“Who is she?” she asked, unable to keep her questions to herself.
He was quiet for a long time, but finally replied, “My sister. Lenore.”
“And the child is hers?”
“I assume so. I… have never met him before.” The discomfort in his voice verged on pain. It was difficult for him to speak of this. Why? Because he was forced to admit a lack of contact with his sister? Or because they had parted badly, and this was the first time he had seen her in at least a few years?
She knew better than to expect an answer right away. “Well, he’s in need of a changing. He is quite… damp.”
When she turned and looked to Roan, it appeared as though his discomfort had deepened to embarrassment.
“She has a bag with her. Perhaps you’ll find…” He shrugged.
As strange and difficult as the situation was, she found herself biting back a laugh in the face of his utter lack of experience with these matters. It was not as if she had a great deal of experience, herself, but at least the mention of a baby’s underthings did not make her blush or leave her stammering.
“That is fine,” Holly said.
Though it was not fine. Nothing could be further from the truth. She had not the first idea what to do with this baby, and it was clear that the young woman who had just begun to cough and groan in pain would not be of much assistance.
“Please…” the young woman managed to groan before another round of wracking coughs stole her breath and her strength.
How far had she come? And had she been ill before she started out? How had she even survived in the blizzard?
Roan covered her with a great many blankets, and Holly brought a cup of tea with plenty of sugar. At least he had enough of that, along with other provisions which it appeared he had just stocked.
He turned to her then, his back to his sister. “She says she was turned away,” he whispered. “She has been walking for days.”
Days. What a terrible thought. And with her child on her back, no less.
“Turned away by whom?” she whispered, her eyes meeting his for a fleeting moment.
He shook his head. “I do not know. Can you take care of her for a bit? I have furs that need tending. Traps I brought back from the stream.”
This left her quaking inside. Caring for a sick stranger and a baby?
He must have read the flash of panic in her eyes, for he added, “I shall only be in the lean-to. But I will close the door to give us both privacy.”
She nodded, resigned. Would there be an end to the surprises in store?
Once she was alone with the newcomers, Holly leaned down over the sick woman. “Might I…?” she whispered, gesturing to the fringed bag which Lenore had yet to part with. “I only need to change him. He seems to be in need of a clean diaper.” Was that the word Indians used?
Lenore loosened her grip on the bag, nodding. She was evidently familiar with the term.
“What is his name?” she dared ask, lying the baby on the floor that she might clean him. This was new to her, entirely new. But she was an intelligent person, and she had certainly solved bigger problems than this in the past.
In the recent past, in fact. Just as she had in the wagon when her wrists and ankles were bound, she would take this one step at a time.
“Edward,” Lenore whispered. “After his father.” Whispering these four words was enough to exhaust her, and her eyes slid shut as another round of coughing left her whimpering in pain.
Holly bit her tongue before the impulse to ask after this Edward person overtook her. What sort of father was he, allowing this to happen? Had he no honor? No chivalry? Was he cold-hearted enough to send his woman and his child out into a blizzard?
Perhaps he’d died. Perhaps that was the problem. Better not to ask, then, unless the information was offered.
For now, there was the matter of a soiled diaper and her confusion over what to do with it.
“You have never done this before.” It was the clearest thing Lenore had said since her arrival.
Holly could only nod with a sheepish smile. She did not know she was being watched, assuming the poor thing had fallen asleep or was simply too weak to keep her eyes open.
“I have no experience with babies. I barely remember when my younger sister was this age, and I was far too young to be involved.”
Lenore smiled, then went about instructing Holly on how to change and clean the baby. There was a great deal of love in her voice, weak as it was, and Holly had no hope of not being curious about this young woman’s situation. What had brought her to this? And who would turn the woman and her child away in such conditions?
“Are you comfortable?” she asked once the baby was taken care of. He would need to eat, most likely, and she was gratified to find a set of teeth in his little mouth. Though he could hardly gnaw on dried meat. Could he?
“As much as can be. Thank you for the tea.”
“Naturally. I can brew more if you wish.”
“Later, perhaps.” Lenore’s exhausted sigh spoke of more than just physical fatigue. She was heartsick, too.
Then, she asked a question which Holly would never have expected. “How long have you and my brother been married?”
Her jaw dropped. “Oh. Oh! No! No, no, no. We’re not. No.”
“You aren’t married?”
“We don’t know each other! Oh, heavens.” She was making a fool of herself, and she knew it, but she’d never dreamed they’d given Lenore this impression.
But of course, they had. Two people who appeared to share a home. What else could the explanation be?
Lenore reached for her son, and Holly handed him over. It warmed her heart to see him snuggle against his mother’s chest, so glad to be comfortable at last. Lenore stroked his dark hair, kissing the top of his head.
“Roan found me in the storm. I… had gotten lost,” she explained, choosing to lie rather than going into detail about the truth of her situation. “He has been very kind to me. I’ve only been here one day. Not even the entire day, in fact.”
“Oh, I see.” Lenore tried to stifle a cough. “I merely thought…”
“I understand. And I’m glad we made it back before you arrived.”
“So am I.” There was no stifling the next burst of coughing, and Holly could not help but satisfy her concern and curiosity.
“You are obviously ill. Do you… I mean, has anyone told you…?”
Lenore shook her head. “I’ve always been weak. Ever since I was a child, I was never able to run or play with the other children. I became sick easily, always. I am afraid this is something I’ve grown accustomed to.”
Yet she had walked for days. It struck Holly as unthinkable. Insurmountable. Yet she had done it. Perhaps with the child on her back in mind all the while.
If such illness was something she was accustomed to, perhaps she would recover quickly with some rest and good food. This gave Holly hope as she returned to the stove and placed a ladle full of corn mush into a bowl.
“Can you eat corn mush?” she asked, turning toward the bed.
They were both asleep. Their meal would have to wait. She ate, instead, watching them all the while.
10
It was a relief to turn his hand to something with which he was well-accustomed, when the alternative would have meant caring for a sister he barely knew.
Lenore. What had made her think to come to him?
From what she had already told him in broken whispers, her story had not been a pleasant one. As always, the cold hatred he felt toward his grandfather rose within him, wrapping itself around his heart until he wondered how it continued to beat.
What the man saw as an act of honor was little more than cruelty, but Roan supposed there had been no getting through to him.
What he had never understood, however, was why his sister had been allowed to remain with the tribe while he had been forced to leave as a child. Why was it acceptable for her to be part of their people
and not for him?
Merlyn snorted, bringing him back to his senses. The past didn’t matter. All that mattered was his ill sister and his nephew.
A nephew! The thought of having a family was entirely foreign to him. He had not even thought of Lenore in years.
It shamed him to admit it even to himself, but he had forgotten her existence.
He finished skinning the first of the foxes, then set about doing the same to the second. This was a chore he scarcely had to turn a thought toward, his hands moving of their own accord. He’d been skinning since he was old enough to handle a knife, as that had been Angus’s main concern. Not that his son learned to read, write or add figures. Though he’d learned to do all of these things, naturally.
He supposed the man was wise in his way, as many who never learned to either read or write were still able to scratch out a living by trapping and treating pelts they harvested.
They simply had no way of telling whether they were being cheated by the merchants with whom they traded.
He was not surprised by the opening of the door leading into the house. What did surprise him, however, was the fact that Holly wore his buckskin coat over her shoulders. “I hope you don’t mind,” she whispered once the door was closed. “I thought it might be cold out here.”
She was right about that, though this sort of cold he could manage. There was a roof over their heads, and walls around them. That was enough. The cracks and openings between the wood planks which made the walls allowed in enough light for him to see by even if they also allowed the chill to creep in.
“How is she?” he asked, assuming the best since he’d not been called in to help.
“Is it true that she has always possessed weak lungs?”
He shrugged, never looking up from his work. “I could not say. She is my younger sister, and I was forced out of the tribe when she was perhaps not older than her son.”
“Edward.”
“Yes, Edward.”
“I thought you might wish to know his name, is all,” she reasoned, a bit defensive.
“As I said, I was young. I cannot recall any of those times. I met her once or twice when we were children, though at the time I did not know who she was or why it was so important to our father that we meet. Always in secret. I believe he might have arranged it with other members of the tribe outside of my grandfather’s awareness. After all, she was his daughter.”
“They allowed her to stay but forced you to go?”
He scoffed, as he had only just been reflecting on this himself. “It no longer matters. I have my life, and I am satisfied with it. I am only sorry to see what has become of her.”
“Did she tell you anything about herself?”
He caught her shivering out of the corner of his eye, wrapping her arms around herself and pulling the coat tight around her body. He imagined it would smell like her when she removed it, and was surprised when he found that the thought was not a disagreeable one.
He nodded, grim. It seemed there would come no harm in telling her what Lenore had managed to explain. “The child’s father abandoned her. When she went to the tribe, looking for help, they turned her away as well.”
Holly gasped. “They did not! How could they be so cruel?”
He grimaced, working the fox’s skin away from its muscle. It was so much easier to turn his mind to his work rather than thinking over painful events. Yet he knew this woman well enough to know she would not be put off even by a sharp word.
Besides, she did not deserve a sharp tone. She had already taken care of Lenore and the child, and she hadn’t needed to do either.
“It seems Lenore ran away with this man. She turned her back on the tribe, and rather than accept her, they reminded her of the choice she had made. I do not agree with their decision, but I do feel that she also made her choice long ago.”
This was clearly not good enough for Holly. “She made her choice because she was in love.”
“Just the same, it was ill-advised.”
“Do you mean to tell me that you believe love is ill-advised?”
This was hardly a topic on which he wished to argue, then or ever. “She sacrificed security for the favor of a man who more than likely never considered her anything but an interesting way to pass the time. Nothing more, nothing less.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I believe I do. If I had the man in front of me, I would put my rifle to good use. No man should abandon his child.”
“Nor the woman who bore him the child,” Holly was quick to add.
He rolled his eyes. “Of course, yes. That goes without being said.”
Rather than continuing to argue, she sighed. “How sad for her. How very sad. She needs a brother now more than ever.”
“Excuse me?” This surprised him so, he nearly dropped his knife.
“What?” She looked puzzled. “She needs you. Why else would she have come? You’re the only person left in her life she can trust. The only person she could imagine coming to in this terrible situation. Do not tell me you plan to turn her away.”
“Of course I don’t plan to turn her away, but we are hardly close. I have seen her three, perhaps four times in my entire life. My home is hardly fit for a woman and a baby. It’s barely fit for just a woman.”
“You can find a way. I’m sure you can. You’ve managed to survive out here on your own for so long. The addition of your sister can only make things easier for you. She could help you. She could tend to the traps, or perhaps—”
“I see you’ve already given this thought.”
She shrugged. “I cannot help it. Perhaps this is the way all women’s minds work. We are always trying to find a way to manage.”
“Do I not have a say in any of this?”
“Of course you do. It’s only that I could not imagine you considering turning her away.”
“I do not intend to turn her away, but I will encourage her to build a home of her own. I will even help her build it. But she cannot live here with me. I… I’m not inclined to live with others.”
“You are simply unaccustomed to it.” She spoke as though she knew him so well, which only increased his irritation.
“What’s the difference? Either way, I have no intention of sharing my life with her. It would be the same if we had been raised together from birth. I do not plan to live with anyone, ever.” Perhaps this came out a bit more forcefully than necessary, yet he suspected it had to for her to understand fully how serious he was on the matter.
He had no desire to ever bring another into his life, into his world. Ever.
When several minutes passed with no response, he looked up from his work. He expected to find her scowling, yet the only word he could think of to describe her expression was fascinated.
“What are you looking at?” he asked, suddenly self-conscious.
She nodded toward the half-skinned fox. “I’ve never seen that before.”
“An animal while being skinned?”
She nodded.
“Does it sicken you?”
She grimaced, and he could not help but chuckle.
“It doesn’t strike me as something I would want to turn a hand to, but I have always been rather squeamish.”
“Yet you haven’t turned away from it,” he pointed out.
“That is true. It seems I am learning quite a bit about myself. I never would have predicted I would be able to escape the kidnapping, for instance.” She offered a weak smile after this.
He admired her ability to speak of such a situation. He suspected she possessed a great deal more strength than she had ever imagined.
“And perhaps you have the patience it takes to share your home with another,” she added.
He should have known. Nothing was ever simple with this woman. If she needed evidence of why he preferred solitude, she need look no further than the end of her nose. It was a situation such as this one that he longed to avoid at all costs.
“I kno
w you think you are quite clever,” he muttered. Perhaps he was a bit rougher with the fox than he needed to be, and he heard her sharp intake of breath as he tore the rest of the pelt from the animal’s flesh. “But your way of twisting my words about and putting new thoughts in my head will not do you any good. I will remain firm on this. There is no room here for a woman and child.”
“How can you be so cruel?”
“It is not cruelty. It is a matter of knowing myself and knowing how difficult it is for me to get along with others. You ought to be aware of that by now,” he added. It seemed they could not go more than a few minutes at a time without arguing.
“I would think that you of all people would know what it means to be cast aside. I would think you of all people would feel for your sister and wish to lighten her burden.”
He tossed his knife to the floor and glared coldly at her. “I have no desire to discuss this with you. Is there anything else you wish to speak of?”
The utter hopelessness on her face made him instantly regret his short-tempered response. Why did it seem he was always saying the wrong thing? Why, when pushing her away was the last thing he wanted to do, did he insist on doing so anyway?
It was not that she meant anything to him. She had been kind to Lenore, she had seen to the child’s comfort.
And she had saved his life. Whether or not he had saved hers before then was of little consequence. She had thought quickly and did what needed doing, just as she had done needed doing when he’d brought Lenore into the shack.
Such behavior ought to be rewarded, yet what was he doing? Belittling her, speaking sharply.
How could she possibly wonder why he would rather be alone? He made a fool of himself at every turn. He made her unhappy, which then served to make him unhappy.
Was she merely blind, or deliberately ignorant of this?
By the time she spoke, so much time had passed that he’d forgotten he asked a question. Her chin trembled only slightly before she shook her head and set her mouth in a firm line. “No. There is nothing further I wish to discuss with you.”
An Inconvenient Bride Page 7
