Banner O'Brien by Linda Lael Miller

fine,” she said stiffly. “How about yours?”
    Adam’s mouth twitched, just at one corner, and he straightened. “Recovery is imminent.”
    Banner yearned to slap him again, just as she had on the boarding ramp, but she didn’t dare. She sensed that, although he had endured it once, he would take firm issue with a second attack. “Shall we go?”
    His blue eyes laughed at her, and he came to strict attention. “Let’s,” he said, as the voices inside the strange ship’s window-lined saloon struck up a rousing rendition of “Good King Wenceslas.”
    On the deck another prostitute waited, clad in a blue satin garment that covered little more than her torso. She wore stockings of black net, a lace garter, and a smile, and she tossed Adam’s suitcoat to him with a practiced flourish.
    Adam caught the coat and shrugged into it, nevernoticing that Banner O’Brien’s face was the color of holly berries. “Thanks,” he said.
    “Thank you,” purred the half-naked creature before turning away to join the celebrants in the saloon.
    Adam offered his arm and looked only mildly confused when Banner proudly refused it and stomped down the boarding ramp on her own.
    They were inside the buggy and climbing back toward Water Street before he spoke. “What’s the matter, O’Brien?”
    She would not look at him, but fixed her eyes on the saloons and brothels ahead. They had a certain festive innocence, those buildings, in the cloaking of pristine snow. “Nothing is the matter—Corbin,” she replied.
    He gave an unsettling shout of laughter. “Good God, you think I was availing myself to the pleasures of the flesh back there, don’t you?”
    “I certainly don’t care, one way or the other.”
    “Yes, you do. Why don’t you admit it?”
    Banner took a stubborn interest in the evergreen wreath hanging from the door of a ramshackle card palace. A silent interest.
    “O’Brien.”
    “What?”
    “Look at me.”
    “I will not.”
    “Why?”
    “Because you disgust me, that’s why. You’re supposed to be a responsible physician and here you were—”
    “There I was, examining Hermione’s tonsils.”
    Banner gave a little cry of exasperation and contempt. “Her tonsils! Do you think me an utter idiot? One hardly needs to disrobe in order to look at another person’s tonsils!”
    Adam laughed again. “The coat,” he said, in the tone of one experiencing glowing revelation. “Shamrock,I took off my coat because I was too hot. That’s all I took off, for your information.”
    “I don’t want to hear this.”
    She felt his shrug rather than saw it. “Fine.”
    “Her tonsils!” railed Banner, under her breath.
    “If you went around dressed like that, O’Brien, you’d have sore tonsils, too. Not only that, but—”
    Before he could finish, a saloonkeeper dashed out into the road, waving his arms. “Adam!” the man shouted, “Adam, stop!”
    Adam immediately complied and was standing on the ground before Banner had even managed to toss back the lap rug. “What is it?” he asked, reaching to the floor of the buggy for his bag, finding it with unerring ease.
    “Somethin’ awful’s happened!” whined the barkeeper, slipping and sliding back toward the swinging doors of his establishment in his haste. “Get in here quick!”
    Banner took up her own bag and scrambled into the saloon behind Adam. As her eyes adjusted to the almost nonexistent light, she was aware of a circle of people crowding around one of the tables.
    There was spittle-strewn sawdust on the floor, and the walls were lined with curtained booths. Over the scratched and battered bar hung a gaudy portrait of a simpering, overweight nude.
    Men, thought Banner.
    “Damn it, get out of the way!” raged the barkeeper, elbowing his way through the muttering group around the table. “Let the doc through!”
    Banner was quick to step into the narrow swath that had been opened for Adam, but when her eyes fell on the subject of all the fuss,