The Diamond of the Rockies [03] The Tender Vine (44 page)

She looked closely, saw the hangman’s noose atop the coils.

“I don’t even have the courage to use it.”

She stared at him. “Why would you use it, Flavio?”

His hands dropped to his lap. “Because of what I am.”

Yes, she thought. He deserved to die, to hang from a rope by his own hand. His cruelty, infidelity, violence . . . Her throat tightened painfully. She took a step toward him. She could help, kick the stool out if he hadn’t the courage to jump. The thought horrified her. She recalled Quillan’s terse answers, telling her nothing, protecting this . . . this man she had once loved.

Yes, she could hurt him. But instead, she put a hand to his shoulder. From somewhere deep inside her came the words, “If Quillan doesn’t condemn you, who will?”

Flavio started to weep. “My own soul.”

“Your soul has been forfeit from birth. What difference is there now?”

“Oh, God . . .” It was more a moan than words.

She didn’t want to say it, to offer him the peace she knew he could have. She wanted to walk away, to run, to leave him to his rope. Why should she stop his suffering when Quillan’s was so much worse, when Quillan might never be the same? None of them would be the same!

Again she spoke resolutely. “God will forgive you if you let him. We have all gone astray, but He draws us to himself just as you gather the cows before a storm, Flavio. Surrender to Him. Know His peace.”

“How can God forgive when you hate me so deeply?”

Yes, he had seen it in her face; how could he not? She showed it to the world. She wanted him to see, to know, to suffer in that knowledge. Her hands tightened at her sides. “What I feel is at war with what I know. God will forgive you, and so will I.” She would have to, or this new bitterness would destroy all she had won.

Flavio shook with sobs. “I got him out, Carina. I freed him or he would have burned.”

Dio!
Was it true? She shuddered, pictured Quillan charred black like his wagon. Had Flavio prevented that?

“He asked only to let his horses free, but I lifted it, his wagon, with more strength than my own. I lifted it and got him out. Then I ran.”

She suddenly clutched his head, overcome with gratitude that he had not let Quillan die. “Grazie, Flavio.”

He wrenched his head up. “Grazie? After what I did?”

“He would not be alive.”

Flavio shook his head. “God help me, Carina, I wish I had died in his place.”

She let him go. “You don’t have to.” But she could go no further. It was up to Flavio now to accept the grace and forgiveness God offered.

“I have to go back. Quillan will want me there when he wakes.”

Flavio looked into her face, searching for some redeeming thread. She closed her eyes, breathing painfully. “If Quillan won’t speak against you, neither will I.” She opened her eyes and faced him. “If there are none to condemn you, what right have you to condemn yourself? Ask God’s forgiveness.”

He swallowed, then followed bleakly with his eyes as she turned away. She stopped at the door, reversed herself to cross the room. Without looking at Flavio, she lifted the rope and carried it out with her.

As she walked home, her heart swelled with love for Quillan. However misplaced his silence was, he kept it honorably. What a different man she joined in one flesh than she might have. God had removed her from a love that was corrupt to a redeeming love, for both herself and Quillan. Maybe even her angry flight had been God’s urging. How else could He unite her with the man He had chosen?
Oh, Signore. Your ways
are bigger than mine. Grazie, Dio. Grazie
.

Carina came in like a breeze, her cheeks no longer wan but touched with color. Her hair tumbled loose and her limbs moved with grace and ease. Quillan watched silently as she brought a small bowl to the bedside and pulled a stool close. He could turn his head, but it hurt the collarbone, so he followed her with his eyes.

This was the first day he felt clearheaded enough to respond. His other awakenings, day and night—how many days he didn’t know— had been foggy and confused, ending in exhaustion. He was so tired of being tired. Gently, she eased his head and shoulders up and pushed a wedge-shaped pillow beneath. One thing hadn’t changed. He was too weak to assist or resist, and it galled him.

“There,” she said, stroking his head. That galled, too. He couldn’t touch her back.

She sat and took a bowl into her lap, stirring with the tiny spoon inside, releasing steam and aroma. Quillan swallowed in anticipation. Had anything but water passed his lips?

She brought the spoon to her own and sipped. “A little hot.” She stirred more and the beefy bouquet reached his nose and teased. At last she brought the spoon to his lips.

Quillan frowned. “Unbind my arm and I can feed myself.” Trussed up like a chicken with his arms across his chest, he could do nothing!

“Take the broth, Quillan.” She touched the spoon to his lips. They parted in spite of him and he swallowed.

Her smile was infuriating, so indulgent. The spoon touched his lips again and liquid seeped through. Broth, food for babies and invalids. He wanted real food and working arms.

“Sei impaziente.”

“Impatient? What do you expect?”

She swirled the spoon in the bowl. “You don’t have to holler.”

He scowled. “I’m not hollering.”

“Your face is.”

“My—”

She snuck another spoonful in, and he swallowed furiously. “Stop that.”

Carina cradled the bowl in her lap. “What should I stop? Feeding you?”

“Stop feeling so smug about it.”

She laughed. “You like helping, but you don’t like to receive it, do you?”

Receive? Being fed like a baby, an invalid, like Leona Shepard, out of
her wits and—
“I see the storm in your eyes.”

Quillan glared at his wife. “Are you enjoying this?”

“No more than you, when you ordered me to bed.” She bent and kissed his forehead.

He struggled against the tight wrapping, which trapped his left arm to his chest, and the sling that immobilized his right in its cast. Even that much movement brought pain. And exhaustion.

“If you’re too difficult, I’ll have Papa feed you.”

Quillan couldn’t make his face more murderous. He wanted to throw the bowl of insipid broth right through the window and stalk out of that house. He wanted no part of Dr. DiGratia or any of them. Trying to win Carina’s family had cost him too much. He would take Carina and go.

“You’re in pain, aren’t you? Why don’t you ask when you need medicine?”

“I don’t need laudanum, I need peace. And I won’t find it here.” Again that feeling of entrapment. He had no control!

She set the bowl down and kissed his lips. He couldn’t reach his hands into her hair or hold her there when she drew away. Having his arms bound and useless scared him more than he wanted to show. It was horrible to be so trapped, so helpless.

“It’s all right. You’re welcome here.” Carina lifted the bowl again. “Father Antoine validated our marriage, Quillan. They accept—”

“I don’t care about any of that. I don’t want their acceptance, their pity. . . .”

She drew back, irked. “No, you have enough of your own, it seems.”

The rebuke stung. Did she blame him? Wasn’t it enough that he protected Flavio, kept silent about his throwing the dynamite, causing all this wreckage? Quillan felt a wave of terror. Would he be crippled and helpless the rest of his life? When the casts came off, the bandages removed, would he hobble around like Alan Tavish, or like Cain with only one leg?

What was wrong with his leg? All he got from Dr. DiGratia was, “We must wait and see.” He didn’t want to wait! He wanted his arms back, his legs to work, his bowels to digest more than broth!

“Caro mio.” Carina kissed him again.

He wanted to grab her, hold her. And he could do nothing! “Don’t patronize me. I don’t need human acceptance and comfort. I surrendered it all.”

Her face changed. “Was that so hard? Haven’t you done that all your life? Turned your back on anyone who could hurt you and depended on yourself?”

Why was she scolding him? “Not myself now. On God.”

“Bene.” She shrugged one shoulder. “Did God set your bones? Mend your intestine? Has God fed you and bathed you and seen to your comfort?”

He flushed hotly but couldn’t answer that. He was living and breathing today because of the care he had received. And it wasn’t directly God’s hand, of course. It was Dottore DiGratia’s.

“Maybe you need to surrender your independence.”

He did not want to hear that. Did she know something they wouldn’t tell him? Would he be helpless, forever dependent on others, unable to reject their succor? Fear seared his innards.

“Now that would be surrender, eh?” She leaned close, kissed one eye and then the other, kissed his cheeks, then his lips again. He groaned.

The door opened and Dr. DiGratia came in. Carina straightened, but her face was flushed and her mouth turned up, her features maddeningly like her father’s. Surrender his independence? Never!

Quillan scowled from one to the other. “I want my arm unbound.”

“Do you.” The doctor spoke dryly, obviously not at all concerned with his wants. He walked over to the bed. “Let me see.” He pressed with one finger on the collarbone and Quillan hollered. The doctor straightened. “Maybe not just yet.”

If his arm had been loose Quillan would have coldcocked him, even if it broke the collarbone again. Carina looked reproachfully at her father. So now she understood?

Dr. DiGratia shook the thin glass tube he’d been sticking into Quillan’s mouth every day, several times a day. He poked it in once more. “Under your tongue.”

“It’s a clinical thermometer, Quillan.” Carina patted his elbow. “It tells us your body temperature.”

Us
. The dottore and her. Quillan sank back against the stiffly stuffed backrest she had placed behind him. At least with the thermometer in his mouth she couldn’t keep spooning soup at him. Simmering, he endured the time that he had to hold the tube under his tongue.

Carina was right. The pain was persistent. His gut felt like fire, the muscles too offended to lift him at all. Carina had to raise him up and prop things behind just to elevate him enough to eat broth without choking. Any motion at all made the ribs throb, and shifting the weight from his rear sent pain into the hip. His leg might as well be blown off at the knee for all he could do with it. Several times a day he was rolled to one side or the other like a piece of meat on a spit. And the greatest horror was the swaddling. Was he no longer a man?

Carina was right again; he had pity aplenty.
But, Lord! What am I
supposed to do? You told me you were the vine. If I remained in you, rejecting
everything else . . .
Hadn’t it said that? Jesus said remain in Him. Didn’t that mean forsake the rest?

He opened his mouth so Dr. DiGratia could remove the clinical thermometer. How had Carina known he’d never seen one before? He had almost never been sick, and the two times that he could recall, no one had poked thermometers at him, bathed him, and . . . Well, Augusta Tabor had spoon-fed him, but only the once. Quillan’s frown deepened.

The doctor held the tube between his fingertips and studied it. “Hmm.” No more explanation than that. Quillan had had enought of “hmm”s and “we’ll see”s. Dr. Gratia went to the glass-faced cabinet and opened the door, fingering through the small bottles. He took down two—one that looked like dried leaves and smelled sweetly pungent when he unstoppered it, and another grayish white powder. He pinched a couple grains of the powder into a porcelain cup, then put a few of the leaves into a square of muslin and tied it shut with thread.

Quillan watched in spite of himself as the doctor poured boiling water over both, dissolving the powder and steeping the leaves. He looked up suspiciously when the cup was held out to him. “What is it?”

“Sassafras and monkshood.” A tremor at the corners of his mouth clued Quillan to ignore what came next. “Not enough to poison, I hope. Just to control the fever.”

“Is it rising?” Carina took the cup and held it to Quillan’s lips.

Quillan sipped.
Not enough to poison . . . he hoped.
Very funny. He made a face.

“From his sour temper, no doubt.”

Carina glanced at her papa, then back to him. Quillan refused to look ashamed. “Be kind, Papa,” was all she said, and she urged a second sip of the steaming concoction between Quillan’s lips. Her eyes softened. “I think something for pain, as well.”

The doctor turned, and Quillan met his quizzical glance with undisguised resentment.

“Yes,” the doctor said.

Quillan flushed at the implication that pain was making him cross. But the thought of the warm, formless effect of laudanum softened his resistance. He’d told Carina he didn’t want it, but the thought worked on him now like a seductress.

“Not opium, I think.” Again the doctor reached into his cabinet, bringing out a larger bottle half filled with powder, then stirred it into another batch of tea. “Willow bark.”

Quillan shook his head. Was Dr. DiGratia some herbalist from the dark ages? He wanted to demand laudanum. Only his pride kept him silent, and the next gulp of sassafras tea. The fewer trips Carina made to his mouth with the cup the better. Every one reminded him of her words,
“Maybe you need to surrender your independence.”
She wiped a dribble from his chin, shaved that morning by Vittorio.

Quillan drank the willow bark tea, certain he would need the opium tincture anyway. But in a while it did seem to dull the edge. After the doctor left, he said, “What does your father have against laudanum? He was free enough with it at the start.”

“He doesn’t want you habituated.”

Quillan leaned his head back. Habituated. Was he? He knew smoking the drug made addicts; he’d seen the Chinamen weaving home from the dens, but . . . He swallowed his disappointment. He should be thankful Dr. DiGratia was not the sort to be draining his blood and dosing him into a stupor.

Maybe he was in better hands than he wanted to admit, in spite of the dry, terse comments and tyrannical pokes. Then there were Carina’s hands, working the tension from his brow and temples. Healing hands, nurturing hands, human hands. He closed his eyes, letting her fingers ease his pain. He was tired. His annoyance and fear drained him. Carina stroked the weariness from his brow, then leaned close and whispered in his ear, “T’amo.” And she kissed the same ear. No opium was necessary to spread that kind of warmth.