Shadows of Love

by Gail MacMillan

  Then the part of me that was my mother, ready to do anything to secure a safe, comfortable life for her child, surfaced and I knew I wouldn’t.

  “Father.” Abraham smiled. “I want you to address me hereafter as Father. Having conceived my grandchild, you have become a true daughter to me.” He leaned forward and kissed my forehead. “And I overheard Caroline’s innuendo. Let me assure you I have no such doubts about the child’s paternity. You see, Barret Madison and I have an agreement, and I know him well enough to be confident he’d as soon rot in hell as go back on any promise he made to me.”

  I recalled their conversation earlier, a conversation in which Barret had assured Abraham that any child I bore would most definitely be his grandchild, and was appalled. Barret had broken his promise.

  “Rest.” Abraham was leaving the room. “Nothing must endanger the baby you carry. It’s my hope for the future, my dream of a dynasty to come.”

  He left. My duplicity was underway. But now I understood Colin’s insistence, on his deathbed, that Barret sleep with me. Pregnant supposedly by my husband, I would be able to remain in the comfort and luxury of Peacock House; my child would inherit Colin’s legacy.

  ****

  During my pregnancy, Randall became my solicitous companion. He came to my room each morning when Rose informed him that I was suffering from morning sickness. He dismissed the maids whose fluttering, he knew, increased my agitation. He held back my hair as I retched over a basin. When I would fall back on the bed, sweat drenched, he’d bathe my face with cool water and brush damp curls from my forehead.

  “This baby is very important to me, little sister,” he said one morning after I had had a particularly brutal bout of vomiting. “It will be the child I shall never have.”

  “How can you say that?” I struggled up on an elbow. “You and Caroline are young. There’s still time.”

  “No.” He squeezed excess water from a cloth into the basin of water by my bed, then pressed me back against the pillows to apply it to my forehead. “I contracted a simple child’s illness on our wedding trip. As a result, I’m sterile.”

  “Randall, perhaps you’re mistaken,” I said. “Perhaps…”

  “My father has sent me on a number of humiliating visits to various physicians,” he said. “You see, the wedding trip, which I didn’t want to take, was his and Caroline’s idea. He forced it upon me. As a result, I suspect he carries at least a small measure of guilt. Perhaps if he’d let us stay here at Peacock House he might have had at least one grandchild…before we discovered how greatly we detest each other.”

  ****

  Then came the awful night I thought I would lose my child, and I realized what the baby I carried truly meant to me. It had been a brutally hot August day. I had felt feverish and short of breath since morning. Randall insisted I keep to my bed and tended me himself in the stifling bedroom where even the drawn curtains could not keep out the fierce heat.

  At suppertime he brought me a tray with a light meal, but I could force down only a few mouthfuls. Even the milk which I usually drank in quantity tasted unpalatable. After the first sip, I set it aside. It tasted odd. I assumed it was souring due to the heat of the day. Exhausted, I fell asleep, the tray on my bedside table.

  I awoke in the darkness of a still, sultry midnight to horrible pain and drenching perspiration. When my sleep-befuddled mind could focus, I realized I was having contractions. It was too soon, far too soon. I knew my baby would die if he were forced from my body now. As a ragged bolt of lightning stabbed across my room, a cry of fear escaped my lips…fear for the life of my child. Clutching my stomach, I struggled to my feet and stumbled into the hallway.

  “Randall!” I gasped, beating on the door of his room. “Randall, I need you!”

  When he opened it, clad only in undertrousers, I was in a heap on the floor.

  “Starr!” He knelt to gather me up into his arms. “What is it, little sister?”

  “I’m losing my baby!” I choked. “Randall, please help me! Don’t let it happen!”

  I huddled against his naked chest.

  Suddenly Caroline was before us in a dressing robe, her eyes flashing with rage.

  “My God, Randall, she’s pregnant with another man’s child.” she flared. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Get out of my way, Caroline,” he ordered with an authority I had never before seen him demonstrate. “She came for my help. She thinks she’s losing the child.”

  Through hot waves of pain I saw the anger fade from Caroline’s face and an expression of evil elation slid into its place.

  “How unfortunate,” she purred, and moved gracefully aside with a mock curtsey to allow us into my room.

  Randall started to put me into bed, but I clung to him. “No, no!” I pleaded, our encounter with Caroline reducing me to a mound of defenseless fear. “Hold me, Randall. Please hold me.”

  “Of course.” He sat down in a large rocking chair in a corner. “Caroline, light a lamp and fetch Gram,” he ordered the woman who’d come to stand in black silhouette on the threshold.

  “Of course,” she mocked him, and left in a rustle of silk.

  “Don’t cry, little sister,” he soothed as I sobbed against his chest. He settled himself and drew my nightshift between us and down over my legs.

  Shortly Gram entered, nightcap askew on her white hair, a dressing gown wrapped haphazardly about her.

  “Light a lamp, please, Gram,” Randall said. “Caroline didn’t bother to do it.”

  When she had done his bidding, the old lady turned to look at us again. “Put her in the bed, Randall,” she said.

  “No, no!” I begged, clinging to the strength and warmth of my brother-in-law’s body. Beneath my hands, he felt like Barret. I needed to be reminded of the man I loved, the father of the baby I was losing. A bolt of lightning illuminated the room, and I cried out.

  I felt Randall’s hand on my belly as he did a cursory examination.

  “You’re having contractions,” he said. “That doesn’t necessarily mean you’re about to go into genuine labor. The baby feels strong. He’s fighting for his life. You must, too. Try to relax. Sometimes these pains stop as quickly as they begin. Breathe deeply.”

  “Lay me in my bed,” I choked. “There’s no hope of saving my baby.”

  “You won’t lose the child,” he reassured me, brushing my forehead with a brotherly kiss, his hand still on my belly. “The baby is at rest now. His struggles are over.”

  Reassured by his words, I huddled against him. Shortly before dawn the pains ceased. Gram mixed me what she termed a sleeping potion, and I drifted into an exhausted slumber. I roused slightly, when Randall again checked the baby, to hear him discussing the incident with Gram in whispers.

  “Someone put it in her milk,” he was saying. “I’d know its scent anywhere. It’s a miracle it didn’t succeed in causing her to miscarry.”

  “But who?” Gram’s voice echoed concern as she adjusted the covers over me.

  “Someone who fears Father having this grandchild,” Randall replied. “Gram, we must guard Starr and her baby every minute. We mustn’t give this killer another chance.”

  I drifted into a troubled sleep filled with weird dreams of Gram preparing one of her potions while Ben Smith, his face contorted into a mask of evil intent, looked on. Tired of Abe’s grasping ruthlessness, they were plotting to prevent his obtaining his most desired possession…a grandchild.

  ****

  The following day I awoke near noon to find Randall seated beside my bed drinking a cup of coffee. On a nearby table, a large pot indicated the extent of his consumption in his efforts to stay awake. A stubble of beard covered his gaunt jaws beneath bloodshot eyes, but he was sober and alert.

  “Good morning.” He smiled. “Feeling better?”

  “Yes, thanks to you.”

  “Don’t thank me. You and that tough little person you’re carrying did it all. Are you hungry? You should eat somethin
g.”

  He went to ring the bell for the maid.

  “Randall,” I said as he returned to his seat and poured himself another cup of black coffee. “How does a man know he’s sterile?”

  “You mean me?” he asked. “I’ve already told you. I had a child’s disease as an adult.”

  “No, I mean how can a person otherwise know.”

  “Mainly because his relations with women produce no issue,” he said. “Starr, who are you talking about? Not Colin?”

  “No, not Colin.” I paused, then blurted, “Barret.”

  “Barret!”

  “He told me he was, but he…”

  “Fathered your baby,” Randall finished. “I knew from the moment we discovered your pregnancy. Colin certainly…” His voice trailed off, and he smiled. “You’re in love with Barret, aren’t you?”

  “I loved Colin, I…”

  “Yes, but you weren’t in love with him, nor he with you. You cared deeply for each other, but there was no magic between you. There is between you and Barret, isn’t there?”

  I lowered my eyes and tears trickled down my cheeks. He understood. He was in love with his girl from the fish sheds.

  “I told him I loved him and that I was going to have our child, and he said…he said he was sterile, and that…the baby had to be Colin’s, and that I was a liar and…” I was sobbing too hard to continue.

  Randall eased himself onto the edge of the bed and gathered me into his arms. “Did Colin ever penetrate you?” he asked.

  I shook my head against his white-shirted shoulder. “Never. Only Barret, only Barret.”

  “Then Barret was wrong about himself.”

  “But he’s never had a child, and I know he’s slept with other women…lots of other women.” I was trembling.

  “”Whores,” he said with a naturalness that startled me. “Prostitutes and sluts who know all the tricks to prevent pregnancy or how to get rid of it as soon as they discover their condition. Barret was raised in a brothel. Those are the kind of women he felt at home among. Until you came along. Starr, you’re the first woman who gave him a fair chance at fathering a child, and he did. Barret Madison is no more sterile than that oversexed stallion of his.”

  “But why did he say he was?” I was totally confused now.

  “He must truly believe he’s physically incapable of producing a child,” Randall said. “Barret never lies.”

  “Why would he believe such a thing?”

  “Perhaps he was injured at some time, or he may have contracted a brothel disease reputed to cause sterility.” He shrugged. “God knows he’s had a rough life. Anything might have happened to him.”

  “But he’s wrong!” I said. “Randall, some day I must find him and convince him he truly is my child’s father.”

  “Yes,” he agreed. “But until then, we must keep up the ruse that this is Colin’s baby. It’s the only way I can keep you in this house, under my care.”

  ****

  As I recovered from my ordeal, I mulled over Gram and Randall’s words about murder. Had I heard them correctly, or had it been an hallucination induced by pain and Gram’s sleeping draught? As I watched the two of them in the ensuing days, I became convinced it had been a real dialogue. Like guards, one of them was constantly near me. When I was unable to dine with the family, one of them always accompanied my tray from the kitchen. At night, they made certain I locked my bedroom door.

  I grew furtive. I caught myself eyeing others in the household with suspicion. With fear growing to horror within me as my ninth month dawned, I thought of confessing to the family that my child was not the long-awaited heir but the offspring of one of Abe’s captains. Then my child would be safe from the murderer who was intent on his never drawing breath.

  He would also be born into degradation and poverty, a sailor’s bastard of a woman people would only too easily brand an adventuress and an adulteress. I had too much of my mother’s blood in me to allow our present security to be thrown away. I remained silent.

  ****

  Alone, Randall delivered Barret’s child at the height of a February blizzard. Abraham had gone to England three months previous, as he had said he would, to obtain increased financing for expanding his interests. Gram was ill with another of her increasingly frequent bouts of indigestion, and Caroline refused to come near me.

  As I lay in the bed I had once shared with Colin, Rose and the housekeeper hovered nervously about. It was obvious they did not share my confidence in Randall’s ability to deliver my child safely.

  “We should have sent for the midwife before this storm set in,” I heard Mrs. MacDonald mutter to Rose as Randall positioned me for the birth.

  “Try to relax.” He ignored them and rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt. “Breathe deeply. Don’t fight the pain. Ride it like a wave that crests and breaks and is over. Mrs. MacDonald, Rose, please leave us alone.”

  Misgivings mirrored in their faces, they obeyed.

  “Talk to me, please,” I begged, as he bent my knees wide apart. “Tell me about yourself, Randall. Tell me your hopes and dreams. It will take my mind off the pain.”

  “My dreams, sweetheart?” He smiled sardonically. “Well, once upon a time I dreamed of being a doctor, a really good doctor who could give the people of this community the medical attention they deserve. I went to medical school with shining visions of a future with a respected practice, a loving wife, and a host of happy sons and daughters.

  “But somewhere along the way, the dream cracked and fell apart. I found myself to be an attorney and politician, forced to do the bidding of a ruthless father. As for the loving wife and babies…”

  I interrupted him with a scream of agony as a great, excruciating cramp leapt through every inch of my body.

  “Oh, God, Barret, where are you?” I cried, desperate in my misery. “I need you!”

  “Breathe deep,” Randall instructed gently. He looked at my body. “Bear down. Now! We almost have a baby.” Sweat had broken out on his forehead and upper lip, but his eyes and hands were gentle and in control.

  “Again, Starr,” he encouraged, perspiration trickling down his face. “Just one more push.”

  I drew a deep breath, thought of Barret and how we’d been on the island, and found renewed strength. I pushed and writhed and moaned and, with Randall’s hands guiding, I was delivered of a son.

  “He’s beautiful,” I breathed, looking into the cherubic face of the baby Randall finally placed in my arms.

  “Yes,” he agreed, looking down at us. “Babies are beautiful miracles. You and Barret have been blessed.”

  ****

  My baby was six weeks old when he experienced his first taste of Abraham Douglas’s wrath. It was early morning. I had finished my breakfast and Rose had brought little Colin to me. Propped up against satin pillows, I was nursing him when my father-in-law entered the room. I had been dreading his return from England, fearful that he might see Barret’s features in my child’s small face. I withdrew the baby from my breast and covered myself.

  “That’s not necessary,” Abe said, coming to stand beside the bed as Colin began to whimper. “A grandfather should be permitted to watch his grandson nurse.”

  The strangeness in his voice and expression unnerved me. He was not the thrilled grandfather I’d expected him to be. He carried his riding quirt and kept slapping it against his high, polished boot, a gesture I’d come to recognize as being indicative of his being in an agitated state.

  “Well, go ahead,” he said shortly, and I became terrified as he moved to tower over me, his face flushed. “Give the child your breast. Make him as contented as you made his father.”

  I opened my gown and put the baby to my nipple. As he settled to suckle, I looked up at the big man beside my bed.

  “You are incredibly beautiful.” His voice trembled with an emotion I recognized as outrage. “Why weren’t you able to arouse my son? Why?” The last was a roar as he cracked the whip against th
e covers near my knees.

  “What…what are you saying?” I shuddered, putting a hand over my baby’s head.

  “This wasn’t the first time you were pregnant, was it?” he rasped, sweat breaking out on his upper lip. “You had an abortion last Christmas Eve in Halifax, didn’t you? You had Barret Madison’s first bastard taken out of you, but you got caught here in this house with the second! Oh, I know you tried to lose it. I’ve heard of your ‘illness’ in July. But you failed, and this time there was no dockside butcher to help you!”

  His big hand shot out and he pulled me bodily from the bed. Little Colin toppled from me and fell screaming among the sheets. Terrified, I stood before the raging dictator. When he raised his quirt to strike me, I cowered against the bedpost.

  “Papa, in God’s name, stop!”

  Randall burst into the room and inserted himself between his enraged father and me.

  “Get out of my way, Randall!” Abraham ordered amid my baby’s screams. “This bitch has deceived me! She’s gotten rid of the first of the bastards my good Captain Madison gave her, and now she’s tried to foist this whelp off on me as my grandson. I will see her punished.”

  “Strike her and I swear I’ll reveal every underhanded scheme you’ve ever engineered, to the governor himself.”

  Abraham froze. Father and son faced each other, pale with rage.

  After what seemed to me like an eternity, Abe lowered his whip and spat on the carpet at my feet.

  “Get out!” he snarled. “Take your sailor’s trash and get out. You’ll never see your lover again, I can assure you. He’s done with you since you’ve proven stupid enough to get yourself in a family way twice with his leavings.”

  He took something from his pocket and threw it at my feet. I gasped as I recognized the ring I had used to pay the doctor in Halifax.

  “I returned by way of Halifax,” he said. “That disgusting little butcher brought this to me and tried to blackmail me into buying it back. He said he’d learned who the girl with Madison had been on Christmas Eve, and that he would disgrace my family by telling the governor all the sordid details if I didn’t purchase the ring. It disgusted me to the point of vomiting to know you’d used my son’s wedding ring to pay a butcher to rid you of a piece of sea tramp’s lust.”