Free The Dress Lodger by Sheri Holman Page A

of thing, and rests her cheek against the very same spot.
    “Miss. Please.’ Dr. Clanny stammers, paralyzed with surprise and something like shyness.
    Gustine out of instinct remains quiet. She cuts her eyes to the naked body on the table. Her body, the one she found, lies just out of reach. That pug Irish nose, that twisted bullying leg. He would nail her standing up just to prove he was no damn cripple.
    “Are you related to this man?” asks Clanny, awkwardly patting her back with his free right arm. Damn if this girl is not fastened to him like a vine.
    Gustine looks up into his flushed face, barely lined, though she can tell he’s at least fifty. She puts her hand to the joint of his shoulder to keep her place there, and can feel his heart thump heavily like he’s been climbing stairs. Yes, he has a daughter her age—she can tell by the sad confusion in his caresses. Should he hug her like a child or pat her cautiously like a woman? Let him stay confused, she decides.
    “He was my father,” Gustine whispers.
    That labourer, father to this dress? Clanny finds it hard to believe, but no less than Mag Scurr, who has followed Gustine into the back room, certain, in her deepest bones, that this chit is up to no good.
    “ThaJ man’s no Da to the likes o’ you,” scoffs Mag openly.
    Gustine ignores her and places her head once more against the doctor’s chest. Gently she fingers his silver Cross of India medal. Her landlord has much to say on the troops in India. He reads aloud from the newspaper every night, working himself into a rage over a government that cares to waste its money on curryfied brown gits when it might better feed starving Christians back home. This doctor’s medal shows not a breath of tarnish—it must be very important to him.
    “My father left for India in 1816, a month before I was born,” Gustine says. “His whole troop perished of cholera there. My mother to the day she died never gave up hope he survived and would return to us.”
    “And you believe this is he?” asks Clanny. “Without having ever seen him?”
    Gustine nods. “She said I might recognize him by …”
    The girl trails off, and Clanny can see she is overcome by emotion, running her eyes wistfully over the naked body of her own lost father. They come finally to rest on his monstrous tattoo.
    “She said, ‘You will know him by the tattoo on his right arm.’” Tears come unbidden to Gustine’s eyes. “Of his best mate Jack Crawford. Hero at Camperdown!”
    Among the less charitable of Sunderland, Mag Scurr’s flat round face has been compared to that of a palsied English bulldog. Now in her undisguised disbelief at Gustine’s story, her black eyes bulge, her jowls quiver, making her look, if possible, even more pugnacious.
    “If your Da was such great mates with old Jack Crawford,” says Mag, “enough to get him tattooed, let’s call Jack over to second the identification. He lives in a cheap lodging house down the street. I’ve got his Camperdown war medals in pawn for drink.”
    “How cruel you are, Mrs. Scurr,” Dr. Clanny chides. “Can’t you see this poor girl is dissolved in grief?”
    Gustine, certain now of victory, hides her smile against the doctor’s coat. I will have that body and I will give it to Dr. Chiver and he will become the best doctor he can possibly be. Clanny chucks Gustine under the chin, and she raises her tear-roughened face.
    “Have you anyone to help you?” he asks.
    “My husband.” Gustine looks around the empty room. Where the hell is he? Mag Scurr has not seen the gentleman who accompanied her since Dr. Clanny first called from the back. What sort of husband leaves his wife to cry on the shoulder of a stranger, when he has two capable ones himself? What honest husband would even think to bring a woman to a place like this?
    “My husband is driving our carriage around,” Gustine says.
    “I’ll send for the constables and let them decide the matter,” Mag says