The Midwife's Choice (11 page)

Martha chuckled and clicked the reins. For all her good qualities, Aunt Hilda made terrible desserts, but Martha would never hurt her feelings and tell her. Besides, how bad could anything really taste when it was topped with gobs of honey? “I won't breathe a word,” she promised.

Aunt Hilda leaned forward and laid her head against Martha's back. “I know you wouldn't. That's one of the reasons I love you like my own. You're a good woman. You haven't had it easy, have you? I know it's been hard for you with Victoria, but I'm so proud of you. You're making the right decision, Martha. A hard one, but right,” she murmured.

Martha's heart swelled. She had valued Thomas's opinion, but it was Aunt Hilda's approval that meant even more.

“Now, you bring that girl over and let me have a good talk with her. That Mrs. Morgan, too. It won't hurt to let them both know you're not alone being concerned.”

“I will. Sometime tomorrow. After you've had a chance to . . . to thaw out and get a good night's sleep in your own bed,”
Martha suggested as they approached Aunt Hilda's cottage. She pulled up, turned in her seat, and helped Aunt Hilda to get down. She held on to the elderly woman until she was steady on her feet before dismounting herself.

“Come inside. We'll get a good fire going—”

“I have an errand I have to tend to, but I'll be back with Victoria tomorrow,” Martha promised, determined that the reunion between Aunt Hilda and her husband would be conducted in private, even if Martha had to stretch the truth a little to make that happen.

She waited until Aunt Hilda had entered the cottage and closed the door before taking Grace back to her stall and feeding her an extra portion of oats for being so good about carrying extra weight today. She proceeded directly to Samuel's cabin on foot, carrying her gifts with her in a basket.

With a little luck, she would be back home just in time for supper, and she looked forward to spending a quiet evening at home with Victoria. Lord knew there were precious few of those left to her.

Martha tried knocking on Samuel's cabin door a third time and paid extra attention to the signal knock she used to let Samuel know who was at the door.

Still no answer.

She glanced at the windows on either side of the door, but didn't bother with them. The shutters were latched closed. She muttered under her breath. She had slipped on ice and fallen twice, landing on her bottom in thick banks of snow. She had dropped her basket both times. How the bottle of honey wine had survived intact was a mystery, but Will's socks looked like four sorry snowballs. The cinnamon rolls were smashed and looked fit for hogs.

She could barely feel her toes. Her fingers were practically numb. Drat!

Both impatient and irritable, she pursed her lips, formed a fist, banged hard, and then again. “Samuel? Will? I know you're in there! Let me in, or . . . I'm going to get the sheriff and have him break down the door.”

No response.

She kicked the door, letting out a shrill scream as pain shot from her toes to her knee and back again. She looked down at her foot to make sure she had not actually kicked her toes right off. “Temper! When are you going to learn to control your temper?” she grumbled.

She closed her eyes and waited for her foot to stop throbbing before making one last attempt to see the troublesome pair inside. Surely they had to be here. Where could Samuel go now? He was blind, and Will would not have any reason to set out by himself.

She knocked the signal one last time.

Silence.

She had no other recourse but to leave. She was simply too cold to wait them both out, but she was also confused. They had never refused to see her before, which did not bode well for her plans. There was simply no way Samuel and Will could stay here now, and refusing to see her would not prevent the inevitable.

“They must know that,” she murmured. She set the basket down in front of the door.

Samuel was too old and stubborn and Will was too young and ornery to admit it. That's all. The bond between the crusty recluse and the streetwise orphan was as amazing as it was strong, and Martha had no one to blame but herself for pairing the two. She had given divine inspiration all the credit at the time, but nothing short of divine intervention would be able to resolve the crisis that would now force the two apart.

Resigned the battle would have to be postponed for another
day, she turned to leave. Straight ahead, emerging from the woods, the life images of stubborn and ornery appeared. Relief flooded through her veins. A smile tickled the corner of her lips.

As they drew closer, however, she realized they had carried trouble home with them.

U
nfortunately, trouble often came in pairs, but Providence could not have picked a better time to guide both Samuel and Will back home.

Martha glanced at both of them, turned sideways, and pointed to the cabin. “Don't stop to explain. Just get inside. Both of you,” she ordered.

She could not tell which one looked worse. Both were a ghastly shade of blue with their cheeks stained crimson. Their clothes were frozen stiff. She did not dare go ahead of them for fear they might fall and she would not be able to drag either one of them very far.

Will tugged on Samuel's hand. “C-come on. C-coupla more steps. C-cabin's just ahead. Hold 'er steady on c-course,” he barked, with all the authority of a ship's captain triple his own size and age.

“Y-you g-got no b-b-business here,” Samuel bellowed to Martha.

She forgave his rude welcome. She even managed to ignore it, followed them inside the cabin, and set her basket to the side.
“Don't get comfortable, Samuel. You, either, young man,” she warned as Will steered them toward the chairs in front of the Franklin stove in the middle of the room. She removed her cape and gloves and set them aside.

“D-don't go m-meddlin', w-woman,” Samuel countered. His teeth were chattering so hard she half expected to see them crack and drop out of his mouth like yellow kernels of corn. He bristled with indignation.

She glared at him, and she felt better, even though she knew he could not see her expression. But Will could, and he squared his thin shoulders. “W-we d-don't n-need no help.”

“I can see that. You're both the picture of health and good sense.” She shut and bolted the door behind her. “I'll be sure to tell folks that when they're staring at your corpses wondering how on earth a grown man and a boy could both be so half-witted as to go swimming in the pond at this time of year.”

Her flippant guess hit closer to the truth than she might have expected.

“We d-didn't go s-swimmin' on purpose,” Will snapped. “We was . . . we was ice fishin', and the d-dumb ice just c-cracked open. D-dumped us both in. G-good thing we was c-close to shore.”

“You're lucky you both didn't drown,” Martha snapped, too shocked by what had happened to say much more. Only last fall, both Will and Thomas had wound up in that same pond after he tried to rescue the boy from an ill-fated attempt to build a raft upstream, only to have the raft break apart when he guided it over the falls. She just might have to fence the pond off to protect Will from himself, then realized he would just scale the fence anyway, the stubborn scamp. “Now strip, both of you, down to the skin while I find some blankets.”

Samuel's purple lips sputtered. “Y-you've gone lunatic if you th-think I'm gonna—”

“I've had the same suspicions about my sanity more than once today,” she countered.

Shudders shook Will's body. Beneath spiked lashes and brows dusted with snow and ice, his dark eyes snapped. “I ain't barin' myself in fronta no girl!”

“You'll both strip. Now,” she repeated. “I'll get some blankets, then keep myself busy in the galley looking for some fresh horseradish to grate for that argumentative mouth of yours.”

Either they were both too cold or too much in shock to argue further. After she dropped some blankets on the floor at their feet, she went straight to the corner of the cabin Samuel referred to as the galley. His stores were meager.

She passed over the horseradish and found several soft and wrinkled turnips and carrots. She diced them for soup. There was only one potato, but it was large. She diced that, too, and tossed everything into a pot. There was not a single herb to add for flavor or meat to provide strength, but the soup would be filling and hot. She got a fire going on the cookstove, covered the vegetables with water, and set the pot to boil.

By then, the grumbling and complaining behind her had stopped, and she judged it safe to turn around. Sure enough, both Will and Samuel were parked in front of the Franklin stove, each with a blanket draped around their shoulders and another that covered them from their waists to their feet. They huddled together, their chairs side by side, with their wet clothing lying in a heap on the floor.

“You two look a little better,” she murmured. She added more wood to the stove and draped the wet clothing around the cabin to dry.

Will sneezed and wiped his nose with the corner of the blanket. “Coulda done this ourselves,” he spat.

Samuel swatted at the boy's head. “Mind your manners, boy. The woman can't help herself. She's got to meddle. Just born to it, I suppose.”

“You could have both drowned,” she argued. “And you would have, but for the grace of God.”

“If God had a mind to, he coulda helped us off the ice before it cracked.” He sniffed the air. “What's that you got cookin'?”

“Soup. Not that you deserve any,” she remarked as she approached him.

“Smells good. We thank you,” Samuel murmured.

“It should warm your insides. The stove should warm the rest. There's not much more we can do now. Just wait and see if you both come down with lung congestion. Whatever were you thinking? Why on earth would you decide to go ice fishing?”

Samuel let out a sigh. “Old fool that I am, I was thinkin' about catchin' some fish for supper. The falls are frozen silent. The ice shoulda held. Will said it was good and thick, but I couldn't see for myself. . . .”

She pressed her hands together. “I'm sorry. Dr. McMillan told me what happened.”

“Young know-nothin'! He's got no right tellin' my business to nobody.”

“I'm your friend,” she insisted.

“Then be one. Leave me and the boy to work this out. We got through worse than this before.”

Martha's heart trembled. Samuel clearly had no concept of the difficulty he and Will would face now that blindness had rendered Samuel so helpless. “I'd like to help,” she suggested.

He put his arm around Will's shoulders. “Then help this mate into his hammock so he can rest. Now that my bones are thawin' out, I'd like to get into some warm clothes, if you'd get them for me.”

Will yawned. “I ain't tired.”

Martha urged him to his feet. “Maybe not, but you'll be all toasty and warm in the hammock while you're waiting for the soup to cook. Samuel and I need to talk.”

Will rolled his eyes, a habit she thought he had broken.

He did not protest further, and she led him to one of two hammocks in the corner of the cabin opposite the galley. He
got into the hammock on his second attempt. Martha tucked the two blankets around him and added a third to cover him from head to toe. “Get some rest.” She nudged the hammock until it began to rock.

He yawned and closed his eyes. “You gonna be here when I wake up?”

“Probably.”

“Figured as much,” he grumbled and promptly drifted off to sleep.

Will was fast asleep. So far, he showed no sign of fever. Samuel had dressed and polished off two large bowls of soup, rather neatly, considering his handicap. Martha sat with him in front of the Franklin stove, wondering how to broach the subject that would cause both Samuel and Will great pain.

Samuel broke the silence that stretched like a taut rope between them. “I know the boy's got to go. Problem is, I got no place to send him. That boy needs a firm hand, and I know I can't wield it. Not like I am now,” he murmured.

Surprised that he would openly admit his own weakness, as well as relinquish all claims to Will, she did not know how to respond.

He leaned an elbow on his lap and covered the raised serpent tattoo on his cheek with the palm of his hand. “Expect that's why you came. To take him.”

“No, I . . . not yet. Soon, perhaps, but not today, especially after that spill into the pond. He'll need plenty of rest and good hot food. So will you,” she cautioned.

He straightened up and gripped the arms of his chair. “I been on my own most of my life. Don't see that changin' now. I might have two eyes that are plumb useless, but I still got my sturdy constitution and my wits.”

“Yes, you do. As for Will, let me tell you what I have in mind.” She gave him a brief description of the home she thought might be best for Will and answered all of his questions. “Nothing is set in stone quite yet, so I wouldn't say anything to Will.”

“He won't like it, but he'll do it,” Samuel promised.

She wanted to take him at his word, but she knew Will well enough to be skeptical. He had run off several times in the past, though never from Samuel. “How can you be so sure?”

She thought she saw a flash of pain in eyes that no longer held any sign of life. “Because I'll tell him it's an order. He'll obey. Taught him to,” he responded.

Martha caught her breath and held it for several long heartbeats. Why the good Lord had seen fit to bring these two together, only to tear them apart, made no sense. No sense at all.

“You'll give me a good bit of warnin', though? I have things to discuss with the boy before I send him away.”

“I will. Of course,” she promised. Until she remembered that June and Victoria would be leaving in four or five days. “Maybe you should talk to Will over the next few days while he's recuperating. Just in case things happen faster than we suspect.”

Samuel tipped his chin up a notch and cocked his head. His eyes might be clouded forever now, but she could still see he was puzzled.

“Just in case you're . . . you're not here for much longer,” she explained.

He laughed out loud. Not an ordinary laugh, either. A full, belly-shaking laugh that colored his cheeks. “One dang slip into the pond, and you got me dead and buried, is that it? I've been keelhauled twice, shipwrecked more than half a dozen times, and I've faced the wrong end of a pirate's sword more than you'd probably believe. It's gonna take more than a pond of ice to do me in.”

He laughed again, then his emotional pendulum swung wide and fast to the opposite end of the spectrum. He paled and
gripped the arms of his chair so hard his knuckles whitened. He struggled, visibly, as anger flared, then slipped behind despair. “After all I've fought against and won, don't seem fair to lose my eyesight to some cowardly, sneaky ailment nobody can cure.” He shook his head. “Can't say the prospect of bein' a helpless, useless old man is all that appealin'.”

Martha swallowed hard. “You're helpless, perhaps, and not up to living on your own anymore, but you're certainly not useless. God has plans for all of us, though we may not like them. There's so much—”

He slapped his thigh and silenced her. “Don't go gettin' all spiritual and start proselytizin' like some preacher. Got no time for that.”

Her backbone stiffened. “I have no intention of preaching to you. I came to offer you a position, if you have to know the truth.”

He sniffed the air. “You're tipsy. Knew there must be some reason for you sayin' somethin' so ridiculous. I'm blind, woman! The only position I could get is sittin' in this chair.”

She huffed. “I am not tipsy!”

“I smell it. Wine's my guess. Maybe honey wine.”

Her gaze dropped to the bottom of her skirts. Sure enough, the hem was stained just like her cape. “I didn't drink any honey wine. I dropped the bottle. It broke, and the wine splashed the hem of my skirts.”

“Waste of good wine,” he grumbled. “Well, if you're not tipsy, I must have been right earlier. You've gone lunatic on me. Shame. You're mighty young—”

“I have not gone mad,” she snapped, “but I am getting mad, and if you don't let me tell you about the position, I will lose my temper.
I
don't want to lose my temper.
You
don't want me to lose my temper. If Will were awake, he'd tell you
he
doesn't want me to lose my temper, either.”

Panting, she paused to grab a breath and realized she sounded
just like Anne Sweet. No wonder the woman got her way. Folks just gave in to her to get some peace and quiet. “Lord, spare me,” she whispered, although she admitted to having a new respect for Anne's tactics.

He chuckled. Again and again. “You got the spirit of a true sailor! You shoulda been a man. I'da been proud to serve with ya. Now, tell me about this so-called position. Just what are you plannin' for me?”

She took a deep breath and hoped God had a flock of angels nearby for reinforcements. “A home. A perfectly lovely home. For aging sailors, and—”

He leaped to his feet and balled his hands into fists. Splotches of anger stained his cheeks. “A home? You want to lock me up in some kind of institution? You best be thankful you're not a man,” he bellowed, “or I'd cut out your tongue and feed it to the sharks before I put that head of yours on a spike and mounted it on the top mast!”