Chapter Thirteen
MELLY TURNED AROUND, HER big brown eyes shocked and unguarded as they sought his. “What…?”
He touched her mouth with a long forefinger. “I want you, to put it bluntly,” he said. “And I’m going to make you want me.”
“Jacob!” she cried out.
He chuckled. “Bruce adores you,” he said. His voice softened. “So do I.”
“But…the widow Terrell,” she protested blankly,
“A blind, nothing more. I am too old for you, Melly,” he said seriously. “Or you are too young for me. But I can’t fight it any longer. It took the heart out of me to say what I did to you at the Women’s Club dance. I can’t hurt you again, even if it is for noble motives. The widow Terrell has been a friend. Only a friend,” he emphasized. “There has not been the slightest impropriety.”
“You said…we will talk to my parents?”
“Yes. Somehow—” he sighed “—we must convince them to give me permission to court you.”
Her ears didn’t register that. Surely she wasn’t hearing him properly. She turned around to look at him directly.
“Melly,” he said gently, “I want to marry you.”
Happiness washed over her in such a wave that she trembled. Her eyes brightened, brimmed over.
He drew her to him hungrily and held her. “What did you think I meant?” he growled at her ear. “Regardless of what some of you seem to think about me, I am not without morals.”
“I know that. I’m so happy.” She clung closer. “I thought you hated me.”
He sighed. “I tried to stop this from happening, to protect you. Melly, you’re only eighteen years old. You haven’t even lived.”
“I never would, if you had married the widow. Without you, I would never have loved again. Never have married or had children.”
His arm tightened. “Do you like children? You must, because Bruce thinks you’re swell.”
“I love children,” she replied.
“Then we might have one or two of our own,” he mused. “I fancy a little girl with hair like yours.”
“Oh, Jacob!” she cried, so close to heaven that she felt as if she could float.
He chuckled and bent to kiss her. “But for the moment, I think we might go our separate ways. I am tired to death and I had a neat whiskey to help me relax—not the most intelligent of combinations for clear thinking.”
She looked worried, and he laughed again. “I assure you,” he said, “that I am competent to know what I’ve said. But I need to look it when we confront your parents.”
“Tomorrow?” she asked.
He nodded. He looked momentarily worried. “They do not approve of me, I know. And when their own daughter is involved…I hope that it will go well.”
“And if it does not?” she asked.
He smiled wistfully. “Your cousin Nora seemed to find her own solution to the disapproval she faced.”
“Yes, she and Cal married in secret.” Her eyes brightened. “Would we?”
“Only as a last resort,” he said. He touched her mouth gently. “So don’t worry. All right?”
She smiled and nodded. He put her in the buggy and swung up on his own mount, bareback.
“So that is how you got here so quickly!” she exclaimed, not having noticed before that his horse wasn’t saddled.
He chuckled. “I ride quite as well without a saddle, as it happens,” he told her. “I will follow you home. Not closely enough to be seen,” he added when she looked worried.
IT DIDN’T TAKE LONG at all to get there, and when she reached home, it was to find that no one took any notice of her late arrival. The whole household was in turmoil, and her mother was in tears.
“Why…what has happened?” Melly burst out.
“It’s Nora,” Helen sobbed. “Oh, Melly, she is in the throes of the most terrible attack of fever. And worse, she has lost her baby.”
“Oh, no!” Melly exclaimed. “Poor Nora! And Cal…”
“Cal has gone for the weekend. We have no idea how to contact him,” her mother replied miserably. “He will not return until Monday at the earliest, and she is so ill. So very ill.” She said no more, but Melly understood.
They went into the guest bedroom where Nora had been brought when Helen found her raving with sickness earlier in the afternoon. Feverish and drowning in sweat, she was being tended by the solemn, weary doctor. He had been summoned long before supper and had had no time even for a cup of tea.
“Can we get you something, doctor?” Helen asked gently.
“I would be glad of a cup of coffee and some biscuits,” he said gratefully. “She needs more cool water, and her sheets will have to be changed, as well as her gown.” He shook his head. “In all my long years, I have never seen a fever quite so bad. Hasn’t she been resting, as I warned her to when she came to see me last?”
This was news to Helen and Melly, who exchanged shocked glances.
“I see,” the doctor murmured coldly. “She told no one, I gather, not even her errant husband. I warned her that any lifting would be dangerous, that she should not exert herself. Did no one realize that she had the beginnings of a cold, and that it, added with her weakened condition, almost guaranteed a bout of the fever?”
“We didn’t know,” Helen said sadly. “She has been healthy as far as we knew, but since her marriage, she has kept to herself. We have hardly seen her these past few days, except when Melly carried her things to tempt her appetite. She has been trying to learn to cook….”
“At a most inopportune time, I assure you,” the doctor said irritably. They looked so guilty that he relented. “Nothing would have spared the child, I fear. But the fever…” He shook his head.
“Will she die?” Melly asked tentatively.
“I cannot say. It is a very bad case.”
“What can we do?” Helen asked anxiously.
The doctor looked up at her over his glasses. “Pray.”
THEY DID, PROFUSELY, for the next two days. Nora was in pain at first and she cried out when they moved her, to sponge her down and help keep the high fever at bay. It exhausted everyone, including Melly, and there was no question of Jacob speaking to her parents. Melly sent word to him about what was happening and went back to her vigil at Nora’s side, her own problems temporarily forgotten.
Monday came, and still the fever raged.
A WEARY CAL BARTON climbed off the train and hired a carriage at the livery stable to take him out to the ranch. He and Pike had hit a dry hole, the second since he’d started looking for oil. They had one last tract, in a different location, and Pike was sinking the first part of the shaft today.
Cal had wanted to stay, to wait, to see if this last effort would pay dividends. Everything was riding on it. He had never been a gambling man, and he was gambling everything on one tract of land and his instincts and a geologist’s certainty of success. But despite that worry, his argument with Nora played on his mind until it was all he could think about. Somehow they had to reconcile their differences, for the sake of the forthcoming child. If only he knew how.
When he arrived at the ranch and went to their cabin, it was to find it empty. His first thought was that Nora had gone back to Virginia. It was what he had invited her to do, although God knew he hadn’t really meant it. He was upset at what Helen had said to him. But he wished he could take back every word he’d said.
His face tight with misery, he walked into the bedroom, expecting to see her cases packed. But there they were. He opened the chifforobe with shaking hands, and her clothes were there. He closed his eyes and thanked God. She must be visiting her aunt and cousin at the big house. And he’d thought she’d deserted him!
With a relieved smile, he went back into the living room and sat down heavily in his rocking chair. He leaned back wearily, wishing the past few weeks undone. If Nora had gone, he would be totally alone. He hadn’t realized how much he would miss burned meat and hard biscuits and ruined shirts while he was away, but he had. Now he smiled wistfully at the memory of how hard she’d tried to make a go of the housework. During his absence he’d had plenty of time to consider the difficulty she would have faced, a woman with her monied background trying to live like a field hand. It hadn’t been fair of him to put her in this position. He’d decided before he boarded the train for Tyler Junction that he must make amends and forget his stupid ideas of trying to change her. Remembering the painful things he’d said to her, he knew it wasn’t going to be easy to make up for them.
But hopefully it wasn’t too late. He could take her home to Latigo, and she wouldn’t have to suffer this deprivation anymore. The Tremayne ranch was as good as he could make it, and Chester was on the right road. Either he and Pike would strike oil or they wouldn’t. If they didn’t, Cal told himself, he had a strong back and a good brain. He would swallow his pride and go back to Latigo to work on his own family’s ranch. If Nora loved him enough, she would adjust. The rest…well, the rest would fall into place somehow. The more he worked at the problem, the simpler it seemed to be to solve.
The light step on the front porch caught his attention. He stood up, smiling, his heart racing as he waited for Nora to open the door and walk in. But the door didn’t open. It was knocked on.
He went to answer it and found a worried Melly on the doorstep.
“I thought I heard you drive up,” she said. “You’d better come up to the house. While there’s still time.”
Because of the look in her eyes when she added that last remark, he didn’t waste time asking questions. Nora’s absence and Melly’s pale, worn face told a story he didn’t want to hear. He quickened his stride with a heartbeat that threatened to shatter his ribs.
IN THE GUEST BEDROOM, Nora lay bathed in sweat with the doctor still at her side. He hadn’t left the ranch since he was first called. He glared at Cal Barton.
“The errant husband, I presume?” he asked icily. “See your handiwork, sir!”
Cal’s heart stopped in his chest. Nora looked almost dead. She was the color of the sheet and thin as a rail. Her stomach…
The doctor saw his look of horror and where it was placed. “She lost the baby two days ago. Now we’re only concerned with saving her life. Didn’t you know how dangerous it was to let her lift heavy pails of water and become fatigued in this condition, especially when it was complicated by a cold?”
“She said that you told her she was fine,” Cal said. His heart was racing with fear as he looked at Nora, so still and sick. “She sneezed, but she said it was the dust…!”
“She caught cold. That was enough, as worn as she was, to bring the fever back. I fear that this bout may well end in her death. I have never seen such a bad case of it.”
“Fever?” Cal moved to the side of the bed and looked down at his wife with wide, stunned eyes. His heart froze in his chest. “What fever?” he demanded hoarsely.
“What sort of marriage do you have?” the doctor demanded angrily. “She has had fever for over a year sporadically. Her own physician, although I do not concur with his prognosis, told her that it might one day prove fatal.”
That was a blow that hit Cal right where he lived. He took a steadying breath. “She never told me,” he managed.
“She never told anyone,” Helen said sadly, dabbing at her eyes. “She said that she would never be able to marry, to put that emotional and financial burden of illness on a man, because the fever was incurable. Oh, bother Summerville! If he had not made unwanted advances and torn her clothing, if the mosquitoes had not gotten to her skin in Africa, how different it might have been!”
“Summerville?” Cal leaned against the wall, staring blankly at Helen. “Summerville caused this?”
“Yes,” Helen said. Tears sprung anew. “I was so afraid when you brought her back that she would not be strong enough to bear up under being with child and learning a completely new manner of living. This is a hard life for a woman, and she was so fragile. I thought you knew. I should have spoken. I should have said something…!”
Her voice broke and she turned away. Cal was just beginning to realize what he’d done to Nora. She was sick with fever and she had never told him. Obviously she hadn’t wanted to burden a poor man with an incurable illness that would mean constant medical treatment, even if it didn’t prove fatal. How tragically ironic that he had seen her hesitation about working in the cabin as contempt of her surroundings, when she had actually been taking a very slow pace only to protect her health. His eyes closed with pain.
If not for Summerville, he would probably never have known about the baby, ever. She’d never have cabled him and he’d never have been driven to marry her, bring her here instead of to luxurious Latigo. Instead, he’d subjected her to a rugged, rigorous life that hadn’t been at all necessary. In his arrogance, he’d meant to teach her a lesson in humility. But he was the one getting the lesson. It had cost him his child already, and might yet cost him his wife.
“Oh, my dear,” he said under his breath, shaken to his very soul as he looked down at Nora’s tortured body. His eyes lifted to the doctor’s. “Will she live? Can nothing else be done? Man, you must save her!”
The doctor had already realized that Cal was not at fault. He relented. Compassion moved him, but its opposite often made a madman of him. He had no patience with people who put their own interests before those of a sick person.
“I’ve done all I can,” the doctor said honestly. “Quinine, baths, bleeding, everything I could think of. If the fever breaks, she has a chance. Otherwise…” He spread his hands. “I have treated cases of malarial fever many times, but there is no cure. Further, she is weakened by the loss of her child and the cold, you see.”
Cal moved to the bedside and took Nora’s thin, hot hand in his. He clasped it firmly, hoping to give her some of his strength. She must live. She must! He said it aloud, torment in the silver eyes that slid over her with equal parts of guilt and hunger. She was part of him. Why hadn’t he realized it before, when there was still time to tell her? If she died, her last memory of him would be of his harsh voice telling her that he was too ashamed of her to introduce her to his family, that their marriage had been a mistake. Now he had to bear the brunt of his own cruelty and watch her suffer. He had failed her, in every way.
ALL THAT LONG NIGHT, he sat by the bedside, with the doctor across the bed from him. They cooled her with wet cloths, changed the linen, changed her gown, while she shivered and wept and rambled incoherently.
Melly and Helen peeked in frequently, having for-gone sleep for so long that they were accustomed to catnaps. Chester went alone to supervise the work on the ranch the next morning, because Cal had no intention of leaving his wife.
The doctor brought him back a cup of coffee soon after daylight.
“When will we know?” he asked the older man.
“I am not God,” the doctor replied frankly.
Cal worried his hair while he stared at the slight, racked figure in the bed. “I tried to be,” he said in anguish. “She was so haughty, at first. Laughing at me and my men, teasing me, looking down her pretty nose at me because of the way I dressed, the work I did.” He grimaced. “In my arrogance, I thought to pay her back for all those condescending acts—even bringing her here, where she had to do physical labor for the first time in her pampered life.” He ran a hand over his pale face. “I never really thought it would harm her. My own mother is robust. Even when she had modern conveniences, she still preferred the old-fashioned way of doing things. She never had servants, except to help with the heavy lifting.” His broad shoulders rose and fell helplessly. “I forgot that Nora had never had to perform the slightest task at home. God forgive me, it never even occurred to me that she might put the child at risk with such ordinary chores.” He sipped coffee quietly. “She didn’t tell me about the fever,” he added dully.
The doctor sat back in his chair and looked at his patient. “She is a remarkable woman,” he said, his voice very solemn. “She came to see me just a few days ago, and spent ten minutes describing to me the proper way to iron a shirt without scorching it.” He chuckled, and Cal actually winced. “She was very proud of the accomplishment. She said nothing about doing any lifting, about any strain or discomfort. It didn’t occur to me that she was keeping her fragility a secret from all the people around her.”
“I thought I knew her,” Cal said heavily. “She’s a complex woman. And I haven’t been the ideal husband.”
“Marriage is a matter of compromises,” the doctor advised, smiling faintly. “My wife and I have been married for thirty-six years, and we have never had a serious disagreement.”
“You are a fortunate man,” Cal said.
The doctor nodded. “My wife is something of a diplomat,” he chuckled.
“Mine has an unexpected temper,” the younger man mused, looking at her with eyes that showed their wounding. “All the while she was trying to learn to be a frontier wife, she never backed away from a fight. I had no real desire to marry,” he confessed, “but once the deed was done, she seemed to…fit into my life. I’m lonely without her now.”
The admission was full of wonder. The doctor’s lips pursed and he looked away from the thoughtful, introspective look on the younger man’s lean face. “You might consider telling her so, when she is recovered.”
Cal’s eyes, unguarded, met the doctor’s. “Will she…recover?”
“We will know soon.”
Soon. The thought sustained him through the afternoon and into the night. Time seemed to run together. He was aware of eating, of comforting voices around him while he held Nora’s thin hand and worried himself sick over her condition. She tossed and turned, sweated and cried out, while the fever racked a body that had never seemed so brittle and delicate.
The doctor went out with the others to eat, leaving Cal briefly alone with Nora in the silent, cool bedroom. He had lit a fire in the fireplace to take some of the nip out of the December air, so that she wouldn’t get chilled again.
She hadn’t told him about the fever. He should have realized sooner that she was a woman who kept secrets, even when telling them would have been to her advantage. He should have realized it when he learned about the baby. Then he could have spared her the rigors of a life to which she was unsuited. He could have spared her…this. Perhaps then the baby might have survived.
The baby. There would be no child now, and that would hurt her most of all if—when, he corrected forcefully—she recovered. He thought about the grief it would bring her and he groaned. He looked at her slender body, lying so still now in the bed, and the pressure of seeing her near death for such a long time finally broke his strong spirit. He felt the heat and wetness in his eyes and, for an instant, gave in to it. He laid his cheek gently against her soft breast, over the damp cloth of her gown, and gave way to the pain at last.
NORA HEARD A DEEP, HARSH SOUND. Her body ached, sore, as if it had been beaten. There was a pressure on her chest, a wetness that was warm, not like the chilled wetness elsewhere. Her blue eyes opened and she looked at the ceiling. It was dark just near the fireplace where smut had stained the thin white boards.
Her eyes lowered to a dark head lying on her chest. She frowned. Cal? Why was he here? Why, this wasn’t her cabin. This was the big house, and she was soaked. Then she realized, all at once, what had happened. She remembered a terrible argument, hurtful words. She remembered feeling ill and then the fever…the fever…
Her dry lips parted and she pushed at the head on her breasts. “My baby,” she managed in a strained, hoarse, unfamiliar voice.
Cal stiffened. His head came up and his pale eyes glittered wildly for a moment. “Nora?”
She pushed at his shoulders. Her memory was coming back now in full force. She remembered every single, terrible detail of their last meeting, including the things he had said to her, the accusations he had made.
The weakness left by her ordeal made her misery even worse. Her arm went across her eyes to hide them. “Oh, why am I still alive?” she whispered brokenly. “Why didn’t I die!”
He was shattered when the words reached him. “Nora, please,” he said hesitantly.
“I’ve lost my baby, haven’t I?” she whispered, and then waited, stiffly, dreading the answer, although she knew it. She knew, deep in her heart, that she was as empty as her life would be from now on.
“Yes,” Cal said reluctantly.
The tears washed past her closed eyelids in a veritable flood. The sobs were silent at first, and more painful to Cal because of their silence.
He touched her coarse hair tenderly, but she jerked her head away, as if she found his nearness actually distasteful.
With a long sigh, he unfolded his length and stood up, lost. She wouldn’t even look at him. He felt a sense of loss more sweeping than anything he had ever known. His pale eyes glittered over her frail body with painful wonder. How incredible that he hadn’t known until now that he was in love with her.
While he was still absorbing the shock, the door opened and the doctor came in. He saw Nora’s eyes open to seek the identity of the newcomer, and his whole face brightened.
“You’ve come through it!” he said with delight. He had had little part in her recovery—it had been more a matter of keeping the fever at bay and keeping her quiet—but he felt satisfaction just the same. “Thank God.”
“I have lost my child,” she whispered piteously, and began to weep.
The doctor grimaced. He glanced at Cal, whose tormented face told its own story. “Go and have something to eat, my boy,” he said gently. “She needs a sedative and plenty of rest now. She will recover.”
Recover and leave him, Cal was thinking as he gave her one last longing glance, which she refused to return or even acknowledge. She would go home now for certain. He doubted if any confessions of love or promises of happier times would console her. She would blame him for it all, for the loss of her child, for the bout of fever, for so much…. And she would be right to blame him. It was his fault.
He went into the hall and pulled the door closed behind him. Helen came out to join him. She was asking something about food, if he wanted to eat. He walked past her without really hearing her. Nora was alive. She would live. He had to be content with that. He kept walking, a man in a nightmare, oblivious to the whole world.
Helen, fearing the worst, quickly opened the door and walked in.
“Has she died…?” she asked, because that was how Cal had looked; like a man who had lost everything.
But Nora was awake and aware. She looked at her aunt and managed a weak smile. “I am alive,” she whispered huskily. “Just.”
“And she will be very well in no time at all,” the doctor assured them. He held a glass of water in which a sedative had been dissolved and coaxed it past Nora’s dry lips.
“Oh, thank God,” Helen whispered fervently, coming to the bedside. “When I saw Cal’s face, I thought—” She bit down on the words when she saw the closed look they prompted. “I’m so glad that you have recovered. We have all watched and waited together.”
“When did he return?” Nora asked.
Helen knew who was being discussed. “Last evening,” she said. “He sat beside you all the long night, and all of today. He was distraught….”
“Has any reply come from the cable you sent to my parents?” Nora asked.
Helen flushed. “Oh, Nora, I am sorry,” she whispered. “I meant only to show Cal that you need not stay here if you only approached your parents. I meant well.”
“Of course you did,” Nora said wearily. “You did cable them, however, didn’t you?”
Helen winced. “Yes.”
“And there was a reply?”
She hesitated. One had come, but she hadn’t opened it. She didn’t want to give it to the girl now, in case it served to worsen her drooping spirits.
“Please read it,” Nora said gently, although she knew what it would contain. She knew her father very well.
She couldn’t know how she looked to the two people at her bedside, pale and delicate and drained almost of life, but still brimming with spirit and inner strength despite it.
Helen wondered if Nora even realized what a change she had made, from the rather introverted would-be adventuress who had first come to Tyler Junction in August to this strong, fearless woman who no longer backed away from unpleasantness.
The doctor nodded, and Helen went to fetch the telegram.
Nora took it in unsteady hands, propped against the white linen of the pillowcases as she struggled with the yellow paper.
When she finally had it open, she knew that she had been wise not to get her hopes too high. The telegram was brutal. “We have no daughter,” it read. It was signed with her father’s initials.
Nora let it fall from her fingers with a long, weary sigh, like a dead leaf from a winter limb. She was truly alone now, although it was no less than she had expected. Had her aunt not interfered, she would never have lowered her pride so much as to beg forgiveness of her father. It was he who should have asked her pardon, not the reverse.
She sighed heavily. She would live. But her life would never be the same.