Crescent City Courtship. Elizabeth White
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of alcoholic sustenance?”
“No, I—” He gave her an exasperated look. “Must you assume the worst?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know many men who lead me to expect anything else.”
“Well, in this case you’re wrong. I went back there because I’d heard a child coughing in the apartment next to yours. The walls are so thin—”
“Yes, they are.” She didn’t need to be reminded. “That would be the McLachlin baby. He has chronic croup. I’ve tried to get Rose to move him out of that mildewy apartment, but she can’t afford anything better.”
“Well, I went back to see about him. Stupid woman wouldn’t let me in, even though I told her I was a doctor.”
Abigail looked up at him. “To the contrary. For once she was using her head, not letting a strange man into her apartment.”
There was a brief silence. “I see your point.” John opened the graveyard gate and held it as Abigail passed through. “Then perhaps you’d agree to return with me this afternoon and persuade her of my good intentions. I’d like to look at the baby to see if anything can be done about that cough.”
Abigail hesitated. “She can’t afford to pay you.”
“I know that.” He let out an exasperated sigh. “Prof encourages us to see charity cases when we have time. It’s good practice.”
“Oh, well, then. For the sake of your education, I suppose I’d best come with you.”
He stiffened. “Miss Neal—”
“Mr. Braddock.” She squeezed his elbow. “I was only tweaking you.”
He looked at her for a moment before a slow grin curled his mouth. “Were you, indeed? Then for the sake of your education, I’ll allow you to observe a man who practices medicine for more than money. Perhaps you might learn something.”
His eyes held hers. Something shifted between them. Abigail looked over her shoulder to find the professor’s reassuring presence several paces back.
John followed her gaze. “Prof, I’m going back to Tchapitoulas Street with Miss Neal to look after a sick little boy.”
“Fine. Just bring her back before noon and you may stay for dinner, too.” Dr. Laniere waved them on and turned off toward Daubigny Street, where his family attended church.
For the next couple of blocks, Abigail maintained a tense silence. In the distance church bells began to ring. “Are you a church-going man, Mr. Braddock? Perhaps your family will wonder where you are.”
“My family would be quite astonished to see me at all on Sunday before late afternoon,” he said easily. “I don’t live at home.”
“Oh.” When he didn’t elaborate, she looked at him. “Then a wife or—or sweetheart?”
“I assure you I am quite unattached at the moment. Are you trying to get rid of me?”
“Of course not.” Abigail looked away, blushing, as they turned the corner at the saloon. “I agreed to come with you to check on the baby.” Her relief that he was unattached was absurd. There was nothing personal whatsoever in his escort.
“Yes, you did. And here we are.” He stood back as Abigail opened the outer front door and knocked on the door across the entryway from her old apartment with Tess.
She could hear the baby crying inside, Rose’s anxious voice, the other two children giggling and shrieking. “Rose?” She knocked again. “It’s Abigail.”
The door jerked open and Rose appeared with the baby on her hip. A little girl and a little boy of about four and five clung to her skirts, one on each side. “Abigail—what are you doing here? Is something wrong?”
Abigail glanced at John over her shoulder. “I brought Dr. Braddock with me. He wants to look at Paddy.”
Rose’s big blue eyes widened. “Paddy’s fine.”
Abigail laid a hand on the baby’s back and felt the rattle of his lungs as he breathed. He’d tucked his face into Rose’s shoulder, but Abigail could just see the curve of a feverish cheek. “Rose. Please let us in. Denying trouble never made it go away.”
Rose stared at John, one hand clasping the baby, the other protectively on her daughter’s head. Abigail knew she must be thinking of the drunken husband who had brought her and the children over from Ireland and abandoned them two months ago. As she’d told John earlier, Abigail herself had little reason to rely on any man’s trustworthiness. But some tiny part of her insisted on giving this one a chance to prove himself.
John seemed to realize he was here on sufferance. “Mrs. McLachlin, I think I know what’s causing Paddy’s cough. If you’ll just let me look at him for a minute, I can give him some medicine and he’ll feel much better tonight.” His tone was, if not exactly humble, moderate enough to reassure.
Baby Paddy suddenly erupted in one of his fits of croupy coughing. Rose took a flustered step back. “All right. Come in, both of you, but don’t look at the mess. The children have been playing all morning.”
Abigail would not have increased Rose’s embarrassment for the world, but she couldn’t help marveling that the young Irishwoman had survived this long on a laundress’s wage with three small children. Clearly she was in dire straights. Except for two dolls made from bits of yarn and a pile of rusty tin cans the children had been playing with in the center of the room, there was little difference between this apartment and the one Abigail had shared with Tess. Poverty had a way of leveling the ground.
To her surprise, as she and Rose seated themselves on the two wooden chairs, John took off his hat, sat down cross-legged on the floor and opened his bag. He produced a couple of splinters of peppermint candy wrapped in waxed paper and smiled at the two older children, who stared at him from behind Rose’s chair. “Look what I’ve got here, widgets. I’ll give it to you, but you have to open your mouths wide and let me see if there’s room for it to go in.”
The little girl, Stella, glanced at her brother. “It’s candy,” she whispered.
“I want it,” he whispered back. The first to conquer his shyness, he edged toward John, who held the candy just out of reach. Apparently seduced by the twinkle in John’s eyes, he dropped his jaw and stuck out his tongue. “’ee? ’ere’s ’oom.”
John laughed and deftly plied a tongue depressor as he peered down the little boy’s throat. “There is, indeed. Here you go.” He laid the candy on the boy’s tongue. “What’s your name?”
“Sean.” The boy danced backward, eliminating any chance of the candy being snatched away. His eyes closed in ecstasy. “Marmee, I like this.”
“Me! Me!” Stella gaped wide as she crowded close to John, gagging slightly as he depressed her tongue. But she patiently held still to let him look at her throat. When she received her candy, she sucked on it furiously, gazing at John with adoration. “Can Paddy have some too?”
John shook his head. “Paddy’s too little. But maybe he’d let me look at his throat anyway?”
By this time, Rose was thoroughly disarmed and handed over the baby without further protest. John took him with a gentle competence that reminded Abigail of the way he’d held poor little Caroline that morning. Her throat closed as Paddy blinked up at the doctor’s handsome young face.
John examined the baby thoroughly, laying his ear against Paddy’s chest and back to listen, gently moving his arms and legs, palpating the glands beneath the soft little chin. He tracked the movement of Paddy’s eyes by moving his finger back and forth, grinning when the baby grabbed it and tried to suck on it. “No, no, boo. Dirty.” He looked at Rose as he lifted Paddy onto his shoulder and patted his back. “Definitely teething, which causes fever. But the cough worries me. It means there’s mucus draining into his stomach, maybe