‘You were so dainty and delicate. Even dressed as a man, you were swallowed up by his clothes.’ Bobby chuckled. ‘I couldn’t understand why he’d allowed you to travel with us, or what he saw in you. But I see it now. You are stronger than any woman I have ever met. And you don’t judge us, as so many would.’
‘I was raised to be delicate and dainty,’ she said tiredly. ‘But it’s not what’s in my nature. I love Jack, despite his many flaws. I found the adventure I was seeking with him. Although, now I am worried that the adventure is becoming just a little too real for both of us.’
Bobby laid a hand on her shoulder. ‘He’ll come out of this.’
‘This time maybe,’ she said, pulling the blankets up to keep Jack warm. ‘But what about next time?’
When Bobby didn’t answer her, she looked up at him. ‘I can’t lose him.’
‘You won’t.’
Pru turned her exhausted gaze back to Jack. His breathing was uneven, sweat matted his dark hair, pasting it to his forehead.
‘Try and get some rest,’ Bobby said, and left the room, closing the door behind him.
Jack didn’t stay still for long. He writhed with the pain and the fever. He became delirious, calling out strange things that she didn’t understand half the time. Pru passed a tense night, watching him move in and out of consciousness. The fever he ran was scalding, even to her touch, and she spent half the night using wet, cool cloths to try and bring it down.
In the morning, Bobby came into the room with Katie at his side.
‘Garrett came to the pub, told me what happened,’ Katie said, tossing her hat aside. ‘Pru, you look exhausted. Why don’t you let me take over for a while?’
Pru shook her head. ‘I can’t leave him.’
‘You need to sleep and you need to eat,’ Katie instructed. ‘You’re no good to him like this.’
Finally, with her stomach growling, Pru had no choice but to give in. She nodded and stood up to leave, but took one last look at Jack before she went out to the living area. Garrett was nowhere to be seen and she was glad. He probably hadn’t returned from town after dropping the doctor back. She hoped he felt the weight of what he’d caused, but she doubted it.
She made a pot of tea and sat down to drink it but after a few sips, she had to rush out the back door to heave it up into the garden. It was the stress she was sure. It had been a very traumatic night and her system just couldn’t cope with anything yet. With a cool cup of water, she rinsed her mouth, drank another cupful, and took a piece of bread to try and get something into her stomach. She felt hollowed out. But Katie was right. She was no good to Jack if she got sick too. She nibbled on the bread carefully and her stomach seemed to accept it, so she continued eating. She tried the tea again and found it stayed put this time.
Feeling better, she went back into the bedroom. Katie was looking at the wound beneath the bandage and Pru gasped at the swelling and redness around the bullet hole.
Katie looked up at her solemnly. ‘It’s infected.’
Pru nodded. ‘The doctor said it would be.’
Prodding at the wound, a foul smelling pus seeped from the haphazardly sewn together skin. Pru retched, and even Katie had to turn her head away from the stench.
‘Sepsis. I’ve seen this before.’
‘Do you have nursing experience?’
Katie’s face was bleak. ‘When miners ran from the Eureka Stockade, many of them hid for weeks with bullet wounds. They couldn’t see real doctors because the police and the army were watching for fugitives. I helped a few men who’d made it as far as Geelong. I was able to save some, but most had left it too late to seek help, and succumbed to the infection in their blood.’ She shook herself, as though she were shaking off the bad memories, and studied Jack’s leg. ‘I can clean out the wound, but it’s going to be painful and not pretty. But Pru, if it’s got too far into his blood … you’d best prepare yourself.’
Pru nodded numbly. She wanted to help but her stomach revolted at the sight of the badly infected leg. Her eyes filled with tears and she rushed from the room, again losing what was in her stomach to the rose bushes in the backyard. Jack was knocking at death’s door, and she couldn’t help him.
She heard Jack’s weak groan and figured Katie had decided to get to work immediately. At least a groan meant he was conscious enough to feel pain, and he was not dead yet. But all the same, she sat on the porch steps in the cool morning sun and prayed like she had never prayed before.
Katie’s cleaning of the wound seemed to help bring down the fever a little and Jack finally fell into a deep and calm sleep. There was no change by nightfall and finally giving in to her exhaustion, Pru climbed up on the bed on Jack’s good side and lay beside him. If he was going to die, she wanted her arms around him to be the last thing he felt as he went.
***
The light tickling on Pru’s cheek brought her back to the surface from a deep and heavy slumber. Her body ached, her eyes didn’t want to open and her stomach was doing horrible somersaults.
But the tickling continued and she finally had to open her eyes. Eyes the colour of warm honey stared back at her from a close distance. The usual spark and lustre was missing but she recognised those eyes. Her love. Her Jack.
‘Jack,’ she said sitting upright, suddenly very awake. ‘Oh, Jack,’ she cried with relief, leaning over to kiss him, thrilled to feel his skin was no longer hot to the touch. ‘I was so scared.’
‘My sweet angel,’ he said, his voice raspy. He coughed. ‘Drink?’
She leaned behind her to take the beaker of water by her bedside table and lifted his head to give him a little sip.
‘Not too much now,’ she said, as he tried to gulp it thirstily.
He rested his head back down and she got up from the bed to check his wound.
Katie and Bobby must have heard them talking, because they were in the room moments later.
‘Jack,’ Bobby said, grinning like a madman. ‘You gave us all a scare.’
Katie took a look at the wound too, and her smile was enough to lift Pru’s spirits.
‘I think he’ll be fine,’ Katie said nodding to Pru and then sending a wink at Jack. ‘You’ve got nine lives, Jackie boy.’
‘Excuse me,’ Pru said, and rushed from the room. Her somersaulting stomach revolted against her and she rushed out to the backyard. She fell to her knees, but with nothing in her stomach to begin with, she only wretched. Lifting her face to the warmth of the rising sun, she closed her eyes, said a little prayer of thanks, and burst into tears again. Tears of release, wracking, violent sobs that she had held on to throughout Jack’s ordeal, that she could not hold onto anymore. She muffled her sobs with the skirt of her dress, and only when she’d got it all out, did she stand and turn back to the house.
Katie stood at the door watching and gave her a huge hug when she stepped back up to the porch.
‘He’s going to live, Katie.’
Katie nodded. ‘He’s going to live.’
Pru took a deep breath, wiped the tears from her face and straightened her spine determinedly. ‘If he goes back out on the road after this, I’ll kill him myself.’
Chapter 13
It was a slow road to recovery for Jack. He slept a lot, but Pru stayed by his side, barely sleeping herself in those first few days, until finally she became so fatigued that Katie banished her to the spare bedroom and ordered her to get a solid night’s sleep.
And she did. For ten hours straight she slept without waking. But when she did wake and went in to check on Jack, Katie stared at her with the oddest expression.
‘Pru, you look terrible.’
‘I slept well,’ Pru said quickly, worried Katie would send her straight back to bed.
‘How do you feel?’ Katie stood and placed a hand over her forehead, checking her temperature.
‘Tired, I have a headache and it’s making me nauseated,’ Pru answered, looking down at Jack. He looked better. ‘How is he?’
/> ‘Fever’s gone completely now,’ Katie answered, a smile touching her lips. ‘He woke once and asked for you.’
‘Why didn’t you wake me?’ Pru asked, a little irritated.
‘He was only conscious for a moment. Pru, you really do look awful. Perhaps I should call Doc Blackmore again.’
‘No, no, I’m fine.’ Pru waved her off, but leaned against the doorframe to fight another wave of dizziness.
‘Right, that’s it.’ Katie grabbed her by the arm and practically carried her across to the other bedroom. ‘You Fairweathers are an obstinate pair. Now get into that bed and stay there. I’ll be back in a while with some soup.’
‘Oh, I’m not really—’
‘You haven’t eaten a solid meal in days,’ Katie said. ‘Don’t think I haven’t noticed.’
Pru lay back on the bed and didn’t wake again until Katie returned with a tray of soup and bread. It smelled divine and her stomach growled loudly.
‘How’s Jack?’
‘He’s fine, sleeping. Which is exactly what you are going to do after I’ve seen you eat at least half of this food.’
Pru pushed herself up in bed and let Katie feed her.
‘You need to get strong, Pru,’ Katie said, blowing on the hot broth before lifting the spoon to her mouth as though she were a child. ‘Jack needs you now, and he’ll need you for the next few months while he recovers.’
The soup was delicious and she finished the bread as well. It all seemed to settle okay in her stomach, for which she was grateful.
‘Thank you, Katie,’ she said, taking her friends hand. ‘I don’t know what I would have done without you here.’
Katie put the empty dishes on the bureau beside the door and sat down beside Pru again, examining her closely.
‘So is it just exhaustion? A sympathy sickness for Jack, perhaps? Or is there some other reason you’ve been throwing up your food every morning?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Are you pregnant, Pru?’
She sighed wearily. With everything that had happened in the last week, she hadn’t paid much attention to her own body, her worry for Jack being paramount. And she had to admit she’d been in a little bit of denial since her first suspicions had arisen.
‘I think I might be.’
‘Then you certainly need to start taking better care of yourself,’ Katie said, squeezing her hand sympathetically. ‘I’ll stay here at Little Windsor with you until Jack is mobile again.’
‘I can’t ask you—’
‘You didn’t ask, I offered,’ Katie said in a tone that brooked no argument. ‘Jack needs around the clock care, and you need to take care of Jack Junior in there so that when his daddy wakes fully, he has something to spur him back to health.’
‘Please keep the baby between us for now,’ Pru begged. ‘I’ll tell Jack when he’s well enough. I’m not completely sure he’ll be pleased about it.’
‘Why shouldn’t he be? He’s going to be a father. He’ll be proud as a peacock.’
‘Please, Katie.’
‘Of course, ’tis not my place to be telling anyone anything.’
‘Not even Bobby,’ Pru checked.
Katie crossed her heart and spit on her shoe for emphasis, and Pru wondered if the woman had spent far too much time in pubs.
***
Over the next weeks, Jack slept a lot, regaining strength every day until Doc Blackmore gave him the go ahead to move out of the bedroom for short periods of time. And none too soon as far as Pru was concerned.
Jack was not a good patient. He was grumpy—to be expected after having been bedridden for almost a month—but he was belligerent too, acting like a sulky child one minute and throwing things in a fit of anger and frustration the next.
Pru took his mood swings in her stride, just happy and relieved that he was going to be alright, that he was going to live. Refusing to leave him alone in the house now that Katie had gone back to town, she set up an order with the stores in Ballarat to deliver all their food and supplies to Little Windsor. And she wore herself out regularly working the vegetable patch and dealing with the animals.
The first day Jack stood up out of bed, he passed out cold. Luckily Bobby and Doc Blackmore had been there to catch him before his head hit the bedside table.
‘Too fast, boyo,’ Doc Blackmore said when Jack regained consciousness. ‘You lost a lot of blood and, now that you’ve built your stores back up, you have to give it a chance to circulate again. It’s all sitting in your arse right now, since you’ve been on it for a month. It has to work harder to get up into that thick skull of yours.’
‘Just shut up and help me stand.’ Jack was obstinate.
The second attempt wasn’t much better. But as days went by, with Pru’s help, he was able to move as far as the chair in the living room, where he could sit by the fire. The winter cold made his leg ache and Pru waited on him, feeding him hearty meals to get his strength up. She’d help him work the leg to get some movement back, as even when he walked it was as though he had a wooden leg.
It hurt him to do the exercises, but he never complained, just gritted his teeth and sweated until he’d had enough, and would fall into an exhausted sleep. By the middle of winter, Jack was up and about every day, walking around the perimeter of the house when the weather allowed, determined to get back to his former agile self. Climbing aboard Persephone was more challenging even though he used the fence to mount the horse. But once he was on, it wasn’t too taxing and Persephone was so in tune with Jack, she knew exactly what he needed before he even made a signal to move. When the heavy winter rains set in, he would sit in his chair by the fire and lay a bag of flour across his shin, using it as weight to strengthen his thigh muscles.
While Jack improved each day, Pru struggled with her morning sickness in silence. Despite being exhausted, most nights her sleep was erratic. Nightmares plagued her. Horrible dreams that tormented her with images of Jack lying dead on the highway, bleeding and cold. And she’d wake in a cold sweat, breathless and crying, scrambling up in the bed to check that Jack was there. She didn’t settle again until she could see the rise and fall of his chest with his breaths, and knew he was still with her.
Throughout his convalescence, Jack had lost interest in sex. And Pru had been thankful, considering she was so exhausted all the time with the first few months of pregnancy. She’d put him to bed first usually, tidy the house a little, before settling in front of the fire with a book, for a few moments of peace and pleasure. Occasionally, she would think about her grandmother and what her life would have been like had she married Frederick Grantham instead of a bushranger. Then she’d chuckle and think of dull days spent drinking tea and listening to inane conversation with well-bred ladies, and she thanked God she was where she was and that she had fallen in love with that crazy bushranger.
While helping him bathe one evening, she ran her hand across the prickly growth of his beard.
‘Seems I finally have enough beard to be called a man,’ he joked.
It had always been a dent in his pride that he could not grow a full and bushy beard like many of his counterparts on the highways. Before he’d become Jack the Devil, he’d been known as the ‘Boy Bushranger’, for his lack of beard, and baby-faced good looks.
Pru smiled, ‘I quite like it.’ And ran her hand across the light scruff.
‘Do you?’
She took a mirror from the table near the doorway and brought it to him. At first he seemed thrilled, but moving his head left and right, his smile faded.
‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘I hadn’t realised how grey it was becoming,’ he said, handing the mirror back to her.
‘You’ve had a rough time of it,’ she told him, placing the mirror on the floor beside her. ‘It makes you appear dignified, worldly.’
‘It makes me appear old,’ he said, sighing. ‘Older than my years.’
‘You’re still a young man, Jack.�
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When he only grunted, she asked, ‘Would you like me to shave it for you?’
He met her eyes. ‘Please.’
She left him to collect the razor and the shaving soap he used and returned to sit by his side as he wallowed in his bath.
Slowly, she lathered the soap across his jaw. Luckily, the beard was not so long as to need to take the shears to it first. Carefully, she began to scrape at the scruff of a beard, removing soap and hair as Jack sat still, his eyes steady on hers as she made every slow sweep of the razor. His concentration on her was unsettling.
‘Stop staring at me,’ she said finally. ‘You’re making me nervous. I’ll cut you.’
His eyes flicked away momentarily, but it wasn’t long before they were back on her again, studying her eyes, her mouth, her neck. She felt a long forgotten pull, low in her belly. Not morning sickness this time, the pleasing ache was not due to the baby that grew inside her. Beads of perspiration popped out on her brow and décolletage that had nothing to do with the hot bath water, and everything to do with the naked man sitting in it. Thankfully, she finished the last sweep of the razor, doing her best to remove his beard and not cut his throat. Taking the wet towel, she wiped the remaining soap from his jaw. He took her hand, halting her actions and again his warm, honey-coloured eyes studied her face.
‘Thank you.’
She smiled, shy all of a sudden. As though she looked at a potential suitor and not her husband of four months. ‘You’re welcome.’
Since he insisted on getting himself back into the bedroom without her help, she cleaned up the bath and stoked the fire, as the night had a chill on it, before blowing out the candles. When she joined Jack in the bedroom, she was surprised to see him still awake.
‘Is something wrong?’ she asked, unbuttoning her dress as he lay propped up on his elbow on the bed. His clean, bare chest appeared golden in the lamplight, even though neither of them had seen any real sunlight in a while.
‘Nothing’s wrong.’ His voice was quiet, his eyes firmly on her as she slipped the dress down her body and tossed it over the chair. The familiar ache that had begun to pulse in her lower abdomen again as he’d bathed grew stronger. A growing, desperate need to have her husband touch her again.
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