Miranda Jarrett - Gift Of The Heart

Abruptly Rachel awakened. The hearth fire had burned low, and the house was cold, the sick man’s ragged breathing still echoing in the little house. Shivering, she put another log on the fire and fanned it bright, then turned to look first at the sleeping boy on the trundle, curled safely in the little nest of his quilt, and then at the man in her bed.

Gently she swept the fever-damp hair back from his forehead, her smile tight. Sometime while she’d slept, Billy had come and placed Blackie on the pillow beside the man’s head.

Tears blurred her eyes, tears she had no right to shed. To be alone on the farm held no fears for her now; she’d welcomed the solitude when William had left. But why had it taken this stranger to remind her again that the price of being alone was loneliness?

Jamie was weak, Lord help him, he was so weak and wasted that to raise his heavy eyelids even this much was more than he thought possible. But if he did, he could see the woman kneading the bread dough on the long wooden table, her bands and forearms white with flour, and for one glimpse of that he would have dragged himself through the snow to Albany and back.

She was so beautiful that at first he’d wondered if she was real or only one more groundless fever-dream. She was tall and graceful as she went about her tasks in the little cabin, her figure rounded but neat, the bow of her apron emphasizing the narrow span of her waist. Strange how often he’d focused on that bow when the pain had burned him the worst, struggling to concentrate on something, anything, but his own tortured body.

And damnation, she had made it almost easy. On the first night he remembered her coming to him by light of the fire alone, bending over him so her unbound hair, black as a moonless night, had rippled over her shoulders. Her fingertips had been cool as she’d gently, so gently, stroked his cheek above his beard. Then he had seen the color of her eyes in the firelight, the same bright green as young maples in the spring, and with feverish fascination he had watched as the little gold hoops with carnelian drops that she wore in her ears swung gently against the full curve of her cheek.

She’d saved his life, he knew that, but his pleasure in her company ran deeper than that alone. After all the ugliness and suffering he’d seen in these past two years since the war had become his life, her beauty was a balm to his soul, healing and easing him as much as the broth and herb possets she’d spooned between his parched lips.

Not that he’d a right to it, not for a moment. He knew that, too. After what he’d done, he deserved no beauty, no sweetness, no comfort at all.

Fiercely he reminded himself that he knew nothing of the woman’s allegiances, nor those of her husband’s. She was kind, she was beautiful, but he’d seen before how hatred could make other kind, beautiful women turn on their enemies. For all he knew she’d kept him alive only to be able to claim the bounty Butler offered for his capture.

“More milk, Mama,” said the little boy, waving his battered pewter mug imperiously as he tugged on his mother’s skirts for her attention. She turned and glanced so meaningfully at the cup that, mystified, he looked inside before he realized what she intended. Then he grinned, and held the empty cup out again. “More, please, Mama!”

Jamie watched as the woman smiled and bent to wipe the smudged jam from the boy’s mouth, and a fresh wave of guilt and sorrow swept over his soul as he thought of another boy, one who would never again be treated to blackberry jam and corn bread or a mother’s kiss to his sticky cheek. He closed his eyes again, desperately wishing it was as easy to shut out the memory of the past.

He would leave now, today. There was no other way.

Through sheer will he raised himself up on his uninjured arm. “Friend,” he began, his voice croaking from disuse, “I must thank you.”

With a startled gasp she turned toward him, her green eyes turning wary as she shoved the child behind the shelter of her skirts.

“You’re awake.” She brushed away a strand of hair from her forehead with the heel of her hand, forgetting the flour that left a powdery streak against the black waves. “Heaven help me, I knew this would happen when your fever broke yesterday.”

“Don’t rejoice too much,” said Jamie dryly, wincing as he shifted higher against the pillows. “Given a choice, I’d rather I’d waked than not.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” said Rachel quickly. Though it had made more work for her when he’d been ill, she was doubly glad now that she’d put him to bed in his breeches and shirt. “I wouldn’t have tended to you at all if I didn’t wish you to live.”

“Or given me your bed?”

Rachel drew back sharply, her face turning hot at what he implied. How much did he remember of what she’d murmured to him as he’d tossed with fever and pain? Unconscious, he had been only a lost, wounded man who would most likely die despite her efforts, and in her loneliness she had caught herself pouring out her heart into his unhearing ears. At least, then she’d believed he hadn’t heard. But now, under the keen, unsettling gaze of his blue eyes, she wasn’t certain of anything.

“This isn’t an inn with a bed to suit every traveler,” she said defensively. “You were too ill to sleep on the floor, and too large for the trundle.”

“The floor would have suited me well enough,” he said gruffly, wondering what devil had made him mention the bed at all. He’d meant to thank her, not insult her. “I didn’t ask for your man’s place.”

“What makes you think you have it now?” Lord help her, why hadn’t she kept her mouth shut? Furiously she began wiping the flour from her hands onto her apron. No man could ever fill the empty place William had ripped in her heart, nor would she let another come close enough to try. She’d no intention of making a mistake like that again. “A husband’s considerably more than a valley worn deep in a feather bed.”

“I never said otherwise,” replied Jamie softly, responding more to the unmistakable pain in her eyes than to her words. “So you miss him that much, then?”

But even as Rachel opened her mouth to correct the stranger, she realized the folly of telling the truth. Hadn’t she said enough already? She knew nothing for certain of this man, not even his name. She was miles from any neighbor or friend, doubly bound in by the snow. Better to let him believe that she loved William fervently, better still to hint that he was expected home again at any time.

“Of course I miss him,” she said carefully. “He’s my husband, and this is his home. I pray for his safe return soon, before Christmas and the worst snows.”

“Then he’s a fortunate man, your husband,” said Jamie with a heartiness he didn’t feel.

“He is.” Rachel nodded, a single swift motion of her chin to mask her bitterness. William was lucky, barbarously lucky; she was the one that fortune had frowned upon. “He always has been.”

“Luck of any kind is a great gift in this war.” Jamie sighed, trying to remember what else, if anything, she’d told him about her husband beyond that he was away with the rebel army. Not that it mattered. He meant to be gone long before the most fortunate husband returned.

She was watching him warily, stroking the little boy’s flaxen hair over and over with the palm of her hand, more to calm herself than the child. By the firelight her eyes were as green as he remembered, and unconsciously she swallowed and ran her tongue around her lips to moisten them.

Oh, aye, her husband was a fortunate man. Afraid that his expression would betray his own despondency, Jamie looked away from her face to the boy at her side and smiled. The child reminded him of his brother, Sam, his cheeks rosy and plump and his little chin marked with the same resolute stubbornness.