The Guardian by Elizabeth Lane Read Free Book Online Page B

Oh!” She gave a muffled gasp. Her fingertips dug hard into his ribs.
    â€œWhat is it?” he asked, alarmed.
    She gripped him harder, writhing. “The baby!” she gasped. “I—think it’s coming!”

CHAPTER FOUR
    C HARITY CLENCHED her jaws, biting back the cry that pushed upward into her throat. She could feel the resistance in Black Sun’s body as he halted the horses. She could hear the unspoken dread in the low rasp of his breathing. Oh, why couldn’t the baby have waited? Why did her pains have to start tonight, in this miserable storm, with no one but an Indian brave to help her?
    â€œAre you sure it’s the baby?” He spoke above the hissing sound of the rain.
    â€œYes. I’m sure. I’m…wet.” She hoped he would understand and not point out that they were both soaked from the rain. The surge of warm fluid between her thighs had come just before the first pain stabbed through her body. Charity knew far too little about having babies, but what was happening to her could hardly be mistaken for anything else.
    â€œHow soon, do you think?” He glanced ahead, then to his left, as if torn between one danger and another. Where her fingertips rested on his ribs, Charity could feel the rapid pulsing of his heart.
    â€œI don’t know! ” She found herself wanting to pummel his body with her fists. “It’s my first baby! How could you expect me to know something like that?”
    The words Black Sun muttered under his breath could have been a curse or a prayer. “Hold on tight,” he snapped, swinging his mount to the left. As he kicked the horse to a gallop, Charity saw that they were headed toward an inky shadow that spilled across the foothills. Seen through the thick curtain of rain, it slowly took on the form of a deep cleft, then a canyon with a wide mouth and steep, rocky sides.
    Charity was trying to pick out more details when another pain knifed through her. She gasped, her body doubling against his back.
    â€œHold on!” Black Sun spoke quietly but his voice was hoarse with strain. How much did this man know about delivering babies? Not a great deal, she suspected. Right now, Charity would have given anything for the presence of her grandmother, or even one of the hatchet-faced sisters who’d perished beside their wagons in a hail of arrows. She could only hope the birth would be easy and natural. If there were complications, she and the baby might not live to see morning.
    Her fingers pressed into the hard knots of Black Sun’s shoulder muscles as she wondered what dying might be like. Pain, she imagined, perhaps terrible pain, and after that a feeling of blessed release, or maybe sadness at all one was leaving behind. Then darkness, to be followed by whatever came next. Dying might not be so bad after all.
    But no, she wasn’t ready to die—she who had tasted so little of life. Whatever this man must do to save her and her baby, she would see that he did it. If she had to scream at him, curse at him, threaten him…
    Slowly the gripping agony slid away from her. They were in the canyon now, with tall stone buttresses rising on both sides of them. How quiet it was here. Even the rain had become a fine, silent mist. High above them, the night sky flowed like a river of thinning clouds. Stars emerged as the storm moved eastward, and now the pale rim of the moon peeped over the rim of the canyon, flooding their path with a ghostly silver light.
    The packhorse snorted, the sound exploding in the stillness. Charity could hear the splash and gurgle of a stream and the whispering chirp of crickets. Black Sun had not spoken but he seemed unusually anxious, leaning forward on the horse, his eyes peering into the darkness. Was there some danger in this oddly peaceful place? Something she didn’t understand?
    Charity had no more time to wonder. Another contraction seized her like a brutal fist closing tight