Old friend.
Curious, Nell thought, that Dr. Greaves should refer to himself that way. Much as they’d cared for each other, they’d never been
friends
, precisely; certainly she’d never thought of them as such.

“And I wasn’t gaping,” he said. “I was admiring.” Before Nell could summon a reply to that, he turned to greet Gracie and Eileen with a bow. “Ladies. So sorry to intrude upon you unannounced like this, but the butler told me you were out here, and that I should just come on back.”

“Quite right,” Nell said. “Grace Hewitt, Eileen Tierney, may I present Dr. Cyril Greaves, a physician from East Falmouth.” To Dr. Greaves, she said, “Miss Tierney helps me to look after Gracie, with whom you are already acquainted.”

“I’m most pleased to see you again, Miss Hewitt,” said Dr. Greaves.

“And I you,” said Gracie, the consummate little Brahmin lady in her short white bathing dress and damp braids.

The child’s decorous reply drew an impressed grin from Dr. Greaves. “I must say, that is a much more mannerly salutation than the red-faced squalls with which you greeted me the first time we met.”

“Dr. Greaves is the physician who took you out of your mommy’s tummy,” Nell told Gracie.

“With Miss Sweeney’s help,” he said. “I couldn’t have done it without her.” A gracious statement, indeed, for it was he and he alone who had saved both Gracie’s life and that of her mother, a chambermaid named Annie McIntyre, by means of a deft and timely Cesarean section that storm-ravaged night six years ago. Meeting Nell’s gaze, he said, “I should never have let her go.”

Looking up at Nell, eyes wide, Gracie said, “You were there when I was born?”

She hesitated. Dr. Greaves winced, evidently realizing he’d just revealed something that Nell, in an effort to forestall Gracie’s incessant questions about her parentage, had kept to herself. With the cat out of the bag, Nell nodded and said, “I was Dr. Greaves’s assistant for four years. Then, after you arrived and Nana decided to adopt you, she asked me if I would come to Boston to be your nursery governess.”

But not before questioning Dr. Greaves, in a conversation overheard by Nell, as to her suitability to care for and tutor a young girl.
She’s of good character and chaste habits, I take it?
His response had been reassuring, if purposefully vague. There’d been no hint—thank God, because Nell had desperately wanted the position—of her disreputable past, nor of the fact that she’d been sharing the lonely doctor’s bed for three of the four years in which she’d lived under his roof.

From a good family, is she?
Mrs. Hewitt had asked him.

They were from the old country, ma’am. Both gone now, first him and then the mother, when Nell was just a child.

And there’s no other family?

She had a number of younger siblings—that’s how she learned to care for children. Disease took most of them—cholera, diphtheria—but one brother lived to adulthood. She assumes he’s still alive, but it’s been years since she’s seen him. James—she calls him Jamie.

Nell had let out the breath she’d been holding, weak with relief and gratitude that he hadn’t mentioned Duncan. The rest of it was damning enough, but if Viola had known about Duncan, there would have been no question of hiring her.

Naturally,
Viola had told Nell when she offered her the position,
I would prefer that you remain unwed while Grace is young, in order to devote your full attention to her. And, of course, your conduct and reputation must be above reproach—you’re responsible for the upbringing of a young girl, after all. But I can’t think you’d let me down in that regard.

If Nell had managed, these past six years, to live up to Viola’s expectations, it was only by perpetuating a lie of omission to a woman she’d come to regard as a surrogate mother. As far as Viola knew—then and now—Miss Nell Sweeney was a virtuous Irish Catholic girl from a working class background who was good with children. There’d been so much Nell had been obliged to keep hidden all these years, lest she risk the loss of her position, her wonderful new life, and most unthinkable of all, Gracie.

“Miseeny?” Gracie was tugging at her skirt. “
Did
you?”

“Did I what, sweetie?”

“Know my mommy? My weal mommy?
Real,
” she added, correcting herself before Nell could.