The Fire's Center Read online

Suddenly Lucien said, "There's one more thing I'd like to do before we leave, if you don’t mind my mentioning it."

  "No, not at all."

  Lucien looked a trifle uncomfortable. "It’s just that your hair is lovely, but it might be prone to lice because it's so long. I have some treatment and a special comb. It won’t smell very nice, I know, but I’ve noticed a great number of the sick people I’ve been treating who have been wandering in from the countryside have them. I just want to make sure you're in the best of health."

  Riona blushed but she nodded. "I agree with you, Dr. Woulfe. Many of the worst cases I’ve seen have been covered with lice." She wished the ground would open up and swallow her. Lice indeed, in front of this stunning man.

  "I’ll just get the things if I may."

  "Yes, of course," she managed to reply in an even tone. Well, he was a doctor, after all. But it might have been nice for him to think of her as a person. A woman, even.

  She reddened at the thought, and told herself not to be so silly.

  Lucien came back a short while later. Before she could say a word, he threw a towel over her shoulders, and flipped her long tail of hair over it. "If you’ll allow me?"

  "N-n-no, really, I'm sure you have other things to do," Riona stammered in dismay.

  "But you won’t be able to see them if there are any,"

  "All right, you can do it," Riona agreed reluctantly.

  Lucien uncorked the bottle, which gave off the odour of paraffin with some sort of spirit in it, and began to massage it into Riona’s scalp. It was wonderful, like the sensation of having her hair washed, as her mother had done so many years before.

  His lean strong fingers it sent tingles up and down her spine. After several moments of absolute bliss, Lucien then began to comb through her tresses gently with a fine-toothed comb.

  "It looks very clean to me, actually, but I just wanted to take the precaution," Lucien said as he gently pulled the teeth through her tresses. He had done this before for patients, but now was struck by the incredible intimacy of the task. He ran the comb down with one hand, his palm with the other, marveling at her thick, soft hair so erotically unbound.

  "I washed it a great deal going swimming in the summer. In the winter we would make sure we always had a bath on washing day," Riona said with a sigh.

  "There you are my dear, all finished," he said abruptly as a vision of her bare and glistening in a tub full of suds sprang into his mind. He shivered and felt his whole body clench like a fist with desire.

  "Now put on one of you lovely new outfits, and pack the rest up. I bought a valise for you this morning, so I’ll just bring it in. Your other things are downstairs being dried. The girl will bring them up in a moment."

  "Thank you, Dr. Woulfe, for everything."

  "My pleasure," Lucien said, corking the bottle.

  Taking it and the comb he beat a hasty retreat from the room. Honestly, she was the most startling and perplexing woman, he reflected, shaking his head at his body's shocking response to her nearness, to something so simple as her auburn hair.

  He took one last look at Riona's lovely face before fleeing to his own chamber to wash his hands and finish the last of his packing.

  Chapter Five

  Lucien tapped on Riona’s door at eleven. He lifted her new valise and bundle of old clothes into the boot of the carriage himself, and then helped her into the waiting carriage. She had never felt so womanly in her life than with this spectacular-looking man so solicitously by her side.

  Soon they were on the main road to Omagh, and he mentioned to her his plans for visiting the workhouses along the way, in an effort to see for himself what was being done to help all the poor.

  The first workhouse they went to was a drab, colourless, dark and gloomy building a short distance away from the main road down a dirt track. Lucien asked to see the manager, and some of the inmates, but was told that all the men were out building a road, and the women were outside working as well.

  "I shall see them, then," Lucien said firmly, stepping past the buxom and disapproving matron who tried to block his way.

  Though it was a sunny March day, the wind whipped cruelly through the workhouse courtyard. About a hundred women of all ages sat there bare-headed and bare-armed, in thin dresses made out of the roughest fabric, similar to that used for grain sacks.

  They laboured with piles of oakum, which were to be unpicked and then twisted into rope. Their hands were all scarred, and some of their fingers were quite obviously festering.

  "Is there a doctor here in the workhouse?" Lucien demanded angrily.

  "He isn’t here at the moment. He has other places to attend to as well, you know. He does manage to come about once a fortnight, though," the matron informed him with a sniff.

  "And where do you put the people unfit for work?"

  She shook her head. "We don’t take them, sir. If they won’t work, they don’t get relief. Some do fall sick once they are here, and they're put in the infirmary," she added almost as an afterthought.

  "May I please see this infirmary?" Lucien requested in a dangerously quiet tone.

  Riona was horrified at the treatment of the women, gaunt as skeletons, forced to make rope fourteen hours a day outdoors no matter what the weather in exchange for thin gruel and a slab of bread twice a day, with a bowl of watery soup and some Indian corn meal porridge for their midday meal.

  But this was as nothing compared to the sights and smells that met them in the infirmary. It was so bad it appalled even Lucien, who thought he had seen it all in his years of practice in Dublin.

  But he had treated mainly wealthy patients up until recently. Whilst he had witnessed may cases of relapsing fever, now for the first time he saw typhus, or the black fever, so called because of the way in which the patients’ faces blackened before they died.

  The stench was indescribable. Riona stood by calmly while he gagged into his handkerchief. He tried to prevent her from entering the room, but she stepped under his restraining arm and looked all around her in horror.

  Many of the fever patients were lying in their own vomit, and most were covered with a dreadful rash. Some had even succumbed to gangrene, and were missing nearly all their fingers and toes.

  Others were raving in delirium, and had been tied to the bed, as the matron guiding them explained, in order to prevent them from doing injury to themselves and others.

  "They’ll do anything get cool when the fever is upon them. They’ve drowned themselves in the rain barrels outside, or even in the small stream out the back. Several of them froze to death out there last month when the weather was so bitter," the matron informed them almost casually.

  "Don’t you have nurses, people to attend these poor wretches, and clean up this filth?" Lucien managed to get out between gags.

  The matron practically dragged them out then, shut the door hastily and locked it from the outside.

  "It would be more than any of our lives were worth. We had people tending them, but they sickened and died themselves. It’s not an infirmary, it’s a death ward, and we just leave them to it," she admitted callously.

  Riona shook her head, but said nothing, merely exchanged glances with Lucien. They soon left the grim workhouse, and got back into their carriage.

  For a time they sat in utter silence, consumed by the horrors they had just witnessed.

  After having ridden the past few miles in the carriage with both of the windows open, taking in huge gulps of fresh air, Lucien said with a shudder, "I know I'm a doctor, but never in all my life have I seen anything like that."

  "Yet you don’t seem surprised at all," he suddenly observed, staring at her sharply with his tiger-like golden eyes.

  "I have seen similar sights, I admit, in Dunfanaghy," Riona confessed.

  "It's bad in Dublin amongst the poor but not that bad, or at least, not yet, thank God."

  "I have the feeling it will be coming soon enough, as more people flock to Dublin looking for work a
nd food."

  As if to confirm Riona’s grim prediction, stretched out for miles as they headed south were more dead and dying, those who had probably been turned away from the workhouse because they had obviously been ill. They were no doubt trying to get to the next large town with a workhouse, or even to the capital.

  As they continued along the road, Lucien could see fever victims of every sort stretched out along both banks. He also saw pitifully long lines of skeletal figures, many with the tell-tale yellow faces of the relapsing fever sufferers, standing in the biting wind clad in nothing but rags waiting listlessly for a tiny bowl of nourishment to be handed out at the soup kitchens set up by some of the more concerned parish churches.

  At each workhouse Riona and Lucien visited, the story was the same, with the poor being forced to build roads, lay railroad beds and tracks, or perform rope-making, gardening tasks, or kitchen and nursing duties in order to earn their daily crust.

  "Well, at least they have a roof over their heads, unlike many of those dying along the road," Lucien sighed.

  "That’s is true, but with the vast overcrowding, how do you know that them all living together under the same roof isn’t causing the appalling conditions? I know my family were never so ill until we were all crammed into the fisherman’s hut."

  At one workhouse, seeing the women still dressed in rags, Riona got out her bundle of old clean clothes and donated them, while Lucien gave the last of the money he had and wrote a draft on his bank for them, all the while thinking how completely inadequate money was in the face of such appalling suffering.

  He might have almost spoken his thoughts aloud, for Riona said, "I’m glad you realize now that money is only part of the problem. There is also homelessness, people reduced to wandering up and down the roads, and a lack of willingness on the part of many except the Quakers to offer any sort of assistance without forcing these weakened and starving people to perform backbreaking work just to earn a bowl of gruel.

  "The government is admittedly putting money into the workhouses, but they are getting roads and railroads built for virtually nothing compared to the cost they would normally have had to pay for labourers, and these people simply aren’t fit for the work."

  "This is appalling! What on earth can be done?"

  "I don’t know, Lucien. All I know is, whatever we can try to do, it’s better than nothing. But have you not seen this before? I mean, you came up from Dublin on this very same road, did you not?" Riona demanded suddenly.

  Lucien looked away from her earnest sapphire gaze, and admitted, "I never even looked! I sat here reading my medical journals, doing my correspondence, and I never even saw what I'm witnessing now."

  "You weren’t to know," she said gently, tucking his cloak more firmly around him against the chill air.

  "I’m a doctor, I should have known! I should have made it my business to know," he muttered.

  They sat side by side sharing their warmth, each lost in their own thoughts. Both had ideas, however, for each was forming a resolve to do whatever they could to alleviate the appalling suffering they had witnessed.

  Riona had seen that the more cramped than crowded the conditions, the greater the spread of the disease. Sanitary conditions were appalling, and the diet meagre.

  If she were to work in Lucien’s clinic, and then show that her theories worked, perhaps Lucien could do something to help even more people. He could try to use his power and influence to make changes in the current system.

  Other like-minded doctors might also be able to petition the government for assistance, or to set up more clinics, or even volunteer some of their time to the workhouses, hire people willing to nurse the sick...

  Lucien’s thoughts were running along similar lines to Riona’s, but he believed that he should attack the workhouses, and expose the appalling conditions through articles in the newspapers.

  Taking out his writing case, he sat in silence as he drafted a letter to the Times reporting on all he had seen, and urging in the strongest possible terms that the government had to do something before it was too late.

  While he worked, Riona, exhausted both physically and emotionally after what she had witnessed, drifted off to sleep against his large form.

  They hadn’t troubled to stop for luncheon, since both had lost their appetites after the terrible things they had witnessed during the morning. So the coach rolled on to Omagh, with Riona lost in a deep and dreamless sleep with her head on Lucien’s shoulder.

  Lucien too, after he had spent his fury in his ten-page diatribe, was weary. He looked down then at Riona, wondering why he had never even noticed her so close beside him.

  After stroking the small head resting on his shoulder, he too closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep, with one arm wrapped around Riona protectively to prevent her from being badly jolted by the carriage travelling over the pitted roads.

  Chapter Six

  Still wrapped in each other’s arms, they slumbered on innocently, only waking from their peaceful repose when the coach driver called down, "The Crown and Sceptre, sir," in Omagh.

  Lucien looked down at Riona, and found her gazing up at him silently.

  "I guess we were both exhausted," Riona said quietly as sat up straight and tried to disengage herself from his arm, now intimately wrapped around her waist.

  "I know you were, my dear. You went out like a light."

  Lucien smiled down at her gently as he moved his arm, and then gathered up their things from the interior of the coach.

  He moved out of the carriage first and then took her hand to help her down, but still being drowsy, and with the rather heavy rain now falling, her small booted foot slipped on the metal step. Lucien caught her just in time before she fell.

  Lucien held her close for a fraction of a second before asking, "Are you all right, Riona?"

  Then he allowed her to slide down the length of him until her feet were squarely on the ground once more.

  "I’m fine, really," she reassured him hastily. But all the same he kept one arm around Riona as he guided her up the slippery outside stairs, and into the warm foyer of the hotel.

  "It’s freezing underfoot," he observed to Riona with a shiver, before turning his attention to the landlord waiting behind the desk.

  "Yes, you and your lovely wife made it just in time." The elderly man beamed at them both. "It looks like we’re in for some snow. "

  Lucien was about to open his mouth to protest at the man’s assumption, when the landlord said, "I’ll get the fire going up in your room, and if you’ll just hand your things over to Sam, he will take them up."

  "I’m sorry, sir, there's some mistake. This young lady isn’t my wife, she’s my niece," Lucien suddenly found himself inventing on the spur of the moment.

  Riona quashed the startled glance she was about to shoot in Lucien’s direction, and merely smiled demurely

  "Sorry, young miss, my mistake." The man beamed without a moment’s hesitation. "But surely a lovely young thing like her must have a husband by now," he laughed, as he ordered their cases to be brought up to two adjoining rooms on the second floor, and asked if they wished to have tea in the parlour before going up, as the rooms weren’t quite ready.

  "Er, that would be very nice, so long as you first show us where we can wash."

  "There’s a small room under the stairs," the landlord replied, taking their cloaks, and indicating the way for Riona.

  She looked hesitantly at Lucien, who merely nodded and said, "You go first, my dear. I’ll wait for you here," and proceeded to give orders for baths and the evening meal and breakfast the following morning, without so much as a second glance in her direction.

  Honestly, he could be so moody, she reflected as she scrubbed her face and hands vigorously, and then tidied her hair. After all, it was an honest mistake on the part of the landlord.

  But of course, to be mistaken for her husband or lover could never be anything other than repellent to a man of his class, she conclu
ded a trifle angrily as she put the finish touches to her coiffure, and stepped back out into the foyer.

  Lucien escorted her to the table nearest the fire, and after seating her, said, "I shall be back in a moment, my dear."

  While he washed, she discussed the various choices on the bill of fare with the serving maid, and in the end decided she would have tea and toast.

  But when Lucien arrived a few moments later, he insisted on adding some slices of meat pie, and several scones to her order.

  When the girl had gone to inform the kitchen of their desires, Lucien answered Riona’s questioning glance with, "Well, after all, you had no luncheon, and supper won’t be until about nine. You might as well have something substantial now, and then go upstairs to rest."