Chapter 46

Carefully, Adam palpated the dog's limbs and trunk. One broken leg, but no major injuries to the torso or head, thank God. He turned Monty over and examined the nasty gash on his left flank. Almost instantly there was a basin of water at his right hand and a stack of clean linen at his left.
Monty's eyes fluttered open as Adam began to wash the wound. Instantly, the woman stepped to the dog's head and stroked his ears, murmuring softly to the beast while simultaneously holding his shoulders still so Adam could work.
"Good dog, Monty. There's a good boy." Her voice was sweeter than he'd imagined, deep for a woman's but soft and kind.
"Can you reach that bottle of ether?" The graze was full of mud and debris - cleaning it would not be easy, and he didn't want Monty to bite his rescuer in a moment of pain.
"Of course." A quick flutter of movement and the glass bottle was in his hand.
He dampened a cloth with a few drops of the anesthetic and handed it to Mrs. James. "Hold this in front of his nose for a few moments."
She did, soothing the patient until his eyes drooped closed. "He's unconscious, Doctor."
"Alcohol." He didn't stop to wonder at the comfort with which he'd started treating her as his assistant. Moments later the bottle of ethyl alcohol was in his hand. She stood beside him, dampening cloths and dealing with soiled ones until he had the wound cleaned. He told her where the suture needles were located, and had her hold the skin together while he stitched. Through it all, she didn't flinch.
He'd set the bone and was wrapping the splint on Monty's foreleg when the dog stirred again. Marietta James held the animal's head until he was done bandaging. Then he dosed poor Monty with a few drops of laudanum and sighed.
"That's all we can do. If infection doesn't set in he should be fine."
"Thank you," Mrs. James said in a voice that was suspiciously shaky. "I can't pay you until quarter day, I'm afraid..." She collected the used equipment and began returning things to where she'd found them. The used basin went in the sink while unused linens and bandages were rerolled and returned to their places.
"You don't owe me any money," he told her. "I'm fond of Lara Denslow myself. Honestly, I feel in your debt for your assistance. You aren't by any chance a trained nurse, are you?" He thought he remembered that her late husband had been a soldier. Had she followed the drum and perhaps tended wounded on the Peninsula?
"Nothing so useful, I'm afraid." She leaned against the examining table and studied the dog. Her softly arched brows knit together in worry. "Just a farm girl who often pitched in when there were livestock emergencies."
"Well, thank you." That also helped explain her carrying the dog to his house. Most women of his acquaintance couldn't have lifted the dog, let alone managed more than a few steps, carrying its unconscious weight. He finished washing his hands then gathered Monty up in his arms. "If you'll help me lay a blanket in front of the fire, I think I'll keep our furry friend with me tonight." He led her back to the parlor and its warm hearth. Though he always kept the stove burning in his surgery, that room was nowhere near as warm as this.
She took a blanket from the back of a settee and folded it, laying it on the rug before the grate. Adam carefully placed the unconscious dog on the pad, checking pulse and respiration one last time. Then he turned to face his unpaid assistant.
"Mrs. James..." Adam paused as he looked at her plump, pretty features. She shook from head to toe and her lips were blue. "Damnation, woman, why didn't you say anything?" He took her icy hands in his and began to chafe them. The woman was damn near frozen. Her hands were also scraped from her fall, though she'd cleaned them well enough in the surgery that they should be safe from infection.
"N-not imp-portant," she stuttered. "But if I c-could sit by the f-fire for a m-moment..."
"Here." He pulled an armchair up as close to the grate as he could without disturbing Monty and pushed her down into it. Almost immediately he pulled her back up again. "No. You should get you out of those wet clothes first. I'll go upstairs and fetch you something to put on. For now, take those wet things off and wrap up in the blanket. I'll stay on the stairs until you're ready for me to return."
She didn't argue, which Adam took as a sign that she was dangerously chilled. His encounters with Mrs. James had been few, but she'd never struck him as a woman who hesitated to say her piece. She'd always seemed to set herself above the other residents of Porter Street, though given her care for Monty he was now beginning to doubt his impressions. Perhaps what he'd taken for coldness had really just been reserve.
She stood obediently. As he turned to dash up the stairs, he tried not to imagine her hands releasing her heavy bombazine skirt.
He had a warming brick on the hearth in his bedroom and a kettle full of hot water on the stove in his kitchen. He fetched the brick first, wrapped in a towel, along with a pair of woolen socks, his flannel dressing gown and a clean nightshirt, which had been hung near the fire so it was warm.
He hurried down the stairs, pausing just before he entered the parlor. "Can I come in?"
"If - if you would," she said, her voice trembling. "I'm afraid I'm a bit...stuck."
"What's the matter?"
"My hands are shaking and I've managed to put a knot in my laces. If I could borrow a knife?"
"You're soaked through to the skin, aren't you?" He rounded the doorway and saw her standing in her corset and petticoats. When she didn't respond, he continued. "Idiot woman. If you can't manage laces, do you think you'd be safe with a knife?"
"Oh bother. Can you help?"
It was horribly against protocol, but then so was letting her catch a chill. At least she was a respectable widow, not a young girl. Resolutely, Adam stepped to her side and took the recalcitrant laces into his hands, trying mightily to focus his eyes on the knot and not on any part of her voluptuous curves.
"S-sorry."
"For what?" he gritted between his teeth. "For not getting run over completely, or for rescuing a little girl's pet? I didn't take you for a fool, madam. Try not to act like one. No apologies are necessary."
Once he had her corset unlaced, he turned his back while she finished undressing, handing her his shirt and dressing gown over his shoulder. Once she assured him she was swathed in fabric, he turned back and wrapped her in a quilt off one of the settees and guided her cocooned body down into a chair, noting her wince as his hand accidentally grazed her hip. He removed her boots and the stockings she'd rolled down to her ankles then covered her icy feet with his socks and tucked them up into the blanket with the hot brick. "Now sit here and don't move. I'll go make a pot of tea and be right back."