Locked rooms - Laurie R. King [47]
“Are you cold?” she asked, and without waiting for an answer, stood and pulled herself over the front seat, balancing over the seat with her feet dangling free while she stretched down, then slid back clutching the corner of the plaid travelling-rug the man had wrapped around his wife. Ignoring Long's protests, she arranged it over him, tucking the thick, soft wool around his knees in a child's imitation of adult nurturing. “There,” she said, admiring her handiwork, and then looked up at an approaching figure.
It was the stern woman from before, come to snatch her employer's child from the wicked Orientals. She yanked the car door open and, without sparing the Longs a glance, pointed one finger at the ground by her feet.
“Come out here.” Her command brooked no argument, but to Tom's astonishment, the infant's chin came up and her eyes narrowed.
“Papa said to take care of them.”
The woman's eyes flashed and she reached over Long's knees for the child. “Your father didn't intend for you to sit in a dark motor with a pair of heathen—”
“Miss MacPherson!” The male voice from behind her gave the woman pause; with a glance at the wide-eyed faces of Tom and his father, she stood back from the car door.
“The child—” was as far as she got.
“We'll be fine, Miss MacPherson. Perhaps you could go and heat some water for the doctor, and see if Philips needs any more warm bricks for my wife's feet. Thank you.”
The woman hesitated on the brink of insubordination, then thought the better of it and stalked away. The blond man laid one arm across the roof of the car and leant inside, his unruly hair falling forward onto his high brow.
“Sorry about her,” he said. “She becomes a bit mother-hennish. Let's get you in and comfortable. The doctor will be here in a minute.”
Long tried to protest, but the man already had his hands on Long's legs to swing them to the ground. He seemed to sense which motions would be difficult for a man with a bad shoulder, and his supporting hand was there to help. In moments, the man was propping his damp, sand-clotted Chinese guest on an immense leather sofa before a fire and giving succinct orders to the servants who appeared.
The fire was built up and a hot drink fetched. When the doctor arrived, although he was allowed upstairs to check on the woman first, he was soon retrieved and told firmly to patch Long together. When the re-snapped collarbone had been securely if excruciatingly strapped and Long's wet clothing replaced by ridiculously long but dry substitutes, a thick soup was brought, oddly flavoured but restorative. And at the end of it, a car arrived to take Long and Tom home, not a taxi, but commercial nonetheless.
“You're not to take any money from these people,” the blond man told the driver. Then he moved to the back window and took out a slim bill-fold.
“Sir, please,” Long protested. “I hope you are not offering me payment.”
The man hesitated, glanced briefly with his peculiar blue eyes at Tom's heavily worn, too-small shoes, and stood uncertainly, slapping the bill-fold against his hand. “You saved my wife's life.”
“As you would have done for mine,” Long replied firmly.
The look the two men exchanged seemed to go on a long time, and said a great deal. Would this tall, beautifully dressed white man have thrown himself into the waves after the wife of the short Chinese man with the much-mended trousers? Most would not. But this one?
In the end, the man slid the bill-fold away into his breast pocket, and held out a hand to Long.
“Thank you,” he said. And then he closed the door of the car, which negotiated the streets from the heights to Chinatown. The driver stopped before the greengrocer's, even getting out to hold the door for them as if they were white, or rich. A very worried Mah bustled onto the pavement, coming to a dead halt at the sight of the uniformed driver. The man tipped his hat to her, got into his vehicle, and drove away before Long could search his pockets for a tip.
The next afternoon, while Tom was off with a delivery for the grocer's and Mah was scrubbing shirts