“Sometimes,” Lenore admitted. “I should love just to see London this night! London, with her busy streets and carefree revelers and her churches, with the bells all pealing merrily. I should love to see Hampton Court; I would cherish a visit to Oxford. I would even love to walk the streets among the people. I am homesick, I suppose. I should not like to see the palisade—I should like to see Westminster Abbey and the shops—” “Shops!” Robert groaned.
“Oh, come!” Lenore said, pouting. “I do not want to smoke meat and worry if we’ve enough candles and wood for the winter. Look at my hands! Alas, they are almost as bad as Jassy’s. I have stooped to the making of candles and soap!”
They all laughed. Jassy was startled by her husband’s touch when he picked up her small hand and smoothed his large fingers over it. The fire flickered, and it seemed that the room grew silent—even Tamsyn ceased to play—and Jamie studied her hand very carefully. “This is not a bad hand, as I see it, Lenore. It came to me rough and worn in the service of others, and now it stays rough and worn in the service of my dream. It is a fine hand. It holds great strength, yet it can touch with tenderness. I am quite fond of it, really. Tell me, Jassy, are you so homesick too? Do you still abhor the Carlyle Hundred?”
She could not snatch her hand away, nor could she understand the curious tone of voice with which he softly spoke, then so abruptly demanded. “I am here, milord, for you commanded it so. Remember?”
“Ah. You, too, would prefer London.”
“You forget yourself, Lord Cameron. Where you go, I am thither commanded. And you choose to be here.”
“Is it really so simple, then?”
“You have seen that it is so,” Jassy replied demurely. She was trembling, and she didn’t know why. She tugged lightly upon her hand and freed it at last. She looked about at their company and mumbled out some excuse about being exhausted. Then she fled them all, seeking the sanctuary of her room. Jamie would come soon enough, but he would not touch her. He would crawl into his side of the bed, keep his careful distance, and not disturb her.
Molly was not with her, and so she quickly disrobed alone and crawled into bed, shivering. She did not remove her pendant but held it between her fingers. Cameron. It was her name. Jassy Cameron. She had never stopped to realize it before, and now it suddenly meant very much. Holding the pendant, she closed her eyes and quickly drifted off to sleep.
It was not, however, a restful sleep. Of all strange times, her nightmares returned. And soon she started to scream again. To scream, and scream, and scream …
“Jassy!”
She awoke drenched in sweat, shaking convulsively. She was not alone. Jamie was back, and he held her tightly against himself. “Jassy, shush, it’s over now. It’s a dream, it’s a nightmare. That’s all. It is nothing real, nothing that can hurt you!”
She stared into his eyes. Against the soft light of the fire they were very blue and gentle. He touched her cheek and smoothed away the tears that she had shed in her sleep. “Jassy!” he repeated.
She had been as taut as steel, she realized. She went limp in his arms. It had been a dream. No specters haunted their bedroom, no corpses.
“I’m … sorry,” she whispered. “I’m sorry that I disturbed you.”
“And that I am here, not Robert Maxwell?” he said sharply.
She stared quickly into his eyes again, wondering if he was angry. He did not appear to be so, but the question was still intense, and she felt herself shivering again.
“I am sorry,” she said softly, “that I disturbed you, milord, and nothing more.”
“There is nothing that can hurt you here, Jassy. You are safe with me. You are safe.” He smoothed back her hair and held her gently in his arms. “Are you all right?”
Her heart kept beating hard, but the pace was beginning to subside. The light of the fire had bathed the room in a soft glow, and she was leaving behind the shadowed world of her nightmarish terror. She nodded to him. He rose, shivering against the chill as he moved to the hearth to stoke the dying blaze with the poker. Then he returned to her, slipping beneath the covers and pulling her against him. She rested with her cheek upon his naked chest. Her hand also rested upon it, and her fingers were teased by the crisp mat of dark hair beneath them. He lay with his arm crooked beneath his head, stroking her hair, staring up at the canopy of their bed.
“Tell me about it. Tell me about the dream,” he said.
She tensed, wondering if she could do so. He must have felt the new fear within her, for he reached for her chin and tilted her head so that she could meet his eyes. “No demons lie in wait for you here, Jassy. Tell me what torments you, and perhaps you will be freed from it.”
She lowered her head against him again, rubbing her cheek against the sleek warmth of his chest. “It—it always starts with my mother,” she whispered.
“And she is ill?”
“She is dying. I can see her: She is lying on the pallet in Master John’s attic, and there is a sheet covering her, and I know what I will find, but I must go to her, anyway. I come closer and closer, and then I pull away the covers and she is there, but she is dead, and she has been dead for a very long time, for her eyes are nothing but dark, empty sockets, and it is as if the carrion and worms have preyed upon her. I stare at her and I stare at her and …”
“And, my love?”
“As I watch her, she becomes me, and I am in terror then that …”
“That what, Jassy?”
“I … do not want to die as she did,” Jassy mumbled against his flesh.
He was silent for several long seconds. “She died the night that we first met.”
“Yes.”
“And you were trying to buy her some medication, or the services of some physician?”
“Yes,” she barely whispered. The sound was a ragged breath of warmth that touched his flesh. Her fingers curled suddenly against him. “You must understand … Robert was very kind to me that day. She would not even lie in a coffin had he not insisted on paying the cost of it.”
Jamie grunted. His voice took on a slight edge. “And that is it? The extent of the dream?”
She shuddered again, violently. “Sometimes … sometimes it is different.”
“And tonight?”
“Tonight it was worse. I watched her, and even as I stared at her, she became me. I saw myself lying there, and I knew that I was dead. I was dead … as my mother had been.”
“Was I there?”
She recalled the dream, Jamie staring down upon her, Hope sidling around him. She remembered holding the baby, the blue, pinched, stillborn baby.
“Yes, you were there.”
“And what was I doing?”
“You were watching me. Very gravely, very sadly.”
“Why?”
“Because … because the babe was laid upon me, and it was dead too.”
“Jassy! Jassy!” He set his hands upon her and sat up, sweeping her into his arms and cradling her within them. His chin rested atop her head, and he held her close. He took her hand and stretched out her fingers, then laid her hand against the swell of her stomach. “Feel him! He kicks even now. He is strong and you are strong, and both of you will survive. I will not let anything happen to you.”
She twisted against him, burying her face against his neck. He continued to hold her tight.
“Trust in me,” he told her. He threaded his fingers through hers and laced them together over the bulge of their child. “Trust in me; I will be beside you, and I will never let you starve or want for anything.”
Jassy had never known such a wondrous feeling of security.
Of being cherished …
She laid her head against him, savoring the sensation.
She yawned, exhausted again, certain that her dreams would no longer be haunted.
“Was there more to it?” he asked.
“What, milord?” she asked in sleepy contentment.
“The dream. Was there any more t
o it?”
“Oh … yes. Hope was beside you as you watched me.”
He laughed suddenly, and with good humor. “You are a jealous little minx.”
She started to stiffen against him. “Milord, I most certainly am not.”
“You are.”
“I am not …” She hesitated, for the baby was moving in great ripples against her stomach. “I … have grown so very large,” she murmured.
He chuckled softly, nuzzling her head with his chin. “It will not be long now, madame. Not long at all. The end of February, the beginning of March.”
“It will not be long,” she agreed. She trembled, for she could not quite shake the fear. He held her closer. “I will be with you,” he promised her. “I will be with you, and no harm will come to you.”
She believed him. She gazed up at him with a tender, dazzling smile, and then she closed her eyes, and in a matter of minutes she was sleeping again, softly and easily this time.
Jamie laid her down, smoothed the hair from her brow, and studied her features, gentle with sleep, a smile still curved about her lips. She grew more beautiful daily, he thought, and he grew evermore beneath the shadow of her spell. He felt like a lovesick boy at times, watching her movements, watching her laughter, watching her when she frowned, concentrating intently upon some task or another.
Regrets … He had none.
He had determined to have her, and he had determined to marry her, and he had known that she had the passion and the spirit to rival his, to meet and challenge this brave new land. He had known that he had the power to make her his wife, and he even had had the sure confidence to believe that he could awaken the passion and sensuality that had lain behind the vehemence of her hatred and the volatility of her spirit. He had, in his arrogance known that he could claim her and awaken her, and command her here, to his side.
But he could not make her love him.
She was his wife. Soon they would have a child, and there was no reason that he should lose her.
No reason … except that he might well let her go. He could not love like this and keep silent. Nor could he lay his heart before her feet and lose his soul. She had wanted Robert. She dreamed of a man full of flattery and laughter. Someone gentle, easily led and maneuvered.
He clenched his jaw, hard and tight. He could not be a half-wit fool for her entertainment. If she could not love the man that he was, then he would have to let her go.
Misery clamped down upon him hard, and his muscles constricted, taut and painful. They would know soon enough, he thought. When the child came, there would be a time of reckoning. He would demand it.
And he would have it.
XVI
They were not to wait as long as any of them had anticipated for Jassy’s baby to be born.
The doctor from Jamestown had promised to make it down to the hundred by the twenty-fifth of February, but it was only the fifteenth of that month when she felt the first startling pain.
She was out in the kitchen with Jonathan when she felt the constriction come around her, like a steel band tightening around her lower back. She had been bending over a pot of stew, and at first she felt as if she had merely stood over it too long. The last weeks had been wretched for her. She could find no such thing as a comfortable position, not to sit in, stand in, or sleep in. Rising was difficult, and walking had its annoyances, and she was ever in need of a chamber pot. She had grown very anxious and longed for the birth.
Straightening, Jassy held her hands upon her hips and stretched, and in a few moments the pain faded. Jonathan Hayes looked at her worriedly. “We can take stock of the spices later, milady.”
She shook her head, smiling. “We don’t know when the next ship is due, and I believe that we are running low on salt. Let’s continue.”
Jonathan went onward to assess the cloves, and Jassy listened to him as he droned on, marking down the amounts of various herbs and spices in Jamie’s ledger. Suddenly she could hear Jonathan speak no more, for the constriction came again, and no little twinge, but an agonizing knot about her. She jumped to her feet, gasping with it, squeezing her eyes tightly shut.
“Milady—”
“I am all right,” she said, but the band constricted tighter and tighter. She fell back into the chair and looked at Jonathan. “I am not all right.”
“I’ll get help.” Jonathan grabbed his cloak from the peg and went racing out into the yard. The pain began to ebb again, and Jassy worried that she might have given poor Jonathan a false alarm. She started to rise again, then felt a flood of water cascade from her, drenching her skirts and petticoats. She gripped hard to the table, for the cascade came with another pain, this one more fierce than ever before.
The door burst inward, and a cold gust of wind followed Tamsyn into the kitchen. He came hurriedly over to her.
“It is the baby,” he said.
“It is too early!” Jassy protested.
Tamsyn smiled at her. “Jassy, girl, there’s none can tell a babe eager to enter the world that it’s too early. They will come when they choose to do so, and that’s a fact. You need to get up to your bed, like a good lass.”
“Then what?’
“Then, lass, you wait. Come, I’ll help you.” He set an arm about her shoulders. The door burst inward again, and Jamie was there. He stood, framed by the doorway, very tall and dark and forbidding. He looked at Tamsyn, and then his wife. He drew off his gloves as he came into the kitchen, tossing them upon the table. “Move aside, man!” he told Tamsyn, stooping low to sweep Jassy into his arms.
“No!” she cried, and she looked anxiously to Tamsyn. “Jamie, he studied at Oxford, please …” She hooked her arms around his neck, shivering. The birth water had made her very cold. “I am soaking you,” she added in distress.
Jamie gave no heed to her sodden condition but stared hard at Tamsyn. He was not the same man he had once urged from the Crossroads Inn. He was clean-shaven, and he often smoked upon a clay pipe, but he seldom inbibed in anything stronger than ale, and he was frugal in that taste. Now, as he looked at the man, Jamie hesitated only briefly. He could not be sure of the man’s credentials, but Jassy trusted in him, and perhaps that was the most important thing. “Come along, then,” Jamie said.
Jassy whispered her thanks against his shirt.
He strode through the breezeway from the kitchen to the house, coming in by the dining room. The cold February wind struck them hard, and he felt her shiver anew. He saw Amy Lawton sweeping the hallway as he entered the main house, and he called to her quickly. “Go to the Tannen house. Fetch Molly. Where is Elizabeth?”
“I’m here!” Elizabeth called from the stairway.
“The babe comes,” Jamie said briefly. He strode on up the stairs with Jassy in his arms. In their room he set her down and instantly set upon the hooks and eyes upon her gown. She looked up at him, shivering miserably. He tried to pull the gown over her head.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she whispered. “I am a disaster.”
“Let’s get this off.” He pulled the gown over her head. She wore no corset or stays but only a shift and two loose petticoats. With the dress gone, she stood and backed away from him. “I can manage, Jamie, honestly.”
“Get over here!” he commanded her gruffly. “You cannot manage.”
“Jamie—”
Elizabeth had followed them into the room by then. She cleared her throat softly. “I’ll find a new gown,” she said.
Another pain seized upon Jassy hard, and she gritted her teeth as tears stung her eyes and she doubled over.
“Little fool!” Jamie chastised her. He caught hold of her, taking her hands in his own. She gripped hard in return. Harder and harder. “Easy!” he whispered to her. “Breathe deep, Jassy. Easy, love, easy …”
The band of agony eased, and she went limp against him. He took the opportunity to strip her of her petticoats and shift, and Elizabeth came quickly over to assist him, and to slide the clean, dry nightgown ov
er her head. By then Tamsyn, too, was standing in the doorway. Jamie stared at him hard. “All right, then, man. What now?”
“Now she must lie down and wait, milord.”
“That’s all?”
“That is all that can be done,” Tamsyn replied. Elizabeth drew back the sheets, and Jamie swept Jassy up and laid her out upon the bed.
Jassy caught his hand. “Jamie,” she whispered. “It’s too early.”
“Not so very early,” he told her encouragingly. He glanced at Tamsyn. He wished that he knew more about the birth process. He had learned so much in life. He could sail a ship, tramp his way through any wilderness, and survive off the land or the sea, but he didn’t know how to ease a single furrow of pain from Jassy’s brow, and he didn’t have any idea if the babe was really too early, if it could survive at all.
“Two weeks,” Tamsyn said, “if my old eyes don’t deceive me. I’m a-thinking this lad might have found his roots on the very night of your wedding, milord, and therefore he has chosen to come just a mite too soon. Things should come well enough.” He looked at Elizabeth. “Lady Elizabeth, if you would find Molly when she comes, have her tend to the water we need, and the cloths to wipe up his little lordship when he arrives, and for Jass—milady.”
“What can I do?” Jamie said.
“Why, milord, perhaps you should go and smoke a pipe and have a whiskey. It will be a while.”
Jamie shook his head. “I promised her that I would stay with her.”
“Then stay with her, milord,” Tamsyn said, and smiled ruefully. “Cool her brow, hold her hand, and be at her side.”
It was exactly what he did.
The man, Tamsyn, seemed awkward at first about touching Jassy in Jamie’s presence. Then he seemed to shrug, realizing that Lord Cameron was in the birth room to stay, and that was that. Jamie knew that Tamsyn was aware of his doubt, and in the end Tamsyn squared his shoulders and spoke to Jamie as he worked over Jassy. Jassy winced and clung to her husband’s hand. Jamie’s flesh went white where she gripped against him, but he made no sound.