Judith Bowen

by The Man from Blue River

  Then, as abruptly as he’d begun his assault, he stopped. He lay absolutely still for a moment. Groaning, he raised his head and rolled off her. The mare stretched down a long muzzle to sniff tentatively at them, and Martha thought she’d scream. The sudden stupid comedy of the situation almost overwhelmed her. But she knew if she started to laugh she’d never stop.

  “God, Martha.” Fraser flicked a piece of hay from her hair. They stared at each other. “I’m sorry.”

  Martha heard the sound of their breathing coming quick and hard together in the relative quiet of the stall. Mercredi reached to snatch a mouthful from her hay rack, losing interest. In the distance Martha heard male laughter and the ring of hammers on wood and metal as Tom and the hand continued their work.

  Fraser ran one finger down her face, tracing the curve of her cheek, then her jaw to her earlobe. His fingers were gentle as they slipped beneath the hair at her nape. She shivered violently. “I—I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  She nodded. She didn’t trust herself to speak. Not yet.

  He got up and crossed to the door of the stall. Then he leaned against the wooden upright for a long time, his back to her. She watched him, fumbling blindly to rearrange her clothing. She barely dared to breathe.

  “Dammit, Martha,” he said without turning. “I don’t want to hurt you.” Finally he turned toward her and raised one hand briefly, then let it fall to his side.

  “It’s just that…” He stopped, and Martha wasn’t sure he’d go on. When he did, his voice was bleak. “I never told you, but somewhere in the back of my mind I always remembered that it took over three years before Charlotte got pregnant the second time.” He glanced at her, then away. “I thought maybe it was my fault, that maybe you wouldn’t get pregnant at all.”

  She was bewildered. “Why’d you…? Our agreement…”

  “Because I’m a coward, Martha,” he said savagely. “A coward! I wanted what you could do for me.” He turned away. “And, God help me, I wanted you.”

  Something began to glow and burn deep in Martha’s soul. He’d never said he wanted her, not like that.

  “I wanted you,” he repeated simply, looking down the dark aisle of the barn, away from her. “Nothing’s changed. I still want you.” His words echoed in her head. I want you, I want you.

  Then he turned again and took a step toward her. He smiled, a smile that broke her heart.

  “Hell, it’s just that…” His voice was rough with emotion. “I guess I figured it’d just be the two of us for a while longer. Just me, just you.” He moved closer and offered her his hand. She took it and he helped her to her feet.

  “I know this is what you want, Martha.” He reached up to pluck another wisp of hay from her hair, his eyes dark with pain.

  She smiled weakly through her tears. “I do.” Her voice trembled. “Oh God, Fraser…I do.”

  “I know, I know.” He smoothed a tangle of hair from her face. “I wish I could say I’m happy for you. For your sake. I can try to convince myself I am—” he took a deep breath “—but they’re just words. I can’t feel it, Martha. I just can’t feel it.”

  HE WAS A SECOND SON. He’d never been first, or biggest or strongest.

  But he always knew his time would come. And he thought it had when Charlotte came back from California and wanted to marry him.

  She’d carried another man’s baby deep in her belly, but it hadn’t mattered. He’d wanted her too much to care. Her child would be his. But then later he’d lost her, and the child of his own flesh. Of his own making.

  Now he was in the process of adopting someone else’s children. Two girls. And Martha only wanted him for what he could give her.

  Sometimes, in his dreams, he wished he’d be first. Just once.

  IT COULD HAVE BEEN worse; at least he didn’t love her.

  That was what Fraser told himself through February, when he did the work of three men, anything to keep from spending time in the house. That was what he told himself while he and Martha attended seemingly endless interviews with state authorities regarding the adoption. On his more cynical days, he wondered what all the fuss was about. He knew the state authorities were enormously relieved that someone wanted to take the girls off their hands. Foster homes were hard enough to come by, and no one wanted to adopt two half-grown half-wild Wind River Mountain sisters.

  Of course no bureaucrat would admit as much, and Fraser resigned himself to going through all the usual hoops. But he wished there was one thing in his life he knew he could count on. Possibly April, they’d said at the end of February, after they’d made contact with Brenda’s sole surviving relative, her sister in Alabama. That gave Fraser a turn for a few moments; then he remembered the letter. No way Louise was going to put up any fuss. Nothing that cold hard cash couldn’t take care of, anyway.

  He’d stopped sleeping with Martha when he realized that it was impossible to lie there beside her in the same bed and not touch her. But he just didn’t feel the same, and he couldn’t pretend. The fact that he knew she had a baby growing inside her killed his desire as quickly as it arose. Even though Martha said he was being silly and the specialist they’d gone to in Rock Springs for a consultation in early March had told him the same, it didn’t matter. He couldn’t put aside the idea that if he made love with her, he might hurt her baby. That he might cause something terrible to happen to Martha’s baby, just as had happened to Charlotte’s baby.

  Martha’s baby. Not his baby. Not his and Martha’s. Martha’s baby.

  Sleeping in the same room with her—he’d moved in a cot—was killing him. Night after night he’d lie awake, listening to the soft sound of her breathing from the other side of the room, wishing he had the courage to go to her. Night after night he’d try to wrap his mind around what was happening—what had happened—without getting anywhere. He’d fathered another child, and now he had to live with that. He’d been stupid to pretend to himself that she might not conceive. But now he’d fulfilled the letter of their bargain, hadn’t he?

  Yet, it could have been worse, he told himself over and over. At least he didn’t love her

  March was busy with lambing, and April was even worse. Many long nights Fraser spent in the lambing pens with Tom and a couple of hired shepherds, helping bring hundreds of Westbank lambs into the world. Many times, as Fraser dabbed a ewe’s nose with vanilla so she wouldn’t be able to smell the orphan he was trying to get her to accept, or quickly skinned out a dead lamb so he could fasten the hide to another orphan to try to fool the mother with her own lamb’s scent, he’d think about just what he was trying to get a handle on.

  Motherhood. Mothering ability was what he called it in his purebreds. Brenda sure as hell hadn’t had it, and she’d had two kids. Martha seemed to have it in spades, and she’d never borne a child.

  And it was during lambing season that Fraser realized how much he’d come to depend on Martha. She’d appear unexpectedly in the middle of the night with hot coffee and sandwiches for the tired crew when she should have been sleeping herself. He always chewed her out about it, but she simply smiled and disregarded him.

  Once she even insisted on helping him with a delivery he’d nearly given up on. Obeying Tom’s precise instructions, she’d managed to disentangle hooves and legs and noses with her much smaller hand and burst into tears when the ewe had then delivered healthy twins. Tom had cheered, the silly old fool.

  Fraser had pulled her into his arms, his heart breaking for her, wishing he could help her, not hurt her the way he’d done. The way he kept doing. She didn’t deserve to be saddled with a man like him. She deserved a whole man, a man who could share her joy, who would help make this the happy time of life it should be for her.

  He wasn’t that man. She’d had the plain bad luck to marry the wrong man.

  Still, all through that spring, as her pregnancy began to show, as he saw the inevitable unfolding of new life before him, he thanked his lucky stars that he was on the outside looking i
n. At least he didn’t love her.

  Then, late in May, when the pussy willows had turned to tenderest green and the Canada geese had long flown north and the Blue was filled past its banks with meltwater, Fraser realized that he was wrong, that his worst nightmare was yet before him.

  It had just begun.

  AFTER MUCH GOOD-NATURED grumbling, Anne had put down her book and gone off with Daisy and Spook to explore the ancient orchard below the house where their grandparents had lived. The old homestead was falling down already, the veranda rotted and the roof caved in and gaping. And Old Man Langston had only been dead four or five years.

  Just went to show you, thought Fraser, stretching out under a ponderosa pine, what could happen if a man didn’t keep a hold on things. Stay on top.

  He was feeling good. He had a bellyful of cold herbroasted chicken and potato salad and apple cider and Martha’s oatmeal-and-raisin cookies. He was glad he’d gone along with Martha’s suggestion yesterday that they come up to the old Langston place for a Sunday picnic. The girls had settled right down these past few months. The adoption looked like it was pretty well set to go through. His lamb crop this year was almost ten percent better than last year’s, and he had some prime stock coming along ready for the summer fairs. No getting away from it, he was just about as content as a man in his particular situation could ever expect to be.

  Then he glanced over at Martha.

  She had just settled herself on a slight knoll at the base of another pine tree ten or twelve feet away and was smoothing down the fabric of her dress over her tucked-up knees. Some thin flower-sprigged kind of cloth. She smiled that secret smile he’d seen before when she thought no one was looking and then smoothed the fabric over the gentle hummock of her belly. Over and over, she ran the flat of her hand over her belly.

  She was half-turned from him, watching the girls in the distance. She’d tied her hair up loosely with a blue scarf, an unutterably feminine look. He could hear Anne ordering Daisy to do something in the distance and Daisy’s shrill reply and Spook barking a couple of times. Martha’s smile became one of tenderness and love. Anne had climbed high into an ancient apple tree, and Fraser saw Martha frown. He sensed her slight tension. But she didn’t call out; she didn’t stop Anne from climbing so high.

  Fraser turned away and closed his eyes against the stab he felt in his gut. It didn’t help. Something inside him burned and crushed and plowed a path through him, right through his heart, right through his soul. The truth. A juggernaut. Unstoppable.

  He was in love with this woman. He loved the woman who carried his child so close to her heart. His child.

  Silently, not breathing, afraid of attracting her attention, Fraser lay back on the soft bed of old pine needles under the tree. He felt his spine connect with the solidity of the earth—a few inches of leaf mold beneath him and then the solid rock of the mountains. Right down to the center of the planet.

  He stared up through the whorl of branches to the blue, blue sky above. Some of the branches were soft with new green growth, some were dead and twisted and still clinging to the gnarled trunk, others were swathed with the lichen they’d called old man’s beard as boys. Boys growing up on this land…

  The Blue River McKenna boys. He and Wes and the twins. And always a few cousins around. Where was Weston now? At Christmas, Cullen had said he’d had a postcard from Bangkok. And Jack? He hadn’t seen his baby brother, younger than Cullen by fifteen minutes, for years.

  Why hadn’t he made the effort? Why had he let it all slip away?

  He turned his head slightly. Martha was quietly folding the napkins she’d brought in the picnic basket, cotton napkins she’d helped Anne sew. By chance she looked at him and their glances caught and held.

  Fraser forced himself not to look away. Every instinct told him to run. But he was through running.

  Martha’s eyes widened slightly. She must have seen something of the war raging in him. He could feel the sweat on his back, on his chest. He could feel the blood roaring in his veins, thundering in his ears. Still, he didn’t turn away.

  Martha smiled a little uncertainly and turned back to watch the girls. Fraser closed his eyes again. He reached deep, deeper into himself and found the pain that had lived there for so many years. It didn’t disappear, but at least now he could face it for what it was.

  After an eternity—which was probably no more than a few moments—Fraser raised himself onto one elbow. Then he sat for a moment with his forearms balanced across his knees. At last he stood and slowly walked toward Martha, and as she looked up, a question in her eyes, eyes that matched the sky above, he sat down beside her. Not touching, not at first. He felt his heart hammer in his throat. Did he have the courage to tell her?

  “Martha,” he began, his voice sounding hoarse and strained. He took her hand, then turned it over in his, studying it It was so soft, so pale, the fingernails trimmed sensibly short. “Martha,” he repeated.

  “What is it, Fraser?” Her reply was no more than a whisper.

  “I want to tell you that I…” He could get no further. He closed his eyes and swallowed. Then he opened his eyes and managed a sort of half smile. He didn’t want to frighten her. With her hand in his, he placed their two hands together on her abdomen. Her eyes widened. Surprise, growing wonder…

  “You want to touch the baby?”

  “Yes.” It was a lie, but he allowed her to take his hand then, to guide it. He felt the tiniest flutter against his palm and fought the instinct to pull his hand away, to run, to hide somewhere dark and safe and secret.

  “Martha,” he began again, when he could trust his voice, “I, uh. .” Again everything inside him seized up. He cast about wildly, searching, searching…

  “I want to come back to your bed, Martha,” he said finally. “I want to hold you again and touch you. If you’ll have me.”

  “Yes, Fraser,” she said, her face suddenly wet with tears. With her free hand she reached up and put her palm against his face. She pulled him down to her and brought her lips softly to his. “Oh, yes!”

  THAT NIGHT he came to her bed and took her in his arms and allowed himself to touch her. He stroked the smooth skin of her back and hips, kissed her everywhere, tasted her everywhere. He learned the new contours of her hard and swollen belly, the new lushness of her blue-veined breasts, the new softness of her hips and thighs. And when she begged him to come to her, he brought her pleasure every other way he knew, refusing the ultimate act.

  He wanted to worship her, wanted to please her and pleasure her. And then he let her touch him, let her bring him the deep shuddering release he craved.

  Later he held her close, not sleeping. He cradled her in his arms as she cradled their child in her body. He couldn’t bear to close his eyes. He was afraid to sleep, afraid to waste one moment of this new awareness, this new feeling—his love for the woman who slept in his arms.

  Afraid, too, of the demons that still walked in the dark.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “FRASER…FRASER!”

  Fraser straightened and tilted his head back to shade his eyes with the brim of his hat. Lord, it was hot! He wiped the sweat from his upper lip with his bare forearm and squinted into the sunshine. Who the hell was that?

  He could see a puff of dust in the distance, too small for a vehicle. For a few seconds he thought he’d only imagined hearing someone call his name. He watched as the puff of dust got a little closer. Looked like one of the kids—on a bike.

  And she was pedaling hell-for-leather.

  Fraser suddenly felt cold despite the August heat. Martha. Something had gone wrong. Something had gone terribly wrong. And, goddammit, he’d practically begged her to move into town, where she’d be close to the hospital. Next week, she’d said. Always next week.

  Fraser threw down his gloves and ran to the fence, quartering the distance between him and the girl. Anne. It had to be. Daisy couldn’t pedal that fast, not over the rough dirt lane that led to the hay f
ield.

  Daisy. What if something had happened to her? Fraser cursed. He felt his heart squeeze. This was what happened when a man let himself feel again. This was what love did to a person.

  “Fraser!”

  “Anne!” He vaulted the fence and strode up to where she’d wobbled to a halt on the dusty track. Careful, McKenna. Don’t frighten her. He stopped himself from grabbing her. “What’s going on, darlin’?”

  “Birdie sent me,” Anne panted, her hand on her thin chest. Her eyes were bright, her face flushed.

  “Birdie?” What was she doing down at the ranch?

  “Yep.” Anne’s eyes were dancing. “You’re supposed to come home right away. Birdie says.”

  He could have shaken the girl. “Why? What else did Birdie say?”

  “It’s Martha. She’s having her baby.”

  Fraser’s blood turned to ice in his veins. He grabbed Anne by the shoulders, hard. “What?” Dear God, please let her be wrong. It was too early. Nearly a month too early.

  “Birdie says not to worry,” Anne said, eyes wide. “C’mon, Fraser. Let’s go. I don’t want to miss seeing the new baby come out.”

  God almighty, I do, Fraser thought. There’s nothing on earth I want to see less.

  Why had he run to the fence? Stupidest damn move he’d made. Now he had to run back to get his pickup, parked in the field.

  “Wait here,” he ordered. Anne nodded.

  The next few minutes passed in a haze. He wasn’t sure exactly what he’d done, except he’d moved fast. He was in the pickup, his foot to the floor, Anne’s bike bouncing around in the back and the girl clinging to the passenger seat. Slow down, slow down.

  Fraser let his foot off the accelerator. No sense scaring the kid half to death. “When’d Birdie get there?”

  “Martha phoned her. She said she was going to have the baby and she wanted Birdie.”