Her Defiant Heart (5 page)

"I have to go before I'm discovered here. Someone's bound to come and check on you soon. If I'm found I won't be able to come back." Was she listening to him? Christian didn't think so. She continued to press her body against his. The jacket he gave her slipped from her shoulders, and he felt it touch his arm on its way to the floor. How could she stand the cold? He remembered Dr. Glenn explaining that she didn't feel things in a customary way. Of course she was also close enough to him that she was practically basking in his body heat. Incredibly, he felt his cock stir in response to the small hand that began to slide back and forth across his groin. Christian simply stood there and waited for Jane to realize that he wasn't going to make a single willing overture. "Are you used to getting what you want?" he asked. "Is that why Alice Vanderstell calls you the princess?"

The words were barely out of Christian's mouth when he felt a sharp, excruciating pain between his legs as Jane delivered a humiliating and incapacitating blow with her knee. It had never occurred to him that he was being set up like a mark in a Bowery saloon. She was sly and cunning and probably everything else that Dr. Glenn said she was. He began to think with more conviction that Scott Turner was the one who had made the mistake.

Christian's legs trembled, and he instinctively doubled at the waist to prevent further injury as well as ease the existing pain. He regretted not being able to hold back the small, surprised grunt that gave sound to Jane's blow. It helped her target his face in the pitch-black room. The double-fisted punch she landed on his cheek and temple knocked Christian sideways and back onto the bed. He rolled toward the wall in an attempt to get out of her way, but her thin arms rotated like windmills, pummeling and flailing him until inevitably she got lucky. Jane's fists found the same spot on Christian's left leg that the lead ball at Gettysburg had.

A different kind of darkness encroached on Christian's vision. It was murky and thick and unrelentingly. He was unconscious almost before he had finished screaming.

* * *

Marshall House was one of a number of brownstone mansions built at the mid-century mark when New York money was moving uptown. At that time Fifth Avenue north of Twenty-third Street was still unpaved and resembled nothing so much as a quaint country cow-path. It was largely unpopulated, and many New Yorkers predicted the northern migration would fail. They were wrong. Fifth Avenue, from Washington Square to Madison Square, established itself as the center of society and fashion and the brownstone mansions bore the mark of money.

Marshall House, like its neighboring residences, was both grandiose and solid looking. It reflected the wealth and the conservatism of the original owners. Men who'd made millions by taking risks to build their empires chose conformity when it came to building their homes. There was a fine line between originality and a vulgar display of wealth.

Commissioned by Christian's father, Marshall House favored conformity. The entrances were made imposing by the Corinthian columns and pilasters which flanked them. The mansard roof, the high, arched windows, and the heavy stone ornamentation weighted the house with formality and respectability. Inside, the mansion was no less stately. The rooms on the ground floor included a spacious banquet hall that was not to be confused with the family dining room, a solarium, an exceptionally well-appointed library, three parlors, and a gallery, which displayed tapestries and sculpture.

Before the war, Marshall House had played a significant role in the social life of the Fifth Avenue elite. Now, with only Christian remaining, the seldom-used rooms of Marshall House seemed to echo silence.

Scott Turner splashed a crystal tumbler with whiskey and held it out to his patient. The searing look Christian gave him made him pull back and add a generous two fingers of liquor before he handed it over. He arched one wheat-colored brow critically. "You're certain you want this?"

"Stop playing doctor and be my friend. Or leave." He leaned forward in his red leather armchair to accept the tumbler and pushed the ottoman away with his feet. The plaid shawl that covered his lap and legs slipped to the floor. He kicked it aside. "Damn right I want it. I'm not an invalid." Christian knocked back the drink in one long swallow. He winced slightly when it hit the pit of his empty stomach.

Scott shrugged. He could sense that Christian was spoiling for a fight. Scott Turner counted himself among a half dozen or so people who wouldn't back down from the opportunity to flatten Christian Marshall. Not that Scott was certain he could do it, but there were times he'd be grateful for the chance. The game leg didn't make Christian untouchable as far as Scott was concerned. It tended to make things a little fairer. Scott stood a full head shorter than his best friend and carried only three-quarters of the weight. He had regular, even features that his wife assured him were quite handsome—even if they didn't turn female heads the way Christian's profile was prone to do. "Doctor or friend, my advice is still the same. Drink in moderation or don't drink at all. This isn't doing you any good."

"What would you know?" he asked, holding the tumbler up to the firelight and examining it idly.

"Now you sound like Beth," Scott said, remarking on Christian's sulky tone. "May I remind you that my daughter is five?"

Lowering the tumbler, Christian rolled it back and forth between his hands. His eyes dropped away from the hearth. "Jesus, what a day."

"And night. It's long gone eight, you know."

That surprised Christian, but it didn't show on his face. His features were a study of stillness. "Is it? What time was it when Mrs. Brandywine sent for you?"

"About six. Just after Dr. Morgan and an attendant from Jennings brought you home and took their leave. I've already commended your housekeeper for not mentioning me to Morgan. He would have been apoplectic if he had known you'd sent for me."

"He thinks you found your medical degree in the
Chronicle's
classified ads, does he?"

Scott grinned and ran his fingers through his hair, pushing back the golden fringe that tended to fall over his forehead. The rueful smile lifted his lips and lighted the striking blueness of his eyes. "Something like that. Morgan's Harvard. The University of Pennsylvania's Medical School doesn't carry much weight with him. He's very old guard. Innovation and change frighten him." He chuckled briefly. "I scare the hell out of him."

"Then he approves of the things I saw today?"

"Don't ever doubt it," Scott said. "Perry Glenn is precisely what Morgan likes in a physician. Ancient techniques only slightly modified to fit a few modern sensibilities. Morgan's been running Jennings Memorial under those guidelines for too many years. The people who put money into that hospital don't begin to understand what it is they're getting in return. In the case of the lunatic ward it's often out of sight, out of mind." He returned the stopper to the whiskey decanter and took a seat opposite Christian, stretching his legs in front of him. "You know, Christian, if you'd let me give you a powder for the pain, you wouldn't be sitting in that chair as stiff as a three-day corpse."

"You flatter me," he said dryly. "Next you'll be suggesting an operation." He held up his hand to stop Scott's obvious reply. "I don't want to hear about an operation, and I don't want a powder. The whiskey will do just as well, thank you very much."

"Alcohol is no good as a painkiller. That's a myth."

Christian's lip curled. "Then it's a damn good myth," he said sourly. "No wonder you scare the hell out of Morgan. Your medical education is full of holes."

Experience had taught Scott when to make a strategic retreat. "So tell me what happened at the hospital. You've been dozing off and on in that chair for the better part of two hours. No concussion that I can see, but Mrs. Brandywine should have kept you in bed where Morgan and Billy MacCauley put you."

"Don't blame her. Your luck wouldn't have run any better."

"Don't I know it."

Christian grunted softly as he got to his feet. He headed to the sideboard. Ignoring Scott's cross look, he poured himself another drink and carried it and the crystal decanter back to his chair. "So you want to know what happened. I assumed Mrs. Brandywine already filled your head."

"She told me what Dr. Morgan told her. After Billy MacCauley called Dr. Glenn away from the treatment room, you went back inside instead of leaving. Your bleeding heart got the better of your common sense, and you released Jane Doe. She returned the favor by knocking you out, stealing your clothes, strapping you to the bed, locking you in, and added insult to injury by taking flight with Liberty. Is that the gist of it?"

"Close enough," Christian said. "Except for that part about my bleeding heart. I didn't release her. She had wiggled out of those straps by the time I returned to the room."

"Maybe so, but she could not have gotten out if you hadn't gone in. The bolt was meant to secure her just as it secured you after she was gone."

"In my case the bolt was completely unnecessary. She had me trussed so tightly to that cot my fingers went numb."

"You deserved it," Scott said. "Now she's out wandering the streets in weather that would freeze a witch's—"

"How was I supposed to know she'd do a damn fool thing like that?" Christian interrupted impatiently. "This was your idea, Scott. You're the one who said there was nothing wrong with her mind. I hope you'll understand that my experience with her has led me to a slightly different conclusion."

Scott threw up his hands. "Don't you see? If she is sane, then she would be even more desperate to get away from the hospital? You offered her hope and snatched it away in the same breath."

"If?" Christian asked, cocking an eyebrow at Scott. He latched onto the one word he heard above all the others. "What do you mean
if?
When you approached me with this scheme, you never once used the word if. 'I'll stake my reputation, Chris,' you said. 'Everything I've been taught tells me something's wrong at Jennings and not with Jane Doe,' you said. 'Help me. I swear she's being kept there against her will.' Do you remember saying all that?"

"Don't you forget anything?" Scott's handsome features contorted slightly as Christian tossed back another drink. He fought the urge to take the decanter, knowing full well that Christian would only switch to something else. "I haven't changed my opinion. It's just that I never anticipated something like this. I had no idea that you would be allowed to observe the treatment. I thought you would meet her on the ward."

"It surprised me, too. I think he wanted to impress me, add another slant to the story he thinks I am writing." Christian raised his glass in salute. "The Marshall name. The
Chronicle's
power."

Scott ignored that. He knew better than to think Christian cared about either one any longer. "You were only supposed to take this opportunity to see which patient she was. The idea was for her to have some recognition of your presence."

"Well, we all got more than we bargained for. I didn't know it was Jane I was going to see in that treatment room. I just assumed I had missed her on the ward. Hell, Scott, you could have warned me about that torture chamber."

"I thought I did."

"Then you could have made a better job of it. Glenn almost killed her with his idiotic plunge bath. And the man believes in what he's doing! How can you keep working there?"

"How can I not? Who battles for reform if I don't?"

"Saint Scott." Christian sipped from his glass. "Sorry. I didn't mean that."

"Yes, you did."

"All right, perhaps I did. You can't deny that you've been battling to save my wretched soul these past six months."

"I've been battling
alone
these last six months," Scott corrected. "I used to have your father's help." He watched Christian's fingers tighten around his drink at the mention of his father. "So," he said, "you realized all along that this business with Jane Doe was just another skirmish in the war to make you take account of the real world."

"From the beginning."

"I see. And you went along with it anyway. That's interesting."

Christian shrugged. He savored the biting flavor of hard liquor on his palate. "And now that you've failed?"

"I was not aware that I had."

"Jane Doe's gone, Scott. Vanished. Probably frozen stiff by now." Christian's words rounded softly at the edges as the whiskey began to slur his speech. He never claimed the same tolerance for alcohol that trapped an unwary drunk. "Not a damn thing we can do about it. Shame about Liberty, though. Best mare in my stables. Hoped she'd find her own way back, but I suppose that's unlikely now. Past eight, you say? No, she's good as gone now. Jane's good as dead. And I good as killed her. That about sums up my day. Why don't you tell me about yours? Susan well? Beth?"

Scott had had enough. "What's this, Chris? A real display of self-pity? You usually play the callous bastard so well. Choose one or the other but stop vacillating. Do you think I don't know that you felt something today? You couldn't have toured the lunatic ward, seen the treatment room, and not been touched, not if you went to the hospital sober. And I know you did," he added for good measure. "Mrs. Brandywine told me."

Unmoved, Christian finished his drink. "I will fire the old biddy."

"Even you aren't that stupid."