Chapter 32
“What’s wrong with these people?” Aunt Wilcox gripped her necklace and glared at the man shoving past her. “Show some decorum, sir!”
Daniel pulled her a little closer, grateful she’d allowed him to hook a hand through her arm.
“We’d better move away from the doors.” They’d get trampled, trying to exit that way.
Aunt’s dress had a train, which had been stepped on already as they were jostled down the row to the stairs. “Come along.”
He tugged her into a clear space at the end of a row, then recognized his mistake. Someone had seen the opening first. Two women, skirts hitched over their arms, charged toward them, one wielding an umbrella.
“Mildred?” Aunt Wilcox gasped.
“This way!” Daniel tried to move aside, but the women hurtled past, pushing Aunt Wilcox into his shoulder. He crashed against the body behind him, and it gave way with a clatter and a yelp.
An elderly gentleman with a frail, emaciated face lay sprawled at his feet, blocking one side of the stairs. As Daniel dove toward him, a fleeing woman trod on the old man’s shoulder with a high-heeled shoe, provoking a scream of pain.
“Get back!” Daniel shouted, but no one heeded.
“Let me help!” The man who’d fallen batted him away, unable to distinguish him from the column stampeding for the nearest door.
Ignoring his feeble defensive blows, Daniel wrapped his arms around the man’s waist and tugged him into the row, away from the pushing crowd.
“Are you in pain, sir?”
Nothing but incoherent mutterings in response, so Daniel maneuvered him into a chair, noting his dilated eyes and the tremors of his body.
“Mr. Brandon?” Aunt Wilcox said. “Mr. Brandon!”
Daniel hushed her. “Something may be broken,” he whispered, unable to explain more as another party, bent on escape, surged toward them.
“You cannot pass here,” he said, hands extended, using his surgical theater voice, the one that sent dressers and orderlies running.
The man in the lead checked, considered, then retreated out the other end of the row.
Aunt Wilcox heaved a sigh of relief. “They’ve turned into complete imbeciles. After sitting here for an hour, do they think—”
“People aren’t reasonable when it comes to cholera,” Daniel said.
“So I see. You’d better tend to Mr. Brandon.”
His shivering was worse, and judging from the man’s age, he was a prime candidate for a fractured hip. Daniel had no tools with him. “Just a few moments, Mr. Brandon,” he said, taking the man’s hands. “When things clear out a little…”
What then? He had no medicines. No bag. They’d have to carry the man to a coach. If Brandon had broken his hip, there was little to be done. Bedridden for months, the odds of him succumbing to pneumonia were practically certain.
“Here.” Aunt Wilcox pushed her smelling salts into Daniel’s face. As he recoiled, eyes and nose stinging from ammonia, she said, “Not for you, boy. For Mr. Brandon.”
“Those will not help him,” Daniel said tersely, pushing her hand away. “Unless you have any laudanum about you—”
“Afraid not.”
A shriek cut the air between them, and Daniel spun around instinctively, because he knew that sound. It wasn’t the noise you made when you fell, or were pushed, or couldn’t get where you wanted.
“Fire! Fire!” a man shouted.
Dear God. “Stay here. Watch Brandon,” Daniel ordered, and vaulted over the rail, plowing into the crowd, chasing the screams rising a few yards away. Someone—perhaps trying to beat a way through with a cane or umbrella—had broken a lamp on the wall.
“Out of my way!” Daniel bellowed.
Beyond the churn of people, he spied curls of smoke and a leaping flame whipping from a wide skirt. He tore off his coat, ignoring the volley of screams as the crowd surged in panic.
One man was already beside the screeching woman, beating the flames from her skirts as she kicked wildly. Daniel shoved forward, flinging his coat at the fire eating its way up her back, and pushed her to the floor. “We must smother it! Your coat! Quick!”
“Here!” Someone tossed him a cloak, and Daniel pressed it over her, smashing down on the burning dress where lamp oil had splashed her. Fire and heat licked his fingers and wrists as her screams wrapped around him.
“Don’t check yet,” he yelled as the man who’d been working on the flames on her skirts tried to lift the cloak. “Starve it of air!”
If their efforts weren’t working, they’d know soon enough. Flames would eat through the cloak, scorching their hands. Another coat dropped on top of him, but Daniel didn’t look up, seizing the dark cloth and clapping it atop the other layers.
“It will be all right,” he promised over her cries.
When he was satisfied that the flames were extinguished, he peeled back layers of smoldering cloth, revealing a pale, shuddering woman with hair falling sideways and over her face. “I’m a doctor,” Daniel told her.
“Not her doctor.” He looked up and saw Adams.
She stretched a bleeding hand to Adams. “Help me.”
“We must get you home,” he said. “Check your burns and dress them.”
“Yes, as quickly as possible.” Daniel sat back on his heels as Adams and the woman’s escort lifted her. He didn’t seem needed anymore. Not surprising that Adams had many patients in the crowd. He kept a large acquaintance in this neighborhood.
The few who hadn’t panicked remained in small clusters, and though there was still congestion around the doors, no one was pushing or shoving anymore.
The screams of fire had extinguished with the woman’s dress, and the crowd had sobered at the sight of her needless injury.
The woman’s low moans and the sobs of the elderly gentleman were the only sounds of distress—flotsam on a churning sea of whispers.
Daniel picked himself up, fingering a scorch mark on his sleeve. The elderly gentleman—Brandon—was surrounded by Harry, Nora, and Horace, urgently conferring. Aunt was just as he’d left her, in the same chair, hands folded in her lap, visibly shaken.
“I’ll go with you,” Harry told the elderly man reassuringly. “As soon as the doors are clear, we’ll carry you to a carriage.”
“I’ll come,” Horace added.
“I know how to rig a traction splint,” Harry grumbled.
Horace raised his eyebrows.
Nora met Daniel’s eyes, and he watched her take inventory of his scorched sleeve, relief washing over her face when she found he was unharmed.
No time to exchange words. They were all hurrying about, making arrangements for Mr. Brandon, assisting Dr. Adams with the evacuation of his patient, and improvising a dressing for a young man with a cut forehead.
But at last the hall cleared, leaving Daniel and his wife nearly alone. Nora leaned in to his chest, her face tired and pale.
“Will you come with me and Aunt Wilcox?” Daniel asked.
“I need to see her home.” He wanted Nora’s company.
In the turmoil, he’d been so preoccupied caring for the people in front of him that he hadn’t thought of his wife.
The omission scared him, and now he wanted her near, within arm’s reach, with a comfortable, reassuring quiet lying between them.
He wondered if she’d sought him in the crowd. If she’d noticed he hadn’t been looking for her. He hoped she’d been sensible and stayed clear of the melee.
“I should go home,” Nora said. “I think my nerves—”
“That’s why I want you close,” Daniel answered before she finished.
He turned to his aunt, still fossilized in her chair. “It’s safe to go now.”
She stared at his outstretched hand like she’d never seen one before. “I’m not going anywhere with you,” Aunt Wilcox whispered. Her eyes, he saw, were full of tears, dammed by rapid blinks of her short, blond lashes. Her hands fisted together.
“Aunt, don’t,” Daniel protested.
“I’ll take a cab,” she said stiffly. “I’m not—” She shook her head.
“This.” She jabbed a rapier-like forefinger at the room, a wide black scorch marring the new wallpaper.
“This is what you did. Miss Vaughn—the young lady who nearly burned to death—is supposed to marry next week. Mr. Brandon has been my friend for forty years. Can you honestly tell me he will mend?”
Daniel rolled words over his dry tongue but couldn’t force them out.
“I didn’t think so.”
“We didn’t start this panic,” Nora reasoned.
Daniel tried to catch her attention, to warn her with a shake of his head. This was not the way to comfort his aunt.
“It could have been defused if you’d been just a little self-effacing. If you’d not tried to advance your agenda by scaremongering about cholera.”
Nora blanched.
“She was talking about treating cholera,” Daniel countered. “Dr. Croft only wanted to show—”
“Your Dr. Croft,” Aunt sneered. “You encouraged him.”
Nora shook her head. “You know I only wanted to secure funding to help the midwives.”
“No one will consider that now,” Aunt Wilcox scoffed.
“Not if I have anything to say about it. This should have been an uneventful, mildly interesting lecture on the qualifications of midwives—not a riot. I’ll be exceptionally surprised if I’m ever permitted to organize anything again.
In addition to this evening’s casualties, you’ve pummeled my reputation. ”
Nora’s lips thinned. Before she could answer, Daniel jumped in. “Adams started the battle. What were we to do?”
Aunt pulled her mouth into a severe line. “Respond with dignity and restraint.”
“I think I did,” Nora said. “My aims—”
“Are finished,” Aunt Wilcox interrupted cruelly.
Daniel’s heart twisted as Nora bit her lip, but he couldn’t think of anything helpful to say. He disagreed with his aunt on many points, but he couldn’t dispute her on this one. This lecture, this attempt at enlisting support, wasn’t just a failure; it was a catastrophe.
As Aunt Wilcox tried to move past, he stopped her with a hand on her arm. “How do you propose to travel home?” he asked quietly. “I must be sure you are safe.”
“I’m safer on my own than near you two.” She sniffed. “Leave me alone.” On that, she swept out, leaving them to stare after her.
They were not alone in the vast hall. A few remained amid the broken lamps and overturned chairs. But no one felt like speaking, and Nora looked done in, defeated.
“If I ever consider another public lecture again,” Nora said quietly, “please talk me out of it.”