The Engagement Bargain Page 3

  Jo snorted. “Of course you didn’t. Assigning blame isn’t going to stop a bullet. Caleb, tell us what to do.” She lifted a pale green corked bottle from his bag. “And why do you have laudanum, anyway?”

  “Got it from the doc when John’s prize stallion kicked me last spring.” Caleb rolled his shoulder, recalling the incident with a wince. John Elder raised horses for the cavalry, and his livelihood depended upon his horses’ continued good health. Caleb’s dedication had left him with a dislocated shoulder and a nasty scar on his thigh from the horse’s sharp teeth. “I figured the laudanum might come in handy one day. I’ll need the chair. You’ll have to sit on the opposite side of the bed.”

  He uncorked the still-full bottle and measured a dose into the crystal glass he’d discovered on the nightstand. Jo rested her hip on the bed and raised Miss Bishop’s shoulders. Anna moaned and pulled away.

  Caleb held the glass to her lips. “This tastes foul, but you’ll appreciate the benefits.”

  A fine sheen of sweat coated Miss Bishop’s forehead. Her brilliant blue eyes had glazed over, yet he caught a hint of understanding in her disoriented expression. He tipped the glass, and she took a drink, then coughed and sputtered.

  “Easy there,” Caleb soothed. “Just a little more.”

  Jo quirked one dark eyebrow. “For a minute there, I thought you were going to say, easy there old girl.”

  Miss Bishop pushed away the glass. “This old girl has had enough.”

  “Don’t go slandering my patients,” Caleb offered with a half grin. “I’ve never gotten a complaint yet.”

  She flashed him a withering glance that let him know exactly what she thought of his assurances. “The next time you have a speaking patient, we’ll compare notes.”

  He was heartened Miss Bishop had retained her gumption. She was going to need it.

  After ensuring she’d taken the full dose, he rested the glass on the table and adjusted the pillow more comfortably behind Miss Bishop’s head. “You’ll be sound asleep in a minute. This will all be over soon.”

  “I have an uneasy feeling this is only the beginning, Mr. McCoy.” She spoke hoarsely, her eyes already dulled by the laudanum.

  “You’ll live to fight another day, Miss Bishop. I promise you that.”

  Her head lolled to one side, and she reached for Jo. “Please, let my mother know I’m fine. I don’t want her to worry.”

  While Jo offered reassurances, Caleb checked the wound once more and discovered the bleeding had slowed, granting him a much-needed reprieve. He desperately wanted to wait until the laudanum took effect before stitching her up. This situation was uncharted territory. He understood an animal’s reaction to pain. He knew how to soothe them, and he took confidence in his skills, knowing his treatments were for the ultimate benefit.

  People were altogether different. He wasn’t good with people in the best of situations, let alone people he didn’t know well. He never missed the opportunity to remain silent in a group, letting others carry the conversation.

  Miss Bishop fumbled for his hand and squeezed his fingers, sending his heartbeat into double time. He wasn’t certain if her touch signified fear or gratitude. Aware of the curious perusal of the other two women, Caleb kept the comforting pressure on her delicate hand and waited until he felt the tension drain from Miss Bishop’s body. Once her breathing turned shallow and even, he gently extracted his fingers from her limp hold.

  Satisfied the laudanum had taken effect, he doused his hands with alcohol over a porcelain bowl, then motioned for Mrs. Franklin to do the same. Without being asked, the suffragist cleaned his tools in the same solution, her movements efficient and sure.

  Caleb breathed a sigh of relief. Mrs. Franklin knew her way around medical instruments. He put her age at midsixties, though he was no expert on such matters. Her hair was the same stern gray as her eyes and her austere dress, the skin around her cheeks frail. She was tall for a woman, and wiry thin. Her fingers were swollen at the knuckles, yet her hands were steady.

  Jo cleared her throat. “Caleb, I never thanked you for coming with me today. I’m thinking this is a good time to remedy that.”

  They exchanged a look, and his throat tightened. A silent communication passed between them, a wealth of understanding born of a shared childhood that didn’t need words.

  A sudden thought jolted him. “Did you find the little girl’s parents? Was anyone else injured?”

  “One question at a time.” Jo admonished. “Anna’s youngest follower discovered her mother in the lobby, frantic with worry. As you’d expect, there was much scolding and a few tears of relief. I asked around, and, as far as anyone can tell, Anna was the only person hurt.”

  Relieved to set one worry aside, Caleb focused on his patient. “Most likely we’d know by now if someone else was injured.”

  Or shot.

  The enormity of Miss Bishop’s condition weighed on him. She’d placed her trust in him, and he wouldn’t fail her. “If Anna comes around, you’ll need to keep her calm. I’ve enough laudanum for another dose, but it’s potent, and I’d like to finish before the first measure wears off.”

  He’d never been a great admirer of the concoction, and the less she ingested, the better.

  Jo pressed the back of her hand against Miss Bishop’s forehead. “Don’t forget, I helped Ma for years with her midwife duties. I know what to do.”

  The irony hadn’t escaped him. Of the three of them, Caleb was the least experienced with human patients, yet he had the most experience with stitching up wounds. After modestly draping Miss Bishop’s upper body, he slid his scissors between the turquoise fabric and her skin and easily sliced the soaked material away from her wound.

  He held out the scissors, and they were instantly replaced with a cloth.

  His admiration for the suffragist grew. “How long did you serve in the war, Mrs. Franklin?”

  “It was only a few months in ’65. I’d lost both of my sons and my husband by then. Our farm was burned. There really wasn’t anything left for me to do. Nothing to do but help others.”

  Caleb briefly closed his eyes before carefully tucking the draping around the bullet wound. “I’m sorry for your losses.”

  Mrs. Franklin lifted her chin. “It was a long time ago. I’ve been a widow longer than I was ever married. Would you like the instruments handed to you from the right or the left?”

  “The right.”

  Her brisk efficiency brought them all on task. Caleb exchanged another quick look with his sister, and she flashed a smile of encouragement. Caleb offered a brief prayer for guidance and set about his work.

  From that moment forward, he focused his attention on the process, certain the surgeon’s arrival was imminent. While Caleb might be the best option at the moment, he was perfectly willing to cede the process to a better option. He wasn’t a man to let false pride cloud his judgment.

  Taking a deep breath, he studied the rift marring the right side of Miss Bishop’s body. He’d seen his fair share of gunshot wounds over the years. It wasn’t unheard of for careless hunters or drunken ranchers to miss their mark and strike livestock. Often the animal was put down, but depending on the location of the wound, he’d been able to save a few. His stomach clenched. Had the bullet gone a few inches to the left...

  He set his jaw and accepted the needle and thread, his hands rock steady. While he worked, his pocket watch ticked the minutes away, resounding in the heavy silence. Though Miss Bishop wasn’t anything like his normal patients, the concept remained the same. He watched for signs of shock, stemmed the bleeding, cleaned the area to inhibit infection, and ensured Jo kept his patient calm.

  Once he was satisfied with his stitches on the entrance wound, he swiped at his forehead with the back of his hand. “We’ll need to turn her to the side.”

  J
o grasped Miss Bishop’s shoulder, and Caleb carefully tilted her onto her hip. Anna groaned, and her arm flipped onto the bed, her hand palm up, her fingers curled, the sight unbearably vulnerable.

  Not even an hour earlier she’d held an entire audience enthralled with her bounding energy, and now her life’s blood drained from her body, vibrant against the cheerful tulip pattern sewn into the quilted coverlet. Impotent rage at whoever had caused this destruction flared in his chest.

  He shook off the distraction with a force of will and resumed his stitching. With any luck they’d already apprehended the shooter.

  Miss Bishop drifted in and out of consciousness during the procedure, but remained mostly numbed throughout his ministrations. For that he was unaccountably grateful.

  Jo dabbed at Anna’s brow and murmured calming words when she grew agitated, keeping her still while Caleb worked. Mrs. Franklin maintained charge of the instruments with practiced efficiency. Despite having only met the widow moments before, their impromptu team worked well together.

  Caleb tied off the last stitch and clipped the thread, then touched the pulse at Miss Bishop’s wrist, buoyed by the strong, steady heartbeat beneath his fingertips. He collapsed back in his chair and surveyed his work.

  He’d kept his stitches precise and small. While he couldn’t order his usual patients to remain in bed after an injury, he’d ensure Miss Bishop rested until she healed.

  With the worst of the crises behind him, the muscles along his shoulders grew taut. Mrs. Franklin sneaked a surreptitious glance at the door.

  When she caught his interest, a bloom of color appeared on her cheeks. “You’ve done a fine job. But I thought... I assumed...”

  “You assumed the surgeon would be here by now.” Caleb pushed forward in his chair and reached for the final bandage. “As did I.”

  He’d made his choice. Instead of walking away, he’d stayed. That choice had unwittingly linked him to Miss Bishop, and he’d sever that tie as soon as the surgeon arrived. The two of them were worlds apart, and the sooner they each returned home, the better.

  He sponged away the last of the blood and sanitized the wound. The instant the alcohol touched her skin, Miss Bishop groaned and arched her back.

  Caleb held a restraining hand against her shoulder. “Don’t undo all of my careful work.”

  She murmured something unintelligible and reached for him again. Painfully aware of his sister’s curious stare, he cradled Miss Bishop’s hand and rubbed her palm with the pad of his thumb. His touch seemed to soothe her, and he kept up the gentle movement until she calmed. The differences between them were striking. His hands were work-roughened and weather-darkened, Anna’s were pale and frighteningly delicate. A callous on the middle finger of her right hand, along with the faded ink stains where she rested her hand against the paper, indicated she wrote often.

  The ease with which she trusted him tightened something in his chest. He never doubted his ability with animals. For as long as he could remember, he’d had an affinity with most anything that walked on all fours...or slithered, for that matter. Yet that skill had never translated with people. An affliction that wasn’t visited on anyone else in his family. The McCoys were a boisterous lot, gregarious and friendly. Caleb was the odd man in the bunch.

  Once her chest rose and fell with even breaths, he reluctantly released his hold and sat back in his chair, then rubbed his damp fingers against his pant legs.

  Her instinctive need for human touch reminded him of the thread that held them all together. All of God’s creatures sought comfort when suffering.

  Voices sounded from the corridor, and Jo stood. “If that’s the surgeon, I’m going to give him a piece of my mind.”

  Mrs. Franklin tucked the blankets around Miss Bishop’s shoulders. “We should tidy the room and change the bedding. Perhaps Mr. McCoy should deal with any visitors we have.”

  Caleb took the hint. “If I’m unable to locate the surgeon, I’ll check on Miss Bishop in half an hour.”

  He snatched his coat and stepped into the corridor, then glanced around the now-empty space. He caught sight of the blood staining his vest and shirt and blew out a breath. The voices they’d heard had not been the surgeon’s, and he couldn’t visit the lobby with such a grisly appearance. The telling evidence discoloring his shirt also placed him at the rally, and he wasn’t ready to answer questions.

  Or make himself a target.

  He crossed to his room and quickly changed. Now that the immediacy of the situation had passed, exhaustion overtook him, and he collapsed onto the bed, clutching his head.

  Of all the things that he’d dreaded when Jo had invited him to accompany her to Kansas City, he hadn’t anticipated this dramatic turn of events.

  He took a few deep breaths and raked his hands through his hair, letting the emotion flow out of him. This happened sometimes. Once the emergency had been dealt with, he often experienced a wave of overwhelming exhaustion. The greater the emergency, the greater his fatigue. He scrubbed his hands down his face and stood, then stepped into the corridor and made his way to the lobby. There’d be time for resting later.

  A man in a loose-fitting overcoat brushed past him on the staircase.

  “Say, fellow,” the man said. “Were you at the rally this afternoon?”

  “Yes. And you?”

  Perhaps this gentleman knew if there had been any further injuries as a result of the shooting.

  “Nope. I was supposed to be covering Miss Bishop’s speech for The Star paper. Figured I’d slip in for the last few minutes. Who wants to listen to them ladies whine? Now I gotta figure out what happened or the boss will have my hide. There was some kind of commotion, right?”

  Caleb measured his words carefully. “There was a disturbance. The crowd scattered.”

  “What kind of disturbance?”

  Great. Now he’d gone and cornered himself into telling the whole of it. “A gunshot.”

  The man’s eyes widened, and he gleefully rubbed his hands together, then splayed them. “I can see the headline now, Shot Fired Across the Bow of Suffragist Battle.”

  The man’s elation turned Caleb’s stomach. Brushing past the reporter before he said anything more revealing, Caleb loped down the stairs and paused on the balcony overlooking the lobby. A discordance of noise hit him like a wall.

  Having survived the encounter at the rally, scores of people from the audience had obviously congregated at the hotel to share their dramatic stories. Voices were raised in excitement, and more than one gentleman clutched a strong drink.

  Caleb sucked in a breath and made his way across the room. He couldn’t have designed a better nightmare for himself. Twice in one day, he’d been forced into a crush of people.

  Upon reaching the concierge desk, he waved over the gentleman in the bottle-green uniform he’d seen his sister approach earlier. “Did the surgeon arrive?”

  The man lifted his hands. “Not that I know of. It’s been like this since the rally. It’s all we can do to keep the crowd contained in the lobby.” The concierge glanced left and right and ducked his head. “I caught a reporter upstairs, and there are several policemen waiting to speak with Miss Bishop. I’ll hold them off as long as I can.”

  Caleb rubbed his forehead. “That would be best.”

  The man cleared his throat. “I also took the liberty of removing Miss Bishop’s name from the guest register.” The man cleared his throat again. “I have your party listed in the register book as yourself, your sister and your fiancée.”

  Caleb’s head shot up. “Say again?”

  “I have a large staff. I can handpick the workers on the fourth floor. I cannot guarantee the characters of all my employees.”

  “But fiancée?”

  The man lifted his hands as though in surrender. “The title seemed the least
likely one for Miss Bishop to take. Since she’s a, you know, she’s a...”

  “She’s a suffragist. It’s not a profanity.”

  “My apologies, sir. I can change the register.”

  Caleb pictured Anna, her turquoise dress ruined, her bold speech silenced. Why would anyone want to live in the public eye? And yet he couldn’t deny her obvious appeal, the way her vivacious speech had captivated the crowd. He couldn’t imagine a better figurehead for the cause.

  “No, you’ve done well,” Caleb said. “Keeping her identity hidden is best.”

  As he surveyed the scene, voices ebbed and flowed around him. All of these people had come to hear her speak. He fisted his hands. Not all of them. For all he knew, the man who’d pulled the trigger was here. Waiting. Watching.

  Caleb searched the faces of the spectators milling around the lobby. There was no way of knowing, no way of telling who held violence in their heart.

  He raked his hands through his hair. Until they discovered the shooter, the less said, the better. What did it matter how Anna was registered? No one would know but the hotel staff.

  After a few more words with the concierge about the new room arrangement, he returned upstairs and met Jo as she exited Miss Bishop’s room.

  Caleb checked the corridor, ensuring the space was empty of curiosity seekers before pulling Jo aside. “It’s not safe for Miss Bishop. She needs a guard at her door. I’ve arranged for another room for you. Simply switching with Miss Bishop is out of the question. There are reporters and policemen. Not to mention whoever fired the shot is still out there.”

  His sister propped her hands on her hips. “She should come home with us.”

  Caleb had briefly thought the same thing, and had come up with a thousand reasons why the plan was not sound. “This isn’t our concern. Surely she has family, friends.”

  A sweetheart, perhaps. The thought brought him up short. He shook his head. Nothing in the papers had ever indicated that Miss Bishop was linked with a gentleman—and that would certainly be newsworthy.