Bride of the Wolf by Susan Krinard Read Free Book Online Page B

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 ragsRenshaw 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 intoher 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.
     
    I T 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