Forsaken Dreams (6 page)

The men exchanged a glance before Mr. Ladson said. “Well, you best hurry. I believe Mr. Haley said he was leaving town tomorrow.”

“Leaving?” Hayden kept his tone nonchalant.

“Yes, headed for Brazil on some wild scheme to buy up land so the South can rise again”—he lifted his mug of ale in mock salute—“or some such nonsense.”

Hayden sifted this new information through his mind, pondering the implications. It sounded just like his father to run off to Brazil on some harebrained enterprise. The barmaid returned with his port. After flipping her a coin and sending her a wink that made her giggle, he downed the drink in a single gulp.

The skinny man pulled out a leather satchel that Hayden hoped was full of money, while Hayden withdrew the writ of sale from his coat pocket along with a pen and ink and laid them on the table. Cultivated farmland, indeed. The property Mr. Ladson had toured was such, but the land he was purchasing was nothing but a swamp.

The accountant grabbed the document and scanned it in the lantern light, his beady eyes shifting back and forth. A drop of sweat slid from his slicked-back hair onto his forehead.

“I assure you everything is in order,” Hayden said. Mr. Ladson picked up the pen, dipped it in ink, and anxiously awaited his friend’s approval.

Just sign the paper and give me the money
. Hayden hid his urgency behind a placid smile. Once this deal was completed, he would leave a far richer man than when he’d arrived. And just in the nick of time. He was down to his last twenty dollars. And the crème de la crème of this fortuitous night would be that afterward he would follow these slatterns to their meeting with his father. Finally, he would have his revenge.

He shoved down a pinch of regret over swindling Mr. Ladson. The man was a Northerner who hated the South. He certainly deserved far worse. Besides, he had plenty of money. Yet even those excuses did not stop the accusations that constantly rang in Hayden’s ears day and night, the words that stabbed his conscience and haunted his dreams.

You’re just like your father
.

A shadow drifted over the table, causing the lantern flame to sputter and cower. Mr. Ladson hesitated, pen poised over the document that would free Hayden to pursue his father without any encumbrances.

A voice accompanied the shadow. “Hayden Gale?”

Hayden gazed up into a pair of seething eyes set deep in a pudgy face. Hair bristled on the back of his neck. “I’m afraid you are mistaken, sir. There is no one here by that name. Now if you don’t mind.” He batted him away. “We have personal business to discuss.”

Gruff hands grabbed Hayden by the coat and hauled him from the chair, slamming him against the tavern wall. Dust showered him from above. Spitting it away, Hayden held up arms of surrender. “My name is Elias Jones, sir. You have the wrong man.” He tried to make out the man’s features in the shadows, but he couldn’t recollect him from the many men he had swindled over the past years. How was Hayden supposed to remember each one?

“Do I now?” The man gritted his teeth and hissed like an angry cat. “You’re the one, all right. You defiled my wife and swindled my family out of our last two hundred dollars. No, no, I’d know you anywhere.” Releasing Hayden, he slugged him across the jaw.

Hayden’s head whipped around. His cheek stung. Ah yes, now he remembered the man. Rubbing his face, he glanced over at Mr. Ladson, who had put down the pen and was frowning at Hayden.
Blast it all!
Hayden released a foul curse. “I have no idea what you are referring to, sir.” Drawing back, Hayden slammed his fist into the man’s rather large belly. “But I will not stand by while you attack me and my character without cause.” He shook his aching hand, but the man barely toppled over before he righted himself.

The music stopped, and a crowd formed around the altercation. Hayden wiped blood from his lip. He supposed he deserved the man’s rage and worse for what he had done, but why did he have to find Hayden now when he was on the cusp of a huge deal?

Fist raised, the man charged Hayden again. This time Hayden blocked his blow with one hand while shoving the other across the man’s jaw. Cheers erupted from the mob as more of the besotted gathered around to be entertained. But Hayden had no desire to provide said entertainment. He had no beef with this man, and he certainly didn’t relish dying on the sticky floor of this hole-in-the-wall. Hayden’s strike barely caused the burly man’s head to swivel.

Shaking out the pain in his hand once again, Hayden backed away, studying the room for the best escape route. The man pulled out a pistol. Hayden barely heard the hammer snap into place over the raucous cheers, but the sound of it spelled certain doom.

“I’ll kill you for what you’ve done, ye thievin’ carp.”

Hayden had no doubt he would do just that. “Now, calm yourself, sir. If you kill me, you’ll go to jail, hang for murder. Then what would become of your lovely wife?”

The man seemed to be pondering that very thing as the shouts of the throng grew in intensity.
This can’t be the end
. Hayden could not die for one night with a lady he barely remembered and a measly two hundred dollars. It just didn’t seem fair. He’d done far worse than that in recent years. Several of those incidents now passed through his mind like a badly acted play—a play that would no doubt be performed before God on judgment day. Shame burned within him.

The ogre smacked his lips together. “Naw, killin’ you will be worth it.” He fired his pistol. Searing pain struck Hayden’s side. Gunpowder stung his nose. The mob went wild, some rushing toward Hayden, others toward the man, while some broke into fistfights among themselves.

Gripping his side, Hayden ducked and wove a trail through the frenzied mob, finally blasting through the front door into the cool night air. He stumbled down the street, wincing at the pain and ignoring the horrified looks of passing citizens. He couldn’t risk someone helping him. They would ask too many questions. Besides, his ruse was blown. He must leave town as soon as possible. The pain of losing the fortune hurt nearly as much as his bullet wound. Nearly.

He slipped into a dark alleyway and slid to the ground by a rotting barrel. A rat sped across a shaft of moonlight. Hayden removed his hand. Blood poured from the wound. He peered into the shadows and grabbed a paper lying nearby. He intended to press it over his wound when a word at the top caught his eye. B
RAZIL
. He read further. A ship called the
New Hope
was leaving tomorrow at sunrise for Brazil to start a new Southern colony. Despite his pain, Hayden smiled. There could only be one ship leaving Charleston for Brazil tomorrow.

Perhaps fortune shone on Hayden after all.

Back to the present

Eliza glanced over the crowd of sailors and passengers closing around the wounded man. “Doctor, please help!” She addressed the man whom the colonel said was a physician, but he stood gaping at the patient as if he’d never seen blood before.

The colonel gripped the doctor’s arm, drawing his gaze.

“That man assaulted me!” Magnolia Scott whined from across the deck.

“So you shot him?” the colonel barked.

“Of course not!” She huffed. “He was like that when he came in my cabin.”

The crowd grew silent, their gazes shifting from Magnolia to the wounded man as if trying to imagine how he could have pulled off such a feat.

“I doubt he could assault anyone, Miss Scott.” Eliza put voice to their thoughts as the captain barged through the mob and began spouting orders for the sailors to take the wounded man below.

“Do you have a sick bay, Captain?” Eliza stood.

“Aye, miss. But it’s small and has few medicines. My man, Wilkes, will take you down.”

“I’ll show her,” the colonel spoke up, dragging the doctor behind him.

Sinking down into the bowels of the ship once again, Eliza felt as though she were being smothered alive. At least the cabin in which the sailors put the wounded man was a bit larger than her own shared quarters, though not by much. They laid him in the center of the room on a wooden table that took up nearly the entire space, save for a cot, a work shelf, and a glass-enclosed cabinet sparsely stocked with bottles and vials. He groaned. Fear skittered across his green eyes. The doctor and the colonel entered behind her.

“I need a bowl of freshwater and some clean cloths,” the doctor said to the sailors as they were leaving. “Remove his shirt, if you please, Miss, Miss …”

“Mrs. Crawford,” the colonel interjected. “She’s the nurse I told you about.” He lit a lantern and hung it on a hook on the deckhead.

Eliza began unbuttoning the man’s shirt. “Only a volunteer nurse. No formal training.” The metallic odor of blood filled the air.

“The war?” the doctor asked.

She nodded, removing the soaked cloth.

“Then that’s all the training you need.”

“I did not … assault.…” The wounded man spoke, his voice strained and weak.

“Don’t worry about that now.” Eliza brushed strands of dark hair from his face. “We’re going to remove the bullet and dress your wound.”

“How did you get shot?” the colonel asked.

Oddly, the doctor remained at a distance. “And by whom?” he added.

The man had no answer.

“It didn’t happen on board.” Eliza examined the bloody opening. “Looks to be a day old at least.”

The deck canted, and she gripped the table as the lantern sent waves of light over the patient. She didn’t envy the doctor. It would not be easy to operate under these conditions. She faced him, awaiting his next command. He ran a hand through his brown hair streaked in gold and shifted his broad shoulders beneath a cutaway coat. The masculine lines of his chin quivered, stretching the scar angling down the right side of his mouth. But it was his eyes that drew her. The color of bronze. They would be striking except for the terror flashing across them at the moment.

“We must remove the bullet,” the doctor said numbly as the sailors returned with the basin of water and cloths.

Eliza knew that much. Grabbing one of the cloths, she pressed it against the oozing gash. The man groaned, the sound joining the creak of timbers as the ship plowed through the sea.

The doctor gestured toward the wound, his eyes on the bulkhead. “You’ve dealt with these before, Mrs. Crawford, have you not?”

“I’ve assisted, but I’ve never extracted a bullet myself.” It was then that she noticed his hands shaking. Which caused her pulse to rise.

“Then I will supervise,” he said.

Colonel Wallace glared at him. “I agreed to your passage because you were a doctor, James.”

“And I did not lie to you. I am a doctor. I simply haven’t”—he halted and ground his teeth together—“I don’t perform surgery anymore. Not since I left the battlefield. I told you I’m a preacher now. Been preaching the Word of God for the past two years.”

“So,
Preacher
”—the colonel’s tone was biting, his eyes raging—“you’re telling me we have no doctor. No one to fix the broken bones and heal the diseases that will be inevitable in the jungles of Brazil?”

James took a deep breath in an effort to compose himself then flattened his lips. “I did not mean to mislead you, Colonel. I can instruct Mrs. Crawford. She can be my hands. But that is all I can offer you besides counsel in spiritual matters.”

“What the dickens—I already have a parson aboard!” The colonel took up a pace while a look of contrition folded onto the doctor’s face.

Eliza swallowed as the realization set in. She glanced at her patient. His fate rested in her hands and her hands alone.

C
HAPTER
5

B
lake ran a comb through his hair and studied his reflection in the cracked mirror hanging on the bulkhead of his cabin. A fleeting question regarding his sudden interest in appearances taunted his mind, but he already knew the answer. It was the lovely Mrs. Crawford and his expectation of seeing her within moments in the captain’s cabin. It was why he had washed the grime from his face and donned a clean shirt and waistcoat. He only wished he had more fashionable attire and perhaps some of that bergamot or cedar cologne women seemed to love. But he had no such thing—he was a simple man with simple tastes.

Except, he realized with surprise, when it came to Mrs. Crawford.

There was nothing simple about her. After the good doctor had declared his inability to operate, she had gone to work, steady-handed and determined, moving like a fine-tuned instrument beneath the doctor’s instructions. Only her trembling voice gave away her fear. Still, she had continued until the bullet was removed, the wound stitched, and the patient resting.

Where other women would have swooned at the horrors of digging through human flesh, she performed her duty with courage, a courage Blake had not often seen, even on the battlefield. That any woman could endure the nightmare she no doubt suffered as a war nurse only made him respect Mrs. Crawford all the more. That any woman who’d lost her husband, who was alone in the world, would venture to an unknown land to start a new life only increased that rising respect.