A Wild Yearning, page 30
She hadn't realized he was no longer touching her until she opened her eyes. He looked down at her, a grin curling his mouth. "Our suspicions were correct, Mrs. Hooker. You're pregnant." He held out his hand, helping her to sit up. "The water's boiling. Shall we have that tea now? Do you have any sassafras? It's good for morning sickness."
She nodded mutely. Now that it was over she was horribly embarrassed. No man except her husband had ever touched her so intimately. And to think she had actually enjoyed the feel of his hands on her body. For one horrifying moment she thought she might have fallen in love with the doctor. But when he turned around from filling the teapot with hot water and she looked at his handsome features, she knew she was being ridiculous. She liked the man because he was good and kind, but looking at him did not make her heart leap as it did when she gazed into Caleb's dear face.
She almost giggled out loud. No doubt it was all the fault of her condition. It put fanciful ideas into her head.
The doctor poured from the pot into two of her pretty blue and white porcelain cups, then cut a piece off the sugar loaf and dropped it into her tea. She had just lifted the cup to her lips when the door was flung open and Caleb burst through. He was so out of breath he had to gulp in air before he could speak.
"Sara Kemble... she said she saw the doctor—Lizzie, what's happened? Did you faint again?"
Elizabeth startled both Caleb and herself with her exuberant, girlish laughter. "Oh, Caleb, silly. I didn't faint. I feel wonderful. I'm going to have a baby!"
All the color left Caleb's face. He looked dumbstruck.
"You're going to be a daddy, Reverend," Ty drawled.
Caleb pushed a shaking hand through his pale brown hair. "Oh, my God..." Elizabeth had stood up when he first barged into the kitchen. Now he rushed to her side, pulling the chair out and hustling her into it. "Sit down, for heaven's sake, darling. Should she be standing up like that?" he asked Ty. "Shouldn't she be in bed? Criminy's sake, Ty, don't just stand there. Do something!"
Ty's eyes, brimming with laughter, met Elizabeth's and they shared a conspiratorial smile. "Come fetch me when the pains start and then I'll do something." Laughing, Ty picked up his physician's bag. "In the meantime, if you all will excu—"
Caleb seized Ty's arm. "You're not leaving?"
Ty rolled his eyes. "I can hardly hang around here for the next six months until she starts laboring."
"But—"
"Caleb, you're being silly," Elizabeth scolded.
"Remember the sassafras tea, Mrs. Hooker," Ty said, easing past the young reverend, making for the door, and giving her a wink. "It's not only good for morning sickness, it also soothes the nerves of expectant fathers."
Caleb came out with him onto the front stoop.
"I can see you were trying to humor Elizabeth," he said. "And I appreciate that, Ty. But you can be straight with me."
"Jesus, Caleb. You're not the first man to father a child. And Elizabeth won't be the first woman to give birth. She's stronger and healthier than she looks. She'll be fine if you take it easy. Both of you." Ty gathered up his pacer's reins, then turned back to impart one last piece of advice. "Oh, by the way, you can enjoy marital relations up until the last month or so."
Caleb's head snapped up and his face darkened. "Why did you tell me that? Did Elizabeth ask about it?"
Ty shrugged. "No, she didn't. The way you've been acting I just thought you'd want to know she won't break, and you won't hurt the baby, if you and she get to feeling amorous from time to time during the next few months."
"Oh... uh, Ty?"
Ty waited patiently while Caleb rubbed the back of his neck, ran his tongue over his overlapping teeth, and studied the toes of his shoes. "Ty, in your experience, do most wives... get to feeling amorous very often?"
Ty's brows went up. "I haven't exactly had a whole hell of a lot of experience with wives."
"But you've had your share of women?"
Ty didn't bother to deny it.
Caleb laughed shakily. "Well, a divinity student hardly has the opportunity to..." He sucked in a deep breath and met Ty's eyes, finishing with a rush. "Elizabeth and I were both virgins when we married and I want to know if you think most women enjoy lovemaking."
"Yes, I think they do."
Caleb looked away. He shuddered once, hard. "It's me then. God, she must hate me."
Ty looped the pacer's reins back around the post. He studied his friend's face, noting the deep bite of a terrible sorrow. "You're imagining things. Elizabeth loves you, Caleb. A blind man could see that."
"Maybe so." Caleb's throat spasmed and he had to blink rapidly several times before he could go on, while Ty politely looked away. "But how can a woman love a man when she hates to be touched by him? I make love to her as little as possible and I do it as fast as I can, to spare her the pain, but it disgusts her, I can tell. I disgust her."
Ty's head snapped around. "Pain? She still feels actual pain? Are you sure?"
Caleb nodded, rubbing a hand over his face. "Y-yes. Every time. She's so darn small. I make her cry. I try and get it over with quickly, to spare her, but it still hurts her."
Ty heaved a huge sigh. He couldn't believe he was actually going to do this. He nodded toward the parsonage's front door. "Do you have any brandy back in there?"
"Well, yes, as a matter of—"
"Fetch it then. You and I are going to have ourselves a little talk, Caleb my friend, and I think we're both going to need to be a little drunk to get through it."
Delia worked a smidgen of salt pork onto the end of the hook, then wedged the alder pole into Tildy's dimpled fists. "There you go, puss," she said, rubbing the little girl's blond curls. She dropped the line with its bait into the river. "See if you can catch a fish now."
Tildy wriggled her bottom along the bank, getting closer to the water. Her mouth was screwed up in fierce concentration, for she expected to feel a nibble at any moment. She picked up the cornhusk doll that lay across her lap and handed it back to Delia. "Fix a pole for Gretchen too."
"Don't be silly," Meg Parkes proclaimed from her perch on a nearby rock. "Gretchen's only a doll. She can't fish."
"She can so!"
"Hush now, girls." Delia selected a tiny twig and began to tie a piece of twine around the end of it. "I see no reason why Gretchen can't fish."
Meg stuck out her tongue at her little sister. Tildy reciprocated, showing a mouth stained purple from the blackberries they'd been snacking on while at the river. The smell of the ripe fruit filled the air, cloyingly sweet.
"If you girls are good"—Delia equipped Gretchen with her own tiny pole and sat her on a doll-sized rock near the water's edge—"I'll show you later how to catch a fish with your bare hands."
Meg sniffed dubiously.
Delia laughed. "You'll see. An old Indian I met taught me how to do it."
As the hot noon sun climbed above the treetops, mist began to rise from the high green grass along the riverbank, still wet from yesterday's rain. Nat had taken a cartload of freshly threshed grain to the gristmill and Delia felt guilty, as if she were sneaking out behind his back, like a child playing hooky from school. There were dozens of chores waiting for her back at the farm, but when Meg had suggested going fishing Delia had immediately leaped at the chance to spend more time alone with Nat's girls. Since the day the hen had gotten stuck in the chimney, Delia had sensed a weakening of Meg's hostility toward her and she intended to press her advantage.
The tip of Tildy's pole dipped sharply toward the water. "I got one!" she screeched. "Oh, Delia, Delia, I got a fish!"
Tildy stood up and tottered two steps into the water. Meg hurried to her side, grabbing her around the waist. "Hang on tight, Tildy, and I'll pull it in," she said, grasping the end of the wriggling pole to help.
Tildy jerked away from her sister. "By myself! I can do it by myself!"
As Delia tried to intervene, her skirt brushed against the cornhusk doll, knocking it off its perch and into the water. Within seconds, it had floated out into the middle of the river where the current grabbed it.
Tildy was the first to notice and she screamed. "Gretchen fell in the river! Gretchen's drowning!"
Delia shoved the little girl into her big sister's arms before Tildy could think of going after the doll herself. Then, pulling up her skirts, she waded in.
Away from the bank, the current was much stronger than Delia had realized. The water was also very cold and soon her legs were numb. Luckily, the doll snagged on a rock or Delia would never have been able to catch up with it. But the river seemed suddenly much deeper; it had risen above her waist. She took another step—it rose to her breasts.
The rushing water was a roar in her ears, but even so Delia could hear the echo of Tildy's hysterical screams. The rapids tugged at her skirts as she leaned precariously over, stretching her fingertips toward the doll. She was inches shy.
She took one more step... and the water closed over her head.
Given his head to find his own way home, Ty's horse walked slowly between the cart ruts along the river. The hot sun beat down on them mercilessly. A fish hawk circled lazily overhead and the vivid green wild rice and marsh grass waved in the sultry breeze. A pair of squirrels chased each other up a nearby tree, chattering noisily. Ty cursed them. As a result of his and Caleb's "little talk," Merrymeeting's doctor was in a foul mood.
Part of it was due, he knew, to the roiling effect of the brandy bubbling through his veins so early in the day. But a bigger part, a very big part, was filling his breeches right now with the most uncomfortable state of arousal he'd ever experienced. It was all the fault of the explicit sexual advice he had just been pouring into the Reverend Hooker's tender and eager ears. He wasn't sure what sort of effect all that randy talk had had on Caleb, but he sure as hell had managed to talk himself into one hell of an erection.
"Damn!" Ty rose up in the stirrups, seeking some relief. What you need, Savitch, you lustful old bastard, is a woman.
The warm, hard pressure in his crotch was a painful reminder that he hadn't held a woman, a real live woman, in his arms since a certain afternoon in Falmouth woods. The trouble was he didn't want just any woman.
"Delia-girl," he muttered grimly between his clenched teeth, "you'd better hope to God our paths don't cross any time soon." In the condition he was in at the moment, he'd throw her down on the ground and take her, married or not. Willing or not.
Such was Ty's self-absorbtion in his own miserable state that the screams didn't penetrate his consciousness for several seconds. He was just about to kick his horse into a canter, for the noise came from ahead of him, when a movement in the water to his left caught the corner of his eye, and he jerked his head around, hauling on the reins. A body was caught in the current, being swept out toward the bay.
Just then Meg Parkes stumbled around the bend with a screaming Tildy in her arms. She was sobbing something of which Ty heard only one word—but it was enough to freeze his heart.
Delia.
"Stay there!" he flung over his shoulder, pressing his knees hard into the pacer's sides. He urged the horse back along the bank—if he had any hope of pulling Delia from the churning rapids, he was going to have to get downriver from her. Looping the reins around the saddle pommel, he pulled off his coat, casting it aside along with his cocked hat. With his thighs, he maneuvered his horse, sending the panicked animal splashing across the marshy ground and crashing through the brush.
He was ahead of Delia now, but there wasn't much time. Kicking free of the stirrups, he jumped from the horse, landing on his moccasined-feet on the soft ground, knees bending to absorb the shock, and then he was wading fast into the river, pumping his arms hard. When the water reached his chest, he struck out swimming.
He had only one chance to snag her body as it was carried by him and he almost didn't make it. For one terrifying second, his fingers groped nothing but water before becoming entangled in her hair. Even then he almost lost her twice, as they were carried along side by side on the current, before he was able to wrap his arm around her chest and get a good grip. He was sure she was already dead. Her tiny frame was a sodden weight in his arms and her face, from the one glimpse he'd gotten of it, was blanched and lifeless.
He flung her onto the grassy bank and scrambled up after her. He pressed his fingers against the pulse point in her neck... and felt nothing.
"No!" he screamed, grabbing her shoulders and shaking her, as if he could shake the life back into her. He clutched her face, pressing his mouth onto her blue, lifeless lips. "No!" he screamed again.
It wasn't Edinburgh University that had taught Dr. Tyler Savitch how to try to revive a person who had drowned. He had seen his Indian father Assacumbuit do it once, bringing back to life a child who had fallen into the lake near their village. He did to Delia what Assacumbuit had done to the child, pumping her arms up and down in a rowing motion and squeezing her chest.
He did it over and over, unwilling to accept that he had lost her because the reality was unbearable. He had seen Abenaki shamans try to blow life back into the dead and he did that, too —pressing his mouth over hers and breathing into her, hard.
Suddenly her head lolled to the side. She coughed once and then a second time, and then water poured from her mouth and nose, and she was retching.
He held her head up so she wouldn't strangle, making it easier for her to draw air into her heaving lungs. When the choking finally stopped and her breathing slowed, he gathered her into his lap, pressing her head against his chest while he rocked her back and forth. His eyes squeezed tightly shut and he buried his face in her hair. "Ah God, Delia, Delia. You scared the living hell out of me."
"Ty?" Her fists wrapped around the wet linen of his shirt and she clung to him, rubbing her face against his chest, her breasts heaving. She felt so damn small and insubstantial in his arms. Christ, he'd come so close to losing her.
Suddenly she jerked away from him, trying to push to her feet. "Oh God, the girls, Ty! Where are the girls?"
He held her down. "They're all right."
She still hadn't quite recovered her wind and the slight struggle had her gasping again for air. "B-but, Ty..."
"They're upriver a little ways. I told them to stay put. At least Meg had enough sense to run for help rather than try to jump in after you." He ran his hands over her face, reassuring himself that she was all right. "Delia, what happened?"
She twisted her head aside and pushed against him, harder. "G-girls... have to go... They'll be... terrified."
Ty hesitated, torn between his unwillingness to leave Delia and the knowledge that he was going to have to go back for the Parkes girls, when his problem was solved. He spotted Meg running down the road above them, Tildy still in her arms.
"There they are. You stay still."
"But—"
He clutched her shoulders. "Delia, for the love of God, will you for once, just once, do what I ask?"
He reached the girls before they could start down the bank. Meg stood at the top and watched him come with huge, frightened brown eyes. "Is she... is she...?"
"She's all right," he said quickly. "What happened?" He squatted down to get a look at Tildy. The little girl had lasped into intermittent, hiccupping sobs, but beyond that she appeared to be all right.
"W-we w-were f-fishing and—" Meg's throat caught on a sob.
"Never mind," Ty said, to head off her growing hysteria. He squeezed her shoulder. "You take Tildy back to the house and put some water on the fire. I'll bring Delia along in a minute. She's all right now, but she needs to get her wind back."
Meg nodded and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. Then she turned and started obediently back down the road.
Delia tried to stand as Ty returned to her. "Don't get up," he ordered, more sharply that he'd intended. "I want you just to sit there in the hot sun a moment and recover your breath."
He sat down alongside her, letting his eyes fill with the sight of her. Her wet hair was plastered tight to her head and her tawny eyes looked huge in her white face. Her lips still had a bluish tinge and occasional tremors shook her chest. Her soaked clothes were molded to her curves. He could see the outline of her full breasts and her nipples, puckered tight from the cold water, stood out sharply beneath the thin, wet material. Christ, even half drowned she was adorable.
Their eyes met and slowly a smile spread across her face. "You saved me from drowning again, Ty. Thank you."
His mouth slanted up in answer. "Who were you trying to kiss this time, brat?"
She started to laugh, but ended up coughing. She sucked in a deep breath, then sniffed, rubbing at her nose with the back of her hand, the way Meg had done a moment before. "It was Gretchen who fell in the river. I tried to go after her."
"Gretchen?" Ty's heart skipped a beat and he whipped around, searching the white-capped water for more floating bodies, even though by now it would be far too late.
Delia reached out, clinging to his shirt again. "Don't, Ty. Gretchen's a doll." Suddenly her chest jerked and she started to cry. "Oh, poor Tildy. I've lost her doll."
"A doll! You jumped in the river to rescue a doll?" Unconsciously, his hands closed around her upper arms and he shook her. "Jesus God, Delia, you can't even swim!"
"I f-forgot."
He crushed her against him, so hard she grunted. "Godsake, Delia!"
She wriggled out of his arms. "Don't shout at me, Ty." Wincing, she pressed her palm against her midriff. "My ribs hurt. I think you bruised them."
Furious anger washed over Ty, so powerful he started to shake with it. My God, he'd almost lost her over a doll! What the hell was she thinking to go jumping in the river after a doll when she couldn't even swim!
"I ought to put bruises on your backside is what I ought to do," he said through gritted teeth.
