When Nalin and Carter returned to their ranch after the convention, Nalin spent her days mostly in bed. The foreman's wife, Grace, dropped in on her every other day to cook and do anything around the house that required exertion, since the doctor said Nalin wasn't to lift anything heavier than a frying pan. Nalin's stomach swelled, and her hope and excitement for motherhood swelled with it. The baby lived inside of her for twenty-one weeks, the longest her body had held life.
The contractions began in the morning after Carter left for his work on a day when Grace didn't visit. Nalin doubled over and moaned on the bed. Her mouth became dry, and she stumbled to the pitcher of water for a drink. Upon returning to the bed and looking down, fear and dread washed over her. A pool of blood soaked the sheets. She had only a moment's pause before pain pummeled her lower back and stomach at the same time. She knew then that the baby was coming. She grabbed a rag and collapsed onto the bloodied sheets. She held the rag between her legs until she no longer cared how much blood soaked the bedding. She allowed the cloth to fall to the floor and held her stomach in her hands. Piercing the lonely silence with her screams, she passed the stillborn baby after six long hours.
She wasn't prepared to see what came out from between her legs. Before when she suffered losses, she had birthed the fetuses in pieces, unrecognizable as human and covered in blood. But that day she gave birth to what was clearly a baby girl. A very tiny baby, but one who was fully formed with all her fingers and toes. She fit into Nalin's hands, and Nalin stared at her, weeping and hysterical. They were both still connected to the umbilical cord, a limp reminder that her body's link to the baby hadn't been enough to nourish her to life. With a trembling hand, she cut the cord using a kitchen knife.
Overcome with a desperate desire to clean her baby, she found a soft cloth, soaked it with water, and went about gently bathing her. Once she was clean, Nalin touched every part of her small body: her eyelids, each finger and toe, her ears, her tiny nipples. Nalin had never known such pain as this—to hold a baby, her baby, and know that she would never live. Sinking to the floor, she sat leaning against the wall and stared at her. The baby, which had come out warm, turned cold in her hands. Nalin's tears fell onto the girl's face. She didn't take her eyes away from her daughter until she heard Carter's footsteps.
He stood in the doorway to the bedroom, and his eyes flashed sheer terror. Nalin watched him eye the bloody rags and sheets, then look at her and the baby she held, all within the span of a few seconds. He rushed to them.
"She's dead," Nalin sobbed. "Our baby is dead."
Carter crouched in front of her. He put a hand on Nalin's forehead and examined her eyes, then took the baby in his hand. He stared at the girl, a pained expression on his face. Without saying a word, he stood and walked toward the door with the baby in his hand.
"Wait!" Nalin shrieked, struggling to her feet and staggering after him. She grabbed the shirt on his back and enclosed it in her fist, leaving a bloodstain. "Where are you going? Don't take away my baby, Carter." She didn't recognize her own voice. It was hysterical, a panicked scream.
"Stay here, Nalin. I'll be right back."
"Oh, please no," she wailed. "I haven't said goodbye, Carter. I beg you to give her back to me. At least let me say goodbye."
Carter stood still for a long moment, his back facing her. When he turned, Nalin looked into his eyes. They were wet, and his face was streaked with tears. She had never seen her husband cry, not once in all the years she'd known him.
"Kiss her goodbye then, Nalin," Carter said, his voice faltering.
Nalin tried to settle her sobs. "I-I-I can't d-do it, Carter. I don't want her to leave."
"She's already gone, my love," Carter choked out. He kissed the top of the baby's head and said, "Goodbye, daughter." He blinked, and another tear escaped from his eye. He looked at Nalin. "Now you, my love. Kiss our daughter goodbye."
"Oh, Carter," she cried, touched and devastated by his words and actions. Nalin kissed her. "Goodbye," she whispered. Her eyes lingered on her face for a few precious seconds before she tore them away and looked up at her husband. He gave her a nod before leaving the room.
Nalin sank into the blood-soaked bed and curled into a ball, facing the wall. Carter returned in less than a minute without the baby. Nalin felt herself being carried and laid on the sofa, which had been draped with a clean quilt. Carter wrapped it around her and placed a pillow under her head.
"I'll be right back. I'm going to town to fetch the doctor. There's water right next to you on the table."
Nalin tried to focus her eyes on him, but he looked blurry. His voice sounded far away and it took considerable effort for her to understand his words. She said something, she wasn't sure what. Next she heard the hooves of a galloping horse. As the sound faded, she retreated into a state of unconsciousness.
When she awoke, it was dark. The doctor had come and gone. Carter was in a seated position on the bed, leaning against the headboard, and Nalin's head was on a pillow in his lap. The bed had been stripped, scrubbed, and remade with clean bedding. Carter's hand, which was settled on her arm, moved up as she stirred. He stroked her hair out of her face and ran his hand down her back, doing what he could to comfort her with his touch.
It was upon awakening that she entered her nightmare. She heard a long wail, and it took her a moment to realize it was coming from her own lips. She wept until she grew too weak to continue and then sank into a silent stupor.
# # #
Unlike before when she miscarried, the stupor didn't leave. Carter grew more worried as the weeks passed without any sign of improvement in his wife's state of mind. The doctor said nothing was wrong with her physically as far as he could tell. His official diagnosis was heartbreak, which broke Carter's heart as well. The fire was gone from her eyes, and her springing step slowed to a drag.
The scene he entered the day of the stillborn delivery flashed in front of his eyes time and time again. Blood everywhere. His wife's stricken, ghost-white face and desperate, darting eyes. The dead baby in her hands. The fear and grief he felt that day were immense. He wasn't sure how long his wife had been suffering alone or whether she would recover, mentally or physically. The doctor's assurance of her physical recovery provided him with some comfort, but her mental state seemed to suffer double whatever misery had not already been visited on her body.
Carter called on her friends from the suffragette group and asked them to visit Nalin as much as they could. She barely spoke to them and appeared relieved when they left. Carter even fetched Billy. Her father gave her a bottle of whiskey and offered a few words of comfort.
"Don't you worry, girl. Before you know it, you'll be back to having a hog-killin' time. This'll pass, like everything else."
Nalin thanked him in a whisper but couldn't bring herself to joke with him or even smile. Before he left, Billy handed Carter thirty dollars.
"It's not much, I know. I want no hard feelings atwixt us, and I'm fixin' to pay you back the rest. I don't claim I was a good father, or even a middlin' one, but I always loved that little girl."
For the first time, Billy and Carter shook hands. No two men were more different from each other, but they shared two powerful things in common: Love for Nalin and an understanding of what it meant to love a daughter.
Grace stayed with Nalin at the cabin every day, ensuring she was never alone when Carter forced himself to leave her side to attend to the ranch. Grace cooked the meals and kept the house clean. Nalin tried to help once in the kitchen but was in such a daze that she burned herself on the pan while scrambling an egg. She didn't cry when it happened, just stared at the burned the flesh on her arm until Grace rushed to pour cool water over it.
Nalin mostly stayed in bed and stared at the wall or ceiling. She didn't express any kind of emotion after the day of the loss. She was uninterested in reading her books or baking her favorite honey bread. She didn't bathe unless Carter helped her, and he and Grace had to coax her to eat. E
very day, Carter gathered her into his lap and held her for a long while, uttering whatever comforting words he could think of while she hung limply in his arms.
A letter from Susan B. Anthony arrived in the post. It was in her hand and addressed to Nalin, informing her of upcoming conventions and requesting her participation at the next one in Texas. Susan asked Nalin to write and deliver a speech on the topic of married women's right to vote. When Carter handed her the letter, Nalin's eyes fixed on the first sentence and didn't move.
Carter watched her carefully. "You're not reading it, sweet girl."
Nalin blinked and handed it back to him. "Will you read it to me, Carter? I feel so tired."
Carter read the letter out loud and looked to see her reaction, hoping for some expression of pleasure or happiness to light her face. It was not to happen. Hearing the request to speak seemed to make her even more tired, and she closed her eyes.
"That's nice of her to think of me," she said with considerable effort, and went back to sleep.
One day, Carter came home and noticed her long hair was horribly knotted from being tussled in the bed. It was the middle of the day and she slept. He shook her shoulder.
"Wake up, sweet girl, and come sit on the chair. I'm going to brush your hair. It's knotted something fierce. I don't even know if those tangles will come free."
She dragged herself out of bed to the chair. She looked at him through the mirror in front of her with a blank expression as he worked the tangles out of her long, dark hair.
"It's been more than a month, honey, and you haven't been able to move on from the loss at all. What can I do to help you?"
"I don't know. I can't feel anything." Her speech was slow and heavy with effort.
Carter made progress with her hair. The tangles came free a little at a time. It felt symbolic to him. He felt hopeful that the rest of her would be freed, too, after some care and attention.
"I would give anything to make it better," he said.
With her hair untangled and smooth down her back. Carter took her hand and led her to the bed, where he gathered her into his lap.
This time she clung to him instead of remaining limp. She grasped his shirt at his chest and spoke, which she hadn't done for some time while he comforted her. "I know I've been a horrible wife, Carter."
Carter gave her a look that bordered on stern, but his voice was gentle. "You must never say you're a horrible wife. You're no such thing, my love."
She clung to him tighter. "Carter?"
"Hmm?"
"Will you always love me and hold me like this, even if I never return to the way I was?"
"Of course, honey, but I think you will return. Everything will be okay. You'll see."
"Do you wish you'd married someone who could have your baby? Do you wish you had a more biddable wife?"
Carter tensed at her words. Did she really not know how much he loved her? He closed his eyes in a moment of frustration. When he opened them, Nalin's eyes were fixed on him.
"I've angered you," she said.
"You've frustrated me. You're doubting my love for you. I can't understand why you would, when I try to show it to you every day."
"How could I not doubt your love? What kind of woman has a body that rejects new life? What kind of wife becomes so depressed she can't leave her bed?"
"Nalin, don't say such things. You're grieving. You're my wife, the woman I love, and your worth to me isn't connected to childbearing. I've tried so many times to convince you of this. What more should I say?"
"You don't realize you deserve someone better. I hate myself, Carter. I hate that I am such a failure."
"How dare you say that? Now I'm warning you. I won't hear you doubt my love for you, and I won't hear you speak ill of yourself. I'll punish you, Nalin. Is that what you want right now? To be punished?"
"I want only to die."
Upon hearing those words, Carter shoved her off his lap onto her feet, a move that startled her after months of nothing but caresses from him. She looked at him with shock, something much different from her dazed expression of late.
"Fetch me your hairbrush, young lady."
"No, Carter!" she said.
"Go on. Rattle your hocks."
Tears sprung to her eyes. "No," she repeated. "I don't want you to spank me. I want you to hold me." She moved toward him, but he held her back, stood, and walked past her to the dresser.
"What you want is of little consequence right now." He picked up the hairbrush. "You just said you want to die. I'm inclined to do the opposite of what you want, since I want you to live."
He sat on the bed again and observed her sad eyes, which began to spill the tears that had formed. As much as he hated to see her cry, Carter believed her tears were a good sign. She hadn't cried at all since the day of the loss. She had only stared at him blankly with a glassy expression, which frightened him, but crying before a spanking was a normal response from her.
"You're getting five extra swats for not fetching this when I asked for it." He cracked the flat surface of the hairbrush loudly against his palm to get a sense of what kind of wallop it packed. The noise caused her to jump and his palm to smart.
"Take off your nightdress."
Nalin's lower lip quivered. "All the way off? But why?"
"Now you've earned five more for questioning me instead of obeying. Don't give me cause to add more, young lady. You're already getting a sound spanking before the extras."
Nalin looked at him with wide, blinking eyes. Another tear slid down her face. Carter knew he was being hard on her. He wanted to jolt her into the right state of mind for a punishment.
"I'm going to spank you, Nalin. My only expectation of you right now is submission, so forget about the other pressures you place on yourself as my wife. If you don't submit to me, you'll lose none of my love, but you'll receive it in the form of harsher punishment. You don't want that. Do you understand?"
Nalin nodded. She pulled the nightdress up over her head, leaving her naked except for her pantaloons.
"Take off your drawers too."
She obeyed. She folded her hands in front of her and looked at him, her eyes still wide.
"Good girl. Now come lie over my lap. You need to be reminded of a few things, one of which is that nothing has changed between us. I still love you, and I'll still punish you."
She hesitated a moment too long.
"Nalin! That's fifteen extra now." He leaned forward, grabbed her arm, and hauled her over his lap before she gave him cause to make it twenty. "You know better than to delay punishment, young lady. When has that ever worked in your favor?"
She wailed and began pleading with him before the spanking even began. "Please, Carter. Don't be harsh with me. I'm in a wretched way. If you must punish me, can't you use your hand?"
In answer to her question, Carter smacked the flat oak of the hairbrush down on her right cheek. He used barely an ounce of his own force because he'd just learned that the hairbrush packed a sting like no other implement, having felt it on his own hand. Her shriek confirmed it.
While spanking her, he lectured. "I think I need to be harsh with you now, Nalin. Being gentle wasn't working, was it? I warned you to mind the words coming out of your mouth, but you continued speaking ill of yourself. I won't stand for it. I never have, and I never will."
He continued to spank her with moderate swats that elicited more squirming and crying than his hand ever had. Carter punished every part of her backside with stinging spanks and watched her bottom turn crimson after a very short amount of time. He moved to the tender area where her cheeks met her thighs, which was when she began to kick her legs and struggle. After leaving her sit spots properly punished, he focused on her upper thighs, reddening them as much as her bottom. At that point, she wept and begged him to stop.
He paused. His voice was stern. "Are you going to question my love for you or speak ill of yourself after this spanking?"
"No, sir."
"I hope not, Nalin, because I'd prefer not to spank you for that yet again."
"I won't, ohpitsa," she said through her tears.
Her word of endearment for him gave him hope that a part of her was returning. "Am I ever going to hear you say something so awful as wishing for your own death again?"
"No, Carter. I'm sorry. I don't want to die really. I don't know why I said it."
"I imagine it's because you're in a very dark place. You will eventually walk into the light again, and I'm going to be with you every step of the way, for as long as it takes. Okay?"
Nalin sniffled. "Okay, ohpitsa."
"What are you going to do after this spanking? Do you wish to go back to sleep?"
She sniffled. "I'm a bit hungry. I might eat." Her voice took on a bit of a whine. "But I'll have to stand up while doing so."
He felt another surge of hope. His wife's fire was there. It was a tiny flame, but it could be ignited.
"I owe you fifteen more licks with the hairbrush for your disobedience, but then I'll get you fed."
The last fifteen swats made her squirm something fierce, but Carter held her in place. When she tried to use her hand to protect her seat after the fourth crack of the hairbrush, he took it in his and moved it out of the way without slowing the swats. He finished the spanking while she cried out and kicked her legs.
He set the hairbrush aside and rubbed her hot skin in circles, relieving some of the sting. She relaxed over his lap. "Good girl. I know I was hard on you, but now it's over."
He continued to rub as her cries died down. "What would you like to eat, Nalin?"
She responded quietly, but with resolution. "Apple pie."
"We don't have that. I wish we did because it sounds good to me too."
"I know. I'm going to bake it. I want to bake my husband's favorite dessert."
"Do you? Hmm. I need to use the hairbrush more often."
His small tease brought out a quiet laugh from her, which was music to his ears. He pulled her soft, naked body into his arms and caressed her. He rubbed her back and her arms, then kissed her tears away. She melted into him and buried her head into his chest as he wrapped his arms around her.
The Submissive Suffragette (Lone Star Love Book 1) Page 9