A Bride for Keeps (20 page)

“So now I’m not enough, and I’m a fool to think so? I’ve got to produce a shipload
of children to satisfy your homestead’s never-ending work needs? Well, unfortunately,
that’s not even possible. If you’ve forgotten, I’m unlikely to have children, let
alone an army of them.” She sniffed. “So you’ll have to be satisfied with the work
I do or find someone else.”

“I’d never trade you for anything.” If an arrow struck him in the chest, the pain
radiating out from his heart couldn’t be more painful. Did she really think he’d toss
her aside? Where had her anger come from all of a sudden? He had to let her know he
loved her. Words wouldn’t pierce her heart, but maybe a kiss. The shaking in his gut
and the knowledge that this wasn’t the right time couldn’t keep him from her any longer.

Swallowing hard, he moved a bit closer. He’d kissed her once. Wanted to a thousand
times. “I don’t need you to work all day long or have a hundred children to be happy.
But I’d like it if we could be friendlier.” His hand traveled up her arm to the strand
of hair lying listlessly against her neck. He kept his gaze glued on the soft brown
lock as he caressed it. “A lot friendlier.”

She wasn’t looking him in the eyes, yet she hadn’t pulled away. Could it be that she
wanted his touch but couldn’t ask for it? Whatever made her so upset after Ned’s attempt
at harming her kept her stockaded behind a wall of fear.

“You shouldn’t be afraid of me. Haven’t I kept my word? And I will.” His other arm
coaxed her forward. “But I can’t
help loving you just the same.” His mouth touched down on hers, her lips trembling
under his. The softness, the taste. They’d become sweeter since the wedding.

Waves of pent-up desire rushed up from deep within, faster than an uncontrolled fire
licking up dead grasses after a season of drought. He needed more. A bit more.

A lot more.

Her hands flattened against his shirt, but he couldn’t break away. She pushed herself
from his embrace with a shove. And right to the roof’s edge.

Falling flat on his chest, the shingles tearing into his shirt, he tried to snatch
at the last bit of green fabric disappearing over the eave. Her scream when her ruffle
tore off in his hand stomped on his heart.

“Nooooo!” Their like cries ended in unison.

Like a reckless boy leaping from a hayloft, Everett jumped off the roof after Julia.
But the ground was closer than anticipated, and his ankle cursed him upon landing.

Still, the pain knifing up his leg was nothing compared to the agony-laced howl coming
from his wife. But at least she was breathing.

Why had he lied to her about being able to control himself? He’d just stolen a kiss
on an uneven roof. “I’m so sorry. I wouldn’t blame you if you slapped me good. Repeatedly.”

Julia didn’t snap at him as he expected. Clutching her leg with one hand, she tried
to sit up, but slumped back to the ground with a moan.

“Julia?” His sore ankle protested beneath him, but he shoved off it anyway and scrambled
over.

Perspiration lay atop her creased eyebrows, and her mouth had thinned into a tight
bundle of lines.

“What hurts?” He pulled her up into his arms.

She answered with nothing but a gasp, and then stillness.

He’d known women to faint at pain any boy would scoff at, but that didn’t explain
her ashen skin. He brushed a hand
against her face where a rock had scraped her cheek. “Look at me.”

Her eyelids obeyed halfheartedly as if awaking from a long night’s slumber. “Mmm?”

“What hurts?”

She tried to push into a sitting position again. “Can’t.”

He threaded his arms under hers to haul her toward the shack’s wall, but a yelp brought
him up short.

“Stttttop . . . sssssst . . . opppp,” her voice slurred, though he’d quit moving her
the second she’d hollered.

A trail of blood colored the grass where her leg had dragged a few inches.

His breathing sped up. It couldn’t be that bad. “Did you scrape your leg on the way
down, or are you talented enough to land on every spare rock I have in the yard?”

She didn’t even scowl at his ill-timed joke. But at least her eyes remained open.

“William’s actually pretty good at stitching if you need it.” Everett propped her
against his bent leg so he could maneuver to look without dropping her. “One of my
steers slashed himself real good once. After William was done with him, I could have
sworn he’d figured out a way to sew up animals from the inside out—couldn’t even see
the gash once he’d finished.” He stretched over to straighten her leg, and blood bloomed
against her skirt.

He muttered words he didn’t want her to hear as his shaky fingers pulled up the layers
of skirting. “Hold still.”

Her stockings were pristine until he exposed the gash—and then the bone, a sickening
white protrusion in a pool of blood.

“That’s . . . that’s . . .” Julia heaved.

He dropped the wad of fabric and turned her upper body so
she could keep from getting sick on herself. His own stomach was barely under control.

He’d seen broken bones jutting from a man’s flesh a few times during the war.

But he never again saw that soldier with all of his limbs intact.

If he ever saw him again.

The tears obscuring his vision swelled faster than the crimson spreading across her
skirt.

He had offered to let her slap him—but she ought to smack him into kingdom come.

If she didn’t arrive there first.

Julia turned her head toward the front of the cabin. White flashes followed her vision’s
progress until she found the groaning door. Rachel’s stout form entered and flew to
the bedside.

“Oh, Julia!” Rachel landed on her knees beside her. “How did this happen?”

Julia groaned and held her cold hand against her throbbing temple. “Everett?” The
raw side of her face hurt when she moved her mouth, but that pain was minuscule compared
to her leg.

“He’s gone to Salt Flatts. Dex was out somewhere in the pasture, so I sent Everett
for the doctor. Figured it’d be faster. I didn’t know where William was.” Rachel pulled
the tendrils of hair from the scrape near her eye. Each strand stung as if Rachel
were pulling out thorns. “Maybe I should have gone myself and sent Everett back to
you.” Rachel squeezed her hand. “I’ll get water.”

“Everett cleaned—” though the vocal reverberations inside
her skull hurt, she powered through—“cleaned it. Whiskey.” She rolled her head in
the direction of the jug sitting on the stool.

Rachel scooped up the jug, rag, and bowl and knelt beside her. She soaked the rag.

“No,” her voice croaked. “Drink.” The pain and fire in her leg cried for relief.

Rachel slid across the mattress. Her backside bumped against Julia’s knee. Twinkling
stars danced in patterns Julia couldn’t track.

“Oh dear. I’m making it worse. Let me have a look at your leg.” Rachel stood.

A bit of petticoat stuck in the wound as Rachel pulled the fabric away. Hot pricks
of pain crawled through her already screaming flesh.

Rachel’s eyes grew huge, and her hand shook as it floated up to cover her mouth. “Oh!”
She closed her eyes. “I . . . I don’t know what to do.”

Was there any hope if Rachel was at a loss? The searing pain made Julia wish life
would end today anyway. The glimpse of bone protruding at the shin and the lightning
strike of pain when she’d first seen the injury had made her lose her lunch. She’d
have fainted if Everett hadn’t gathered her in his arms and shouted in her face.

“Everett cleaned it.” And she had screamed almost the entire time. When her voice
turned raw from overuse, the yells became moans. After he’d finished cleaning her
leg he apologized over and over as he set it in a splint and waited for the applied
pressure to stop the bleeding.

The pain was old now, as if she’d always lived with it, like she would always have
to live with it. “Don’t need to clean it again.” The pain swelled into her head and
burst forth with fresh tears.

Rachel gingerly set her skirt back around her legs. “Everett’s coming, honey.” She
grabbed the whiskey and filled the cup to the brim. “There now, the doctor will be
here real soon.” She glanced toward the door. “Please, Lord, let them hurry.”

Julia floated into darkness accompanied by the sound of Rachel’s pleading.

Blaze slid to a stop in front of the homestead, and Everett jumped off his sweaty
horse and rushed over to the doctor’s mount. The nag sagged under the large man’s
weight. “Let me get your bag.” He grabbed the black leather portmanteau and left Dr.
Forsythe to follow after him.

Inside, Rachel kneeled beside the bed, her head cradled in her arms by Julia’s side.

Julia’s face was pale, her eyes were closed.

“She’s not . . . she’s not . . .” Everett dropped the bag on the table and rushed
to touch her face.

Rachel’s hand rubbed his back. “No, Everett. She’s passed out.”

Dr. Forsythe’s rotund form hefted its way to the bedside. “Make room, please.”

Rachel jumped back, and Everett clung to Julia’s hand as the man did a quick check
of her face and pulse before moving to her leg.

The sweaty physician settled himself and moved aside the torn dress. He peered down
his spectacles at the splint Everett had thrown together before racing to the Stantons
and on to Salt Flatts.

“You did well enough for something this extreme.” He opened his bag. “Just so happens
I’ve been reading the material I picked up about Lister’s antiseptic principle in
regard
to compound fractures.” He pulled out a bottle and gauze. “Seems successful enough,
but I’ve yet to try it. A bit impractical, but with a mortality rate of eighty percent
of my own cases with fractures like these, it can’t hurt to attempt it.”

Rachel whimpered.

Everett’s whole body tensed. Eighty percent! How could the man say such a thing? His
taste buds relived the sweetness of Julia’s lips. He might have very well killed her
for that second of pleasure. He slid down the wall until his rear hit the floor, dragging
her limp and clammy hand to the bottom with him.

Julia moaned.

Rachel knelt beside him as the doctor huffed and bustled about Julia’s injury. “We
best pray, Everett.”

He nodded and listened to her prayer but couldn’t form words to add to her petition.
Julia might never want him, but he prayed God would want her and save her, not just
from death and decay, but from an eternity without His love. Since the day at the
pond, he knew Julia didn’t have a relationship with God. He’d figured he’d have time
to talk to her about it once she opened up. If God would turn this horrid mistake
into the path that would lead her to understand God loved her, he could let her go.
His desires had put her in jeopardy. He could, he would, lay them down. If she would
only survive . . .

“I need you up here, boy. Hold her down.”

For a few seconds, his tears thwarted his vision, keeping him from detaining her thrashing
limbs. Her cries murdered his heart, and he choked on her screams.

Falling, falling, falling, splash. Julia sputtered and clawed to keep herself above
the water’s surface. “Help! Help!” She yanked the arm that plunged in near her face.
“Help!”

“Shhhh.” A deep soothing voice hushed her. She knew that voice. She pulled the muscular
arm and tried to see through the water. Worried steel gray eyes swam before her.

“It’s me, Julia. You need to stop moving. You’re going to disturb your leg.” His tone
was forceful. “You cannot disturb your leg.”

Her leg. Her leg was on fire.

“You’re burning up. I’ve got to get more water.”

A door slammed, leaving her alone. Alone in a fire, reaching inch by inch to her middle.
She didn’t want to feel that fire anymore. Make it go away!

Freezing water trickled down the sides of her head and into her ears. Her ears ached
with the cold. They throbbed with the cold.

“Don’t leave me, love. Don’t leave me.”

Despite being inside a vat of boiling water, shivers ran along every limb of her body.
Up and down, over and across, and back again. All she could do was tread water. She
wanted out!

The pot. Senseless to stay in the pot. She clawed for the rim, but grabbed immaterial
fluff. Where was the rim? She couldn’t pull herself out without the rim. “Help me!”

“I don’t know what else to do,” a shaky voice answered. “I don’t know what else to
do.”

“Can no one . . .” The insides of her mouth were melting. She tried to make her tongue
work, but it was burned to a crisp. She had no tongue. Could she make the leftover
ashes form words? “Can no one save me?”

“I can’t.”

A waterfall of cold pricks landed on her neck. The sound of a steam engine chugging
and weeping and chugging and weeping neared her. She had to get out of the boiler
car.

“I can’t do anything. God, it’s now or never. Let it not be never.”

Her hands were quickly sheathed with ice-cold gloves and squeezed. Pain shot up through
her wrists.

“Pray with me, darling. You’re here right now. Listen. Ask God to stop it. He loves
you. Call out to the Father to rescue you. I’m inadequate.”

Was someone weeping? Why didn’t God tell the babbling man to stop sniffling and rescue
her from the fiery waves?

“So inadequate.”

Her father didn’t love her. No one had loved her. Why would God love her? The heat
from the cauldron she was in proved He did not.