His Defiant Wife, the Adventures of Linnett Wainwright, Book 2 by Vanessa Brooks Read Free Book Online Page B

beads. On the babe’s feet were soft shoes of the same
material held on by soft strips of leather that criss-crossed the
plump little legs -- a native child perhaps?
    The babe
regarded Linnet solemnly with large, very dark, almost black
eyes.
    “Goodness!
Where on earth have you come from?” Linnett spoke aloud to the
child, hoping for some response, but the baby continued to regard
her with an unblinking stare.
    Linnett thought
hurriedly; she could put the child back, hoping that its parents
were nearby watching and then she could come back in a little while
to see if the child had gone. She was concerned about the stream
being so close to where the baby was and worried it may fall in and
drown. Linnett decided it was a risk she would have to take.
    Parting the
bushes, she placed the baby back down on the ground, but the child
began to wail. Linnett walked a little farther away and turned back
to look. The baby was crawling out from under the bush towards
her.
    “ Oh no!”
Linnett muttered as she went back to pick up the child.
    As soon as she
had him in her arms he leant forward and buried his face into the
hollow of her neck. His fat little arms reached around her neck,
his hands grabbing fistfuls of her hair. In an instinctive rush of
tenderness, Linnett hugged the little body to her and patted the
small back. “Hush there shhh...shhh...little one,” she crooned
softly. Linnett walked up and down the side of the stream looking
all around for some sign of the child’s protectors.
    After a few
minutes, she came to a decision. She absolutely refused to leave
such a small child outside, alone and unprotected. If the parents
of this child wanted it back, they could come to the cabin and ask
for it. With her rather cumbersome load of a baby on one hip and
the washing basket on the other, Linnett made her way slowly back
to the welcoming warmth of the cabin.
    She dropped the
basket into a corner and turned her attention to the child. She
tried to disentangle the child’s hands from her hair in order to
place it on the bed but like a small leech it clung on to her
fiercely. Linnett gave up and ‘wearing’ the baby, she poured out a
cup of milk.
    Linnett took it
with her and sat in one of the wooden rocking chairs. She pulled
the shawl from the back of the chair and wrapped it around the pair
of them. After a minute or two, the child relaxed its hold
slightly, sliding down onto Linnett’s lap. She crooned gently to
the babe and offered the cup of milk, holding it up to the child’s
lips.
    The baby drank
thirstily, finishing the cup and then wailing for more. “Alright,
alright there’s plenty more, hush now, hush,” Linnett soothed.
After a second cup of milk, the child plugged in a thumb and
snuggled into Linnett, rapidly falling asleep. Linnett looked down
at the small, round face with its sweep of long dark lashes and was
choked with emotion. How endearing, how trusting, she thought.
    She lifted the
sleeping child over to the bed and laid it in the middle, away from
the edge, and tucked the shawl tightly around the baby.
Straightening up, she put a hand to the small of her back,
massaging the ache that sitting in a cramped position with the
child had caused.
    She looked down
at the sleeping babe and realised she didn’t even know what sex it
was. Carefully, so as not to wake the sleeping child, she lifted
the tunic -- well then, definitely a boy, with no napkin on either!
Perhaps not a problem for the native child, she thought, but a huge
one for me.
    Linnett
remembered the pile of extra bedding that Sarah had insisted she
bring. She ran to the chest at the foot of their bed, and flinging
up the lid, Linnett pulled out the oldest and softest blanket she
could find. She tore it into as many napkin type squares as the
blanket’s size would allow. She ended up with eight decent-sized
squares and a few oblongs. Linnett gently swaddled the babe’s
nether regions in one of the improvised napkins, then covered him
up