Laurie Alice Eakes - [Midwives 03]

by Choices of the Heart

  Esther’s mouth parched like herbs in the oven. Drinking down the coffee in one gulp seemed like a good idea, except she’d scald herself in the process.

  She swallowed and drew the cup close to her chest. “I’m listening.”

  “And so am I.” Griff spoke in a low voice, a tone too low to carry farther than her ears. “Will you keep talking?”

  Esther lifted the mug to her lips in response.

  He sighed but did not move away. “This is rough country, you know. We’re all loyal to our families. And sometimes a family member is so offended he just has to fight back. That’s what happened. A man connected with the Brookses did something that offended my relatives and got wounded for it. Then his relatives went after mine for wounding him and killed my older brother . . . And that’s how it starts. But Zach and I took a vow to stop the fighting once and for all. We took it before God and everyone at church.”

  “That’s . . . barbaric.” Esther sipped at the coffee to warm her cold insides. “No one right in his reason tries to kill someone. No one kills someone over an insult.”

  “They do if the insult’s bad enough.” Griff’s gaze shifted right.

  “Not a Christian soul,” Esther persisted.

  Hypocrite that she was for invoking the Lord when she had revoked her claims to a relationship with Him months ago.

  “We seemed to forget all that.” Zach spoke up for the first time. “’Cept for Griff and me. We listened to the circuit preacher who comes through once a month or so, and we know it’s wrong.”

  Both men wore identical expressions of intent sincerity—beautiful blue eyes wide, chins determined—handsome cousins so much alike in looks save for one fair and one dark. Not much older than Esther herself but already bearing lines at the corners of their eyes. Mostly smile lines. Nice, kind young men who deserved the better way of life their mothers wanted for them. That God surely wanted for them.

  She was most definitely not right for them. More suited to be that tavern maid, or so they’d think if they knew the truth.

  “You won’t come to harm up here with us,” Griff assured her. He rose, brushed his forefinger across her cheek, and moved back before she could shy away.

  She gripped the tankard so hard she expected the pewter to bow beneath her hands. She should ask what had started the fighting. If someone had stabbed Griff because of the feud, how safe could an outsider truly be if the fighting broke out again, despite these two scions of the families vowing they would stop it?

  She couldn’t form the words. She didn’t want the answers. She must continue on with them. If matters grew dangerous, she would simply leave. She’d learned that lesson well.

  Decision made, she rose. “I think we need to get some food prepared and be moving along then.”

  “Yea, we do.” Hannah stooped to right the spider and let out a soft cry.

  “Hannah?” Esther glanced down at the other woman. “Are you all right?”

  Beside the fire, Hannah knelt in the dirt by the ruined dinner. She was cradling one hand with the other. On her palm, flaming red marks warned of blistering to come. “I grabbed the pan without a cloth.” Her voice was a whimper.

  “You should have said something.” Esther tossed her cup aside and grasped Hannah’s wrist. “Griff, hand me that bucket of water. Zach, fetch my satchel.”

  5

  Without taking a moment to consider the consequences of her actions, Esther used the voice her mother had taught her to employ in the birthing chamber: “You need people to jump when you tell them to, not question why, so be authoritative.”

  Hannah crouched on the ground, sobbing through her teeth, though without tears, and her face was pale beneath the sun-tinted skin. Esther held her wrist in the water and spoke in the other kind of voice Momma had taught her to employ—the gentle, soothing one, almost like talking to a fractious child, without the exaggerated sweetness people tended to apply to little ones.

  “I know it hurts. Burns always do. This will help. Thank you, Zach.” She didn’t raise her voice as he returned with her satchel. “Set that beside me. Griff, fetch some colder water. This is too warm to do much good.”

  “Won’t do no good anyhow.” Bethann returned to the gathering around the dying fire. “You need grease on that hand.”

  “No, cold water. Griff, please?”

  With a nod, he trotted off with the coffeepot, the only large enough container besides the bucket.

  “What are you?” Bethann called after him. “Her lapdog?”

  Esther’s mouth tightened, but she kept moving Hannah’s hand around in the cool but not icy water.

  Perhaps she should ask Bethann to stick her hand in the water to freeze it.

  “He’s helping my sister.” Zach set the satchel on the ground beside Esther and flipped up the catch.

  She rummaged in the bag with one hand, keeping eye contact with Hannah so she would know if the older woman might swoon at any moment. “I’m going to make a poultice with these herbs. Bethann, will you assist me?”

  “Naw. All she needs is a little grease.”

  “My mother and I have never believed grease to be helpful for taking away the pain. Later it helps prevent the blisters from breaking, but at first, the colder the water—”

  “You’re going to kill her with that, I tell you.” Bethann began to scoop fat from the bacon tin. “I’ve been doctoring my family for years. I know what works and what don’t. Never heard of water for a burn.”

  “I’ve used cold water, even ice if it’s available, for years on pa—” Esther shut her mouth and turned her attention to Hannah, her tone a soothing murmur.

  “I’ll help you.” Zach shot Bethann a glare, then turned his full attention on Esther, moving closer to her. Too close. His not entirely unpleasant odors of woods, horses, and perspiration filled her nostrils, her brain. Nausea touched her middle, spread as dizziness into her head.

  “Please.” Esther took a deep breath. “I need room to work.”

  “Sure.” He moved back half a foot.

  Not as much as she liked, but better.

  “I mix the herbs in the grease,” Bethann persisted.

  “That might work.” Esther set the envelope of elderflower leaves on her lap, then reached in to find her comfrey. “But we need that cold water first.”

  “Suit yourself. No one listens to me.” Bethann slammed the lid on the bacon tin and stumbled away, looking ill. Beyond a curve in the path, her voice rang out. “You men are fools, and so is she.”

  “She knows what she’s doing, that’s clear,” Zach responded.

  Bethann grumbled something indistinct, then crashed away.

  Another patient for Esther to tend. She should not be this ill.

  Except Esther didn’t want to be tending patients. She had left that behind. Yet she couldn’t deny Hannah the care she needed, and Bethann appeared at the end of her strength.

  Griff strode into the clearing with only a hitch in his gait to tell of his recent wound. He crouched beside Esther, and she flashed him a quick smile.

  “Do, please, pour that water into the bucket. No, wait, let me pour some of this out. Hannah, I’m sorry.” She drew Hannah’s hand from the water.

  Hannah hissed in her breath. “I declare the water is helping. It hurts more out of it.”

  “Of course it does. These herbs will help, though fresh would be better and aloe would be the best.”

  “What’s aloe?” Griff asked.

  Concentrating on studying the severity of Hannah’s injury, Esther murmured, “A plant from northern Africa, though it grows all over the world now. It likes warm places, so we always grew a pot on our kitchen window sill.” She plunged Hannah’s hand into the water again. “Just a few more minutes.”

  “Why is aloe so good?” Griff pressed.

  Esther glanced at him, eyebrows arched.

  A dusky hue rose on his cheekbones, and he rubbed his cheeks. “I’m a farmer. Plants interest me.”

&nb
sp; Zach shuddered. “I’d rather be on the river.”

  “Perhaps you can take the river to someplace warm enough to grow aloe.” Esther made the suggestion as a joke, but the cousins exchanged glances as though she were serious.

  “That should do with the water for now.” Esther removed Hannah’s hand from the bucket and sprinkled herbs right onto the skin. “The elderflower smells nice, but the comfrey is like garbage. But nothing heals faster. Zach, hold your sister’s hand while I wrap it.”

  He hesitated. “Why would you use something that smells bad to heal?”

  “Because it works. Now take it, please.”

  “Sure thing.” Zach slipped his hand between Hannah’s and Esther’s, his the size of both theirs together and even more calloused on the palm than Griff’s.

  Esther snatched her fingers free and dug in her satchel for a bit of gauze. The burns needed air to heal, but the herbs needed to remain pressed to the skin for several hours. “Griff, you should go look in on your sister. She’s not well.”

  “Maybe you should.” He was staring at her as Zach was too—with amazement. “You’re the one with the doctoring skills.”

  More than he knew. More than she wanted.

  “Men are doctors,” she muttered.

  “We don’t got—” Hannah ducked her head. “I mean, we don’t have no—”

  “Any,” Zach corrected.

  Hannah sighed. “We don’t have any doctors, men or otherwise, where we live. Just Bethann with some herbs and a midwife as old as Mr. Jefferson.”

  “Mr. Jefferson,” Griff said, “is dead.”

  “Well, so should Granny Duval be.” Hannah half smiled. “She’s as old as he would be if he was still alive—about a hundred.”

  “You’ll be welcome,” Zach added.

  Esther’s skin broke out in gooseflesh as though the temperature had suddenly dropped from early summer day to late autumn night. “I am here to teach, not doctor. I just thought . . . burns need tending immediately.”

  And she couldn’t abandon Bethann if she could help her.

  Esther stood and brushed a few pine needles and herbs off of her lap. “I shall return in a few minutes.” She turned and marched down the path. “Lord, don’t let—” She stopped. No sense to pray for the men to remain behind. God didn’t listen, let alone answer.

  As though proving her point, boot heels crunched along the overgrown and leaf-strewn path. Zach or Griff? Long, easy strides eating up the ground. Griff. Zach walked faster with a shorter gait.

  She stopped and turned. “Please, I’d like to talk to Bethann alone.”

  “Not sure you should.” Griff smiled at her in that eye-crinkling way that made her insides feel like plucked strings on the church’s old harpsichord. “She’s taken a dislike to you.”

  And she wasn’t going to like Esther any more in the next few minutes.

  She hesitated. She need not go. Bethann wouldn’t welcome her. Esther’s aid hadn’t been requested.

  But she had watched her mother rush off at all hours of the day or night to help someone in need. And as Esther paused at the end of the path, Bethann moaned at the edge of the stream.

  Esther spun on her heel and bounded to the other woman’s side. Bethann stood bent over with her arms taut across her waist, her hands gripping her elbows as though she held her guts inside, which she just might feel she was doing.

  “Bethann.” Esther reached out to rest a hand on the older woman’s shoulder but drew it back at the last moment. “I can help you. I have some gingerroot and peppermint oil in my—”

  “Don’t need any of your fancy know-it-all doctoring.” Bethann turned her face away. “This’ll pass.”

  “It should have passed already, and you’re far too thin. You’re not eat—”

  Bethann turned on Esther with a sound like a snarl. She jumped back, glancing toward the end of the path to see if Griff remained in proximity. She might need his aid after all.

  He stood there as still as the trees on either side of him, face tense, mouth grim.

  “What would you know of this?” Bethann demanded. “Pretty little preacher’s daughter who has to seek trouble because you don’t know what it is?”

  If only you knew.

  Esther set her hands on her hips and glared at Bethann. “You don’t know anything about me, Miss Tolliver. I might be pretty, but that’s not my fault, and I’m scarcely little. As for trouble . . .” She took a deep breath. “No, I haven’t known the kind you’re in, but I’ve seen my share—”

  “Where?” Bethann snorted. “At tea parties and the like?”

  “When I’ve examined women.” Esther took a step forward to ensure only Bethann heard what she had to say. “I am a fully qualified midwife and have been for three years. I apprenticed with my mother for three before that.”

  For a moment, Bethann’s eyes widened. Her jaw hung slack. Then she flung her head and shoulders back and her hands forward, palms slamming into Esther’s chest. “You lie. You don’t know anything. You can’t. It’s not true. Do you hear me? Not true.”

  “Four months.” Esther managed the two words through chattering teeth and a haze of memories that wanted to intrude.

  From the corner of her eye, she spotted Griff moving forward and waved him back.

  “Maybe five,” she added.

  “No.” Bethann shot her head forward like a chicken about to pick up a tasty bug. “I’ll deny any such thing, and you’ll be gone without an escort back to your momma.”

  “Of course I’ll say nothing.” Esther tried the gentle smile she’d practiced in the mirror to resemble Momma’s. “It’s part of my training to keep secrets.”

  “See that you do. This ain’t nobody’s business but mine.”

  And the father’s. And God’s. And perhaps Bethann’s parents, despite her age, since she lived at home.

  “You’re right.” Esther nodded. “It isn’t any of my business unless you ask for my assistance.” She held out her hand, palm up.

  Bethann hesitated a moment, then touched her fingertips to Esther’s in a feathery acknowledgment of their agreement. Then she stumbled away, past Esther, and along the creek.

  The brush of Griff’s heels on the ground cover joined Bethann’s retreating footfalls in the brush as he approached Esther. “What was that about?”

  “I gave her some advice.” Esther smiled. “She didn’t want it.”

  “Didn’t look like it.” Griff gazed past Esther. “Will she be all right? I mean, she ain’t a-dyin’ or anything, is she?”

  Esther hesitated before responding. Women did die from the sickness that accompanied childbearing. They suffered so badly they couldn’t eat and faded away. Sometimes they suffered a seizure and just collapsed, never to awaken again. Bethann attempted to appear vigorous though.

  “I don’t think so, if she eats more,” Esther said.

  Griff rubbed the back of his neck. “And she’ll be better in a week or two?”

  “Should be.”

  So he suspected what was amiss with this sister.

  How it must distress him to have a sister, who must be eight or nine years his senior and unmarried, in a condition too many women in the East referred to as delicate. Despite her thinness, nothing about Bethann, from her forceful voice to her wiry arms, was delicate.

  He dropped his hand and clasped the other one behind his back. “Miss Esther, my pa ain’t—isn’t well, and my older brother got himself killed with the feuding ten years ago. That leaves me the head of the family, and there are reasons why I gotta know the truth about Bethann.”

  “I promised her I’d keep her secret. You’ll have to ask her.”

  Lightning flashed across his eyes. “Even if it means this could start the fighting again?”

  “I keep my promises,” Esther said. “And my secrets.”

  “Even if it could get people killed?”

  “How could it get people killed?”

  “That’s family business.”
>
  “And this is my business.”

  Even if she had vowed to leave it behind, it apparently wouldn’t leave her behind.

  Their eyes locked, held, neither so much as blinking for a full minute.

  Then Griff ripped his gaze away and turned back toward the clearing. “I suggest you be praying no one’s going to die over your honor, especially not you.”

  6

  Not a polite thing to say to her. Griff knew it without his mother standing over his shoulder reminding him that just because he’d grown up in the mountains didn’t mean he was raised without knowing how to treat a female right. Suggesting Esther Cherrett might be responsible for someone’s death was certainly not treating her right.

  Even if it was the truth.

  He’d have to be ignorant of all around him to not suspect what was wrong with Bethann. And if she was breeding, the same man as before was all too likely responsible—Henry Gosnoll, Hannah Gosnoll’s husband, Zach’s brother-in-law.

  The incident that had started a ten-year-long feud.

  “Oh, Bethann, how could you be such a fool again?” He groaned the words aloud and paused on the path to lean against a tree and rub his face, his gritty eyes.

  His side ached. His heart ached more. The instant Pa learned the truth, he would take his shotgun to Gosnoll and the fighting would begin again.

  If it hadn’t already.

  Griff pressed his hand to his side and considered the possibility that someone in the Gosnoll family knew about Bethann and wanted vengeance against the Tolliver family for her interference.

  Someone like Zach.

  “Not Zach.” It was a prayer, a plea, a cry for help. “God, this can’t go on.”

  “God can do anything He wants.” Miss Esther’s voice purred through the afternoon stillness in the forest. “He has His reasons, and I’m not convinced they are all good for us.”

  Griff jerked around and stared at her. “Miss Esther, that’s blasphemy.”