“Thank you for helpin’. I couldn’t’ve done it alone.”
The wind moaned through the black dome of night sky as they were both stricken with the enormity of what they’d done. There had been no second thoughts. They had not acted so much as reacted when they saw that Dan needed them. It was like the day of Zach’s death all over again. The three of them forever caught in a tapestry, woven into it like figures unable to change the course of their intertwined lives.
Chapter 18
WHEN Rye DALTON stepped back inside, McColl was nowhere in sight. Laura had built up the fire and was heating water for tea. He stopped in the shadows near the door, and at the sound of his entry, Laura looked up, a teapot in her hands. During his preoccupation with Dan, Rye had scarcely noticed how Laura was dressed. But he paused now to note her wrapper of soft pink flannel, buttoned demurely from hem to high neck and belted around her middle, disguising her shape. On her feet were thick gray knit stockings. The fire danced and flickered, backlighting the outline of her hair, which was loosely braided in a single plait, with wisps flying free around her face. Their ends took on sparks of fire themselves as she stared into the shadows at Rye.
He shuddered and slipped his chilled fingers into the waist of his britches to warm them against his belly, but in that instant, while Laura poised and their eyes met, his body quivered from memory. It was the first time he’d been exposed to her, the Laura he remembered, moving about, doing familiar things, dressed in an intimate way. Almost as if she sensed his thoughts, she set the teapot on the table and turned to face the fireplace once again, the single braid swinging between her shoulder blades as she bent forward.
With a deep sigh, Rye pulled his errant thoughts back to the problem at hand; this was not the appropriate time for either memories or wishes.
He crossed the keeping room, but as he passed the alcove bed, he made out Josh, lying wide-eyed in the dimness, staring up at him. Still with his hands tucked against his belly, Rye paused, meeting the blue eyes of the child with an earnest gaze. Enough light slipped into the cavern above the bed that Rye could see fear and questions in the child’s expression. He leaned sideways from the hip, lightly running a forefinger along the edge of the patchwork quilt covering the boy. “Your pa ...” But the boy knew the truth now—there was no sense in trying to disguise it. Rye’s voice was very low yet curiously rough as he began again. “Dan is going t’ get better, I promise y’, son. Y’r mother and I’ll see to it.”
The small chin quivered and tears suddenly glimmered on Josh’s fair lashes as he tried not to cry. Then his childish voice trembled. “H ... he’s got to, ’cause he ... he promised t’ teach m ... me to skate.”
For the first time Rye, too, felt like crying. His chest went tight. His heart felt swollen. He dropped to one knee, adjusted the quilts beneath the boy’s chin, and let his hand linger just a moment on the small chest. Through the layers of bedding he could feel shaken breaths being held tenuously. A surge of love welled up in Rye as he leaned to do what he had so often dreamed of doing. He placed a gentle kiss on his son’s forehead. “It’s a promise, Joshua,” he vowed against the warm skin that smelled different from any the man had ever been near—a child’s scent, milky and mellow, and touched with the aroma of bayberry that clung to the room. “But in the meantime, it’s perfectly all right t’ cry,” Rye whispered. “It’ll make y’ feel better and help y’ get t’ sleep.” Even before Rye’s words were out, Josh’s tears spilled and his breath caught on a first sob. Realizing that Josh was chagrined at breaking down this way, Rye secretly added, “I’ve cried plenty o’ times m’self.”
“Y ... you h ... have?” Josh tugged the quilts up to dry his eyes.
“Aye. I cried when I heard m’ mother had died while I was out t’ sea. And I cried when ... ah well, there’ve been plenty o’ times. Why, I nearly cried out on the step just now, but I figured if I did, the tears’d freeze and I’d be in a fix.”
Somehow during this conversation Josh’s tears had abated. Rye touched the blond hair on his son’s forehead. “G’night now, son.”
“G’night.”
When Rye straightened and turned, he found Laura had been watching all the time. Her hands were clasped tightly together and her lower lip was caught in her teeth. She, too, appeared to be holding emotions in check, for her face reflected both tenderness and pain. Rye looked from her to the linter room doorway, from where McColl now watched them both. When Rye’s glance shifted, Laura’s did, too.
Flustered to find McColl observing something that was none of his business, Laura immediately sought to divert him. She crossed to pluck three mugs from their hooks on the wall and set them on the trestle.
At that moment Josh’s voice came from behind Rye again. “Where’s Ship?”
Rye turned. “Why, she’s right here on the rug by the door.”
“Could she come over here by me?”
Without hesitation, Rye ordered quietly, “Here, girl,” and the dog ambled across the puncheon floor with clicking toenails. “Down,” Rye ordered, and the Lab dropped to her stomach obediently.
Josh hung over the side of the bed to pet Ship’s head, then looked up appealingly at his mother. “Couldn’t she come up here with me, Mama, please?”
Rye could see the idea didn’t agree with Laura, and put in quickly, “She’s been trained that her place is beside the bed, not in it, Josh. But she’ll stay right there and keep y’ company.”
“Will she be there when I wake up?”
Rye’s blue eyes met Laura’s brown ones across the firelit room. Then he turned back to his son. “Aye, she’ll be there.” Again they both grew uncomfortably aware of the apothecary observing their every exchange. But then McColl cleared his throat and announced, “I’ll need some boiling water.” Laura filled the teapot, then handed the simmering teakettle to him. “If you need more, I’ll fill it again.”
The apothecary answered with little more than a grunt before disappearing into the bedroom again. Laura and Rye sat down across from each other at the table, and she poured tea into two mugs. The fire snapped, and the wind howled around the windows, and from inside the bedroom came the sound of water being poured.
Rye had raised his cup to his mouth for the second time before some sixth sense warned him. He lurched to his feet, sending the bench scraping backward as he strode purposefully to the bedroom doorway, where he stopped short, his fists clenched.
“What the goddamn hell do y’ think y’re doin’, McColl!” His rage seemed to rival the force of the blizzard outside. Laura was beside Rye in a flash. She gaped in horror at the steam-heated glass cup McColl had placed upside down on Dan’s exposed chest.
“We must restore his circulation ...” McColl was lifting a second dome-shaped glass from the interior of the hot teakettle with metal tongs when both tongs and cup were suddenly smacked out of his hand and went flying across the room.
“Get the hell out, McColl!” Dalton roared, “and take y’r goddamn cuppin’ with y’!”
Immediately, Rye spun toward the bed, searching for something to slip beneath the rounded lip of the cup to break the suction. He caught sight of the awl and quickly inserted its point beneath the thick-domed piece that was about the size of half a walnut shell, and handleless. Grabbing up the brandy-stained rag, he took the cup from Dan’s skin, and as he did a little puff of steam came from beneath it. At the sight of the burn it had caused, Rye cursed, “Goddamn y’, fool!”
“Fool!” The outraged apothecary glared at Dalton. “You call me the fool?” Cupping was as common a practice as pill-rolling, for the vacuum created beneath the steam-heated cups was believed to have the power to induce bad blood from incisions and cure respiratory ailments by stimulating the skin and drawing the blood to its surface. Thus, McColl’s voice held a note of disdainful superiority as he scoffed, “People like you think you know more than trained men of medicine, Dalton. Well, I for one—”
“Trained men o’ medicine! Y’ve
burned him, man! Needlessly burned him!” Rye’s face was a distorted mask of rage, and the power of his voice fairly shook the rafters.
“I did not invent the cure, Dalton, I only apply it.”
“And enjoy every minute of it!” Rye’s anger billowed afresh, for he knew that had he not stepped to the doorway when he did, McColl undoubtedly would have covered Dan’s entire chest with the painful “cure-alls.” Had the man shown any sign of compassion for the plight of his patient, Rye might have relented in his anger.
Instead, McColl only crossed to retrieve the cup from the floor, using his hanky to hold it as he headed toward Dalton to collect his bag. “The burns are an unfortunate side effect, but it’s for the good of the patient in the long run,” the apothecary stated smugly.
The sheer stupidity and pitilessness of such views was more than Rye could tolerate. Turning swiftly as McColl passed, the cooper suddenly pressed the hot cup he still held to McColl’s cheek.
McColl jerked back, nursing the spot tenderly with his fingertips as it slowly turned red. His eyes snapped with hatred. “You’re mad, Dalton,” he growled. “First you call me in for help, then use your own queer methods and refuse to let me proceed with the accepted treatment, but I’ll see that you pay for this ... this insult!”
“How many more ways were y’ plannin’t’ torture him? I’m not the one who’s mad, McColl, you are! You and all your kind who practice such atrocities in the name of medicine! And I did not send for y’. I sent for Doc Foulger, though I’m not too sure his methods’re any less grisly than yours! How did it feel, McColl, huh? How do y’ like bein’ burned? Do y’ think Dan here likes it any better than you do?” With each accusation Rye took another menacing step forward until he’d forced the apothecary back almost as far as the linter room doorway. There, Rye snarled, “Now take y’r fancy black bag with y’ and get the hell out and never darken my door again!”
“B ... but my cups!” McColl’s wide eyes wavered toward the hot kettle still sitting on the bedside commode.
“Will stay right where they are!” Rye finished for him. “Out!” A shaking finger pointed the way.
McColl grabbed his cape, turned tail and ran.
A wide-eyed Laura, her face ashen, was bending over Dan, sickened by the unnecessary wound forced upon a man too ill to be able to object to such treatment.
As Rye turned back to her, he immediately noted that the circular burn was brilliant red and already beginning to blister. “Oh, Christ, would y’ look at what that damn fool’s done.” Without pause, Rye strode out of the room and returned a moment later with a handful of snow, which he laid on the burn.
Immediately, it began melting, and Laura found the cloth with the brandy stains and dabbed away the rivulets as they formed.
“Oh, Rye, how could McColl do such a thing?” There were tears in her eyes.
The hand holding the snow shook yet with anger. “The man’s an ass! He and all his ilk. What they get by with is criminal—leechin’, cuppin’, rowelin’—every last one of ’em should be made t’ suffer their own cures, and they’d soon stop subjectin’ others t’ them.”
“I’ll mix up an ointment for it. How are Dan’s fingers doing?”
Laura’s question diverted Rye’s attention, and his nerves stopped jumping. He checked Dan’s fingers, which were warming now and beginning to bleed. He lifted his eyes to Laura’s, and there was pain in the blue depths. “I won’t lie to y’, love. He’ll do plenty o’ sufferin’ before this’s over.” Together they looked at the man on the bed, then at each other again.
“I know. But we’ll be here to see him through it. Both of us.”
The long lines of weariness at the sides of Rye’s mouth were accented in the dim candlelight. And from where she stood, Laura made out each pockmark on his face as a round shadow while he answered.
“Aye, both of us.”
A tremulous silence passed while they seemed to solemnize the vow, then Laura silently turned and left the room.
They wrapped Dan’s hands in linen strips and covered them with a pair of mittens, then applied a balm of witch hazel to his burn, then covered it with a square of soft flannel before they bundled him in a feather tick and went back to the keeping room to wait.
Laura turned toward the fireplace to rewarm their tea, but she glanced over her shoulder at a soft word from Rye.
“Look.”
Rye stood beside Josh’s bed, gazing down into the alcove’s shadows. Laura came up behind his broad shoulder and peered around to find Ship sound asleep at the foot of the bed, curled against Josh’s feet, while the child, too, slumbered peacefully.
Rye turned his eyes from the bed to the woman beside him. She lifted her face, and for a moment he read peace there. He watched her coffee-colored eyes rove over his features, pausing on his hair, his eyes, lips, sideburns, and homing again to his eyes. Outside, the wind rattled the shutters while behind her a log broke and settled to the grate with a soft shush. More than anything in the world, Rye wanted simply to circle her with his arms and rest his cheek on top of her hair, close his eyes for a moment, and feel her face pressed against his collarbone. But he didn’t. His thumbs remained hooked at his waist while he invented inanities to bridge the compelling moment.
“I’m sorry, Laura. I remember y’ don’t like dogs on y’r beds. Should I make ’er get down?”
“No. Josh needs her just as badly as ...” She caught herself just in time before saying, as I need you. But Rye’s sharp glance made her realize the words were clearly understood between them. Again she groped for something to say. “Thank you for coming, Rye.”
“Y’ don’t have t’ thank me, Laura, y’ know that. Nothing could’ve kept me away when you or Dan needed me.” He paused thoughtfully for a moment, then his mouth formed a rueful quarter-smile. “Funny, isn’t it? Everyone on this island knows the truth of that. I was the first one they thought o’ runnin’ to when they found Dan, just like he was the first one they went runnin’ to when I was supposed t’ve drowned.”
They stood silent for a minute, once again pondering the reversal of the two men’s roles in Laura’s life, then she admitted, “I don’t know what I’d have done without you. I would never have been able to stand up to McColl the way you did or know what was best for Dan.”
Rye sighed and glanced toward the linter room doorway. “Let’s hope we’ve done what’s best for him.” Then, looking down at Laura’s hair, he asked, “Have y’ got that tea ready?” She led the way back toward the fireplace while Rye slumped to a bench at the trestle, and she placed two hot mugs on the boards, then sat down opposite.
Quite naturally, their thoughts roved backward five years to the last time they had shared this table. Laura looked up to find Rye watching her as he lifted the cup to his lips. He sipped, then the crease deepened between his eyes. He looked down into the cup. “The honey—you remembered.” Again his blue-eyed gaze met hers over the cup.
“Why, of course I remembered. I must have fixed you tea with honey and nutmeg a hundred times.”
The spicy, hot brew brought back at least as many memories now, but they knew it was dangerous to revive them. “When I was on the ship and the ice storms came on a night much like this, I’d think of sittin’ with y’ this way beside the fire, and I’d’ve given my entire lay t’ have a cup o’ y’r tea then.”
“And I’d have given the same to be able to fix it for you,” she added simply. It was the first time he had expressed regret over the choice he’d made. She tried to keep her eyes on anything except him, but it was as if they were unwilling to obey her wishes, and time and again, Laura’s gaze got tangled up with his. They raised their mugs, drank deeply, and suddenly, beneath the table, Rye shifted his long legs and his knee bumped hers. Her knee jerked back to safety while he simultaneously sat up straighter.
For the first time Rye became fully aware of the pungent scent of bayberry permeating the room. He glanced toward the hearth, along the stones to one sid
e, noting the candle forms, the baskets of berries, one of them spilled, the kettle and long-handled ladle for dipping the melted wax. Slowly, he turned back to look at her.
“Y’ve been makin’ bayberry candles.”
She nodded, her eyes flickering up, then quickly down again.
He let his eyelids drift closed, pulled in a deep lungful of evergreen-flavored air, and dropped his head back slightly. “Ahh ...” The sound rumbled from his throat in a long syllable of satisfaction before he looked at Laura once again. “The memories that scent brings back.” The perfume of the bayberries seemed to shift about his head like rich incense, bringing with it recollections of himself and Laura, younger then, seeking privacy in the bayberry thickets. And after they were married, there was the time she had made candles, and that night, in an orgy of excess, they had lit six of the fragrant tapers and placed them all around the bed, then pleasured each other within their circle of flickering golden light while the essence seemed to flavor their very skin.
Sitting now with that same smell filling their senses, the two were as aware of each other as man and woman as they’d ever been in their lives. The dancing firelight sent shifting highlights over their faces, and lit the sleeve of Laura’s pink wrapper to a deep melon color. Her mug was empty, she had taken refuge in it so often, and she told herself to go get the kettle, to break this spell. But before she could, Rye lowered his right hand and laid it palm up on the table between them. Her gaze moved from his long fingers to his sea-blue eyes, which remained steadfastly on hers. Her heart tripped and thudded, and she clutched the handle of her mug while looking down again at the callused palm that waited in invitation.
“Don’t worry,” he said, low and gruff. “I wouldn’t do that t’ Dan when he’s lyin’ unconscious. I just need t’ touch y’.”
She moved her own hand slowly until it rested on his, then his fingers closed gently around hers and she searched for something proper to say, but so many intimate things came to mind instead.