by Jillian Hart
"Major?" The reverend stood in the threshold with the cheery morning sun slanting over him, forcing him to squint. "I apologize for interrupting your morning meal, but Anya sent me."
"Anya?" Jonah pushed out his chair and stood. "Is there a problem? She went to the Bradfords to help Tessa tend her family."
"You have not heard? The Bradford children are all recovering. 'Tis Tessa who is ill."
"Ill?" He crossed the room in two strides. "It cannot be. I saw her just two, nay, three days ago."
The reverend's face saddened, and Jonah heard the knell of grief. " Tis true, Jonah. I know you and your wife have had some kind of a disagreement, but now is not the time for conflict. She is gravely ill, mayhap dying. She didn't want you to come, but she has lost consciousness and Anya and I thought it best that you see her."
A cold shock struck him like a blow, left him reeling but unable to feel.
"We'll go together." Thomas' hand settled upon Jonah's shoulder. "Reverend Brown, is there much hope?"
"Nay." Sorrowful. "Tessa is the healer, and now that she is sick, there's no one but Anya to tend her. She cares, but she is not skilled."
"Then we'll call a surgeon. It helped Father." Jonah's mind whirled. He could send Thomas, who would be swiftest, and mayhap-
"There is no time. 'Tis why I'm here. I thought you might want to say goodbye to your wife."
Jonah saw the unavoidable truth in the reverend's eyes, and the compassion. For once, he could not hide, could not seal off his heart, could not freeze out the emotions battering his chest like a horned bull.
His heart cracked wide open. Tears stung his eyes and rolled down his cheeks.
"How long has she been like this?" Jonah demanded as Ely opened the door.
"Two days." The rotund man blocked the threshold. "She left strict instructions. You are not welcome here."
"Move aside, Bradford," Jonah growled, "or I'll tear you limb from limb with my bare hands."
The fleshy man stepped aside.
Jonah caught a dim impression of a filthy kitchen, dishes stacked in piles on the messy board table, the room abandoned. Maybe the others in this house had left for Charity's mother's home, to recover now that Tessa could not tend them. That knowledge sparked another wave of rage. He burst into the parlor and saw the pallet on the floor by the hearth.
Damn Ely. He could not even spare a bed?
"Master Jonah, you came." Anya sprang up from the floor, fatigue bruising her face, harsh around her frightened eyes. "The reverend thought he could convince you to come. Mistress Tessa made me swear not to send for you, but she's unconscious. So, I am not directly breaking my oath to her."
Jonah's throat tightened at the sight of his wife restless with fever beneath a linen sheet. Somehow he managed to speak. "You stayed all day and night with her."
"Aye." Sadness knelled in that quiet word. "I don't know what else to do. I have applied the onion poultice and her lungs are not the problem now. Her fever is. I have used the compresses. I have soaked her in water. She became so chilled I dared not do it more."
Jonah sank to his knees, his gaze never straying from Tessa's face, her dear face. He knew without looking the exact delicate cut of her jaw and chin and cheekbones, the shape of her silken mouth, of her small nose and dark lashes. Every part of her was etched in his memory, engraved in his heart.
He took her hand within his. Her skin felt far too hot, and he saw the blotchy redness marking her skin. The delirium twisted incomprehensible words from her mouth as she thrashed, the fever almost winning its battle.
Too late for a surgeon to bleed her, and he knew nothing about treating illnesses.
" 'Tis up to God now," the reverend said, his boots barely tapping on the floorboards as he stepped into the room. "And up to Tessa."
"You're wrong, Reverend." Jonah pressed his lips to Tessa's knuckles and closed his eyes. " 'Tis up to me, too."
How could he endure losing her? What if he never saw her again? Never to explain he loved her. How he loved her.
"Anya, keep applying compresses. Wasn't there a powder she used on the Hollingsworth child? I know she used it on Father."
"Aye, but I am not certain of the dosage. I can't simply give her any amount, for the powder is dangerous and too much could kill her."
"Well, the fever is already killing her." Jonah shoved past Thomas who had just come from the stable. "Brother, go upstairs and grab the first bed you see and bring it down here. They have Tessa lying on the floor."
"Damn that Ely." A fury matching his own snapped in Thomas' eyes. "I'll find the softest mattress."
Listening to his brother's boots striking angrily on the wood floor, Jonah turned to study Tessa's basket. "This is the bird dropping tea."
" 'Tis not made of bird droppings." Anya grabbed the crock and checked on its contents. 'Twas nearly empty. "But of bark and leaves."
"And this is the other tea that clears congestion."
"Aye, but it does naught for fever."
Jonah pushed aside that crock to reach more. One held bark for headaches, according to Anya, and another dried berries which helped with fever, but not one as severe as Tessa's.
"This is what she used on Mercy Hollingsworth, whose fever was the most severe." Anya hesitantly touched the lid of a small crock. "I wasn't in the kitchen when she crushed the root, and I remember she said 'tis lethal, even in small quantities, but the right amount can help break a fever."
"Then there is hope?"
"Aye, I've not been sure what to do all night." The young girl's face crumpled with torment. "I cannot sit here and let the woman who gave me a good home die. And yet, how could I live with myself if I gave her the wrong dose?"
"Crush some of the powder. She's too far gone with fever. I have seen it on the battlefield. She is living her nightmares and soon she will be gone to us."
"Aye. I've seen it too." Anya bowed her head. "You will administer the powder? I'm no coward, and yet, I cannot hurt my mistress. I could never-"
Jonah's throat ached. "I will administer the powder."
Tears rolled down Anya's face as she dropped a small black root into a shallow bowl.
He helped his brother bring down a bed, Ely and Charity's, judging by the look of it. And in no time assembled it in front of the fire, laid the sheets and eased Tessa's fitful body upon it.
She was fighting the fever, this he knew. He sat on the edge of the feather mattress, taking both of her hands in his. Her head thrashed from side to side, and her ebony curls were plastered with sweat. Her legs kicked and her body twisted. She suffered, and he hated it.
He released her hands with a kiss to her knuckles and wrung die cool herbed water from a cloth soaking in a nearby pail. He folded it into thirds and laid the compress on her forehead, another on her throat, and so on, until her body was swathed in white and he started the process over again.
Thomas ran to the well for more cold water, and Anya mixed the herbs for them. They ran out of cloths, and the reverend raced next door to borrow what he could from the Sandersons.
A knock rattled the door. Jonah soaked more cloths in the fresh water while Thomas answered it. Susan Hollingsworth stood in the threshold with a basket on her arm.
"I brought food and more clean linens." The woman seemed hesitant. "I don't want to interrupt, but I heard Tessa was ill. She saved my girls' lives many times over the years and now is the first chance I've had to pay back some of her kindness."
" 'Tis appreciated," Jonah managed.
"I will put on some of my soup to warm." Susan set the basket down on a low table and rifled through it. "This is for Tessa. My girls made it for her. As a thank you."
Jonah took the small rag doll, made with inexperienced stitches, but all the more dear with thanks. He sat it on the headboard above Tessa. The doll with uneven black yarn hair smiled crookedly down at her.
"Jo-nah," she whispered brokenly in her sleep.
She was not awake; she didn't know he was
at her side. He lifted the cloth from her brow and replaced it with a fresh one.
"Jo-nah, Jonah, nooooo." So heartbroken that sound, so lost and desolate.
He laid a hand to her cheek, and his heart hurt like sunshine cracking hard layers of ice, like spring come to the land.
"I have the blackbale powder." Anya gazed down at the bed, at Tessa who stared up at them in delirium, not seeing them, not seeing anything. "Susan, do you remember how much of this Tessa gave to Mercy?"
"Nay, I was too distraught to notice, I'm ashamed to say." Susan knelt at the bedside, her hands clenched.
Thomas stood behind her, his face shadowed. The reverend crowded close, opening his well-worn Bible.
Jonah pressed a kiss to his wife's cheek and dropped a pinch of the ground powder on the center of her tongue.
Now, they waited. He set the little bowl aside and took Tessa's hands, determined to hold her, to stand beside her until the very end.
Chapter Sixteen
Tessa opened her eyes. Sunshine, warm and merry, slashed through the generous window of the room. She recognized the diamond paned windows and the chest of drawers and her mother's trunk leaned against the wall.
"So, you're finally awake."
She recognized that voice too, rum rich and rumbling like tempered thunder. She turned her head on the pillow and saw him seated in a chair at her side. Dark circles rimmed his eyes, and lines crinkled around the bold cut of his mouth. He looked like a man who hadn't slept in many nights.
"Why am I here? I don't live here anymore. I don't understand." Her chest felt tight and her whole body felt achy. "I want to go home."
"You are home, now and forever." Warm strong fingers encircled hers, holding her in a grip that felt possessive and claiming, the way a man holds a wife he loves. "I brought you here as soon as the fever broke. I couldn't stand seeing you in Bradford's house, not when you have a place where you're loved and cherished."
"Jonah, nay, I-"
" 'Tis the truth. I love you." A slow curve of his mouth drew her gaze, but it was the true emotion in his eyes that surprised her, emotion bright as a thousand suns and twice as everlasting.
Hope grew within, sweet and new.
"I cannot live without you. I know that now." His kiss brushed her knuckles. "I will never be anything without you. Because you married me, and opened wide my heart."
"But you never loved me. You never loved-" Tears burned, and she turned her head away. She was not strong enough for this. She was thirsty and nauseous and tremblingly weak from the fever. Even the sun hurt her eyes.
"You are wrong, Tessa. I loved you all along. Why else would I have given my life over to you? And maybe, just maybe, I thought of that ridiculous way to choose a wife because deep down inside I knew it was you who would offer. You were the one I wanted."
"Jonah." How could this be true? And yet throughout their marriage he had cared for her. He'd made sure she had rest and meals. He'd found a servant so she would not have to work hard, and bought her clothes, and even took her to the seamstress.
And most of all, he'd taken care of her when she was ill. He'd stayed by her side, just as he'd done for his father.
No one had ever cared for her that much.
"I had the same dream over and over when I was sick." She dared to look at him, the love she felt for him growing stronger once again.
"You called my name when you were feverish." He shifted on the chair, drawing closer so that she could see his capable shoulders and rock-hard chest and the handsome way his slow smile changed his face.
"Aye. I dreamed we were in the forest together and you told me you no longer wanted me. 'Twas horrible, and you left me, running away into the mists, and I couldn't find you."
"An impossible nightmare. How could I leave you?" He pressed a tender kiss to her cheek. "You have my heart. Every last bit of it. For now and forever."
She gazed up at him and saw what she'd never seen before. He understood that the quiet challenge of loving another took the greatest courage. But he was a courageous man-her own hero-and she knew with unending certainty he would love her every moment of every day.
"Come, I want to show you something." He pulled back the covers.
"I'm not strong enough to walk."
"Then I will carry you."
He gathered her into his arms, and how wondrous it felt to be cradled against his chest.
"I had much time to think whilst we waited for your fever to break." He navigated the stairs with ease, holding her close.
"What? You were thinking?"
"Aye, 'tis shocking, I know. But every once in awhile I am capable of it. And I did see what a thick-skulled dolt I was. I should warn you that I'll probably show this trait from time to time, for it runs in my family. Surely you've noticed this same fault in my brothers."
"Now, I heard that." Thomas looked up from his Sunday afternoon reading.
Andy closed his book. " Tis good to see you awake, sister. Mayhap I should fetch you some tea."
"That sounds wonderful," she answered as Jonah lowered her onto a hard wooden bench. She didn't remember a bench being in their comfortable parlor. In fact, much had changed since she last saw this room.
Andy scampered off, footsteps echoing in the nearly empty room, on the floors without carpets, on walls without tapestries, on windows without curtains.
"What is this?"
A wicked grin teased dimples into his cheeks and a mischievous spark twinkled in eyes as dark as midnight. "All our furniture is in Mistress Briers' stable. She has agreed to upholster it anew for you."
"For me?"
"Aye, you are the lady of this house now, Tessa. 'Tis your home, and you should make it yours." His fingertips brushed curls out of her eyes, an infinitely tender act. "Besides, you know the place. What do four men know about decorating? 'Twas an eyesore. We're depending on you to save us from our lack of taste."
"Not again?"
"Aye. I need your skills yet again." Humor twinkled in eyes as dark as a devil's.
And she saw it then, as the colonel ambled into the room with a book in hand and Thomas sat awaiting her answer with hope in his eyes and Andy returned holding a cup of steaming tea just for her. This was her family, her real family, and they loved her as she loved them.
Her husband, her wonderful husband, stood and took the cup from his brother. "So, what do you think?"
"This needing me is becoming a habit. First I save your father and brother. Then I find Anya to save your sorry souls. And now you want new furnishings."
"Aye. I might very well need you for the rest of my life." He knelt before her, but it was love that blended with the glinting humor in his eyes, love that gentled his voice. "Especially since I will be needing a son or daughter."
And how wickedly he said it, as if he wanted to haul her back upstairs and lay her down in that bed-Even weak, she felt desire pool hot and low.
"All right, Jonah. As you know, I'm always a dutiful wife."
That made him laugh. She could see it now. There would be children racing around these rooms, the colonel watching them over the top of his book, and Jonah at her side.
"Andy, what kind of tea did you bring me?" She sniffed at the bitter brew.
"Why, 'tis your bird dropping tea, of course." Andy grinned, and she recognized the slant of revenge in that unabashed grin.
The colonel threw back his head and laughed. "That a boy, give her a dose of her own medicine. Then she'll know how we have suffered."
"Drink it, sweet Tessa." Jonah kissed her brow again. "For I want my beloved wife well and strong. We have such a wondrous life ahead of us."
About the Author
Jillian Hart makes her home in Washington State, where she has lived most of her life. When Jillian is not writing away on her next book, she can be found reading, going to lunch with friends and spending quiet evenings at home with her family.
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