Redeemed: Into The Wild

One

November 1868

Denver

Living, for the past month, in a whorehouse, Dr. James Madison had grown used to a certain element of the fantastic.

A layer of the theatrical laid over Delilah’s like a fine dust.

The stage and the footlights.

The girls with their costumes and dramas.

Delilah with her feathers and beauty marks—an elaborate pretense to hide her fatally broken heart.

The men who came in every night, to pretend for however much it cost that they could buy something that couldn’t be bought.

A fleeting wet and warm shadow perhaps. But not the sustaining reality of it.

This whole building and everything in it was a lie. A wish, perhaps. But false all the same.

All that to say, James would have thought nothing could surprise him.

But he stepped into the wide-open barroom of the whorehouse and stopped in his tracks.

Icy snow slipped off the brim of his hat onto his bare neck. It hurt, that hot/cold brush of ice, but the pain was gone too fast.

What is that? He pointed at the large domed object covered in a red velvet blanket that sat on the small stage in the middle of the room. Sunlight from the new windows turned the velvet blanket the color of blood. Rich and saturated.

That, answered Kyle the bartender as he made the place ready for the night, loading fresh shells into the shotgun beneath the bar. There were other things he undoubtedly did as the barkeep of Delilah’s whorehouse, but that gun always seemed paramount. Is a birdcage.

What kind of bird is that big?

The cage was taller than James, so wide he would not be able to put his arms around it.

The human kind.

James stared at the red-haired man, who stared right back. Kyle made no effort to hide the fact that he didn’t like James. Which was fine; James didn’t much like himself.

If you’d been paying any attention. At all- Kyle said.

I haven’t been.

James did not flinch at the censure in Kyle’s face. The man could judge him all he wanted.

The Northern Spy. The act? Kyle said the words as if they were supposed to mean something. The virgin. Jesus, he muttered. You are a self-absorbed son of a bitch.

Yes, it would seem so, wouldn’t it?

For the years after the war, up until this very breath—and he imagined every single breath after this one—chloroform had ruled his life. Controlled his thoughts. Wanting it and not having it occupied every moment of his day now.

He didn’t care about the birdcage or the Northern Spy. He couldn’t care about anything. Not now and maybe never again. He could not afford to.

All he could do was want and not have. Crave and deny.

It was all he was and could ever be again.

He wasn’t a doctor or a man. He could never be a person’s friend again.

Without another word he turned and went back out into the snow and the ice.

It was dark when he came back. The snow had long since stopped and the sky had cleared. It was all stars and bright white moon over his head. The lights of Delilah’s, the laughter and the tinny piano, a woman’s warbled singing—Agnes, he thought, judging by the high notes. She had enthusiasm but not much skill.

All of it, the light the sound—the life—spilled out the doors onto the dirty snow of Market Street. The street was busy despite the hour and the weather, thanks to the saloons and Delilah’s. He recognized a few of the men stumbling past him in the dark, fewer than he should. Patients at one time or another.

He went around the back and the cats came out from their hidey holes to greet him, curling around his ankles like he had something to give them.

The smallest one, the calico with an ornery temperament, he scooped up in his hands.

You haven’t been taking care of that wound like I told you. He tilted what was left of the cat’s ear, running his thumb over the stitches he’d given her. They were oozy. You get an infection and you’re going to lose the whole ear.

The cat bit his thumb in response.

Treating animals? a voice asked out of the darkness, and he flinched, squeezing the cat so hard she hissed.

Sorry, he breathed. To the animal and the woman behind him.

Every muscle fired, every instinct screamed. Run. Run away.

But he’d been walking all day every day, and he didn’t have much strength past the initial instinct.

And the truth was he couldn’t avoid her forever. Denver was small.

James put the cat down and faced one of his worst mistakes. His bloodiest regret.

Annie Denoe stepped from the shadows into a slice of moonlight just outside the back door of the whorehouse. The larger shadow behind her proved to be Steven Baywood. The blond man’s eyes were glittering and hard, and the way he lingered at the edge of Annie’s shoulder told a certain story about their relationship. James had heard the rumor about Annie and Steven from the whores inside, but they were notorious for rumors.

But this one, it seemed, was true.

Annie and Steven were in love.

Good. He shoved his shaking hands into his pockets. That is a good thing. Annie and Steven. She’d loved that man for a long time. And Annie deserved to be happy.

Before that night with the madman and the blood, James had asked Annie to marry him. He’d asked her to marry him because he admired her. Because he didn’t know how else to keep her safe with the outrageous arrangement they had concocted between them.

But mostly he’d asked her to marry him because she had money and he had a chloroform mania.

The shame was acidic, boiling in his gut.

She did not belong with the likes of James. But the proposal had had the benefit of forcing Steven into action.

Annie, he said, dipping his head slightly with his thin brand of cordiality. At least his voice was even. Steven. Nice to see both of you.

Annie kept walking toward him, past what was polite until she was only a few inches away. The tip of her cane punched a hole in the snow right next to his boot. The loud snap of it made him flinch.

She leaned forward, and the moonlight caught the edge of her glasses and obliterated her eyes, which—he wasn’t going to lie—was a relief.

Annie’s eyes had always been too sharp. Too clear. Too able to see right through everything.

Right through him.

You look like hell. Are you O.K.?

He very nearly smiled because he liked her so damn much, but behind her Steven cleared his throat and James was reminded of how much his relationship to Annie had cost her. How it had almost killed her.

He stepped back, away from her and all her fierceness.

Couldn’t be better. You? He clung to manners with the strength of a shipwreck survivor on a fragment of hull.

James, she sighed, as if urging him to let go of his little piece of wood.

She reached forward with her gloved hand, about to touch him. Embrace him. About to act in a way that would reach into their past and require him to be a friend to her.

Miss Denoe. He used her last name and his firmest doctor-with-a-raving-patient voice.

She stiffened as if he’d slapped her, and James didn’t know what to do. How to not hurt her. How to not hurt everyone in his life.

The urge to turn on his heel and walk away, into the night and perhaps not come back, was not insignificant.

I came to visit you weeks ago, she said. To see if you were all right. Delilah wouldn’t let me see you.

He could almost imagine it. The two fiercest women he knew head to head at the door of his sick room. It made him wretched with guilt.

She said you were very sick.

He didn’t remember much of that first week as the drugs left his system. The pain was the only thread he could follow.

As you can see, I am fine.

You’re too thin, she said.

Ignoring her assessment, he smiled over Annie’s shoulder at Steven. Mr. Baywood, a pleasure to see you again.

Steven simply nodded.

Ah, I had forgotten the pleasure of your conversation. Out for a stroll? James asked. Past the brothel? Not my first choice, but to each their own.

Delilah sent a note that she needed my help.

Your help? Annie’s help? Never. Not ever again.

She said she wanted a doctor.

You’re not a doctor.

James had allowed her too much freedom as his assistant. He’d rented the first floor of her home as his office, and she’d quickly gone from landlady to reliable assistant to…pretend doctor. Because she was skilled and smart and eager to learn, and he was a little enchanted, a lot lazy and above all a terrible human. And now people treated Annie like a doctor. Which was dangerous. For her. A month ago she’d been here as a doctor when she’d been pulled into a room with a madman holding a gun who’d killed himself inches from her face.

And she’d only gone because James had been passed out in a drugged stupor.

She could have died, and it would have been as if he’d pulled the trigger.

Steven’s steely gaze in the shadows, filled with disdain, agreed with his thoughts.

Which is what I said in my answering note, Annie said. I said in fact that she had a doctor under her roof. But apparently you are too busy stitching up stray cats to do whatever it is she needs help with.

The burning slash of her tongue delighted some deeply hidden and perverse place in him. It always had.

The back door opened, and Delilah stood in the slice of light from the doorway in her feathers and rhinestones. A far cry from the aproned nursemaid who’d kept him alive. If she was surprised to see all of them standing there among the cats her perfect face gave no indication, but he suddenly felt an anger bloom through him like blood hitting water.

Do you remember what happened the last time Annie came here because you needed a doctor? he asked Delilah.

Do you mean when you were too unconscious to do your own job? she asked. Her eyebrow arched at his tone. Is that the time you’re referring to?

He could feel the blood beat hard in his face. Yes.

I need a medical—

She’s not a doctor.

Yes, well, neither are you these days.

There are other doctors in this city.

None that I trust.

True, Whitmore was a prig who liked to sermonize the girls as he felt under their skirts.

It’s fine, Annie said, stepping toward Delilah as if she meant to go inside.

It’s not fine. He lifted his hand to physically stop her. But it was an error, he knew that the moment he did it, he did not need Steven’s heavy hand on his shoulder to remind him.

Do not, Steven said, his voice low and menacing, raise your hand to her.

James shrugged off Steven’s hand, angrier than he’d been in years. Don’t you have a railroad empire to run? he snapped.

Not at the moment. No.

Well, if you’re so concerned why are you allowing her to come here?

"He does not allow me to do anything," Annie said.

Steven, who did not smile, smiled. The happiness between them nearly sparkled and filled James with such an ache.

How forward thinking of you, he said without any heat. The problem remains, Annie, you shouldn’t be here.

Neither should you, she said, clearly trying not to show her pity, but unable to keep it all covered. It will be Christmas soon, no one should be alone at Christmas. You can come back-

Annie, stop. He would not go back to the rooms he’d rented from her. His office and the examination rooms. The location of all his worst moments.

Christmas. He could have laughed.

If it were possible to never see Annie again, he would do it.

Yes. That was a fabulous idea.

Go home, he said to Annie and Steven. I’ll handle whatever medical emergency is happening here.

Annie looked from James to Delilah. Are you sure?

Quite. Now, get out of here, he snapped, letting for just a moment his raw edges show.

If whatever needed doing inside this whorehouse happened to kill him, all the better.

Annie watched him for a long, assessing moment, and then Steven touched the edge of her cape. The warm woolen one she’d gotten last year. She’d been so pleased with it, the braided trim.

Annie, Steven said, all warmth and knowledge.

Go! James yelled and she stepped back, stricken, and Steven was there to hold her, to put his arm over her shoulder, keeping her safe.

You needn’t shout.

I do. Otherwise you don’t listen.

Our connection was born out of convenience. And our desperation—mine to be useless, and yours to be useful. Those days are over and I am no longer in need of your…usefulness.

I am a stone, he thought, hardening himself against that look on her face. A stone that you will tie to your shoe and drag around because you are too kind.

My rooms, you mean, she murmured.

Your rooms, your money, your willingness to do my job and turn a blind eye to my inebriety. I mean all of them.

She waited for him to take it back. To laugh or apologize, and he did none of those things. Finally he saw it register—the last hope for whatever decency or kindness she wanted to attribute to him was destroyed.

Come on, Annie, Steven whispered, turning her toward home.

James very nearly sighed with relief. He very nearly put his hands on his knees and wept with sour gratitude. But she turned, glancing over her shoulder at him, and so he only stared back. Arranging his features into some kind of indifference. He might have smirked.

And so the two of them, Annie and Steven, followed their own footprints back through the snow toward the end of Market Street where her house sat on the edge of town.

She was your only friend, Delilah said after they were gone.

I don’t have friends. He turned back to Delilah, with all her pain that no amount of feathers or gilt could hide. People like us are not friendly.

In her silence he wondered if she was thinking about Kyle. If she ever thought about Kyle.

No, we’re not, she finally agreed.

So. He took a deep breath and stepped toward the open door. She shifted out of his way as he came inside. She did it with aplomb, but he noticed she did it with everyone, not just him. She constantly managed the space around herself, not letting anyone too close. What is this medical emergency? he asked.

The Northern Spy, Delilah said. That rang some bell in his brain, but he didn’t put much energy into sussing out why.

"There is no North and South. The war was