But still…the devastation in her blue eyes flashed across my mind again. Honestly, I hadn’t expected that reaction. She was a whore and I hadn’t ever met one that was the mothering kind, but Kristina was different and I was a fool to forget it.
The familiar smell that belonged in those woods hit me long before I took the time to realize its meaning. I was too lost in my own churning thoughts to pick up on something that was at home with the scent of the native trees and grasses of our little hideaway. It wasn’t until I was much closer that it drew my conscious attention.
I smelled Jeremiah.
“Come on,” I goaded the horse as I pulled him behind. My sensitive nose led me right to his crumpled body.
If it weren’t for the struggling movement of his chest, I’d have thought him dead. His body was mangled in the in between state that said he wasn’t completely with me yet. At least his fur already retracted and he had smooth, human skin again. He grunted as one of his fingers snapped back to its human shape. It was happening so slowly. I was watching my worst nightmare come to life.
“You stayed wolf too long,” I scolded him, unsure if he could even understand my words or not. The rumble that came from his throat said not.
The smell of predator was pungent against the forest. I couldn’t just leave him there. He’d likely been changing for hours and the smell of his struggle and sound of his pain was bringing in critters that would eat him alive.
“Sorry,” I whispered as I hoisted him over the saddle. He screamed and my horse shied. “Steady there, boy,” I crooned. “It’s just Jeremiah.”
The rest of the journey back to the house lasted hours. Likely it was twenty minutes or so, but every labored breath and groan from behind me brought the memory of pain to my bones. My hopes of Kristina being safely inside when we arrived were dashed the second I pulled through the trees that edged the clearing. Her gaze plowed into mine and her eyes went as wide as dinner plates.
“Is he dead?” she asked breathlessly when she reached us.
“Nope, but not for lack of trying. I need you to get back in the house.”
Jeremiah screamed again amid the sound of cracking bones.
“He needs a doctor!”
“What he needs is you not staring at his naked body. Get on inside, you hear me?”
Stubbornly, she said, “I’m riding to town for a doctor.”
“No! No doctors. He’s fine. The best thing you can do for him is fry up these fish. He’ll need something to eat.” I handed over the string of fat catfish and pushed past her.
“I’ll get his bed ready,” she said quietly.
“He’s sleeping in the barn tonight,” I called behind me.
With a furious screech that rattled my eardrums, Kristina stomped for the house as I threw open the barn door. Jeremiah, for all the trouble he’d caused, could finish his change in my own little private corner of hell in the back. I dumped his body and unsaddled my horse before I headed for the house.
Da had taught me there were things in life that a man didn’t want to do, but if he was man enough, he’d do them anyway. I was headed into a hailstorm, and there was no help for it but to keep on going.
I ducked when I opened the door as the smallest of the catfish I’d pulled from under their nesting rocks sailed through the air at my head. Another one followed.
“Dammit woman, would you stop that?”
“What in hells bells am I supposed to do with whole fish? I know you don’t think I’m going to fry them up this way, do you? Your brother’s dying and you hand me fish and tell me to cook them? You’ve lost your ever-loving mind, Luke Dawson, and you’d better find it again, quick.”
I sloughed my reserve off and grabbed her hand before she could throw another. Her eyes were frightened but my speed did the trick. She wasn’t lobbing things at my face anymore. “I’ll clean the fish. Just let me get a clean pair of clothes for Jeremiah first.”
“I’ll get them!” She ran for the room and as we both got stuck trying to shove ourselves through it, she burst out into a fit of giggles.
Leaned up against the doorframe with her pink cheeks and smiling eyes, she looked right harmless from the screaming banshee that had been throwing fish a second ago. I relaxed against the other side of the door and huffed a surprised laugh at the absurdity of the last five minutes.
Moving a strand of hair out of her face, I waited until she was calm enough to hear the truth in my words. “I’m sorry about earlier. I wasn’t trying to boss you around, I just needed to get him off that horse so he can start feeling better. Jeremiah will be fine, I promise. And what he’s going through right now? That man deserves it and more. He’ll be back to his normal, intrusive, overbearing self again by morning. You just have to trust me, okay?”
The smile faded from her full lips. “No, you have it wrong. It’s you who has to trust me.” And with that, she retreated from the door.
She retreated from me.
****
Kristina
Jeremiah obviously had too much drink in him and hurt himself coming home. Luke thought he was protecting me by keeping his drunken injuries in the barn, and while it was sweet that he was trying to be a gentleman, I’d seen more drunk men than sober in the past year. I was basically a professional at men who’d consumed too much of the rotgut whiskey, but if Luke wanted to squander my abilities to sober up a man, so be it. Their loss.
I strained the bucket of milk through the thin cloth again and frowned when Luke called my name from the yard.
“What?” I yelled testily. If the cream didn’t rise off by dinner, there’d be no milk with our food.
“You need to learn how to do this,” came the muffled reply through the front door.
The empty bucket made a thud as I set it in the sink to rinse. I’d go outside out of curiosity, but I’d take my time about it.
When I hopped off of the bottom stair of the front porch, it was obvious what Luke wanted me to see. He sat at a small wooden table, stained darker in the center, with two filleted fish and one in process. Disgusting.
“I’m all for cooking them. You clean them. That’s the deal.”
“This is a valuable skill to have in case I’m not here someday and you get a hankering for fish. Come on, woman. I’m waiting on you.”
“Fine,” I groaned. With my eyes squeezed tightly shut, it wasn’t so bad.
“You won’t learn anything with your eyes closed, now come here.”
I glowered at the back of his head. How did he know?
“You still have your knife on you?”
Out of my pocket my new deadly friend slid, and Luke nodded his approval.
“Good, now watch me this first time, and on the next one you can do it.”
I eyed the still catfish and swallowed a gag. “This don’t seem like women’s work to me.”
Luke sighed and wiped the back of his arm across his forehead. “It ain’t but I thought you said you weren’t like other women. You’re going to learn stuff other women don’t know, because I want you to be prepared out here. If you want me to go back to treating you like you’re helpless, say the word and I’ll coddle you. You didn’t seem too happy when you weren’t contributing though. I respect that, but if doing all the extras is too much, I’ll dial it back.”
Well, that sounded not at all like what I wanted. It was nice that he wasn’t treating me like some woman who stayed in the kitchen baking pies all day. He’d been okay with me going fishing, and bought me a horse so I could learn to ride. He’d even mentioned me learning to shoot a pistol. He was making me his equal, and if cutting up a fish kept him on that path, then so be it.
“Okay, show me.”
Luke did show me, and then after I’d done a hack job of fileting my fish, he showed me how to make the batter to fry them too.
“I thought Jeremiah did all the cooking before I came along,” I said to the sound of popping grease. The smell of cooking cornmeal was enough to set my mouth to wateri
ng.
“Nah, we took turns. My Da was the one who cooked when we were growing up. Ma was a self-proclaimed terrible cook so if we wanted to eat, Da or us had to make it.”
“What did your mother do?”
“She did all of the other mothering things, just not that. She helped Da out a lot with his work as well so we didn’t ever mind it. My brothers and I didn’t know any different, so it wasn’t strange. Like this,” he said, leaning over my shoulder and tossing a strip onto the hot grease.
The rasp of his jawline against my cheek was a gentle reminder of the closeness we’d shared in the river and my heart hammered so hard, surely he’d be able to hear it from where he stood.
In search of somewhere to place my focus other than his glorious face against mine, I asked, “What happened to your parents?”
“They’re both still alive, living happily in the city where my mom was born. She doesn’t like the wilds as much as the men in our family do, so Da told her if they got all three of us grown and on our own, he’d buy her a place in Boston. Someday we’ll go and see them. They’ll be mighty surprised to see me settled down.”
If he kept touching my waist like he was, I was likely to burst into flames at any moment. “I guess I wasn’t in your plans, was I?”
“Making a home has always been Jeremiah’s thing.” He paused before he said, “Speak of the devil and he shall appear.”
A moment later, the front door flung open and Jeremiah staggered in. His face was haggard and his hair mussed. Heavily, he sank into one of the dining chairs and groaned as if he’d aged a hundred years in a week.
In a move I found so surprising it caught my breath, Luke kissed my neck before he left me to finish ladling the fish from the oil and onto a cloth covered plate. I glanced at Jeremiah to see if he’d seen the daring affection, but he only had eyes for the corner of the table. He looked haunted.
As I lay the plate of food in the center of the table, Jeremiah put his hand over my wrist. “Can you forgive me for leaving you in such a state?”
“There’s nothing to forgive. I’m fine.”
His dark eyes searched every facet of my face before he nodded. “You do look like you’re healing. I shouldn’t have left until I was sure though.”
I sat beside him as Luke watched us from the front where he poured milk into a pitcher.
“Jeremiah, why did you leave?” I asked. Sometimes it was easier if a man just said the vile thing he was going through—if he spat it out like poison before it turned his soul to rot.
“My wife, Anna…” He swallowed hard. “She was abused before she was killed. I couldn’t watch another woman in pain like that. It was too much.”
I’d figured it was something along those lines so I patted his hand with little surprise. “I’m sorry for your Anna. Thank you for coming with Luke to save me. If you two hadn’t come…” My voice trailed off to a feeble little sound. “If you hadn’t come, I would’ve died too, so thank you.”
His smile was as dry and frail as a barren desert, but it was a smile and a start nonetheless.
Chapter Sixteen
Kristina
“Trudy isn’t here today. She’s feeling poorly so it’s just me here to serve all these people until tonight,” said the harried girl at Cotton’s. Leslie, I remembered Trudy calling her.
Okay. An inkling of suspicious excitement lit my gut. Maybe Luke was right. I hadn’t a clue why he’d venture a guess like this, but he had, and now I couldn’t put it out of my mind. “Thanks and good luck today,” I rushed before I slid out the busy front door. Breakfast was booming at Cotton’s.
The street was still muddy, but I’d wised up and found a thin trail of plank boards someone thoughtfully floated across the muck at the end of the street. The general store was nearly empty when I wandered in. A man behind a cluttered counter smiled from behind his glasses.
“I can’t say I’ve seen you around here. You new in town?” he asked.
“Pretty new. I just arrived last week.”
“Ah, welcome. What can I do you for?”
“Do you have any ginger to sell?”
He pointed his finger at the roof like he might just have what I needed, then rifled through a row of jars until he came to one with two pieces of ginger in it.
“You’re in luck, little lady. We got some on the stagecoach two days ago.”
Beaming, I slid a coin across the wooden surface of the counter and waited for him to fold one into brown paper before I all but danced out of the store.
With a quick rap on Trudy’s door, I glanced around to see if Luke finished his errand at the post office yet. He stood leaned against a post, watching me with an indecipherable expression. I waved but he didn’t seem to notice.
The door opened and Elias stood with a worried look in his blue eyes. “Trudy’s feeling poorly this morning, Ms. I’m worried she’s got the grip and I don’t want it spreading to you and your men.”
Poor Elias looked disheveled and pale. “Don’t worry. She doesn’t have the grip and I’ve got the cure for what ails her.”
His shoulders relaxed noticeably when he saw the brown wrapped thing I carried. “Come on in. She’s in the back room.”
Trudy was pale faced, shaking, and clutching onto an empty washbasin when I pushed the door open. Maybe I should’ve bought up all the ginger the general store had.
“Mr. Elias,” I said with an edge of worry. “Could you heat up some water?”
Immediately the sound of banging pots rang out.
“I don’t want any water,” Trudy said. “I don’t want anything.”
“Well you’re going to have to drink something sometime. It won’t help anything if you lose your strength.”
Trudy’s lip trembled. “I’m real sick, Kristina. I think I’m dyin’.”
My heart lurched at her fear. “Oh, Trudy, you aren’t dyin’. You’re with child.”
Her dark eyes grew as round as the full moon. “How do you know that?” she whispered.
“For one, Luke told me you are, because apparently he’s some sort of magical midwife—”
“Luke told you I’m pregnant? But how…” A toothy grin spread across her face and some of the color returned to her dark cheeks. “He’d know, I suppose.”
“I suppose,” I said doubtfully. “And second, what you’re doing now with the shaking and nausea is exactly what I saw one of the girls I used to work with doing when she was accidentally with child. Now, whores know a thing or ten about avoiding pregnancy, but those tricks don’t work all the time. She, Gretta was her name, was sick from the day she found out until the day she delivered, and nothing would help her keep food down but warm ginger water. And you need to eat so that baby can grow big and strong. I brought you a present.” I opened the corner of the wrapping and let her see the fragrant spice.
“Don’t tell Elias,” she said with an excited tremor in her voice. “We’ve been trying a long time.”
I zipped my mouth and whispered, “This is your news to share.” Squeezing her hand, I swished into the kitchen and pulled the knife from my pocket.
The water was boiling by the time I was finished chopping a piece of the root as finely as I could manage. When the ginger water was steaming in a tin mug, I brought it in for Trudy to sip. A dreamy look had settled on her face and she smiled from time to time for no apparent reason. I was so happy for her I could cry, but a tiny part of me pulled into itself protectively. I would never have this moment. That moment of realization that my body was making a miracle and I was creating a child as a woman was meant to do. I wouldn’t dare let my loss show on my face though because I wouldn’t ruin Trudy’s moment in a million years.
She gasped. “Kristina, no midwife is going to take me and there aren’t any other freedmen around who would deliver me either. What am I going to do?”
“Can you send word to your family up north? Could they come down when you get closer?”
“No, they won’t travel this far.
It wouldn’t be safe here for them either.”
“Okay, we have some time to figure all of that out. Even if we have to send for a midwife from up north, between Elias and me, we’ll get it done. Don’t you worry.”
“Do you have any experience midwifing?” she asked.
“No, not me. I’ve been in the room on a couple of births, but I don’t know how to get those babies to air like someone trained would be able to.”
“Will you be there anyway?”
I tried to keep the emotion out of my voice just in case. The sheer potency of my excitement had a tendency to frighten people. “Do you want me in the room?”
Her delicate eyelids were lined with the shining jewels of unshed tears. “Yes.”
Raw emotion made my throat close up, so I swallowed hard before I answered. “Then I’ll be there.”
****
The ginger seemed to do the trick and when I closed the door to Trudy’s house with a happy heart, I looked up to find Luke in the same place he had been. He was joined by Elias, who leaned heavily against the post talking quietly.
“Is she all right?” Elias asked the moment I was close enough.
“She’ll live,” I said with a wink at Luke.
I stopped him from jogging back into the small home. “Elias, she needs ginger. I’ve left some in the kitchen for you, but she may need more and I have it on good authority the general store has another root of it. Buy it up so they’ll order more. When she needs it, boil water and chop a small piece finely. When it’s good and mixed in the hot water, give it to her in a tin mug. Give her bread or something hardy right after, you hear?”
“Thank you, Kristina.” He kissed me on the cheek before he switched directions for the general store.
“You okay?” Luke asked as I watched Elias walk away.
Inhaling deeply, I said, “I’m fine.”
Luke’s fingertips brushed mine as he pulled my hand into the crook of his arm. Our shoes made very different tones as we walked across the wooden planks in front of the shops.