pulled his wet shirt over his head, and tossed it on the fl oor.
Accustomed to seeing men shirtless, toiling the day long under
the hot sun, Maggie was shocked by the nobleman’s unhealthy
pallor. It was as if the man’s skin had never been exposed to the
sun—his hairless chest an eerie, opaque expanse.
Cavendish preened in the center of the room and took a sip
from yet another glass of port before slipping his arms into the
robe offered by the other brother. “Thank you, Castor—see my
shirt delivered to the laundress.”
Castor scooped up the shirt. He and Pollux arranged them-
selves side by side and waited.
“Dismissed.” The viscount waved the twins away. The boys
beat a path out the door, and Maggie hurried to follow. Caven-
dish stepped between Maggie and the open door.
“I do not recall giving you leave.”
He belched. A rank blend of bilious sputum and sour port
hung in the air. Maggie took a step back. Cavendish kicked the
door shut, shot the bolt home, seized her by the wrist, and pulled
her across the room. Exhibiting a strength that belied his frail
pallor, the viscount fl ung her onto the bed.
Maggie scuttled back on elbows to hug the bedpost in the far
Midwife of the Blue Ridge
285
corner. Pale blue eyes, bloodshot and tinged yellow, tracked her
every movement. His cold appraisal chilled Maggie to the bone.
“Please, sir . . . ye seem worse for th’ drink . . .”
“La, mademoiselle”
—his accent precise—“intemperate I may
be, but I shall perform admirably nonetheless. According to
Papa
”—Cavendish gestured with a flourish to the portrait on
the wall—“drunkenness and debauch are the areas in which I
excel.” Strutting like a crow that had just scavenged a shred of
meat from a bone, he unfastened the buttons on his drop-front
breeches and groped between his legs to produce a sad, limp
member.
Too drunk to do the deed!
Maggie felt like clapping. She si-
lently blessed Pollux and his bottomless bottle of port.
With scowling brow Cavendish assessed his organ, flaccid as a
stalk of rotting celery. He looked up at Maggie and smiled, al-
most apologetic. “But a moment . . .” Spitting into the palm of
his hand, the viscount attempted to propel himself to erection.
The sight of him encouraging his vile flesh to life acted upon
Maggie like a violent purgative, vanquishing all selfl ess reason
and resolve from her mind. She choked back the bitter bile snak-
ing up from her belly. She clung helpless to the bed curtains, her
heart thumping like a military drum, beating a call to quarters in
her brain.
The man’s mouth was moving and Maggie knew he must be
speaking to her, but she could not hear his words for the blood
that rushed screaming into her head. She covered her ears, for the
noise was deafening—screams, drums, and the clatter and clank
of soldiers at the quickstep—heavy boots scuffling along the
loose scree of the village road.
Maggie squeezed her eyes tight and could see it all just as she
had so many years ago. Red jackets running from croft to croft
with torches set. Thatched roofs
alight—crimson and orange
tongues licking billowing black smoke. She clung to her mother’s
skirt—fabric slipping through her desperate, little fingers as the
286 Christine
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trooper dragged her mother away—Mam’s stricken face and the
terror in her voice as she shouted,
“RUITH! Ruith, Magaigh!”
RUN. Run, Maggie.
A growl gathered in the pit of Maggie’s being, balled up, and
burst from her lips as she sprang from the bed. Mindless of
where she was going—knowing only that she had to be away—
Maggie pushed past Cavendish and ran to the door.
He was right behind her as she fumbled with the bolt. Caven-
dish pressed one hand to the door to prohibit her escape. “You’ve
not been dismissed.”
Ruith, Magaigh!
Her mother’s voice echoed in her head. A
bolus of rabid fury burned in her throat. She turned and feath-
ered into the man like a wild thing, clawing, kicking, screaming,
and biting.
“Mad bitch!”
Cavendish caught her by the left arm and pulled
her toward the bed. Maggie dug her heels in and flopped to the
floor—carpets rolling and bunching as he dragged her along. She
fumbled under her skirts for the knife and freed the blade from
its sheath.
“UP! Up, on your feet!” Cavendish jerked hard on her arm.
And she complied, jumping to her feet brandishing honed
steel.
He let loose her arm in time to leap back and evade the full
force of her attack. Swinging the blade wild, Maggie slashed
through his silken robe and sliced a red pinstripe across his chest.
They both froze—immobilized by the sight of bright blood bead-
ing, then trickling scarlet tendrils down the viscount’s white
chest.
“You wretched
cunt
!” Cavendish pounced and wrested the
dagger from her hand, flinging it to hit the wall and fall clatter-
ing behind the bed. In an instant, his enraged fist came full force
to her face, knocking Maggie to the fl oor.
A blazing rod of pain pierced her skull and set her ears to ring-
ing. Maggie rolled from side to side, moaning and sobbing.
Midwife of the Blue Ridge
287
“Get up.” He prodded her with his foot like one would nudge
a dog lying in his path. Maggie struggled to hands and knees.
“On your feet.”
Threads of bloody spittle linked her aching mouth to the car-
pet. She turned her head slow and looked up with one eye already
swollen shut.
Cavendish stood over her, his part erect and quivering. Mag-
gie hawked up a glob of red-tinged mucus to land on the toe of
his boot.
The savage kick he delivered to her gut lifted Maggie inches
from the floor and sent her sprawling—gulping for air. Caven-
dish wound a hand around her hair and yanked her to her feet,
wrenching her right arm behind her back.
Every feeble struggle she offered was now met with a furious
ratchet of her arm and tearing at her scalp. She was racked and
rendered helpless with pain. Cavendish drove her forward, slam-
ming Maggie to bend face down over the writing table.
“Please, I beg ye . . .” She flailed with her free arm. “Please.
Stop.”
He answered her plea with a brutal twist to her arm, stretch-
ing tendons and muscles in agony. The man laughed in triumph
as a sickening pop sounded and Maggie’s shoulder dislocated
from its socket. The viscount tossed muddy skirts over her back
and kicked her feet apart. Pinning her to the table with one hand
planted between her shoulder blades, he rammed himself into
her.
Maggie arched her neck and cried out, writhing to escape his
onslaught.
Grinding in deep, Cavendish leaned close. Mouth to her ear,
he hissed, “An angry, snapping cunt makes for a nice, tight
ride.”
Maggie caught her sobs in her throat and lowered her head to
the table. Her cheek pressed to the smooth polished wood slid
back and forth in a slick of blood and tears. She forced herself to
288 Christine
Blevins
lie lifeless, chewing the flesh inside her lip to keep from moving
or making any noise.
An eternity passed. Candle fl ames wavered and wavered as he
pounded and pounded into her body. She shut her eyes but could
not close her ears to the teacups and silver spoons tinkling in
alarm with his every thrust.
A grunt. A shudder. He slumped forward and pushed off.
Maggie lay still and listened to the scuffle of erratic footfalls as
he skinked away—the bed cords creaking with sudden strain as
he fl ung himself onto the mattress.
She tugged at her skirts with her good arm, drew a shuddered
breath, and slowly stood upright. Her right arm hung painfully
useless at her side. Picking at strands of hair plastered over her
mouth and eyes and without a backward glance for her attacker,
Maggie staggered out the door. She braced her good hand to the
door frame and vomited, hacking and heaving till empty. Caven-
dish’s seed seeped gummy between her thighs. Maggie hugged
her battered ribs, retching anew, gagging up dry, painful spasms
of air.
The guard peered down from the blockhouse roof, snickering.
“Looks like his lordship treated you t’ a ride, missy . . .”
Maggie shuffled forward and lowered to sit on a wide tree
stump. She squinted one eye at the last rosy light of awful day. A
small, striped lizard ran up her skirt, danced for a moment in the
upturned palm of her useless hand, then scurried away to disap-
pear in the scrub carpeting the fortyard.
Would that she could, like a lizard, slip her wretched
skin . . . she’d leave it to dry paper thin in the hot sun, and wait for
a strong breeze to come along and blow the battered, empty husk
far, far away. Then like the wee lizard, she’d scurry away to disap-
pear and blend into the bark of the world, new and whole again.
A gentle arm wrapped around her shoulders and urged Maggie
to her feet. “Come along now, baby . . . we need care for those
bruises.”
Midwife of the Blue Ridge
289
Maggie yelped and winced, squinching eyes tight against the
pain shooting down her arm to her fi ngertips.
“Oooh, sugar . . . I’m sorry,” a soft voice soothed, and a gentle
hand smoothed her hair. “That devil-man sure done beat you
bad . . . real bad.”
“Devil-man . . . aye.” Maggie leaned her head to rest on the
shoulder of her Samaritan. Wiry curls tickled her cheek and she
was comforted by wholesome, good smells—lye soap and sun-
dried linen pressed with a hot fl atiron.
The laundress . . .
20
Better to Bend Than Break
If Maggie lay perfectly still—kept her head straight, fi ngers laced
over her middle—the racking pain in her shoulder melded with
the ache in her head and the soreness between her legs, forming
an overall pulsing throb that was somehow . . . tolerable.
She lay on one of three straw-stuffed pallets lined up along the
wall of the very same cabin she had shared with so many others
during the Shawnee uprising. One eye swollen shut, Maggie fi xed
her good eye on the ceiling. Gloaming light keeked between the
same chinks in the same roof shingles and she watched the same
brown spider repair the web spanning the same pair of rafter
beams.
Everything the same, yet everything so different . . .
The recollection of the viscount’s hand planted between her
shoulder blades, pinning her helpless to the table, caused her to
shudder, then cringe with the sudden pain radiating out from
her shoulder to the tips of fingers and toes.
To keep from being drawn into the abyss of self-pity and
self-loathing yawning at the back of her mind, Maggie closed
her good eye and concentrated on drawing deep controlled
breaths. Never in her life had she been brought so low, to a po-
Midwife of the Blue Ridge
291
sition so tenuous—so reliant on the whim of strangers. She lay
still and quiet, straining to hear the voices muttered outside the
door.
A swoosh of skirts and a whiff of lye soap. Maggie opened her
eye and leaned her head to the left, not surprised to see the slender
laundress framed by the open doorway. The woman’s honey skin
was aglow with perspiration and the dusky light fi ltering through
her wispy curls. She asked, “What they call you, sugar?”
It took forever to force her lips to form the words. “Mm-
Maggie . . . Maggie Duncan.”
The laundress settled her skirts so she could sit comfortably
on Maggie’s left. “My name’s Aurelia, an’ this here’s Tempie—th’
root doctor. She gonna make you good as new.”
Maggie tipped her head to the right. A very small, very odd
woman stood there, like a pixie come to life from the faerie tales.
She was dressed in a brilliant saffron blouse and a clover-green
skirt, her thin neck strung with many strands of multicolored
seed beads. Tempie looked as though she’d sprung from the earth,
her complexion as dark and smooth as the glazed umber cup she
held in her delicate hands.
The tiny root doctor set the cup on the dirt floor. She sat
down, tailor style, all the while considering Maggie with a wise
smile and merry eyes bright and black as two jet buttons. Laying
her little hands on Maggie’s injured shoulder, she probed gently
with knowing fingers. Teeth clenched, Maggie focused on the
woman.
Tempie’s hair was cropped short. Dense as a sea sponge, it
clung to her head like a fleecy black cap. A salting of gray at the
temples and the stamp of crow’s-feet at the corners of her eyes
were the only indications of any maturity. The woman seemed
ageless—neither young nor old.
Aurelia loosened the laces on Maggie’s bodice. “Tempie say
she got to get yo’ arm fi xed quick or it won’t never be right. You