Mary's Christmas Knight Read online

  Mary’s Christmas Knight

  A Rougemont Novella

  by Moriah Densley

  Published by esKape ePress

  http://eskapepress.com/

  All Rights Reserved

  Copyright © 2013 MORIAH DENSLEY

  ISBN-10: 1940695074

  ISBN-13: 978-1-940695-07-5

  Edited by Kim Bowman

  Cover Art Design by For the Muse Designs

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and events are fictitious in every regard. Any similarities to actual events and persons, living or dead, are purely coincidental. Any trademarks, service marks, product names, or named features are the property of their respective owners and are used only for reference. There is no implied endorsement if any of these terms are used. Except for review purposes, the reproduction and distribution of this book in whole or part, electronically or mechanically, without the written permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author's intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book, other than for review purposes, please obtain written permission first by contacting the publisher at [email protected].

  Thank you for your support of the author's rights as provided for in the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976.

  For subsidiary rights, foreign and domestic, please contact the publisher at [email protected]

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  Special thanks to Susie, Laura, Mary, Sammi, Ginger, Tam, Brian, Emily, Kim, and Kay for your eagle eyes and stellar sense of vision. You see the finished product and know how to pull it out of me — with minimal blood and tears, but not sweat. Thanks also for reminding me to laugh at my mistakes; they are pretty darn funny.

  To my Mutineers, Musketeers, Unicorns,

  and especially my super awesome “Easy Street” Team:

  I know you got my back. Thanks.

  To Pauline

  Thank you for always ordering dessert,

  whether the occasion is commiseration or celebration.

  You’re a true friend.

  Chapter One

  December 24, 1872, Devon County, England

  Ah, won't you buy my ivy? It's the loveliest I've seen.

  Ah, won't you buy my holly? Oh you who love the green.

  Do take a little branch of each, and on my knees I'll pray

  That God will bless your Christmas and a happy New Year's Day.

  ~John Keegan, 1809-1849

  MARY CAVENDISH ROLLED the last bandage. On the other side of the fogged window, raindrops began to float. “I hate snow.” Her new side-laced velvet boots wouldn’t survive the added layer of slush, for starters.

  As though on cue, a mud-spattered sleigh rounded the corner too fast, nearly clipping the lamppost. The back of the hood hit the wreath looped on the post, and it landed in the gutter. The curled tulle ribbon flattened and seeped black with mud. Mary pressed her lips in a line and squeezed the bandage roll to keep from saying something uncharitable on Christmas Eve. She and the ladies on the Cockington Beautification Committee had spent hours wiring evergreen boughs into loops, and hours more installing the wreaths around the town.

  “Beg pardon, miss?” Lieutenant Baxter’s voice sounded nearly as creaky as his half-rusted bed. The apparatus hoisting his plaster-cast leg groaned in protest as he tried to turn and look out the window. He scowled then huffed, sending the ends of his waxed moustache flying.

  “I said, ‘What a show.’ It seems the passengers from the last Torquay train have arrived from the station, and all of the cab drivers have forgotten how to steer.”

  Old Tom Hart, lying two beds down from the lieutenant, gave a snort then a theatrical groan. He appeared at the parish hospital every time a storm blew in, and sometimes in between, hoping his complaint of “heart murmurs” would earn him a dose of laudanum.

  Mary turned Mr. Gage onto his left side, fluffed the stuffing in Harold St. Just’s pillow, and spooned a dose of benzoin tincture onto Mr. Duffy’s blister. He gasped, and she let him squeeze her hand as long as the benzoin burned. She collected the cups from all the bedstands, trying not to wrinkle her nose at the smell of cold stale wassail mingled with the odor of cod liver oil and bedpans. So much for the wassail bringing Christmas cheer to the patients.

  At the least it curtailed her appetite. Since her carrot juice and boiled oats with cinnamon luncheon, she’d eaten nothing and was in danger of surrendering to the nearest pastry with hardly a fight. Inhaling was enough to remind Mary her corset simply could not grow any tighter.

  “I expect ye’ll want to be off to midnight services, miss?” Lieutenant Baxter called. He paused to cough into a handkerchief then twisted the corners of his mustache back into shape. “Perhaps with the fine Mister Warren?” The fatherly Lieutenant Baxter had been matchmaking on her behalf since he’d arrived from Africa two weeks ago.

  Mr. Warren, the surgical resident volunteering from a Torquay specialist hospital, peered over the rims of his spectacles as his pen paused on the clipboard. He raised a brow at Mary, as though she’d made the suggestion. Pomade-slicked waves of hair reflected like molasses taffy in the lamplight. Precisely-trimmed whiskers gave him an air of distinction, although Mary couldn’t help but wonder if they would tickle when he kissed her — the very thought struck her with crippling anxiety.

  She didn’t dare meet his gaze, dark as onyx and sharp as a razor. Looking at his shoulders was worse; square and proud, and so dashing in his white physician’s coat. Very fine indeed. An angel on an angel’s mission.

  “Yes, and no, Lieutenant.” Mary turned and arranged the medicine bottles in the cabinet to disguise what had to be cranberry-colored cheeks. Knowing she was an uncontrollable blusher only made it flash hotter. Her trembling hand tipped over a bottle — one of Mr. Warren’s vaccine samples. It toppled the entire row with a tinkling clatter. His quick intake of breath was worse than a shout or curse; he’d noticed Mary Cavendish being incompetent yet again.

  Plump Mary.

  Clumsy Mary.

  Foolish Mary.

  Careless words spoken in exasperation or jest by people she loved, all burned into her memory. Never mind her improvement crusade, at the moment she felt every bit the spinster, but trapped inside the bumbling fifteen-year-old self she had been. Since drawing a deep breath was out of the question, Mary breathed short gusts until her heartbeat quit pounding in her ears. Mr. Warren still watched her, she could feel it.

  A Christmas miracle — none had broken. Mary righted the tiny brown glass bottles and faced the labels forward. Vibrio Cholerae, Salmonella Typhi, Rhabdoviridae Mononegavirales… The faint scratching sound meant Mr. Warren had resumed making his notes.

  That he hadn’t come forth with an invitation to attend midnight mass together didn’t bode well for the box she had stashed under his desk: a Ross No. 2 binocular microscope in lacquered brass.

  The previous week, Mr. Warren had complimented her expert wrapping of Mr. Duffy’s ankle bandage. He’d called her a fine, conscientious nurse. If he hadn’t added a comment about her being indispensible, she probably wouldn’t have ordered the microscope express from London in a fit of romantic aspiration.

  So then he probably hadn’t looked meaningfully into her eyes as she mixed tincture for his patients the day before. And she must have completely misinterpreted his hand at the small of her back the previous day while he monitored her transferring his notes to the ledger. He wasn’t looking at her now with any sign of being enamored.

  The guilty box seemed painfully conspicuous to
Mary, wrapped in gold paper with a giant green tulle bow. If he’d seen the present, Mr. Warren had failed to mention a word about it. And with only a half hour before the hospital closed for the night, it was looking less and less likely that her vision of a legendarily romantic Christmas Eve would play out the way it had in her daydreams.

  It took her a moment to notice Mr. Warren following her gaze; if he hadn’t seen the present before, he did now. Regarding the box as though it were a particularly nasty strain of virus in a culture dish, he approached the desk. “What is this?”

  His stern tone of voice made her a coward; she confessed nothing, even as he placed the package atop the desk and looked over his spectacles again, waiting for an answer.

  Counting down the seconds until he would see the tag and know what an idiotic, presumptive, peahen she was… Of course she’d been too forward. At the time, all she could think about was the interchangeable lenses and lacquered brass and the rapturous expression that would light on his handsome face when he saw the improved Gillett achromatic condenser. It was absolutely perfect for his vaccination research, and he would think of her when he used it.

  Oh, what a silly fool she was!

  Mr. Warren lifted the box and looked beneath it then searched the floor under the desk, still regarding the gift with his mouth pursed. “What is it?”

  A present, you ninny!

  “Who is it from?”

  “There’s no tag?”

  “None which I can see.”

  “Hallelujah.” Never mind the intact bottles — this was her Christmas miracle.

  “What?”

  “I said, ‘How could they do that?’ Leaving you so unkindly in suspense?” Trying to invent a graceful way out of her faux pas produced a sensation like grinding gears. “It would seem you have a secret admirer, Mr. Warren.”

  Mary slid a sideways warning glance to Lieutenant Baxter, who had seen her bring in the present and place it under the desk earlier that evening. He pantomimed locking his mouth shut with an imaginary key, which he then tossed over his shoulder. “Well, why don’t you open it? Wouldn’t you like to see what it is?”

  “It’s very prettily wrapped,” said Lieutenant Baxter, his tone a bit too obvious and hopeful.

  “Oh, dear. Oh dear indeed.” Mr. Warren shook his head, much the way he did when a patient was terminally septic. “I’m afraid this is rather embarrassing. You see, I am Jewish.”

  “You’re Jewish?”

  “Quite.”

  So what? came first to her, then, You don’t really look Jewish. What she actually said might have been worse. “Then suppose it’s a Chanukah present?”

  One eye narrowed and he cocked his head, which plainly meant, What a numpty you are. Or perhaps he knew it had come from her, and it was too awkward for words.

  “My guess is it’s from the Cockington Relief and Aid Society. I had a gift from them as well, although the box was considerably smaller, which is why I didn’t think of the correlation before. It was a pair of tatted doilies. Very suitable for a trousseau, and heaven only knows whether I might yet have need of one.”

  Her better self begged her to stay mum, especially since she’d spouted a falsehood. But she’d pulled her finger from the dam, and all her worst faults came tumbling out at once. “But now that I recall it, the wrapping paper on my present from the Relief and Aid Society was likewise that brocade-embossed gold foil with the jade-colored tulle curled into spiral ribbons. I do recall the tag attached to the gift, and it’s a shame yours turned out to be missing, because the sentiment directed at me was most cordial, in regards to volunteering as a nurse here at the parish hospital. Not that I mean to draw attention to my own humble efforts — seeing how your contribution is exponentially more substantial — but I meant to illustrate how the society’s gesture to extend formal gratitude to you for your extraordinary service on behalf of the afflicted would potentially have been gratifying to one so accomplished in the healing arts as you are, Mr. Warren. Even if the offerings turned out to be earmuffs or stocking warmers, since I can scarce imagine they would give you doilies.”

  Now he regarded Mary as though she was the abnormal specimen in a culture dish. “Doilies?”

  Belated heat rushed from the top of her head and settled in her cheeks, while her unruly heart threatened to punch through her already strained corset. Any moment buttons and laces would go flying, and then she would be well and truly humiliated. “Oh, drat. I fear I might indulge in a sugarplum or two.” Or two dozen.

  No doubt once the plate was passed at dinner, Mary would remember this very moment, wishing Zeus would strike her down with a lightning bolt. She would crave deliverance so sorely, the mirage of confectionary comfort would override her good judgment. Not that she had much judgment — it lay in tatters all over the floor.

  “Sugar, what?”

  “I said—” Mary sighed, feeling a tinge of anger compete with mortification. No doubt it turned her face a red hue unflattering with her violet dress. “No. I’m fresh out of fables. If you don’t want it, I will take it downstairs. I am sure there is someone here who could make use of a Number Two Ross binocular microscope.”

  Mr. Warren sputtered. “Ross? Microscope?”

  “Interchangeable lenses and lacquered brass. Forget it.”

  For a moment, it appeared Mr. Warren badly wanted not to be Jewish and not set upon by an erringly presumptive spinster.

  Mary set down the bandage rolls she’d meant to transfer to the other supply carts and glanced at the clock hanging by the desk. No point in staying through a humiliating, quiet twenty minutes. “I think I will leave a bit early, with your blessing. I should like to attend the midnight mass.” She reached to untie the bow at the back of her apron.

  Mr. Warren adjusted his spectacles and opened his mouth when a commotion downstairs rattled the walls. Slamming doors, shouting voices, toppling furniture.

  Mary flew into action; she knew the sound well — an emergency.

  Chapter Two

  Awake, my soul, and come away.

  Put on thy best array; Lest if thou longer stay

  Thou lose some minutes of so blest a day.

  Go run, And bid good-morrow to the sun;

  Welcome his safe return To Capricorn.

  ~Jeremy Taylor, 1613-1667

  STUMBLING AND CURSING sounded in the stairway. A thud on the wall, and a man yelped in pain. Mary whisked a fresh sheet on the empty bed beside Lieutenant Baxter. A wheeled supply cart lacked a surgical tool kit — no, she’d just buried it under the fresh batch of bandages.

  The one remaining orderly herded the party through the hall and past rows of occupied beds. Their faces indistinguishable in the dim lighting, Mary saw one man being dragged between two other men, all of them caked in mud and missing their hats. A bloody handprint dripped down the wall framing the stairwell.

  One man with a local Devonshire accent answered Mr. Warren’s questions in a low, breathless voice. He must be a cab driver. The other man, wearing an exquisitely tailored coat, lowered the unconscious patient to the bed then turned toward the window, heaving for breath, mindless of being in Dr. Warren’s way. Mary pushed past him to the foot of the bed.

  The driver left the ward, stomping on his way out, muttering about the constable.

  Grasping one muddy boot, she pulled. The patient cried out. A broken foot or ankle, likely.

  Mr. Warren passed her a pair of round-tipped shears. “Never mind the boots. Cut them off, and be quick. Before the ankle swells.”

  Mary took the shears and wrestled with the sodden leather until it gave way, then started on the seam of his sleeve cuff. She’d long been inured to the sight of a naked man. Seeing a mangled one was many times worse. Her elbow collided with metal; a revolver slid out of the patient’s trousers pocket. She jumped back with a squeak. “Wha—? Who is he?”

  “Unknown.” Dr. Warren paused to pick up the weapon, hooking the trigger guard with the tip of his pen. He set it on the botto
m shelf of the cart.

  The cut sections of shirt peeled away to reveal hundreds of small cuts and strange discolorations on the skin. “What happened?” She dipped a rag in a basin of steaming water then tried to wash away the street grime.

  “He fell out the window as the coach went over. Crush injuries.”

  Mary nodded, hoping her dismay didn’t show on her face. Patients with internal injuries typically couldn’t be mended, and they died of sepsis. She patted his grimy cheek. “Mister?” His eyes rolled back in his head.

  Mr. Warren listened to the patient’s heartbeat and took his pulse, palpating over his neck and ribs in search of injuries to explain his inertia. Mr. Warren wore a blank, professional expression, but Mary knew his pursed lips meant a grim prognosis. When he examined the patient’s belly, the man lurched and vomited blood, right on Mary’s sleeve and down her apron.

  She didn’t mean to neglect her duties, but she couldn’t move. Frozen not by disgust, but stricken with the evidence that this man, whom she knew not at all, was not long for this world. Doomed on Christmas Eve. She traded glances with Mr. Warren, who nodded his permission for her to quit trying to clean the wounds. No need to prepare the splints, as the surgical tools lay untouched.

  Nothing more to do, except ease his way. Already his breathing gurgled and hitched as his lungs filled with fluid.

  Mary loaded a syringe with triple the usual dose of morphine. She rubbed inside his elbow and couldn’t find a vein, and so passed the syringe to Mr. Warren while she prepared another syringe. The man standing at the window had yet to make a sound.

  Outside, below the window, a quartet of carolers passed by, singing. “Sire, the night is darker now, and the wind blows stronger. Fails my heart, I know not how, I can go no longer…” The gloomiest possible excerpt of Good King Wenceslas.