Butterfly Garden (29 page)

The sound that grew from deep in his throat, the sight and taste of him, his warmth beneath her hands, added to her joy, life-giving, vibrant, as he carried her up and into a world new and brilliant with shattering promise.

Thrumming with her own release, Sara basked in Adam’s unrestrained shout as he slid into her one last deep time. To her surprise, he carried her with him, up and over one last exhilarating peak, while he filled her with his seed.

Peace, Sara knew, there in that unlikely place, like none she had ever known, a vast contentment, acknowledged in the light of day. Real. Her marriage. Her love.

She knew too that the essence of this moment would live forever in her mind as the mingled scents of hay and desire. She would never forget the sound of his slowing breath against her neck, the nipping kisses he pressed to her cooling skin. She would remember the weight of his hand against her, there, where she’d taken his seed.

Sara smiled and closed her eyes, drifted as on a cloud above the earth.

When she opened them again, the sunbeam had shifted and she heard, somewhere below, Roman calling her sleeping husband’s name.

Chapter 17

Her husband came awake with a start and jumped up so fast, he hit his head on a loft beam.

“That you, Adam?” Roman called.

Adam looked at Sara, at their bedraggled states, and grinned.

Sara grinned back and giggled. Wide-eyed, she slapped her hand to her mouth. When they heard Roman at the loft ladder, she scrambled to right herself as Adam hurried to put himself away and button his broadfalls.

Roman crowned the top of the ladder and jumped when he saw her. “God a’mighty, Sara, you were so quiet after I called, I thought it was rats—Oh, Adam, you here t—”

Roman summed up the situation in a blink, then he was the one grinning.

Adam was not.

Sara giggled again; she couldn’t seem to stop.

“What the devil do you want?” Adam snapped. “Sara, stop laughing.”

Roman looked from one to the other.

“Sara, stop.…” Adam’s voice broke and a rolling rumble of laughter escaped him, then Sara and her husband fell over each other laughing like fools.

Roman just stood at the top of the ladder watching, shaking his head, until he could not help but laugh with them. “Congratulations Sara,” he said when they caught their breaths. “Knew you’d bring the stubborn fool back to life.”

That got Adam’s back up. “What do you mean by that?  Did you come here to snoop on me and my wife in a priv—”

“Hush,” Sara said. “If he didn’t suspect anything before, he certainly does now.”

Adam glared. Sara shrugged.

“If he didn’t suspect anything before,” Roman said with a wink, “he would have to be deaf and dumb. And I am neither. But I didn’t come to snoop, just to say the rest of your family is having dinner with us, supper too. Won’t be home for hours yet.” He wiggled his brows, tipped his bedraggled straw hat, and disappeared down the ladder.

Their gossipy neighbor whistled his way out the door.

Neither Adam nor Sara spoke until his buggy had cleared the drive.

“Nosy man.”

“Nice man. We’re going to be alone for the rest of the day.”

“Good. We have things to do.” Adam climbed down the ladder.

Sara was taken aback but tried not to show her disappointment. She felt foolish for suggesting … anything. What was the matter with her?

She went down, not wanting Adam to see she was embarrassed. When she reached the bottom, he took her hand and headed for the house.

“Where are we going?”

“Chores,” he said. “Long overdue.”

Sara stopped, pulling him up short. “My chores are in the house, Adam Zuckerman; yours are back there, in the barn.”

“Inside,” he said. “It’s bath time. Let’s go.”

She stopped again and this time he stopped with her. “Remember the baths you used to give me?”

All Sara could think about was how embarrassing and … and she became warm just thinking about it. “What about them?”

“I told you. It’s bath time.” Adam wiggled his brows the way Roman had done. “And this time, we’re going to get it right.”

What started out to be a sponge bath became a tub bath, but Adam was just too big for Sara to fit in the blasted thing with him, which made him curse to high heaven, or low hell, however you looked at it.

But once she knelt by the tub and began to sponge him off the way she used to—except she didn’t stop at his belly this time—then Adam stopped fussing and began to enjoy the experience.

He did, at least, until the sound of a carriage pulling into the yard and a crying baby got his attention. And then when somebody began knocking on the door, he started cursing again.

But Sara was laughing so hard at the way he pouted, that she could tell he had a difficult time staying mad, even though the poor frustrated man looked as if he might need help getting all of him back into his broadfalls.

“I’ll just go and see who it is,” she said, trying to get serious, and then you can come out when you’re … ready. She slipped into a giggle again before she opened the bedroom door, then she squared her shoulders, went out and shut it behind her.

She heard him curse once more before she opened the kitchen door to find Mercy and Enos Bachman standing on the steps, little Saramay wailing in her father’s arms.

Before the kitchen door closed, Mercy and Sara were in each other’s arms.

Sara was delighted to see the woman who had become a friend in one heart-binding afternoon. “How wonderful you look. All blossomed out again, I see.”

Mercy stepped back and gave Sara a considering look. Had she pinned something wrong or left something showing?

“You’re blossoming too. I am so happy for you.”

“I am happy for me too, almost as happy as you are, I think.”

Sara took her namesake from her father. “You look tired from your journey, Enos,” she said, patting the fussing baby’s back. “Will you stay and have supper with us?”

Enos nodded. “Got to feed the horses.”

“My husband will be … ah, here he is. Adam, here is Enos and Mercy Bachman. I delivered this little darling for them last winter, remember, when you were laid up?”

Adam nodded at Mercy and shook her husband’s hand.

“They’re staying for supper,” Sara said. “Take Enos out to feed his horses.”

Adam gave her a bland but speaking look, and Sara couldn’t help her smile. “Mercy and I will begin cooking right now, so take your time.”

Adam led Enos out.

“He doesn’t say much, your husband,” Sara said, though hers had been silent as a post beam too. “I thought, when you delivered, that he didn’t talk because he was worried, but he’s the same now. Or is he shy around strangers?”

“Enos is tired. He’s had a hard life and I worry about him still working so hard at his age. He should have grown sons helping with the farm, but he’s still doing it by himself.”

“Since he is a good deal older than you, and you didn’t marry him to care for his motherless children, did you fall in love with him?”

“Sara Zuckerman,” Mercy said, opening her dress for her daughter to nurse. “Don’t tell me you are a romantic?  Not many of those among our people.”

“No, nor many midwives either. So I guess I’m different all around. A scrapper and a rebel, Adam says.”

“Special,” Mercy corrected. “And in love with your husband, I think.”

Sara smiled and nodded. “But don’t tell him I said so. Hearing it scares him silly. When is your baby due?”

“Late November.”

“Mine is due a month later. They will play together, our children.”

Mercy regarded Sara’s middle with some surprise. “But you’re so small.”

“No, you’re so big.”

“Am I?” That troubled Mercy.

Sara knelt before her. “What’s wrong?”

“Twins, then, maybe. I’ve lost two sets, remember?”

“Ach, yes. I almost forgot about that. You’re staying till the baby is born, right?  My mother-in-law told me you were coming.”

“Everything we own is in our wagon. We’re staying for good.”

That frightened Sara. “Not because of … I mean I’m only.…”

“Don’t be afraid, Sara. I would never blame you if something went wrong; you should know that.”

Sara bit her lip. “I know, but I would blame me. It does frighten me, your history and all. Promise me, the minute you get settled, that you’ll let Doctor Marks take a look at you. He’ll know if you’re carrying more than one baby. And Mercy, if you are, please think about letting Jordan deliver them.”

Her friend’s obvious disappointment bothered Sara. “I’d be there too. But the doctor has so much more knowledge of this than I do. He was my teacher.”

That made the difference with Mercy. “All right,” she said, grudgingly. “Both of you, if it’s twins. But just you, if it’s not.”

“Good. You’re staying with May and Cal Sussman like the last time, right?”

Mercy nodded. “Until we find our own place.”

“Close by, please, so we can visit every day?”

Mercy grinned and Sara laughed. “Good. Now give me back that baby girl so we can get reacquainted.”

* * * * *

As the nights grew colder and the days shorter, Sara Zuckerman grew big with child and the bigger she got, the more Adam worried.

He had never … needed … anyone before, and he hated to think that he might now. He had never been so … captivated. This overwhelming ‘necessity’ to make lo—

“No damn it!” Longing, friendship, he felt for Sara. He liked—all right, he liked her a great deal more than he’d ever liked anyone in his life. So what?  Whatever such overpowering liking meant, whatever the act such liking inspired might be called—he could not bring himself to use any of the cruder words—Adam wanted it with Sara. Again and again. And damn it, his plight wasn’t even that simple. This fascination was more than lust, more than a need for sexual satisfaction.

He wanted Sara—Sara, not just any woman, but his Sara—to enjoy their … encounters … as much as he wanted to enjoy them himself. More. Probably because it was such a new and unexpected experience to bed a woman who liked the physical side of marriage as much as he did. Even bedding her sounded sordid. Damn it; if he could just identify this fascination, he knew he could deal with it.

He’d tried to tell himself that all of this was normal. Sometimes he believed it. Other times he feared he was as mad as everybody thought.

After weeks of worrying the dilemma, Adam thought he might have discovered what ailed him and why this unexpected preoccupation with his wife. He was afraid that buried so deep he didn’t realize it existed, lived the notion that if he could get enough of Sara, it wouldn’t kill him if … he lost her in childbirth.

Adam rubbed his tight chest and coughed to dislodge the bramble in his throat. All right, so the very notion all but killed him. God help him, he almost hated the child she carried as much as he hated himself for putting it there, though he could never let Sara know how he felt.

More than once, he had come upon her, natural mother that she was, crooning to the child she called Noah. Never in anyone else’s hearing had she named it, yet he’d heard her do it twice when she was alone. Already she loved the child so much, it was a wonder she could stand the wait until she held it in her arms. If she ever held it.

It, him, her. A girl named Noah. Adam almost smiled, but, damn it, what did a name matter, if after the child was born, it had no mother?

Adam groaned and kicked a fence-post. Had a man ever been so haunted?  He needed to talk to somebody. Somebody who would not make jokes, so that left Roman out. But who would see the sense in his fears. A woman would, but it had to be a man, a man who would understand, but what kind of man could?

A doctor. “Shit.” The fence-post came down with his kick.

Adam sighed. Perhaps if he did talk to the doctor, the man would tell him Sara faced no danger, that she did not have to die. God knew, he would not believe it, if anybody else told him so.

Bloody hell. He needed to talk to that bloody damned
English
.

He must be in real trouble if he were actually considering talking to that gold-buttoned fancy man about anything. Adam kicked the downed post one last time before stalking off.

* * * * *

Jordan was surprised the day Adam Zuckerman showed up at his surgery door. The Amishman greatly disliked him; Jordan knew that much. “Is Sara all right?  It’s not the baby, is it?  She’s not due for two more months.”

“Sara’s fine. Far as I know, the baby’s fine. Kicks all the time, always letting us know she’s there.”

Jordan thought he detected a bit of jealousy. Perhaps the child intruded at the wrong times. The doctor coughed. “Sit, Adam. What can I do for you?”

The big muscular farmer was clearly out of his depth and uncomfortable in his surroundings. Appearing trapped, as if he were tied to the chair, he turned his hat in his hands while regarding a white enamel pan of lancing instruments on the near shelf of a glass fronted cabinet.

“Feel free to stand, or even pace,” Jordan said. “If it will make you more comfortable.”

Adam took up his suggestion with apparent relief. He placed his hat on the surgery table and ran his hand through his hair. “You know that my first wife died in childbirth.”

Jordan nodded, concerned about where this was going.

“I don’t want to lose Sara that way,” he said, his plea so clear and heartfelt, Jordan believed a true miracle stood before him. Mad Adam Zuckerman loved his wife.

He only wondered if Mad Adam knew it. “I see.”

“I don’t care what you see. I want you to promise me—and I don’t want her to know about this—that when her time comes, you will save her.”

“Your wife was here yesterday making the same plea for Mercy Bachman. What do you all think, that I am God?  Believe me, you are wrong. I am only a man, a doctor, human, flawed. Badly flawed.”

“I know that,” Adam said.

Chagrined, Jordan shook his head. “I can’t promise you anything, Adam, any more than I could promise Sara that I would save Mercy’s twins.”

Jordan put his hand on the Amishman’s arm when he paled. “I can only promise that if you call me the minute Sara goes into labor, that I will do everything I can for her and your child.”