Sweet Fire Page 6

  Father Patrick raised his eyes heavenward and whispered a word of thanks. His prayers had been answered. “Yes indeed, my boy,” he said, eagerly stepping forward. He put an arm around Nathan’s shoulders and drew him into the room. “Pei Ling tells me Liddy’s gone to Miss Bailey’s.”

  “Miss Bailey’s? But that’s—” He almost said that’s where she had been earlier in the evening, but he caught himself in time.

  “A brothel,” the priest said, finishing the sentence he thought Nathan was too polite to complete. He threw up his hands and began pacing the tiled floor. “When Liddy gets something into her head, she can’t let go of it. She’s committed to the children, you see…no, you can’t see. I’m not explaining this very well at all.”

  Pei Ling raised her head slightly. “I would explain, please. Two women come tonight for Miss Liddy. Say Charlotte is about to have baby. Miss Liddy go to help with delivery and take baby.”

  “Take the baby?” asked Nathan. Lydia Chadwick wanted a child?

  “To the orphanage,” Father Patrick broke in. “She’s gone to Miss Bailey’s to take Charlotte’s baby to the orphanage.”

  “Charlotte doesn’t want baby,” Pei Ling went on. “Miss Liddy see it has good home.”

  Surely this could have waited until the morning, Nathan thought. What made taking the baby out tonight so urgent?

  “Miss Liddy afraid for baby,” Pei Ling said, answering Nathan’s unvoiced questions. “Doctor at whorehouse not very good. Miss Liddy doesn’t like. She say he drink too much. She think he might hurt Charlotte or baby. Miss Liddy go today to see Charlotte, but her time not come. Now it come and Miss Liddy go again.”

  Nathan doubted Pei Ling had ever spoken so many sentences together in her life. She seemed surprised by her effrontery and quickly bent her head and studied the floor.

  Father Patrick stopped pacing. “Well, Mr. Hunter? Could we press upon you to go after Lydia? She made Pei Ling promise not to tell her parents, which is why she came to me. I’m afraid my absence from the musicale is already cause for some comment. I can’t afford to be gone much longer.”

  “Miss Chadwick must have already been missed by others,” Nathan said.

  Pei Ling nodded. “I tell Father she not feel well and go to room. He want to see her but I say she not want to be disturbed. I could not find Missus.”

  Nathan knew why that was so. “I’ll go after her. I don’t know why she didn’t leave with the women who came with the message. At least she’d have had an escort to Portsmouth Square.”

  Father Patrick’s dark-red brows lifted slightly. “So you do know where Miss Bailey’s is.”

  “Don’t take me to task for it, Father. Be happy that I do.”

  It was drizzling by the time Lydia reached the brothel. She was happy to get out from under the rain and the thick cloud of fog and into the relative safety of Miss Bailey’s. Every noise between Nob Hill and Portsmouth Square quickened her heart and her pace until she was running through Chinatown on her way to Kearny Street. She took the side entrance to Miss Bailey’s and leaned against the door for several minutes to catch her breath.

  “Here you are,” Ginny said, coming halfway down the narrow back staircase. “Me and Mara thought you changed your mind.”

  Lydia unfastened the satin frog at her throat and hung her damp cloak by a hook near the door. “You could have waited for me,” she said, starting up the stairs with her basket. “It only took me a few minutes to get ready.”

  Ginny’s bright yellow curls bobbed as her head came up suddenly. “Wait for you? You wouldn’t mind being seen with us?”

  Remorse struck at Lydia’s heart. She had been berating them for leaving her to make the trip alone and they had only been thinking of her reputation. “Of course I wouldn’t mind.”

  “Imagine that,” Ginny said. “And I was so sure you’d want us out of the house as quick as possible. Mara didn’t even want to go in. Wanted to pay a boy to give you the message and be done with it. I said we should try to look like we belong and deliver it personal.”

  “You did the right thing. Has Charlotte had the baby yet?”

  “Soon. I think she’s waiting for you. Won’t let Doc Franklin hardly touch her.”

  At the top of the stairs they turned left and headed up another flight. Charlotte had been given a room in the attic for her delivery. In the event it was a hard labor, Ida Bailey didn’t want the customers complaining about Charlotte’s screaming.

  “I’ll help what I can,” Ginny said as they entered Charlotte’s room. “Mara’s got someone with her, but I’m free.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Kind of a slow night. All the swells are at your place applying for sainthood.”

  Lydia thought she was used to Ginny’s plain speaking, but that comment made her feel heat in her cheeks. She had never given a thought to the men who frequented Miss Bailey’s house. Now she wondered how many of them had danced with her this evening, played poker with her father, or made a pledge to Father Patrick. One of them might even be the father of Charlotte’s child. The thought disappointed her first and then made her angry, but she didn’t have time to dwell on it. Charlotte had cried out.

  “I’m here now,” Lydia said, ignoring Dr. Franklin’s mumbled aside. She sat down on the edge of the bed and took Charlotte’s hand. There was a basin filled with water on the floor beside the bed. Lydia took the cloth lying over the rim of the basin, wet it, and gently wiped the perspiration off Charlotte’s pale face. “She could use a fresh gown, Ginny. This one’s soaked through. See what you can find.”

  “She’s not changing her gown now,” Dr. Franklin said quellingly. “She’s about to give birth.”

  “Then she’ll have it for later. Or were you going to let her lie here like this for the rest of the evening?” Lydia shivered. “And it’s cold in here. Why don’t you start a fire?”

  Franklin sputtered and swayed a little on his feet. He attempted to level Lydia with a hard stare, but his eyes were slightly unfocused. “I’m the doctor.”

  “Yes, well, there’s a mystery.” Her sharp retort raised a wan smile on Charlotte’s lips and captured Lydia’s attention. “Good. That’s all I wanted to see. You’re going to be fine, do you know that? And the baby’s going to be fine.” She smoothed back Charlotte’s ash-blond hair where it lay wetly against her forehead and placed the cloth across her brow. “Go ahead, you can squeeze my hand when it hurts. I don’t mind.” Lydia turned her anxious eyes in the direction of the doctor. “Isn’t there anything you can do for her? Should she be in so much pain?”

  “It’s perfectly normal,” Franklin said. “Which proves my point that you shouldn’t be here at all. This is no place for you.”

  “This is no place for any woman.” Lydia didn’t like the look of Dr. Franklin. His thin, slight body was hunched at the foot of the bed as though straightening would have pained him. His hands, when they weren’t jammed in the pockets of his jacket, trembled. His dark eyes were rheumy and he dabbed at them occasionally with a handkerchief. In the short time that Lydia had been in the room he had gone to his black satchel twice and raised something to his lips. Lydia was not so naive that she didn’t realize he was drinking.

  Ginny entered the room carrying fresh linens and a nightgown. Without any prompting from Lydia, she built a fire and kept busy tending it. The tension between the doctor and Lydia was almost a tangible thing and Ginny didn’t want any part of it.

  Lydia replaced the cloth on Charlotte’s forehead several times in the next half hour. Her hand was bruised where Charlotte held it in a tight grip each time she had a contraction. Lydia’s silent entreaties to the doctor went unanswered. Except to knock back a little drink, he didn’t leave the bed, and save for the few times he muttered something to himself, he didn’t speak.

  Ida Bailey poked her head through the door once to inquire about Charlotte’s progress. That said, she stated her real mission for climbing the stairs. “Someone’s come for you, Lydia. He says Father Patric
k sent him to make certain you arrived here safely and get home the same way.” Ida’s beringed fingers curled around the edge of the door and drummed lightly as she awaited Lydia’s response.

  Lydia sighed. Pei Ling must have gone straight to the priest. “Did he tell you his name?” James or Henry, she thought. They would have been eager to make themselves useful where her safety was concerned.

  “Nathan Hunter.”

  “Mr. Hunter!”

  Charlotte cried out again, her thin face contorting with pain. Lydia forgot about her own situation as the doctor announced the baby was indeed coming.

  Impatient to be gone, Ida asked, “What do you want we should do with Mr. Hunter?”

  “Entertain him,” Lydia said succinctly.

  Ida’s rosebud mouth curved in a sly, catlike grin. “A pleasure.” She slipped back into the hallway and closed the door quietly behind her.

  Dr. Franklin cleared his throat and caught Lydia’s eye. “It’s breech. I’m not sure I can—”

  “You damn well better,” she whispered coldly. She turned back to Charlotte and soothed her with encouraging words and kindness. It wasn’t enough. Charlotte let out a scream of terror and pain as Franklin attempted to turn the baby.

  “You’re going to have to hold her,” Franklin said. He motioned Ginny over to the bed. “Both of you. Make sure she keeps her knees up.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re squeamish now,” Lydia warned Ginny.

  “I’m not,” the prostitute said. “Well, not much. But you surprise me.”

  Lydia shrugged as if it were unimportant. She wrung out the cloth in the basin and sponged off Charlotte’s neck and shoulders. The young girl’s breathing was quick and shallow and her heartbeat fluttered rapidly against her chest. “What are you doing to her, Franklin?” Lydia demanded. “Can’t you—”

  Ginny broke in. “She’s passed out.”

  Lydia glanced down at Charlotte. Her face was pasty white, her lips a bluish gray. There was no reason now for Lydia to mince her words. “What’s happening to her, Franklin? What in God’s name have you done?” She eased her hand out of Charlotte’s and went to the end of the bed where the doctor stood. Lydia blanched when she saw the blood. “My God! You’ve torn her. She’s hemorrhaging!”

  “That baby’s not coming out,” Franklin said. He turned away and went for his satchel.

  Lydia picked up the bloody forceps the doctor had been using and jammed them into the small of his back. “You take another drink and I swear I’ll force these down your throat.” She poked him again, harder this time, and when he turned around awkwardly, unsteady on his feet, she jabbed the forceps at his middle. “You damn drunkard. Do something for her! Make the bleeding stop!”

  Franklin pushed the forceps away and took a step backward, holding his hands in front of him to ward Lydia off. “There’s nothing to be done,” he said without emotion.

  “I don’t believe you,” Lydia said hoarsely. “There must be something you can do.”

  “She’s going to die.”

  “Damn you.”

  He shrugged. “She’s just a whore.”

  Enraged by his callousness, Lydia raised her arm to strike him. Ginny’s hand stayed her. “Don’t do it, Miss Lydia. Look at him. He can’t help Charlotte.”

  Tears flooded Lydia’s dark blue eyes. She lowered her arm until it was pointing at the door. “Get him out of here, Ginny. Show him the door and tell Miss Bailey that I’ll need towels, menstrual cloths, and boiling water to sterilize these instruments. Also, get someone up here who thinks they can do something. Hurry, Ginny.” Lydia drew up her gown and knelt at the bottom edge of the bed. “I’m not giving up, even if he has.”

  Lydia began by trying to stem the flow of blood. Using the linens that Ginny had brought earlier, she made packs and pressed them against Charlotte’s thighs. Charlotte went in and out of consciousness as the contractions came on more rapidly, and Lydia had no clear idea what to do with a breech birth. “Oh, please, Charlotte, you’ve got to help,” she whispered. “You’ve got to.”

  The door opened behind Lydia. She glanced over her shoulder and saw Nathan Hunter walk into the room. He threw his jacket beside the doctor’s satchel and rolled up his shirtsleeves as he approached the bed.

  “You!” Lydia cried. “What are you—”

  Nathan did not answer. He simply picked Lydia up and moved her off the bed. Her legs unfolded under her and he set her on the floor. “Ginny’s bringing the things you asked for. Go help her.”

  Lydia responded to the authority in Nathan’s tone and stopped questioning his presence or his right to order her around. She hurried off to lend her assistance to Ginny.

  “Charlotte? That’s your name, isn’t it?” Nathan washed his hands at the bedside basin, then shook off the water droplets. “Well, Charlotte, I’m going to help you have your baby. You go ahead and scream if you have to, call me any name you want. It’s going to hurt because the first thing we have to do is turn your baby around.” He kept talking, a gentle litany of instructions and praise, as he worked between Charlotte’s bloody thighs. Sweat trickled down his spine and beaded on his brow.

  Lydia returned to the room and set a kettle of water in the hearth. She dropped in the instruments Dr. Franklin had used, then stood beside Nathan at the foot of the bed. She watched him work in silence, his mouth tight with the force of his concentration, his jaw clenched. There was tension in his profile and a muscle worked rhythmically in his cheek. Lydia picked up a damp cloth and wiped his forehead.

  “Thank you.”

  It took Lydia a moment to realize he was speaking to her. She couldn’t think of anything to say. She simply nodded once in acknowledgment.

  “Take her hand,” Nathan instructed. “Talk to her. Make her help. I’ve almost got the baby turned. Is Ginny here?”

  “Right here, sir,” Ginny said as she walked into the room. “I’ve got the linens.”

  “Find something to wrap the baby in and bring it over here.” He turned his attention back to Charlotte. “It’s all right to push now, Charlotte. Next contraction. That’s it. Come on, darlin’. I can feel the baby’s head. No, don’t stop. Don’t…Lydia, get me the forceps; Charlotte’s not pushing any longer.” Lydia retrieved them quickly from the kettle, almost burning her hands in the process. “Easy,” Nathan cautioned. “I can only do one patient at a time.”

  “Are you a doctor?” Lydia asked when the instrument was cool enough to give him.

  He shook his head.

  “But how do you—”

  “Sheep.”

  Lydia’s lips parted in surprise. Ginny giggled nervously.

  Nathan continued working. He eased the forceps around the baby’s head and pulled gently on the next contraction. Though nothing of his fear showed on his face, the amount of blood loss alarmed him. If he somehow managed to bring the baby out, he wasn’t at all confident he could do anything to save Charlotte.

  He glanced at Lydia once. She was stroking Charlotte’s hair, her lips bent near the young whore’s ear. Her voice was softly encouraging, lilting and sweet. Her eyes though were infinitely sad, tear-washed, and so dark in her pale face they appeared to be black. She knows, thought Nathan. She knows we’re going to lose Charlotte.

  Losing the baby, however, was the first pain to be borne. Nathan held the tiny child in his palms, his own eyes closed briefly against the ache of his failure and the loss of something so precious. “I’m sorry, Charlotte,” he said quietly. “He’s stillborn.”

  Charlotte nodded weakly. A tear slipped between her closed lids and she bit down on her waxen lips. Groping blindly, she found Lydia’s hand and held on tightly.

  Lydia sucked in her breath and smothered a sob with the back of her hand. It didn’t matter that Charlotte had vowed all along that she never wanted the child; Lydia knew it did little or nothing to lessen her anguish now.

  “I’ll take him,” Ginny said, slipping her hands beneath Nathan’s. “We’ll need the scis
sors to cut the cord.” Nathan got those for her and snipped the cord quickly. Ginny carried the baby to the basin and began washing him off while Nathan went back to working on Charlotte.

  A few minutes passed before Nathan had the placenta. He wrapped it in the newspaper that Lydia was quick to provide. “Do you embroider?” he asked Lydia as he examined the damage Dr. Franklin had done to his patient.

  “What?” She couldn’t imagine why he wanted to know at a time like this.

  Nathan didn’t answer her question directly. “Look in the doctor’s bag and see if he has a curved needle and surgical thread.”

  Suddenly his query made sense. Lydia hesitated. She couldn’t possibly do what he was proposing. Yet when Nathan repeated his order, rapping it out impatiently this time, Lydia knew she would do whatever she had to.

  She did. And in the end it still wasn’t enough.

  Ginny laid the baby in the basket Lydia brought and put it beside Charlotte’s still body, then she closed Charlotte’s eyes. “There’s nothing more you can do,” she said quietly. “I’ll see to everything from now on.”

  Lydia couldn’t move. Her fingers trembled with exhaustion and she pricked herself with the needle she held. Her eyes widened slightly at the pain, but that was her only reaction. She simply sat at the foot of the bed, limp with weariness, her eyes vacant, and stared at Charlotte’s serene, finely wrought features.

  Nathan used his forearm to push back the damp strands of dark hair that had fallen across his brow. He looked around for a clean towel and grimaced when he couldn’t find one. “Is there someplace we can go to wash?” he asked, holding up his hands for Ginny to see.

  “My room,” Ginny said. “One floor down. First door on the left. Lydia knows where it is.” She looked at Lydia, then back at Nathan. “Is she going to be all right, do you think?”