New World, New Love (12 page)

She grinned, showing gaps in her teeth. ‘You’ll find I’m worth my weight in gold.’

It was five o’clock when he reached home after checking on the patients he had seen earlier. The note was still on the door with no sign that Louise had been there, but he knew she would have taken notice of his warning.

He felt tired, but he made himself a meal and would have gone to his desk to record the new case if he had not started wondering about Louise. Perhaps she had not come at all, something unexpected having happened. He wanted to see her and if today should be the start of an epidemic it would be many weeks before he could meet her again. If he went to her home now he could talk to her at the window from a little distance away, because for all he knew of the contagion the infection could be hanging about his clothes.

Going out to the stable, he saddled up his horse and rode off. Before long he drew level with her living-room window. Still in the saddle, he reached out with his riding crop and tapped on the glass. When Louise did not appear he tapped again without result.

On her bed Louise, her head clear for a few lucid moments, heard the tapping. Somebody was at the door! She must get there and ask for help! In her confused state she had no thought of Charles. Forcing herself to sit up, she cried out again at the pain that the tremendous effort sent shooting through her head. Rolling herself from the bed, she fell sprawling on to her face and lay there unable to move.

‘Help me!’ she croaked from her dry throat. Then she drifted once more into enveloping darkness.

In the street, Charles tried tapping on the bedroom window just in case she was dozing. Then, disappointed at not finding her at home, he swung his horse round and started back the way he had come.

But he had not gone far when he decided that he should have left a message in case he was too busy tomorrow to make another visit. Riding back again, he dismounted and took a pad and a stub of pencil from his pocket. Outside the door of her apartment he set the paper against the wall and wrote. Then he bent down to push it under the door, but a wooden draught-excluder, fastened by some previous tenant, gave no space for it. Without hope, he tried the door and to his surprise it was unlocked. This was not a district in which to invite intruders.

‘Louise?’ he called out as he entered. There was no reply and he put the note down on the table where it would be easily seen. It was as he was turning to leave that his attention was caught by the rumpled end of a quilt lying on the bedroom floor. Curious, he pushed the door wider and then he saw her. In a rush of fear, he dropped to one knee beside her, turning her limp body towards him. Her eyes were closed and her luxuriant hair tumbled about his supporting arm. He had seen enough cases that day to know just what the danger was. Somehow he must get her home with him, but there were too many people about outside for him to take such an obviously sick woman on his horse. The cry of
Yellow Fever
! would go up, and that could result in a general panic. He and Louise could be pelted with missiles to drive them out of the district, as had happened to others in the past, and he would not risk any further harm coming to her.

Gathering her up, he laid her gently on the bed. ‘I’m leaving you for just a few minutes, Louise,’ he said, even though she did not hear him.

Outside, he looked one way and then the other along the street. Women were gossiping in doorways, others sat with their men outside the nearby tavern and children were playing everywhere. Taking his horse, he went along to poor-looking stables, where the only vehicle for hire was a rickety old cart. It would be a rough ride for Louise, but he had to get her to safety. His horse snorted and reared its head, nostrils flaring at being harnessed up, only used to a rider, but Charles patted its neck and spoke encouragingly until it quietened down. Then he led it back to the house.

In the apartment he ripped the linen from Delphine’s wall-bed and carried the mattress out and dumped it in the back of the cart. A bundle of pillows and another of sheets followed. Those watching him were used to people taking their belongings in flight from a creditor or a landlord wanting overdue rent. By the time he appeared with a long roll of blankets, those around had lost interest and none noticed the care with which he laid this final bundle down. Then he locked the apartment behind him and set off on foot, leading the horse.

The cart lurched drunkenly over the ruts in the street, shifting its cargo from side to side, but Charles did not risk stopping to check on his new patient until he turned down a deserted alley. To his relief as he drew back the blanket, Louise opened her eyes for a moment and murmured his name before her lids closed again.

F
or five days Charles fought to save Louise’s life, Joan giving him able assistance. When he was out, visiting other patients, Joan seized the opportunity to give Louise a spoonful of a concoction from a bottle she kept hidden in her apron pocket. It was mainly herbal, but as it had a couple of ingredients in it that her old grandmother had advised for any life-threatening fever, she was certain that Dr Noiret, with his decided notions about clean water and his other strange ideas, would throw it away if he found out about it.

Yet she knew from past experience that, if the contagion was in its first stages, her concoction helped people to recover. Although it had been too late to save the young wife and three other of his patients, Louise was holding her own and Joan thought that with a few more doses she had a good chance of pulling through.

Every day Joan marvelled to herself over the diligence of the young French doctor, whose face was constantly wrenched by anxiety over Louise and who, in spite of his physical tiredness, never turned anyone away or failed to go to a house where he was needed.

The fever had been declared a minor epidemic. Through some quirk of fate it had not claimed more than one more person in the two streets where it had first been reported. Instead it had located itself fiercely in the district near the docks. With so many important commercial interests at stake, an isolation camp was hastily erected at a safe distance from the city and the evacuation of the sick from the infected area began to take place. Louise, although thin and bedridden, was through the crisis of her fever. Lying in an upstairs room, she heard the first rumble of wheels as the evacuation began. As the only doctor in the area, it had been Charles’s responsibility to organize it.

When he came into the room, a travelling bag slung over his shoulder and his medical bag bulging with extra supplies, she tried to keep a smile on her face.

‘I’m leaving now,’ he said, grinning cheerfully for her benefit. ‘But I know you’ll soon be completely well again.’

Although she had been prepared for his departure, it tore at her heart to see him go. His earlier reassurance that if he had been going to catch the fever it would have happened already held no weight now that the time of parting had come.

‘I’ll be looking forward to our Sunday afternoons together when you’re back again,’ she managed on a light note.

‘So shall I. Then we’ll make up for lost time. As I believe you’re no longer infectious, Joan will soon take you to Mr Hoinville’s house. Everything has been arranged. He’ll see that you’re cared for until fully recovered. Then Joan will come to assist me at the camp.’ He took her hand, kissed it and then her brow. ‘Au revoir, Louise.’

‘God be with you,’ she said in a choked voice.

His gaze lingered long and warmly on her before he clamped his tricorne hat on to his head and went from the room to clatter away down the stairs. Joan, who had tactfully kept her distance, even though they had spoken in French, as they usually did on their own, came into the room when the front door banged after him.

‘Help me to the window!’ Louise implored, pushing aside her bed cover. ‘I want to see him leave.’

Joan almost carried her to the window, for her feet dragged weakly. Then she looked down into the street, but he was not expecting to see her and did not look up. She saw him set his hands on to the back of a cart full of sick people and leap up on to it to sit with his legs dangling. Even as she watched, he turned to comfort a sobbing child.

Three days later Joan brought the horse from the stable to the mounting block by the house. Then Louise, supported by the woman’s strong arms, took each stone step slowly until she managed to sit sideways on the saddle.

Joan looked up at her almost accusingly. ‘I hope you realize how much t’ doctor loves you.’

Louise met her eyes. ‘I do,’ she replied quietly.

It was true, she thought, as the woman began to lead the horse at a gentle pace. She and Charles had formed a bond between them that was more than friendship; a warm love that would stay the rest of their lives. But they each had their own paths to follow. Whether those paths should ever merge to become one was something only the future could reveal.

To shorten the journey, Joan led the horse through narrow streets. She also wanted to avoid being seen by the guards, who stopped anyone leaving the infected area, other than those on the sick carts, which had to keep to a specific route.

By the time they reached Richard’s home, Louise was totally exhausted, no longer able to sit upright on the saddle. Joan pulled her down from it and she would have collapsed if she had not been held. She did not know they were being watched from a window or that their arrival had resulted in immediate activity within.

Joan half-carried her through a side gate and followed a path by the side of the house until they came to an open doorway. They descended a short flight to a basement laundry room where footsteps had scuttled away at their approach. The woman continued to support Louise in her arms as she looked about her. The household washing had been interrupted by their arrival, but a hip bath stood ready with hot water and a stack of towels on a chair beside it.

‘Take off all your clothes, ma’am,’ Joan ordered, even though she had washed and ironed them herself in readiness for Louise that morning. ‘As t’ doctor said, you mustn’t go into this house wearing anything from his place.’ She shrugged her shoulders to disassociate herself from his strange theories as she knelt down by the hip bath and poured some cold water into it from a brass jug that stood ready. She swirled it about with her hand. ‘It’s ready.’

When Louise was safely in the hip bath, Joan dropped the discarded clothes into one of the steaming tubs. Then she washed Louise’s hair vigorously, fingers hard on her scalp, before drying it with equal ferocity.

After Louise had dressed again in a set of garments that had been waiting for her, she sank down on a bench, her legs giving way again. ‘You will give my letter to Dr Noiret as soon as you see him?’

‘You can trust me.’

‘I do, Joan. Thank you again for your good nursing and for all else you have done for me.’

The woman shrugged carelessly. ‘You was just another case of fever to me. The rest of it I did for t’ doctor.’ She picked up a bell that had been left on an ironing table and handed it to Louise. ‘Ring it as soon as I’ve left and someone will come.’ Then she thumped back up the steps and disappeared from sight without a backward glance.

It was Richard himself who came when the bell sounded, a manservant following him. ‘You must be exhausted,’ he said with concern. ‘I was watching from a window when I saw how you nearly fell to the ground.’

‘I’ll be stronger soon. I don’t want to impose on your kind hospitality for too long.’

‘You are not to worry about that or anything else. Now I’m going to see you to your room.’

The manservant carried her up the short flight into the house and then to the head of a sweeping staircase. In a large bedroom, a maid was waiting in attendance.

‘I feel overwhelmed by all that is being done for me, Richard,’ Louise said gratefully, once she was seated.

‘It’s a pleasure to help you get completely well again. Now rest. Just ask for anything you want.’

Later that day, when Richard came again to see her, she was in bed. She guessed that he would remark on the barely touched supper tray beside her and forestalled him.

‘I’ll do better tomorrow.’

He glanced at the tray before he returned her smile. ‘I’m sure you will, but I didn’t come to check up on you. I’ve something to tell you, now that you have rested. Until I received Dr Noiret’s message two days ago, I thought you were in the country with your sister.’

‘Why did you suppose that?’ she asked in surprise.

‘I heard it from Daniel Lombard. He had been looking everywhere for you. Finally the milliner told him where she believed you had gone, which set his mind at rest.’

‘Why was he back in New York again so soon? He’d told me that he wouldn’t be returning until the early autumn.’

‘That was his intention, but he’d made this special trip with the best of motives. He wanted to take you and your sister out of the city and away from the danger of infection.’

‘Is he still in New York?’

‘No, he departed again as soon as he had brought me the news of you.’

After Richard had left her room, Louise thought over all he had told her. She was relieved that Daniel was no longer in the city, otherwise he would have found out that she was here. Another fraught scene with him was beyond her strength at the present time. She felt subdued by the knowledge that he had risked the danger of the yellow fever epidemic to take her and Delphine to safety.

Every day, tempting food was served to Louise in her room and gradually she began to regain her strength. Richard came regularly to see her just to chat, or else they would play chess or backgammon. Before long she was able to dine with him each evening in the small dining room in which he dined when alone. Above the fireplace there was a portrait of his wife, the artist having captured her delicate, almost ethereal beauty. She thought it no wonder that Richard had never found another woman to take her place.

At table they talked of Charles. No news had come from the camp, but all the time she could picture him in that tragic place, going from patient to patient, never sparing himself.