“And had I been there to find her on the streets of New York, she wouldn’t have been this woman.”
He made a face. Yes, damn it! The thought of all those men who had crawled between her legs bothered him. He hated and resented each and every one of them. Not just that they’d discharged their penises inside the woman he loved, but that they’d known the magic of her body.
He’d had no idea that sexual intercourse could be an art, or that two people could conjure such sensations and pleasures. He just couldn’t stop imagining her using those same skills as she serviced other men.
From the beginning, however, she had told him: “When I was with a johnny, he was a nameless, faceless job. He might have paid for the use of my body, but I never gave so much as a sliver of my heart. You’re the only man I ever loved, ever told I loved. Damn, Doc, till you I’d never even kissed a man! My cunt may have been used, but my heart was chaste, untouched, and virgin.”
“So what would you change, Doc?” he asked himself as he strode home in the late afternoon. Flies buzzed where someone had a shot a dog and left it in the street.
He averted his gaze to the distant mountains. Clouds were building in the peaks to the west, their bottoms black and inky with rain as they sailed out from Lookout Mountain.
By Bridget’s own admission the seventeen-year-old girl he would have rescued on the New York streets had been ignorant, unlettered, her accent untenable, her etiquette unmannered, and mind empty. Everything that Bridget had become—the intelligent, smart, brave, and resourceful woman he loved—was the culmination of her years in the houses.
“Dear God,” he whispered to himself as he climbed the steps to his house. “I’m still a fool.”
He never darkened the door of his house without the hope that Butler would be waiting—that silly grin on his bearded face, his blue eyes slightly unfocused as his listened to the phantoms in his head.
The house greeted him with emptiness.
After he had dressed in his new black broadcloth sack suit, Doc ran a comb through his sandy locks and checked himself in the mirror. Still struggling over the dilemma Bridget presented, he walked slowly to Blake Street and arrived at Phillipa’s old house more than fifteen minutes early.
He stared up at the brick structure, thinking of his history with the building. Of the role he’d played in bringing Bridget’s attacker down. He’d spirited Parmelee’s girls away at the same time the blackguard had left to rape and mutilate the woman Doc would come to love. That act, in turn, had brought her here to this very same building. Couldn’t that be said to be God’s hand?
He blinked. Suddenly shaken down to his core. Was he twice the fool?
Even if it was God’s hand, he surely wasn’t being punished for blasphemy. He’d ended up with Bridget. Or at least the part of Bridget’s life that this damn pile of brick and her mysterious partner didn’t lay claim to.
Doc smiled wryly, amused by his silly preoccupation. He climbed the steps and lifted the old familiar knocker before letting it clank.
A young woman in her early twenties opened the door and met him with a smile. She wore a light green poplin dress with silk trim and a curved corset that left no doubt about the swelling endowment beneath her silk-trimmed bodice. Raven-black hair was piled high and hung around her ears in ringlets. A smile lay behind her green eyes and dimples formed in her cheeks as she greeted him. “How may I help you?”
“Dr. Philip Hancock, ma’am. I’m afraid I’m early. I’m a guest of—”
“Oh, yes! Aggie’s Doc. Do come in! I’m Agatha.” She led the way through the parlor and into the handsomely furnished bar. Compared to the last time Doc had seen it, the wood was waxed and polished. “Might I get you something? Perhaps a Madeira?”
Doc had heard about the trials and tribulations of not only minimally furnishing the house, but obtaining symbolically exotic drink. Scarcity was everywhere with the trails closed. Nevertheless, one of Pat O’Reilly’s agents had happened upon five cases of Madeira, which—being in greatest supply—would be the most promoted drink of the evening.
“Madeira would be fine, and I’ll do my best to steer the others away from the sour mash.” Somehow Sarah had also cadged the last two bottles of Tennessee whiskey in the territory. Those drinks were to be judiciously dispensed.
Agatha continued to smile as she stepped behind the bar and poured Doc a full glass. “Your help extending the sour mash will be most appreciated.”
“You are the actress, if I recall.”
“That’s right.” She leaned forward, glancing slyly to the side. “With the show I’s paid to act, but had to give it out for free. Here I’ll be paid for the lay and the acting. We’re gonna be putting on performances. Not like the stage, but costumed readings and such. What’s different from the troupe is that Sarah an’ Aggie ain’t gonna be slipping a’tween my covers at night with a hard prick and all sloppy drunk and stinking.”
“One doesn’t think that of actresses, I mean that they’d be taken advantage of that way. I know Aggie will treat you fairly.”
She glanced speculatively at him. “You gonna be attending to our female needs?”
“I’ve been asked to see you all once a month, but you’re welcome to send for me at any time.”
The rustle of fine fabric announced the arrival of another woman, older, perhaps closing on thirty. She wore a lace-trimmed yellow silk taffeta with a tightly corseted waist. Cut low over the bosom, it exposed considerable cleavage. The Basque sleeves were short, accenting pale white forearms. She had done her hair up in ringlets that hung to either side of her head. Her smile was practiced and didn’t
