Kate Bridges - The Surgeon

“I got about two hours. It wasn’t much, but I’ve got the next few to myself. I arranged for someone to take over at the fort so I could come to check up on you.”

“There’s no need to check up on me.” Another question gnawed at her. She had to ask. She needed to know for her own peace of mind. “How exactly…did you remove my clothing?”

“Are you sure you want to know?”

Swallowing she tried to say yes, but the word was inaudible. “Yes,” she repeated, much too loudly.

“I removed them one by one.” Leaning in, two inches from her face, he laid one palm flat against the wall behind her, grazing her hair.

A wave of heat shimmered through her. In a self-conscious gesture, she tried to smooth her tangle of hair, but it was no use trying. It was no use ever trying to smooth her hair.

“Your jacket slid off first. Quite easily, I might add.”

“Humph.”

“Then your skirt.”

“Humph.”

“Your petticoat was easy, too, because of the secret drawstring.”

She heard a moan and realized it was coming from her throat. Heaven help her!

“Then the bloomers. They looked new, too. Did you buy them for me, as well?”

She didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.

He raised his other palm and placed it firmly on the wall by the other side of her head. She was trapped between his arms. His body was splayed before her. She recognized the faint scent of laundry soap that’d been on his pillow.

Her voice was a frazzled whisper. “Why…did you ruin my corset?”

“Because if I’d taken the time to unlace all those little zigzagging straps at the front, gently and carefully, and took the time to slip them up over your arms, I would have seen it all.”

She gasped.

When his gaze dropped to the bare expanse of her throat, a suggestive smile curved his well-defined lips. He ran a long, tanned finger along the base of her jawline and her muscles quivered beneath his touch. She should drop dead here and now.

“Sarah?” he murmured.

“Yes?” she whispered.

“I’m going out that door, to the bakery. When I come back, I want you fully dressed.”

A loud clang startled them. In the hallway below, a mop and bucket hit the hardwood floor.

To Sarah’s mortification, staring up at them was a skinny, youthful man she didn’t know. In front of him, Polly Fitzgibbon who’d just dropped her bucket, dressed in her washing clothes and kerchief, stood aghast. “Well, I do declare!”

The man turned his portable camera up the stairs. Sarah was blinded by the magnesium flashlamp as it went off in a cloud of smoke and ash. “Look straight at the birdie!”

“Are they gone yet?” Sarah shrieked the question from behind John’s bedroom door.

John hollered back from the hallway, still agitated himself but wondering when she was going to come out of hiding. “The house is empty. It’s safe. They’re both gone.”

In the commotion ten minutes earlier, Sarah had dashed up the stairs and locked herself in his bedroom and Mrs. Fitzgibbon had huffed her way out the front door with her bucket, which had left her obnoxious nephew David alone with John to do the fancy footwork of explaining.

John heard a scraping on the floor, then Sarah asked another question. “Did you smash the camera?”

“I didn’t need to smash it. Besides, it’s private property and I can’t do that. But I confiscated the photographic material.”

“Did you smash that?”

“Yes.” In his mind, the embarrassing photograph was John’s property, no matter what David’s flimsy excuses were for taking it—journalistic instinct for a great shot, his aunt Polly’s request…. John rapped on the hard door. His knuckles stung. “Come out and let’s discuss this like two rational people.”

“There’s nothing rational about what Polly Fitzgibbon and her nephew witnessed.”

“I’ll admit they caught me off guard, too. But I’ll go to Polly and explain.”

“What will you say?”

He talked into the painted white wood. “That…that you were waking up and I was coming home from duty.”

“And what? You were helping me to get dressed?”

Leaning back, he pressed his shoulders into the cool plaster wall. “I could tell them the truth. That we were arguing—”

“Because you slashed off my corset?”

He combed his fingers through his hair in frustration. Sarah was right. The truth would sound worse.

Sarah’s voice got louder. “Polly’s probably telling the neighbors right now what she saw—or what she thinks she saw—and David is probably writing home to New York City about the great Canadian wild.”

“Polly won’t spread gossip,” John said weakly. God, he wished he believed it himself. “I asked her to keep it quiet.”

“Polly Fitzgibbon is not one of your men. She won’t be tried for treason or court-martialed if she tells people what she saw. And believe me, she won’t be able to keep this quiet.”

Sarah was right again. He knew that Polly Fitzgibbon had the biggest mouth in town; how he’d been so lucky to have her as a neighbor, he’d never fathom. “The police don’t court-martial each other.”

“Whatever.”

John heard more thudding and furniture moving beyond the door. “What are you doing in there?”

She ignored his question. “What’s your comeback about David?”

“I told him I’d have him arrested if he tried anything underhanded.” But what John didn’t tell her was that David took photographs for postcards and novelty buttons for distribution not only in New York City but across the country. A snapshot of John and a half-naked Sarah might have been amusing to any other person, but fortunately for him and Sarah, the picture had been destroyed.

The door opened suddenly, making him jump.

“You threatened David with arrest?” Smiling in deep approval, Sarah stepped into the hallway, fully clothed in a worn-out gingham dress. The collar couldn’t be higher, going right up her throat, finished with a floppy lace flounce and a dozen tiny buttons, and the skirt couldn’t be longer, sweeping her scuffed boots.

“Do you teach Sunday school in that thing?”

She patted the bun at the back of her head. How had she managed to capture all that beautiful curly hair into one tight bun? “It was given to me by my mother. As a matter of fact, it was my mother’s.”

He looked beyond her dress to the suitcases in her hands. Relief to see her finally packed and ready to leave settled on him. “There, you see. You’ll be on the train in no time, David’s photograph will be a bad memory and no one will even remember you were here.”

His comment made her turn her head abruptly toward him. Her mouth twisted open in a stab of disappointment. The shoulders beneath the dress fell with his insult.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that no one will remember you. That was a rude thing to say. I meant that no one will remember this incident.”

Well, that wasn’t entirely true, either. He’d remember. He’d remember coming home to a beautiful temptress, his down cover spilling about her naked shoulders, the light of battle in her heated gray eyes. He’d never had a better welcoming. An unexpected smile caught his lips, but he thought better of telling her about the image he was savoring.

She stalked down the stairs. The bags, which he’d retrieved for her last night dragged behind her, thudding along each tread.

He followed, with a queasy feeling. “You are heading to the train station, right?”

“I’m going to where I should have gone in the first place. To the boardinghouse.”

“Shouldn’t we be going to the train station? I stopped by and got a schedule on my way here this morning. There’s a train leaving this afternoon for Halifax, so there’s no sense paying for a room at the boardinghouse.”