Liz Ireland
Page 25
“No.” He’d slept the night in his uncle’s barn, then got up this morning to discover Ellie gone. When he’d returned to the house, he’d found Parker had disappeared.
Having his brother absent so suddenly made Roy uneasy, though he didn’t know why. Most of his thoughts had been so centered on Ellie, he could barely spare any mental room for Parker. Besides, Parker could take care of himself, while Ellie…
Why had she left him?
He could have kicked himself for passing out last night, but the fire had been so exhausting, and Ellie’s embrace so warm, so giving, that he’d simply gone out like a snuffed candle.
When he recalled his time with Ellie now, he felt almost in awe of her. She’d been so beautiful. He’d never known that a woman with child could be so desirable, and yet remembering Ellie lying next to him, he couldn’t think of another woman he’d wanted as intensely.
“Well, believe you me, there was plenty of speculating about a McMillan marriage,” Ike continued, heedless of Roy’s distracted thoughts.
They didn’t remain distracted for long.
Roy’s weariness escaped him and the gaze he levelled on Ike was razor-sharp. “When?”
“Soon, I guess.” Ike shook his head in wonder. “Not to mention, you should have seen this ring Parker showed me. Real pretty thing. Had pearls and diamonds in it, shaped like a flower.”
His ring? Parker had bought it?
Suddenly, he was seeing red. And not just because of Parker. Ellie, too!
Of course he’d known that Parker had been seeing Ellie in town every day. At first he tried not to care, then later when he realized that he did care, he’d hoped that Parker’s attentions to Ellie stemmed from kindness, not love. Certainly yesterday when he’d been with Ellie, both in the afternoon and after the fire, the subject of her and Parker had never arisen. If she loved Parker—enough to marry him—wouldn’t she have whispered some word to him of that fact?
Would she have allowed herself to be made love to by him if she were in love with his brother?
Why had she left him? his mind repeated disturbingly. What the heck was going on here?
Damn it, he shouldn’t have let her go last night—should have locked the barn or tied her down to the bed if necessary!
“Hey, where are you going, Roy?” Ike asked in astonishment.
He wasn’t the only one surprised. Roy was barely conscious of having jumped up from the table and run for the door like a nervous hare.
“I’ll be back!” he thundered, before slamming the door behind him.
He saw the wagon standing where Ike had left it, jumped in, and grabbed up the reins. He didn’t know what in the world was going on around him, but he surely wasn’t going to let Ellie slip through his grasp now. Not after last night.
He drove the horses quickly and deliberately, his jaw set with fierce determination. He was going to march into his mother’s house and tell Ellie that she could just forget about trying to marry someone else. She had no right to be accepting rings from Parker or anyone else after last night!
Plans raced through his head. A preacher. That’s what he needed. He’d round one up somehow and drag Ellie through a wedding ceremony whether she was ready or not.
So intent was he on his plans for Ellie, he nearly didn’t see the figure on the side of the road as he passed. Only a glimpse of startling red hair made him pull up the reins.
He jumped off the wagon before it had stopped moving. His heart was racing as he saw her slumped form. He bent down and grabbed her by the shoulders. “Ellie, it’s me,” he said in a rush, “What’s happened?”
She was pale and tense and looked at him through eyes glazed with pain. “Roy?” Her voice was dry.
He swallowed. “Is it the baby?”
She nodded.
Without further ado, he swept her into his arms and carried her to the wagon. He took off his coat and put it down for her over a layer of straw that was already there. Then he laid her carefully onto the makeshift bed.
Instinctively, he turned the horses toward home, returning as fast as he could. His thoughts were full of recriminations now, and regrets. It wasn’t time for the baby, and yet she was clearly in labor. Had their activities of the night before caused this, or her riding back home on her own? How long had she been there by the side of the road?
Occasionally, she would utter a soft moan behind him, breaking into his unproductive thoughts and spurring him to lap the reins against the horses’ backs to speed them.
At the house, he pulled the wagon up to the door and jumped down, calling for Ike. He carried Ellie into the house just as Ike was opening the door.
“What the…?”
“The baby!” Roy cried.
Ike’s eyes widened and his mouth gaped like an uncapped barrel. “What are we gonna do?”
“You’re going to town to fetch Dr. Webster,” he said. “I’m going to put Ellie in my room and try to find the medicine book.”
Ike nodded. “I’ll start boiling some water and get you some clean sheets before I go.”
Roy stopped in midstride and whirled on Ike even with Ellie in his arms. “What for?”
“That’s what Mama always said she did for my married sisters.”
Finally Ike’s mama was coming in handy! “You do that—and hurry.”
The trouble was going to be figuring out what to do with that stuff once Ike was gone. Roy didn’t know the first thing about how to help a woman giving birth—one of the drawbacks of being from a family of bachelors. For a fleeting moment he even considered asking Ike to stay and going for Dr. Webster himself, but when he looked down at Ellie’s pale, drawn face he knew he couldn’t leave her.
“Hang in there, Ellie,” he said encouragingly, “Ike’s going for the doctor. He’ll be right back.”
Her brow puckered and she looked up at him. “The baby’s early, Roy.”
He nodded, feeling his stomach go knotty with the same fear that was written in her expression. He forced a tiny smile and said, “He’s just eager to see his mother. Can’t say as I blame him, since she’s so pretty.”
She laughed skeptically, then clamped down in pain for a moment. Roy tensed right along with her, and felt his skin go clammy. When she relaxed a little, he sat her up and began unbuttoning the back of her dress. “Let’s get you out of this.”
She seemed only too happy to go along with his suggestion. When the confining garment was off, she looked slightly more comfortable—enough to encourage him to do more than hold her hand. “You look exhausted already, Ellie. Do you think you could have some water?”
She nodded, and he ran to the kitchen to find the kettle steaming like a dragon atop the stove. He pulled it off the heat, grabbed a mug from the cupboard and ran out to the pump.
Ellie accepted the water gratefully, and Roy spent the rest of the time they were alone alternately giving her sips of liquid, wiping her brow, and running to the kitchen to look out for the doctor and make sure that the water remained boiling hot for such a time as it was ever needed.
His efforts paid off. Though the pain worsened, Ellie began to look a little more up to the task ahead, and she was able to talk more easily, though some of her thoughts were disturbing.
“If something happens to me, Roy, will you find someone to take care of the baby?”
Roy frowned and squeezed her hand. Something happen to Ellie? Mostly he’d been pessimistic about the prospects for the baby, and worried about Ellie’s pain, but he hadn’t allowed himself to consider the possibility of anything terrible happening to Ellie herself.
“Don’t talk like that, Ellie. How could anything happen to you? You’ve come this far.”
And he realized suddenly that she had come a long way, and sacrificed everything she’d known before, for the sake of her child. And when he thought of the little life he’d felt stirring inside her last night, he felt a fierce possession kick in his own gut. Nothing bad would befall that child on his watch.
Finally, Ike returned with Dr. Webster, followed by another wagon bearing Ed and Isabel. Roy was so relieved to see the doctor that he almost roared at the man as he walked in the door. “Thank God you’ve come!”
Dr. Webster, however, looked more than usually tense. And gloomy. “This is all very unfortunate, Roy,” he said gravely, “very unfortunate…”
Before the doctor could go in with Ellie, Roy grabbed his arm. “Don’t talk to Ellie that way, Doc. It’s taken me a long time to convince her that all isn’t lost, and I don’t want your doom and gloom predictions reversing that.”
The doctor nodded. “Of course, Roy. Of course.” He went into the room with Ellie and closed the door.
Isabel made coffee, and Ike, Roy and Ed started a long, tense vigil in the parlor.
If Roy thought time was going slowly before, it truly began to crawl now. Already he felt exhausted, he couldn’t possibly imagine what Ellie was feeling. He gave up the idea of not going into the room with her after thirty minutes; it made him feel better to have Ellie squeeze his hand and speak to him in short bursts. He mopped her brow often and tried to make her laugh. But finally, it seemed that she was beyond laughter and that the time was at hand.
Roy’s heart was in his throat as the doctor announced that he could see the baby’s head. A few agonizing moments later, as Roy’s eyes squeezed shut in tension, the doctor practically let out a whoop.
“A girl—a little girl!”
When his eyes opened, it was to see the little red baby—still attached to her cord and more messy than he’d ever imagined a child could be—kick her legs and let out an uncertain cry.
At the sound, Roy very nearly cried himself. Instead, picked up by his soaring heart, he ran to the door and called out, “A girl!”
A flood of people rushed in.
If Ellie objected, she was past having the energy to say so. When he ran back over to her, she was smiling absently at the activity going on around her. He mopped her brow as they watched Dr. Webster instructing Isabel how to cut the cord and clean the baby. Roy mopped Ellie’s brow one last time, then bent down to kiss her lightly on the cheek.
“Congratulations. You’re a mother.”
Limply, she held out a hand toward her newborn, and Roy rushed over to take her from Isabel, who was attempting to swaddle the squirming infant into a sheet. She handed the child to him carefully, and the moment Roy held the baby in his arms, a rush of wonder struck him. And awe. She was so tiny, so light, and yet she already showed incredible strength in the way her small fists punched at the air, and he could swear the blue eyes squinting out at the world had a little of Ellie’s green in them.
As he stared into those eyes, his stomach churned as if he’d just stepped off the edge of a cliff. He’d never known that the feel of a little fist beating at his arm could move him so. But now that he did, he understood what Ellie had obviously known all along: this baby was precious beyond jewels. Maybe he hadn’t believed her weeks ago when she’d told him that she’d lied to give her child a good name and a clean start. But he understood now.
“Roy?”
He turned to see Ellie, one brow crooked curiously, still impatiently holding her arms outstretched.
He flushed and moved over to her. “I was just checking out your handiwork,” he told her. “She’s much better than that shirtwaist you sewed for Mrs. Crouch.”
As he handed over the baby, he was treated to one of Ellie’s delighted bursts of laughter.
“I like Gwenevere. It sounds so…queenly.”
Roy frowned. “It sounds peculiar!”
Ellie looked down to where her baby lay against her breast, her eyes squeezed shut, and was unable to resist touching her downy hair. “All right, how about Annabelle? I always loved that poem about Annabelle Lee. Don’t you think that would be pretty?”
His nose wrinkled. “How about something nonliterary? A good solid name, like Mary.”
Mary O’Malley came to mind, as did her dire predictions about what a terrible end Ellie would come to, and Ellie immediately protested. “Oh, no! I must have something a little more imaginative.” And less scolding! “Don’t you have any names that you particularly like…say, if she were your own baby?”
Roy looked away, and Ellie immediately regretted her foolish question. Roy had been so good to her during the birth—she didn’t know what she would have done without him. And ever since Dr. Webster had left, he’d barely given her a moment’s peace. Even while she was asleep, Ike had informed her, Roy stayed by her side, watching over her and the baby. It gave her a funny feeling to know that he had taken such proprietary care of her. So much had happened between them.
After a moment, he surprised her by turning back to her thoughtfully and saying, “Violet.”
She blinked. “Violet? Like the flower?”
He nodded. “I remember from when I was a boy, my mother always smelled of violets. I suppose she had some perfumed water, because there certainly weren’t any around here. But ever since then, I’ve always thought violets must be the sweetest flower there is.”
Then what better name could there be for a child that Ellie was already certain was the sweetest in the world? She nodded her head, and said the name aloud to test it. “Violet.” Out of some impulse that seemed startlingly like recognition, the baby kicked her thin legs. Ellie laughed. “Violet it is, then!”
Roy’s expression was proud and pleased, but slowly his smile faded ever so slightly. “Violet McMillan.”
Ellie was so surprised she almost fell out of bed. She wasn’t even sure she’d heard him correctly. “What?”
He looked at her with a rueful smile. “That’s what it will be, won’t it?”
Her heart pounded in her chest. He seemed to be intimating…and yet his miserable expression was anything but that of a lover. “Why would it be?”
“Well, from what I’ve heard, you and Parker are fairly serious.”
Her jaw dropped in astonishment. “Parker!”
He nodded. “I suppose you can count on him to do right.”
Every inch of her stiffened. “And why should Parker have to worry about that?” she said, jettisoning pride and discretion. “He wasn’t present in the barn after the fire. He wasn’t the one with me on that cot!”
Roy looked startled.
Did he think she’d forgotten their time together in all that had subsequently happened? “Don’t worry, Roy, I’m not going to try to entrap you. But if you think you can foist me off on your brother, you’re wrong. How could you think I could love another man after you? Though heaven knows I’ve tried not to think of you at all!”
He looked offended. “You have?”
“Of course! Do you think I wanted to be in love with a cranky dyed-in-the-wool bachelor like yourself? Heavens, no—but apparently I have no choice in the matter, for the harder I try not to think of you, the more I do. The harder I try not to care for you, the more I do. It’s a terrible quandary.”
“Terrible?” He paced in front of her bed.
She laughed. “Yes, but I’m resigned. Because I…” She hesitated, then rushed on anyway. “I love you, Roy. I love you and it doesn’t matter if you love me back, because I’ll just carry a torch for you anyway. I’ll become as isolated and odd as your poor Uncle Ed before he decided on marrying Isabel, only instead of becoming obsessed with apples, I suppose Violet will be my life’s work.”
Roy stopped and looked as though he were having a hard time following her words. “Wait—Uncle Ed is going to marry my mother?”
“Of course!” She raised her brows. “Didn’t you know?”
His face went slack. “Wait a moment…did Parker ever give you a ring?”
“Good heavens, no.” She drew back, unsure what had him looking so stunned. “Is something wrong?”
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br /> “No!” A prairie-sized grin spread across Roy’s face. “Only I thought…well, never mind what I thought. I’m a fool. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Because even if Parker had set his heart on marrying you, I wouldn’t have let him. Not after all we’ve been through, Ellie.”
Her heart felt as if it were waltzing. “Then…?”
He crossed to the bed, knelt, and took her hand in his. “Of course you can make Violet your life’s work, Ellie. She’ll be mine, too. But no matter what you say, we’re getting married just as soon as I can get a preacher over here. I love you, Ellie.”
“Roy!” she exclaimed in surprise, but she couldn’t talk for long, because Roy bent down to capture her lips.
She twined her arm about his neck, and suddenly it seemed that she and Roy and Violet were all bound up together, as one. His kiss was as warm and intense as ever, but he held her gingerly, lovingly, as if she, like her daughter’s namesake, were a delicate flower easily crushed.
When he finally pulled back from her, his eyes were so full of love that Ellie felt almost light-headed with happiness.
“At the dance you said you wanted to see my face when I figured out how wrong I’d been—well, here it is,” Roy said.
“It’s an adorable face.”
He held her tight. “I’ve loved you ever since I saw you step off that railroad car, Ellie. Loved you so much it scared the pants off me. Maybe that’s why I flew off the handle when I found out you’d lied. I was too scared and too stubborn to see that your love meant more to me than anything.”
“Oh, Roy,” she said, sinking down against the brace of pillows against her back. “I’ve never heard such wonderful words.”
He grinned. “I’ve never spoken any, either. I guess when it comes to love talk, I’m not very accomplished. But now that I’m starting to get the hang of it, I intend to tell you how much I love you at least five times a day.”
Ellie was thrilled, but she pretended at least to think over his loving offer. “I think I’d prefer ten times a day. And for every time you say it, there should also be a kiss.”