Twice Loved (copy2) (39 page)

“Damnit, Laura-love, don’t y’ faint on me now.”

Her eyes flew up at the half-gentle, half-harsh words, and she found Rye sending his encouragement to her once again. “I won’t. Just hurry.”

The awl pierced the first finger three times, once on each of its inner pads, before Rye gave the order, “Pour.”

The brandy ran into the holes and drizzled onto the white cloth, staining it a pale brown. Though McColl refused to help, he nevertheless stood by watching, fascinated by the process and by the endearments that passed from Rye Dalton to Laura Morgan. Behind him, a child stood in the doorway, watching too. Beside the child sat a dog, both of them so quiet nobody took notice as the tap of the hammer on the awl fell into the still room again and again, followed by the firm but quiet order, “Pour.” The man on the bed remained blessedly unconscious, the alcohol in his bloodstream serving a totally useful purpose for the first time in his life: not only did it keep him from rousing, but it made it necessary for Rye to puncture the fingers fewer times than he’d otherwise have had to.

It was with great difficulty that Laura assisted Rye. Time and again she swallowed the clot of nausea that threatened. Tears made Rye’s and Dan’s hands swim before her, and she hunched a shoulder and blotted her eyes on her sleeve, took a firmer grip on her emotions, and steeled herself to hold the next finger.

Never once did Rye falter. His movements were steady and efficient with the tools as he tapped delicately, gauging the depth of each hole with great care. Not until the last finger had been bathed with brandy did Laura look up at Rye again. She was stricken to find his face ashen as he stared down at Dan. He opened his mouth and drew in a deep draft of air, as if battling for equilibrium, and suddenly he threw down the hammer and awl and spun from the room. A moment later, the outside door slammed.

Laura’s eyes met McColl’s, and suddenly she remembered how Rye had called her Laura-love. Then she saw Josh, whose chin was quivering as tears ran down his face. She scooped him up and hugged him close, kissing his hair, and comforting, “Shh, Joshua. Papa's going to be just fine. You’ll see. There’s no need to cry. We’re going to take good care of Papa and make him teach you how to skate as soon as he’s well again.” She deposited Josh back in his own bed, then tucked him in, and whispered, “You try to sleep, darling. I ... I’ve got to go to Rye.”

She turned to grab a woolen shawl and stepped out into the howling night. Rye was sitting on the wooden step, slumped forward with his head on his crossed arms. Ship was there before him, whimpering softly, pacing back and forth and trying to nuzzle beyond his master’s arms to his face.

“Rye, you must come back inside. You don’t even have a jacket on.”

“In a minute.”

The wind lifted the fringe of Laura’s shawl and slapped it across her face while snow streaked down and bit at her exposed skin. She hunkered down beside him and put her arm across his shoulders. He was shaking uncontrollably, though she realized it was not solely from the weather.

“Shh,” she comforted as if he, too, were a child. “It’s over now, and you were magnificent.”

“Magnificent!” he flung back. “I’m shakin’ like a damn baby.”

“You have a right to shake. What you did was hardly easy. Why, not even McColl had the nerve to do it. And me—why, if you hadn’t been so sure and confident, I’d have fallen to pieces.”

He raised his head, wiping his cheeks with long palms as if exhausted. “I’ve never done anythin’ like that before in my life.”

His shudders continued beneath her arm, and she gently kissed the top of his head, tasting icy snow on his hair. “Come on now. It won’t do us any good if you catch pneumonia, too.”

With a shaky sigh he stood up, and she along with him. “Just give me a minute, Laura. I’ll be all right now. You go back in.”

She turned back toward the door, but his voice stopped her.

“Thank you for helpin’. I couldn’t’ve done it alone.”

The wind moaned through the black dome of night sky as they were both stricken with the enormity of what they’d done. There had been no second thoughts. They had not 
acted
 
so much as 
reacted
 when they saw that Dan needed them. It was like the day of Zach’s death all over again. The three of them forever caught in a tapestry, woven into it like figures unable to change the course of their intertwined lives.

Chapter 18

WHEN 
Rye 
DALTON 
stepped back inside, McColl was nowhere in sight. Laura had built up the fire and was heating water for tea. He stopped in the shadows near the door, and at the sound of his entry, Laura looked up, a teapot in her hands. During his preoccupation with Dan, Rye had scarcely noticed how Laura was dressed. But he paused now to note her wrapper of soft pink flannel, buttoned demurely from hem to high neck and belted around her middle, disguising her shape. On her feet were thick gray knit stockings. The fire danced and flickered, backlighting the outline of her hair, which was loosely braided in a single plait, with wisps flying free around her face. Their ends took on sparks of fire themselves as she stared into the shadows at Rye.

He shuddered and slipped his chilled fingers into the waist of his britches to warm them against his belly, but in that instant, while Laura poised and their eyes met, his body quivered from memory. It was the first time he’d been exposed to her, the Laura he remembered, moving about, doing familiar things, dressed in an intimate way. Almost as if she sensed his thoughts, she set the teapot on the table and turned to face the fireplace once again, the single braid swinging between her shoulder blades as she bent forward.

With a deep sigh, Rye pulled his errant thoughts back to the problem at hand; this was not the appropriate time for either memories or wishes.

He crossed the keeping room, but as he passed the alcove bed, he made out Josh, lying wide-eyed in the dimness, staring up at him. Still with his hands tucked against his belly, Rye paused, meeting the blue eyes of the child with an earnest gaze. Enough light slipped into the cavern above the bed that Rye could see fear and questions in the child’s expression. He leaned sideways from the hip, lightly running a forefinger along the edge of the patchwork quilt covering the boy. “Your pa ...” But the boy knew the truth now—there was no sense in trying to disguise it. Rye’s voice was very low yet curiously rough as he began again. “Dan is going t’ get better, I promise y’, son. Y’r mother and I’ll see to it.”

The small chin quivered and tears suddenly glimmered on Josh’s fair lashes as he tried not to cry. Then his childish voice trembled. “H ... he’s got to, ’cause he ... he promised t’ teach m ... me to skate.”

For the first time Rye, too, felt like crying. His chest went tight. His heart felt swollen. He dropped to one knee, adjusted the quilts beneath the boy’s chin, and let his hand linger just a moment on the small chest. Through the layers of bedding he could feel shaken breaths being held tenuously. A surge of love welled up in Rye as he leaned to do what he had so often dreamed of doing. He placed a gentle kiss on his son’s forehead. “It’s a promise, Joshua,” he vowed against the warm skin that smelled different from any the man had ever been near—a child’s scent, milky and mellow, and touched with the aroma of bayberry that clung to the room. “But in the meantime, it’s perfectly all right t’ cry,” Rye whispered. “It’ll make y’ feel better and help y’ get t’ sleep.” Even before Rye’s words were out, Josh’s tears spilled and his breath caught on a first sob. Realizing that Josh was chagrined at breaking down this way, Rye secretly added, “I’ve cried plenty o’ times m’self.”

“Y ... you h ... have?” Josh tugged the quilts up to dry his eyes.

“Aye. I cried when I heard m’ mother had died while I was out t’ sea. And I cried when ... ah well, there’ve been plenty o’ times. Why, I nearly cried out on the step just now, but I figured if I did, the tears’d freeze and I’d be in a fix.”

Somehow during this conversation Josh’s tears had abated. Rye touched the blond hair on his son’s forehead. “G’night now, son.”

“G’night.”

When Rye straightened and turned, he found Laura had been watching all the time. Her hands were clasped tightly together and her lower lip was caught in her teeth. She, too, appeared to be holding emotions in check, for her face reflected both tenderness and pain. Rye looked from her to the linter room doorway, from where McColl now watched them both. When Rye’s glance shifted, Laura’s did, too.

Flustered to find McColl observing something that was none of his business, Laura immediately sought to divert him. She crossed to pluck three mugs from their hooks on the wall and set them on the trestle.

At that moment Josh’s voice came from behind Rye again. “Where’s Ship?”

Rye turned. “Why, she’s right here on the rug by the door.”

“Could she come over here by me?”

Without hesitation, Rye ordered quietly, “Here, girl,” and the dog ambled across the puncheon floor with clicking toenails. “Down,” Rye ordered, and the Lab dropped to her stomach obediently.

Josh hung over the side of the bed to pet Ship’s head, then looked up appealingly at his mother. “Couldn’t she come up here with me, Mama, please?”

Rye could see the idea didn’t agree with Laura, and put in quickly, “She’s been trained that her place is beside the bed, not in it, Josh. But she’ll stay right there and keep y’ company.”

“Will she be there when I wake up?”

Rye’s blue eyes met Laura’s brown ones across the firelit room. Then he turned back to his son. “Aye, she’ll be there.” Again they both grew uncomfortably aware of the apothecary observing their every exchange. But then McColl cleared his throat and announced, “I’ll need some boiling water.” Laura filled the teapot, then handed the simmering teakettle to him. “If you need more, I’ll fill it again.”

The apothecary answered with little more than a grunt before disappearing into the bedroom again. Laura and Rye sat down across from each other at the table, and she poured tea into two mugs. The fire snapped, and the wind howled around the windows, and from inside the bedroom came the sound of water being poured.

Rye had raised his cup to his mouth for the second time before some sixth sense warned him. He lurched to his feet, sending the bench scraping backward as he strode purposefully to the bedroom doorway, where he stopped short, his fists clenched.

“What the goddamn hell do y’ think y’re doin’, McColl!” His rage seemed to rival the force of the blizzard outside. Laura was beside Rye in a flash. She gaped in horror at the steam-heated glass cup McColl had placed upside down on Dan’s exposed chest.

“We must restore his circulation ...” McColl was lifting a second dome-shaped glass from the interior of the hot teakettle with metal tongs when both tongs and cup were suddenly smacked out of his hand and went flying across the room.

“Get the hell out, McColl!” Dalton roared, “and take y’r goddamn cuppin’ with y’!”

Immediately, Rye spun toward the bed, searching for something to slip beneath the rounded lip of the cup to break the suction. He caught sight of the awl and quickly inserted its point beneath the thick-domed piece that was about the size of half a walnut shell, and handleless. Grabbing up the brandy-stained rag, he took the cup from Dan’s skin, and as he did a little puff of steam came from beneath it. At the sight of the burn it had caused, Rye cursed, “Goddamn y’, fool!”

“Fool!” The outraged apothecary glared at Dalton. 
“You 
call 
me
 the fool?” Cupping was as common a practice as pill-rolling, for the vacuum created beneath the steam-heated cups was believed to have the power to induce bad blood from incisions and cure respiratory ailments by stimulating the skin and drawing the blood to its surface. Thus, McColl’s voice held a note of disdainful superiority as he scoffed, “People like you think you know more than trained men of medicine, Dalton. Well, I for one—”

“Trained men o’ medicine! Y’ve burned him, man! 
Needlessly burned him!”
 Rye’s face was a distorted mask of rage, and the power of his voice fairly shook the rafters.

“I did not invent the cure, Dalton, I only apply it.”

“And enjoy every minute of it!” Rye’s anger billowed afresh, for he knew that had he not stepped to the doorway when he did, McColl undoubtedly would have covered Dan’s entire chest with the painful “cure-alls.” Had the man shown any sign of compassion for the plight of his patient, Rye might have relented in his anger.

Instead, McColl only crossed to retrieve the cup from the floor, using his hanky to hold it as he headed toward Dalton to collect his bag. “The burns are an unfortunate side effect, but it’s for the good of the patient in the long run,” the apothecary stated smugly.

The sheer stupidity and pitilessness of such views was more than Rye could tolerate. Turning swiftly as McColl passed, the cooper suddenly pressed the hot cup he still held to McColl’s cheek.

McColl jerked back, nursing the spot tenderly with his fingertips as it slowly turned red. His eyes snapped with hatred. “You’re mad, Dalton,” he growled. “First you call me in for help, then use your own queer methods and refuse to let me proceed with the accepted treatment, but I’ll see that you pay for this ... this insult!”

“How many more ways were y’ plannin’t’ torture him? I’m not the one who’s mad, McColl, you are! You and all your kind who practice such atrocities in the name of medicine! And I did 
not
 send for y’. I sent for Doc Foulger, though I’m not too sure his methods’re any less grisly than yours! How did it feel, McColl, huh? How do y’ like bein’ burned? Do y’ think Dan here likes it any better than you do?” With each accusation Rye took another menacing step forward until he’d forced the apothecary back almost as far as the linter room doorway. There, Rye snarled, “Now take y’r fancy black bag with y’ and get the hell out and never darken my door again!”

“B ... but my cups!” McColl’s wide eyes wavered toward the hot kettle still sitting on the bedside commode.