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She lifted the baby so that its downy head rested against her cheek. A curled fist flailed, bumping her mouth. Alive. Wanting to live. Giving her the courage she so sadly lacked.
Whoever you may be, she told it silently, wherever you have come from, I am here to protect you.
Blue eyes opened. All babies had blue eyes at first, but this child’s were startling, as bright and intent as if they could focus on hers.
“Yes,” she murmured. “I see you.”
The baby—a boy, she saw, checking under his diaper—gave a gusty little sigh as if he understood. Nursery rhymes crowded into her head, pushing away her fear.
Once, she had sung such songs to the baby within her, certain he could hear her long before he was born. She had felt him move, kicking and punching as if to declare his coming independence.
Little Timothy had lived so short a time. Only long enough for her to sing a few verses of the song she loved most.
Hush little baby, don’t say a word,
Mama’s going to buy you a mockingbird …
The door opened, and Renshaw walked in with a pail in one hand and saddlebags over his shoulder. He set down the pail and moved past her to lay the saddlebags over a chair. In the pail, the milk steamed, fresh and pungent.
Rachel found her composure again and hugged the baby as if it needed protection from the very person who had found him. No one, least of all this man, would see her vulnerable.
“We will need something to feed him with,” she said briskly.
Without a word, Renshaw rummaged in the saddlebags and produced a bottle and several squares of white cotton fabric.
“Where did you get the bottle?” she asked.
“It was left with the kid,” he said. He went to the pail to fill the bottle, but Rachel stopped him with a cry of protest.
“Your hands must be clean,” she said.
He glared at her, though his face remained expressionless. He strode into the adjoining kitchen. A moment later she heard the squeak of a pump handle working and a gush of water.
Her heart was beating fast when he walked back into the room, looking like nothing so much as a panther with his lowered head and silent feet. Muscles bunched and flexed under his shirt and trousers, lending power to his grace.
He is handsome, she thought, surprised. It wasn’t easy to see at first because of the harsh lines of his features, but she could not deny it.
Handsome, like Louis. And nothing like him. There was a leashed energy in him, a feral quality she couldn’t put a name to. It was more than a sense of danger, more than the gun at his hip or a question of dubious intentions. It felt almost as if he could look into her eyes and make her do anything.
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.
Like everyone was alone in the end. Heath had no sympathy for her. She’d come here of her own free will. She hadn’t said much about herself in the letter he’d read; maybe those details were in the rest of the correspondence Heath hadn’t looked at. The words she’d written in her fine hand hadn’t been at all poetical, the kind Heath reckoned you’d send to a lover, just talk about when she planned to arrive and how she was looking forward to making Jed a good wife, whatever that was.
But there was something too quiet and humble in those words. Not like the woman he’d just left. It was as if they covered up secrets. Secrets she didn’t want even Jed to know.
Heath took off his hat and scrubbed at the sweat on his forehead. Rachel Lyndon was a puzzle, and he had no use for puzzles. She obviously had reasons for lying about being Mrs. McCarrick. He didn’t much care what they were, or why Jed had chosen her. He would let her keep that secret so she wouldn’t have to worry about her “reputation” living on a ranch full of men.
Hell, he wondered if she’d even figured out how her reputation could be ruined. If she’d ever taken a man into her body, he would eat something far worse than his hat.
Heath stopped in the middle of the yard. Mrs. McCarrick’s body was of no interest to him. Even if she hadn’t been Jed’s intended, he wouldn’t have given her a second glance. Too thin. Too unyielding. She wore the ugliest clothes he’d ever seen on a woman, and she wasn’t a wild hog’s idea of pretty. Even the most jaded whores knew how to tart themselves up. Frankie had been like that. She could almost make a man feel as if he was more than just another coin in her pocket.
But she’d still been a liar and a fake. Like all women.
Heath slammed his hat back on his head and kept on going. He had other things to worry about right now. Getting the things the woman needed. Finding a wet nurse. Where in hell was he supposed to locate a female who had a suckling infant and wanted to come out to the ranch to take on another?
“Holden!”
Joey skidded to a halt in a cloud of dust, grinning from ear to ear. “I’m so glad you’re back!”
Heath kept walking, wishing the kid wouldn’t make him care that he’d be leaving without saying goodbye. “Where you been?” he muttered.
“Out with Charlie, brandin’ strays.” He skipped alongside Heath, his yellow hair flopping into his eyes. “You know I ain’t no shirker, Holden. I always do my share.”
“I know you do.”
“Is it true what I heard? About the lady?”
Heath sighed and stopped outside the bunkhouse door. “What’d you hear?”
“She came in from Javelina with Henry Sweet. She ain’t pretty, and she talks diff’rent. She says she’s—”
“Who told you all this?”
Joey ducked his head. “I was listenin’. You ain’t mad, are you, Holden?”
Mad at himself, not at Joey. The kid was too good at eavesdropping, and it bothered Heath that he hadn’t heard or smelled Joey nearby. He’d been too distracted by Rachel’s arrival, and that kind of distraction was a dangerous thing.
“Sean was spittin’ mad at you,” Joey said, grinning slyly. There was no love lost between him and Jed’s nephew, who’d always treated him like dirt. “Thought you’d never make him leave.” His grin went flat. “Is it really true that the lady is Jed’s wife?”
Heath grabbed Joey by his sleeve and pulled him back toward the stable. “Help me saddle Bess.”
The boy wouldn’t be put off. “Jed never said nothin’ ‘bout gettin’ hitched! You didn’t know, did you?”
Bess stamped and cocked her ears as Heath walked into the stable. “Guess he wanted it to be a surprise.”
Joey brought the saddle. “When do you think he’s coming home?”
Lying to the kid felt wrong, but Heath had been ready to lie a lot worse. “Haven’t heard from him in a while. He’s probably investin’ some of that money he got for the herd, maybe even buyin’ up new stock.”
“Oh.” Joey followed Heath as he led Bess outside. “You don’t like her, do you?”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
“You don’t like no females. I could tell you was mad as a hornet.”
Heath swung up into the saddle. “She’s Jed’s wife, and you got other things to worry about. I need you to talk to Maurice about askin’ the lady what she needs to be comfortable and make sure she gets it. I have somethin’ else to do.”
Joey gave Heath that look of pure trust that always made his chest tighten. “Things ain’t goin’ to be the way they used to anymore, are they?” the boy asked.
“Guess we’ll have to wait and see.”
His words finally silenced Joey, though the boy was clearly not satisfied. Heath felt the kid’s stare raking across his back as he rode out.
It wasn’t going to be easy on Joey when he found out Jed was gone, and Heath wouldn’t be around to make it any easier. But maybe he would be able to do something he wouldn’t have been able to if he’d left for good the day he found Jed’s body.
Sonntag knew just about everything that went on in the county. He’d be able to tell Heath if anyone could use a boy to do small jobs around a ranch for food and shelter. And he’d know if some local woman had a new baby, though it could be complicated getting such a female to come to Dog Creek to act as a wet nurse.
He would make her come, if he had to. The kid was more important than any woman’s preferences, even if she was the queen of England herself.
