Into the Wilderness
Page 261

"It's six weeks too early," Kitty said. She pressed her hands into her belly as if to quiet the child inside. "It can't be, yet."
Curiosity let out a high, quivering sigh. "I feared as much."
Axel stood up so quickly that his stool fell over. "Should I go after Falling—Day?"
Without looking away from Kitty, Curiosity said: "She's got enough to handle with the children. I'll need my Daisy, if you'll be so kind. Martha and me can manage in the meantime. Elizabeth, you let Nathaniel take you home. There's more work here tonight, but not for you."
"No!" Kitty's puzzled expression was replaced instantly by a fearful one. "Please, Elizabeth. Please stay."
Nathaniel at her elbow, his fingers pressing. She started to agree, and the pressure increased; she turned, and was met with the anger in his face.
"Let me talk to you outside."
"But—”
“Outside," he insisted, pulling her along. Elizabeth caught Curiosity's resigned expression, and Martha's startled one. She let him direct her out the door, and then stood while he turned on her, his fury pushing him to a state she had never seen before.
"I won't let you do it!" he said. "Curiosity and Martha will look after her. I'm taking you home."
"Nathaniel—" She raised her hands, helplessly, and he came up close enough so that she could see the blood caked in his hair.
"No."
"She needs me, Nathaniel. Look what she has just been through—"
He laughed, a harsh sound with nothing lighthearted in it. "And what have you been through? What have you lost tonight?"
"I have not lost my husband, or my daughter, or my unborn child."
"You lost your brother!"
"My brother was lost to me long before this night," she spat back, and then pressed a hand to her mouth. When she was sure of her voice again, she said: "I have my family, but she has lost the father of her child. And she may well lose the child, too."
His face contorted then, and he put his arms around her and pulled her to his chest, his hands cradling her head. His trembling told her what his words had not.
"I am perfectly fine," she said softly. "Nathaniel. I am in no danger at all. Here, feel." She took his hand and pressed it to her belly. "This child announces its health very clearly. Do you feel?"
The column of muscles in his throat rippled as he swallowed. He was calmer, but still there was a fine, humming tension in him. "You'll come away if it's too much?"
"Instantly."
"You'll let Axel or one of the men see you home if you're ready before I come to fetch you?"
"Of course. I will not go anywhere alone. Not until—" She thought of Billy Kirby, and saw by the new flash of anger in his eyes that Nathaniel's thoughts had taken him in the same direction. "Not until you tell me it is safe to do so."
Another hesitation, and he looked off to the horizon where the dawn was showing in its first pale streaks. "I can't stay, Boots."
"Go on ahead home, then," she said. "Be there when Hannah wakes."
"You don't understand."
"I understand," she corrected him. "You'd rather face an army than woman in childbirth."
He glanced up in surprise. "Did Falling—Day say something to you?"
"No." Elizabeth smoothed a hand over his cheek. "She said nothing at all. But I know that you've been through this before, and that the outcome has never been easy or completely joyful. So I am not surprised that you don't want to be here."
"You're too smart by half," he said, wearily. "Maybe there's some flaw in your logic, Boots, but I'm too tired to see it."
"I must stay, if she wants me. Will you go now, and let me do what I must do?"
He pulled her face to his and kissed her, briefly. "All right, then. But I don't like it much."
Neither do I, Elizabeth whispered to herself as she went back into the cabin alone. Neither do I.
Chapter 57
A cold rain began at dawn, beating down on Paradise without pause. While Kitty labored, the wind trembled and whispered in the eaves with a voice so human that gooseflesh rose on Elizabeth's nape; at times only the greatest feat of self—discipline kept her hands from shaking as she wiped Kitty's brow. She said very little through the long hours, content to let Curiosity's easy good humor carry the burden. When her thoughts drifted toward her brother, she reined them in sharply. There would be time for such things later, she told herself firmly, trying very hard not to let his face take Kitty's place on the pillow.
Through the morning people came and went with covered dishes, special teas, offers of help. Bleary—eyed and unshaven, Mr. Witherspoon showed up at the door to be comforted by Curiosity and sent home to his bed. At midday when it seemed that it would be a good while before the child could be coaxed into the world, Curiosity sent Elizabeth to rest. She obeyed without protest. Curling into Jemima's narrow bed next to the hearth in the other room, she fell into a sleep so bottomless that when she did wake she had no sense of where she might be, or why, or even what woke her.
Gradually her mind presented her with simple facts which were, at first, impossible to fit into a rational whole. Her brother was dead; her school was gone. There was a heaviness to these truths that was almost tangible, the weight of sorrow still to be explored. Just as Elizabeth realized that what she was hearing was not a storm, but the cry of a newborn, Daisy came through the room, buttoning her cloak.