Yesterday's Roses (6 page)

“Charlotte Butcher?” Jake asked, a frown creasing his forehead. Then he laughed. “I believe you mean a ‘charlatan' and a ‘butcher.'” He could just imagine the puffed-up Dr. Barnes's reaction to a female doctor calling him that.

Celine put both her hands on her bony hips and stared at her employer severely. “That be what I jus' say. That Miz Penelope, she done tell the lady docta' to leave, that the real docta' come. That didn't sit none too good with the lady docta'. What you gonna be doin' about this, Mista Jake?”

Jake sighed. “I guess it's time for me to go upstairs and perform a gallant rescue.”

“Now there's something I don't want to miss,” Seth quipped. “Jake Parrish rescuing a Mission Lady.”

“Who said anything about the Mission Lady? If my hunch is correct, it's Doctor Barnes who's going to need rescuing!”

Chapter 4

“You stay right there!” Hallie warned, brandishing Maggie O'Shea's hastily abandoned broom.

“This just goes to prove my point that females don't have the temperament for the medical profession, doesn't it?” barked Dr. Barnes, eyeballing his two strapping apprentices expectantly. Like automated French puppets, the young whelps bobbed their heads in practiced unions, eliciting a smug smile of approval from their mentor.

“I can just imagine what
that
point would be, seeing what an open-minded, progressive individual you are,” Hallie snapped, still smarting from the man's attacks on what he saw as the mental and emotional inferiority of the female sex. What irked her most was that he honestly believed that women were to be viewed like half-witted children and to be treated accordingly. It chilled her to the core to imagine the kind of medical treatment a woman would receive at his hand.

Turning to pry her arm free from the numbing effects of Serena's constant clench, Hallie tried to reassure her patient. “It's all right, dear. There's no need for you to be frightened.”

Serena was clearly terrified by the appearance of the men, and all of Hallie's efforts to calm her were meeting with dismal failure. Every time she managed to free herself from Serena's convulsive grip, the woman simply reattached herself to whichever limb happened to be within her reach.

“Make them go away!” Serena shrieked, peering around Hallie's shoulder at the burly, red-faced man and his companions. Dr. Barnes glared at the pregnant woman impatiently, the menacing promise in his eyes making her shrink against Hallie with a frightened little whimper.

“You promised you wouldn't let anyone else touch me,” she wailed childishly. “You promised!”

Hallie patted the woman's pale cheek. “Hush, now, Serena. No one's going to hurt you.” Why wouldn't these idiot men just go away and let her do her job?

Without warning, Serena let out a long, strangled scream. Dropping her hands from Hallie's arm, she fell to her knees, clutching at her belly with a sobbing chant. “Hurts! Hurts! Hurts!”

“Damn it, woman! Can't you see that Mrs. Parrish is about to deliver a child?” Dr. Barnes snapped his fingers at one of his apprentices, who sprang into action and began stalking toward the women.

“Smart of you to have noticed,” Hallie ground out. “What was that, the second pain in the last five minutes?” With that, she swung the broom, bringing it down on the head of the apprentice who had edged too close to Serena.

He howled as the broom made whumping contact with his skull, cowering like a mangy cur beneath Hallie's threatening scowl.

“Mr. Parrish engaged me to deliver his wife's baby,” Hallie said, “and I intend to do just that.”

“I have been attending the Parrish family for many years, and let me tell you this: I don't intend to stand by while some excitable female with pretensions of being a doctor murders one of my best patients! Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes. It's clear that you're a narrow-minded fool. As for pretending—just where
did
you receive your medical education, Dr. Barnes? I'd be interested to hear.” Tossing the man a challenging glare, Hallie stooped down to stroke Serena's trembling back.

“That wouldn't be as interesting as hearing about the training that makes you consider yourself qualified to call yourself a doctor. That is, if you have any training at all.”

Hallie met Dr. Barnes's impervious gaze with a shrug and then proceeded to tick off an impressive list of European hospitals where she had received training in addition to her degree from the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania.

When she finished, the man stared at her in red-faced silence. With his double chins quivering beneath his luxuriant graying whiskers and his mouth working like that of a grounded carp, he was the very picture of outraged dignity.

Regaining his composure with admirable speed, the doctor cleared his throat several times before replying with galling condescension, “That all sounds very well and good, but everyone knows that females are incapable of retaining knowledge for any reasonable length of time. I'm afraid, my dear, that your poor parents threw their money away. Better they had spent it on a dowry instead.” With a nasty smile, he added, “Even the most undesirable of females is rendered desirable in the presence of a large marriage portion.”

“Yes. But only to undesirable males,” Hallie replied flippantly as she tried to pull Serena toward the bed. As if she didn't have enough problems already, the woman had decided that she was having none of Hallie's coaxing and refused to budge from her crouched position on the floor.

With a sigh, Hallie decided to try to reason with her. “Now Serena—”

“Hurts!” wailed Serena as another contraction rocked her body.

Hallie made some quick calculations. Gauging from her last examination of her patient, the birth was critically near. Damn it! She had to find some way to get rid of these men. Only then would she have any hope of delivering the child successfully.

“Dear God!” exclaimed Dr. Barnes when yet another cry was wrenched from Serena. “I've wasted enough valuable time trying to reason with this irrational female. Claude! Benedict! I want Mrs. Parrish bound to that bed! Now!” he ordered, and the three of them advanced on the women.

Hallie leaped into action. Wildly she swung the broom, first catching Claude in the back of the head with a blow that brought him to his knees, and then backhanding Dr. Barnes in his considerable belly, making him double up with pain. Defensively, she spun around to face the apprentice, Benedict, but it was too late.

With an agility Hallie hadn't counted on, he easily caught hold of the flailing broom and wrenched it out of her hands. Tossing the weapon aside, he pulled her into an immobilizing grip that made her fight for breath.

“Stop that! Can't you see she's terrified?” demanded Hallie as Dr. Barnes and Claude dragged the screaming Serena to the bed. They wrestled with her roughly, trying to still her arms long enough to bind them.

“You promised!” cried Serena, frantically struggling against the restraining strength of the two men. “You promised you wouldn't let them touch me! You promised! You promised!” The desperation of the words tore at Hallie's heart, spurring her to renew her battle with a vengeance. Twisting and pulling until she gained enough distance from her captor to move her legs, she called forth all of her waning strength to give him one sharp kick. As the pointed toe of her boot made bruising contact with his shin, Benedict let out a yowl loud enough to drown out Serena's hysterical shrieks. Instantly, his arms dropped from Hallie's waist and he slithered to the floor, clutching at his leg.

Satisfied that her captor was preoccupied with nursing his abused limb, Hallie lunged into the fray at the bed.

“Looks like a scene from bedlam, doesn't it?” Seth observed, viewing the altercation from the doorway. “Oh, good left on that lady!” he added with admiration as Hallie landed a punch squarely against Claude's chin and effectively eliminated him from the tussle.

As Jake joined his friend on the threshold and stared aghast at the chaos in the room, Seth quipped, “We should probably stop the little hellion before she annihilates San Francisco's finest medical practitioners.”

“As if that would be a great loss,” Jake muttered, his face tightening with thunderous fury as one of the lumbering apprentices clasped Hallie in an immobilizing hug and wrestled her to the hard floor.

Hallie bellowed with unladylike rage as she was slammed to the floor, face down. Feeling as if she was suffocating beneath the crushing weight of Benedict's body, she struggled frantically to free herself. As she clawed impotently at the wooden floor, kicking her feet in hopes of inflicting damage on a stray body part, her heavy burden was miraculously lifted. Catching a deep, panting breath, she rolled onto her back and braced herself for the counterattack she knew was coming.

Nothing prepared her for the sight of Jake Parrish standing over her prone figure holding the intimidated Benedict by the scruff of his neck like an errant puppy. Nor did she quite know how to respond to the man dressed in a colorful suit of clothes who murmured, “Fine left hook, sweetheart,” and then hauled her up against his hard form.

Hallie could only gape with bewilderment as the stranger seized her left hand, lifted it to his lips and kissed her open palm, sighing, “Such a delicate hand to pack such a wicked wallop. I stand in awe of such a lovely and worthy contender.”

Jake snorted derisively. “Seth, let go of Dr. Gardiner and stop your nonsense.” Without sparing the hapless Benedict so much as a glance, Jake flung him aside as if he were so much rubbish. The youth scrambled to his feet and scampered off to cower behind the indignant Dr. Barnes.

After kissing Hallie's palm one last time, Seth reluctantly released her. As he turned to move toward Jake, he tossed her an impudent wink that brought a halfhearted smile to her lips.

Jake waited until his friend had finished his tomfoolery before turning the full heat of his glare on the brawlers. “What the hell is the meaning of this chaos?” he demanded.

The combatants stood silently accusing one another with their mutinous gazes, no one wanting to be the first to speak up. Then all hell broke loose. Bickering loudly among themselves, arms flinging in broad gestures, each of the guilty parties rushed to lay blame on someone else.

At the sudden onslaught of noise, Serena whimpered and huddled against the mattress, her imploring eyes darting to Hallie. Then she let out a strangled cry and doubled over into a shaking heap of misery.

Spurred by old habit, Jake started toward his wife. He got no further than a few steps before he was stopped short by Serena's expression of repulsed horror. Her silent rebuff only served to add kindling to his already flaring temper. Pinning Dr. Barnes with his glare, Jake barked, “Well?”

“I was just trying to save your wife from the hands of this hysterical female,” intoned Dr. Barnes pompously.

“And I was trying to save her from this butcherous charlatan,” countered Hallie.

Jake ignored Dr. Barnes's gasp of outrage. Riveting his gaze on Hallie's face, he taunted, “Butcherous charlatan? One of the members of the exalted medical profession? Surely you jest.”

Hallie sputtered at that. Must this man always twist everything she said? Straightening her spine to stand tall, Hallie returned Jake Parrish's stare. Ignoring his barb, she asked, “Do you know what this man wants to do to your wife?”

“This should be educational,” Seth murmured, leaning against the wall and nonchalantly examining the glossy ends of his hair.

“He was talking about tying Mrs. Parrish down and risking serious damage to her body by pulling the baby out with forceps.”

Dr. Barnes harrumphed several times before stating, “Which is a perfectly acceptable course of action—considering the circumstances. As we both know,” he paused to give Jake a look of ingratiating conspiracy, “Mrs. Parrish is incapable of taking instructions, and therefore extreme measures must be considered.”

“Oh, yes! Why don't we tell Mr. Parrish about your extreme measures, Dr. Barnes? Like how you intend to crush the infant's skull should the head be too large for the forceps to grip?”

“Good God!” Seth dropped the lock of hair he had been studying and stared at Dr. Barnes, appalled.

Jake's eyes narrowed as his gaze moved from Hallie's outraged face to Dr. Barnes's smugly self-righteous one. He considered the man for a second before drawling, “Really?”

“Only in the most extreme situation, mind you. Most probably the forceps will be adequate.” The doctor threw Hallie a condescending look.

“And you think it necessary to tie my wife?”

Serena cried out at that suggestion, and Hallie went to sit on the edge of the bed. With desperation, the woman pushed herself at Hallie, clinging to her tearfully.

Jake watched as Hallie pulled Serena into her arms, rocking her gently and whispering into her ear. Gradually his wife calmed beneath Hallie's soothing ministrations. It was clear that Serena trusted this odd mission doctor.

Strangely enough, so did he.

Jerking his gaze away from the revealing scene, Jake demanded, “Well, Dr. Barnes? I repeat: do you really think it necessary to tie my wife?”

“Of course. How else could you expect me to keep her still and in the proper position?” The man's confidence was unflappable.

“Interesting. And what do you have to say, Dr. Gardiner?”

Hallie slowly raised her face from where it rested against Serena's hair. Meeting Jake's glittering gaze with a steady stare of her own, she replied, “I don't see why this baby can't be delivered just like any other. As for binding Serena, well, up until this man disturbed us, your wife was following my instructions perfectly. I expect she will again once you remove this charlatan and his butchers-in-training from her sight.”

Jake rubbed his jaw thoughtfully.

“Jake.” Seth walked over to his friend and clasped his shoulder gently. Only he knew how difficult this decision was for Jake; only he understood the pain—and the guilt. “It's up to you to decide what's best for your wife.”

Jake glanced from his friend's concerned face to Dr. Barnes, standing stiffly beside his apprentices. Then his gaze moved to the tableau at the bed. Hallie had tied a twisted sheet to the footboard and was encouraging Serena to pull on it as another contraction jerked her body. Miraculously, his wife was cooperating.

With a shrug, Jake replied, “It appears my wife has made the decision for herself.”