“Stand up, Fancy,” Jeff ordered calmly, and she saw that there were other people running into the clearing—Adam, Banner, Melissa, even Katherine.
“I can’t!” wailed Fancy.
Jeff ignored her words. “Remember how I made the balloon land that other time, Fancy?” he asked reasonably. “Pull the white cord—slowly. Very slowly.”
Fancy’s knees were made of jelly, but she stood up, reaching for the cord in question, her eyes closed tight.
“No!” Jeff roared. “That’s the gas valve! Pull the white cord!”
Fancy forced herself to open her eyes. Her stomach was leaping within her and her throat burned with bile. But she looked up and the white cord was there. Her hand trembled so that she could hardly grasp it, but she did, after long, torturous moments of struggle, manage to catch hold.
“Pull it very slowly,” Jeff ordered. How could he be so calm?
Resisting a frantic need to wrench at the cord, Fancy pulled it gradually downward. There was a splintering sound as the balloon descended, and she knew without looking that Temple had fallen.
And then the gondola was within two feet of the ground, and Adam and Jeff were both grasping its edges in strong hands, hauling it the rest of the way down. Jeff caught Fancy by her shoulders and wrenched her out, holding her close, muttering senseless words into her hair.
She wailed with terror and relief, clutching at his shirt with her hands. Jeff lifted her into his arms and, with his wan mother scrambling along at his side, carried her out of the clearing.
Fancy lost consciousness before they reached the main house, and awoke to find herself on an examining table in the hospital wing, with Banner peering down at her. “Jeff, Adam—she’s awake!”
There was a scuffling sound and the little room seemed to undulate. Only Jeff’s face, Jeff’s glorious, snow-white face, could be trusted not to writhe and shift.
“Fancy,” he whispered hoarsely, and there were tears on his cheeks. “Oh, Fancy.”
She reached up and drew his head down, holding onto him, tangling her fingers in his hair. It was so good, so gloriously good, to touch him. “D–Did I lose the baby?” she managed, voicing her worst fear.
“No,” answered Banner in a tearful voice before anyone else could reply. “No, the baby is fine.”
“Thank God,” sobbed Fancy. “Oh, thank God—”
“Let her rest now, Jeff,” came Adam’s voice, from the void.
Obediently Jeff drew away, out of her arms. She was drifting, drifting—but comfortably. Arms lifted her and she was placed on a soft bed. Rails clanked into place and a blanket was tucked around her.
It was good to sleep.
* * *
Temple Royce’s grisly death was the talk of Port Hastings for months. Most of the populace, for reasons of their own, were glad that he was gone.
There were some, of course, who claimed that Jeff and Adam Corbin had murdered him to avenge real or imagined wrongs, but those in authority looked upon this theory with disdain. Had Royce died in a more ordinary fashion—at the point of a gun or a knife, for example—the idea would have had some credence. But impaled on a tree limb, fifty-some feet above the ground? No. The judge and the mayor and the marshal shook their heads in unanimous disbelief. Temple Royce had been a smuggler, a thief, perhaps even a murderer, if what the Corbins said about the sinking of the Sea Mistress and the tragedy at that Wenatchee wedding was the truth. Like as not, the fates had dealt with him in their singular and irrevocable manner.
Except for gossip over teapots and poker tables, the subject was closed.
* * *
Banner’s manner was brisk and professional. “Get out of this room this instant, Jeff Corbin,” she said, rolling up the sleeves of her dress and washing her hands in the basin that steamed near the window, melting the pretty curlicues of frost that had gathered there during the night.
“Don’t you want me to find Adam?” Jeff asked desperately. He had driven all the way to the main house and back in the cold chill of that February dawn, and was only now realizing that his shirt was untucked from his trousers and misbuttoned in the bargain.
Banner looked at Fancy and winked. “That’s a grand idea, Jeff,” she said. “You go and find your brother. I think he’s in the Klallum Camp.”
Jeff bent over the bed and kissed Fancy’s wan but happy face. “You’ll be all right, won’t you?”
A pain caught Fancy just then; it seemed that her hipbones were being pried apart. Having a baby was proving to be arduous business. “Yes,” she managed to say, still smiling.
Jeff raced out of the bedroom and when he was gone, Banner, trim again after the birth of her healthy daughter some weeks before, laughed. “We’re well rid of him, I think,” she said.
Fancy moaned and arched with another pain. “W–Will it take a long time?”
Banner was drawing down the blankets to examine her and Fancy was very glad that she could be attended by a woman. It would be embarrassing to have Adam doing all these things, brusque and businesslike though he was. “Sometimes first babies take awhile,” came the thoughtful answer. “With any luck, though, we’ll be all done before Jeff gets back.”
The door opened and Mary came in, her eyes wide, clutching her wrapper around her. “Does it hurt much, mum?” she asked in quiet awe.
Banner darted the housekeeper a look that said she would brook no hysterics. “It’s a worthwhile pain,” she observed, finishing her examination and covering Fancy again with the sheets and blankets. “You get something for it.”
Mary glowed. “Aye! A wee baby—no better gift than that, now is there?”
Banner smiled. “No,” she agreed, more gently. And then she sent the housekeeper bustling off to heat water and gather fresh linens. “I was saving those jobs for Jeff,” she confided wryly, “but now that he’s out of the way, they’ll serve the same purpose with Mary.”
Fancy felt another pain building within her and tried to divert her thoughts from it. She and Jeff would have a child soon, a child of their very own. Their house would be wonderfully noisy, the way the main house always was.
It seemed that Banner washed her hands a thousand times during the next hour. When the pain was bad, she talked of her own children, the twins Danny and Bridget, and the baby Elisabeth.
Fancy was perspiring and every part of her seemed to strain with the effort of birthing that child. She breathed deeply when Banner told her to and gripped her sister-in-law’s strong, sure hands when the suffering grew to intolerable proportions.
“Scream if you want to,” Banner enjoined. “Sometimes it takes your mind off the pain.”
Obediently, Fancy screamed. She was glad, then, that Jeff had been sent on a wild goose chase and could not hear her.
“Is Adam r–really at the Klallum Camp?” she asked, between bouts with that consuming, clenching agony.
Banner shrugged. “Who knows?” she asked, flipping back the covers to examine Fancy again. “All right, this is it,” she said coolly. “I can see the baby’s head. I want you to push as hard as you can, Fancy.”
Fancy pushed, gasping. This final, greatest pain seemed to clasp her like some wild and furious beast.
The door burst open just as the baby burst into the world. Banner’s hands were busy with it for a moment, and then it squalled in outrage.
“A boy,” Jeff breathed, and Fancy turned her head on the damp pillow and saw that he was standing just inside the room, his magnificent face suffused with joy and wonder.
“Let me see him!” Fancy cried, craning her neck.
Banner smiled and laid the squirming, furious child on his mother’s stomach. “Don’t mind the cord now,” she cautioned gently. “We’ll take care of that in a minute.”
Fancy touched her baby boy with a trembling hand. He had a thatch of untamed, wheat-gold hair and the dark blue eyes that all infants have. His red face was squenched with fury and his tiny hands and feet flailed in protest.
“B
eing born is something of an affront, isn’t it?” Banner asked soothingly, collecting the child from Fancy’s stomach.
“He looks like you,” Fancy said, looking into her husband’s face. “What will we name him?”
Jeff kissed the tip of her nose. “Anything but Hershel,” he answered.
Fancy laughed, exhausted and aching and full of heady triumph. “We could name him for Phineas,” she teased.
“That isn’t a bad idea,” mused Jeff ponderously.
“Never!” cried Fancy. “I was only teasing!”
Jeff feigned disappointment. “Eustis?” he suggested.
And Fancy knew then that he was teasing as well. Her heart was full of love and pride at the wonder they’d wrought together. “We could name him for your brothers,” she said. “Adam Keith Corbin. Or Keith Adam—”
Jeff laughed. “I love my brothers, Fancy, but there is such a thing as confusion, you know—especially in this family.”
Fancy yawned, craving sleep with a sudden and all-consuming lust. When she awoke hours later, Jeff was stretched out on the bed beside her, fully clothed, holding her close.
“I’m about to suggest a compromise,” he announced, as though there had been no pause in their conversation about the baby’s name. “Your father’s name is Patrick, isn’t it?”
Fancy nodded. The room was shadowy and quiet and all that mattered in her world was right there, either touching her or within easy reach.
“Then why don’t we name our son Patrick Keith,” Jeff mused. “I like that.”
“They’ll call him Pat,” Fancy protested, “or even Paddy!”
Jeff shook his head. “No. He’ll always be Patrick.”
And he was.
* * *
There had been a party to celebrate spring and the launching of the new ship, and Fancy was flushed with laughter and the music that lingered in her head and heart. What a joy it had been, singing and dancing on the decks of a ship shamelessly named for her!
“Corbin’s Fancy, he calls it,” she told the greedy infant at her breast. “Can you imagine that? Everyone danced and sang—”
The door of the bedroom creaked open, letting in a golden spill of light from the hallway. Jeff was there, holding something large and square under one arm. Presently, he lit a lamp at the bedside and sat watching Fancy as she finished tending their child and then laid him in his cradle to sleep.
Then, grinning, he stood up and placed the square object on the wall, where a picture of a rose arbor had been. It was Fancy’s signboard from the days when she had performed with Hershel, now framed and behind glass. FANCY JORDAN. SHE SINGS. SHE DANCES. SHE DOES MAGIC.
“We’ve taken care of the singing and dancing,” Jeff said, turning back to rake the length of her with smoldering indigo eyes. “That leaves the magic.”
Fancy smiled and went to him, and the lamp Jeff had lit flickered out.
More to treasure from
ANGELFIRE
BANNER O’BRIEN
CAROLINE AND THE RAIDER
CORBIN’S FANCY
DANIEL’S BRIDE
DESIRE AND DESTINY
EMMA AND THE OUTLAW
FLETCHER’S WOMAN
KNIGHTS
LAURALEE
THE LEGACY
LILY AND THE MAJOR
TWO BROTHERS: THE LAWMAN AND THE GUNSLINGER
MEMORY’S EMBRACE
MOON FIRE
MY DARLING MELISSA
MY OUTLAW
ONE WISH
PIRATES
PRINCESS ANNIE
SPRINGWATER
A SPRINGWATER CHRISTMAS
SPRINGWATER SEASONS: RACHEL, SAVANNAH, MIRANDA, JESSICA
TAMING CHARLOTTE
THE VOW
WANTON ANGEL
WILLOW
THE WOMEN OF PRIMROSE CREEK: BRIDGET, CHRISTY, SKYE, MEGAN,
YANKEE WIFE
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Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Corbin's Fancy Page 26
