M. Donice Byrd - The Warner Saga (32 page)

“Christ! Is that what this is about?”

“You said you weren’t going to divorce me because they needed a mother. If we don’t find them, are you going to leave me?”

“I’m never going to quit looking for them so I suppose your position is safe,” he said emotionlessly.

“Lucky me,” she said in the same cold tone. “I’m really getting tired of you treating me like I’m to blame.”

“You’re the one who told
Frederick I’m a spy so he could blurt it out in front of Pete.”

“I did no such thing! I told him I thought you were a government messenger. I didn’t know you were a spy until you told me. He’s the one who put it together,” she stated. “You should have been open with me and told me the truth. Then you could have told me to keep it to myself and I would have.”

“If I knew you’d show up here, maybe I would have. You should’ve stayed in St. Joseph until you heard from me. But you can’t ever do what you’re told, can you?”

Meredith stood staring at him. She didn’t know if he was hurting her because he truly felt that way or because he needed a way to vent his frustration.

“If you don’t want me here, send my aunt and uncle a telegram. Be sure to tell them I was recently widowed and I need a place to live, that way if a child comes from our brief marriage, no one will be overly scandalized.”

“If you are having my child, you aren’t going anywhere.”

“I’m smaller than my mother. I probably won’t ever birth a live baby.”

He eyed her with hostile blue eyes. “You wouldn’t tell me if you were having my baby?”

“Only if it survived.”

Sensing her urge to bolt, Blake grabbed her wrist. “Are you late?”

She wrenched at his grip, trying to twist her arm free. “Let go. I have a headache. I’m going to bed.”

He rose to his feet instantly when she did not answer his question. “Are you? Answer me.”

“Why would you want to get your hopes up when you know I’m not going to carry it full-term.”

“You are not your mother,” he yelled then seeing the tears in her eyes, he softened his tone. “You are not your mother.”

A fat tear fell over her lashes and Blake caught it before it went more than an inch. He took a deep breath, focusing his attention on her and trying to wade through the fifty emotions all hitting him at once.

He returned to his position in the chair feeling completely drained by the possibility she might be expecting. He tried to pull her back into his lap but she resisted and ended up between his long legs.

“Are you late?”

She stood silently, her eyes meeting and locking with his.

“We’ve only been reunited a couple of weeks. Maybe you’re not
enceinte
but only a little late.”

“I’m not a little late,” she said tightly.

“You’re not late or you’re not just a little late?”

Again he had to wait for her answer. “I haven’t been cursed since we met.”

“Cursed? With your monthly, you mean?”

“Mama called it her blessing. I disagreed.”

A slight chuckle escaped his lips. “Of course you did.”

“I should’ve been cursed around the time we were in
Des Moines.”

Blake felt as if all the air had been sucked out of the room. He teetered between elation and fury. “And you didn’t think to mention it? You were just going to let me divorce you and send you away?”

“I thought my body might have just skipped it because I hurt my head. Besides you already hated me. I didn’t want you to have more reason. Or to think I was trying to trap you.”

Blake squinted at her trying to understand that logic. “If you missed in Des
Moines, that means you’ve been expecting since that first time we….Criminy!”

All the implications hung in the air. Had she not been the person he came to
New London to help, he would have left her there with his seed rooted inside her and never known he fathered a child. If they had not been caught, he would’ve taken her to her relatives and abandoned her there. Would her aunt and uncle have cast her out when it became obvious she was large with child – if they even took her in at all?

“When were you going to tell me?” he asked hooking his arm around the small of her back and drawing her closer.

“Is it worse to know I lost your child or not to know?”

“You are not your mother,” he repeated. “Tomorrow we’re taking you to the doctor and we will find out if you have any reason to worry. This should be an exciting time.” He put his hand over her lower abdomen. “I’m going to be a father,” he whispered and cleared the lump from this throat realizing he already had two children, both legally and emotionally. “You know
what I mean.”

“Please, don’t get too attached yet. It’ll only make it worse.”

Blake knew this was the experience she grew up with. Her mother’s inability to have more children colored her perception of pregnancy with dread.

“There are lots of reasons women lose babies, not all of those reasons are passed on from mother to daughter.” He pulled her forward again. This time she did not resist being pulled into his lap. And when his arms encircled her, pulling her into his wide chest, she cried. “You’re going to have the best doctors, my precious, precious treasure. I can’t believe you been carrying around such a heavy burden in your heart and you didn’t say anything.”

She wanted to laugh at that. He was the one carrying a burden he would not share. The secrets he carried from childhood still peppered his perspective and she suspected if he never told Donna, he’d never told anyone. It wasn’t as if Donna didn’t know he’d spent months fending for himself as a boy and still he wouldn’t talk to her about it. What happened during that winter? Had he become a thief to survive? Had he hurt people? Had they hurt him?

“I didn’t know for certain I was expecting until I missed my second curse. By then you were long gone. And since I’ve been here, the time hasn’t been right – you had so much to worry about with Pete and Lolly gone that it felt wrong to bring it up.”

“Until the doctor tells me otherwise, I’m going to be excited about this baby.”

She cringed. “Oh, Blake, don’t do it. You’ll be devastated when I lose it.”

The same way he felt now with Pete and Lolly missing.

Blake knew Meredith well enough to know she was not playing a game the way many women he had courted were wont to do. It would never occur to her to try to use her condition strategically. If she had, she would have told him in
Des Moines as a way to stay married. He knew she was right; he should try not to become attached to the baby until he heard from the doctor that she and the baby were healthy.

“Would this be the first child you fathered?” she asked tentatively.

“Yes, as far as I know. I’m usually more careful than I was with you.”

“So you’re not Lolly’s real father?”

Blake’s eyebrows raised as a grin came to his face. “You think I might be Lolly’s father?”

“You look alike.”

Blake thought back to the first moment Anna Morgan walked around their cabin and for a second he thought his mother’s ghost appeared to him.

“Coincidence,” he said.
“But a happy coincidence.”

“It wouldn’t have mattered if you were her father. I just wanted to know for sure.”

Blake laced his fingers with hers. “She looks just like her mother. I’ve never courted any dark-haired women.”

Meredith wanted to point out Rebecca Grant had rich brown hair but she refrained.

“I did notice most of your women were blondes.”

“You are my only redhead. If I had only known…” he teased with a roguish grin

Blake suddenly scooped her up in his arms as he rose to his feet.

Meredith squealed with surprise. “What are you doing?”

“I’m carrying the mother of my child to bed.”

“Oh.”

She wrapped her arms around his neck and Blake carried her to the master bedroom with its large bed. Although it had tall post at the corners, Blake preferred not to have a canopy or bed curtains. He said it felt like sleeping in a cave.

He laid her down and pulled the covers up around her neck and kissed her gently.

“Good night, treasure.”

“You’re not coming to bed?”

“I’ll come to bed after I’ve decided where to search tomorrow.”

Meredith sat in the parlor two days later not at all comforted by the doctor’s pronouncement that her pregnancy seemed normal. Her mother’s pregnancies always seemed typical at the beginning and around the end of her sixth or seventh month was when she lost it.

When the bell above the door jangled, Meredith jumped up to answer it only to have, Saunders, the prim and proper butler Blake hired,
waylay her.

“I’ll get the door, madam,” Saunders said.

A moment later the butler carried a letter on a silver tray, past the parlor into the study. A minute after Blake read the note, he emerged from the room, threw on his heavy cloak and headed towards the stables to saddle his horse. As soon as Meredith realized he was leaving without saying goodbye, she followed him out.

“Is it the children?” Meredith asked when she
caught up with him.

“No. Go back inside. It’s cold out here.”

“Do you want me to go with you?”

Blake looked annoyed. “No. Don’t wait up. I’m going to be late.”

He gave her a short kiss and led Wunner out and mounted the horse. Before Meredith could ask any more questions, Blake put his heels to the horse, leaving at a good clip. Meredith headed straight for the study and began looking for the note. She found it in the trash.

                 
Stop putting me off. I need to see you now.

             
              R.

At first Meredith thought the note might be from his father but remembered Randolph Knight returned to Washington a week earlier.

Rebecca. Who else could it be from?

Meredith slept at the edge of the bed giving his side of the bed her back. She could not have made it clearer that she was mad if she stayed up to yell at him. He should have told her where he was going and why but wasn’t exactly sure what to say. It was one thing to allow the gossips to think he and Rebecca were involved when he was single but it was another to allow it to continue now that Meredith would get hurt. It’s why he had put off seeing Rebecca since he’d been back – that and searching for Pete and Lolly had been his main priority.

30

As Blake unbuttoned his shirt, he noticed the sounds of horses and wheels on gravel, faintly filtering in
from outside. It was loud enough for him to know the sound came from their driveway.

Blake quietly left their room in the back of the house and crossed to a room where he could see the approach to the house. There wasn’t much light but it appeared to be a rented hack.

“What the devil?” Blake said under his breath as he left the window hoping to make it to the front door before anyone knocked and woke up the whole household. It was probably one of the Pembrooks foxed out of his gourd who had forgotten they had moved.

Blake was still on the stairs when the heavy doorknocker began its slow, steady pulse making Blake swear. He wished he had time to get his pistol out of his desk but he doubted he'd need it to send the drunk on his way, especially if he had the assistance of the hack’s teamster.

The knocking stopped as soon as Blake pulled the bolt.

The man standing at the door was short and lean with shaggy hair and long mutton chop sideburns that left only his dimpled chin bare.

“Sir, I’m sorry to disturb you. Is this the Pembrook house?”

“It was. They don’t live here anymore,” Blake said and began closing the door.

“Wait. These children said they…”

“Children?!”

Blake shot past the driver of the hack and flung open the carriage door. Pete sat in the large seat holding Lolly in his arms.

“The little girl is burning up with fever,” the cabbie said.

“Oh, my God.”

Blake climbed inside the conveyance in a heartbeat with his hand on Lolly’s forehead. “Dear God. Thank you, Pete. Thank you for coming home. I can’t believe you remembered the name of the people who owned the house before us.”

Silently, he prayed it was not too late. He’d never felt anyone so hot before. He scooped up the little girl. “Come on, Pete,” he said backing out of the carriage when Pete didn’t move. “Thank you, so much,” Blake said to the cabbie. “You probably just saved her life.”

“I’ve got kids myself,” the man replied. “The boy wasn’t having any luck finding someone to take them this far, especially when they found out he had no money. But the boy wrote that you would pay me.”

“Yes, yes of course. If you can wait a moment, my money is upstairs.” Blake carried Lolly inside with Pete close at his heels. “If you fetch Dr. Billingsham here, I’ll pay you double your fee,” he called back to the driver through the open door. “Do you know where the Billingshams live?”

“As a matter of fact, I took a fair there about two months ago,” the man said. “Who should I say needs
him?”

“Blake Warner.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll be back quick as I can.”

“Meredith!” Blake bellowed as soon as the door was closed. He took the steps two at a time. “Meredith!”

Groggily, Meredith emerged from the bedroom. “Are you drunk?” The words died on her lips. “Pete, Lolly!”

“She’s sick. Wake everyone. We need a fire in her room and hot meals. I sent the driver after
Frederick.”

“Blake, take her in our room, the fire’s already lit.” Meredith hurried to the back stairs and up to the next floor to the servants’ quarters.

Lolly stirred and opened her eyes as Blake laid her in the bed, removed her shoes and the little cape she had gotten the day they ran away. “Uncle Blake!” she said happily but weakly.

“Shh. Rest, sweetie.
The doctor is coming.”

Blake pulled the covers up to her chin and crossed to the doorway to where Pete stood. “Come in and warm yourself by the fire. You look pale are you feeling all right?” Blake touched his forehead and cheek and Pete allowed it without pulling away.

“She’s going to be fine, Pete,” Blake assured the boy trying to muster hope he did not feel.

Pete pulled a small writing tablet out of his pocket and a pencil from behind his ear.

“Tell Lolly I’m sorry.”

Blake hadn’t really considered the fact that Lolly couldn’t understand Pete’s only form of communicating. She might only be four but teaching her to read was going to be a priority once she was well.

After lighting the lamp, Blake sat down on the edge of the bed. “Lolly, Pete says he’s sorry.”

Meredith came into the room and immediately wet a wash cloth and laid it on Lolly’s forehead.

“Why are you doing that?” Blake asked.

“Because that’s what my mother did when I ran a fever.”

“Oh,” he said. “But shouldn’t we be warming her up rather than cooling her down. She’s been out in the cold for days.”

Meredith put her hands on her hips as she turned
to Blake. “Well, maybe you should get on your little pony and go ask Rebecca what she thinks?”

Blake’s brow lowered. “Rebecca? I hardly think this is the time or the place to have that argument.”

“Oh, is she the only one who’s allowed to crook her finger and have you come running? Doesn’t it work the other way around?” she shouted leaning towards him.

Meredith knew her timing was all wrong but she just couldn’t stop
herself. And she hated that she couldn’t keep her jealousy to herself.

Blake spared a glance at Pete. His elbows were on his knees, his hands covered his ears and his eyes were shut as if he could block out their argument by doing so. “Fine, you want to talk about this now, let’s step into another room,” Blake said. “Pete, keep an eye on Lolly and let us know if anything changes.”

“Fine,” Meredith said.

Meredith and Blake stepped across the hall into the bedroom they’d decorated with Lolly in mind. The maid hadn’t lit the fire in the unused rooms so the room was cold and she was wearing only a cotton nightgown. Meredith could feel her nipples pucker and the chill bumps rising on her arms.

“Meredith, I know I shouldn’t have left without telling you where I was going.”

“Are you going to try to tell me you didn’t go see Rebecca?”

“You obviously read the note so denying it would be pointless. But don’t you think if I had something to hide, I would’ve thrown the note in the fire or taken it with me?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps you think because I admitted I love you that I’ll put up with your affairs. Well,
I won’t.”

“You have no reason to be jealous, treasure. I have never slept with Rebecca nor will I ever. She’s not my type. But I can’t get enough of you,” he said putting his arms around her waist and pulling her close,

He lowered his mouth to hers and gently coaxed a response from her. During the weeks the children were missing, Blake’s kisses had been perfunctory at best and making love was nonexistent. Neither one could manage to put aside their concern for Pete and Lolly long enough to kindle their passion for one another but now suddenly they remembered their carnal draw.

Breathing fast, she pulled away. “You think you can distract me from being
mad by kissing me?”

Blake smiled roguishly at her. “I know I can but right now I just want you to put it aside long enough for us to deal with Lolly and Pete.”

Meredith couldn’t help but smile back. “I really hate you sometimes,” she said knowing there was not a shred of truth to it.

“Would you mind putting on a dressing robe when we get back in there? I’d feel terrible kicking Lolly out of our bed so I can make love to you.”

31

Freddy arrived twenty minutes later looking as though he’d been roused from sleep. As Meredith
showed him to Lolly’s room, which was, by then, awash with warmth from the newly laid blazing fire in the hearth, Blake paid the driver and asked him to come back the following afternoon for the reward they’d offered for the children safe return. Frederick was just beginning his exam when Blake caught up to him.

It only took
Frederick a few minutes to diagnose her infected tonsils as the culprit. He ordered she be given weak willow tea for the fever and instructed them to keep her in bed until she felt better. As he turned to leave, Frederick noticed Pete standing in the shadows. He knew instinctively that Pete must have, at some point during their absence, carried his little sister.

“Young man, while I’m here, I’d like to check your stab wound. Come lay over here on the bed.”

As Frederick performed his exam, he began speaking about some deaf patients of his and how they spoke with their hands. “It’s amazing to watch them. They’ve got a hearing brother who comes with them to their appointments and he interprets everything they have to say.”

“Do you think the brother might like a job or know someone who would?” Blake asked.

“I don’t know. But I can make inquiries for you.”

By the time Lolly was well, Blake made arrangements for a regular tutor and the sign language tutor/interpreter to come in daily. They had set up a classroom in Blake’s study with desks and a large slate chalkboard.

The sign language tutor, Sam, was the brother of the deaf patients Frederick Billingsham had spoken of. He had never worked as a teacher before and gave up his job as a store clerk to work with the family. The regular tutor was a more difficult position to fill. The first tutor they
hired quit within the week claiming Lolly was much too young to learn anything. The next one stayed only a day before saying that since Pete could not talk, he had no way of gauging his reading abilities. The next one didn’t like having Sam in the classroom signing every word that came out of his mouth – the children were completely distracted and not paying attention to the lessons – oftentimes, their hands were repeating the signs as the teacher spoke. At times, Pete even interrupted the lesson to ask Sam to repeat signs.

Finally, they found an elderly lady, Mrs. Banyan, who was intrigued by the challenges of teaching Pete and Lolly and even stayed after her normal hours to try to learn sign language during the hour at the end of the day when Blake and Meredith joined them for their sign lessons.

They were amazed at how quickly Pete and Lolly learned the new language. They made up their own games. They would challenge each other to see who could sign the whole alphabet fastest or they would make up stories to explain why a certain word was signed the way it was to help them remember it.