Beloved Enemy (74 page)

Chapter
29

Ginny
finished the explanation of the situation and what she needed, watching the old
woman's reactions. It was impossible to go into the subtleties of the situation
when one was reduced to a few words and plentiful gestures, but she was
confident she had got the message across. Now she looked for a sign of
repugnance, or at least of deep, moral disapproval, but the woman's countenance
hardly changed. She nodded briefly and went to the back of the shelter,
bringing out a hide flask. The contents she tipped into a small gourd, then
added a little gray powder and shavings from the bark of the slippery elm.

Ginny
took the final mixture when it had been replaced in the hide flask, understood
that she was to take two doses, one at night, the next the following morning.
She could expect pain, some bleeding within a few hours. If this did not happen,
she was to come back. There were other ways.

She
made her way back to the woods, the flask in the pocket of her apron. Still she
did not know whether she would take the medicine woman's potion, the very
thought of it filled her with revulsion; but however hard she had tossed and
turned, no alternative solution had come to her in the dark reaches of the
night. At least, now, she had an answer at hand, however unpalatable it might
be.

"Got
you!" Alex sprang out from the trees behind her, catching her round the
waist and swinging her in the air.  “You have been visiting your Indians
again."

"There
is no reason why I should not, is there?"

"No,
I suppose not." He set her down. "It is no more dangerous than being
taken for a witch. But I do feel most uneasy when I have no control over your
movements." He scratched his head, smiling ruefully, "That will annoy
you, of course, but it is true, nevertheless."

"I
have never given you the right to control my movements," Ginny told   him,
amused rather than annoyed.

"Maybe
not, but I have assumed it often enough." Shared memories held them for a
moment; then Ginny felt the flask in her pocket, and the desolation crept over
her again. It showed in her eyes, and Alex took her free hand. "Something
more than the usual is troubling you, chicken. It has been so for the last
week."

"Nonsense,
unless it be the need to contrive some trysting place other than this
forest," she said, averting her head.

"That
problem I have solved." Alex took her face and turned it toward him.
"What is troubling you?"

"Nothing,
I told you. How have you solved the problem?"

"I
am not allowing you to get away with that, Ginny. I feel impotent enough at the
moment as it is, without being dismissed so carelessly when I know my concern
is well founded. Something is troubling you, and you will tell me what it
is."

Ginny
clutched the flask in her pocket as if it were a talisman. All she had to do
was go home and take the potion; then there would be no need to tell Alex or
anyone else. If she could just withstand the desperate need to share the
problem, to bury herself in his arms and let him come up with a solution. But
she had to be strong. It was so much better this way. There were no solutions,
and it would not be fair to increase Alex's burden of hopeless frustration.

"What
is this that you are holding?" Frowning, Alex drew her hand from her
pocket, opening her fingers to take the flask from her. "You have been
clinging onto it as if it were a lifeline."

"Nothing,"
Ginny repeated faintly. "It is just some medicine."

"For
what? Are you unwell? Why must you go to the Indians for medicine?" The
questions came fast and anxious, as if Alex somehow sensed the shape of the
tragedy waiting in the wings.

"It
is just some physic for my stomach," she said. "My own medicine has
not alleviated it, so I thought to try—"

"It
is more than that," he insisted. "Tell me the truth. Are you
ill?"

"No,
I am not ill. Please, I do not wish to talk of this any longer."

"Well,
I
do," he said firmly. "God forgive me, Ginny, but if
you do not tell me the truth quickly, I shall shake it out of you!"

"Why?
I do not understand why this is so important to you," she cried in
despair, recognizing the last vestiges of restraint slipping away from her
under this relentless pressure. "You do not want to know, I promise you.
It is better that you do not."

Alex
went white. "What could possibly be better kept from me? Quickly, Ginny, I
cannot be patient for much longer." His hands were on her shoulders,
gripping in forceful emphasis.

"I
am carrying a child," she said quietly, and his hands left her shoulders.

"Whose?"
Alex rasped, his voice barely audible, his face ghastly.

Only
then did Ginny fully realize the torment Alex suffered knowing that she
belonged to another man, knowing that Giles had the right and the opportunity
to possess her whenever and wherever he pleased. It was a torment every bit as
fierce as that her husband suffered when he thought of the months of her unfaithfulness,
but Alex had never allowed her to see it, had borne it as his own private hell,
just as she had borne her own.

Now
she said simply, "Yours. My husband has not been capable of claiming his
conjugal rights since our marriage was—" She gave a short, ironic laugh.
"Was resurrected. It is that failure that causes the violence of his
bitterness—" She stopped. Making excuses for Giles did not seem relevant
at the moment.

Alex
looked down at her for long minutes, his expression a curious mixture of amazed
wonder and great joy. Ginny recognized the emotions as being the same as her
own in the first moments of knowledge, and she waited for the change that would
sweep through him, wiping out the joy, when he realized the full, horrendous
implications of the situation. But it didn't come. Instead, he wrapped her in
his arms and kissed her with fierce passion.

"You
bring me such joy, sweetheart," he whispered against her mouth. "It
is what I would have wished for, of all things."

"What
can you mean?" Her voice was a mere thread as she stared up at him, aghast
that he did not seem to understand. "My husband will know that it cannot
be his child that I bear. He would not be able to live with that—"

"He
will not have to," Alex said, suddenly frowning. "You will be leaving
him now, long before your condition becomes obvious. I would prefer you not to
take a sea voyage, but it cannot be helped, and the journey to the Indies is
not too long-"

"Alex,
stop, in the name of pity. You do not know what you are saying. You would live
as an outcast on a plantation in Barbados while I breed you bastards? Living in
fear every minute of the day that the next ship will bring someone who knows
our story—who knows Giles—who . . ."

"Enough,"
he said, his voice very quiet. "What strategy have
you
formed then,
Virginia?" She was quite unable to answer him, to look him in the eye,
even as her soul rebelled at the injustice of these guilt feelings when she had
attempted to spare him, to take the whole burden of pain and decision upon her
own shoulders. "Well?" he asked as softly as before. "You must
have a plan, my dear Virginia. Will you not share it?"

Ginny
winced at the sardonic note, the harshness in the green-brown eyes, but still
she could not manage to speak the truth. "I had not decided anything,
yet," she whispered.

"You
lie!" Alex stated, looking down at the flask that he still held. "You
have been to the Indians for medicine for your stomach, is that not what you
said? Well, is it not?" he demanded when she kept silent. with quiet
deliberation, he took the stopper off the flask and upturned it, allowing the
contents to spill upon the ground.

"You
do not understand—" Ginny said, her face white as milk, her eyes huge.
"Can you not see that there is no other way?"

"My
vision is not as blinkered as yours," he said coldly. "Understand
this, Virginia Courtney. You will not destroy my child."

"Then
what am I to do?" she cried. "I do not wish to do such a dreadful
thing but I would not destroy
you.”

Alex
wrestled with a seemingly limitless fury. He could not at this point begin to
understand why she would have chosen such a desperate solution, such a lonely
solution that excluded him, denied him any rights, a solution that would surely
endanger her.

"I
am too angry to discuss this with you in a reasonable manner," he said
eventually, hardening his heart as the gray eyes swam and she turned away, her
shoulders sagging. "Come with me now. I want to show you something."
Without touching her, or waiting to see that she followed, he strode out of the
glade. Ginny went with him because she could think of no good reason not to.
She felt cold and empty, no longer able to react with any feeling to his anger.
If he did not understand, then she no longer had the energy to make him.

In a
small clearing, Alex stopped, and Ginny stared at the small hut made, like the
Indian cabins, of woven swamp reads and marsh grass. "Where did that come
from?" she asked stupidly.

"I
found it a few days ago," he said, "when I was searching for an
answer to this open-air existence. Presumably, it belonged to some renegade,
but it has been abandoned for some time. I have made a few improvements."
He held open the flap for her, and Ginny slipped inside. It was, to all intents
and purposes, an Indian home, with animal furs piled on a woven frame to make a
bed, and a central fireplace. The earth floor had been swept and covered with
hides, and skins hung on the walls to keep the cold and wind from penetrating
the cracks.

"Come
here tomorrow," Alex instructed her in the even tone she had heard him use
so often to one or other of his officers —the tone of voice of one who could
not imagine having his orders questioned. "By that time, I should have
calmed down sufficiently to talk about this rationally, and you will have had
enough time to realize that my solution is the only one, and we may discuss how
best to put it into operation.''

"If
that is what you want," Ginny said dully. "I will make no further
objections." She turned and left the hut, too dispirited even to bid him
farewell.

Alex
swore vigorously. Capitulation he had wanted, but not in that dull, spiritless
fashion. There was no pleasure, no satisfaction in such a victory. He wanted to
plan with joy for a joyous future, but how could he do that, when Ginny saw
only disaster ahead?

In the
next days, she continued to resist all his efforts to infuse their meetings
with hope. She came to the hut obediently, sat on the pile of furs, and
listened when he told her that a Dutch ship would be leaving from Jamestown at
the end of the month. He explained how he would leave Harringtons' a few days
early, ostensibly to reach Jamestown in ample time for the sailing, but he
would come back for her in secret. She would slip away from her house in the
canoe, and he would meet her down river.

Ginny
listened in silence, made no objections, offered no suggestions, until, one
cold, gray afternoon, Alex, at the end of his patience, accused her of
deliberately trying to sabotage his plan with this studied indifference. How
could he trust her to perform her part when he did not even know whether she
had heard a word he had said?

"I
do not need to sabotage it," Ginny responded with the first flash of
spirit in days. "It will not work, anyway. Do you think Giles is going to
sit quietly by while his wife runs off with another man? Do you think he is not
going to know whom  I  am with?  How can we  take  ship  together  in Jamestown
without the entire colony knowing of it with the next canoe down river?"

"There
is nothing we can do about that, and it does not matter in the end. We shall be
long gone and far away; the scandal will not touch us."

"You
live in cloud cuckoo land," Ginny retorted. "Giles will not let me
leave him. You do not know what he has become. He is determined to be revenged
upon me for my faithlessness when I thought he was dead. I asked him to release
me at Preston, to think of me as dead, but he would not because he would have
his revenge. I could not be accused of deliberate betrayal of my vows in the
days of the war, because he was believed dead, but Giles sees that as no
mitigation. How do you think he will react when he discovers that I have
knowingly committed adultery? He grows more bitter by the hour, and he will
pursue us to the Indies and beyond for as long as his health holds."