His Defiant Wife, the Adventures of Linnett Wainwright, Book 2

by Vanessa Brooks

  After a few minutes, she came to a decision. She absolutely refused to leave such a small child outside, alone and unprotected. If the parents of this child wanted it back, they could come to the cabin and ask for it. With her rather cumbersome load of a baby on one hip and the washing basket on the other, Linnett made her way slowly back to the welcoming warmth of the cabin.

  She dropped the basket into a corner and turned her attention to the child. She tried to disentangle the child’s hands from her hair in order to place it on the bed but like a small leech it clung on to her fiercely. Linnett gave up and ‘wearing’ the baby, she poured out a cup of milk.

  Linnett took it with her and sat in one of the wooden rocking chairs. She pulled the shawl from the back of the chair and wrapped it around the pair of them. After a minute or two, the child relaxed its hold slightly, sliding down onto Linnett’s lap. She crooned gently to the babe and offered the cup of milk, holding it up to the child’s lips.

  The baby drank thirstily, finishing the cup and then wailing for more. “Alright, alright there’s plenty more, hush now, hush,” Linnett soothed. After a second cup of milk, the child plugged in a thumb and snuggled into Linnett, rapidly falling asleep. Linnett looked down at the small, round face with its sweep of long dark lashes and was choked with emotion. How endearing, how trusting, she thought.

  She lifted the sleeping child over to the bed and laid it in the middle, away from the edge, and tucked the shawl tightly around the baby. Straightening up, she put a hand to the small of her back, massaging the ache that sitting in a cramped position with the child had caused.

  She looked down at the sleeping babe and realised she didn’t even know what sex it was. Carefully, so as not to wake the sleeping child, she lifted the tunic -- well then, definitely a boy, with no napkin on either! Perhaps not a problem for the native child, she thought, but a huge one for me.

  Linnett remembered the pile of extra bedding that Sarah had insisted she bring. She ran to the chest at the foot of their bed, and flinging up the lid, Linnett pulled out the oldest and softest blanket she could find. She tore it into as many napkin type squares as the blanket’s size would allow. She ended up with eight decent-sized squares and a few oblongs. Linnett gently swaddled the babe’s nether regions in one of the improvised napkins, then covered him up warmly and left him to sleep.

  By the time the child woke, Linnett had made various preparations. She had made porridge with oats for a meal. She had improvised for toys, putting a few safe household items on a rug in the corner. She had put a large pot of water on to boil so that she had warm water for the child’s bath. The tiny boy sat up and blinked owlishly at her from the bed.

  Linnett hurried over to him, all the while crooning baby-talk to soothe him. He watched her solemnly as she changed his makeshift napkin, which was soaked through. Linnett dropped it into a pail and put the pail outside the cabin door.

  Feeding the baby was extremely hard work and Linnett got quite hot and flustered. He would keep grabbing the spoon and the contents landed on Linnett, the floor, or all down the front of the child. Eventually, he seemed to have eaten his fill and Linnett deposited him on the floor while she went to set up a bath for him.

  She had only taken a couple of minutes to organise the tin bath and fill it with the warm water. Yet when she turned her attentions back to the baby, there was mess everywhere. He had found the basket of wet washing that Linnett had dumped in the corner on her return from the stream, pulled all the clothes out and crawled through them with a very dirty napkin, which had failed to contain the contents as well as Linnett had hoped it might.

  Linnett groaned and went to pick up the unsavoury little character. His face split into a huge grin as she bent down to him and he held up his chubby little arms. Linnett’s heart missed a beat with the flood of tenderness that welled up inside her, “Ohh you little darling!”

  Regardless of his disgusting state, she hugged him and then stripped off the offending garments, dropping them into the napkin pail on the door step. “I shall be doing nothing but washing at this rate,” she told him as she lowered him into the tub of warm water. The child loved the warm bath and splashed and rolled about, chuckling with glee.

  Linnett, absolutely enchanted by his happiness, played with him for a while and then reluctantly turned her attention to cleaning up the mess he had left all over the cabin floor. The once clean washing from the basket now joined the overflowing pail of dirty clothing Linnett had placed outside the door. When the cabin was once again reasonably straight, Linnett turned back to the tub and retrieved the child.

  She dried him in another of Sarah’s soft blankets and swaddled him in another makeshift napkin.

  “What can I put on your top half?” she asked his owlish little face. He grinned again showing several small, even, pearly-white, teeth. “Ah, have you got toothy -pegs then, you little poppet?” Linnett crooned. “Auntie Linnett must give you something harder than porridge then for your breakfast to keep those little teeth nice and strong.”

  “Tong,” the child repeated happily.

  “Oh can you talk?” Linnett said, startled.

  “Linnett” she said slowly and then repeated her name over and over to the small boy, but got no response.

  “Ah well, come along, baby, let Linnett put you to bed.”

  She carried the baby in his strange garb of ripped-up blankets and tucked him in on John’s side of the bed. After a moment’s consideration she fetched another, thicker blanket, folded it double and put it beneath the child.

  “Net,” said the baby suddenly.

  Linnett stopped what she was doing and said, “That’s right, darling, my name is Linnett.”

  “N-n-itt,” said the babe, “an da ka ga gwa,” he crowed and reached out, his fat little hands grabbing handfuls of Linnett’s hair.

  “What does that mean, poppet? Hair, say hair, hair, hair.”

  “Ayah,” repeated the child obediently, “ayah.”

  Linnett laughed and bent to kiss his little golden cheek. “Go to sleep now, you little rascal.” She tucked him firmly into the bed and he plugged a small thumb into his mouth, his sooty lashes drooping with tiredness.

  Linnett stroked his forehead and wondered where on earth he had come from. Hans had told them that there were no native settlements close by. John had told her not to fear the tribes since they were only interested in trade. It was impossible for a child this age to crawl and toddle any distance. He must have been brought here by someone, but who? They could be outside now, Linnett realised. Hastily she went over and barred the door. She closed the shutters and barred those as well. “Oh how I wish John was here!” she whispered aloud.

  Linnett set about making preparations for the morning. She made some more dough and set it to rise overnight, then, exhausted by the day’s events, she fell into bed next to the child, promptly falling asleep.

  Linnett woke at dawn with a small fist lying across her face, she still felt absolutely exhausted. The child was sleeping like a small crucified being, spread out so that Linnett was forced to cling to the edge of the large bed. Sleeping with a small child was worse, she decided, than sleeping with a man. They both broke wind as frequently and, true, a man snored but a child seemed to take up the entire bed, moving about continuously all night long.

  Linnett spent the entire day clearing up after the child. As she struggled back up to the stream with the washing, the little child toddled at her side slowing up the process considerably. She pegged up the clothes on the washing line that John had rigged up for her use earlier that week. The child hung onto her skirts as she moved about the business of her daily chores. By the end of the day Linnett was physically exhausted but surprisingly happy. She found to her amazement that she enjoyed the household tasks. Looking after a small demanding tyrant was a joy in itself. Linnett found herself hoping the parents of the child would not come looking for their child just yet.

  For the first time since her marriage, she se
riously considered what the arrival of children might mean to her marriage- all the hard work and the lack of privacy, the constant demand of her time and attention. She wondered if John liked children, she assumed that he must want a son. Linnett knew that however demanding looking after a child might be, she wanted a baby of her own.

  Linnett had given the baby the small wooden horse that Han’s had carved for her. He was delighted with it and crooned lovingly at it. The boy seemed to have a name for it too, for he always made the same sound to the toy. “Ko si. Ko si.”

  Linnett taught him the word “horse,” and he dutifully repeated it and then promptly returned to “Ko si.” The little boy was now garbed in his original clothes, which Linnett had carefully washed and dried. She marvelled at the intricate bead work and meticulously sewn quills and little feathers that decorated his tunic. Whoever this child belonged to must love him very much to have spent so much time decorating his clothes in this way, she mused.

  CHAPTER 5

  John was having a very successful hunting trip; he had stalked and shot a young male deer on which there was plenty of meat to last them at least for a while. He was completely unaware that his movements were being tracked. Breaking his camp in a clearing of the forest, John packed up and prepared to leave. He tightened the girth on the horse and turned to collect his bedroll, but when he straightened up he sucked in his breath sharply, realizing he was surrounded by three Indian braves.

  They were each similarly dressed in deerskin leggings, all of them bare-chested except one, who had a breast plate made of some sort of thin bone or quills. The middle Indian was an exceptionally tall and well-built man. He sported a necklace of what John guessed were bear claws. All had shaved heads with a line of hair running from the front to the back of their heads, the hair standing upright like the feathers of crested birds.

  John held out both hands at waist height, palms upright to show he held no weapon. He nodded to them once and then stood quite still and waited. The large Indian raised his hand first in greeting and nodded at John. He touched his eye and pointed to John, then held his hand out at about knee high. John followed this pantomime and realised straight away these men were looking for something of that height, probably a child, and they were asking him if he had seen one. John shook his head. The Indian, still using sign language, mimed hunger, rubbing his belly in circles, and he gestured to the deer carcass. John nodded and drew a line across the haunch of the animal with his finger, gesturing the Indian forward to cut the leg for their use.

  It would have done him no good to have refused their request, John realised. He was outnumbered three to one.

  Linnett had spent a better night with her young charge. She had made a bed in the tin tub for the babe, and he had snuggled down comfortably. She had slept all through the night, waking at dawn feeling much refreshed, thanks to her undisturbed slumber. She had only just finished feeding the child his breakfast when she heard the blowing and stamping of a horse. Opening the door a crack and peeking out she saw John dismounting and Linnett was about to run and meet him, when the child gave an excited cry and called out. He toddled over to Linnett at the door and grabbed onto her skirts; Linnett swept him up and into her arms.

  Then Linnett saw them, the three native males. They sat silently mounted on their horses, staring at her with an unblinking gaze. Instinctively, she clutched the child, clasping him to her in a protective gesture that was not lost on one of the natives watching her.

  Linnett stood still frozen to the spot but the child called to the natives in an excited babble, his small hand reached up and wound itself in Linnett’s loose hair and he bounced excitedly on her hip. John watched from the fence where his horse was tied, he was startled to see his wife emerge from their home carrying a small native child. John was now terrified for Linnett’s safety but he could only stand and observe, fearful that any sudden move on his part might trigger an attack. One of the men rode forward a few paces while the other two hung back. He stopped and waited. Linnett looked down at the child’s glowing face he was still bouncing up and down in her arms oblivious to the tension surrounding him.

  Linnett took a deep breath and walked up to the native man, who was large and muscular, golden skinned with black eyes that betrayed nothing of his inner thoughts, let alone his intentions. His nose was slightly bent as if it had been broken at some point. Bizarrely, his head was shaved, save for a middle strip of hair that ran from his forehead to his neck this was coloured with ochre paste and stood up stiffly. He wore a necklace of what looked like animal claws strung around his neck. One ear sported an earring of silver from which hung three small white feathers.

  He stretched out his arms to take the child, Linnett searched his face to assess his intentions but she could read nothing, his face was totally blank. Linnett realised there was nothing else to do but hand the child over; she held the child up to the terrifying man before her but the babe suddenly grabbed her around the neck and snuggled his face into her, holding on tightly.

  Gently, Linnett withdrew his arms and kissed his cheeks before she swiftly handed him up to the native, who smoothed the child’s hair back and spoke gently to him in a soft deep tone. The child twisted in his arms and called to Linnett. “Ko si, Ko si, Mi he wi!”

  Linnett held up her hand to the Indian. “Wait please, wait!” She ran inside quickly and came out again clutching the carved wooden horse.

  The natives were in the process of turning their horses to leave and Linnett had to run alongside them and put a restraining hand on the large Indian’s leg as she held the carved horse up to him. The child reached out for it and also grabbed a fist full of Linnett’s hair. The native Indian spoke sharply to the child but he hung on tightly and began to wail. With a swift movement, the Indian withdrew a large dagger from his hip, and before Linnett even had time to register any fear, he cut off the length of hair the child was holding. Man and horse moved off swiftly, the child waving the toy horse and a long gleaming rope of Linnett’s hair in the air as they rode away. A thin wail carried back to her as the child suddenly realised that Linnett was not attached to the hair he clutched so hard in his tiny hand.

  Linnett stood still staring long after the Indians had disappeared. Silent tears slipped unnoticed down her cheeks. She was startled out of her reverie by John, who slipped his arms around her from behind, holding her close, his chin resting on top of her head. After a while he turned her around and held her close before gently guiding her indoors. John led Linnett to a chair and bid her sit. He hunkered down at her side, taking one of her hands in his. “How did you find the child?” he asked her gently.

  Linnett told him her tale, and John nodded thoughtfully. He told her of his meeting in the forest with the three native Indians and of the sign language conversation that they had. “Hans told us there were no natives living nearby; I wonder where these came from?” Linnett pondered.

  John shook his head. “I have no idea where they came from, but I think they were Abenaki. We were lucky; they are the most warrior-like tribe in these parts. I had the shock of my life when I turned around and there they were. They made no sound at all.”

  Linnett nodded. “I know, the baby was so quiet at first and not at all like any other children I have seen,” she sighed. “Oh John, he was so sweet! I am going to miss him so!”

  John pulled her to her feet and wrapped his arms around her. He looked down into her miserable face. He hated what he had to do next, but Linnett had disobeyed him once again and the consequences of her actions had put them both in grave peril. John went to the bed and sat down, then he patted his knee. Linnett stared at John, astonished, for there was no doubting his meaning and he was going to spank her!

  “John, I do not deserve this.”

  John quirked his brow and said, “Really? I told you not to leave the cabin and...”

  “If I had stayed inside that poor baby might have died out there, John!”

  “Linnett do not interrupt me again! As
I said you should have stayed inside; you have put us both in peril and all because you did not listen to me yet again! Now show me that you have changed by doing what any other biddable wife would do and place yourself over my knee for your punishment. It is either that or your hairbrush, the choice is yours darlin’.”

  Linnett struggled internally with the need to flee and the desire to please her husband. She secretly loved the power that he held over her and found John an exciting and sensuous mate but she didn’t want to be spanked! She had saved that child! She did not deserve this! Linnett stamped her foot and glared at John, but he simply crooked his finger at her, his mouth tight and unsmiling, his eyebrow quirked and questioning. Linnett took a shuddering breath and a faltering step. She sidled towards him her hands clasped behind her, already protecting her threatened derriere.

  John patted his knee again and Linnett took a deep, shaky breath before bravely placing herself across her husband’s lap. John flipped up her skirt and petticoat loosening her drawers and parting them, baring Linnett’s curvaceous bottom. He rubbed her soft peachy flesh and began peppering her with small spanks, landing the swats ever faster and harder over the whole area of Linnett’s bottom, turning her from blushing pink to hot red.

  Linnett had been determined to stay proudly silent throughout her ordeal but as the spanking progressed and John landed more and more spanks on the tender spot at the top of her legs, Linnett gave into her grief. She wept at having to say farewell to the lovely little child and cried because of the stinging spanks landing on her bare bottom. Very soon she felt sorry for herself and began to wail.