Blood Autumn Page 18

  But he didn't know if fleeing this time would save his life. He had run away before, but hadn't she found him after all this time?

  Surely, it was coincidence, he told himself. Surely. But he knew it wasn't.

  Nothing that had happened to him was coincidence.

  Certainly not his having forgotten August Hamilton — Justinian, he corrected. Perhaps he had forced himself to forget, or perhaps, and this seemed far more likely, she had had a hand in it.

  Daniel felt chilled to the bone. One moment his life had been secure; the next his entire existence became precarious and uncertain. He wanted nothing more than to turn tail and run away from Savannah, away from her. But he couldn't, not this time. This time he had responsibilities, and besides, hadn't she proved that fleeing was futile?

  Thus he would have to stay; he would have to face her as he had not done thirty years before. This time he was fortified, though, with the strength of his faith. His faith would protect him.

  He almost laughed aloud. Whom had he been fooling?

  And so what would he do now? he asked himself as he paced around his small, sparsely furnished room. Would he wait to act until August appeared to him in a drear later tonight — when he finally had the courage to go to bed? Would he simply sit idle until she came to claim him?

  Perhaps, he thought somewhat wildly as he glanced into the oval mirror that hung over the washstand, she wouldn't come after him. He was no longer a young man. Thirty years ago he might have proved attractive to her, but not now. While he was still healthy and lean, he was nearly sixty. There were lines in his face that hadn't been there creases around his eyes that had appeared in the last few years, and grey tinged his temples. Surely she wouldn't want him.

  He remembered how she had looked at him earlier, and was no longer sure of that.

  There was a knock on the door. He hesitated, then went to answer it. August would not have used the door, he knew.

  It was his nephew.

  In appearance Guy reminded him of himself when he was that age, for the young man had the same dark hair and eyes as Daniel and Sophie, his only sister, as well as the same lean face and finely boned hands, but there the resemblance ended, being simply physical. Guy had a single-minded purpose to his life. As long as Daniel could recall, his nephew had wanted to be a doctor. Doctor . . . he suddenly remembered Dr. Napier. After all the years he couldn't recall the details of his voice and face, only his manner.

  Guy had never cared for poetry or music, as had Daniel, He wanted to learn medicine, and only that, and its pursuit consumed his entire life. He'd earned his medical degree at twenty-two and had gone on to his first appointment in New York City, where Sophie lived. Later he'd gone to Philadelphia, then south to Savannah. It had been coincidence that once Daniel left England for America, he had been sent to Savannah.

  "Ah, Father Flirtation," Guy said, chuckling as he settled in one of the two chairs in the room, "I was quite amazed tonight. You made a remarkable conquest and are the envy of all the men in Savannah." He arched an eyebrow and waited for Daniel's usual flippant reply.

  None was forthcoming. All traces of the older man's good humor had fled at the recognition of August Hamilton. Justinian, Daniel reminded himself, and he wondered with ill ease how that husband had died.

  Guy's face took on a look of surprise as the other man kept his silence. "You're sombre tonight. Is anything wrong?" He frowned slightly. "Did you leave early? I don't remember seeing you after ten."

  Daniel nodded. "Yes ... I wasn't feeling well, so I left." A small white lie, and he reminded himself to attend confession. On the other hand, he hadn't felt well when he recognized her, so it wasn't strictly a lie.

  "Perhaps it's the heat," Guy suggested. "A number of my patients have been affected by it."

  "Perhaps."

  "Is there something troubling you, Daniel? You seem so quiet tonight."

  Daniel shook his head. "No, Guy. I'll just go to bed soon, and I'm sure I'll be fine in the morning. There's something I'd like to tell you, but not until I'm sure."

  "Sure?"

  "Yes." He was unwilling to elaborate. "I trust you had a good time tonight. I've never seen you more social before."

  "Sometimes you have to get away from your work."

  "Yes." Daniel folded his hands in his lap. "Dr. O'Shaunessey left rather early tonight."

  "I believe she has a lot of work in the morning," Guy replied neutrally.

  Daniel frowned, for that response wasn't like Guy. Normally, he would have been concerned about Rose leaving by herself. But then, at the party his behavior had not been usual.

  "She's beautiful, isn't she?"

  "What?" He hadn't been paying attention and didn't know what Guy was talking about. But, of course, he really did.

  "Mrs. Justinian. She's beautiful, isn't she?"

  "Yes, quite."

  "You sound as if you don't like her."

  "I do?"

  "Have you met her before? I thought you said something about knowing her a long time ago or about her reminding you of someone from the past.''

  "Er, I don't recall, Guy. I'd have to give it more thought, I think." He knew his nephew didn't believe him, but he could say no more at the present. He remembered how Christopher Smyth-Fellowes had acted when he tried to tell him how evil August was.

  "All the rage of Savannah in a matter of weeks," Guy said. "It's a shame she's been widowed so young."

  Daniel did not smile, even though he knew that the woman was not young; hadn't been young even when he had known her thirty years before. He didn't like Guy's preoccupation with her, for he feared it would have disastrous consequences, and having lost friends to August, he didn't want to lose his only nephew.

  "Why don't you go visit your mother?" Daniel suggested suddenly.

  "What? Why? Is she ill?" Guy asked.

  "Ill? No, I don't believe so, but it has been some time since you were in New York. I have a letter here from her someplace." He was searching through the papers and bundles that cluttered the pigeonholes and top of his desk. "I know she wrote to say that she missed you. I know it's here," he said, half to himself.

  Guy laughed, not unkindly. "You know Mother. She would miss me if I lived on the next street and hadn't seen her for two days."

  "Well, you're all that she has left."

  "I know. I'll go back sometime soon."

  That wasn't good enough for Daniel. He wanted Guy to leave as soon as possible and to stay as long as August was going to be in Savannah. He wanted his nephew well away from her.

  Because you want her for yourself? One part of him asked snidely.

  Daniel was horrified. Good God, no. The thought hadn't crossed his mind. Or had it? He realized Guy was watching him with a slightly puzzled look.

  "You could take Rose with you," Daniel said.

  Guy laughed again. "You're determined that we're going to marry, aren't you?"

  Daniel smiled. "Yes. You know my opinion on that matter, Guy. I like Rose a lot and think you two would do well together."

  "Perhaps." Guy roused himself. "The real purpose of my visit tonight, though, Daniel, is to invite you to dine with me tomorrow night."

  "Will Rose be there?" Guy nodded. "Then I would be delighted."

  They chatted for a while about current gossip and the unseasonably hot weather; then Guy said he must leave, and as his nephew prepared to do so, Daniel realized he wanted him to stay. As long as Guy was here with him, he wouldn't sleep and the night phantoms would be banished. Foolish, he said to himself. He had to face them sometime.

  Finally, Guy would delay no longer, and after arranging a time for dinner, he left. Alone, Daniel looked at his old clock, a castoff from one of the wealthier parishioners. Nearly one. He had to go to bed, had to get some rest.

  Reluctantly he did so, and crawled in, although he did not pull the covers up because of the heat. He lay there, rigid, his eyes open, and waited. Nothing happened; except that after a while his eye
lids grew heavy, then closed, and he slowly drifted to sleep. He slept the night through without any dreams.

  *

  Dr. Rose O'Shaunessey unbuttoned the cuffs on the long sleeves of her bodice and carefully rolled them up to above her elbows. One of her coworkers raised an outraged eyebrow and looked away. Convention and propriety be damned, she thought sourly. She was hot and sweaty, and the material held the heat, as well as getting into the way. Men had coats that they could remove, collars to loosen, sleeves to roll up. Women did not. She reached for a simple handkerchief and blotted it against her face, feeling the moisture soak into the material.

  She was not yet accustomed to southern hot weather, although all the natives of Savannah she'd talked with were quick to point out that this type of weather this late in the year was unusual. Nonetheless, she was accustomed to a different sort of heat, being born and bred in Boston. The heat in Boston's summers had never left her feeling as languid as she felt here. She sighed, pushed away a damp strand of hair and picked up her pen, forcing herself to concentrate on what she was writing.

  The daughter and youngest child of a husky, good-natured Irish merchantman, Rose had been reared by a fiercely religious mother who had strictly raised — mostly alone, because her husband was out roaming the seas for a good part of each year — her seven surviving sons and single daughter to follow the Ten Commandments and to love their country, God, and the Pope, although not necessarily in that order. Above all, she hoped to instill in them a reverence for the Mother Church. Molly O'Shaunessey had pledged her one daughter Rose and one son to the Church, and it had been the most sorrowful day in her life, so she informed each member of her family who would listen, when Rose showed no inclination toward the life of a religious. Had she been less strong-willed. Rose might have allowed herself to be pushed in that direction by the pitiful pleadings of her heartbroken mother and the adamant prayers of the family priest.

  But she didn't. Instead, at an early age she'd shown a most unladylike tendency to want to know the "why" of things, as well as a passion for ministering to birds with broken wings and cats and dogs with injured paws and tails. Perversely, while Mrs. O'Shaunessey frowned on her daughter's fascination with facts, Mr. O'Shaunessey was delighted by his daughter's yearning for knowledge and had further kindled it by bringing her numerous books as presents from his sea journeys.

  Mrs. O'Shaunessey, disapproving of the practice, tried to take the books away — just once, when Rose was sixteen. Rose held onto the disputed volume and calmly informed her parent that she wasn't about to give up her books, and if her mother forced her to, then she would leave the house that instant and become a Protestant. After that her mother left her alone. At least Mrs. O'Shaunessey didn't try physically to force her daughter to do her will; instead, she worked on another approach — the spiritual. Molly O'Shaunessey's prayers were filled constantly with biddings unto the Lord to bring "a fine husband" for her daughter so that she would forget these unnatural ways.

  A husband hadn't come, for Rose had shunned all social functions in order to study. She wanted to continue her schooling past high school. Her brothers were flabbergasted by this seriousness in a girl; her father was pleased, for no one else in his family had been so bookish; her mother crept off to her room to cry and say the Rosary.

  When just nineteen, she applied to the Boston University School of Medicine, was accepted and began working on her medical degree. After graduation she worked for a while in the Boston slums, the only position available to a woman doctor, then heard of a job down south in Savannah. Wishing to travel, she decided she would apply for the position of physician at the hospital. At the age of twenty-four, she was accepted.

  She had few women doctors of her acquaintance, as only one other had been in the Boston medical school, and while she hadn't been readily accepted in the North, there'd been little active resistance toward her. The South was altogether different. Here, of course, the concept of the lady continued, even a generation after the Civil War, or as the southerners termed it, the War Between the States. In Savannah she was regarded with general bemusement. Why, after all, would a lady wish to dirty her hands as well as tend sick people who were not her relatives? Rose kept insisting she wasn't a lady. That brought icily lifted eyebrows in response.

  There was also the question of her being a Yankee. She frankly didn't know which was more damning in the eyes of the southerners: her being a woman doctor or a northerner, but she rather suspected it was the latter.

  She wanted to stay, too, for she enjoyed her work. Working there provided her with a day-to-day challenge, and she liked Savannah, finding it a beautiful city, fortunately preserved from Sherman's burning of Georgia, and she was interested in the unusual scenery, the marshes and pine forests. Too, there was a different mixture of people here than in Boston.

  And, of course, there was Guy Maxwell.

  Rose closed her eyes briefly at the thought of her fellow doctor. Never had she met a male colleague so supportive of her, and perhaps she had let his friendly manner and his ready acceptance of her go to her head. Within days of meeting him she began daydreaming about him; then he started making nightly appearances in her dreams, the nature of which would have shocked her mother greatly.

  But soon it was apparent that she wasn't the only one suffering from this malaise of the heart. The two doctors talked while they worked, once they met for dinner, and then late one pleasant summer's night they'd gone for a walk in Forsyth Park. They had stopped by an immense live oak, embraced, and not long after that became lovers. Discreet lovers as well, for they roomed at separate boarding houses, and doubtless the medical board would have fired both of them — or at least her, she recognized wryly — if word of their affair reached anyone else.

  She suspected that Guy's uncle, Father Daniel, knew about their affair, but instead of being censorious, he seemed to approve. She liked him a lot, finding him extraordinarily different from the priests she'd known in Boston.

  And since she and Guy had become lovers, his free time had been only for her. Until now. Until that other woman had appeared in Savannah. Rose narrowed her eyes as she recalled how Guy had acted at the party the night before.

  He had neglected her, acted almost as though they didn't know one another. On the other hand, Father Daniel had been kind, no doubt feeling sorry for her, but she didn't want that. She wanted no one's sympathy.

  Well, perhaps this August Justinian was simply a passing fancy. She fervently hoped so.

  Rose sighed again. She'd best push these thoughts from her head or she wouldn't be able to finish her report in time. She completed the sentence and glanced over what she had written earlier. She was preparing the report for Dr. Fredericks to take a look at. While she usually did not lack for work, she did notice that she tended to receive fewer assignments than the male doctors or else she was given those that appealed to no one; consequently, she had more free time to study the latest medical developments and to investigate other areas in the field. Something that had come to her attention this past week was a sharp increase in deaths.

  Most of the dead had been black youths, and she thought their deaths could be traced to the high temperatures the city had had the past ten days. Exhaustion, heat stroke, there could be any number of reasons. The boys' employers had reported some lassitude preceding their deaths, but she tended to be faintly skeptical about that, for the white bosses always complained of the laziness of their black workers, whether it was summer or winter.

  She'd been allowed to examine only one dead man, for the rest had been buried already with no doctor's examination. The one she had seen had had two small areas of rash on his body, around the throat and the groin, and — astonishingly — only slight traces of blood. She'd looked for wounds that could have bled profusely, but had found nothing beyond the rash. There had also been the expression on the young man's face — one of horror, as though he had suffered greatly prior to death.

  At that moment Guy entered th
e common room of the hospital where she sat and approached her.

  "Hello."

  She smiled confidently, although she felt a little uncertain. He seemed friendly enough. "Good morning, Dr. Maxwell."

  They were so formal toward one another in public, as the dictates of society demanded. She deplored it as much as he did, but for a while they had no choice. But for a while . . . how long was that? When would it change? She had no idea.

  "Working on your report, Dr. O'Shaunessey?" he asked, indicating the papers strewn across the desk. She was always methodical, if not precisely neat.

  She nodded. "Finished it just before you came in. Would you care to look it over?"

  "Certainly." He sat on the edge of the desk, picked it up in the fine hands she admired so much, and read through it slowly.

  She sat back and watched him. Even at this early hour tiny beads of sweat trickled down the sides of his face into his dark sideburns, and a slight frown of concentration was fixed on his face. He wasn't precisely handsome, not in the traditional sense, she thought, but his face was strong with its aquiline nose, high cheekbones, and pointed chin. Almost a devilish sort of a face, she thought with amusement, and realized her mother would have crossed herself and uttered a prayer under the same circumstances. Under the same circumstances? Her mother wouldn't be here, she told herself wryly.

  "Excellent, Rose."

  "Thank you, Guy, I was about to take it in to Dr. Fredericks. I certainly hope he likes it. Would you like to come with me?"

  "Sure."

  She gathered the papers, and they walked down the hall. They could hear the cries of the sick in the wards. There were others, too, waiting outside to be treated — most of them suffering from the heat. There was little the doctors could do except tell them to stay out of the sun and to rest as often as possible.