Claire stared down at her hands as the men carried the dead out to be buried. She liked the older woman. Her life ended in tragedy. The man next to Mrs. Bennett was a pewter merchant with four children, his wife now a widow. Claire swiped at a tear.
“What else?” Devon snapped, breaking her out of her reverie.
“I-I was going to offer you an explanation about Sir Teakle, but there isn’t enough room for me and your pride.”
He ordered the blond-haired slave working with Lily to his side and whispered. “Ames, send a message to the governor and order a crew to dig more plague pits for the ones who are not so fortunate. We need to move them out with haste. Their air multiplies the contagion.”
“Surely now, there is no explanation needed.” He threw a bloody rag into a basin. “You can attend to yonder patient. He needs water. Perhaps you can offer him something else.”
Claire froze as if she had been turned to marble, the subtlety of his suggestion obvious. She turned her back to him, refusing to let him see the tears gather in her eyes. What did she expect? A ringing endorsement of what he had seen in the carriage with Sir Teakle.
Claire weaved, whether from exhaustion or emotion, she couldn’t tell. Everything blurred. A miasma rent the air, spread from infected bodies. She could not breathe. Claire doubled over, her stomach nauseous. Bile rose to her throat.
“Dammit! Open the shutters,” Devon ordered. “Whose idea was it to entomb us?”
An islander protested. “The way to cure this disease is to suffocate the evil.”
“It’s madness. Let the fresh breezes in and carry out the plague to Poseidon. Next you’ll be telling me to eat toads and bathe in milk. Johnnie, take Madame Hamilton outside.”
Devon watched her through the window. He looked for any signs that might convince him she contracted the disease despite the fact she had told him she had already survived the pestilence. The fresh air revived her, and soon, she entered the hospital again. Devon breathed a sigh of relief. Why did he care?
She was Sir Teakle’s whore or soon to be wife. He remembered her embrace with that corpulent mass of human flesh, remarkable how she played the innocent with him and threw herself at nobility. Did she moan in pleasure when he touched her?
Annoyed where his thoughts veered, he turned to his next patient, noting, Claire did not work alone as she did earlier, but chose to work with Johnnie. He glanced at her slim hands as they gently lifted a woman’s head, coaxing her to drink. You would not find the governor’s wife working in this pestilence, nor did he see any other fine ladies from the island.
As the hours passed, Devon listened to young Johnnie’s humorous anecdotes of his family and ironic villagers back home while Claire gently laughed, returning witticisms of her own. Her puckish wit lightened his mood.
Lily appeared beside him. “Listening to Claire is like drinking a fine wine. Pretty soon you feel giddy too,” Lily said, following where his eyes rested. “Claire lives her life in sunny optimism, and always believes in the innate goodness of people. Her laughter is contagious and generous, her take on life and how it should be lived−you’re envious of it and want to emulate it. There is no one like her.” Lily gave him the medicines he had ordered and returned to Ames.
For a moment, Devon imagined himself in another time and place, wishing he was nothing more than a country gentleman come to flirt a few hours away at a dance, inhaling the sweet scent of apple blossoms and listening to the soft strains of a quintet. The need to live a free and carefree life flung so far from his grasp.
A hand touched his and pulled him from his dreams. Devon looked down, the grim reality evident. The wretch did not know he was dying. He offered some words of consolation. In a few hours he would be untroubled.
Bloodsmythe arrived, surprising Devon with a package from Anne Jensen. He tore open the wrapping and stood amazed, a fine coat, a cast-off, no doubt, from a former customer of the prostitute. He had cured two of her girls, and this was her way of thanking him. He tried it on and reveled in its exact fit.
Every once in a while he saw Claire glance in his direction, her eyes disdained to look anywhere the sight of him was possible. Still he preened in his coat, delighting in a small kindness that made him happy for the moment. She lifted her chin in the air and resumed her activities. That stayed fine with him. The strain of maintaining schooled disinterest waxed a heavy toll on his patience.
Devon plunged his hands into his pockets. He stood stock-still, fingered deeper, feeling round heavy bits of metal sewn into a thick padded lining. The exact size of a gold sovereign. Too afraid to assume his good fortune, and unable to conceal his joy, he strode to the sacristy. Behind locked doors, he used a scalpel to slice through the stitching. One gold coin emerged and another. Anyone else would have overlooked the bounty but his skills as a physician in fingering tumors and veins assisted him uncovering the coins through the dense layers of wool padding. “Sixty pieces of gold!”
A flapping of feathers drew his attention. Abu Ajir perched on the window sill. “My good friend, enough to buy a skiff to get off this hellhole.” Devon sewed the coins back into place. Anne Jensen never would have parted with the coat if she knew the fortune it contained.
Released from hard labor into this catastrophe had given Devon hope to renew his escape efforts, but now the eventuality of that escape became real. He grew anxious for a meeting with that rascal, Tom Dooley, the single man who could procure a boat. Devon rounded the baptismal font and stepped back into his makeshift hospital. Whistling a happy tune from his boyhood days, he observed Claire rising from her labors.
“I have hardly eaten in two days,” she said to Johnnie. She yawned then stretched her back, the outline of her soft breasts taut against the fabric.
Devon’s whistle broke off.
“You must fortify yourself, madam if you are to keep up this pace,” said Johnnie.
Offer in sympathy was the easiest way to a woman’s heart. A vein in Devon’s neck pulsed and swelled dangerously.
“Please escort me,” she allowed. “You must have sustenance as well.”
Devon hated Johnnie.
Johnnie a trifle unsure, but with a warm, reassuring smile Claire bestowed on him, easily complied. Claire tripped on the hem of her dress. Johnnie caught her.
Devon felt his breath burn raw in his throat.
