Yankee Wife (27 page)

Lydia thought of women like Magna Holmetz and Elly Collier, and that poor creature Dr. McCauley had found cowering in his outhouse. They had endured hardships all their lives, and would continue to do so, and they weren't married to one of the richest, most powerful men in Washington Territory.

“Brigham still refuses to close the brothel,” she said after she and Polly had both consumed a good portion of their tea.

“I suspect he'll never give in on that point,” Polly answered.

“He says he hasn't taken Clover O'Keefe as a mistress.”

“Then I'd say he hasn't,” Polly said matter-of-factly. “If he had, I do believe he'd say so, straight out, and expect you to deal with the fact as best you could.”

Lydia nodded. Brigham was still faithful to her, despite the crazy convolutions of their relationship, and she treasured that knowledge. She also knew the situation could change in the space of a heartbeat. If Brigham decided he wanted Miss O'Keefe, he'd go directly to the woman and declare himself, and it was most unlikely he'd be refused.

“I can't leave Quade's Harbor and I can't stay,” she finally said. “What am I going to do?”

Polly smiled sympathetically and poured more tea for herself and her guest. “Same thing I'm doing, I suppose,” she answered. “You'll do whatever work comes to hand and wait. After all, just because we can't solve our problems all at once doesn't mean we shouldn't chip away at a corner here and there.”

Polly's remark made sense.

Lydia debated with herself as she went down the stairs after her visit with her sister-in-law. She could return to the big house and crawl back into bed beside her husband, and no one, not even God and His angels, would blame her. She loved Brigham, she was his true and legal wife, and she carried his child tucked away under her heart. On the other hand, if she gave in so completely, she feared the man would soon own her soul.

Assuming he didn't already.

 

Devon stood at the end of a long wharf, watching smatters of reflected starlight play over the dark water. Even with the noise of Seattle's infamous Skid Road clamoring in his ears, he felt as though he'd been left alone on the planet. He'd been so sure distance would heal him, that he'd forget Polly and her deception easily. All it would take, he'd reasoned blithely, would be a few gallons of whiskey and a whorehouse full of women.

The trouble was, all of the sudden perfectly good liquor tasted like kerosene to him, and worse, he'd thrown it up like some green kid who'd never taken a drink before. As for his visit to the brothel, well, that had been a plain disaster. He'd worked himself up by imagining the woman he'd bought and paid for was Polly, but there was a part of him that wouldn't be fooled. That part, hard as tamarack only moments before, had melted like snow under a tropical sun.

Just remembering it made Devon go crimson with humiliation. He'd paid the whore double her usual fee, and threatened mayhem if she ever told a soul what had happened. She'd patted his cheek and said she knew ways to put the starch back into a man, but Devon had only shaken his head. It was hopeless, and he knew it. For the time being he was spoiled for any woman besides Polly.

He took a thin cigar from the pocket of his shirt, along with a wooden match, then threw both into the water. The way things had been going for him lately, an innocent smoke would probably turn his stomach inside out.

Devon dragged in a deep breath, then let it out slowly. He turned his thoughts to Lydia—God, he'd been so sure that he wanted her, in his heart and in his bed—but the love he bore for her was that of a brother for his sister. Lydia had been intended for Brigham from the beginning of time; he could see that now.

He shoved splayed fingers through his hair, and the longing that pulled him in the direction of Quade's Harbor was so strong that he nearly believed the water of the harbor would solidify under his feet so that he could take the most direct route home.

Home.

He had been away more than a month, but the sounds of the place still echoed in his soul. He didn't just miss Polly and his general store, he missed his brother, and Lydia, and those two nieces of his. He'd always envied Brigham his children.

He turned from the water, and the star-shimmered path leading homeward, his eyes burning with tears he would have denied before God Himself. The child Polly was carrying—suppose he really was the father, just as she'd said? Suppose he was letting the legendary Quade stubbornness and pride stand between him and everything he'd ever wanted?

Then again, Polly had certainly lied to him, not only in words, but by going through that pretend marriage ceremony in San Francisco. She probably wouldn't be above proffering another man's baby as his own.

The question was, did he care? His loneliness was so great that it threatened to consume him, and a child was a child. Devon wanted a home and family with a desperation that sometimes frightened him.

He strode along the board sidewalk toward the hotel where he'd been staying since his hasty arrival in Seattle weeks before. There was still some soreness in the muscles in his legs and back to remind him of his accident, and his thoughts returned to Polly as though magnetized. Even though he'd been downright cruel to her once he'd regained consciousness, he knew she'd stayed at his side throughout.

It was just possible that she loved him.

Devon wove his way between passing wagons and buggies and crossed the sawdust-covered street to his hotel. “Fool,” he muttered to himself, but the pull toward home was even stronger than before, and there was no telling how long he'd be able to resist.

 

Joe McCauley hoisted himself up off his examining table with a groan, letting his blankets slide to the floor, and finger-combed his hair. Since Frodine was in his bed, he'd had no civilized choice except to sleep in his examining room—if the ordeal he'd just been through could be
called
sleep. His back was killing him, the wind was howling like a thousand wolves, and somebody was literally flinging themselves at his front door.

Yawning, Joe pulled on his shirt and trousers and put his suspenders up over his shoulders. “I'm coming!” he yelled, murmuring as he made his way through the house. Despite the hard and dangerous work they did every day, some of these lumberjacks were nothing but crybabies. They risked getting themselves torn in two while topping a tree, or pinned underneath one with a branch going straight through their belly, but let them get a sliver or a bee sting, and you'd have thought they were dying.

“Hold on!” Joe said before wrenching open the door. He regretted his impatience immediately when he saw the terrified little boy standing on his front step. The Holmetz kid looked up at him with huge dark eyes, his thin face pinched white.

“My mama,” the child blurted. “It's her time.”

Joe was instantly as awake as if he'd gulped down a mug of strong coffee. “Is she having trouble?”

The boy nodded. “There's blood.”

Silently, Joe cursed, but his voice was even and calm when he spoke again. “You run and get Miss Lydia straight away. Tell her I'm going to need her help with your mama.”

Again the boy nodded, then he bounded down the pathway to the road, veering off in the direction of Lydia's cottage.

Joe went back to the kitchen, where Frodine was setting water on to heat. She was already dressed for school, which she attended faithfully every day, and so far there had been no visit from her no-good father.

“Somethin' wrong?” she asked, her dark eyes wide with concern. Her blond hair was wound into a flyaway braid, and she looked like the woman she was in her borrowed dress, which was a size or two too small for her.

“The Holmetz baby is on its way.” Joe grabbed a basin and began dipping tepid water from the reservoir on the side of the stove. “I'll need Lydia's help today, so I doubt there'll be any school.”

The disappointment in Frodine's eyes was keen; she'd just grasped the alphabet and learned to count to a hundred, and she begrudged every second of education she'd been denied. She followed Joe as he went into his office, stripped off his shirt, and began to wash in the basin of water he'd set on the examining table.

“Miss Lydia said there's no reason in the world I couldn't take another name,” she babbled. “Frodine don't suit me, you know.”

Joe was splashing industriously, a little annoyed that the girl had lingered while he was washing. It wasn't entirely proper, her seeing him without his shirt on, but then neither was letting her live under his roof without a chaperon.

“I know,” he said, reaching for a towel.

“What name do you like?”

Joe snatched up his shirt again, thinking not of Frodine's dilemma but of Mrs. Holmetz, who was probably in considerable pain and might even be dying. “Etta,” he said shortly, picking the name off the top of his head. “I like Etta.”

With that, he grabbed his bag and his coat, shoved on his boots, and hurried out of the house.

 

When Brigham woke for the second time, just before dawn, he could hear the wind whistling in the tops of the big trees surrounding the house. It was a sound he'd grown used to, a sound he loved, but today something about it made the pit of his stomach turn cold.

He cupped his hands behind his head and stretched. His body was still languid from the sweet satisfaction he'd taken in the night, but a persistent ache had settled in his heart. Lydia was gone, had been for several hours, and he was pretty sure she didn't intend on coming back.

Brigham cursed. He'd been awake when she'd sneaked out of bed and dressed, after that last feverish bout of lovemaking, but he'd feigned sleep. It had been his pride that kept him quiet, and not any nobility or prudence. He'd known she wouldn't stay, even if he begged, and he'd also known that if he'd so much as opened his mouth, he'd have been pleading with her.

He'd never begged anyone for anything, and he sure as hell didn't plan to start now.

Brigham rolled onto his side and squinted at the window, where pink and apricot shadows were invading the otherwise solid blackness, slowly turning it to gray. The sun would be up in another few minutes, but the moan of the wind told him the weather wouldn't be good. From the sounds of things, there was a storm blowing in, the kind that made it too dangerous to work in the woods.

“Shit,” he said. He had a deadline to meet, and the least the weather could have done was hold for another day or two so he could get the lumber ready for the ship that would soon be arriving.

Normally, he would have been out of bed by then, splashing himself awake at the washstand and reaching for his clothes, but today he lingered. He could catch Lydia's scent from her pillow, and the warmth of her passion and tenderness still heated the marrow of his bones.

He smiled. She was going to have his baby. A shout of pure joy rose inside him, pushing past all the doubts and misgivings that plagued his spirit, but he stopped the cry at his throat.

After all, it wasn't as though Lydia loved him or anything. She responded wholeheartedly to his attentions in bed, it was true, and she'd even come up with some innovations of her own that had made him certain he was about to die of pleasure. He knew only too well that the spirit wasn't always willing, even though the flesh might be weak. Lydia was a young, healthy woman, just discovering the delights her body was capable giving and receiving, and it was entirely possible that any man with a reasonable degree of skill as a lover could have made her carry on the way she had.

The thought chased the sparkle of pride from Brigham's eyes. Hell and tarnation, he wouldn't be able to stand it if Lydia were to lay herself down in another man's bed. His reason, rock-solid until the day Devon had brought her home from San Francisco and presented her like a present, would desert him entirely. He swore again and thrust himself himself out of bed, his legs so entangled in the twisted sheets that he nearly fell on his face.

Stumbling over to the washstand, he poured water from the pitcher into a basin, and then stood studying in the small mirror affixed to the wall. He imagined Lydia going on her merry way, visiting his bed when she felt the need, then returning to her cottage on Main Street and her work as a schoolteacher as if she didn't even have a husband. He considered the example he'd be setting for his son, not to mention Millie and Charlotte, letting his wife treat him like that, and the eyes looking back at him from the mirror rounded in proud horror.

No one dared show amusement now, of course, but if Lydia kept up her high-handed eastern ways, he'd soon be the laughingstock of every lumber camp between California and the Canadian border. And he'd be damned if he'd let that happen.

A
STRAY PAPER BLEW PAST
L
YDIA LIKE A KITE AS SHE
hurried along behind the Holmetz boy, and she held her skirts to keep the rising wind from catching them. The sky overhead was an ominous gray, the harbor seemed restless and expectant of some momentous event, and the trees of the forest that curled around the town like a protective arm rocked alarmingly from side to side.

When Lydia and her escort burst into the Holmetz cottage, the place was as neat as if company had been expected. There were pallets on either side of the small front parlor, where the children slept, along with a few pitiful belongings. Mrs. Holmetz lay moaning on a straw-stuffed mattress in the tiny bedroom beyond, and Joe was already with her.

His shirtsleeves were pushed up past his elbows, and his muscular forearms still glowed from the scrubbing he'd given them. Looking at him, Lydia felt her heart constrict, wishing again that she had fallen in love with Joe instead of Brigham. She understood the doctor, even though they'd been on opposite sides in the war, and had much in common with him.

She went to the kitchen without a word, snatched up a bucket and hurried into the backyard to the pump. When a large kettle was heating on the stove, she washed her hands and arms in the small amount of water Joe hadn't used and hurried back to the bedroom.

The children were standing at the foot of their parents' bed, small hands gripping the iron railing, eyes wide with fear and a woeful knowledge of the dangers their mother faced.

“Go to school,” Lydia told them, with gentle briskness. “Tell Charlotte to work on her geography. Millie is to practice the multiplication tables, concentrating heavily on the sevens. Frodine should practice her alphabet, and all the rest of you will read to yourselves from the primers. There had better not be any lollygagging just because I'm not around to keep an eye on things, either.”

The children looked profoundly relieved, and after giving their mother sympathetic glances, they dashed off to obey Lydia's orders. That left Hans, who had every right to stay but was obviously going to be of no help whatsoever.

“Go to the main house and tell Jake Feeny you need all the pots and kettles the two of you can carry, and some clean sheets as well,” Lydia told Mr. Holmetz. Magna punctuated the conversation with an unsettlingly shrill scream, and Hans looked furiously toward Joe.

“Is not right for a man to touch my wife that way,” Hans said.

“He's a doctor,” Lydia argued, maneuvering the big man toward the doorway.

Hans's expression was obdurate, and his rough skin had gone crimson. “Magna never needed doctors before. You look after her. All she needs is woman to help.”

Lydia glanced back at Joe, who was examining Magna and paying no attention to Hans, although he couldn't have helped hearing the exchange.

“Not this time,” Lydia replied quietly. “Magna is in trouble, Hans. She could die, and so could the child. You must cooperate with the doctor and with me. Now, go and do as I say. Please.”

The big man hesitated for a long, suspenseful moment, staring at his writhing, feverish wife, and Lydia repressed an urge to scream at him in frustration. She knew now it wasn't Magna's well-being he was so concerned about, but her
virtue
, and under the circumstances, that was plainly appalling.

Joe raised calm eyes from his suffering patient to Hans's face. He didn't speak, and yet his message was plain enough.

Hans turned around and left the room.

“We'll have to take the baby,” Joe told Lydia, smoothing Magna's sweat-dampened hair back from her forehead. “The poor little mite isn't going to make it without help.”

Lydia closed her eyes for a moment, then drew a deep breath and let it out in a rush. “All right. Is there ether?”

“In my bag,” Joe said. “Sit with Mrs. Holmetz while I go and find more water to scrub up again, will you please?”

Asking was only a formality, Lydia knew. She'd already approached the bedside and taken Magna's work-worn hand in both her own. “The hurting will stop soon,” she said to the half-delirious woman, hoping the promise wasn't a lie.

“My little one,” Magna gasped out. “Please don't let my little one die.”

Lydia forced back the tears that burned behind her eyes. This was no time to fall apart. “We'll do everything we can,” she said.

When Joe returned with the kettleful of hot water, he poured it into the basin on the battered chest against the wall and washed again, the strong yellow soap he used filling the stale air with the smell of some antiseptic. Clean again, he took a pad of folded gauze from his bag and laid it on Magna's pillow. Then he handed Lydia a brown bottle.

“Have you ever administered ether before?” he asked.

Again that mental shift occurred, and Lydia was back in the horrifying din of a Civil War field hospital. “When we had it on hand, yes,” she answered, carefully pulling the cork from the bottle. Most of the time, nurses and surgeons had simply had to do without the medical supplies they needed; the conflict had turned out to be so much bigger and more brutal than even the most pessimistic doomsayers had predicted.

Lydia turned her attention to Magna, moistening the gauze carefully and laying it over the patient's mouth and nose. Joe, in the meantime, had tossed back the covers and raised the woman's nightdress to her waist. Her distended belly flexed as the life within struggled to be born.

Please
, Lydia prayed silently. She never allowed herself a more specific request when interceding for a patient; in her view, only God could know who should live or die.

As Magna began to breathe in the ether and relax, Joe cleansed her stomach with an alcohol solution and brought a scalpel from his bag. Lydia watched approvingly as he washed the instrument in antiseptic.

By the time Hans had returned with the requested pots and sheets, Lydia had finished putting the patient under anesthesia and replaced the blood-soaked bedding with a plain blanket.

A figure appeared in the bedroom doorway, filling it, but to Lydia's relief, it was Brigham who stood on the threshold, not Hans.

Joe began the incision, after a glance at the visitor. “For God's sake, keep the happy husband out of here until we're through,” he said calmly.

Brigham nodded, his look lingering on Lydia for a moment, and then turned and left the room.

Lydia gave Magna more ether to breathe. The smell of blood was thick in the room, coppery and pungent, and she swayed slightly on her feet. Still, her attention didn't waver.

With the outer incision finished, Joe began the inner one, his hands steady and deft as they worked. “How's her breathing?” he asked.

“Regular and a little shallow,” Lydia reported. She could hear Brigham speaking calmly to Hans in the other room, the sound accompanied by the clatter and clank of pans being put on the stove. Just knowing her husband was so near, even if they were estranged, was a comfort to Lydia.

Joe reached inside Magna's stomach and pulled out a small, bluish infant covered in blood and a powdery substance. “Hello, little one,” he said gruffly, clearing the tiny mouth with his finger.

The baby girl gave a weak little mew, like a newborn kitten, and Lydia held her breath. A second later the child began to squall.

Joe tied off and cut the cord, then turned the baby over to Lydia to tend and called to Brigham for hot water and sheets.

Brigham immediately appeared with the requested items, but when he glanced at Magna, he went completely white under his woodsman's tan, and Lydia honestly thought he was going to collapse. He pulled himself together, however, and left the room without a word.

While Lydia happily bathed and wrapped the Holmetzes' baby girl, Joe quickly closed Magna's incisions with neat sutures. She carried the infant out to the kitchen, where Hans waited anxiously. To her disappointment, there was no sign of Brigham.

“I'd like to introduce you to a very pretty young lady,” Lydia said, tenderly lifting the blanket so that Hans could see the baby's face. “This is your daughter, Mr. Holmetz.”

Hans's grizzled features softened as he studied his child. “Magna?” he inquired, his tone raspy.

“She survived,” Lydia said carefully, knowing only too well how many things could go wrong in the next few hours. “She'll need special care, you know, because we had to take the baby surgically.”

Hans met Lydia's steady gaze with a glower. “What?”

Joe came out of the small bedroom and stood in the doorway, his clothes blood-spattered. In a few brisk, no-nonsense words, he explained what had been done and the reasons for it.

Somewhat to Lydia's surprise, Hans subsided, although he was a much bigger man than Dr. McCauley. He sat down on a makeshift chair and held out his enormous arms. “I hold baby,” he said. “You please see to Magna.”

Lydia surrendered the infant and raised her eyes to Joe, who nodded almost imperceptibly.

Returning to the bedroom, Lydia gently bathed the still-unconscious woman and replaced the bedding with the things Brigham had brought. The image of her husband's wan, shocked face did not leave her mind for a moment.

Hans came in, tenderly placed his baby in Lydia's arms, and bent over Magna to kiss her forehead. Lydia forgave him for his earlier reluctance to let a doctor see his wife undressed.

“This one we keep,” he murmured to Magna.

Lydia's throat tightened. She knew the Holmetzes had lost several babies in the last few years. She held the sleeping infant close to her breast and tried to will some of her own strength into the little body.

Joe appeared in the doorway where Brigham had stood earlier, and, although he looked weary, he glowed as though a lantern burned behind his skin. “I'll send Frodine over to look after Mrs. Holmetz and the baby,” he said, ignoring Hans and addressing himself to Lydia. “You'd better get some rest.”

Lydia sighed. She probably looked a sight, all right. She hadn't slept the night before, and assisting with the birth of a child was physically and emotionally exhausting. She nodded. “Yes, Doctor,” she said softly, with a smile.

He watched her for a moment, then turned and walked away.

About fifteen minutes later Frodine arrived, looking flushed and excited. Her dark eyes sparkled as she showed Lydia her slate board, on which she'd carefully written the name ETTA in block letters.

“It's my new name,” she said in a trilling whisper, setting aside the slate and reaching for the baby. “From now on, I'm Etta. Frodine is gone forever.”

Lydia smiled. “All right,” she agreed. “Etta.”

Since it soon became clear that Joe had already given Etta detailed instructions, Lydia stumbled back to her cottage, took off her clothes in the privacy of her small bedroom, and gave herself a sponge bath. Then she put on her nightgown, crawled into bed, and immediately lost consciousness.

 

Polly stood on the porch of the general store, the moist wind whipping tendrils of dark hair against her cheeks, her eyes fixed on the mail boat as it came into port.

A ramp was put in place, and two men in rough clothes stepped onto the wharf, each with a canvas bag slung over one shoulder. They wore hats, so Polly couldn't make out their features, but it didn't matter. Neither one of them could possibly be Devon.

She turned, wiping her hands on her apron, and went back into the store.

The business was taking shape. She had a coffee grinder now, and cheese and books and calico to sell, among other goods, and every time the bell on the fancy cash register chimed, Polly felt hopeful. Even if Devon never came back—and she prayed he would—she was building something for herself and her baby.

In the privacy of the store, she stood behind the counter and turned her back to the door, pretending to examine the tins of crackers, beans, oysters, and other selections on the shelf while surreptitiously raising the hem of her apron to her eyes. The wind howled and shrieked around the sturdy walls of the unpainted building, and rain began to pound at the roof.

Polly composed herself, went to the potbellied stove against the opposite wall and added a chunk of wood to the dying blaze. The air was chilly, and she felt uneasy.

When two giggling bundles of calico and energy burst into the store, she was cheered. Millie and Charlotte stood just over the threshold, dripping wet.

“What on earth are the two of you doing out in this weather?” Polly demanded, but her scolding was good-natured, and the girls knew it. “Get over here and stand by this stove immediately, before you catch your deaths!”

Brigham's daughters obeyed, their hair, skin, pinafores, and stockings soaking wet.

“Papa said we could each have a peppermint stick,” Millie announced, prying her way into a pocket and bringing out two copper pennies.

Polly smiled. Like Devon, she loved these children quite dearly and was always glad to see them. She also knew that Brigham never missed an opportunity to increase her business at the store, even though he was in competition with her, in a sense. She took two candy sticks from the jar on the counter and brought them to her sodden customers, careful to accept the proudly offered pennies with proper respect.