Crescent City Courtship (20 page)

All Abigail could do was pray that Tess would be able to get away.
Father, it’s not her fault she befriended such a dangerous woman as me.

“So you used my agent for your own purposes,” Braddock continued silkily as Crapaud slipped through the door into the night without a sound, “then disappeared the moment you landed in New Orleans. Crapaud investigated and found that there was no such family as Neiland in New Orleans. When he informed me of how he’d been duped—and exposed our company’s unsanctioned enterprises in the process—my first impulse was to do away with him.” Braddock sighed. “But my anger cooled as I realized he’d been acting in my best interests. Besides, why should I cheat myself out of a valuable employee?”

Abigail just stared at him.

Braddock uncrossed his legs and leaned forward, elbows on his knees. He steepled his fingers under his
chin. “We have been looking for you for six months, Miss Nieland,” he said softly. “And here you have been all along, right under my nose, seducing my hardheaded son. I wonder that he thinks you so brilliant. Appearing at a party in my home, exposing yourself to public ridicule by seeking a medical degree? These are not the actions of a smart woman.”

“I did not seduce John,” she repeated doggedly.

“But he is completely enamored with you.” Braddock shook his head. “Which is why I have brought you here for this little chat. Despite what you may think, I am not a murderer. I simply have a proposition to make.”

“You’d best let me go,” Abigail said in a suffocated voice. “The Lanieres will be looking for me. John will be looking for me.”

Braddock raised his heavy brows. “I suppose he will. My son has never listened to wisdom. But if you’ll listen to reason, he’ll forget about you soon enough.”

“He’s going to destroy you,” she said with certainty. She would have to enlist the help of Dr. Laniere to keep volatile, possessive John Braddock from sabotaging his career by exacting premature and violent justice against his father.

“No. No, I think not.” Braddock tapped his fingertips against his lips. “Because you are going to accept my generous offer and disappear. I don’t care where you go, as long as you keep your mouth shut and never again approach my son.”

“Why on earth would I do that?” Abigail hissed. “You’re insane.”

“Oh, no, I’m in perfect command of my faculties.” He smiled again. “And you’d best consider your response. As I told John, I’ve recently made a rather large loan to the
medical school which would be jeopardized by any hint of scandal attached to my name.”

“Your money is foul!” Abigail spat. “You made it in the course of farming and trading a narcotic that destroys people’s lives. It ruined my mother! And you’re shipping little girls overseas like cattle, trading them to brothels where they’re exploited as prostitutes.” She struggled against the ropes that bound her hands behind her back.

“There is no need to insult me.” He sat back. “I made my money to take care of my family. I don’t want them to endure the privations I did as a young man. And I certainly don’t want my daughter soiling herself by associating with the likes of you. Which is another reason you must leave New Orleans. Lisette has become entirely too strong-minded since she met you.”

“You cannot seriously expect me to just walk away from John and my chance to graduate from medical school.” Abigail stared at him, panting. Should she tell him Dr. Laniere was onto him? Her skin felt like it was on fire. “No amount of money is worth—”

“I certainly do expect it. I cannot afford to lose such a valuable source of income as my opium trade.” His voice had hardened, as if he’d suddenly tired of playing the paternal game. “And if you feel you cannot comply, you’ll be sorry. I know where to find your father, and Crapaud would be most happy to bring his pathetic missionary efforts to a merciful close.”

J
ohn’s body shook as he and Tess turned onto Canal Street, but he couldn’t have said whether his tremors resulted from the cold wind whistling down the narrow deserted street or rather from his internal shock and anxiety for Abigail. Tess walked beside him, head bent, swallowed in John’s greatcoat. She’d been silent for several minutes, letting him absorb the story of Abigail’s escape from China.

Escape? A violent shudder gripped him as he imagined the degradation, the privation his love had endured since she’d landed in the great United States of America. Forced to lie to a criminal, she’d buried herself in the seamy underbelly of New Orleans to escape whatever vengeance he would exact when he discovered she had no rich grandfather. Six months of ten-to twelve-hour workdays, six days a week, to keep body and soul together, barely able to afford the paper-thin walls of a tenement room.

He glanced at Tess. God had indeed blessed Abigail with such a friend. There was something oddly refined in Tess’s carriage; even her speech sometimes slipped into a cultured drawl not unlike John’s own mother and sister.
He’d paid little attention to these details when she’d been a patient in the Laniere clinic; now he wondered that he’d managed to miss her beautiful white teeth—indicative of a healthy diet for most of her life—and the luxuriant reddish hair expertly twisted into a fashionable knot. The typical lifelong prostitute who worked in the District rarely took such pains with her appearance.

No wonder the two young women had been drawn to one another. When it came down to it, they were peas in a pod: resourceful, strong, loyal. It crossed his mind to wonder about Tess’s faith in God. Had it survived hardship and persecution as had Abigail’s? What about the father of her baby? Who was he and why had he abandoned her?

The questions flitted across his mind, but bled away in his concern for the woman he’d come to love more than life.

“Tess, do you think Doc Laniere will know what to do with this information? He knows my father about as well as anyone. Why do you suppose he hasn’t noticed or confronted him about it?”

She shrugged without looking up. “You know the great doctor, John. Rich people like him—like you—don’t always react the way you’d think they would.”

What did she mean by that? He grabbed the sleeve of the coat dangling past her hands. “You said Abigail had come back for a journal that day. Did she take it home with her?”

“I don’t remember—” Tess’s gaze flicked over his shoulder, her eyes widened. “Look out! Run!” She took off.

A heavy body shoved John from behind and hurtled after Tess. Recovering his balance, John ran after the man, dove and tackled him. They fell heavily, John landing painfully on his left shoulder, but the other man quickly lurched to his feet. Rolling, John dodged a kick aimed at his kidney
and jackknifed upright. He whirled to find his attacker plowing his round, bullfrog-shaped head straight for John’s midsection. His father’s agent, Crapaud.

John danced out of the way just in time. Too late to stop his forward momentum, the man staggered to his knees. John shoved him hard with a foot to the backside, but his opponent was more lithe than his stocky build would indicate. Grunting with pain, Crapaud flipped to his back, grabbed John’s foot and threw him to the ground.

The breath knocked out of him, John lay unable to move, absorbing kick after kick aimed at ribs, face, groin. He could feel the warmth of blood pouring from his nose and mouth, pain taking over his body. The man was a bull, relentless.

But at least Tess was out of the way. Suddenly the beating stopped. John heard Crapaud’s heaving breaths, even louder than his own, and a moment later, the snick of a knife coming out of a sheath. John was going to die here on the street, within blocks of the hospital. And Abigail was still in his father’s hands.

He could not let that happen. Groaning, he tried to rise and protect himself. But before he could do more than shove himself to his knees, a blood-curdling rebel yell echoed along the street and running footsteps pounded toward him. He saw Crapaud’s one good eye widen as he turned to look. Crapaud lunged with the knife, managing a swipe at John’s upper arm before the new arrivals tackled him. John was crushed beneath the pile.

There was a confusing tangle of limbs and fists, cries of “Kill him!” “My turn!” and grunts of pain before John finally felt the melee roll off him into the gutter. Ears ringing, absorbed in pain, steadily losing blood, he simply
let the battle rage. His vision went black around the edges until it overtook him, and still his thoughts, when he could grasp them, were on Abigail.

The blackness won.

She should have known John’s father would be no weak pushover. Abigail had stared at Phillip Braddock long and hard, considering the consequences of each possible decision. She couldn’t simply leave and overlook the things she knew about John’s father. Besides, she had dropped enough hints to John about his father that there was every likelihood he’d already begun investigating. Once he discovered the truth, he would not keep quiet. On top of that, there were Dr. Laniere’s suspicions to consider. He was not a man one could easily deceive.

On the other hand, telling what she knew would result in her father’s execution. Papa might have been a less-than-stellar example of fatherhood; still she loved him too much to sign his death warrant.

The only thing left to do was to simply wait for rescue. So she remained stoically silent in the face of Phillip Braddock’s blatant sneer.

Wait.
The word now seemed to be the mantra of her life, when everything in her screamed for action. But the kind of waiting Scripture mandated involved the action of prayer:
Wait upon the Lord.
This she could do even while being gagged, rolled into a rug and unceremoniously hauled onto a man’s shoulder. She could wait upon the Lord while being bundled into the frightening darkness of a closed carriage, tied hand and foot and barely able to breathe. While being tossed into a cart and transported, blinded and bruised, bumping along what
smelled like the river levee, up and up a ramp onto the deck of a ship.

To be left utterly alone.

“Abigail,” John muttered as a white canopy swam into his blurry vision. He blinked. The canopy shifted to reveal the creased forehead and crooked eyebrows of Miss Charlemagne. “I mean, Miss C.”

She smiled and patted his shoulder. “Shush now.” She dabbed a gauze pad soaked in iodine against his cheek. It stung like crazy and stank.

As he pushed to his elbows, pain radiated from his ribs throughout the length of his body. He looked around at the emergency ward at the back of the hospital. “How’d I get here?” Beyond the closed door, male voices clashed against the moderated tones of a nurse. That sounded like Weichmann and Girard.

Before she could answer, the door burst open and Girard’s sandy head poked through the opening.

“Braddock—you’re alive!” Girard, apparently wrestling with someone trying to restrain his entrance, spoke over his shoulder. “I’ll be quiet. Mercy, what a fidget! We’ve got to find out what that rough-and-tumble was all about.” He pushed into the room and shut the door behind him, obliterating nurse Wilhelmina’s irate face. He hurried over to John and lifted his eyelid to examine the pupil. “Concussion. Lie down, old man, before you barf on my new waistcoat.”

John ignored him, though he did indeed feel queasy. “I’ve got to go find Prof. Can you send Crutch to bring around a carriage? It’ll be faster.”

The nurse tsked. “I’ve already sent him after Dr.
Laniere. Someone responsible needs to know what’s going on around here.”

Girard shook his head. “You’re not going anywhere with cracked ribs and your mouth split like the Grand Canyon. I had to stitch you back together once already. I’m not doing it again.” He studied John’s face critically. “Neat job, if I say so myself—fixed your pretty mug good as new. Maybe I’ll start a whole practice, redoing people’s faces.”

John touched the stitches on his aching upper lip. He didn’t care what he looked like as long as he found Abigail. “What happened to Crapaud—the man who attacked me?”

“With a name like that, no wonder he’s so ugly. His ancestors must’ve worked long and hard to come up with a handle that means ‘toad’ and begins with—”

“What did you say?”

“I said it begins with—”

“No, the part about what it means.”

Girard looked gleeful at the idea of one-upping John. “You and your languages.
Crapaud
is French for ‘toad,’ moron.”

“No wonder—” More pieces fell into place. John’s head reeled and not just from getting beaten to a bloody pulp. “My father’s agent was Abigail’s liaison getting out of China. Tess must have known that. That’s why he went after her and beat me when I got in the way.”

Girard planted a hand on John’s chest and pushed him flat on the examining table. “You’re raving. What’s your father’s agent got to do with Abigail? She hasn’t been in China, she’s been right here shoving her way into medical school. And who’s Tess?”

“Never mind that.” John knocked Girard’s hand away and rolled to the side. Panting, he sat up. The room spun like a whirligig. “I’ve got to get to the professor and tell
him…” The rest of his sentence split into shards of pain exploding through his head.

Girard grabbed his shoulders and kept him from falling off the table. “Idiot—”

“I’m here.” The professor’s authoritative voice cut through John’s agony. “Tess said she and John were set upon.” A pair of strong hands cupped John’s head gently. “Let’s get him back down, Girard. We’ve got to keep him awake.”

John felt himself eased to his back again. “No, Professor, we have to look for Abigail,” he mumbled. “I think my father took her somewhere. Crapaud will know where—”

“Crapaud’s the scum who beat him up,” said Girard. “Locked in the storage shed off the stable. Didn’t know what else to do with him.”

“All right, you boys get him, bring him here. We can’t move John yet and I need to talk to both of them,” Prof said. “Charlemagne, I’ve got the situation under control. Will you keep the other nurses out of the room and deal with any emergencies that arise?”

“Of course, sir.”

A confusing series of footsteps ensued, the door opened and closed a couple of times and then John was alone with the professor.

“Braddock, are you lucid enough to listen to me for a moment?”

Thankfully, John’s head had stopped its gyrations. He cracked one eye open and found Dr. Laniere staring at him, concern in every line of his face. “Yes, sir. What’s going on, sir? I’m worried about Abigail. We can’t wait around any longer—”

“Of course you’re right. I had just gone home to tell you Abigail was nowhere to be found, when Tess barreled in,
raving about an attacker. She’s waiting outside the room in case we need her. Having heard her part of the tale, I think I understand what’s going on. But you’ll be more helpful to me if you know a few more details of my part in this mess.” Prof paused. “If you can follow me. Are you all right?”

John swallowed his nausea. “Yes, sir,” he said through his teeth. “I’m fine.”

“Good. Keep your eyes open and listen. My background is a little more complex than the typical medical professional. Since my youth I’ve been…assigned to government service. Although semiretired, I’d recently agreed to assist the governor with uncovering the source of shiploads of opium entering New Orleans illegally. You’ll probably not be surprised to know your father was under suspicion—”

“No, sir. I’m not surprised.”

“—which made you suspect as well. I’d set Abigail the task of watching for signs that you were involved.” The professor sighed. “I didn’t anticipate such violent results because I was not aware Abigail already had ties to your father’s Chinese enterprises.”

“I hope you know, Professor, I have nothing to do with my father’s criminal activities.” John anxiously surveyed his mentor’s face.

Prof smiled faintly. “No, I don’t suppose you’d be lying here on this table if you did. But I need to know anything that will help us find Abigail and stop your father’s determined efforts to spread the scourge of drug addiction in America. It’s already destroying China, and the empress is ready to declare war on anyone involved.”

John pulled his whirling thoughts together. Prof was a
government agent. Abigail had been set to spy on him. He let out the breath he had been holding. “My father has a fleet of six ships that ply back and forth between New Orleans, Asia and Europe. I know he doesn’t always report what he imports, which is how he avoids some of the heavier taxes. Until recently, I never saw the reason to report any of this—it really seemed to have nothing to do with me.” He met Prof’s eyes. “But now that I know the Lord, I seem to have a new set of eyes…or something. I can’t just stand by and let him steamroll over everyone. I can’t let him ruin innocent people’s lives.” Painful, embarrassing tears warmed his eyes, and he blinked hard. “I’m sorry he’s my father.”

Prof laid a hand on his shoulder. “We’ll sort out all those feelings later, son. Right now, I’m grateful for your corroboration of what I’d suspected but couldn’t prove.”

The door opened, admitting Girard and Ramage, one on either side of Crapaud. The agent’s hands were bound with a length of rope, his puffy face nearly unrecognizable. He had clearly been patched back together with less than the students’ usual precision. The bandage which covered the top half of his head appeared to have been fashioned from his cravat and he winced every time one of his captors jerked on his arms. There was a large rip in the knee of his pants and most of his shirt buttons were missing.