DeliveredIntoHisHands (16 page)

Switching his gaze to the barbican where
the dark silhouettes of two bodies swayed in the brisk wind from the last
autumn storm, he pursed his lips. There swung two more reasons the inhabitants
of Blackthorn so despised him. The men had been caught spying—one having been
discovered rifling through Garrick’s desk.

He heard Antonia groan and turned his head
to look at her. She had not regained consciousness since the cabin. Now and
again she would groan as though caught in terrible agony but her eyelids never
flickered. She lay as still as death, as pale as the sheets upon which she reclined.
The transfusions the healer had given her hadn’t added one single flush of
color to her cheeks. The only color she had was from the dark shadows under her
eyes.

“She’s gonna be fine,” Marc stated. “You
have to believe that.”

“Aye,” Garrick said and returned to staring
out the window. “I’d like to be alone with her if you don’t mind.”

“Sure,” Marc agreed. He glanced at the
healer who nodded. They left the room together.

For a long time Garrick stood where he
was—rigid and tense, turned in on himself—then his shoulders slumped. He hung
his head. He’d come to a decision he wished he didn’t have to make but if he
was to ever know peace again, he had no choice in the matter.

Leaving the window, he walked over to his
wife’s bed. She looked so small, so lost, so utterly defenseless. He might as
well have been staring at her in her coffin for her chest barely rose and fell
with each breath. He kept his hands in his pockets to avoid the temptation of
touching her. He was afraid if he did, he’d change his mind.

“I loved you more than anything,” he said
quietly. “But that wasn’t enough for you, wench. You would have given your life
for him and you almost did. I can’t forgive that.”

He allowed his gaze to roam over her face
one last time then he left her.

Thyme Belvoir screamed as loudly as she
could but it didn’t help. Nothing did. The ungodly pain that was gripping her
with fiery talons was tearing her apart. She dug her heels into the mattress
and screamed again yet still the pain went on and on and on.

“This is why I never want to have
children,” Ashlyn said. Her young face was pale as she stared at the servant
straining to give birth.

“They say you forget the pain as soon as
the baby is born,” Antonia told her. She blew a strand of loose hair from her
sweaty face then ran her arm over the moisture gathered on her forehead.

“I seriously doubt I’d forget nineteen
hours of excruciating agony,” Ashlyn stated.

Antonia reached for the wet cloth in a bowl
beside the bed and wrung it out. She leaned over the moaning woman to blot the
cold cloth over Thyme’s face, neck and upper chest.

It was sweltering inside the little
thatched hut, the Sun beating down from a cloudless July inferno. It had been
three months without rain and two months of unrelenting, crop destroying heat.
Rivers were way down. Creeks were drying up. Dust flew through the air on hot
gusts of winds.

And the war between Volakis and Modartha
continued. The death toll had risen to over seventy thousand with no end in sight.
Cities were being destroyed and the countryside ravaged by both sides. The
rebel forces were taking a beating but were hanging on if only by a thread.

Garrick had been gone for months without a
word. What news she had of him came from her father who took great delight in
telling her how much the people of Volakis despised the tyrant to whom she was
Joined.

“There is a million credit bounty on his
head,” the baron said. “Sooner or later, someone will collect on it.”

She prayed not. Despite him having left
her, Antonia loved Garrick just as deeply as she had before that night in the
cabin when his love for her had died.

A hideous scream shook Antonia out of her
reverie. With the healer seeing to injured fighters at the keep and the midwife
two boroughs away delivering a set of triplets, there had been no one willing
to go outside the walls of Castle Blackthorn to help a rebel soldier’s wife
when she went into labor. Antonia had circumvented her parents to take on the
chore. She knew the Modarthans would not harm the wife of the Crimson Lord and
the rebels would not harm any of the Blackthorn family because of their close
connection to Gen. Clay. She was as safe a half mile from the keep as she was
within its walls.

“I can’t stand much more of this,” Ashlyn said,
putting her hands over her ears. Both Antonia and the pregnant mother gave the
young girl incredulous looks.

“I think it’s coming, milady!” Thyme
stated.

“Goddess I hope so,” Ashlyn mumbled.

Antonia had assisted at three other
births—all at the keep—so she had a good working knowledge of what was required
of her. When Thyme held out her hand to be helped to a sitting position, she
took it and supported the woman as she got out of bed. Thyme hiked up her
soiled nightgown, squatted beside the bed, grabbed the edge of the mattress in
one fist, slapped her palm to her thigh and started to push, her face screwed
into a mask of pain.

“Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh!” Ashlyn whimpered. She
backed away, turned around three times as though looking for a way out of the
situation she’d been thrust into then squeezed her eyes shut.

Thyme held her hand up to Antonia.
“Milady?”

Antonia took the woman’s hand and tried not
to wince as Thyme gripped it hard. “Ash, what are you doing?” she queried.

“I can’t watch this,” Ashlyn said.

“You wanted to come along,” Antonia
reminded her sister. “Make yourself useful and hand me the towels.”

Wedging an eye open as Thyme began to pant
and heave, keen and heave, grunt and heave, the young girl reached out with
trembling hands to pluck the towels from the table. She held her breath as she
brought them over to her sister.

“For the love of the goddess, Ash,” Antonia
scolded. She took one of the towels in her hands and held it at the ready.
“This is a natural process most every woman will go through in her life. It is
a beautiful thing.”

Ashlyn violently shook her head. “Not me.
No way. I’m not ever going to get pregnant.”

“That’s what I said,” Thyme said with a
grunt. She darted a glance at Antonia. “The getting’s good. It’s the getting
out that’s the problem.”

Antonia smiled but the smile dissolved
quickly as Thyme gave one more mighty push and shouted, “Here it comes!”

Quickly putting her hands between the
woman’s legs, she caught the babe as it slipped from Thyme’s body and into
Antonia’s hands.

“It’s a boy,” Antonia said with a grin.

“Praise be to the goddess!” Thyme
exclaimed. After five girls she’d finally given her husband Zacharias the boy
he had longed for.

“Get the knife, Ash,” Antonia told her
sister but Ashlyn didn’t move. The young girl was staring wide-eyed at the
babe. Antonia knew it was the sight of the cord dangling from Thyme’s body to
the baby as well as the waxy white substance that coated the lad that had
turned Ashlyn to stone.

“Never you mind, milady,” Thyme said,
holding out her arms. “Just give ’im here.”

Antonia eased the babe into his mother’s
care then got up to get the knife to cut the cord. She thrust it first into a
pot of simmering water then poured alcohol over it, wondering why she suddenly
had a strange, unwelcome feeling niggling in the back of her mind. Just as she
hunkered down beside Thyme once more, the afterbirth slipped out with a wet,
sloshy plop and pooled at her feet.

Ashlyn made a strange gurgling sound then
her eyes rolled back in her head and she went down like a stone, out cold.

“Oh for the love of—” Antonia began.

“Milady, he ain’t breathing,” Thyme
interrupted her.

That was what was bothering her, Antonia
thought as she knelt there with the knife in her hand. The babe had yet to make
a sound and one quick look at him revealed he was turning blue.

With a calmness she didn’t feel, she
quickly cut the cord then reached for the babe. “Give him to me, Thyme,” she
ordered.

The woman handed him over without
hesitation. Antonia knew she thought her child was stillborn but Antonia
thought all he needed was to have his airway cleared. That’s what she did,
quickly using the little suction device Healer Frye had given her should it be
necessary. Once the babe’s nose and mouth were clear, Antonia turned him to his
side and gently patted his back.

“Milady…?” Thyme questioned, her voice
breaking.

Bending over the babe, Antonia put her
mouth over his little nose and lips and blew into him a gentle breath. She gave
him five light puffs of air and was beginning to lose heart. At that moment
Baby Boy Belvoir let out an ear-piercing shriek that rivaled those his mother
had made while she’d been in labor with him. His little trilling sound as his
chin quivered was the most glorious thing either woman had ever heard.

“You saved his life, milady,” Thyme said.
“You saved my boy.”

Antonia clamped off the cord, wrapped the
baby in another clean towel then laid him gently on the bed. He was squalling
to high heaven with his little red face scrunched up fiercely. She helped his
mother to stand then into the bed, tucking more clean towels between Thyme’s
legs.

“You saved my boy,” Thyme said, propping up
against the headboard. “You saved him, milady. Thanks be to the goddess, you
saved him.”

Antonia picked the child up and put him in
his mother’s arms. “I bless Her for giving me the knowledge to be of help.” She
smiled at the infant. “He’s a handsome lad,” she said.

“He is, ain’t he?” Thyme asked with pride.
She kissed his little forehead, tears gathering in her eyes. “My husband is gonna
be so proud.”

“What are you going to call him?” Antonia
asked.

Thyme looked up at her. “With all due
respect, milady, I’d like to name him Antony,” she said. “After you.”

“I would be honored,” Antonia said, emotion
clogging her throat.

“Then Antony it is,” his mother stated.
“And you’re a fine little Ant, aren’t you, son?”

After making sure Thyme had everything she
needed. Antonia went over to her sister and squatted down. Gently she slapped
Ashlyn’s cheeks until the girl’s eyelids fluttered open.

“Is it all over with?” Ashlyn asked.

“Aye, and time for you to go home. I don’t
think you want to be here when I clean up the afterbirth and—”

“No!” Ashlyn said. She scrambled to her
feet, being careful not to look at what was on the floor beside the bed.

“Have one of the guards take you back to
the keep and ask the other to wait for me,” Antonia said. “Have him draw a
bucket of water from the well and bring it in.”

Ashlyn didn’t reply. She couldn’t get out
of the cabin fast enough.

“Poor little thing,” Thyme said as she
fumbled with the bodice of her gown. “I think we scared her half to death.” She
bared her breast to the eager lips of her son who latched on greedily.

“You didn’t have to ask him twice,” Antonia
said with a grin.

“Like father, like son,” Thyme replied.
“Some men just never get over their need to be put to a woman’s breast.”

Antonia felt heat invade her face. Not
because Thyme’s coarse suggestion embarrassed but because Garrick had taken
great delight in feeding upon her when they made love. She missed his touch.

She missed him.

“I’m sorry, milady,” Thyme said softly.

“For what?”

“For reminding you of your man,” the
servant said. “I didn’t mean to bring up bad memories.”

“They aren’t bad memories, Thyme,” Antonia
told her. “They are sad memories.”

An hour later one of the women from a
nearby cabin came over to see the baby. She assured Antonia she would stay with
Thyme until the servant’s sister-in-law came home from work at the keep. It was
well after sunset and Antonia was grateful for the woman’s help. She didn’t
like to be out too late.

On the walk back to Castle Blackthorn,
Antonia had a feeling she was being watched. A niggle of concern undulated down
her spine but the guard with her was heavily armed. She cast surreptitious
glances around her and even stopped at one point to look deliberately behind
them.

“Nothing for you to worry about,” the guard
said. He was Modarthan—one of the men assigned by the Crimson Lord himself to
watch over her.

“Someone is trailing us,” she said.

“Aye, milady, he is, but he means you no
harm,” the guard replied.
He’s just making sure you’re safe.”

She looked up at him. “My husband?” she
asked, holding her breath for the answer.

“Best we get on to the keep, milady,” the
man said.

“Answer me, please,” she said. She reached
out to put her hand on the guard’s arm and could have sworn she heard a low
growl from the bushes.

“Milady, please don’t do that,” the guard
advised. “I like my head where it is.”

“Mayhap I should reserve my touches for the
man who wants them,” she said with a sniff.

When there another low, menacing growl from
the bushes, she tossed her head and started walking again.

“The goddess save me from pigheaded,
stubborn men,” she mumbled.

* * * * *

“Did we enjoy our little trip to
Blackthorn?” Marc asked Garrick when his friend flung the tent flap aside and
stomped in.

“I wasn’t aware you accompanied me,”
Garrick snarled.

“Nay, but I had men on you the entire
time,” Marc said. “There is a bounty on you, you know.”

“Fuck the bounty,” Garrick said. “And fuck
the man who put it on me.”

Marc watched as Garrick stripped off his
shirt and threw it aside.

“By the goddess it is an inferno in here!”
he complained.

“Mayhap if you turned the power grid back
on…” Marc began and when Garrick whipped around to send him a narrow-eyed
glare, he held up his hands. “Just a thought.”

“I am sick of this fucking war,” Garrick
said. “I am past ready to leave this goddess forsaken backworld and go home!”

“What of your lady-wife?” Marc inquired,
lacing his fingers together and putting them behind his head as he tipped his
chair back. “Will you be taking her with us when we return to Modartha?”

“I haven’t decided yet,” Garrick grumbled.

“Aye, hell, you have,” Marc accused. “Who
are you trying to convince? Me or yourself?”

“Fuck you,” Garrick snapped.

“Not me, Rick. You need your wife for that
and the longer you’re away from her, the farther away you are pushing her. You
push her far enough, she might land in some other man’s arms.”

“Arms that would wind up rammed down his
throat and up his ass,” Garrick told him.

“Charming image,” Marc said. “That’s one
way to shake your own hands I guess.”

Garrick sat down on his bunk and peeled off
his boots. He flung them across the tent to land atop his shirt then flopped
down on the thin mattress.

“Did you see her while you were over
Blackthorn way?” Marc asked. He didn’t think his friend was going to answer but
then Garrick sighed heavily and ran a hand over his stubbled face.

“Aye, I saw her. She was coming back from
helping deliver a baby.”

“She needs one of her own,” Marc suggested.

“Leave off, Zoltán,” Garrick warned with a
fierce scowl.

Marc grunted. “Oh for fuck’s sake, Rick.
You love the woman. Why the hell aren’t you with her?”

“Because I am running a goddess-be-damned
war, you fucking moron!” Garrick shouted at him.

“Then bring her here.”

“In the fucking field?” Garrick said,
propping up on his elbows. “In the middle of the fighting? Have you lost what
little mind you had?”

“Neither our men or the rebels would let
her come to harm,” Marc said.