Island Flame (39 page)

The only thing that kept her from being totally convinced of his infidelity was the constant level of activity about the estate. There was a possibility that he was legitimately busy, spending his time seeing to the seed
and fertilizer and human labor force needed if Woodham were once again to become a successful cotton plantation. That this was Jon’s plan she learned from Petersham. The captain had decided to take up planting, which the little valet found hard to understand, and when Master Jon did something he went all out. Why, he, Petersham, wouldn’t be surprised if they had a bumper cotton crop by next summer!

Cathy was patently uninterested in cotton. She was cross, and tired, and if she were honest she would admit that she was missing Jon. She longed for the baby’s birth the way a jailed convict longs for freedom. Once her body was her own again, she vowed, she would have no scruples about using it to get what she wanted: the love of her husband.

Martha was appointed housekeeper for the time being, and she was growing more and more harassed. Unused to dealing with Americans, she was deeply suspicious of them and refused to let any of them near Miss Cathy. She was sure they were all savages and would slit the girl’s throat if given the chance. The constant upheaval caused by this attitude did nothing for Cathy’s serenity. When she was on her feet again, domestic organization would be another problem she would have to deal with.

The weather remained warm and sunny through the first day of March. Then a gentle shower broke the monotony, its soft pattering noise against the closed windows lulling Cathy into drowsiness. She had felt strangely lethargic all day, and the burden she carried seemed even heavier than usual. Which was normal, she supposed, as the child was due any day now.

Jon had looked in on her that morning, inquiring with
a cool politeness about her health. He had been dressed for town, and Cathy had eyed his handsome form with smoldering resentment. He was responsible for her discomfort, and he wasn’t suffering one bit! She scowled at him, refusing to speak, and he had looked her over with bland disinterest before according her a mocking bow and proceeding on his way.

As she ate her dinner, propped up against a mound of pillows in the enormous bed, Cathy stared moodily at her engagement ring, the brilliant stones reflecting the light of the candle near the bed. Jon was a swine, she thought bitterly. Even now he might be with another woman, kissing her, making love to her. Cathy’s whole body burned with jealousy. If Jon had been present she would have taken great pleasure in slapping that bronzed face.

Savagely she speared a piece of chicken with her fork, pretending it was Jon. As she bit into it with grim satisfaction her eyes widened. A rush of water spread over her legs, wetting the covers and mattress. What on earth … ? She stared down at her lower body with amazement. She had wet herself! Then the truth dawned. It was her time. The baby was coming!

She looked around for the bell that was supposed to stand on the bedside table. It wasn’t there. Between Martha and the confused house servants nothing was in its place. But she had to have help. She tried calling out, but her voice echoed thinly and she knew it wouldn’t be audible beyond the confines of the room. Gritting her teeth, she swung her feet to the floor and eased out of bed. She no longer had to worry about doing something that would force the arrival of the baby. It was on its way of its own accord!

Her legs were shaky from the weeks she had spent in bed, but she managed to drag herself across to the door by holding on to the furniture. The first pain hit her as she was stepping into the hall. She bent double, gasping, but it was gone almost as soon as she felt it. That wasn’t so bad, she thought, heartened. Maybe childbirth wouldn’t be the ordeal she had feared.

Her room was three doors away from the stairs. She made it to the top, hanging on to the banister as she looked down. She didn’t dare attempt it. A fall might kill both herself and the child.

“Martha!” she called. Her voice was pitiably weak. She tried again. “Martha!”

The door to one of the rooms off the hall opened and Cathy could see the cozy glow of a lamp illuminating a filled bookcase. The study, she surmised, and opened her mouth to call out again just as Jon stepped into the hall with another man.

“Thanks very much for stopping by, Bailey,” Jon said, shaking the man’s hand.

“It was a pleasure, Captain Hale,” the man replied.

Cathy tried to draw back into the shadows of the upper hallway, not wanting to call attention to her predicament with a strange man present, but another pain struck and a tiny moan escaped her.

Jon glanced almost casually up the stairs, his face freezing with disbelief as he saw Cathy doubled over at the top.

“My God!” he breathed, and came up the stairs two at a time. Cathy felt his strong arms go around her with almost womanly gentleness. She tilted her head back, trying to smile at him. The effort was contorted by another pain.

“It’s … I’m having the baby!” she gasped, when the spasm had receded.

Jon nodded, his face white beneath its tan.

“I’m going to lift you,” he said, his voice very calm. “You don’t even have to put your arms around my neck. Just relax. You’ll be all right.”

He lifted her with infinite care, then bore her swiftly back along the hall to her bedroom. Gently he lowered her to the bed, then strode back to the open bedroom door. His bellow for Martha shook the house to its rafters.

Fifteen

C
athy was in labor for almost twenty-four hours. As the night wore on Martha saw that the delivery would be difficult, and sent word down to Jon asking him to summon a physician. (It was the custom for babies to be delivered by female members of the expectant mother’s household.) The message was unnecessary. Jon, white and shaken by the sounds that emanated from behind the closed bedroom door, had already done so.

The low moans were bad enough, but Cathy’s occasional piercing screams were well-nigh unbearable. Jon broke out in a cold sweat, and had to be physically restrained by Petersham and one of the new housemen from rushing upstairs and bursting into the room where his wife was enduring such agony.

Old Dr. Sanderson, arrived more than three hours after being sent for. He responded to Jon’s growling demand to know what the hell had kept him by pouring Jon a stiff whiskey and telling him brusquely to stay out of the way. As he mounted the stairs to the upper floor shaking his shaggy white head, the doctor was heard to mutter that he would rather deliver twenty expectant females than deal with one prospective father. The women were usually far more stoical.

To Jon’s intense annoyance and Petersham’s consternation, the whiskey helped only marginally. Jon downed
great quantities of the stuff, but his mind was so desperately attuned to what was happening upstairs that oblivion eluded him. When Cathy’s screams rose to such a pitch that he was sure she must be dying, all he could do was stride about the hall outside her bedroom, cursing and praying in the same breath. The thought of her suffering tore at his vital organs like red-hot pincers, making a mockery of the cold contempt he had convinced himself he felt for her. Bloody fool, he castigated himself, as emotions he had thought long dead struggled for resurrection. Would you love her now, after all she’s done to you? No, his mind screamed in reply. Any love he might once have felt for her had been foully murdered by her treachery.

Another piteous moan from inside the bedchamber made Jon flinch. Petersham silently passed him another shot glass of whiskey, and Jon bolted it down. It didn’t help. With a great flash of insight it burst on him that his lust was solely responsible for Cathy’s pain. Shuddering with self-loathing, he remembered how he had callously ignored her pleas that first time on the
Margarita
, his own hungry passion driving him ruthlessly on until he had possessed her completely. And he had not been content with merely stealing her virginity. Oh, no! He had taken her time and again until the end result was the agony she was even now suffering. Listening to her anguished cries, he vowed never to touch her again as long as she lived. If she lived. He was hideously afraid that he might already have killed her.

All through the next day Jon refused to move from the vicinity of the bedroom, rejecting food with an impatient shake of the head. Petersham shook his head over him, thinking that Master Jon was drinking enough whiskey
to fell a horse and hardly showing it. The valet did his best to coax Jon to lie down on the sofa in his study for a brief rest, or to step outside for a breath of fresh air, but Jon curtly dismissed all such suggestions. He continued to prowl the hall just outside the bedroom, swallowing shots of whiskey like water and morosely pouring himself more. Every time Cathy made the slightest sound he winced, and when she screamed he went as white as death. Martha, bustling from the room occasionally to fetch hot water or towels for Dr. Sanderson, was shocked at the state he was in and did her best to cheer him up. Really, the poor man seemed to be suffering almost as much as Miss Cathy!

Toward dusk Cathy’s screams grew to a shattering crescendo. Jon froze outside in the hallway, his eyes fixed fearfully on the closed bedroom door. Finally he could bear it no longer. With a frenzied rush he burst through the door only to stand transfixed just inside the threshold, one hand still on the knob. Dr. Sanderson was holding a tiny, blood-covered infant by the heels, and, even as Jon watched, administered a sharp slap to the miniscule buttocks. Jon’s mouth gaped open as the child let out a wailing cry, and then Dr. Sanderson was laughing and passing the baby to Martha, who was smiling with big glistening tears rolling down her plump cheeks. Jon felt his knees sag with relief. At last the ordeal was over!

“Cathy?” he questioned hoarsely. Both Martha and Dr. Sanderson turned shocked faces toward him, not having heard him enter. For a moment two sternly reproving sets of features regarded him, and then Dr. Sanderson’s old face quivered into a smile.

“Relax, Captain,” Dr. Sanderson said dryly. “From the looks of you, Mistress Hale is in better shape than you are.”

“You’ve got a son, Master Jon,” Martha put in joyfully, proffering the infant, wrapped in a blanket, for him to view. Jon glanced at it abstractedly, vaguely registering a red, wrinkled face and a thatch of black hair. It looks like a red Indian, he thought even as his gaze was leaving the sleeping bundle to fix hungrily on the girl in the bed.

“Wait until we get her cleaned up, Master Jon,” Martha urged softly, seeing where his eyes rested.

“I want to see her now,” Jon said stubbornly. At a resigned nod from Dr. Sanderson Martha discreetly withdrew a few paces.

“Cathy?” Jon’s voice was husky as he came to stand beside the bed, staring down with pained eyes at her small, pale face. Her bright hair was wet with sweat and wildly mussed, trailing in great snarled strands across the plump white pillows. Her lips and cheeks were practically bloodless. Jon was afraid for one shattering instant that she had died while everyone in the room had been taken up with the baby. Then her eyes fluttered open, and she smiled weakly as she saw who was looking down at her.

“Jon,” she murmured, her eyes great pools of tiredness. “I did it, Jon.”

Her way of putting it brought a slight, rueful smile to his lips. Dr. Sanderson was right. She did seem to be in better shape than he was, mentally at least. Giddy with relief, he took her hand, carrying it to his lips and pressing his mouth passionately against the softness of it.

“Thank you for a son, my love,” he murmured hoarsely, the endearment slipping past him before he could catch it.

Cathy smiled up at him tenderly, her sapphire eyes glowing. It was the first time he had called her that since
the soldiers had come to Las Palmas. She badly wanted to hear more. He looked terrible, his eyes bloodshot and his jaw unshaven, his hair standing up wildly all over his head as if he had been running his fingers through it. He had been worried about her, she saw with satisfaction. Desperately worried, from the look of him. She took a deep breath, wanting to answer him, to encourage him to say other soft words. The unmistakable smell of stale whiskey hit her nostrils as she inhaled.

“You stink,” she mumbled, surprised, and then her eyelids fluttered down and she was asleep.

Jon’s mouth curved in a foolish grin at that, and he pressed another ardent kiss to her hand before tucking it reverently beneath the covers. He turned from the bed, still grinning, and walked on unsteady legs to the hall. No sooner had he reached it than his knees gave out and he collapsed with a crash. By the time Dr. Sanderson reached him, he was snoring loudly. The doctor shook his head, and called for Petersham to come and help him get the captain to his bedroom. The whiskey had finally, belatedly, had its effect.

Jon slept like a stone through the rest of that night and well into the next day. He finally surfaced, when the reedy cry of an infant pierced through his fogged brain. Frowning bemusedly, he shook his head to clear it, reaching for the water jug to rinse the stale taste from his mouth. What was a baby doing at Woodham? Then he remembered. The cry must be coming from his son! Why was no one seeing to the child? Groaning, he hoisted himself to his feet, running a hand over his wildly tousled hair as he walked very carefully out of the room and into the hall. The cry seemed to come from Cathy’s bedroom and he approached
it with grim determination. Just as he made it to the door, it opened before him. Martha’s startled face blinked at him, then moved over his crumpled form. She grinned, then quickly assumed a serious expression as Jon frowned at her.