Susan Krinard - Bride of the Wolf

Anything at all.

Renshaw startled her by holding his hands in front of her face. “Clean enough for you, Mrs. McCarrick?”

His voice was milder than she had expected, and all at once her certainty of his guilt seemed less secure than it had been only minutes before. She looked up at Renshaw with all the confidence a married woman should display.

“Thank you,” she said. “Would you kindly fill the bottle?”

He stared at her a moment longer, then removed the cork, tube and rubber nipple from the bottle, knelt beside the pail and pushed the bottle into the milk. When the bottle was full, he thrust it at her.

“Feed it,” he said.

Swallowing fresh resentment, she took the bottle and rested the nipple against the baby’s lips. His tiny nostrils flared, and his mouth opened a hairbreadth.

“Mr. Renshaw,” she said, fixing her gaze on the baby’s face, “I would like to make one thing perfectly clear. I am not an employee at Dog Creek. I am not under your command.”

She couldn’t see his reaction, but she heard the sudden intake of his breath, as if he was about to speak. She concentrated on the baby again … on the way the rosebud lips opened wider, the miniature fists flailed toward the bottle.

“There now,” she said. “That’s it.” She nudged the bottle into his mouth, and he took it.

Renshaw’s worn, dusty boots shuffled on the scratched wooden floor. “Is it goin’ to be all right?” he asked.

“It is not an ‘it,’” she said. “It is a ‘he.’”

“You think I don’t know that?”

“One would be hard-pressed to realize it.”

Rachel had not lived so sheltered a life that she hadn’t heard far worse profanity than he uttered now. “I will thank you not to speak so in front of the baby,” she snapped.

“You’re tellin’ me he can understand?”

Once again she lifted her gaze from the suckling infant, focusing on the dark, strong brows above Renshaw’s striking eyes. “What do you intend to do with the child when he’s better?” she asked.

For once Renshaw seemed to have nothing to say. If the child was a foundling, presumably abandoned, the chances of his parents coming forward to reclaim him were dubious at best. Wouldn’t a man like him be eager to be rid of such a burden, as he had so obviously been relieved to consign the child’s care to her?

A man like him . Could she be wrong about him, too quick to base her judgment upon Sean McCarrick’s obvious dislike of his uncle’s foreman? Had her natural prejudice in favor of Jedediah’s nephew, so clearly a gentleman and so comfortingly respectful, colored her perception of this man?

Rachel bit her lip and watched him from the corner of her eye. “There is no need for you to remain,” she said. “The baby will rest after he is done feeding. You may return to your work.”

His brief laugh was more of a bark than an indication of amusement. “Oh, so I have your permission, Mrs. McCarrick?”

She averted her face quickly. “You have set me a task, Mr. Renshaw, for which you are ill suited, as I am unsuited for yours.”

“There ain’t much food in the house. We ain’t fitted out for a lady.”

One might almost have taken it for an apology. “I will make do,” she said.

“I’ll send Maurice to find out what you need. What he don’t have in the cookhouse, he can get in Javelina.” He cleared his throat. “Do you need anythin’ else for the baby?”

“Yes. As many clean cloths as you can get. And—” She almost blushed. “It is better if the baby has mother’s milk. A wet nurse, a woman who has just had a child herself …”

“Is that all?”

His mockery had returned, tempered by something else she couldn’t quite name. “I will see that you know if there is anything else,” she said.

He lingered for a few heartbeats more, then opened the door and went outside. Rachel didn’t breathe again until she had counted all the way to ten.

“There now,” she said to the baby. “He’s gone. You don’t have to be afraid.”

The infant burbled, bringing up little milky bubbles. She set the bottle on the table, picked up one of the rags Renshaw had taken from the saddlebags, laid it across her shoulder and gently positioned the infant over the cloth.

He did exactly what he ought to do, and promptly fell into a deep, contented sleep. Rachel almost imagined she could see the color coming back into his skin, the roundness of health returning to his thin body.

She sang to him for a while, afraid to disturb him, and then looked for a place to lay him down. There was no cradle, of course. She ventured cautiously into the short hall and looked into the two rooms that led off from it.

One, the smaller, was clearly the province of a man, though it was tidy enough. The bed, covered with an Indian blanket, was neatly made. The walls were bare save for a faded photograph of a pretty, dark-haired woman in a white dress. The air smelled faintly of horse, perspiration, leather … and him . He might be unpolished and blunt, rude and uncivilized, but these were not the quarters of an ignorant boor.

Who was the lady whose picture was placed across from his bed where he could see her every night before he went to sleep? A relative? An actress he admired? A former lover?

She backed away hastily and turned to the other room. It was as plain as the rest of the house, but somehow softer, with a quilted coverlet in muted tones and an empty vase on the table beside the bed. The house might not be “fitted out for a lady,” but some attempt had been made here, and the bedstead was wide enough to accommodate two sleepers side by side.

Jedediah got that bed for me . No one had ever cared so much for her happiness. Unwanted tears seeped into her eyes. When he returned, everything would be just as it should.

The bed was soft enough for a baby. She laid one of the spare cloths on top of the quilt and set the child down. He didn’t wake as she removed his diaper and carefully pinned on another. He would need a bath soon, but recuperative sleep, now that his stomach was full, was far more essential.

It felt strange, even wrong at first, to lie on the bed as if it belonged to her. She reminded herself that it was for the baby and settled him into the crook of her arm with a sigh she almost dared think of as contented. She tried to stay awake, certain that Holden Renshaw would soon come striding into the house with more questions and demands.

But her own body insisted on claiming its due, and she drifted into that half-world where anything was possible.

I will wait, Jedediah. I will not be afraid. I will make you happy .

And no one, not even Holden Renshaw, would stop her.

IT WAS DONE. Heath had committed himself, and there was no going back. Much as he hated the situation, much as he wanted to get as far away from humans as he could, he was bound by the baby. And the baby was bound to the woman until it was healthy again.

Not “it ,” Heath reminded himself as he strode toward the bunkhouse. Him . Damn the woman. Wash your hands. Fill the bottle. Get back to work . She talked like a schoolmarm and gave orders like a cavalry sergeant.

Sure, the fear he’d smelled on her never completely went away. Most humans could feel that he wasn’t one of them without knowing why. He could make just about anyone afraid by staring them down or showing his teeth, and Sean had probably said plenty bad about him. Heath hadn’t exactly tried to prove the bastard wrong.

But Rachel had stood up to him, even though she must have had other things than him to be scared of. Whatever her reasons, she’d come a long way to a strange place to marry a man she could hardly know and found him gone. She must feel mighty alone.