Delilah Marvelle - Forever and a Day

Shouts and a gathering crowd of men on the upcoming dirt road made her jerk to a halt and snap her gaze toward a pluming dust that was settling. An overturned dove-gray top hat lay oddly displaced outside the crowd in the middle of the street.

She sucked in a breath, scanning the men who were yelling at women to stand back. What—?

The driver of an omnibus, who had already brought his horses to a full halt, untied the calling rope from his ankled boot, hopped down from his box seat and hurried into the crowd as passengers within the omni craned and gaped through the small windows.

“Oh, God.” Her stomach clenched as she scrambled forward.

The Brit had been struck by the omni and was lying motionless there on the street corner of Howard and Broadway.

LIGHT EDGED IN THROUGH the waving darkness and pulsed against his eyelids. Slowly opening his eyes, he squinted against the glaring brightness of the sun that pierced through a cloudless sky. Taking in several jagged breaths, he drifted, unable to lift his head from the dirt-pounded street that dug into his shaven cheek and throbbing temple.

Several booted feet and countless hovering faces blocked his skewed view of painted placards posted on buildings and a blue sky that rose beyond a street he did not recognize. Shouts boomed all around him and the dust-ridden, heat-laced air made it difficult for him to breathe.

A bearded man with a cap slung low against his brow leaned over him. “Good to see you stayed below the clouds, sir. Are you able to get up?”

Why were there so many people gathered around him? What was going on? He rolled onto his back, wincing against the searing, razorlike sensations coiling throughout the length of his body. He staggered to sit up, only to sway and stumble back against the dirt road beneath him. The scuffed imprint of a booted foot that had been pressed deeply into the dirt beside him drew his gaze.

One day it happened that, going to my boat, I saw the print of a man’s naked foot on the shore, very evident on the sand, as the toes, heels and every part of it.

He winced, pushing the odd, misplaced voice out of his head. His vision blurred as the acrid taste of blood coated his mouth and tongue. Something trickled down the side of his face, its wet warmth dribbling toward his earlobe. He swiped the moisture away with a trembling hand and glanced toward it. The fingertips of his brown leather glove were smeared with blood.

“Hoist him up,” a female voice insisted from within the blur of surrounding faces. There was a pause. “Oh, saints preserve us.” She sounded more panicked. “We need to get him over to the hospital.”

He swallowed and glanced up toward that lilting female voice that appeared concerned for him. Was he in some strange part of Ireland? Despite trying to find that voice, there only seemed to be an endless blur of male faces floating around him.

Hands slid beneath his morning coat and trouser-clad thighs. A group of men jerked him upward with a unified grunt.

Pain whizzed straight up to his clenched teeth and skull. He gasped, twisting against their pinching grasps. “Gentlemen,” he seethed out between ragged breaths. “Whilst your concern is appreciated, I hardly think a full procession is necessary.”

“Such posh manners for one who is dying,” one of the men carrying him hooted playfully. “One can only wonder what’ll come out of his mouth when he’s dead.”

A quick hand reached out and knocked the cap off the man’s head. “Less tongue, more muscle. Move!”

“Ey!” the man yelled back, stumbling against him and all the others carrying him. “Keep them mammet little hands to yourself, woman. I was only having a bit of fun.”

“You think it fun watchin’ a man bleed? Keep movin’ him, you lout. Lest I make you bleed.” The freckled face of a young woman with the brightest set of green eyes he’d ever seen suddenly peered in from between all of the broad shoulders carrying him. Her rusty arched brows came together as she trotted alongside him, trying to hold his gaze through moving limbs. A loose, soft-looking strand of strawberry-red hair swayed against the wind, having tumbled out of her frayed blue bonnet.

“Where are you stayin’?” She shoved the loose strand of hair back into her bonnet with a bare hand, trying to keep up with the men carrying him. “Close? Far?”

Gritting his teeth, he tried to focus, but couldn’t.

“Are you from around here?” she insisted, still bustling alongside him. “Or are you visitin’ from abroad? You mentioned a hotel. Which hotel are you stayin’ at?”

“Hotel?” he echoed up at her, his throat tightening. “When did I mention a hotel?”

She squinted down at him, searching his face. “Never you mind that. We need to contact your family. Give me a name and address, and after we deliver you to the hospital, I’ll run myself over to them at once.”

Family? He blinked, glancing up at the swaying, hazy blue sky above as he was guided up toward a hackney. Countless names and faces flipped through his mind’s eye like the pages of an endless book whipping past. There were so many names. Strada. Ludovicus. Casparus. Bruyère. Horace. Sloane. Lovelace. Shakespeare. Fielding. Pilkington. La Croix. They couldn’t all be related to him. Or…could they?

I was called Robinson Kreutznaer, which not being easily pronounced in the English tongue, we are commonly known by the name of Crusoe.

Wait. Crusoe. Yes. It was a name he remembered very well. Robinson Crusoe of York. Was that not him? It had to be, and yet he couldn’t remember if it was or it wasn’t. Oh, God. What was happening to him? Why couldn’t he remember what was what?

He winced, realizing that he was now being tucked against the leather seat of an enclosed hackney. The firm hands that had been pushing him to sit upright against the seat left his body one by one as all the men turned away and jumped down and out of the hackney, leaving him alone against the seat.

Everything swayed as he slumped against the weight of his heavy limbs. He panicked, unable to control his own body, and fought to remain upright by using his gloved hands against the sides of the hackney.

The woman with the green eyes shoved her way past the others and frantically climbed up into the hackney, slamming the door behind her. “I’m takin’ you in myself. I’ll not leave your side. I promise.”

The vehicle rolled forward as she landed beside him on the seat with a bounce. She leaned toward him. “Come.” Her arms slid around him as she dragged him gently toward herself. She guided his shoulder and head down onto her lap, scooting across the seat to better accommodate his size.

He collapsed against the warmth of her lap, thankful he didn’t have to hold himself up anymore. Wrapping a trembling hand around her knee, he buried it into the folds of her gown, taking comfort that he wasn’t alone. The scent of lye and soap drifted up from the softness of her gown, which grazed his cheek and throbbing temple. He could die here and know eternal peace.

Her hand rubbed his shoulder. “I want you to talk. That way, I’ll know you’re doin’ all right. So go on. Talk.”

He swallowed, wanting to thank her for her compassion and for giving him a breath of hope even though he sensed there was none. Was death nothing more than a long sleep? His hand slowly and heavily slid inch by inch from her knee as he felt his entire world tip.

“Sir?” She leaned down toward him and shook him. “Sir?”

A snowy, rippling haze overtook the last of his vision, and though he fought to stay awake in those heavenly arms, everything faded and he along with it.

CHAPTER TWO

The height of cleverness is to be able to conceal it.

—François de La Rochefoucauld,