Halfway Home, page 14
Lord, You look after him real good until I can get there and take over, will You? I’ll hurry as fast as I can.
The dog came silently to her side and sniffed at her fingers. Absently, she scratched his ears. From the other side of the tall, high-ceilinged room, Ivadelle Moyer was staring at Rafe Turbyfill as if she’d never before seen a rumpled, dissolutely handsome, middle-aged man.
Meanwhile, Hester Renegar, elbows on the table, head in her hands, was sobbing quietly and murmuring. “My boy, my sweet, blessed boy . . .”
“You’ll have to drive me there,” Sara declared briskly. “Unless there’s a horse here I can borrow? No, I’ll need to take supplies, so a carriage would be better, or at least a gig. Rafael, do you—”
“Slow up, darling. Princess Anne County’s promised to stay until she has to leave for Liberia. By then, I’ll be back there and I can find another woman. I only came to tell you the news.”
Sara’s mouth fell open. “Indeed, you will not find another woman! Until who has to leave for where?”
With the suspicion of twinkle in his jaded eyes, he repeated, “The nurse. Miss County is scheduled to leave for the colony of Liberia aboard the next ACS ship that sails, which is why—”
“Who—what on earth is an ACS ship?”
“You never heard of the American Colonization Society? They’ve been around for years, helping any free black who wants to go back to Africa to emigrate. Miss County is of a mind to nurse the good folks of the Liberian colony for a spell. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she don’t end up running the whole government in a few years.”
“Yes, well . . . that’s all very interesting, but if we’re going to leave right away, I’d best be gathering up a few things. Miss Renegar?”
The housekeeper rose, dried her tears on her apron and nodded grimly. “Yes’m. We’ll need laudanum and willow bark tea, a good healing salve and plenty of bandages. Good thing I made up a fresh batch of my healing oil. Can’t beat it for—”
“As it happens, I myself have rather extensive bedside experience,” announced the elegant woman in black. Ivadelle flowed across the room to stand between Rafe and Sara.
How does she do that, Sara wondered. It’s unnatural to be so blasted graceful.
“How do you do, sir, I am Miss Iva—”
“Miss Moyer, Mr. Turbyfill,” Sara said bluntly.
Ignoring her, Ivadelle appealed directly to Rafe. “I’m sure Miss—Mrs.—that is, Sara, would be best served by staying home. She only arrived last evening, and the poor child was so exhausted she was barely civil.”
Sara bristled. She started to protest when the tall blond cut her off. “I assure you, sir, I’m quite good at tending the ill. My sister-in-law suffers from a poor constitution, and my poor brother has boils that cause him dreadful pain.”
Then why, Sara wanted to ask, aren’t you looking after your own family instead of meddling with mine? Instead, she quietly left the room and began helping Hester Renegar gather up supplies. After that, she slipped into the small bedroom she had moved into just that morning and crammed a few things into her valise. Whatever else she needed could be sent for later. If she had her way, Jericho would be traveling south just as soon as possible.
And if she had her way, that woman would go home and tend her brother’s boils. Which was something she would see to when she returned from helping Jericho.
Presenting herself in the front parlor a short while later, Sara lifted her brows at the sight of Rafael making free with Jericho’s brandy. The overseer’s sister was ensconced in the best tapestry-covered wing chair, her feet propped on a cushioned stool.
Well. Lifting her chin, she strode into the room. “It was my understanding, Mr. Turbyfill, that we would be leaving right away. Or did I mistake your intentions? If you would prefer, I’m sure I can find something around here to drive.”
“Oh, please—Sara has just arrived and hasn’t even had time to settle in. I’ll be glad to go,” Ivadelle said in a voice that was so soft and sweet it made Sara want to throw something. “After all, women who are all alone in the world must earn their keep.”
The woman was alone in the world? What about her brother? Sara asked her just that and was ignored for her troubles.
“I would so like to help. You can’t know how it feels to be beholden for the very roof over your head.”
Sara did know. Noreen had made her feel that way, and in her own home. She came within Ames-ace of weakening, but at the last minute her sense of survival took over. Give some women an inch and they would take a mile. And the mile Miss Moyer would like to take just might include Sara’s husband.
“I’m sure Miss Renegar can use your help while I’m away. My own servants will be arriving most any time now, so there’ll be rooms to make ready if you’ll be so kind.”
The two women eyed one another while Rafe finished his brandy and set the glass on the pie-crust table. Sara, arms crossed over her breast, stared at Ivadelle until the woman’s eyes fell.
There, she thought. That settled the pecking order in the Wilde household. All that mattered now was Jericho. Getting him home and getting him well.
The dog, Brig, clicked down the hall to stand in the doorway. Ivadelle stiffened and drew back. Dog hair might make her eyes water, but it was terror, not tears, that Sara saw on her face. Acting on impulse, she snapped her fingers and watched warily as the dog made his stiff-legged way to her side. His tail wasn’t wagging, but then, neither were his ears laid back.
“Nice dog,” she murmured, and to Ivadelle she said, “See? He won’t harm you.”
Reaching out a hand toward his massive, shaggy head, she stopped just short of touching him and waited. Cautiously, Brig sniffed her knuckles. Then, with what appeared almost to be a sigh, he allowed one of his ragged ears to be scratched for a count of perhaps ten seconds before backing away.
Sara let out the breath she hadn’t even known she was holding. Ivadelle sniffed—the woman really must be allergic—and Rafe grinned like a possum.
*
“I am not your darling,” she told him firmly as soon as he handed her into the one-horse chaise. He had called her that more than once.
“Yes’m.”
“You’re only teasing, I know, but all the same, some people might get the wrong idea.”
“Yes’m.”
One of the most irritating things about Rafael Turbyfill, Sara had quickly discovered, was his habit of grinning for no reason at all.
Which he did nearly all the way to his own farm, some two miles north of Wilde Oaks.
Oh, he answered her questions soberly enough. Including the one she could not quite bring herself to ask. Smithers, he told her, had turned and thrown his knife out of turn, seriously wounding Jericho, who had nevertheless managed to let fly his own knife, catching Smithers in the belly. “Not one man in a hundred survives a gut wound. Doc said he’d not last the night, even if he made it off the field alive.”
Sara swallowed hard. For the next few minutes she tried to think worthy thoughts about her stepbrother, who had made her life miserable from the first day he had crossed her father’s threshold. Why should she be surprised to hear that he had cheated in what was supposed to be an affair of honor? He was sneaky in all things. Always had been.
And yet, he was her stepbrother. Or rather, he had been. She supposed she should feel some small touch of remorse for anyone who had died so young, and so unnecessarily. For Noreen’s sake, she tried, honestly she did. But Louisa had died young, too. Died tragically. And Titus was solely responsible. Besides which, the wretched coward had nearly killed Jericho!
On the heels of hoping Titus would burn in hell, Sara squinched her eyes shut and offered up a plea for forgiveness, in case the Lord decided to punish her wickedness by taking from her the very thing she valued most in this world.
Jericho.
“Is he in great pain?” she whispered.
From the seat beside her, Rafe twitched the reins, setting the mare into a fast trot. “Sleeps most of the time. I’m not sure if it’s laudanum or some conjuring potion out of Miss County’s red bag of tricks, but he was resting quiet when I left. Ain’t come down with the fever yet, either, which is a good sign.”
They traveled fast, and Sara clutched the sides to keep from being tossed tip over tail onto the rutted road. Rafe pulled up before his house, a tall brick affair with a fan-lighted door, and shouted for someone to come trade out his horse. After telling Sara to stay put, he raced inside and was out again before she could even begin to fret over the wasted time.
Waving a basket under her nose, he said, “I’ve not had supper yet. This way we’ll save time by not having to stop. Ham biscuits, raisin cakes, cheese, and wine, darling.” And then he grinned that wicked grin that Sara was coming to expect from him. “Not to mention a fresh waistcoat and a stack of clean cravats. Can’t afford to ruin my reputation as a dandy.”
*
It was nearing midnight when they reached the hotel. After nearly three miserable hours on the bumpy road, Sara felt as if her bones had disconnected and every tooth in her head was loose.
The night clerk was dozing in an easy chair in the lobby. Ignoring him, Rafe hurried Sara directly to the Carolina wing. She held onto her hat with one hand, the half-empty basket with the other, while Rafe carried her hastily packed valise.
“In here,” he said, and then laid a finger over his lips. “Shhh, we don’t want to disturb him if he’s sleeping.”
But no sooner did he turn the knob than the door was yanked open by the most intimidating creature Sara had seen in all her born days. The woman stood every bit of six feet tall, her skin the color of blackstrap molasses. Her generous body was costumed in a colorful panoply of skirts, shawls, half aprons, and overblouses, and decorated with jewelry made of beads, bones, seeds, and a variety of unidentifiable items.
Sara was dismissed with the merest glance. The woman looked Rafe directly in the eye and demanded in a fierce whisper, “Who she? Don’ need no picayune white girl messin’ around here.”
“This is Mrs. Wilde. She’s his wife. I went to fetch her when I heard there was an ACS ship leaving out of I Hampton Roads within the week.”
“She too puny.”
Tired of being spoken of as if she weren’t even present, Sara pushed herself forward and glared up into the fearsome black face. “I may be small, but I am certainly not puny. Anything you can do, I can do better and faster. Try me!”
If she weren’t so furious, she might have seen a twinkle of something akin to respect in those large, ebony eyes. “Kin you talk a fever out’n a body, an’ him burnin’ fit to die?”
“I know about willow bark tea and cold cloths. I know not to bleed a man who’s already lost too much blood. I know . . .”
“You know how to sing de debil spirit out’n a body an’ see it don’t come back no mo’?”
“Yes! Of course I do! Anyone with a grain of sense knows that!”
Sara was almost, but not quite certain she was being made sport of. She hadn’t the least notion what the woman was talking about, but whatever it took to make her husband well again, why then, that was what she would do. The Lord would guide her. If she had to do penance for her own wickedness for the rest of her days, she would do it. She would see that Titus had a headstone any man would be proud of, with an epitaph that . . .
Well. She would think about that later. There was no point in making things worse by promising to have her lies carved in granite.
*
The next few days were unlike anything Sara could have imagined in her wildest dreams. In the first place, there was her husband’s disposition. If she’d thought she had a quick temper, it was nothing compared to Jericho’s outbursts.
Of course, he did have the excuse of being forced to lie on his belly all the time, with no relief. Miss County had cautioned against turning him over onto his back until his wound had stopped seeping.
As for the wound itself, the blade had evidently gone in, struck bone, and then sliced all the way up into his shoulder, tearing through every tissue along the way. The surface wound was relatively small, but the flesh all the way up to his shoulder was outraged and swollen. Sara was cautioned to change the dressings several times a day for as long as it went on seeping, and to watch for the color of the seepage to change from pink to green, which was a bad sign.
So three times a day she soaked the bandages with warm water, peeled them off his tender flesh, and three times a day Jericho cursed her, swore revenge, and tried to reach around behind him with his good arm to swat her away from his bed.
Three times a day, while his wound lay uncovered, she sprinkled the gray musty powder Miss County had kit behind into a saucer, lit it, and while it burned, repeated the gibberish she had been made to memorize in case there were any evil spirits waiting to pounce on the unsuspecting victim.
There was no point, she thought sensibly, in taking chances.
That done, she would spread a layer of Hester’s healing oil, which smelled mostly of turpentine, over the injured flesh and the surrounding bruises, search for any hint of undue redness, swelling, or any hint of green seepage, and then wrap the area in clean linen.
Three times a day she forced her husband to drink a cupful of fresh-brewed willow bark tea dosed with laudanum. She listened stoically as he called her every wicked name he could think of, most of which she had never even heard, but which must be awful indeed if his expression was anything to go by.
It was impossible not to be aware of his magnificent body. Even wounded and helpless, Jericho positively radiated masculinity. Sara had never even been aware of such a thing as masculinity until the first time she had laid eyes on the man she was later to marry. Even now, lying helpless and half drugged, he was such a powerful presence in the room that she was constantly forced to steel herself against wayward thoughts.
Which meant that she spent a good deal of her waking hours, not to mention those spent turning restlessly in the trundle bed that had been brought into the room, in concentrating on what she was not supposed to think about.
The man is ill, Sara Rebecca! And you’re here trying to visualize his parts?
The man was her husband. If anyone had the right to visualize his parts, surely it was his wife.
Still, she tried not to. Not to think about his private parts, that was. Because theirs wasn’t that sort of a marriage. Jericho had offered her a home and a name for her baby, if she found herself carrying Archibald’s child, and she had offered him . . .
Precisely what he was getting. Care and whatever duties he required of her.
He watched her. Times when she thought he was asleep, she would feel his gaze on her and turn to find those basilisk eyes focused on her in such a way that heat would come rushing to her face. “Did you want something?” she’d asked him the first time, but he had only closed his eyes and soon his breathing had slowed, and she had been left with her own thoughts.
Which were becoming more and more difficult to deal with.
Late on the third day, Rafe came in and, with Sara’s help and two extra pillows, turned Jericho so that he could lie on his back for a change. Which made Sara’s lot considerably easier, since helping a grown man to eat and drink while he was lying on his belly was a thankless task.
It was Rafe who spelled her several times a day so that he could tend to Jericho’s personal needs while she tended her own. Thus Jericho was always neatly shaved and bathed. Although he muttered that he would almost rather grow a beard than have some cutthroat waving a razor in his face, and him not able to defend himself.
Of an evening, while the patient dozed, muttering frequently in his sleep, Rafe and Sara played games. From somewhere Rafe procured a checker set and a deck of cards, and he taught her to play Monte.
She was good at it. “You’d make right smart of a gambler, darling,” he observed, and smiling, she shook her head.
“No thank you. I’ve already seen one fortune go whistling down the river. I’ll not risk another. And don’t call me darling.”
“Give me leave to call you Sara, and I won’t.”
“Leave,” she cried, and they both laughed.
And they laughed some more, and played some more, with Sara winning three buttons and Rafe swearing to take revenge. Nut until she had put away the cards and gathered up her nightclothes to step behind the folding screen did she notice that Jericho was awake.
“Are you in pain? Do you need more medicine?”
“So you mean to hang onto my fortune for me. In that case, I’m obliged to advise you to steer clear of men like Turbyfill.”
Sara was puzzled about his reference to his fortune. Surely she had told him that she was an heiress in her own right. She knew very well she had told him about the way her own father, and Titus after him, had gambled away all but the roof over their heads and a few acres of worthless land.
“Well?” he prompted, and she noticed then the lines in his brow that had been etched there by pain. His perennial tan, a result of spending years aboard a ship, had quickly faded to be replaced by a grayish pallor that came from loosing too much blood.
“I simply Meant that I believe gambling for money is a fool’s game. What difference does it make what card turns up next, or what rooster manages to spur another to death, or what horse Teaches a certain mark first? Or last? Or even not at all? The world will go right on spinning in any case.”
“That’s not what I meant,- and I suspect you know it. However, I’ll take comfort in knowing you don’t plan to beggar me just yet.”
“Jericho, you’re just trying to be difficult. If your shoulder aches, I’ll give you a few drops of—”
“No more laudanum. It appears to me, madam, that if I want to guard my interests, I’d do well to keep my wits about me.”
“There’s no point in hurting when you don’t have to,” Sara retorted. “It’s been a long day. Trying to sleep in a narrow padded box with an ungrateful creature constantly grunting and groaning and muttering in his sleep in the same room is no great pleasure, I assure you.”
