You Belong to My Heart (36 page)

Sunrise finally came, but no baby.

As noon approached Mary Ellen’s pain-dulled eyes registered her unspoken distress. She was not afraid for herself, but she was worried about her baby.

“Please, Dr. Cain,” she pleaded, so weak she could hardly speak, “don’t let my baby die. Please, don’t…Oooh!…” Another tearing pain came, and Mary Ellen bit the inside of her bottom lip until it bled.

“Scream if you want to, child,” said the doctor. Then he lied: “You’re doing fine, Mary Ellen. Just fine.”

Leah looked at him from across the bed, where she stood bathing Mary Ellen’s perspiring, ashen face. Leah read the concern in the doctor’s eyes and knew that if Mary Ellen didn’t deliver the child soon, it would be too late for them both.

The torture continued through the hottest part of the day. Shortly after noon, black clouds boiled up in the summer sky. Heat lightning flashed, and booming thunder rattled the windows of the mansion.

A torrential rain began and didn’t let up.

Nor did Mary Ellen’s pain.

But finally, at three o’clock on that hot, rainy sixth of June—a year to the day since Clay’s return to Memphis—the exhausted Mary Ellen gave birth to a perfect, healthy baby boy.

Out in the hallway, Titus and Mattie heard the infant’s cry above the rain and hugged each other. Mattie sent Titus down to the kitchen to brew some hot tea while she went inside and to clean up the newborn.

When the old cook laid the crying infant in his tired mother’s weak arms, Mary Ellen kissed his downy head and said, “Welcome to the world, Clayton Terrell Knight, Junior.”

His tiny fists opening and closing, Clay Junior snagged a lock of his mother’s loose, tangled hair and opened his eyes.

Tears that were a mixture of joy and sadness immediately sprang to Mary Ellen’s dark eyes, and she cooed to the baby, “If only your father could see you.”

As soon as her baby had been fed, Mary Ellen fell into a dreamless sleep of total exhaustion, and the baby, full and slumbering peacefully, was taken from her, placed in the waiting lace-trimmed bassinet beside the bed.

Mother and child slept as the violent afternoon thunderstorm changed to a slow, steady rain.

Mary Ellen awakened later that rainy afternoon.

When she opened her eyes, she saw two Clays. The officer and the infant. Both were asleep. Both were beautiful. Both were hers!

Captain Clay Knight, in black boots, blue uniform trousers, and a white shirt open down his chest, revealing his bandaged ribs, sat sprawled on a chair beside the bed, his dark head resting against the chair’s tall back, his eyes closed in slumber.

Mary Ellen stared at him as though he were an apparition from a long-remembered dream.

Twenty-four-hour-old Clayton Knight, Junior, in the white cotton nightshirt handmade by his loving mother, rested trustingly against his father’s broad chest, his downy head cradled in the crook of Clay’s muscular right arm.

Her happiness now complete, Mary Ellen gazed silently in awed wonder at the sleeping pair.

The elder Clay awakened.

His beautiful silver-gray eyes opened and he smiled at Mary. Then, for a long moment, there was gentle silence between them. Clay moved, and his son awakened. The tiny infant opened his blue eyes and looked up unfocused at his father.

Smiling, Clay Senior looked from his son to his wife and asked, “Are you both just a dream that will vanish if I blink?”

“I was about to ask you that.” Smiling happily now, Mary Ellen lifted her arms to him and said, “Come here and I’ll show you how real we are.”

Clay rose from the chair, carefully handed Mary Ellen the tiny baby boy, then laid his open hand against her pale cheek and said, “Why, sweetheart? Why didn’t you tell me before I left?”

“I didn’t want you worrying about me, about us.”

Clay kissed her tenderly.

Pushing aside his shirt to gently touch his bandaged stomach, she said, “Clay, Clay, I thought you had been killed. I was so worried and…Are you badly hurt, my love?”

“No,” he assured her, making light of it. “A flesh wound. It’s nothing.”

“Then kiss me again, Captain,” Mary Ellen said, her dark eyes shining. “Kiss all the breath out of my body.”

Grinning boyishly, recalling the night he’d said that to her, Clay leaned down and started to comply, but the baby wailed his outrage.

His parents looked at each other, laughed, and turned their full attention on their precious baby son.

Outside, the rain had stopped.

The sun was shining again, bright and hot.

Down on the terraced lawn, the old marble-faced sundial read the sunshine.

And it began to work perfectly once more.

Nan Ryan is an award-winning historical romance author. The daughter of a Texas rancher, she began writing in 1981, inspired by a
Newsweek
article about women who traded corporate careers for the craft of romantic fiction. She found success with her second novel,
Kathleen’s Surrender
(1983), a story of a Southern belle’s passionate affair with a mysterious gambler. Ryan continued writing romances, publishing novels such as
Silken Bondage
(1989),
The Scandalous Miss Howard
(2002), and
The Countess Misbehaves
(2000). Her husband, Joe Ryan, is a television executive, and his career has taken them all over the country, with each new town providing fodder for Ryan’s stories.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1996 by Nan Ryan

Cover design by Connie Gabbert

978-1-4804-6731-6

This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

345 Hudson Street

New York, NY 10014

www.openroadmedia.com