Frontier Bride (Harlequin Historical)

by Ana Seymour

  “You don’t look any the worse for wear after your scare yesterday,” Randolph told her, looking intently at her face.

  She smiled at him. “It was probably harder on you than it was on me. First the worry over Jacob and then our tardy arrival back.”

  “I’m afraid I spoke harshly yesterday morning when we were forming the search parties.” His eyes were remorseful.

  “It doesn’t matter. We all were under a strain.”

  “I just didn’t want you to think that I was angry with you. It was Reed who was causing the trouble, really.”

  Hannah turned her face to study the shoreline. “Let’s not talk about it, Randolph. It’s over. We’re all safe, so let’s just enjoy this beautiful day.”

  Randolph followed the direction of her gaze. “It’s not quite so beautiful out there when you consider that hostile Indians might be lurking behind those trees,” he said soberly. “When I think of Jacob in their hands…”

  Hannah turned back to him. “I believe the Indians who had Jacob were friendly. They treated him well, and they treated me well, too. It’s just that one particular brave was…a little too interested, I guess.” She ended with a half laugh.

  Randolph did not join in her levity. “I couldn’t really blame any man for wanting you, Hannah. But when I think of one of them putting his hands on you, touching your hair…” He was watching her with much the same possessive look she had seen on Ethan’s face when he had left the Indians yesterday. And Randolph must have gotten some of the details of the encounter from Ethan, because she hadn’t talked about how the braves had touched her.

  Suddenly she felt tired. She was, of course, glad that she wasn’t in the hands of the Indians, but it seemed that her own people felt the same kind of need to possess her that Skabewis had. The young Indian had been respectful and admiring and, according to Ethan, had offered a good price for her. Was his offer so much different than the indenture through which Randolph had purchased her three years ago?

  Late in the afternoon they had reached a spot where the river took a great sweep west, and just at the bend the shoreline had parted to form a pretty little island. Ethan had motioned for them to pull over to it. Though it was early to stop, Ethan pointed out that the island would provide them with some added protection. Besides, they were all worn-out after the previous day’s adventures. Nancy was in particularly bad shape. She had been having cramps all day and could find no comfortable position to rest on the crowded boat.

  There was not a lot of conver-sation as they prepared their camp and the evening meal. The children were unusually subdued, still chastened by what had happened to Jacob and Bridgett.

  Hannah was glad when the meal was finished and everyone agreed that there would be no gathering around the camp fire that night. Peggy and Jacob had already retired to their tent, and she was about to do so herself when Randolph stopped her. “We said we would talk this evening,” he reminded her.

  “But…we’ve been talking all day. You said you were sorry about being gruff yesterday, and I told you not to worry about it. Surely it’s not still on your mind?”

  He took her hand and pulled it through the crook of his arm, as she’d seen the gents do with their ladies back in London. “Just walk with me a spell,” he said. “Let’s go across the island and look out at the river.”

  She had no other graceful choice but to accompany him. And after the initial reluctance, she found that the stroll felt good. The sounds of the night were peaceful, and she started to relax.

  “What did you want to talk about?” she asked as they came out of the trees to the rocky river side of the island.

  Randolph pointed to a couple of large stones. “Let’s sit down.”

  Hannah perched on a rock just above the running water, pulling up her boots so that they would not be splashed. Randolph sat slightly above her. His long legs stretched so that his boots were in the water, but he didn’t seem to notice. “I’ve not asked you your opinion of the West, Hannah,” he began.

  She twisted her neck to look at him. He’d asked her opinion of very little in the two years she had known him, but it seemed now that would change along with all the other things that were changing in their relationship.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said. “Wild and…fascinating.” Her voice became almost reverent, and for the first time she realized how the land was taking hold on her.

  Randolph sounded surprised at the intensity of her answer. “You’re not fearful of it, even after yesterday?”

  She thought for a moment, then shook her head. “There’s danger, of course, but then isn’t there everywhere? I’m as likely to be knocked over by a runaway carriage in the crowded streets back home as I am to run into a hungry bear out here.” Or a big ol’ coon, she thought, pushing away the sudden, unwanted memory.

  “I knew from the first minute I saw you, Hannah, at the indenture block, that you had a valiant spirit.”

  Hannah was startled by his comment. Randolph had seemed to regard her as no more than a work-horse for his wife during those first years. Perhaps his memory was faulty and he was now remembering the beginning of their relationship with the coloring of everything that had gone on since.

  “That’s a day I’ll not forget in this lifetime,” she said. “But I never got the impression that you thought much about me one way or the other.”

  He gave a harsh laugh. “If you could but see yourself with a man’s eyes, Hannah, you would realize how ridiculous a statement that is. It’s true that I didn’t come to appreciate the full depth of your spirit for a long time, but you intrigued me from the very first.”

  “You never said anything—”

  “Of course not!” he interrupted. “What kind of man do you think I am? I had the most wonderful wife in the world and two beautiful children. I certainly was not going to let myself get involved with a fascinating, beautiful young woman and see the people I loved most destroyed by my actions.”

  His voice trembled and his hands tightened on the edge of the rock beneath them. “But there were times, my dear Hannah, when I was hard put not to damn them all and myself, too, to claim you.”

  Hannah was dumbstruck. She had never so much as suspected, for all that time. Randolph’s devotion to his wife had not wavered, not once. Even through the most terrible times of her illness. She turned around to see his face better in the dim light. “I never knew…”

  He took a ragged breath. “Nor did Priscilla, Lord rest her saintly soul. I made sure of that, no matter what it cost me.”

  Hannah’s feet slipped on the rock and she pulled herself up to sit more on Randolph’s level. “Why are you telling me this now, Randolph?” she asked.

  “Perhaps it’s unfair. It was my burden, and I carried it gladly those years. Priscilla deserved no less of me. But yesterday when I thought I may never see you again, I decided that I couldn’t go any longer without letting you know how I feel.”

  Hannah’s mind was spinning. What a truly good man Randolph was, moral and caring about the people in his life. And how different he was from Ethan Reed, who would sleep with Polly McCoy when it suited his fancy and then days later do the same with her. But she didn’t know how to respond to Randolph’s declaration. She didn’t know if he even wanted a response. After all, she already belonged to him. For many employers of indentured servants, that would be enough to lay any kind of claim they chose.

  “I’m contracted to you for another three years…” she began carefully.

  But again he interrupted impatiently. “Forget the damn indenture, Hannah. I’ll dig out the papers and burn them tonight, if you want. And then you’d be free to go.”

  He put his hands along each side of her neck and ran his thumbs gently along the lines of her jaw. The moonlight caught the glint of tears in his eyes. “Only…don’t go, Hannah,” he pleaded. “Stay with me. I’ve already lost the love of my youth, but now you’re the one I want to build a life with—to grow old together.”

 
; Her own eyes filled with tears at his declaration. She was about to reply when there was the crackling sound behind them of someone walking through the woods.

  Randolph dropped his hands and they both turned to see who it was. He didn’t emerge into the light, but Ethan’s powerful figure was unmistakable.

  Randolph gave an exasperated, angry laugh. “What the hell do you want, Reed?”

  Hannah could not see Ethan’s expression. His voice was even as he said, “Mrs. Baker sent me to fetch you, Hannah. Nancy Trask is having her baby.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Hannah rubbed her stinging eyes. It had been a day and a half since she had slept, and that sleep had been the eventful night she had spent with Ethan. It seemed a lifetime ago.

  Eliza had said that they would take turns sitting up with Nancy, and Hannah had urged the older woman to leave the sick woman’s side for periods of rest. But she herself could not leave. She had sat this way with her mother and then Priscilla. She knew how suddenly and easily the fragile soul could slip away to the other side, and she did not intend to let that happen to Nancy. At least not without a fight.

  All during the long night and the longer day she had watched Nancy slide in and out of consciousness. She had wiped the sweat from her face and held her hand when the pains came strong and hard.

  Nancy’s own husband was not available to comfort his wife. Last night he’d appeared once at the entry-way of the makeshift lean-to they’d built for the birthing. He was stumbling and reeking of liquor, and Eliza had told him sharply that he’d better be sober before he bothered them again.

  Nancy had not asked for him. She seemed content to have Eliza and Hannah by her side. She smiled at Randolph on one of several visits he made to inquire about her progress. And she murmured a weary “bless you” to Ethan, who came by to tell them that he had occupied the children in building a rough raft and was now going to take them downriver on a fishing expedition.

  Hannah had not met his eyes when he had ducked his head under the deerskin canopy of their little shelter. But she, too, was grateful for his thoughtfulness, for now Nancy was not able to restrain her cries as the pains became more fierce.

  “What can we do, Eliza?” Hannah asked, feeling her own stomach wrenched with each one of Nancy’s outbursts.

  Eliza’s normally sunny face was taut with worry. “I don’t know. It should have come by now, if you ask me. Maybe it’s not going to come out right because it’s coming so early.”

  “Do we have any of the willow bark tea left?”

  Eliza shook her head. “It’s gone. And I don’t think it eased her much, anyway.”

  Hannah watched as Nancy moaned and thrashed back and forth on the soft bed they had made for her atop a pile of furs. “I don’t think she can take much more.”

  “She’s out of her head now,” Eliza said. “She’ll remember none of this, I wager. You usually don’t, you know, once you have the baby in your arms. The pain is forgotten.”

  “I hope Nancy forgets,” Hannah said fervently.

  “I just hope she ends up with a baby in her arms,” Eliza added. “The little mite’s going to be a wee one, coming this early.”

  Hannah stood up to ease the tension in her back. She peered out the doorway. “The children and Ethan should be back by now,” she said.

  Eliza gave her a shrewd look. “Who are you worried about—the children or Ethan?”

  Hannah turned sharply. “What do you mean by that?”

  Eliza gave her one of her gentle, wise smiles. “Don’t bristle at me, girl. You may be able to fool the rest of the folks here, but I know you too well. I’ve watched you mooning over our handsome captain since we started this trip. And when you both came back from the woods yesterday, I’d swear that you were a woman with a secret. A troubling secret, the kind that involves a man.”

  Hannah walked back to Nancy’s side and sank down on a deerskin. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, her voice dull.

  “Hogwash. Of course it matters. I don’t have any criticism of your eyesight, my dear girl. The man’s bonny enough to make even an old heart like mine skip a beat every now and then. But it’s your brains I’m aworrying about. Captain Reed’s not the kind of man who’s going to settle down to make a home for a woman and a family.”

  “I know that, Eliza. I haven’t lost my mind completely.”

  “Just partially, is that it?”

  Hannah gave her a rueful smile.

  “It’s Randolph Webster you should be setting your cap for, my dear. Now there’s a man who could make a woman happy.”

  “I’m not setting my cap for anyone, Eliza. After all, I’m still an indentured servant…”

  Eliza held up her hand. “You fold those papers around yourself like a shield, my friend. But I don’t think it will work out here on the frontier. Randolph would no longer hold you if you asked to leave. You know that as well as I do. But you think that if you are still bound as a servant, you don’t have to face the real decisions of life the way the rest of us do.”

  Was her friend some kind of sorceress? Hannah wondered. There was no way Eliza could know of the discussion she and Randolph had had last night by the river, yet she seemed to be reading inside Hannah’s very soul.

  There was a wail from the bed and both women turned their attention back to their patient. She had opened her eyes. “Am I going to die?” she asked, her raspy voice barely intelligible.

  Hannah came back to her side and leaned over her, taking hold of her shoulders. “Absolutely not, Nancy. We’re not going to let you die. Not you, or the babe.”

  Eliza put her hands soothingly on Nancy’s distended stomach. Then she lifted the fur covering and looked between the pregnant woman’s legs. “Just hang on a little while more, Nancy dear. I think that little one is finally going to make its appearance.”

  “Is it coming?” Hannah asked, clutching at Nancy with a swift wave of fear mixed with exhilaration.

  Eliza looked up with a smile. “Black hair and all, just like its mama.”

  Nancy gave a tremendous gasp as the pains gripped her. Her face screwed into a grimace of agony. “It is coming, I think,” she panted.

  “Is there something we should do?” Hannah asked, feeling her own stomach clench with her friend’s effort.

  “I think the rest is up to her,” Eliza said, sounding relieved.

  There was another loud cry from their patient, and Randolph came to the door of the lean-to. “What’s happening?” he asked. He sounded anguished.

  “The baby’s finally arriving,” Hannah said. “We can see the head.”

  “Thank God!” Randolph said fervently. He hesitated a moment, then said, “Should I fetch Hugh?”

  “If he’s sober enough to know what’s going on,” Eliza said curtly. “Which I doubt.”

  “But this is his child being born,” Hannah argued. “He should at least be informed.”

  “I’ll tell him,” Randolph said.

  “What about the children?” Hannah asked.

  “They came back with Reed a few minutes ago. They’re fine. You just worry about Mrs. Trask.”

  The minutes crawled by as Nancy’s spasms grew more violent. Hannah felt sweat trickle down her sides underneath her arms. But finally, after one final, violent push, Eliza cried, “I’ve got it!” and Hannah looked down to see a bloody, tiny creature in the older woman’s two hands. “It’s a boy. Nancy, you have a beautiful little boy.”

  Nancy made an attempt to raise her head, then fell back against the furs with another moan. Hannah wiped her wet face as Eliza cut the baby’s cord with a hunting knife and tied it with thread. She had stopped exclaiming over the child and something in her silence made Hannah look up sharply. Eliza looked meaningfully over at Nancy, then picked up the baby in a piece of soft deerskin and walked toward the door, motioning for Hannah to follow her.

  “Something’s wrong,” she said, keeping her voice low.

  The baby was lying still in Eliza�
�s arms and was not making a sound. Underneath the smears of blood, the tiny body was bluish. “I don’t think he’s breathing,” Eliza whispered.

  Hannah felt a surge of anger. She knew firsthand the callous injustice of death, but she couldn’t believe that Nancy had labored so hard to bring this little being into the world only to have him die before their eyes.

  “Trask’s still drunk,” Randolph’s voice reached them from out in the darkness. He came nearer and stopped when he spotted the deerskin-wrapped child. “Is it born, then?” he said with a little cry of joy.

  Eliza was bouncing the little bundle up and down in her arms. “The lad’s not breathing, Randolph,” she said, beginning to sound panicky.

  “We have to do something,” Hannah said fiercely. “We’re not going to let him die.”

  “We sure as hell are not,” Randolph agreed, seizing the child. He knelt on the ground with the baby cradled in his arms. “It’s got to breathe. Somehow we’ve got to make it breathe.” He bent over it and, to Hannah’s surprise, began to blow right into the baby’s minute mouth.

  “What are you doing?” she started to ask, but before he could say anything there was the slightest movement of the tiny chest, then a larger one and the little creature gave something like a cough. Randolph pulled back as the baby began to take tiny gasps and make a mewling sound.

  Hannah thought she had never heard anything so beautiful. “He’s breathing. You did it!” she said to Randolph.

  They both watched as the tiny breaths turned into larger ones and the blue skin began to change to pink.

  Randolph’s eyes were shining. He stood up, holding the baby tenderly in front of him, then walked over to Nancy’s side. “Here’s your son, Mrs. Trask,” he said. “He’s a beautiful, healthy boy.”