Maverick Heart (23 page)

“An Indian woman helped us get away. Hawk’s wife, actually.”

“Why would she do that?” Miles asked.

“She … uh … wanted Hawk all to herself. You see, he wanted to make me his wife, too.”

“Good God!” Miles exclaimed.

“It’s all over now,” Verity said. “We’re all together again. That’s what’s important.” Her brow furrowed as she surveyed Rand’s wounds. “Rand is going to be all right, isn’t he, Miles?”

“He’s lost a lot of blood, and he’s got a fever. But there’s no infection yet. With rest, with time, there’s a good chance he’ll pull through.”

“But?” Verity asked, hearing the hesitation in his voice.

“But the wound could turn putrid. Or, if he’s too weak from loss of blood, he may not be able to fight off the fever, and that could kill him.”

“You’re saying he’s not out of danger yet?”

“Not yet.”

She slumped back against him. “I think I’d like to lie down again.”

Miles helped Verity to lie down, plumping the pillow under her head. He settled himself at the foot of the bed, his arms crossed, his back against the bedpost, one hip on the mattress, one foot on the ground. “Rest,” he said. “Don’t worry about Rand. I’ll keep an eye on him for you.”

She wondered if there was some meaning hidden in his offer.
Do you know Rand is your son? Is that why you’re willing to watch over him? I can’t believe you haven’t noticed the resemblance. Why haven’t you said something?

“Lady Winnifred, maybe you’d like to go outside and get a breath of fresh air,” Miles suggested.

“I don’t—”

“You don’t want to make yourself sick,” Verity said. “Rand will need you when he regains consciousness.”

“I guess I could use a breath of air,” she said as she rose from her chair.

Neither Miles nor Verity said a word until the door closed with a resounding
click
behind her.

“Is Rand my son?”

Even though Verity had fully expected the question, her heart skipped a beat.

“Is he?” Miles demanded, his voice slicing through the air between them. “Answer me, damn it!”

“Yes! Yes, he’s your son.”

Miles gave a strangled cry of anguish. His head
dropped back against the bedpost, and he covered his eyes with his arm.

“I didn’t know,” she said, struggling to sit up, pleading for understanding. “I didn’t know I was pregnant when I married him.”

His hand came away from his face, and she was frightened by the mask of rage that confronted her. “How could you not know?”

“I thought my courses were late because I was so unhappy, because—”

He snorted rudely, cutting her off. “Don’t bother lying,
Verity.
”

“You have to believe me, Miles.”

“Why didn’t you ever send word to me? Why didn’t you find a way to let me know? All these years when I could have known him … Wasted!”

“Why didn’t you contact me?” she retorted. “I didn’t even know if you were alive, at first. You simply disappeared. Chester had threatened to repudiate Rand if I told you about him. Our son would have been a bastard. Rand was innocent. He didn’t deserve to suffer.”

“So you let my enemy claim my son as his own?”

“What else was I supposed to do?” she cried.

“Divorce him.”

She gritted her teeth in an attempt to still her trembling chin. “You know I couldn’t do that. If I had divorced Chester, the courts would have let him keep Rand. I was the only one standing between our son and Chester’s hatred for you.”

Miles ran an angry hand through his hair, leaving
it standing on end. “Does Rand know about me?”

She hesitated a moment before replying, “No.”

Miles turned his face away from her and groaned like an animal in pain. “Did he love Chester?” he gritted out.

“Don’t torture yourself. Miles.”

“Answer the question!”

“What do you want me to say? He believed Chester was his father. He wanted Chester’s love.” Her lips twisted bitterly. “He never got it.” She saw Miles’s glistening eyes through a mist of her own tears. “What’s going to happen now?”

“What do you mean?”

“Are you going to tell Rand you’re his father?”

“He has a right to know who his real father is. And what kind of woman his mother is.”

Verity’s face blanched. “Bear in mind—if you decide to blacken my name—that Rand loves me. He won’t thank you for it.”

“I’ll take my chances.”

“At least give him time to get well before you tell him. Please, Miles.”

“I’ll wait. Verity. But I’m the one who’s going to tell him. You’re not to say a word to him about any of this.”

“Can I be there when you tell him?”

“I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it.”

“There’s another thing you should consider, Miles.”

“What?”

“Rand is going to be suspicious of the circumstances
surrounding our marriage. He knows I had a deed to this ranch. And he’ll find out you’ve been in possession for quite a while. He’ll wonder why I would marry a stranger the same day I met him—the same day he disappeared. What are we going to tell him?”

Miles stared at her. “You’ve never told him a word about me? About loving me, lying with me, before you married Chester Talbot?”

Verity heard the underlying pain that caused the sarcasm. She shook her head and whispered, “I couldn’t.”

“Tell him whatever you want,” Miles said brusquely. “Make up something. You’re good at it.”

He didn’t wait to hear her retort. He was gone from the room before she could even think of one.

Miles shook Verity awake. “Rand’s fever is worse. Unless we can get it down, he’s going to die.”

“Tell me what to do.”

Miles wasn’t sure what he had expected—that Verity might fall into a swoon or shriek and tear at her hair—but he was frankly surprised by her calm, rational response.

He had spent an uncomfortable night sitting in the ladderback chair beside Rand, his legs stretched out in front of him, his ankles resting on the foot of the bed. He had listened to the house creak and settle as the wind blew through the eaves and swirled up from the knotholes in the wooden floor. The past few difficult days had taken their toll, and he had fallen asleep. He had woken only when the pink light of dawn seeped through his eyelids.

He felt guilty for not keeping a closer watch on his son. Regrets weren’t going to help now, just fast, efficient action.

“You can help me sponge him down,” Miles said. “Maybe we can cool him off that way.” It was a remedy for fever that had worked in the past.

Verity eased her legs over the edge of the bed, but even that small movement caused her to hiss with pain. She was stripped to her chemise and pantalets and had nothing else to put on.

“Do you have a shirt I can use to cover myself?” she asked.

Miles got a worn chambray shirt from his wardrobe and watched while she put it on and buttoned it. It irked him that as angry as he was with her, his body still responded to the feminine swell of her breasts beneath the masculine material.

“Are you sure you ought to be out of bed?” he said. “Can you even walk?”

“I’ll crawl, if I have to, but I’m getting out of this bed.”

Miles helped Verity onto her feet, being careful to keep her legs from brushing against the sheets. “Is that better?”

She tested her weight on her legs. “Yes. Thanks.”

Miles picked up a kerosene lantern from a table beside the bed and led the way into the other room. The added light woke Freddy, who had gone to sleep on a pallet Miles had rigged for her in front of the fireplace. He had been lucky to get her to lie down at all. She had wanted to stand vigil
over Rand with him. She was still completely dressed in her rumpled green riding habit. Her only concession had been to remove her calfskin boots.

It dawned on him that if Rand survived, he would marry this woman. Freddy would become his daughter-in-law. One look at her hands, and he knew she hadn’t done a lick of work in her lifetime. As the daughter of a duke, she had most certainly been pampered, most likely spoiled rotten. Her behavior in the incident with the bear proved she didn’t have a particle of sense.

But he couldn’t deny her beauty. He had seen how Tom was smitten with her. That tumbled mane of auburn hair, her astonishing, long-lashed green eyes and pouty-looking, bowed lips, all set in a porcelain, heart-shaped face, would turn any man’s head for a second look. But beauty didn’t count for much in a land like this.

The fact she had sat for hours by Rand’s side and stared at the ugly, oozing wound on his shoulder without fleeing or fainting dead away showed a stronger stomach than he had thought any gently bred English lady possessed.

The fact Freddy had climbed down from the safety of a tree in an attempt to rescue Rand spoke of extraordinary courage. It wasn’t a bad trait for a man to look for in the mother of his sons. Unless you considered the impossible odds she had faced. That made her behavior reckless, perhaps even stupid.

He wondered if there was any more to Lady
Winnifred Worth than surface beauty and a strong stomach and a penchant for danger. Had his son sought out a woman of substance for his wife? Or had he merely chosen for beauty and rank and fortune?

He decided to reserve judgment on the girl. In a land like this, there were plenty of opportunities to test a person’s mettle. The weak ones didn’t survive. The cowardly ones ran. Only the strongest, the sturdiest, the bravest stayed to carve a life in the wilderness.

Freddy raised herself on one elbow. “Is Rand all right?”

“His fever’s worse,” Miles answered. “We’re going to sponge him with cool water to try to bring it down.”

Freddy shoved the quilt out of her way and began drawing on her boots. “What can I do to help?”

Verity’s heart went out to the young woman sitting on a makeshift pallet on the hard floor. She had also been observing Freddy, whose face was half hidden in shadows, half lit by the soft pink light of dawn. She saw someone who, three mornings ago, had been a naive seventeen-year-old, cosseted and protected from such vulgar horrors as a man’s naked chest.

The Freddy who scrambled to her feet and stood waiting for a word from her had serious green eyes that had aged a lifetime in a few days. It seemed ridiculous to treat her like the child-woman she had been before she set out on this journey.

“Get another cloth and a bowl of water. You can work on Rand’s shoulders and chest, while I do his legs.” Verity primed the pump and ice-cold water began gushing into the tin bowl she had set in the sink.

“What do you want me to do?” Miles said.

“You can refill our bowls, so we’re always using cool water.”

Verity was already heading back to the bedroom when she realized she needed more light. “Miles? The lantern.”

He lit the lamp on the kitchen table to provide light in the main room until the sun was fully up, then led the way back to the bedroom. He set the lantern back on the table beside Rand, so Verity and Freddy would be able to see what they were doing.

Before they let Freddy into the bedroom, Miles and Verity stripped Rand completely and rearranged the sheet over him so his chest and legs were exposed, but he was still decently covered.

“You can come in now, Freddy,” Verity called when they were done.

Miles and Verity exchanged a poignant look as Freddy’s eyes sought out Rand.

Will she be able to stay the distance?
Miles wondered.

Is she going to break Rand’s heart?
Verity wondered.

Freddy crossed to Verity’s side, took the cloth Verity handed to her, dipped it in the cold water,
and wrung it out. Her hands were trembling as she brushed the cloth across Rand’s shoulder.

Miles and Verity caught each other’s eyes again. She had passed the first test. There would be others. All they could do was wait and see. There was no more time for thinking, for worrying, for wondering. They were too busy ministering to Rand.

Verity stood at the foot of the bed and began the endless chore of sponging Rand’s fiery skin with cool water, repeating the process again and again. It wasn’t long before the mattress beneath him was soaked. She and Miles decided the wet mattress couldn’t hurt because the dampness beneath Rand also helped cool his flesh.

None of them was sure of the efficacy of the treatment. Rand became restless, struggling against the hands that attended him.

“Rand,” Verity said. “Please, be still. You’re going to be all right. Everything will be all right.”

He quieted for a while, but moments later cried, “Freddy! Freddy!”

Freddy dropped the cloth she held and reached for Rand’s flailing hands. “I’m here, Rand. I’m right here.”

“Dead,” he muttered. Tears leaked from his closed eyes. “Bear … too late.”

Freddy turned stricken eyes to Verity. “He seems to think the bear killed me. He doesn’t remember we were rescued. He’s suffering, Lady Talbot. What can I do?”

Verity didn’t correct the girl’s mode of address. Her marriage to Miles seemed to have happened in
another lifetime. She met Miles’s eyes as he entered the room with another bowl of water.

“He’s rambling, muttering nonsense. He doesn’t seem to remember he and Freddy were saved from the bear,” she told him.