He stepped back, gave a small bow at the waist, and swept his arm out. “Certainly.”
She had to walk by him so closely that her skirts swept over the top of his mud-caked boots. Heart hammering, she fled down the stairs, the wood cold beneath her toes.
By the time she reached the parlor, her pulse thudded in her ears so loudly she couldn’t even hear herself think. The nerve of that man! Whether he saw her as a harlot or not did not give him the right to look at her that way!
Her stomach twisted. Though she must admit—even if she did not want to—that the appreciation in his eyes did not turn her blood cold as it should, but rather set it aflame. Nothing about the intensity of his gaze had been like the predatory gleam she’d so often seen from men. This was something…different.
Ella stepped into the parlor and halted. “Sibby! Why is Lee on the floor?”
Sibby lifted her arm from where it had draped over her face. “Major Westley done put him there.”
Ella crossed the rug and dropped to her knees, glad she didn’t have any crinoline to hinder her. “Why in heaven’s name would he do such a thing?”
Lee lay on the outspread quilt, wearing a different gown than the one she’d put him in this morning. He sucked on his tiny fist and looked up at her. “Why…?”
“He made sure the boy be dry, seein’ as I can’t be doin’ it and you was upstairs.”
Ella pressed her lips into a line. Major Remington had changed him? She reached down and rubbed his little face.
Sibby chuckled. “But he weren’t goin’ to change his napkin. Said that was for you to do.”
Oh, the napkin. She’d forgotten to fetch a fresh one from the nursery. “But why is he on the floor?”
Sibby lifted a shoulder. “I reckon he thought it be safer that way.”
Something within her lurched. Major Remington had done these things? The man who made his living killing had changed her child? Had worried over dropping him so he had made a soft place on the floor? Tears pricked at the back of her throat. “How did he do it?”
Sibby turned her head and regarded Ella. Her eyebrows lifted, and it seemed she understood what Ella really wanted to know. “He plucked that boy from the cradle and soothed his cryin’. He was abouncing him and talkin’ to him real sweet-like. Then he fixed him that little place there and changed him into one of the spare gowns I keep down here.”
Ella stroked Lee’s head. Major Remington, the Yankee devil, had so gently tended her son? Ella opened her mouth, but words would not come.
Sibby regarded her closely. “Yes ’um. I been knowin’ him for all of my life, and I ain’t never seen him treat anything so gentle. Was like he was afraid he were going to break that babe.”
Ella lifted Lee and cradled him in her arms and her heart lurched. That was what Lee should have had…a mother who loved him and a father who gently tended him. Instead, Lee would have an imposter mother and no father at all to teach him how to be a proper man. She snuggled him close and he began to cough, his little body shaking with the effort.
Ella turned worried eyes on Sibby. As the fear she’d struggled to contain within herself manifested on the other woman’s features, Ella’s heart pounded harder.
Oh, Lord. If he suffers because of my folly I shall never be able to forgive myself….
Tears streamed down Ella’s cheeks as she wiped the cool cloth over Lee’s heated face. He hadn’t eaten in hours, and refused each time they had tried to get him to suckle.
Ella made another pass around the nursery, past the bed Sibby watched her from, and back to the wash basin. It had been quite the task, but with help from Basil, she and Major Remington had managed to get Sibby upstairs once the medication had taken its effect and dulled the pain.
“Miss Ella, you gonna have to calm down,” Sibby said, interrupting her thoughts. “You bein’ like that ain’t helpin’ nobody.” Sibby pushed up on her elbows and adjusted the pillow behind her. Outside, the wind howled and banged against the window, as though it demanded entrance to the nursery.
Ella stopped her pacing and dropped the rag back into the basin. “I’m going for the doctor.”
Sibby’s eyes widened. “What for? So you can die out there in this here storm?”
“I have to do something!” Ella caught back her voice, the screech in it likely to draw the major from his chamber. At least he had not thrown her out. Nothing had been said about her outburst, and when the major finally retired some hours ago, it had been with concern on his features.
“I’m sorry, Miss Ella.” Sibby’s words were filled with an ache Ella did not wish to hear. “I knows how hard it is.”
Ella sniffed and wiped her sleeve across her face, not caring that she smudged the fine silk. She had an idea about what put so much pain into Sibby’s voice, and she didn’t want to hear more.
“We’s gonna make sure someone gets the doctor in the mornin’, Miss Ella. We is. But in the middle of the night, and in this storm…” She shook her head. “We just can’t go now.”
“But what if tomorrow is too late?” Ella whispered.
Sibby’s eyes brimmed with tears. “It won’t be. God won’t let me lose dis one too.”
Ella turned her face away, but Sibby kept talking. “I be knowing the terror you feel.”
She turned back to Sibby, not wanting to hear what she knew came next.
“I know because my Peter died of a coughing sickness with the Masta and Missus.” Sibby swallowed hard, and when her eyelids fell closed, tears slipped out from underneath her dark lashes.
Ella gripped Lee tighter. She shouldn’t ask. “The…the same sickness?”
Sibby’s eyes flew open. “Oh, now, we don’t know that. Look here. Maybe he just done breathed in too much of that rain.”
Oh, this was all her fault! If only she hadn’t run outside. Ella shook her head, the tightness in her throat making it difficult to breathe. “You are certain there is still a doctor around?”
Sibby’s gaze dropped to the covering across her lap. “He came out here before. I reckon he still be in town.”
Ella squeezed her eyes shut for a moment and then resumed her pacing. Lee coughed again, a deep sound that seemed impossible for one so small. “I’m sorry, Sibby. About your baby. I can’t….” She drew a shuddering breath. “I can’t imagine.”
Sibby nodded, but didn’t say anything more. Ella rocked back and forth until her head began to swim with exhaustion. She glanced back at the bed. Sibby slept, no doubt aided by the dose of medicine Major Remington had given her. Perhaps she should find some rest as well.
The lamp on the table cast flickering shadows across the walls, like insects scurrying to and fro. Ella adjusted the wick and lifted the light with her free hand, increasing the depth of the shadows pooling around her feet. Her head began to throb. Yes, she would have to rest. She could lie down with Lee next to her for just a few moments.
The door between her room and the nursery stood open and Ella passed through it, holding the lantern high and sending inky shadows scurrying from her path. She set it on the dressing table and considered changing out of the blue gown she still wore. But she was too tired to worry about the wrinkles.
Ella laid Lee in the middle of the bed and then crawled in next to him, curling her body protectively around his. Oh, my wee one. I am so sorry.
Tears slipped down her cheeks and onto the quilt, pooling under her face. Papa was right. The more she tried to help, the worse she made things. After Mama died, she attempted to take over her duties, cooking and caring for the household, but she had fallen short in every way. Her burnt or undercooked meals making their scarce supplies nearly intolerable, Papa had turned ever more to spending their funds on whisky rather than food.
Aye, Lass, you can ruin anything.
Your ma would be ashamed of ya, this place lookin’ like it does.
Don’t you ever think, girl, before ya open yer mouth?
His words pelted her, dragging up time after time s
he had failed. His comments had cut her, but she’d known he’d spoken truth. It was her poor work and sassy tongue that drove him to the devil’s juice. And that night when he’d slapped her…aye, she’d deserved that too. She’d called him a good-for-nothing bottle-toting coward, and blamed him when that last colt had died.
Rebel soldiers had taken the colt’s dam before he was ready to wean, and Papa hadn’t even tried to stop them. The poor thing had starved, and she’d screamed at him for it.
A strangled sob broke free, and on its heels more followed. Fire burned in her throat and at the back of her eyes, and pulsed through the throbbing in her head. She’d failed to save the colt, just as she’d failed to keep Papa happy, or make it safely north, or bring anyone to help Cynthia birth Lee.
And now…now he lay here with her, barking coughs shaking his tiny body. All because she was every bit the ninny Papa had said….
Something warm and heavy settled on her shoulder and Ella jerked, her feet flying out behind her and smacking something solid. The shadows had sprouted demons again, and they had come for her! She flipped to her back, her heart galloping.
A monstrous shadow loomed. She opened her mouth to scream….
“Cease, Ella! It is only me.”
The cry died in her throat. Her breath hitched. “Major…?”
He grunted. “Who else would it be?”
Confusion flittered in her chest. “Why…why are you in here?”
He leaned closer, his face practically indistinguishable from the shadows. Hadn’t she had a lamp? What had happened to the light?
“I heard noises. I came to see if you were all right.”
All right? She was anything but. “I am fine.”
He reached out and his fingers bushed the edge of her jaw, moving soaked tresses from where they clung to her skin. “I think you speak falsely.”
“I…” she wanted to deny it, but the pain in her chest would not let her. “I am sorely afraid.”
His hand cupped her face, and the gentle gesture let forth another heaving sob.
Miss Whitaker shook, her body appearing desperate to hold in a grief that sought just as desperately to free itself. He ran his hand down her hair, gently stroking. “Easy, Ella.”
She shuddered, as though the sound of her name affected her as much as it did him. He stroked her hair, uttering words of comfort until his leg began to ache. Still, she strangled sobs in her throat and would not let them free. He shifted his weight and moved to go around the other side of the bed so that he might sit without pressing up against her.
Her hand flew out and grasped his sleeve. “Please….don’t go.”
So much fear in her voice. He placed his hand over hers, her small fingers cold beneath his own. “I meant only to go to the other side of the bed. I will stay, if you wish it.”
Could she possibly want for him, the one she’d called a devil, to stay with her? Her grief must be deep, indeed, if she would seek comfort from one such as him.
Her hand slipped from beneath his and he wondered if she decided against her request. He used the bed posts as support and walked to the other side. He glanced at the door to his own room, which he’d left open—it had proven to be too much of a temptation. Slipping through it, rather than coming to the door at the hall, had seemed much more intimate. Something done between husband and wife, as the rooms were designed for. But he was no husband, and she no wife. And, thus, he trespassed.
He sat on the bed, his gaze traveling over the babe and to the woman who wrapped herself around the child. Her display of protectiveness sparked the same in him, and he wondered at the fervent urge to wrap himself around her as she did the baby.
“I am sorry.” Soft words, so quiet he almost missed them, drifted across the great expanse of the bed. An arm’s length only, but it seemed a great ocean separated them. An ocean he had the strangest desire to sail.
“You need not be.” He would not have her apologize for the pain that claimed her. Unable to resist, he reached over the babe and allowed his hand to feel her face once more. She turned her cheek into him, and his world shifted. Unnerved by the sensation that burned within him, he removed his hand.
“I should not have called you such things,” she whispered in the dark.
Westley tilted his head back and stared at the ceiling he could not see. “You had every right. I sense that this war has done things to you…as it has to me.” That last part he had not meant to say, yet it clung to the end of his sentence and would not remain within the privacy of his head.
She made a strangled sound, and despite his better judgment, Westley turned and laid himself out on the bed. On the pillow across from him, she shifted, though to get closer or farther away, he could not tell. “It is all right to let the feelings out sometimes.”
She gulped, and then sniffled. “I do not wish to be further marred by weakness.” Bitterness tainted the words, and he wondered at the source. “Yet, as much as I try to hold them back, these boggin tears—” she jerked to a stop.
Westley chuckled. “What is that word?”
She turned her face away. “One of my papa’s. ’Tis not a nice one, I’m afraid. And not befitting a lady.” She gave a bitter laugh. “But then, since I’m not one, I suppose it doesn’t matter.”
Lee coughed a deep and ragged sound that sliced through Westley’s contemplation of her statement.
“Oh, wee one,” Ella cried, pulling the baby closer to her. “This is my fault.”
The jagged pain in her voice tore at him, and he reached across to touch her once again. “You must not say such things. You are not at fault for a sickness.”
“But I…”
“No,” he said firmly. “You went out in the weather, yes. But you were not there for long, and even then only because I provoked you.”
Another sob, this one let free. He rolled closer, trying to see her in the tiny droplets of moonlight.
“Hear me, Ella. You cannot blame yourself.”
“Say it again.”
He rubbed her shoulder. “It is not your fault.”
“No, the other.”
He frowned, then set his jaw. Of course she would want to hear again that he was the one to blame. She deserved it, even if only for the sake that his claim would ease her suffering and give her someone other than herself to fling her loathing upon. “I provoked you. If you need one to blame, then I shall shoulder it.”
She made a funny noise. “Not that, silly man. My name.”
“Ella?”
“Aye, I like the way it sounds coming from you.”
Heat swarmed through him, and he wanted nothing more than to pull her into his arms and feel what her lips would be like under his.
Suddenly she yelped and grew stiff. “Oh, I shouldn’t have…” She scooted farther away, so near the edge of the bed that she might fall from it. “Dafty fool,” she muttered.
“Westley.”
She sucked air. “What?”
“I would like it if you called me Westley.”
She didn’t respond for several moments, and as the child barked out another cough he wondered if she’d fallen asleep.
“Probably best I call you Major, sir. Seeing as I would still like to work for you, if you would allow it.”
He tried not to let the steel in her words bother him. Of course she would first be concerned with her security. How could he expect her to learn to trust him if ever she feared for her safety? The very fact that he longed for her to trust him was something he had better not dwell on.
“You may stay, Ella.” He resisted the urge to reach for her once more. “You were correct. I need someone to manage the house in my absence.”
Her breath caught. “Truly?”
“I give my word.” The word of a Federal soldier, one she would not be likely to accept readily.
“I…thank you.”
They lay in silence for a time, and her breathing grew deep and even. He lifted on his elbow and turned to put his fe
et on the floor.
“Must you go?”
He stilled. “I thought you were asleep.”
“I cannot. The shadows…still they haunt me.”
He laid back on the bed, the nearness of her and the scent of her rain-washed hair making it difficult for him to keep his thoughts from drifting where they should not. He dared not ask the meaning of her words, afraid it would launch him into a place he would be unable to return from.
Lee coughed again, each heaved breath a labor. If he did not get the child a doctor soon, death may very well soon steal him from his mother.
“As soon as the storm breaks, I will get the doctor for him.”
He could feel her relax, a settling that echoed somewhere within him. “Again, I am in your debt.”
She did not argue, nor insist she had business to see to in town. Perhaps trust would bloom after all. He contemplated the silence, and then broke a vow to himself that he did not need to know the truth behind her mysteries. “You are not his mother, are you?”
The tension returned, thicker, even, than before. It settled between them, a great fortification with sharpened pickets turned against him.
“I am his mother, and he is mine.”
Westley turned her words over in his head. Without the aid of light by which to study her features, he had to rely on rhythm and tone. “Yours, yes. That I can see.”
She let out a breath that drifted across the quilt and stirred the hair on his brow.
“Even still, you did not birth him.”
She sniffled. “How did you know?”
Relief, thick as molasses, poured over him. She had not been used and forced to bring a child into the world born of man’s wickedness. Neither did she sell herself for men’s pleasures. The more he watched her, the more he did not want to believe that it could be true. “It explains much.”
Lee coughed again, rough and deep, and she nuzzled against him. “Not of my blood, but of my heart. And now I will lose him.”
His fists tightened at his sides. “I will do all in my power to see that you do not.”
“Why?” The whispered word hung in the air, tempting him to lay bare depths of him that he dare not explore.
In His Eyes: A Civil War Romance Page 16