THE DEVILS DIME (9 page)

“No, I’m just over there,” she replied, indicating the gloomy brick monstrosity across the street. She felt none of the embarrassment that Hamilton had forced her to feel when he’d dropped her at home after the Joplin affair. She removed her hand from his elbow and reached for her violin, but Jess moved smoothly behind her, switched the violin case to his outside hand, and took her right elbow to escort her across the street.

“Then I’ll just-“

“Ow! O-o-o!” Addie grabbed her right elbow and pulled it back to her side.

“What? Did I—?”

Jess looked stricken and Addie tried her best not to cry. The shoulder was shrieking now.

“I just need to get home and put a poultice on my shoulder,” she gasped. “I’m sorry. I should have told you. It’s been hurting since...since yesterday.” She couldn’t tell him it had been hurting since he’d tossed her into the banister. “And then playing all evening has made it worse. I’ll be fine, really, once I get home.” Addie babbled as she began to back away from Jess, intent on getting home quickly.

“Addie, let me—”

He was following her, and that was the last thing she wanted.

“Please! I’ll be fine. Good night!”

She hurried across the street and into the dark alcove of the front door, pulling the key from her drawstring bag as she went. But when she tried working the key with her left hand it refused to turn in the lock.

“Dash it all. Blasted key!” She was flushing hot and cold with the pain that had escalated dramatically since he’d jostled her arm, and then his large hand dropped over hers and in one twist he had the door opened.

“Th-thank you, I—”

Jess took the key and helped her through the door.

“I’ve got your violin. You just look after yourself.”

She looked at the violin, stunned to see that it was still tucked under his arm. She had never let her violin out of her sight before, but tonight she’d left it in Jess’s care and turned her back on it without another thought. It must be the pain.

Addie chastised herself for her carelessness as she scuttled toward the elevator, trying to disturb her shoulder as little as possible.

“G’d ev’nin’, Miz Magee,” the bellman tipped his cap and pulled back the cage door for her to enter. He threw a disapproving look at Jess when he followed her into the elevator.

“I’m her doctor,” Jess lied easily. “Miss Magee has injured her shoulder.”

The bellman raised his eyebrows, half accepting the explanation, and launched the snail-paced elevator toward the third floor. The relentless jarring of the simple pulleys made Addie long for the stairs, but just when she thought she couldn’t tolerate another bump, the cage screeched open and Jess helped her into the hallway.

She led him to her door and leaned on the wall while Jess used her key.

“Thank you for your trouble. I’m afraid I’d be sobbing in the gutter by now without your help.”

“No trouble at all.” He swung the door open and she hurried in. “Can your roommate help you with the poultice?”

“I don’t have a roommate.” Addie spoke without thinking, and realized too late she could have sent him on his way if she’d just let on she had someone to help her.

“You should have told me you were in pain, Addie. I’d have brought you home directly.” Jess propped the violin against the wall inside the door and surveyed her tiny domain.

She wished he hadn’t seen her wretched one-room studio. Addie took a quick look about for any unmentionables in view and blanched. The chamber pot. Had she emptied it before leaving for the hotel that evening?

“You’re going to need my help,” he said, lifting the cape from her shoulders. “Do you have the makings for a poultice?”

“Jess, I can’t ask you to—”

“I didn’t hear anyone asking, Addie. Now tell me where your medicinals are.”

Addie relented in the face of his determination and pointed to the drawer and cupboard where he would find muslin, mullein leaf and comfrey root.

First he found an empty cocoa tin and dampened the muslin by dipping it right into the pitcher. He folded and rolled the cloth and stuffed it into the tin.

“What are you doing,” Addie asked. She was impatient for the poultice and couldn’t see this step as anything but a waste of time.

“You’ll see,” he smiled, and glanced over his shoulder, sending her a compassionate smile that convinced her she could be patient for a few more minutes. Addie managed to remove her hat pin and hat with one hand and checked her condition in the vanity mirror.

Woman in pain, she thought. Not very appealing.

As she stowed the hat pin in her top drawer, her eye stopped on the small bottle of laudanum she’d kept after her mother’s final bout with pneumonia. With a glance over her shoulder at Jess who still had his back to her, she flicked the cork out of the bottle and sipped several drops.

Just considering taking the laudanum revealed to her how bad the pain had become.

By the time she’d stowed the hat and hung her cape on its peg, Jess had rigged a contraption to hold the cocoa tin over the base of a kerosene lamp. He had the flame turned full up beneath it, and was mixing the comfrey root and mullein leaf in a small, wide-mouthed pot he’d found sitting empty on the window sill.

“Can you get undressed all right?”

“What!” Addie sputtered. “I should say not! I mean...”

“Suit yourself, but once this poultice is in place, I don’t think you’re going to want to move.”

“But I—”

“Trust me.”

Jess stepped behind her and unhooked her skirt. Addie gasped and caught the skirt with her left hand before it slipped free of her hips.

“That’s quite enough. I’ll manage quite nicely without your help, sir!”

“Addie, we’re both adults here, are we not? Crawl into bed as soon as you’re finished. Just whistle when you’re ready.” Jess discreetly kept his back to her and resumed his work on the poultice.

“I’ll do no such thing.” Addie gathered as much dignity as she could muster and turned to usher him out. She stepped forward and tromped on the bottom of her skirt, yanking her hand painfully down.

“You— ow!” Her next breath disintegrated on a whimper, and she cradled her arm again. A tingling buzz flitted across her forehead and she lifted a slow hand to tap at it. The laudanum was working on her brain already. When in blue blazes was it going to reach her arm?

“I’ve got all night, Addie. You can crawl in fully dressed or in your birthday suit. Makes no difference to me. But one way or another you need to get into bed so I can get this poultice on your shoulder. It’s just about ready.”

He stood with his back to her, an easy pose with the weight slung on one hip. Addie considered his instruction, and knew there was a reason she shouldn’t crawl in bed. She fought the fuzz and concentrated hard to remember what it was, but nothing made sense.

She took a deep breath and held it, slipped out of her skirt and laid it over the foot rail of the bed. She unbuttoned the high-necked blouse, let it fall to her wrists before she gently tugged it off and slid it clumsily over the back of her desk chair. The air filtering through her chemise began to dry her fevered sweat. She stood a moment, grateful for the feel of it.

Shoes.
Did she usually wear her shoes to bed? Addie studied the eight buttons that marched up the outside of each shoe and sighed. Tonight she’d wear her shoes to bed. But it hardly mattered. She doubted she’d sleep a wink, anyway.

She plopped on the edge of the bed and swung her booted feet under the covers and began to lie down, but new pains ripped through her arm and pushed back the laudanum haze. She gasped and snatched the covers up to her chin with her left hand just as Jess turned around.

“Here, let me help y—”

“No, no! I’ve managed. Thank you anyway.” Keeping the covers around her as much as possible, Addie turned to her left and used her good left arm to support her as she dropped herself to the pillow.

“There, now. That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

Jess was behind her now, rolling a pillow behind her back. She relaxed against it and found that it was just what she needed to take the stress off her shoulder and lessen the pain. She opened her mouth to thank him and snapped it shut. Would he smell the narcotic if she spoke?

“Good. Ready, then?” Jess leaned toward her a bit, awaiting permission to begin administering the poultice.

She nodded, relieved that for the first time in more than an hour the pain was almost tolerable.

With a manner more gentle than most physicians she’d known, Jess slid her chemise off her right shoulder. He gently nudged the fabric down across the top of her breast and laid a small hand towel over her to protect the fabric.

Addie winced and turned her head to the side. Not because he’d hurt her. Quite the opposite. Her response as his fingers flicked over her bare skin had been curiously unsettling. It’s the bugjuice, she decided. Her mother always said the bugjuice—that’s what she called laudanum—gave her curious sensations.

Jess dipped three fingers into the tin cup and scooped up an ample portion of the pasty mess. She wrinkled her nose as he began to massage the smelly concoction into her shoulder, to the base of her neck, and to the very edges of her armpit.

“I don’t see how you could play when you were in such pain.”

His fingers rolled and pressed, soothed and smoothed as she searched for the word to answer him. “Adrimmnum...” The word refused to take shape on her tongue and she tried again. “Adren-ennnamum.” She sighed. It was just too much work to try again.

“Adrenaline?”

Ah! Yes! Adrenaline. She voiced her agreement with a noisy sigh. Addie closed her eyes, waiting for him to press in just the wrong spot and hoped she wouldn’t cry out too loudly. But the moment never came. He dipped and rubbed without saying a word, and Addie began to feel it was his fingers, not the mullein leaf and comfrey root that were working their magic.

“Better?” he asked as he lifted the towel he’d placed across her. Addie knew she was exposed down to her cleavage, but the relief, the peace that had worked its way into her with the herbal remedy cast caring from her mind.

“Mmm hmm,” she whispered.

“One last thing, then you can get some sleep.”

Jess disappeared for a moment and returned with the cocoa tin that had been warming over the kerosene flame. He pulled the damp, steamy muslin out, holding the hot tin with the other towel he’d just removed from her chest.

He touched a small corner of the hot, moist fabric to her skin to prepare her for its heat, then laid it out, crisscrossing the area he’d worked the poultice into. His large, sure hands layered the muslin smoothly across her bare shoulder, pressing the heat into the smelly residue that stained her skin.

“There now.”

She heard his voice from far away, and felt the hot poultice glowing in stratas deep beneath the skin.

“You’ve enough supplies for one more poultice. I’ll come back in the morning to apply it and you’ll be good as new. Guaranteed.”

She tried to speak, but her head was already drifting. Even the pungent odor of the medicinal herbs couldn’t keep her awake. The last thing she heard before falling deep asleep was the soft click of the doorknob and a quiet voice as Jess Pepper slipped out into the hall and was gone.

“Sleep gentle, fair lady.”

Or maybe she just dreamed that.