"There you go," the ambulance driver said with false cheer as he settled Thomas in his bed. Thomas thanked him with great dignity.
From the doorway, Lucien observed it all, his arms tightly folded. He could hear the housekeeper clanking around in the kitchen, supposedly making tea but he'd seen the way tears formed in her eyes as soon as she watched her employer being carried into his home on a stretcher.
Employer—something more was going on there, Lucien thought with distaste. Another complication to be dealt with when his father—to be dealt with later. Clearing out the house would mean moving her along too, and if she felt that she had some claim to the estate...He took a deep breath. He wasn't ready to deal with overflowing female emotions.
"If there's anything you'll be needing, Doc, just ring us up. We'll take care of you," the ambo said as a parting to his father, while giving Lucien an outraged look.
Only in a town a few days, and he already had a reputation, Lucien thought ruefully.
After seeing the ambos out, he returned to the bedroom. "How is that, Father?" he said heartily.
"Well as can be expected," Thomas replied, but his voice was weak.
Lucien smelled her before she was there at his elbow; a warm summer garden. "Tea is ready, Doctor," Jean said, ignoring Lucien.
Thomas visibly brightened, struggling to pull himself up in the bed. Jean brushed past Lucien to assist him, pushing a pillow in behind his back.
"A slice of your wonderful banana cake?" Thomas asked hopefully. "With lots of butter?"
"No," Jean said regretfully, "your doctor sent along a list of acceptable dishes. I've made a date loaf."
"Bother," grumbled Thomas.
"He can have a bit of butter on his slice," Lucien told her.
She tossed back her head and glared at him. "The instructions said no fat—"
He leaned close. "Yes, he can," Lucien said quietly.
She met his gaze, then dropped hers. He saw the tears shining in her eyes again. "Let me get your tray," she said quietly.
Jean sat with Thomas, which meant Lucien could have his own slice of well-buttered date loaf and tea in peace. Only to have the front doorbell ring just as he was tucking in. He was nearly to the door when Jean popped out of his father's room, reaching for the knob as well.
"I'll get that," she said firmly.
He ignored her and opened the door to reveal a young district nurse, her bright face shining from under her woollen grey beret.
"Hello there," the girl said easily, "I'm Mattie O'Brien. Here to look in on Dr Blake?"
"That won't be necessary," Lucien said with an imperious air, looking her over. "I'm also a doctor and can tend to my father."
Mattie didn't back away. Her smile remained in place. "In my experience, there's duties that doctors would prefer that nurses do."
"In your experience—" Lucien squinted at her. "How old are you? Twenty?"
"I just turned twenty-one." The smile remained but her gaze turned flinty.
Twenty-one. Li would be twenty-one. Lucien's cheek twitched. He had no idea what his daughter would look like. Then Jean grasped his arm and pulled him aside.
"Mattie! Please come in!" she said loudly.
Thomas heard her, and called out a welcome as well. Lucien was effectively overruled. His family name was on the brass plate outside, but it was obvious that he was not in charge.
He had retreated to the kitchen and brooded over his date loaf and cool tea. It had been the beginning of a new sort of life for him, with women's expectations to be considered. It did turn out that Jean had claim on this house, but not in the way that he'd thought.
On a much more base level, the memory of Jean's fine baking was making his stomach growl. The fire was down to cherry red coals and Jean curled closely to his chest, her arm tightening across his belly. Their dressing gowns did little to fend off the chill.
"What's that?" she murmured, tapping his tummy.
"Hungry," he confessed.
She slowly blinked like a waking cat. "Surely not again," she said, pushing her curls off her forehead. "We'll have to report you to the uni in Melbourne for a study, I swear."
He gave her bum a soft swat. "Goose," he said affectionately. "If you must know, I was thinking of your amazing date loaf. I don't suppose you have any—"
She sat upright, clutching her gown closed. "With everything else going on, you actually expected me to have baked?"
Devoid of her warmth, he groped for his own gown's belt and tied it. "Of course not," he said quickly.
She stood. "Well, I did. I couldn't leave Charlie here with nothing to eat."
Pattering off to the kitchen with Lucien in pursuit, Jean hid her smile from him. She turned though, and putting her hand on his chest, she made a demand: "But promise me that after this midnight snack, we'll go to bed. Sleep," she said definitely.
He flicked on the light. "Of course," he said but she thought he seemed evasive.
The kettle bubbled as she took the cake from its tin. "I can't believe you're hungry after all the food at the wedding supper."
"I didn't see you eating much," he chided. "Too busy making sure that everyone else was having a good time." To make his point, he pulled out a chair for her and gently pushed her down into it.
After taking down the cups, he shook tea leaves into the earthenware pot and fetched butter from the icebox for their cake along with the milk jug. Jean watched him with affection. She liked him being domestic.
Date loaf...Mattie had loved it..."I'll be so glad to see Mattie on our trip," she said, "I miss her so much."
He sat beside her. "I do too. And I loved watching the two of you together." For a time, he'd lived with a mother and daughter, and had been grateful.
She actually blushed. "What?" he asked, curious.
Dipping her head, she sipped her tea and avoided his gaze. "I—I'm embarrassed to say."
"There's not much to be embarrassed about after the past few hours," he said wickedly.
It worked as he intended. Her cheeks flamed redder and she gasped, "Lucien!"
"Tell me."
Her cup clanked as she placed it a bit too firmly back on the saucer. "I...I was jealous of Mattie."
"How well she got on with my father?"
"No..." She recalled those days as Thomas was dying so clearly. The young nurse had been a godsend, taking care of delicate necessities that Thomas never would have wanted Jean to perform. Jean had known Mattie from church and a few other social occasions, and quickly found her a wonderful companion, easing the pain of that difficult time.
But Mattie was also the source of unexpected and painful emotions that Jean hadn't even been able to define at the time. Lucien Blake was the son of her employer and thus should be served and treated with civility, but he aggravated and unsettled her. What she should not have been doing was harrumphing and narrowing her eyes every time he was near Mattie.
Around Jean, Lucien was distant and terse but with Mattie, he dipped his shaggy head like a shy puppy every time she addressed him. He gazed at her with utter adoration. He rushed outside to fetch the afternoon paper for her to read with her tea. He fiddled with the radio to find just the right music for her to enjoy while filling in her notebook. Jean seethed. So unseemly. A man old enough to be her father—well, wasn't that just like a bloke?
Thomas had seen her watching Lucien and Mattie playing croquet in the backyard from the windows. When the young woman laughed, Lucien joined her, his deep chuckles melding perfectly with her light tones. Jean snapped the curtains shut sharply.
"I hope that Lucien's not too upset when she's done with this job and goes off," Thomas said.
"Lucien, upset?" Jean said with a huff. She bit back a few other things that she immediately thought, about dirty old men and pretty young lasses, and nurses and doctors, and men abusing their power, and really, shouldn't Thomas Blake's son be above such behaviour? Not that it was her business, and not that she really cared, but Mattie O'Brien had her own reputation to worry about and he wouldn't consider such things, would he, with his drinking and sleeping in the shrubs and wearing dirty togs—
"Mattie must remind him of his daughter. She's about the right age."
Jean spun around. "Lucien has a family?" Why hadn't this occurred to her? And why did her stomach drop?
Thomas had gone pale. He pressed his fingers to his quivering lips. "I've failed him—them."
She hurried to sit beside Thomas on the couch. He'd seemed to have shrunk over the past few weeks and she fit easily on the cushion. She picked up his hand. "Don't fret so, Doctor."
"I do nothing but fret these days." He leaned back into the pillows. "So much yet to do, but I just don't have the strength."
"Doctor Blake..."
"My son married a...an Oriental lady while in Singapore. Of course, she was unsuitable to live in Ballarat, be mistress of this house, and I'm afraid that I made a bit of a fuss."
For the first time since she'd come to work for Thomas, Jean thought less of him. She turned away and watched the figures out in the garden through the sheer curtains.
"If I'd welcomed her into the family, perhaps she and the girl would have been here when Singapore fell. Instead, they were lost."
"Are they dead?"
"I don't dare ask but they must be." She'd never heard Thomas sound so defeated and ashamed.
"Perhaps you should now."
"Some things are best left alone." He was firm, so she did leave it. And Lucien wouldn't tell her about his family for months. Father and son were not much different in some ways.
Mattie had burst into the lounge, flushed pink from the sun and exertion, and had apologised for disturbing the patient. Thomas had only smiled sadly at her, and told her that a young person brightened up the house.
Lucien tugged Jean out of her chair and onto his lap. "Darling?" he said, wrapping his arms around her waist. "You never had anything to be jealous about. What in the world would a pretty young girl have seen in this old sod?"
She remained seated as though his lap was her chair, her back ramrod straight. "I'd been expecting that old sod to behave as old sod's do around pretty young girls," she said tartly.
He laughed and she didn't like that sparkle in his eyes. He set his chin on her shoulder, tickling her cheek with his beard. "I was being silly," she said, the martyr. "I didn't know you yet. I didn't understand."
He rocked her back to cradle her in his arms, a proper snuggle. "But if I'd known that her presence hurt you, I wouldn't have asked her to move in—"
"She had to come live with us." Jean leaned her head against his chest. His hands were everywhere on her body, gentle strokes and squeezes, but not starting anything. Just like his touch had been until she'd had to acknowledge what it was really about, and had to tell him to stop.
"To stop wagging tongues," he said, "after my father was gone, she needed to be here for your reputation—"
"And yours," Jean pointed out. "No one would have trusted their wife with a doctor who lived in sin."
He rolled his eyes.
"It was for the best, and you know it."
"Anyone who believed that of you—"
She struggled free from his grasp to stand and lean against the bench. "Oh?"
Chilled by the loss of her body, he sensed he'd trod on delicate ground. "You're the most honourable woman I know," he said carefully.
"I would never, right?" The challenge was there.
He furrowed his brow. The minefield was clearly marked, but where lay the bombs? "You...wouldn't?"
She met his questioning gaze. The first night that he would sleep in the house, two doors down from her bedroom in his childhood bed, she'd not locked her door because she wouldn't show him fear. But she remained half awake, stirring at every creak of the old house, every rattle of a window sash. She'd gone bolt upright at sudden cries piercing the night, not words but guttural sounds. At her door, pulling her gown on over her nightdress, she could tell it was coming from Lucien's room. He must not disturb Thomas. Thinking of nothing else, she rapped on his door.
When he didn't stop yelling, she opened the door and strode through, deciding an air of authority was necessary. Caught in some frightful nightmare, Lucien thrashed on the narrow bed, tangled in the sheet. Her instincts kicked in and she started to pull the sheet free, as if straightening up the bed of one of her sons. His flailing arms found hers and he pulled her down to his chest.
This wasn't a boy though. He was naked and sheened with sweat, she realised in horror. His mouth settled on her neck where the pulse jumped with shock. He stopped crying out but
each gasping breath was like a grazing kiss to her throat.
Managing to pull him up so she could sit on the edge of the mattress, she tried roust him. "Doctor...Lucien..." In the dark room, his eyes shone up at her glazed and unfocused. His hand gripped her arm tightly, as though he was a drowning man going down. His heavy head settled on her breasts, pushing aside the loose neck of her satin nightdress, and his moist breathing was on her collarbone. It had been so long since she'd been this close and intimate with a man, and for a brief moment, it seemed so easy to allow him to pull her back down on the mattress—this could not continue.
"Lucien." Her tone was sharp.
He didn't reply, but his breathing hitched. She eased up to her feet and extracted herself from his grasp. He fell to the bed with a sigh of relief. She hurried to the doorway but dared to glance back. She wasn't certain, but thought that she saw the glint of his eyes, watching her. She latched the door as quietly as possible.
He never spoke of the incident, nor did she mention it either. The next day, he did tell her that he would start sleeping on a bed in his father's room to offer any assistance. She had agreed that it was a very good idea. She switched to a much more sensible nightdress and gown, and the few times she said him in his nightclothes, he was fully covered as well. Later, he moved into his father's room, and he firmly told everyone to ignore his night terrors. She would lie in the dark, listening to his muffled screams, and grip the edge of her mattress to keep from going to him.
Lucien probed again. "You said that I wasn't the sort of bloke that you'd be interested in—"
She smoothed her satin gown's sleeve, avoiding his gaze. "I said that I wouldn't have married you."
Lucien didn't know why he was arguing this point, but it was all suddenly important. "Surely you wouldn't have—I mean, a respectable widowed housekeeper—"
Her gaze turned sharp. "Really. Not the sort, right?" she said.
He stepped right on that landmine. "Of course not!"
"Not some lovely modern girl, the sort that men try it on with." She turned away, grabbing the kettle from the stove.
"Lovely, yes. Try it on...No?" he said slowly. He really couldn't see a way of out of this.
She was at the sink, adding water to the kettle. "No, I'm the sort who has to wait around for a man to come calling, hope for the best—" The kettle clanked loudly on the hob's burner. The gas lit with a whoosh.
"You could have had any man," he insisted, fighting his confusion with determination. "I was just lucky that you waited around on this particular man."
She collapsed in a chair at the other end of the table from him and smoothed back her hair. She didn't look at him. Yes, men had tried it on, from husbands of families that she'd worked for before the Blakes to shopkeepers assuming she was up for it. Even Patrick Tyneman; she could never tell Lucien of that unpleasant encounter! Other men had assumed that she was desperate enough to overlook their flaws for the chance to remarry. Still others had thought she was already taken. Social functions spent with the wallflowers, but for the dances in Lucien's arms, while the partygoers watched their every turn. Men who'd chat her up, only to glance Lucien's way as if needing his permission. Then those rare souls who'd dared to breach the doorway, but then having to brave her employer's intense glare. And now Lucien seemed incredulous that she'd 'waited' for him? For such a brilliant man, he could be obtuse sometimes.
The kettle screamed.
"Jean?"
"Let me get us more tea." She kept her back to him as she fussed with the teapot and kettle.
He had a flash of anger. He'd been frozen for so long, afraid to reach out to her, afraid of releasing his tumultuous emotions. Their fragile glass world within this house could be shattered and lost forever if he had handled it too roughly. He simply couldn't lose what little peace that he'd found there. But if she'd given him any encouragement...would he have been able to control himself? A tremor ran through his limbs. The stiff set to her shoulders and jerky movements in her mundane tasks were very familiar and he calmed.
His father's dying breaths and she was the one weeping. A woman crying...He knew what he was supposed to do, but Lucien could only stand with his back to the wall and watch Jean's hunched shoulders shake. Mattie was mercifully there to gather Jean to her arms when her nursing skills were no longer needed. Then Jean was the widow at the funeral, all in black, three steps behind the coffin. It was so much easier to carry the burden of the coffin on his shoulder than give her the support she needed.
Instead, he'd travelled to Melbourne, bought a few drinks in the right sort of pub, and had gone home with a woman who held up no such barriers. Angie? Annie? She'd understood what the evening was about, and responded eagerly. Lucien had thought that he could simply blow off some steam before settling into a close living arrangement with an attractive woman, only to exacerbate the situation when it was her face that he saw as he thrust mindlessly into this woman's body. He'd been sickened as he always was when he sought release this way. The times before, he'd felt unfaithful to Mei Lin, this time, it was to a woman who he'd only known a few weeks. The swarm of undefinable emotions clouded his thoughts for much too long. Marriage was supposed to have freed him. He stood quickly, knocking his chair back.
"I think that I need a drink." He was gone before she could say anything.
He carefully poured just a finger of whisky. He'd try cutting back rather than go cold turkey. When she touched his back, he barely flinched. He knew how difficult it would be for her to follow and reach out to him. Covering her hand with his, he downed his drink.
"Do you need that?"
"You want me to sleep, don't you?" His tone was harsher than he expected.
She stepped away.
He set the crystal glass down carefully as to not break it. He was still too rough and it banged on the tabletop.
He had thought that he'd go mad sitting with his father, doing what little that he could to ease the suffering of a dying man. He considered clearing away any barriers between them, but every time that he started to speak, the words lodged in his throat like dry bread. Nor did his father seem ready to talk, and he used that as his excuse.
When the doorbell had rung, it was so loud he started in his chair. "I'll get that," he said unnecessarily to his father who was dozing.
The elderly lady at the door looked familiar, but she was the first to say something. "Lucien," she gasped, "I'd heard that you were in town."
"Mrs Clasby," he said and before he could stop her, she was hugging him, right there in the entry. No one had touched him with affection since before the war. The last hugs from Mei Lin and Li before they'd gotten on the boat which was supposed to carry them to safety. He disentangled himself with care, for the old lady was frail. "It's so good to see you," he added formally.
She tugged his beard. "All grown up, I see."
For the first time, he was embarrassed with his appearance. "Been working in a mining town," he said gruffly, "no need to spruce myself up."
Giving him a gentle smile, she squeezed his arm. "I'm sure you're still a handsome boy under all that fuzz."
"Nell, is that you?" Thomas was calling from his room, his voice stronger than it had been in days. His old friend joined him and Lucien fled to the kitchen to prepare tea with shaking hands. He brought it into the over-warm, stuffy bedroom and forced himself to stay, even if it was stand with his back pressed to the wall.
He didn't like Nell's colour though, and the shake to her hand. When Thomas could no longer stay awake and she rose to leave, Lucien herded her to the exam room.
"Mrs Clasby, I'd like to check your blood pressure—"
"Please, call me Nell."
"Nell, when's the last time that you were examined?"
"Your father hasn't been up to seeing patients for a few weeks now, and I'm not comfortable with the other doctors in town."
He held out a chair for her. "Please, have a seat. I'll just be a moment."
He hurried to the small sink in the exam room and scrubbed his hands thoroughly. He found a lab coat hanging on a hook and pulled it on over his faded canvas shirt. It was snug, but would serve its purpose.
With great care, he took Nell's vitals and checked it against her records that he'd managed to find in the filing cabinet. He wasn't at all pleased with her blood pressure and told her so. "I'd like to change your prescription. My father set the dosage six months ago."
Nell folded her hands on her lap. "I trust you."
He glanced up from the notes that he'd been making. "That is, I'm not trying to step on his toes—"
"Someone will need to take over," Nell said with the placid certainty of the elderly. "You're the best person."
Lucien stood abruptly. He was back in the sweat box, bent in half, blind but for the welding flame of light that came through cracks between the boards, time recorded by scratches made with his thumbnail. His breathing became rapid but Nell didn't seem to notice. Her smile calmed him.
"Yes, Nell," he said. "You may be right."
Jean had been in the doorway, and he'd just noticed. "Did you need any assistance, Doctor Blake?" she asked.
He started to correct her, but then looked down at his lab coat. "I think I'm finished," he said, suddenly exhausted. But he'd added, "I suppose I can see any patients who call for an appointment," before wandering out of the office to curl up on the sofa for a nap.
He was just as tired now. He couldn't hold off sleep anymore. His hand slid from the whisky decanter. He hadn't noticed that he'd been reaching for it. He glanced over to Jean, curled on the sofa, sipping tea and watching him.
He let his hand drop. "To bed, my darling," he said softly.
Putting aside her cup, she rose. She held out her hand for him to take. "Everything will seem better when you've slept," she said, relieved.
In their bedroom, Jean had to straighten the bedding before flipping it back for them. Shedding their gowns, they slid into bed and found each other in the middle. But when she ran her hands along his bare back, she could feel the tension in the muscles.
"Sleep, love," she murmured to his ear. She held him as tightly as she had wanted to that night, touched all this skin that she could reach, rubbing circled patterns and cooing low and gentle. Slowly, his body melted into hers and she kissed his temple. "That's a good boy," she murmured, mostly asleep herself and not sure what she was saying.
He'd learnt to fake sleep. Keeping his breathing slow, he pushed the dread away. It would be fine. Jean being there would keep the nightmares away, surely. He kept repeating that to himself until the only word in his mind was Jean, over and over, and he drifted off.
~ end chapter 4