Jade Star

by Catherine Coulter

  “Time to let Mammy Bath help you out of those clothes,” Saint said, smiling at Byrony. “Call me when you’re in bed.”

  Byrony’s lips tightened as a contraction grabbed her belly. She saw Brent’s white face, and tried to smile at him. It was she who said, “I’m just fine, love. You mustn’t worry.”

  “Let’s get this chile into the world, little missis,” Mammy Bath said, and tugged at Byrony’s arm.

  Saint watched until Byrony disappeared from view at the top of the stairs. He turned to Brent. “If you like, you can stay with her for a while. Talk to her, distract her. First, though, let me examine her.”

  Brent nodded, his throat too tight from fear to let words out.

  “That’s right,” Saint said on a grin, and clapped Brent’s back. “You think celibate thoughts.”

  “Just wait until Jules is pregnant,” Brent managed.

  Saint was silent a moment. “It’s a sobering thought.”

  This would be a long labor, he thought a few minutes later, gently easing his fingers from Byrony’s body. Dammit! He forced a smile. “Just continue breathing easy, Byrony. That’s it. Now, let me get your husband for you.”

  The pains were coming more quickly some three hours later, but still she was long from delivery. Brent was talking at his wife nonstop, nonsense, really, but it did distract her a bit.

  Byrony gasped suddenly, a small cry tearing from her throat. Her body arched upward.

  Brent sent Saint an agonized, helpless look, and Saint said quickly, “Breathe slowly, that’s it. Now, Byrony, did I tell you about what was done to the expectant fathers in a long-ago civilization? No, I guess I didn’t. You listen to me now, and you too, Brent. You see, these folk were very advanced. For every hour the woman was in labor, her husband was hung upside down by his heels beside her bed. Even after the baby was born, the father had to look at his son or daughter upside down and nod in approval before he was released.”

  “Talk about celibate thoughts,” Brent said.

  “You made that up, Saint!” Byrony gasped, her laugh cut off by another contraction.

  “Nope, I swear. Now, the Siamese had an interesting method. After the birth of a woman’s first child, she continued in her bed, exposing her abdomen and her back to the heat of a blazing fire not two feet distant from her. It was kept going night and day for an entire month, the husband in charge. The practice had at least one virtue—it allowed the woman all the rest she needed. What do you think of that?”

  “I prefer Brent hanging by his heels,” Byrony said.

  “I’ll hang myself by anything you want,” Brent said as he gently wiped the perspiration from her forehead. “Well, not anything,” he added.

  Saint rose and stretched. He was racking his brain for more stories when he heard a shout from downstairs. “Stay put, Brent,” he said. “I’ll see what’s going on.”

  He bounded down the stairs. Just inside the door lay Thackery at Mammy Bath’s feet. His shirt was soaked with blood. Saint felt himself go cold.

  He lifted the man in his arms and carried him to the dining table. “Mammy, get me hot water and my bag from upstairs. Quick!”

  He cut away Thackery’s shirt and saw the bullet wound in his chest.

  “Dr. Saint.”

  “You just lie still, Thackery, just lie still.”

  “He got Mrs. Saint, he shot me and left me for dead, I guess. God, I let you down.”

  “It’s all right—” Saint began, only to watch Thackery slump again into unconsciousness at the same time a piercing scream came from upstairs.

  Brent appeared in the doorway a few moments later, his face white. “Saint, what the hell . . .!”

  “Wilkes has Jules. He shot Thackery.”

  “Damnation! Oh God, no!”

  Saint closed his eyes a moment, trying to think clearly, calmly. “Brent,” he said at last, “listen to me. Byrony’s hurting, but the baby won’t be here for a while yet. I want you to stay with her . . . hell, man, make up stories, anything. I’ll patch up Thackery.”

  “Then what will we do?”

  Saint knew he couldn’t leave Byrony. Yet that bastard Wilkes had his wife. “I don’t know,” he said. “Go to your wife now.”

  Alone with Thackery, Saint quickly dug out the bullet. He wanted Thackery conscious to tell him where Wilkes had captured her, but not before he’d gotten the bullet out. He was a strong man, a healthy man. He would live. Mammy Bath stood at his elbow, handing him instruments, cloths as he asked for them. Within minutes Thackery’s shoulder was bound firmly.

  “Now the smelling salts, Mammy,” Saint said. He waved them under Thackery’s nose. “Thackery,” he said, leaning over the man. “I know you hurt and I’ll give you some laudanum in just a moment. Tell me where you were when Wilkes shot you.”

  “Better yet, let him tell me. You wouldn’t know, Saint, even if he told you.”

  Saint moved aside and let Brent lean over Thackery.

  For a moment the pain was so great that Thackery couldn’t breathe.

  “It’s all right, John,” Brent said. “Take your time.”

  “At the northeast edge of the valley near MacGiver’s place. I saw him heading south with her, and west, toward the ocean. He knew, Dr. Saint, oh yes, he knew that Miz Hammond was going to have the baby. He timed it that way.”

  Saint gently patted Thackery’s shoulder to calm him.

  There was another piercing scream from upstairs, and both men froze.

  30

  Brent felt fear crawl through him.

  “You’ve got to go, love,” Byrony whispered. “You’ve got to bring her back safely. I have a saint to look after me. A real-live saint. Go, love.”

  Then she was lost to him and to reason, her eyes glazing with pain.

  A man shouldn’t have to make such a choice, Saint thought, even as he gently rubbed Byrony’s back to ease the contraction. He met Brent’s eyes.

  “Take care of my wife, Saint,” Brent said. “I’ll get Jules, I swear it. And I’ll kill the bastard, you can count on that.”

  But I want to kill him, Saint thought, exhilarated by the rage that filled him.

  He nodded then, unable to find words.

  He watched Brent lean down and kiss his wife’s pale lips.

  Then he was gone. Saint listened to his purposeful stride down the front stairs.

  Saint walked to the window that faced the front of the house. He saw Brent tie a rifle to his saddle, saw him thrust two guns into his belt. A half-dozen men, all of them black, waited for him to mount.

  The horses whinnied and reared. Then they were gone, leaving only the thick welter of dust kicked up from the horses’ hooves.

  It’s just as well I didn’t tell him, Saint thought, walking back to the bed. He sat down beside Byrony and gently took her limp hand into his. “Listen to me, Byrony,” he said, his voice low and insistent, pitched to cut through her pain. “The baby’s turned wrong and I’ve got to straighten him. Byrony, do you understand me?”

  He realized that she didn’t. He called to Mammy Bath. “Come here and hold her. You heard what I told her?”

  “Yes, Docta Saint, I heard.”

  It wasn’t the first time Saint had wished his hands were smaller. There was no help for it, of course. He had to try to turn the baby. If he failed, he knew Byrony Hammond would die. And what of Jules? What of his beautiful, sweet wife? What was Wilkes saying to her, doing to her?

  Saint shook himself and forced his mind to the matter at hand.

  “It is quite odd, I’ll admit that,” Jameson Wilkes said, and unconsciously tightened his arm around Jules’s waist. But he’d wanted her too long, so long in fact that he could no longer remember when she wasn’t in his thoughts. And in his opium dreams.

  He sounds so reasonable, so reasoning, Jules thought, a stirring of hope going through her. “I can be nothing to you,” she continued, her voice as persuasive as she could make it. “You’ve only imagined that you want me. But
I am a married woman. I am not a virgin any longer. Didn’t you tell me that my virginity was my only value?”

  “Yes,” Wilkes said. “That’s what I told you.”

  “Then why?”

  He felt the agony in his belly growing more insistent, more unrestrained, and was unable for the moment to answer her. The pain was the reality.

  Her voice thin and high, Jules said, “You’re old enough to be my father! Do you want a daughter? Are you so twisted that—?”

  He tightened his arm about her waist, cutting off her breath. “Shut up,” he said. He laughed humorlessly and said to himself, “Hell, what I need is your damned husband.” His laughter trickled away. No one could help him, cure him. He was tired now, and worried. And he felt so old, so damnably used up, so finished. No! He shook his head and forced his mind into clear channels. He would handle Hawkins and Grabbler. The scum wanted the money he’d promised them more than a woman.

  He watched the sun disappear in a ball of vivid red. He’d always been in awe of sunsets over the ocean. They were like a short burst of the most awesome Chinese fireworks. Never to see them again . . . He felt Juliana sag against him and breathed a sigh of relief.

  “It’s almost as if he wants us to track him,” said Josh, a black man Brent had grown up with at his father’s plantation, Wakehurst. He straightened, his eyes on Brent. “We saw Miz Saint’s mare—”

  “Which means he’s carrying her on his horse and that will slow him down,” Brent finished, shading his eyes toward the sun that was glowing fiercely over the ocean.

  “That’s not the point,” Josh said.

  “No, it isn’t. I’m afraid I do know what the point is. Not only does he want Jules, he also wants Saint. Revenge, I suppose, since Saint saved her from him. Stole her, I guess, is Wilkes’s reasoning.”

  But why did he wait until Byrony had gone into labor to take her? Did he believe Saint would leave her and come after his wife? No, he added mentally, Wilkes just wanted enough time. And, it seemed, he wanted Saint to be in a damnable position. The cruel bastard. “We’ve only got another hour of light,” he said abruptly, and dug his heels into his stallion’s sides.

  But they hadn’t found her when night hit. It was dark as pitch, only a sliver of moon, clouds obscuring the stars. They couldn’t track any more until morning.

  Brent didn’t know what to do. He was faced with the most painful decision of his life.

  “I’m sorry, Brent,” Josh said, laying his huge black hand on his friend’s arm. “Real sorry. But you can’t go back, now now. Four hours there, four hours back. You’d be exhausted, and Missis Saint needs a functioning man, not a piece of dead meat.”

  Brent gave Josh a twisted smile. Then he closed his eyes, praying toward the cloud-strewn heavens, praying that his wife was all right, that Jules wasn’t being savaged at this moment, praying that life would somehow become normal again.

  “We need to build a fire,” Brent said. “It’ll be colder than a dead stone before long.”

  The cave was damp and chill despite the smoking fire in front of her. Jules drew her legs closer, kept her head down.

  “She’s a purty little thing,” said Hawkins. “Lookee there, she knows I’m talkin’ about her. She quivered all over.”

  Hawkins chuckled and emptied his tin cup of the remains of his coffee.

  “It’s time for you to spell Grabbler,” said Wilkes. “Take him something to eat while you’re at it.”

  He felt better. The opium always dulled the pain, for a while at least. He’d not taken too much to dull his mind.

  “You gonna fuck the little gal while we’re gone?”

  “Get out, Hawkins,” Wilkes said.

  “Looks awful cold, she does,” Hawkins said. “A nice big man atween her legs would warm her up.”

  Jameson Wilkes looked Hawkins square in the face. God, he was a villainous-looking creature, his gaunt face covered with a thick black beard, hiding, Wilkes knew, a puckered, ugly scar that ran the full length of his cheek. “You want her or the money?” He forced himself to shrug. “It’s up to you. You don’t get both. And you know, don’t you, my friend, that the money isn’t with me.”

  Jules felt her blood run cold at Wilkes’s emotionless voice. She kept her eyes on the cave floor. The dirt was soft and very black, she thought vaguely. She tried not to think of Byrony in agony, tried not to think of Michael and Brent.

  “Hell,” Hawkins muttered finally, the toe of his dirty boot kicking at the fire’s embers, “a man can always get hisself some tail.”

  “Tell Grabbler the same thing,” Wilkes said coldly. “With what you two will earn, you’ll be able to buy all the whores you want.”

  There was no more talk until Hawkins had left the cave. Wilkes said calmly to Jules, “A pity, my dear, that I can’t offer you a bath—or a bed, for that matter. I do apologize. I don’t believe, however, that we will have to remain here much longer. Since it’s dark, we’ll be staying here the night. I suggest you get some sleep.”

  Spend the long night with this man and those other two villains? “Why are we remaining here at all?”

  Wilkes studied her pale face in the soft glow of the fire. Her riding hat was long gone, and her beautiful hair was in riotous curls and tangles over her shoulders and down her back. There was a smudge of dirt on her cheek.

  He was proud of her cold voice because he knew how afraid she was.

  “I don’t think you need to know that just yet,” he said. No, he thought, if he told her, she’d become a wild thing, he knew.

  “What are you going to do to me?”

  He laughed softly. “Not fuck you, my dear, as Hawkins so crudely phrased it. Not yet, in any case. Not until we’re away from here and safe.”

  Safe! “Not ever,” Jules said. “No, not ever.”

  “I know,” he said easily. “Your huge husband would kill me, is that right?”

  “No,” Jules said, “I would kill you.”

  He swooped down and kissed her hard on the mouth, then moved before she could react. “Get some sleep, Juliana.” He gave her a smile that made her shudder. “If you need to relieve yourself, I suggest you ask me to be your companion.”

  Saint sat beside Byrony, his chin resting on his folded hands. The bedroom was in darkness save for the one lamp that cast dim shadows on Byrony’s pale face. He’d finally given her some chloroform and she was in a stuporous sleep. He prayed she would regain some strength, because there were still hours before the child would birth itself.

  At least he’d managed to turn the baby. He could still feel Byrony’s pain, the dreadful stretching of her small body as he’d eased his hand into her. But the child was now head-down, as it should be.

  He finally slept himself, fitfully, his thoughts of his wife. What had happened to her? It was twelve o’clock, midnight.

  When Byrony awoke she lay for a moment in a painless, vague realm. She saw Saint’s face above her, gentle, kind, yes, so very kind. She ran her tongue over her dry lips.

  “Some water, Byrony,” he said, and helped her sip from the glass.

  The pain was nearer now, bringing her to full awareness.

  “Chauncey told me you’d tell me where you got your nickname, Saint,” she said, striving desperately for reason, for control over her pain-racked body.

  “Yes,” he said, “I’ll tell you. You breathe deeply now, and when that contraction builds, I want you to push with all your strength.”

  “I don’t think I have much more strength,” Byrony said.

  “Don’t you talk like that,” Saint said, his voice hard and cold. “You’re young and strong. You’re going to birth that baby soon, yes, very soon. Do you hear me, Byrony?”

  “I hear you,” she said, her voice so hoarse and raw that she wondered he could even understand her. The contraction built, and she wanted to die, to do anything to escape the pain. But she heard his voice telling her to push, and she did, with all her might.

  “Now,” Saint sa
id when the pain eased a bit, “let me tell you about my nickname. Look at my face, Byrony. Don’t fight the pain. You know what you have to do and you will do it. Now, it was when I was a young man, at Harvard Medical School. Various folk would provide the students with corpses to dissect. Breathe sharp, shallow breaths, Byrony! Yes, that’s it.”

  “I don’t know if I want to hear any more of this story, Saint.”

  “It ends well, I promise.”

  He waited, hearing her scream, softer now because her throat was raw from her cries, saw her arch, and said, “Push, Byrony!” He knew she was trying, but she was weakening.

  Jules, where are you?

  It was four o’clock in the morning. Nearing dawn. When most deaths and most births occurred. He shook himself.

  Byrony struggled to hold to something real, not to be dragged into the endless pit. “Tell me, Saint!”

  “Yes, well, one day they wheeled in the body of a man who’d just expired at the hospital. The professor, Old Hook Nose, we young men called him, was waving his scalpel about, on the point of demonstrating to us stupid students how one was to proceed. But you see, Byrony, the man wasn’t dead. I grabbed Old Hook Nose’s wrist just as it was descending. There was a lot of shouting and cursing that I, a wretched student, would dare attack such a venerable man. But I’d seen the eyelids of the ‘dead man’ flicker. I thank the good Lord to this day that I’m a large man. I had to fight off a good ten men, Old Hook Nose included. Then, my dear, the supposed dead man opened his eyes. It was he, Robert Gallagher, who named me Saint.”

  “Saint, make it stop!”

  He wondered briefly if she’d even understood him. He held her, felt the awful wrenching pain, and knew he must do something or she would be too weak to birth the child. She would die, and the child with her.