Tempted (7 page)

“Don’t throw him out,” the redhead begged.

“Stella, don’t be ridiculous. He causes nothing but trouble.”

“I’ll take him upstairs,” Stella said.

Delilah lifted that eyebrow again. “Sam Garrity does not have the money to pay for an hour of your time.”

Sam Garrity was the man Anne had stitched up last night. The man she was worried about. Steven shifted a few steps to the left to get a better look at him. The man’s face was purple and black with bruising. A filthy bandage swaddled his hand.

Beneath that bandage were Anne’s stitches, and the way Sam was going, they’d be pulled by the end of the night.

He wore his threadbare Union Cavalry coat that didn't stand a chance against the wind whistling outside.

“I’ll… take it out of my own money.” The redheaded prostitute said.

“I do not run a poor farm, Stella.”

The redhead looked down at the man at the end of the bar, swaying like he was on the deck of a ship in storm-tossed waters.

“He lost everyone and everything. Just like us,” she whispered, and something flinched on Delilah’s face. Something scared and young, and she glanced sideways at Steven as if to see if her secret was out.

“I’ll pay,” he offered. “For Sam’s hour.”

Delilah carefully controlled her surprise. “That’s generous of you,” she said, and urged Stella forward. “Go, before I change my mind.”

Stella was gone, moving quickly down to the far end of the bar.

And then Delilah turned to Steven.

“Drink your whiskey and come with me.”

He didn’t move. Not that he hesitated—he just wasn’t at all ready to follow her.

“Drink your whiskey and come with me or leave.” Her eyes were hard but her voice was broken, somewhere between a command and a plea. Punishment for having seen, for just a moment, her broken façade.

He lost everything. Just like us.

I don’t want to lose anymore.

Steven shot back the whiskey and Delilah signaled the bartender, who handed her the bottle of sherry. Those unfriendly eyes, to Steven, had grown more so.

“Delilah,” the bartender whispered, holding the bottle. Some communication passed between them, a powerful force, and Steven felt a heat in his blood. Something heavy.

But then Delilah got the bottle free, and as if some battalion drummer had counted out the command, they turned and walked along the edges of the room, the fringes of the party—past Stella, who held Sam’s small frame in her soft arms—to the staircase that led to the bedrooms on the second floor.

Girls gathered there at the banister in a sea of white linen and faded silks. They watched with wide eyes as Delilah walked past them, Steven in tow.

This
, he thought,
does not happen very often
. He wasn’t sure if he felt special or doomed.

At the end of the hallway Delilah used a key from a long chain around her neck to open the door. She stepped inside the dark and shadowed room.

“Come in,” she said.

And he’d come too far to be a coward now. He stepped in after her and closed the door behind him.

“Do you want me to light a lamp?” she asked. “Or is this something you need to do in the dark?”

“Dark or light, I don’t think it will matter.” Despite the heat in the room, coming up through the floorboards from downstairs, cold sweat tricked down his back.

There was the flick of a match and the small noises of a lamp being lit, and the room was illuminated in a soft light.

A forgiving light. Delilah looked softer, her hard edges blunted.

“You a virgin?” she asked.

He shook his head no.

“I hope you don't require a virgin,” she said with a smile. “I’m gettin' one next month. A prize to be won in a card game organized by a man from Georgia. Apparently she was a rather notorious Northern spy, or at least that is what we're all led to believe.”

“Sounds barbaric.”

Delilah blinked. “I suppose so,” she said. Perhaps she was entirely used to being barbaric. “Care for sherry?”

“I don’t normally drink.”

“What do you normally do?” she asked, pouring herself a glass and then quickly drinking it.

“It’s been so long I’m not sure I remember.”

“It’s our animal instinct. Everyone remembers. Do you normally pay for the services of a whore?”

“Not in some time, no.”

“Well, I’m a very good whore, so you need not worry.” That broken tone was back in her voice. She began to peel off her long black gloves, revealing plump arms white as moonlight. “Now, let me guess, you have some secret desire your wife is unwilling to satisfy. You want to hit me.”

“No,’ he said, horrified at the thought.

“You would like me to hit you?”

“No.”

She put her gloves on the small table with the lamp. “Pity.”

He blinked. “I don’t… want violence. Or to debase you. Or be debased.”

“Then what brings you to my door so full of self-loathing, Steven? Because I can smell it on you. Like gangrene.” He didn’t answer. Couldn’t. He was not able to talk about himself in that way.

“Can't we just...?”

“Fuck?”

He swallowed and nodded.

“Not without telling me what's got you tied in knots. Sad sex is not interesting sex.”

“I have an…aversion.”

“Aversion, perversion, they are much the same.” She stroked his shoulder.

At her touch he jerked back so hard he nearly knocked a lamp off a table.

Mistake
, he thought, panting in the humid, close little room that smelled like woman and his fear.
This was a goddamn mistake
.

“An aversion,” she said, her eyes wide. “To touching?”

“Not…” He had not looked at it this way. He had not taken it apart like this. It was all just a blank horror. “I can tolerate touching her, I think. But I can’t tolerate… to be… touched by her.”

“Why aren’t you with this... her? To work on your aversion.”

“I can’t,” he whispered. “If I fail, it will hurt her so much.”

Her smile was startling. And pretty. “Well, I do love a challenge. May I help you take off your coat?” she asked, but before he could answer she reached for his buttons. The pressure of her fingers against his ribs made it suddenly impossible to breathe, and he flinched away.

“I’ll do it.” Carefully he took off his coat, laid it across the chair near the table with the lamp.

“Your vest,” she said. There was a secret tension in her body. And he could suddenly feel her interest.

It was not uncomfortable.

He took off his vest, and then he was standing there in his shirtsleeves and suspenders.

“Would you like to touch me?” she asked, holding out her hands, those moonlight arms.

Trembling, he reached for her fingers. They were warm from being in the gloves. Her palms were damp. His fingers traced the tendon under her wrist, and her breath came in slowly. He got to her elbows, and her fingers brushed the insides of his arms, and he stopped for a moment. He didn’t flinch, which was an improvement, but the instinct was one he had to fight.

“What happened?” she asked. “That you're like this?”

For a moment the memory was too strong. The crush of the bodies. The wet thickness of blood and shit seeping into his clothes. His skin.

He lurched back, sucking in air.

“I’m sorry,” she said, her hands up. “I’m sorry I asked.”

He stood just outside the brightest circle of light from the lamp. His shoes were cut in half by it.

He needed to give up on this idea of Anne. Of being anything of use to her besides a friend.

But that, of course, would be over too. Once she was married. There would be nothing of them when she married.

And that, more than anything, made his decision for him.

“Shall we try again?” Delilah asked.

Anne
, he thought. Anne was worth it.

He nodded and stepped back into the light.

And then the screaming started.

A
nne put the last of the re-laundered and rolled bandages into the dresser in the room they used for surgery and exams. She blew out the lamp, and the curl of smoke and the smell of extinguished flame followed her out the door.

It was past time for her to go to bed, and she’d exhausted all of her distractions.

I could ask for a lesson in setting bones
, she thought, looking down the hallway at Dr. Madison’s shut door. But he’d gone into his room, sweating and shaking, a few hours ago and she did not have the wherewithal to face him. Not his addiction. Not his piercing eyes. Not after Steven.

In the back, there was a baby's soft cry and the thump of Elizabeth's feet on the floor.

I could see if she needs help. Surely
, she thought,
someone needs help
.

A sudden pounding on the door made her jump, her heart in her throat.

“Doc!” a man yelled, and he pounded again. Frantic. “Doc! We need you!”

There was no movement, no sound from Dr. Madison’s quarters, so she stepped toward the front door and opened it, letting in moonlight and cold air.

And Tell Garrity.

“What’s happened?” she asked. All thoughts of Steven and Dr. Madison gone. “Is it Sam?”

Tell’s thin, dirty face was streaked with sweat and tears. “There’s a problem at Delilah’s. Sam… Sam did something to one of the girls, and he’s got himself locked up in the room, and he’ll only open the door for Dr. Madison. People are threatening to kill him if he doesn’t open the door…”

Oh, God. She’d wanted a distraction, but not this.

“One minute,” she murmured, already halfway down the hallway. Dr. Madison’s door was locked, but she had a key and she used it, slipping into the doctor’s rooms.

In the dark, she could see his long body stretched out on the settee. Quickly she lit the candle on the table near the door and approached him. The chloroform and towel he used to administer it were tipped over on the floor next to his slack hand.

Thank God his chest was moving. Lifting and falling in a comforting repeating pattern.

But those breaths were deep. And she did not think she could wake him.

“Dr. Madison!” she cried, and shook him. Nothing.

“James!” she yelled, and smacked him across the face. He didn’t so much as flinch.

“What’s wrong with him?” It was Tell, seeing far too much, standing in the shadows of the doorway, the door she hadn't closed cracked open.

“The doctor suffers from migraines,” she lied. Pulling together a plan out of desperation and bravado, she blew out the candle and pushed past Tell in the doorway. She grabbed her coat from the stand by the door. “I’ll go see Sam.”

“You…?” Tell said. Even this illiterate boy who’d been raised on the battlefields and then in a silver mine knew what she was doing was far beyond acceptable.

“The girl in the room with Sam, is she dead?”

“No. Not…I don’t know. Sam sounded real cut up about whatever he done to her.”

“And what will happen to Sam if we don’t get there soon?” she asked.

“Someone is going to kill him.”

“Exactly. It’s me or Sam, and probably that girl dies.”

Still Tell hesitated, but Anne had no more patience. She grabbed her cane and stepped out the front door. Moving as fast as she could toward disaster.

Tell led her through the back entrance of Delilah’s. She hadn’t known there was one, but a door from the back alley surrounded by cats led them into a small, dark room. There was another door, and they walked through a moonlit courtyard. A silver surprise. She had no idea this courtyard, with its garden, existed.

But then they were through another doorway. The sounds of voices and singing and shouting, a sharp piano came muffled through the walls, and the warm light from a hundred candles fell through the doorway.

Delilah stepped out of the shadows, giving every impression of being calm, but Anne could see otherwise. The feather in her hair was shaking.

“Madison?” She asked. Anne shook her head.

“Damn him.”

“My sentiments exactly,” Anne said. But she reached out and squeezed Delilah's hands where they were clenched in her skirts. They had grown to be friends of a kind during Anne's monthly visits with the doctor to check on the girls.

Delilah squeezed Anne's hands back. Hard.

“Do you know Sam?” Delilah asked.

Anne nodded. “Where is he?”

“Follow me. Try not to draw attention to yourself. Kyle's giving away drinks and my girls are doing their best to create a diversion, but everyone can sense something is happening.”

Anne followed Delilah through the doorway and immediately up the steps to the second floor. At the top of the stairs were Janey, Rose and Bea. When they glanced over at her, she gave them her best reassuring smile. Dr. Madison, for all his flaws, would be able to convey a certain amount of calm. Authority. She was trying to do the same, but judging by the terrified expressions on Bea and Rose’s faces, she could only assume it wasn't working.

“Who is the girl in the room with him?”

“Stella,” Delilah answered in a cold voice. She played the part of reluctant mother very well, but Anne was not fooled. Not right now. Delilah was scared. Everyone was scared. She squeezed Janey's hand as she walked by.

“There is a customer talking to Sam through the door. A solider, like him.”

“Is it helping?”

“How do I know?” Delilah said.

“No one is dead,” Anne replied, meeting Delilah’s eyes.

“Then yes, so far it is helping.”

Anne got to the top of the stairs and lifted her head enough to look down on the room below. Whatever debauchery she’d expected from a whore house in full swing, this seemed... not it. Tension over the room was palpable.

"Stop staring," Delilah said, and Anne pushed herself into motion.

Down the hall there was a knot of people gathered outside the door, and as Delilah and Anne approached they all separated, revealing a man crouched down, speaking into the keyhole.

It was Steven.

She knew in a heartbeat.

She knew by the color of his hair. The bend of his spine. The width of his shoulders.