Chloe

by Lyn Cote

  “Does your mother know you’re expectin’?”

  “No, I only told the McCaslins.” She wouldn’t mention Minnie. “Roarke came and picked me up in Baltimore when I came down from New York.”

  “Well, you did right, honey. At a time like this—you losing your husband in the war and expectin’ his child, you came to the right place. Your mother and I won’t hold it against you, you runnin’ away like that.”

  Chloe held her tongue but it wasn’t easy.

  “It was mostly her fault anyway,” he continued, “havin’ Haines burn the man’s letters when I told him he could write to you. Your runnin’ away was all your mama’s doin’ and don’t think I didn’t tell her so.”

  Chloe barely listened to him working himself up to a tirade. At least at the door in front of Roarke he’d behaved better than she’d hoped. “I’m plumb tired out, Daddy. I’ve got to get upstairs to bed.”

  Jerusha hurried down the hall as if on cue. “Come with me, Miss Chloe. You need to lie down and get off your feet.” Her father stepped out of the way. Even though she didn’t need to, Chloe leaned on Jerusha’s arm. She wanted to get away and keep her father out of her room. Daddy avoided sick women.

  It worked. Soon Jerusha had helped Chloe undress and she’d slipped into bed. The maid started a fire in the grate at the foot of the bed. “We need to take the chill off this room. You’ll rest better.”

  Chloe thanked her and closed her eyes. Her last thought was God, keep Roarke safe and bring him home. And please take Daddy far from here tomorrow.

  Her mother arrived two days later. Her father had called her at the resort in Florida to gloat about being the first to know they were expecting a grandchild. She had caught the first train home. Now she hurried into the house. “Chloe! Chloe!” she called up the stairs. “Everything will be all right now! Your mother’s here.”

  Standing alone in her bedroom, Chloe opened her eyes and stared out her window. She wished she’d never left New York. “Don’t worry, little one,” she whispered to her unborn child and patted her growing abdomen. “I’ll protect you. I won’t let them make your life miserable. I won’t.” She tried to push away the fear that had been growing since her father had come home. How could she stand against them? She didn’t know how she’d find the strength. But then she remembered the moment of the first fashion showing at Madame’s. I didn’t think I had the nerve for that either.

  Her mother hurried into Chloe’s room and embraced her dramatically. “Mother’s here, my dear. I’ll take care of everything.”

  “I’m doing fine, Mother. I’m eating and resting in the afternoons. Doctor Benning says the baby’s growing just fine.”

  “You had the doctor here. So soon? No doubt that was your father’s—”

  “I called him when I returned home. I wanted to make sure everything was going as it should.”

  “Chloe, you don’t need a doctor. You need your mother.”

  Her father filled the doorway. “We been doin’ just fine without a mother.”

  Chloe’s mother sniffed. “You always were an unfeeling barbarian.”

  He laughed out loud. “Our daughter doesn’t take after you. She takes after me. Built tough. She’ll do fine. Give me a strong grandson.”

  “Oh, you know this will be a boy then?” her mother sneered.

  “Please,” Chloe interrupted, “it’s time for me to take my daily walk.”

  “Not in this sharp wind,” her mother objected.

  “The doc said she should walk every day unless it was icy,” her father weighed in.

  Chloe ignored them both and walked from the room. I’ll protect you, little one. I won’t let them fight over you.

  CHAPTER TEN

  France, March 1918

  Cold penetrated his paralyzing fog. Roarke stirred. A moan. Was it his own? He tried to focus on his jaws. Were they open? Another groan forced its way through his slack lips. He was flat on his back and he couldn’t move, not even lift a finger. Pain gnawed him with jagged, razor teeth. His eyes jerked open.

  Coming through the strange, clinging mist in front of his eyes, a hand gripped his wrist. “More morphine,” a man’s voice ordered. A careless hand hauled up Roarke’s head, and pain began peeling off his skin. He groaned long, low. Dry lips stuck together as indifferent fingers opened his mouth; a liquid trickled down his throat. To stop from gagging, he swallowed. Bitter, burning. Another moan dragged itself from his lungs.

  Other sounds, moaning, whimpering, then a terrifying whistling. His heart pounded. “Shells!” he yelled, but didn’t hear his voice. Were they being bombarded again? “No!” he shouted. Or was it only a whisper? His head sank back the fraction he’d managed to raise it, gasping, fighting for breath. The agony was a vise twisting him apart. “God, help me. Help me . . . die.”

  “You need to make a decision, Lieutenant McCaslin,” the doctor said in his clipped English accent. He stood above Roarke by his bed. The mingled odors of disinfectant, sweat, and blood were strong. The bare, white-washed walls were lined with narrow cots. Wounded men lay like cord wood, quiet or writhing and moaning. White-garbed doctors and nurses paraded purposefully up and down the center aisle as if set apart from the pointless suffering.

  Roarke looked up at the doctor. The man with thinning hair was maybe ten years his senior, but looked haggard and drawn. Well, didn’t they all? Roarke had been moved from the field hospital to a ward in an army hospital near Paris. A Red Cross nurse had told him that last night—or was it the night before? The passage of time had become irrelevant to him.

  “Your elbow is badly shattered,” the physician said, his eyes on the clipboard. “I’ve removed some bone fragments and have studied your X-ray. You must decide if you want your arm set straight or crooked.”

  “What?” Roarke asked. The question made no sense.

  “You are not going to regain normal mobility of your right arm.” The voice was cool and perfunctory. “I can set it so that your arm will remain extended like this.” The doctor held his arm stretched taut at his side. “Or bent like this.” The doctor bent his arm at the elbow as if it were in a sling.

  “Bent or straight,” Roarke repeated, still not sure of what was going on. “What happened to my face?” He finally made himself speak the words that had been on his mind.

  “You were hit by shrapnel, I’m afraid. It’s healing but you’ll have permanent scarring.”

  “How bad is it?”

  “Not bad. Just your cheek. You didn’t lose an eye or an ear. Your nose is intact, too. Not bad at all.”

  Roarke wondered if the doctor would say it was “not bad at all” if it were his own face. Over the dressing on his face, Roarke gingerly traced the furrows carved into his right cheek. He didn’t look forward to encountering a mirror.

  “Well, which do you want—bent or straight?” the doctor prompted with a trace of impatience. “You’re next in line. We need to know.” The man looked down at his clipboard and waited.

  Roarke tried to think, but his head was like a cotton ball. Someone across the aisle began moaning for “Rosie.” The sound made it hard for Roarke to focus. “What do you think?”

  “Me?” The doctor looked into Roarke’s eyes at last. “I think I’d prefer bent. Sometimes it’s awkward not to be able to bend your arm, don’t you think?”

  I think I’d like to go home with everything back to normal. But that wasn’t what the doctor was asking. Roarke finally got it. The Englishman was telling him, “You will never be normal again.”

  “Bent is fine,” Roarke muttered, not really caring either way. I’ll never again be able to hold Chloe the way I want to.

  “Very good.” The doctor turned away. “Nurse, prepare this man. We’ll set his arm in plaster now.”

  Roarke closed his eyes. Then, as it had done innumerable times since he’d first awakened, the awful truth of what he’d done once again blazed through him. Lying every night on his back in the dark berth, he had seen it happeni
ng again like a newsreel in his mind. Now, he held himself still so that no sob betrayed his weakness. A bent arm and a scarred face were no less than he deserved for what he had done. He deserved to die. And how could he ever face Chloe again?

  Maryland, March 1918

  A contraction gripped Chloe again, tightening her lower back. She watched the clock on her mahogany dresser tick second by second. She breathed in and tangled her hands in the sheets. Grinding her teeth, she resisted the urge to scream.

  “That’s okay, honey.” Jerusha wiped her forehead with a damp cloth. “You can yell. Nobody blame you. Let it out.” The woman’s dark features expressed loving willingness to suffer through labor along with Chloe. The pain let go, but the tension hung on. Panting as if she’d been running, Chloe sank back onto the sheet, damp with her own perspiration. Jerusha’s kind hands bathed Chloe’s face with more cool water and smoothed back her bangs. The gentle touch soothed the ache in Chloe’s heart. “I wish Minnie were here,” she muttered.

  “Me, too, honey. Me, too.” Jerusha patted her face dry with a crisp linen cloth.

  “Did I tell you how beautiful Minnie looked in that red-satin evening gown?” Chloe whispered.

  Nodding, Jerusha lifted a cup to Chloe’s lips. “Take a sip of water, honey.”

  Another pain seized Chloe, raking her, twisting her. Jerusha stood by with cup in hand, watching and waiting. Her thin, aging face filled with concern. Chloe was glad Minnie’s mother was here to help her. For a second, she wished her mother was by her side as well. But only for a moment. Mother would only tell her that ladies didn’t labor to have babies, that their maids did that for them, or something else in that vein. Chloe closed her eyes and tugged, mangling the sheet on each side of her. I’m having your baby, Theran. Our little boy will be born soon. The pressure wrenched harder, more potent.

  Jerusha dabbed her forehead with the linen. “Let it out, honey. Go ahead.”

  Chloe gasped and then a groan was dragged out of her. She panted. “How long?”

  “You still got a way to go, honey.” Jerusha helped her sip water. “Babies don’t come out till they’re ready.”

  Gray-haired, soft-voiced Doctor Benning walked over. “I’ll check her now.”

  Chloe closed her eyes, trying to block out the doctor’s hands probing her, the pain.

  Chloe lay exhausted, weak, flattened. She stared at the ceiling, feeling warm blood between her legs.

  “A difficult presentation,” the doctor murmured. He stood with her mother near Chloe’s bed. She heard a baby wailing, wailing. “I thought I might lose her,” the doctor continued.

  Chloe closed her eyes. The pain had been more than she’d ever experienced before and had lasted a day and a night, but she’d done it. She’d brought Theran’s baby safely into this world. Oh, Theran, I wish you were here.

  “Chloe’s always been delicate,” her mother fretted, “but she’ll be all right now, won’t she?”

  “She’ll need careful nursing, very careful nursing.” Doctor Benning’s voice was subdued. “She’ll be in bed for two weeks at least.”

  Did they know she was awake?

  “I’d send you a trained lying-in nurse but I think Jerusha here is as good as any I could get from outside. She’s done an excellent job with many of my patients who needed extra nursing after a delivery.”

  “I’d rather have a trained nurse—” her mother began.

  “I want Jerusha,” Chloe interrupted, trying to lift herself onto one elbow and failing. “I want . . . Jerusha.” Minnie seemed closer with her mother nearby.

  “You’re awake then?” The doctor came over and gently clasped her wrist. “So you prefer someone you know?”

  Chloe nodded, rubbing her head against her pillow. “Yes.”

  “And I think Francy Clayborn is nursing now.” Doctor Benning looked at his watch. “You can get her to wet nurse your little girl.”

  My little . . . girl? That’s right. I didn’t have my little boy. Chloe knew it had been foolish to have imagined a little boy with Theran’s black hair and gray eyes. But she could love a little girl as well, couldn’t she? “I want to nurse my baby. My daughter.” Chloe turned on her side to face Doctor Benning.

  Her mother chuckled her sophisticated lady laugh. “Chloe, ladies don’t nurse their babies. You’ll ruin your figure.”

  “I don’t care about my figure.” Chloe wished her mother would leave. She had disappeared when labor began and hadn’t returned until the baby had finally come and had been bathed. “I want to nurse my baby.”

  “You’ve been through a terrible, long labor,” her mother said in a patronizing voice. “You don’t need to be doing something low like nursing your child. That’s for servants.”

  Chloe clenched her hands around the top of the soft wool blanket spread over her. “I want my baby—” She infused her voice with as much starch as she could. “And I want to nurse her.”

  Her mother made an exasperated sound. “Chloe, really. What will Doctor Benning think?”

  “Many ladies nurse their own children,” the doctor said in an easy tone. “Why don’t we let Chloe try?”

  Her mother clicked her tongue and tossed her head in an impatient gesture.

  Jerusha helped prop Chloe up in bed with pillows. She’d never felt so exhausted, so bone weary in her whole life. But anticipation warmed her as she watched Jerusha carry the little bundle that was her baby toward her. Then the child began crying again. And Chloe wished again that she’d even held a newborn baby before. But she hadn’t.

  “She sound hungry.” Jerusha grinned down at the baby and Chloe. “You tellin’ your mama that you hungry, little one?”

  Cautiously Chloe accepted the soft, cotton-wrapped bundle and looked down at the wrinkled red face. The little mouth was wide open and squalling. The doctor drew her mother away toward the door of the room.

  Jerusha opened Chloe’s nightgown and folded it back. Chloe looked down at her own white flesh and recalled Theran’s dark head resting there. Now his little girl would rest her cheek there. “Hello, sweetheart. Hello, Elizabeth Leigh—my little Elizabeth,” Chloe cooed, her heart beating fast. “Your daddy would have loved you. I love you.”

  The baby wailed, balling her hands into tiny fists. Jerusha showed Chloe how to hold and lead the child to nurse. The baby keened on, stretching her neck and twisting up her little face. Maybe she sensed her mother didn’t know what she was doing. Chloe tensed. “Am I doing it wrong?”

  “No,” Jerusha began.

  “You’re just not strong enough to do this,” her mother snapped, approaching the bed. “You need your rest.”

  Chloe bit back angry words and blinked away hot tears of frustration. “I am tired, but I want to hold my baby.”

  “Well, no one said you couldn’t hold your baby, did they?” Her mother gave her a false smile. “You’re making a fuss when you should be sleeping.”

  Jerusha said nothing, but she adjusted the baby in Chloe’s arm and with a dark finger lifted the baby’s pale chin to nurse. She began sucking.

  Chloe hadn’t anticipated the brand-new sensation of the child’s suckling and jerked. The baby fussed, balling her little fists again.

  “This one has a temper,” Jerusha said with an indulgent smile. “She’ll get it all right. You wait and see.”

  Chloe’s mother sniffed.

  Jerusha helped little Elizabeth start nursing again. In spite of the unexpected discomfort from her child’s sucking, Chloe forced herself to remain still. She closed her eyes and tried not to notice the lingering pain and exhaustion that wanted to swallow her whole.

  “You just need to be patient,” Jerusha whispered. “It’s harder at first for pale ladies like you. I don’t know why, but it is.”

  Chloe hoped she was right. Theran came to mind again and a wave of fresh sorrow washed over her. She wanted to cry and never stop. But Theran expected better from the woman he’d married. She expected better.

  Little Eli
zabeth was over a month old. It was after midnight in the dark and otherwise silent house. Chloe stood near the window and thought she might go crazy. She pressed the back of her hand to her mouth, buffeted by wave after wave of frustration. “What’s wrong with her?” Why doesn’t she like me?

  Jerusha held the wailing baby in her arms and walked up and down the nursery floor. “Your little Bette got the colic. That’s all, Miss Chloe. She can’t help it. Her little tummy hurt her.” Jerusha made soothing noises and rocked the baby in her arms as she paced.

  Chloe had been so weak and in so much pain after childbirth that her mother had taken over Bette’s care while Jerusha nursed Chloe back to health. Now, for some reason, Chloe couldn’t make up for lost time with her baby. “I should be able to comfort my baby.” A good mother would be able to.

  “She know her mommy is here. She just feel so bad she gotta let us know.”

  “Every time I nurse her she cries.” Chloe covered her face with her hands and winced, thinking of how painful nursing Elizabeth was. I’m a bad mother. A good mother wouldn’t mind the discomfort.

  “This is your first time and you gotta baby with a sore stomach. It make you nervous. That’s all.”

  “But she screams every time I touch her.” Chloe felt like sinking to the floor and never rising again. What am I doing wrong? I must be doing something really bad. I lost Theran and now my baby hates me. She leaned her head against the chilly window. Tears poured from her eyes and she was too weak to wipe them away.

  It was nearly July. Chloe walked into the nursery and found her mother rocking three-month-old Bette by the cold fireplace. “I finally got her to take a bottle,” her mother whispered.

  Chloe drew near and looked down on her child. Was it her imagination or did her daughter glare up at her the same way Theran’s mother had? The look accused her as though Chloe were the one responsible for all the pain Bette had endured, still suffered at times. No matter how much I try my baby doesn’t like me. I’m not a good mother.

  Chloe’s milk had dried up over the past week. And Chloe was secretly relieved to be done with the painful, messy process. But as a consequence, her daughter would have even less to do with her. Francy, the wet nurse, still came three times a day and Bette nursed hungrily. In between, the baby liked the sweet, diluted evaporated milk Jerusha mixed up. But Bette would take this only from her grandmother.