Seven
“Could you hail her a fiacre?” Aurora’s faint request could’ve been a bomb going off in the silent room. He was on his feet in a flash, coming toward her. “She’s doing well,” she told him, and he wondered if it was because she thought he cared, or if it was just habit to reassure whoever one encountered after treating a patient.
“I’ve had one waiting for her,” he said, resisting the urge to take her in his arms.
“You did?” Aurora looked up at him with a surprised, and perhaps marginally impressed, expression. “Thank you.” Something fiercely protective ensnared him in that moment. Urges that he simply could not entertain. Not if he was to stay on course.
“You need to rest,” he said, but she shook her head.
“I’m fine.”
She looked a far cry from fine. In fact, she looked done in. Utterly wrung out. There were grooves on the sides of her mouth and her face was pinched and pale. He also knew that pointing out these details was not in the best interest of peace and harmony.
It was funny how he’d started the night furious with her, and now he’d probably open his own vein and let her feast on his blood if it would ease the sheer exhaustion practically radiating from her.
By now he knew Dona Maria would be her priority. So he focused on getting the patient, who he’d become strangely invested in, to her conveyance. There was something about the woman that reminded him of his own cousin. She was much too young for such despondence, such abject hopelessness. His fifteen-year-old cousin Juliana’s life full of dreams of pretty dresses and ballrooms could not be more different from Maria’s. If he had anything to do with it, that would never change.
“Thank you both for your help,” she said from behind her veil, which was still firmly over her face. Once she was seated in the fiacre, she reached out to kiss Aurora’s hand.
“Make sure you change the dressing as I showed you,” Aurora told the woman in answer, her face flushed with embarrassment at the praise. She was so prideful about her work, but she shrank at any kind compliment. “And this is for you to give to someone who might need help from the clinics.” She pinned a little gold charm, which he couldn’t make out the details of in the dark, to the woman’s lapel. “I’ll see you soon,” Aurora finally said, before telling the driver to go.
For that hour he’d paced in the parlor, he’d thought of what he’d say to her about what she was getting up to. Imagined himself delivering a righteous monologue about the risks she was taking. Was she intentionally trying to get herself killed by some stranger in the streets? Did she realize those demented gloves would not protect her against the criminals roaming the streets at this time of night?
But when she turned to him, and he got a good look at her under the warm light of the streetlamp. The fury drained out of him and all he was left with was a staggering need to carry her upstairs.
“You saved me tonight.” She was visibly shaking, her teeth chattering with such intensity he could hear them from where he stood. “I will just get my things and get out of your way.” He tried to reach for her, since she looked ready to collapse, but she sidestepped him, stumbling back into the foyer of the building, toward the elevator. The entire ride up, she stood rigid, her arms wrapped around herself, while he helplessly watched the tremors rack her frame.
He opened the door of the small apartment in complete silence and only when they were back inside did he speak.
“Aurora—”
“I’ll be gone in a minute,” she told him, before picking up the teacup Maria had used and placing it on the tray he’d brought in from the small kitchen. “You probably want me out of here after all the trouble I’ve caused you.” She was attempting to sound breezy and unaffected, but he could see the cracks all over her.
“Stop it,” he said tersely, and she froze at the threshold of the bedchamber. “Stop this, Aurora,” he repeated when he saw her shoulders slump. “Come here.” He reached for her hand and pulled her to him.
“Let me go, Apollo.” She resisted weakly at first, but after a moment, she let him cradle her to his chest. He tried to lift her face up, but she kept it pressed against him. Her fast, hot breaths seared his skin as he held her. He sensed the war waging in her, to resist his caretaking, to insist she needed no one.
It was a battle he’d waged for much of his life. Denying in every way he could how lost and alone he’d been. How badly he’d yearned for a mother and father who loved him, and instead was burdened with the knowledge that his existence had taken his mother’s life. That his father was a monster who abandoned him. He’d turned that ache, that hole inside him, into his obsession with revenge. He’d plotted and schemed until he destroyed the man who’d taken his mother from him. Meanwhile, Aurora healed. At a cost he was only now beginning to comprehend.
At one point tonight, he’d wondered if she simply wasn’t scared of the consequences. That perhaps she was somehow unaffected by the dangers she incurred to treat these women. That had made him angry.
It was worse to realize that she did all of it this afraid. That she knew exactly how absolutely mad it all was, and did it anyway. He wanted to make her stop. Wondered why no one had. But instead of badgering her with recriminations and questions, he held her. He ran his palm up and down her back while she quietly gathered herself. He suspected she’d never forgive him for seeing her like this, especially when he informed her he had no intention of walking away from that. He already had a plan. The challenge would be to apprise her of it without getting his eyes clawed out with those blasted gloves.
They stayed like that for a long time, him leaning against the doorjamb to the bedchamber and her hanging on him, her arms limp at her sides, like a battered vessel that had finally crashed against the wrong rocky cliff. He was working up to speaking when she pushed off him as though she’d been scalded.
He had to fight himself not to cage her in his arms.
“I’m grateful for your hospitality.” The little devil actually extended a hand to him. He could only stare, all the while considering options to keep her there that didn’t involve tying her to one of the chairs by the hearth until she saw some sense.
Even with an indentation on her cheek from the button of his vest, she was once again warrior Aurora, with steel in her spine and daggers in her eyes. But he wouldn’t be steamrolled. Right or wrong, Aurora Montalban Wright was very much his problem, starting tonight.
“I’m not shaking your hand, Aurora,” he told her, and for once, she seemed genuinely chagrined.
It only lasted long enough for her to summon that foul temper of hers.
“Fine.” She retracted her hand. “I was attempting to be cordial,” she retorted, before spinning on her heels and heading to the bedchamber.
“You had the police running after me tonight,” he reminded her, as he followed her in there.
“It would not have been an issue if you weren’t such a slow runner.”
He had to be losing his mind, because he actually laughed, which only served to further infuriate her.
“What?” she asked through tightly gritted teeth.
It would never be easy with this woman. Not talking to her, certainly not bedding her, dammit, not even a meal with her could occur without some manner of hostility. Everything was a battle, but he’d never walked away from one before and he would not do it now.
“Am I supposed to become enraged at your insults, Fiera?” he asked, propping himself on a dresser to watch her carefully arrange her instruments. “Are the men you usually deal with so fragile they can’t take a few barbs?” He had no idea why he was bringing other men into the conversation, but he was well past attempting to make sense of this evening or his reactions to Aurora Montalban.
“Very few men can keep up with me, Your Grace.” Even dead on her feet, she was defiant. This rebellious bluestocking with more passion than sense was not an obsession he could afford to indulge in.
An ill-timed distraction if there ever was one. He had to find a way to neutralize Ackworth, he had a million things to think of regarding his tenants. Then there was the promise he’d made his aunt to find a suitable wife. He had obligations after all, not to his father, like Aurora told him that night, but to his mother. The last thing he needed was to be embroiled in another scandal, and one thing was certain, what Aurora was doing would almost certainly end in one.
And yet, as he looked at her, undaunted in her mission, clearly intending to carry on—despite the many setbacks of the evening—he knew Queen Victoria herself could not make him change course now.
“You should eat something,” he finally said. Her head whipped in his direction, the challenge in her eyes replaced with genuine confusion.
It seemed like years had passed since they’d sparred over cream puffs at Le Bureau. He expected to be told to go to hell, but in the end, she sighed and turned back to cleaning her instruments.
“I thought you only kept chocolate and rum here.” She didn’t look at him as she wiped down a wicked-looking scalpel with a cloth soaked in something abrasive enough to make his eyes water. He still had to work hard not to laugh again, especially when he spied a small twitch of her lips.
“O ye of little faith,” he proclaimed, but she didn’t turn around. “I ordered a tray from the restaurant downstairs while you were with your patient.”
This time she did turn. Her expression dubious. “Are they open so late?”
“It’s Paris,” he retorted. She still did not look convinced.
If she only knew that the morning after she’d come to him, he’d gone down to the building administration office and asked them to find a night cook for him. Tonight, he’d finally ordered one of the midnight meals the man had been hired to make.
“When you’re done, come to the parlor.” Without waiting for her to turn him down, again, he went to the kitchen to fetch the plate of bread, fruit, cold meats and cheese. He was just opening a bottle of claret when she walked out of the bedchamber with that enormous bag in one hand.
“How can you run with that thing?” he asked, pointing with a wineglass at the Gladstone. “I thought my arm was going to be ripped from the socket, lugging it while those coppers chased us.”
“I’m used to it.” She shrugged after carefully placing it on the floor by the door. A clear signal she had no intention of staying very long. “I appreciate this,” she mumbled as he handed her a glass of wine and slid a plate in her direction. After pouring himself a dram of rum, he sat down across from her.
“It’s the least I could do after such an invigorating evening.” If she heard the sarcasm in his voice, she didn’t say it.
He had no intention of letting her walk out of his apartment until they’d had a serious conversation, but for now, he’d let the wine, food and exhaustion soften her up for him.
“You’ve fed me twice tonight,” she told him, before taking a sip of the claret. When she licked an errant drop off her bottom lip, he had to shift in his seat.
“You need a keeper, Doctora.” He expected an earthquake, but what he got instead was a grin which was much more effective at knocking him off his feet.
“ That is the one thing I don’t need, Your Grace,” she quipped, before she popped a fig into her mouth, chewed and focused doggedly on the walls, the fire, her own feet. Anything but him.
“That’s debatable,” he countered, and decided he’d exercised enough restraint. “You’ve dropped at least one stone since I last saw you.”
She put down the piece of bread and regarded him curiously, as though she was attempting a diagnosis of his tone. He was certain she was preparing for the best way to succinctly inform him the quickest route to hell, but instead she broached the last topic he expected her to.
“Besides balls, what does a duchess hunt entail exactly?” Her tone was casual enough as she pressed her finger on errant crumbs of bread scattered around the table. But this was not the first time this evening she’d brought up his impending betrothal. Perhaps it was merely to taunt him, but perhaps not.
“According to what my aunt tells me, my presence at an ungodly number of recitals and receiving a surprisingly large amount of embroidered cushions,” he told her, if not for her benefit, then for his own.
“Is someone making these cushions?” she inquired with genuine bafflement.
“From the sheer number that arrive at my home, I would surmise all of Britain and certain parts of Europe are engaged in nothing else.” She laughed this time, clearly amused by his flustered state. “I don’t suppose you’re interested in entering the aristocracy.”
The amusement instantly vanished from her face. “I’m afraid I’m not suited for the life of an aristocrat.”
He was beginning to wonder if he would ever be. But he didn’t want to think about his own malaise then, he wanted to talk about her.
“What was the matter with Dona Maria?” She’d warned him that she wouldn’t share any information about the patient. When she didn’t answer, he figured she wouldn’t tell him, but after sending him a long considering look, she did.
“It’s called a fistula.”
He knew about them. “My uncle owned cattle. I’ve heard of cows getting them after particularly difficult calvings.”
She grimaced and sipped more wine. “It can happen when women give birth too young, before their body is ready for it.” He didn’t have to ask for Dona Maria’s, just from her voice he knew she was still painfully young. “It’s a fairly simple injury to repair, but she’s been denied access to medical care by her husband.” He could hear the frustration in her words.
Men had so much to answer for. His own father had left his mother to die in her childbed. That thought suddenly put the entire evening in a different light. Aurora was saving mothers, daughters, sisters. Women who were at the mercy of callous men and an indolent society. He wondered if his mother’s fate would’ve been different if she’d had an Aurora at her bedside.
“Have you seen many cases like this?” he asked, hoarsely, suddenly awash in emotions.
“Some.” She nodded. “You want to hear something horrific?”
“I thought I already had,” he muttered, unable to produce even a trace of humor. But she let out a tired laugh.
“I learned the procedure when I was working in Philadelphia. My mentor Sarah Loguen Fraser taught me how to perform it.” He didn’t know she’d been in Philadelphia. He thought she’d been living in Mexico.
“Your mentor was a woman?”
She narrowed her eyes at his question, but after a moment she must’ve have seen his curiosity was not malicious. “She was, she was only the fourth Black woman to become a doctor in the United States.” He would not have expected any less from Aurora Montalban. “She’s actually living in the city I was born in Hispaniola at the moment.”
“Aren’t you from Veracruz?” He’d asked questions about her to Evan here and there. Not too many, in case his brother became fanciful as he was prone to do now that he’d found true love. Apollo knew she’d studied medicine here in Paris, but he’d assumed that like a good little girl, she’d returned to the family nest the moment she was done. One more assumption he’d made about this woman he’d gotten wrong.
“I haven’t lived there since I was fifteen.” And from the way she held herself as she said it, he imagined the departure had not been a warm one. “I was born on the northern coast of Hispaniola in Puerto Plata, my mother’s family is from there.” Did he imagine that flinch at the mention of her mother? “My father was doing diplomatic work for Mexico in the Caribbean and asked to be posted near her home.”
“Is that how you met Luz Alana?”
“Why do you want to know about any of this?” she asked warily, while she occupied herself with rearranging what was left on her plate without looking up at him.
“I’m curious of where a well-bred woman like you would’ve learned such evasive tactics when running from police.” This time, the flinch was quite obvious. Something about this conversation was bothering her. He didn’t think it was the mention of the police chase. If anything, she seemed to have taken it in stride.
“You are quite preoccupied with breeding, and no, I met Luz Alana in finishing school in Switzerland.” She didn’t say it waspishly. She sounded disappointed in him, which in turn made him defensive.
“I suppose all the thinly, and sometimes not-so-thinly, veiled implications that I’m a bastard and an impostor might have something to do with that.”
She stared blankly at him for a long moment, then made a sound that should’ve been a laugh, but something about it sliced Apollo like a knife. “Well, there is no bigger slight than being called a bastard, is there?”
He’d hurt her, he realized. He didn’t know how, but suddenly he felt like an utter ass. “Am I being a snobbish comemierda?” he asked sincerely, and to his relief, this time her laugh reached her eyes.
“Not any more than usual.”
“Fair enough.” He dipped his head in acquiescence. “You don’t want to talk about this, do you?”
She gazed up at him and shook her head. “No, I don’t.”
“Then, tell me about the fistulas.” Just to make her laugh, he took one of the white linen napkins on the tray and waved it.
“Your humor is lacking,” she told him without heat, and because he was a man prone to taking calculated risks, he veered into more perilous territory.
“I have other skills, as you very well know, Doctora.” She coughed loudly, pounding her own chest as she swallowed the wine she’d been sipping. He grinned when she sent him a dirty look. But the tenacious Aurora Montalban did not take his bait.
“As I was saying, regarding fistulas.” She emphasized every word, eyes very wide as she spoke.
“Chicken,” he teased, provoking an adorable harrumph from her.
“The doctor who perfected the fistulotomy is American.” She took another fig from the plate, but she didn’t eat it. Just fiddled with it. “J. Marion Sims was his name.” She said it with such distaste, that he braced himself for yet another emotional blow. “He used slave women to test the procedure, without anesthetic.” That turned his stomach.
“Hijo de puta,” he swore, and reached for his dram of rum, which had so far gone untouched. He took a long, burning gulp before he looked at her again.
“I don’t do this work because I like to put myself in a position of danger,” she told him, as if she knew where he’d been waiting to take the conversation all along. “I do it because women are suffering.” She waved the hand with the fig in the air between them. “Especially women who look like you and me. And I’m in a position to help. So, I do.” As simple as that.
“How are you funding the clinics?”
The moment he asked the question, any trace of humor vanished from her face. He could almost see the tension seeping back into her bones.
“That’s a complicated question. I was the primary benefactor, but my trust fund is not available to me at the moment,” she confessed without any prevarication. This was not a woman who ran from her problems, on the contrary, he guessed her trouble was more the tendency to ram headfirst into them. “Cora has been generous, and Luz Alana. I have a small bequest I’m in the process of liquidating that will allow us to continue to run until we find more permanent solutions.” He didn’t think he imagined the suggestiveness in her tone. “Would you like to help, Your Grace? You’d be the first man we ask.”
“I didn’t know you could say ‘Your Grace’ without spitting.” Oh, but he liked that grin. It made her nose wrinkle at the top and it exposed one incisor, so that he didn’t know if he was looking at an imp or a very cheeky doctor.
He’d get into a hell of a lot of trouble for one more glimpse of that grin.
One could not accuse Aurora Montalban of lacking brazenness. To dare ask a duke to help her fund a clinic where she performed what certainly had to be illegal procedures made her the bravest or foolhardiest woman in the world. Then again, maybe she was just desperate.
“I’ll be one of your benefactors, Doctora.” The offer seemed to only make her more suspicious. “I have two conditions,” he began, but she interjected, holding up one finger.
“If it involves offering your unsolicited manly opinions on women’s matters, I must politely decline.” She said it so sweetly, she even fluttered her eyelashes, the incisor made another appearance. He wondered how it would feel on his skin.
“What if I told you I have a building here in the eleventh arrondissement, near Le Marais, I can gift to the clinic, as well an endowment for its maintenance.” That made her sit up straight. Those curls fluttering around her head like antennae.
“I’m listening,” conceded Doctora Montalban with a cautious expression.
“One,” he continued, pointedly holding up a finger, and for once, she kept her mouth closed. “That you promise to stop using your personal funds to support the clinics.”
“You can’t tell me—” Whatever she saw on his face made her clamp her lips shut. He knew it was not cowering, but Aurora would be the kind of woman to set her pride aside for her cause.
“Whatever is happening with your trust, it’s clear your family is using it to discipline you. If you allow me to help you, then you can hold on to this bequest.”
“I don’t enjoy having people in my personal affairs.”
“I’m only stating facts.” He knew he was on very thin ice, but he was not above extortion when trying to get his way. After what he’d seen tonight, he’d be damned if he left her unprotected. And damn it, she should not be left with nothing, no matter how worthy her cause. “You like your independence, and that only comes with money.” Her jaw tightened and he could see she was barely containing the urge to fight him. But she managed to resist it. “You might be willing to sacrifice everything you have for your cause, but you don’t know what it is to be destitute. If your family cuts you off for good, what will you do then?”
“I can make money as a physician,” she protested, all bluster and pride.
“From whom? The Dona Marias who can’t afford to pay even for their fiacre?” Her shoulders were by her ears now, and she was practically bristling.
“You are transgressing, Your Grace.” He was dangerously close to being slapped across the face, but she was still sitting there, which told him he was not completely off the mark.
“But I am not wrong, am I?” She lifted that pert nose in the air, refusing him an answer. “I’m not offering to give you money, only to help you keep the funds you do have,” he reasoned with her. “You can’t live on your convictions, Aurora.”
She didn’t like what he said, but the truth of it seemed to sink in, because she finally looked at him. “All right.”
“That’s only one of the conditions,” he reminded her, and she was back on the defensive in the next instant.
“When will you sign over the building? I won’t agree to anything without seeing the deed.” She crossed her arms over that generous chest, and he could feel the blood rushing to every limb in his body like lava.
“I will have my solicitor send it over as soon as it’s ready.” Or more like once he found a building to buy, since he’d made the entire thing up. But she never had to know. “If you accept both my conditions.”
Another woman would attempt meekness, diminish herself to make him feel big. Aurora Montalban leaned forward, took his glass from the table, crossed her legs at the knees and took one big gulp.
“Get on with it, Annan,” she croaked after the rum sent her into a coughing fit. God, but he wanted to put her over his knee and redden those luscious nalgas.
“I’d like to teach you how to defend yourself in case you find you’re in a situation like you were tonight.” If he had to think of her trying to put off criminals with nothing but those gloves, he would go out of his mind. The mere thought that she’d been doing this for months had him clutching his chest.
“You’ll teach me how to fight the police?” For the first time all night, she appeared genuinely energized.
“Not exactly, Fiera,” he said, biting back a laugh. “But I am certain the police are not the only trouble you run into.” The fact that she didn’t argue told him everything he needed to know about his suspicion.
“What exactly will this entail?” she asked suspiciously, taking another gulp from his rum. Every time she sealed her lips to the glass, his cock pulsed.
“Let’s just say you’ll learn some basics of hand-to-hand combat from an excellent instructor.” She sent him a look that said “what are you up to?” but she didn’t refuse. He extended a hand to her, which she eyed with naked contempt.
“And what would you be getting out of this deal? Forgive me for doubting your selflessness.” He knew she’d argue, but if there was something Apollo could do with great effectiveness, it was use an advantage in his favor. She needed what he was offering, and they both knew it.
“To be honest, I could use your expertise.” She scoffed, but he was being truthful. “The way you were with Maria was—” he paused, finding the right word “—humane.”
“That’s a low standard you have for physicians, if basic kindness impressed you.” Her caustic tone could not hide the flush in her cheeks. His compliment pleased her even if she didn’t like the fact.
“I’d like your advice on how to operate a clinic of sorts in the dukedom’s land.” He and Evan were working to improve conditions on the housing, but he wanted to do more than be a landlord. He wanted to give those people the means to thrive. “I noticed that in addition to the need for a school, there are also many women and children who require care. I’d like to provide that for them.”
As he expected, this seemed to soften her somewhat.
“You could hire a doctor in Scotland,” she countered.
“I could,” he admitted. “But my family is now here too, my aunt, my cousin. I have half a dozen trusted staff from our estate in Colombia making their way here as we speak, with their families. I’d like your expertise on how to set up medical care for them too. From people who they can trust.” That got him another dubious look, but eventually she relented.
“Fine. We have a deal,” she told him grudgingly, extending a hand. “But I’ll bring my blade gloves and will use them liberally if necessary.” Then, because she truly was the Fiera he’d called her, she lifted his glass. “More rum, please, it’s been a long night.”
“You drive a hard bargain, Doctora Montalban,” he told her, rising to his feet to fetch her rum.
“I still don’t like you, Annan,” she volleyed back, as she leaned her head on the sofa.
“You can bring clients here, when you need to, while we sort out a more permanent option.” He didn’t want her in the streets, and he knew better than to tell her to stop until the fictional building he’d now have to find and buy to give to her was ready.
“Tuesdays,” she whispered, her voice drowsy like she was only half-awake. “I’ll come here on Tuesdays, thank you.”
By the time he’d poured her the drink she’d demanded and came back to the sofa, she was fast asleep. He stood there with the glasses in his hand, watching her. Her pouty lips, which had been flattened by irritation just minutes earlier, were soft and parted just enough to blow little puffs of air.
His heart ached looking at her. Even in her sleep, she was restless. Her fingers twitching, her eyes moving fast under bruised lids. She reminded him of a young colt, unbridled and loose in the wild. Frighteningly unaware of the dangers in its path. But that wasn’t true, was it? She knew exactly what she was doing, she just did it anyway because she was brave and noble.
He put the glass down and went to the bedchamber, which reeked of that carbolic she used to disinfect everything, and grabbed one of the blankets from the trunk by the foot of the bed. She’d slid down on the sofa and was now half lying on her side.
“What am I going to do with you, Fiera?” he muttered under his breath as he reached for her. Gently, he nudged her down onto the cushions, careful not to wake her. She mumbled something unintelligible as he pulled her boots off. They were the only beautiful thing she had on. Soft, supple burgundy leather, with lovely embroidery work. He smiled at this bit of vanity as he placed them on the rug, so she’d find them when she woke up.
He smothered a yawn as he walked into his bedchamber. The clock on the mantelpiece read half past four. The night had ended a lot differently than he’d imagined, but for the first time since his father died, he was looking forward to what the next day had in store, he’d make sure to tell her in the morning. But when he came out of his bedchamber three hours later as the sun was rising, he found the blanket folded neatly on the sofa and no trace of Doctora Montalban left in the apartment.