“I quite agree.” She looked up at rags hung from drooping clotheslines strung between buildings. “It has always infuriated me to think of human beings living like animals.”
Honor took a deep breath. “I’m glad I decided to become a lawyer, because I could never be a doctor.”
Catherine glanced at her. “Nevada told me about your father.”
Honor reached up to anchor her hat as a sudden gust of April wind tore at them. “I suppose some people would consider me foolish for letting such a tragic incident rule my entire life, but”—she shrugged helplessly—“I loved my father, and I blamed myself for what happened to him.”
Catherine placed a hand on her arm. “People said the same thing to me. Why should I choose such a difficult path in life just because of what happened to my mother? My becoming a doctor wouldn’t bring her back.”
Honor remembered that Nevada had told her that a careless male physician had caused the death of Catherine’s mother in childbirth.
Catherine said, “But every time I save a life, I feel that I am doing something useful and honoring her memory.”
“Every time I keep someone from being taken advantage of or I win a case, I feel as though I’m winning it for my father.”
Catherine clasped her hand in mute understanding.
As they toured the squalid East Side, Honor felt her admiration for Catherine Delancy growing. Though the lady doctor had been away for a little more than two years, people remembered her. A boy no older than twelve came up to them and in halting English thanked Catherine for saving his mother’s life. A young woman greeted “Dr. Dee” and proudly showed off her son, who could walk because Catherine had set his broken leg correctly, and another woman thanked Catherine for saving her baby from cholera infantum, the dreaded “summer sickness.”
But the ones who haunted Honor were the women who thanked Catherine for helping them to have fewer children and told her how their lives had improved.
“My husband doesn’t drink so much now that we don’t have to worry about having another mouth to feed.”
“Next month we’ll have enough money to move out of this rat trap into a real nice place.”
“Now there’s enough money to send my Mabel to school instead of a sweatshop.”
And Anthony Comstock wanted to throw Catherine in jail.
Later that night, awakened from a light, troubled sleep by the pattering of rain against the bedchamber window, Honor left
Nevada sleeping and rose naked from their bed. As always, her body felt warm and soothed by his lovemaking, yet ready to be aroused at his lightest touch. She looked down at him in the darkness, his fair hair tousled against the pillow as he slept on his side, and she felt her heart constrict. Even in sleep he never let down his guard.
Honor padded quietly over to the window and peered through the curtain. A brisk April wind flung raindrops against the glass, blurring the deserted street below. The building across the way was dark save for one window where a light shone. Honor stared at it.
Why didn’t he tell me about their child?
She heard him stir in the bed, sensed that he had reached for her, then quickly wakened when he realized she was no longer lying beside him. Only the bed’s soft creaking betrayed him. Then she could smell the pleasant, pungent musk of their lovemaking, and she knew he had quietly crossed the room to stand behind her.
“Can’t sleep?” he whispered, his lips against her hair, his hands lightly caressing her bare shoulders. “I know just how to cure what ails you.”
She watched as the light in the window across the street went out, plunging the building into darkness. “Why didn’t you tell me about your child?”
His hands stilled. Silence.
Finally he said, “The doc told you?”
Honor turned and looked into his wary eyes. “This afternoon.”
He took a deep breath. “I didn’t tell you because I’ve put it behind me.”
She placed her hand against his hard cheek, feeling the muscles tense. “I love you. I don’t want any secrets between us.”
Something flickered in the depths of his eyes. “It was never real to me somehow. I know that sounds callous, but—”
She placed her fingertips against his lips. “I understand.” And she did.
He sighed. “I would have liked a future with them both, but that wasn’t in the cards. My future lies with you and our children.”
Honor’s eyes widened. Children. This was the first time Nevada had ever mentioned having children with her. She thought of a lanky boy with her black hair and black eyes or a winsome little girl with her father’s slow smile.
Honor said, “I’m still legally married. I wouldn’t want any of my children to be illegitimate.”
He took her face in his hands. “They won’t be. That no-good husband of yours will turn up one of these days. And in the meantime…”
Nevada swept her into his arms and carried her over to bed, where his loving hands and lips erased all secrets.
Later, as they lay together among the rumpled sheets, she said, “I’ve never met a woman like Catherine Delancy. She’s a saint.”
Nevada propped himself up on one elbow and roared with laughter. When the bed finally stopped shaking, he wiped the tears from the corners of his eyes. “The doc a saint? That is a belly buster.”
“Oh, is it? I’ll have you know that in the Women’s Dispensary and throughout the tenements, everyone thinks she can perform miracles. I was skeptical myself at first, but now…” She shrugged.
He sobered. “Just because lots of folks love and respect her doesn’t make her a saint. She’s got her faults, and she is just as stubborn and hardheaded as Delancy.” Nevada wound a lock of Honor’s dark hair around his finger. “After Sybilla was killed, Damon feared for the doc’s life. The tenements are especially dangerous for a woman alone, even during the day, but just the thought of his wife going there alone at night was enough to drive him mad. He wanted her to stop practicing medicine.”
Honor raised her brows. “Stop practicing medicine? That would be like someone telling me to stop practicing law.”
“Well, the doc didn’t take too kindly to being ordered around. One day, when she returned home, she found that Damon had taken down her shingle outside the house and converted her office back to a parlor.”
“She must have been furious. What did she do?”
“She left him.”
Honor sat up, pulling the sheet up over her breasts. “She
left
him?”
“She told him she wanted a divorce.”
Honor stared at him, speechless.
“Hard to believe, isn’t it? If ever there were two people more in love…” He grinned. “Except for us, of course. But neither one of them would bend an inch or meet the other halfway. So they went their separate ways for a while.”
“Obviously they resolved their differences.”
He nodded. “When Damon was blinded in a bomb explosion, Catherine went to Coppermine and tended him until he got his sight back. They obviously became lovers again because the doc soon discovered she was going to have his child. That’s when she returned to him, but she resented it. Eventually they both decided to bend, and you know the rest.”
Honor shook her head. “Catherine told me that she and her husband had a tumultuous marriage, but I never dreamed…”
“Oh, they fight like cats and dogs, but they don’t stay mad for long.”
“I can see why Catherine finds him so exasperating.” She looked at Nevada thoughtfully. “You and Damon are so different, it’s hard to imagine your being friends.”
“I reckon that’s why we’ve stayed friends for so long.”
Honor rested her chin on her knees. “I couldn’t live with a man who tried to tell me what to do, even if it was for my own good.” Robert had tried.
“Delancy always thinks he knows what’s best for everyone. I guess we’re all used to his ways.”
“When Gordon Graham had me beaten, you didn’t try to persuade me to drop Genevra’s case.”
Nevada’s blue eyes hardened possessively. “We weren’t married. It wasn’t my place.”
“But even if I were your wife, you wouldn’t forbid me to do my job, would you?”
He studied her. “You can’t change the course of a river. All I would do is stand right by your side to make sure you didn’t come to any harm.”
Relieved, Honor touched his cheek. “Catherine said that Damon is like a hurricane, all thunder and roaring wind, but that you’re like the eye of the storm.” She let the sheet fall, reveling in the sound of his breath catching at the glorious sight of her. “I much prefer the eye of the storm to a hurricane.”
The familiar heat flared in the depths of his eyes. “Is that how you see me, as the eye of the storm?”
She nodded. “Always calm.”
He reached for her. “But what if I’ve a mind to be a hurricane?”
“As long as it’s only in bed.”
Laughing, he pulled her into his arms, and Honor felt herself swept up in a storm of quite another kind.
Chapter Twenty
Memories of Sybilla were still there, warm, bittersweet, and poignant, but they occupied his thoughts less and less, fading a little more with each passing day like the faint scent of summer roses detected while quietly passing through a room. Even as Nevada sat in his office looking at a photograph of an ageless Sybilla frozen in time, he thought of Honor lying real and solid in his arms last night, a lifetime of experiences still waiting to be savored and shared.
He looked at the photograph for the last time.
As he put it away in the farthest corner of a bottom desk drawer, he thought he felt the barest brush of air against his ear and heard a whisper that sounded like “good-bye.”
He shook his head. Impossible. He was much too practical a man to believe in ghosts.
“Mr. LaRouche?”
He looked up to find Miss Fields standing in the doorway. “Yes?”
“Mr. Stannard from the Pinkerton National Detective Agency is here to see you, sir.”
They had found Robert Davis.
Nevada rose, anticipation heightening his senses, racing through his blood like a fever. “Show him in.”
Aaron Stannard was an inconspicuous-looking man whose sharp gaze never rested, first darting around the room, then up and down Nevada as if committing height, build, hair color, eye color, and any distinguishing characteristics to memory. Once he completed this fast, penetrating survey, however, his eagle eyes held Nevada’s and never wavered.
Nevada shook the man’s hand, offered him a seat, and got right to the point. “I take it you’re here because you have good news for me?”
Stannard shifted in his seat, but his gaze remained locked in place. “I’m afraid not, Mr. LaRouche. Our man tracked Davis to Georgia, then lost him.”
Nevada stroked his mustache, his annoyance growing. “How can one man be so hard to find? He’s a lawyer. Surely he’ll try to set up shop somewhere.”
“He hasn’t yet. He’s a man on the run, and he’s clever about covering up his tracks. He works at different jobs under more names than a dog has fleas, and just as we’re closing in, he bolts. It’s almost as though he smells us coming.”
Nevada swore under his breath.
Stannard’s gaze didn’t flinch. “We’ll catch the slippery bastard sooner or later. We just need more time.”
“You’ve been chasing him for six months.”
“You want us to stop?”
Nevada placed his palms on the desk and leaned forward. “Not if it takes you six years.”
The detective smiled slowly and nodded in understanding. “You must want him real bad.”
“I do.” He wanted Honor to be free, no matter how long it took, no matter what the expense.
An hour after Stannard left, Nevada received another visitor.
“May I interrupt you?” a familiar voice inquired from the doorway.
“Any time, Doc,” he replied with a welcoming smile, rising as Catherine closed the door behind her and swept into his office.
She kissed him on the cheek. “I’m here to go to lunch with Damon, but he’s in a meeting, so I thought I’d visit with you while I’m waiting.”
Nevada indicated a seat. “You going to the dispensary today?”
Catherine sat down. “Work keeps my mind off the trial.”
He leaned back in his chair. “When are you supposed to meet that Lyons fellow?”
“He’ll arrive here the day after tomorrow and stay the week as our guest to familiarize himself with my case.” A frown creased her brow. “I hope he agrees to let Honor assist him. She does so want to help.”
“She’s a good lawyer. He won’t be sorry if he takes her on.”
Catherine smiled. “I do like her. I wasn’t sure if I would, out of loyalty to Sybilla, but now that I’ve gotten to know her better, I can see why you love her so much. You’re a lucky man, Nevada LaRouche, to have found the perfect love twice in a lifetime.” She paused. “Have your detectives had any luck finding her ne’er-do-well husband?”
“One of them was in here just an hour ago to tell me they tracked him to Georgia and lost him.”