Until the Dawn (43 page)

Quentin’s booted feet slashed through the overly long grass, ripping the strands from the rain-softened soil. “Is this your idea of giving us time?” he bit out. “Frolicking half-naked in the field and flirting with another man? Charming, Sophie.”

Sophie looked surprised to see him, a gleam of startled reproof
in her eyes. “What’s put you in such a surly mood?” She faced him squarely, her hands on her hips and challenge in her eyes.

He wasn’t about to spill the personal details of his life in front of Professor Byron and his annoyingly perfect, healthy body, but neither was his leg capable of taking Sophie any kind of distance away from the house.

“I need a word alone with Sophie,” he said bluntly. “You can clean up in the river.”

Byron’s smile faded, and he glanced uneasily to Sophie. “I’m not so sure that’s a good idea . . .”

“It’s an excellent idea if you hope to work at any college in the United States or Europe ever again. All it will take is a brief meeting with the financial office of a college for them to lose all interest in you, and I promise I can make that happen.” Anyone with enough money could use the power of endowments to manipulate people, and he was angry enough to threaten it.

Byron still hesitated.

“Go on,” Sophie said. “Quentin can be a bad-tempered bear, but I am in no danger. I am quite certain I can outrun him if need be.”

It was humiliating to think about, but she was right. Tiny droplets of rain began to fall, and he instinctively clutched his cane tighter. Byron leaned over to scoop up his shirt and a towel, throwing them both casually over his shoulder but keeping his concerned eyes fastened on Sophie.

“I’m going to be ten yards away in the groundskeeper’s cabin,” he said. “Just say the word and I’ll come running.”

Quentin glared at Byron’s retreating back, but Sophie didn’t wait for the professor to enter the cabin before she attacked.

“Is this
your
idea of giving us time?” she challenged, turning his own words against him. “I thought you were trying to be a better man. One with some foundation in decent Christian values instead of growling and flaunting your power.”

His eyes narrowed. He spoke quietly, but with intensity. “What I told you about my marriage to Portia was private. I’ve never told that to
anyone
before you, and you’ve gone and blabbered the most painful details of my life to your pastor. Pieter overheard everything and wanted to know why I didn’t love his mother.”

Sophie’s eyes grew rounder as he spoke. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I needed to talk to someone—”

“He’s my son, Sophie.
My son
. Do you know what that means? I’m just barely finding my footing with him, and you’ve gone and planted that seed of doubt in his head.”

“I’m sorry,” she repeated. The color had dropped from her face, and she looked sick. “Quentin, please understand, I meant no harm, please—”

“Please what?” he snapped out. “Please keep being patient while you decide if I’m good enough for you? Or please don’t fire me from a job that pays one hundred dollars per week?”

She stiffened. “If that’s what you think, you don’t know me at all.” She threw a towel into the bucket and whirled away.

He wanted to call the words back, but it was too late, she was already running. He lurched after her and managed to grab a handful of fabric before she tore away, dashing toward the house. He lumbered forward, his weight propelling him in a desperate bid to stop her.

His shinbone snapped. He heard it . . . like a wet crack of a bat striking a board, just before he toppled over and crashed to the ground. Time slowed . . . this was happening to someone else . . . but then pain blinded him, blazing from his leg to scorch every nerve in his body. The scream sounded like it was coming from a distance, but it was from his own throat.

He twisted and rolled in agony, sensing the grinding of bone fragments shifting in his leg. Wet grass was in his face, dirt in his nose.

Sophie crowded him. She bent over him, talking in panicked
tones, but he couldn’t understand her words. All he could sense was a warm gush of blood on his leg. Heat surged through his body in waves. Whatever infection had taken root a few days ago was now flooding his system.

“You’re going to be okay . . .” It was Sophie’s voice, but she was weeping.

Someone rolled him onto his back. Professor Byron was there, arms sliding beneath him. The pain as he was lifted was agonizing. His head rolled back, and his world went black.

It had been raining for hours, and there was no sign of the bodyguards Sophie had sent racing into town for the doctor. With the bridge over the gully washed out, Sophie could only pray they would get through to Dr. Weir. If the water hadn’t risen too high, they could ford the river on horseback. It had been three hours since the accident; shouldn’t they be back by now?

Wind sent a surge of rain spattering against the window, and Sophie clenched her fingers together, staring at the front lawn rather than turn around to see Quentin’s pale, haggard body unconscious on the bed.

She had been here when they’d cut the trousers from his leg. The image would be forever branded on her mind. Several inches of white bone cut through his skin, jutting out at an obscene angle. The bone graft had broken free. They dared not cover it or try to force it back beneath the skin, and Quentin had been white from blood loss when Byron had laid him on the bed.

“We’ll need something for a tourniquet,” Byron had said.

Sophie nodded. There was no earthly way such an injury could be healed, but even so, she turned to Nickolaas for permission. The old man looked as if he’d aged twenty years at the sight of Quentin’s shattered leg. He nodded.

None of them had ever done a tourniquet, but all they needed to do was bind it tight enough to stop the bleeding. One of the professors brought a braided silk cord from the grand parlor’s draperies. As it was tied, Quentin gasped and roused back to consciousness, thrashing on the bed.

Sophie leaned over him, trying to soothe him and block his view of what Mr. Gilroy was doing.

“What’s happening?” he gasped.

There was no gentle answer. “Quentin, you are going to lose your leg,” she said.

If possible, his muscles seized even tighter. He swallowed. “I know.”

The men moved behind her, the mattress shifting as they positioned themselves to tighten the cord even further. Once it was tied and looped, the handle of an axe was slipped into the loop and twisted.

Quentin’s eyes rolled back in his head, and he passed out. Thank God.

Hours passed and still the doctor did not come. Sophie had no experience with this sort of illness, but the heat ravaging Quentin’s body seemed unnatural and extreme. He was so hot, the intense warmth radiated from him to heat the room. He drifted in and out of consciousness, and Pastor Mattisen lifted him, holding a cup of water to his lips. It was the only thing they knew to do for him.

Twilight descended, sending darkness over the land, but in the distance came a rider on horseback, galloping up the drive. She squinted, but in the gloaming it was impossible to see who it was.

She opened the bedroom door to dash toward the front hall, but Pieter stopped her. He had been loitering in the hall most of the day, but she hadn’t let him inside. Quentin’s leg could not be covered, and the jagged white bone sticking up from his flesh wasn’t something a child should see.

“Is my father going to die?” Pieter asked.

She instinctively wanted to reassure him but couldn’t. Squatting down to be on his level, she spoke as gently as she could. “I don’t know. It would be nice if you can say some prayers for him. Sometimes God answers our prayers, but not always.”

The front door opened, and Ratface appeared, water dripping from his coat and exhaustion on his face. “Dr. Weir is in Boston. We rode to Tarrytown, but no doctor can come until tomorrow.”

The strength left her legs, and she would have fallen had Ratface not grabbed her. “You’re gonna be all right, Miss Sophie,” he said roughly.

But she wasn’t. Quentin was in agony, and they didn’t even have any proper drugs to help dull the pain.

He was awake when she returned to his room. Night had fallen, and his skin looked ghastly white in the candlelight. “Sophie,” he gasped.

She sank into the seat by his bed. “I’m here.”

“Sophie, you have to marry me.”

She smoothed the sheets across his chest. “We’ll talk about that when you’re better.”

“No,” he said, cutting her off. “I’m not going to get better, and you have to marry me now. I can’t leave Pieter alone . . .” His voice trailed off, and his gaze tracked to the others in the room—his grandfather, Pastor Mattisen, and three of the bodyguards. “You owe her loyalty,” he told the men. “I’m giving her everything. I’m giving her Pieter, control of the estate. You are my witnesses.”

The words were directed to Nickolaas. “I agree,” the old man said, his voice firm. “I’ll see your will carried out.”

Tears blurred her vision. How tragic that these two men should finally join forces at this most terrible of moments.

Quentin squeezed her hand. “Sophie, please . . .”

The doctor would not be here until tomorrow. His skin was scorching with fever; his leg was black. It was unlikely he’d be alive by the time the doctor got here. She knew the right thing to do.

“I’ll marry you,” she said on a ragged breath, and the relief on Quentin’s face made her want to weep.

Quentin struggled to stay conscious long enough to get the vows said. Trying to separate his mind from the pain raging in his leg, he issued orders quickly.

“I want everyone in the house to witness this. I am of sound mind. Sophie is to be my wife and my heir. She will be Pieter’s guardian.”

He feared for Sophie. She was going to inherit control over a fortune, and it would attract a swarm of sharks. After his grandfather was dead, distant relatives would come spilling out of the woodwork. They would try to tear her to pieces, deny his sanity, deny the legality of the marriage itself. As others gathered in the room, he repeated his will over and over. With a pastor and eight college professors to attest to his sanity and the validity of the marriage, it was going to be hard to mount a legal challenge, but he cringed at the thought of Sophie with no protection.

“Ratface,” he wheezed. “Look out for her. Guard her.”

“Like she is the Holy Grail itself,” Ratface vowed in a voice of steel, and if Quentin had had the energy he would have laughed. Sophie collected admirers wherever she went, but she was going to need help after she became his widow.

“I want Dierenpark signed over to her now,” he said. “In its entirety. I want no third-cousins or the state emerging to take it from her.”

Nickolaas agreed. Terms of the Vandermark trust dictated
the estate go to the oldest male heir, but he wanted Sophie to have legal guardianship over Pieter and Dierenpark until Pieter came of age. She was the only person he completely trusted to do what was right.

One of the professors rigged a wire frame to tent over his leg. They draped a sheet over it so Pieter would be spared the ghastly sight. A ring was produced from somewhere in the house, and the metal was cold in the palm of his hand. Pieter looked frightened and upset, but as soon as everyone was assembled, things moved quickly.

He wished Sophie didn’t look so stricken. She deserved so much better, but the pastor stood on the other side of the bed, a large Bible open in his hands.

It was hot . . . so sweltering hot he could barely fill his lungs. He had to fight for every breath. Sophie’s narrow hand was cool in his own, and he tugged it until she leaned over him, enveloping him in the scent of pine and lemon. “What is it, Quentin?” she murmured.

“Don’t let Pieter be like me,” he managed to whisper. “Raise him in the sunlight.” If anyone could do that, it was Sophie. She was a bright, radiant light and would know how to guide Pieter into becoming a fine man. One who counted and shared his blessings, rather than jealously guarding them.

“It’s time,” the pastor said. He nudged Pieter to stand between Sophie and Nickolaas.

The pastor began. Quentin heard little of what was spoken over him, but when the pastor asked if he would love, honor, and cherish Sophie, it was easy to affirm the vow, for he did love her. The muscles in his face eased as she spoke her own vows, because even though he would not be able to raise his son to manhood, he had found someone he loved and trusted to undertake the task. The pastor declared them man and wife, and Sophie leaned over to press her cool lips to his forehead,
and it felt like a blessing. He didn’t even have the strength to put the ring on her hand. It slipped from his fingers and pinged on the floor, but someone picked it up and passed it to Sophie.