The Moon by Night (20 page)

Hiding his smile by looking down to gather up the tray, Jauncy said, “Yes, sir, the House of Bourbon is generally considered to be a very aristocratic line. All of the Louises, you know. The ladies were not insulting your wife. They were, if anything, envious.”

“Thought so,” Shiloh said with satisfaction.

Shiloh went to the bay window, put his hands behind his back, and happily whistled a few notes of
Shadow Song
. Jauncy cleared all the dishes and crumbs, polished the library table, and straightened the letters and cards that Shiloh had been going through. Just as he was about to pick up the tray, Shiloh said, “Let's go ahead and set a date for this party, Jauncy. And let's decide what we're going to have. I'm just a mutt, but I've been to cotillions, musicales, grand balls, masquerades, levees, and more I can't think of right now. What about…How about New Year's Eve? I'm on the Gramercy Park Community League, and we've just decided to have a fireworks show on New Year's Eve. What if we had guests to dinner, went to the park for the fireworks and the band performance, then come back here for a late buffet and dancing?”

“Then that would likely be called a fête, sir, since part of the festivities will be outdoors,” Jauncy said confidently.

“A fête,” Shiloh repeated thoughtfully. “A New Year's Eve fête.”

“You are hereby cordially invited to a New Year's Eve fête, at the special invitation of Mr. and Mrs. Shiloh Irons-Winslow,” Jauncy recited in a sonorous voice.

Shiloh turned from the window. “That sounds good,” he declared. “Let's do it, PJ. Prepare the invitations. But there's one invitation I'm going to send by letter on the fastest clipper on the seven seas. He probably won't come, but I'm going to invite him anyway.” He hurried into the study.

Jauncy watched him with affection and slowly descended the stairs carrying the coffee service. Sketes and Fiona were sitting at the worktable having their lunch. Sketes got up, took the tray from him, and ordered, “Mr. Jauncy, you sit down right now and eat something. You've been hopping up and down those stairs all day, and you're pale and still not well. Mr. Shiloh will understand if you take a rest now and then these first few hard days while you catch up with your strength.” She put the tray on the washstand.

“Thank you, Sketes, I believe I will sit down for a moment and have a cup of coffee. I seem to have developed a taste for this vile American brew.” He sat on the high stool, his thin shoulders sagging, but he said cheerfully, “Mr. Irons-Winslow won't miss me for a bit, I believe. He's writing what I'm sure must be a very difficult letter.”

“Oh?” Sketes said eagerly, setting his cup of hot coffee down and climbing back onto the high stool beside him.

He sipped the very sweet coffee gratefully. “Just so. You did tell me, did you not, that Mr. Irons-Winslow's first cousin, Mr. Bain Winslow, has never answered any of his letters?”

Across the table Fiona's head came up, and her dark eyes grew alert. She had a spoonful of double cream halfway to her mouth, but she froze. Both Sketes and Jauncy took note of this, though they gave no sign. Sketes answered, “You're right, Mr. Jauncy. No letters have come here that I'm aware of, that's for sure. Right, Fiona?”

“I-I've never seen any from Mr. Winslow,” she said, her fair cheeks delicately coloring a pale pink.

Jauncy went on, “Well, right now Mr. Irons-Winslow is writing a letter inviting his cousin to attend a New Year's Eve fête that will be given by Mr. and Mrs. Irons-Winslow here at Gramercy Park.”

“Really,” Sketes said speculatively. “Surely Mr. Shiloh doesn't think Mr. Bain Winslow would come? Does he?”

Jauncy said thoughtfully, “I don't know. I believe he
hopes
his cousin will come.”

Breathlessly Fiona—her spoon still suspended—asked, “Oh, Sketes, do you think he might? He might come to a fête when he wouldn't come just to…to come. Mightn't he?”

Kindly Sketes, with a meaningful glance at Jauncy, answered, “He might, child. Mr. Bain Winslow just might.”

“There you are, Cheney. I was beginning to wonder if you had just saddled Eugènie and ridden off into the sunset,” Victoria Buchanan said as she came up to the nurses' station. “After the morning you've had, no one could blame you.”

Cheney looked up from the stack of files she was working on. Victoria was stunning, as usual, in midnight blue velvet trimmed with mink. Her crystalline blond blue-eyed beauty was enhanced rather than dulled by the somber colors. Behind her Minerva looked around, her blue eyes wide, in chocolate brown with gold braid and tassels and trim. Dr. Pettijohn, too, hovered behind Victoria.

Cheney said, “Hello, Victoria, Miss Wilcott. Oh, you two look so fresh and lovely and—clean. You make me look dingy, I declare.”

Kitty Kalm, the two ward nurses Mrs. Alsop and Mrs. Abbott, and Mr. McBean, the male ward attendant, slowly drifted into the nurses' station. All of them appeared to need something—this file, that file, a pencil, a question answered—but Cheney knew they were all hovering around because Victoria was there. She was something of a celebrity, Cheney had come to see during the years they had been best friends. The entire Steen family were known about town, like the Vanderbilts and the Astors and the Stuyvesants. Victoria was so extremely wealthy. Her clothes were always such that most women could only dream of them or at most see drawings in books like
Harper's Monthly
or
Godey's Lady's Book,
and of course she was noticeable because she was so beautiful. She had such grace that she never acted as though she noticed—though of course she must see that people stared at her all the time—and she never seemed to be self-conscious. Cheney admired that poise in Victoria. She herself could never have such self-assurance. Now, though she had changed clothes and of course had exchanged the bloodstained coverall she had worn during the surgery for clean ones, she still felt gritty and worn.

“Nonsense, Cheney, you positively glow in the newest coverall couture,” Victoria said, her blue eyes sparkling. Minerva giggled, and Dr. Pettijohn smiled at her indulgently.

Victoria went on, “Oh, Cheney, don't make that sad face. I'm sorry to tease you. Besides, you know perfectly well that you're one of those enviable women who could wear a flour sack and your skin would still glow and your eyes would still flash, and of course your hair is always the envy of every woman you meet. There. Better?”

“Mm, a little. More about the hair, maybe?” Cheney suggested.

“You mean the part where I tell you that when you're coming to work you dress as if you're going to wear a wimple?” Victoria said devilishly. “And you with the
modiste
of the world too! I should have stolen Fiona for myself. Anyway, Cheney, we came to visit Annabeth Forbes and dear Cassandra Carteret, and of course I want to see dear Becky. Dr. Pettijohn tells me that Ira is fit for polite company again and Becky is resting quietly. Would it be all right if Min and I visited her now?”

“Of course. I'll go with you,” Cheney said, rising and turning around the long counter, carrying Mrs. Green's file. “Dev left instructions for an hourly check on her and ordered detailed entries in the file.”

She hurried to walk by Victoria, but somehow as the four of them went down the ward hall, Dr. Pettijohn maneuvered close to Victoria, and Minerva and Cheney were left trailing behind. But when they got to the cubicle, Cheney moved ahead of them. Dev had left the responsibility for attending Mrs. Green with her, and she wanted to do a quick assessment of Mrs. Green's condition before everyone trooped in there.

She pulled the curtain aside. Ira Green was sitting in a straight chair by his wife's bed. He looked up, his beard-stubbled face distorted by fear and grief. But when he saw Cheney, he narrowed his eyes and jumped up so quickly that the cane-bottomed straight chair fell over. Rebecca made a small whimpering noise and reached weakly for him, but he didn't see it. He was a short stout man with heavy dark hair and a leathery outdoorsman face and gnarled thick hands. Now they were bunched up into fists, and he marched to block Cheney.

“Now look here, Miss Fancy Doctor Lady,” he said in a low taut voice, “I'm not gwine ter raise my voice 'cause I know you'd just have me socked outer here like before. But you and that hatchet-faced Nurse Flagg has done all you need ter do ter my poor Beck. So I'm asking gent-like for you to just let her be.”

“Ira, Dr. Duvall is an excellent doctor. It's not her fault, or Nurse Flagg's, that Becky's surgery didn't go well,” Victoria said evenly.

“All the same, Miz Buchanan, I don't want no more females doctorin' my Beck,” he said doggedly. “We thank yer for paying for the hospital and all, and we thank yer husband for doing his bit. But if those two females are goin' ter be cuttin' any more on my Beck, we two will be leaving.”

Victoria started to respond, but Cheney laid her hand on Vic's arm and said quietly, “No, Victoria, it's all right. You and Miss Wilcott go ahead in and see to Mrs. Green. Mr. Green, I will have Dr. Pettijohn, or one of the other male doctors, make the necessary hourly checks on your wife. Please don't upset yourself any further and especially don't think of taking Mrs. Green home. She needs to stay here until she's recovered from the surgery.”

“Surgery, yer still calling it?” he snorted, holding aside the curtain for Victoria and Minerva to pass. “More like butchery.”

Dr. Pettijohn started to walk in after Minerva, but Cheney reached out and touched his arm. “Dr. Petti—”

He wrenched away with such a violent jerk that Cheney was startled. Then he stopped and said expressionlessly, “I beg your pardon. I was thinking of assessing Mrs. Green, and you startled me.”

“No, I beg your pardon,” Cheney said hastily. “That—that's what I was going to say, to ask you to do. Please, go on in. But if you would be so good, I would like for you to come report to me after you check her so that I can make the entries in the file the way that Dr. Buchanan requested.”

“Surely,” he said with blank politeness. “Will there be anything else, Dr. Duvall?”

“No, thank you.”

He turned and went into the cubicle.

Sighing, Cheney went back to the nurses' station. Checking the small watch pinned to the pocket of her coveralls, she saw that it was only noon. She felt as if she'd been through a long hard day already, and normally she would only now be waking up. Vaguely she thought of having lunch, but she wasn't really hungry. Truth to tell, she had some painstaking lab work to do, and she wanted to get it over with. She had to examine the tumor they had removed from Rebecca Green's left breast and see if they had entirely excised it.

Since the patient had been in such a precarious condition—Shiloh had been able to keep her unconscious, but even his magic couldn't keep her from dancing dangerously close to the precipice of shock—Dev had been forced to hurriedly finish the excision and close up. He told Cheney that she was better in the lab than he, and he would prefer if she examined the tumor, and Cheney had of course consented. She would have stayed to hear the results even if someone else was to do the examination. She knew that Dev would have too, but he had three other surgeries scheduled today, including two procedures at Long Island's Washington Memorial Hospital. But she knew that Dev would come back as soon as he could tonight to hear the postoperative examination results and to check on his patient.

Nurse Flagg had been nauseated and feeling dizzy, so Cheney had sent her home. Dr. White, who usually worked the same shift that Cheney did—two to midnight—had insisted that she wanted to stay too, since Cheney intended to. So Cheney put her to work stocking the surgery supply tables and helping Nurse Kalm clean Surgery 3. It was indeed a mess.

Cheney went into the surgery and saw no sign of the bloody drama of the morning. Dr. White was taking some instruments out of a basin of carbolic acid, drying them, and placing them in the glass-fronted supply cabinets. “I was just finishing up, Dr. Duvall,” she said eagerly as Cheney came in. “Will this do?”

Cheney looked at the instrument table, the supplies table, the clean linens on the bed, the spotless floor. “Very professional, Dr. White,” she answered. “When you finish, would you like to come do rounds with me?”

“Oh yes. I'm just about finished.” Hurriedly she gave a pair of forceps and a scalpel a final swipe, closed the cabinet door, and hung the towel on the stand. She and Cheney went out and down the hall to the west wing, the men's ward.

“I might as well tell you now, don't even stick your nose into Rebecca Green's cubicle,” Cheney told her ruefully. “Mr. Green didn't have you on his list of butchering females, but I'm certain it was just an oversight on his part.”

“Did Mr. Green call you a butchering female, Dr. Duvall?” Dr. White asked, her fawn eyes wide.

“Basically, yes.” Cheney gave her an appraising look. “What will you do, Dr. White, the first time a patient's husband calls you a butchering female?”

Her wide clear brow creased. “What did you do, ma'am?” she finally asked.

Cheney smiled. “I just agreed to stay away from Mrs. Green and let it go. I think that Mr. Green is very fearful and feels helpless, and he's just lashing out at anything, with any excuse. As a professional I must understand that, and as a Christian I must always try to show God's understanding.”

“Yes, Dr. Duvall,” Dr. White said obediently.

“But,” Cheney continued, her eyes dancing, “when I was your age, I would have argued with him and then been angry all day. Or I would have picked a fight with my medical assistant to vent my anger, which would have been even more wrong than what Mr. Green did, for I was my medical assistant's employer, so he could hardly argue with me. And now he is my husband and probably only married me so that he could fight back.”