Lynna Banning (15 page)

F
or three days the young Ellis boy struggled for life against the disease ravaging his body. Jonathan sat at his bedside for hours, dribbling boiled salt water into his parched mouth with a teaspoon.
Dear God, he’s not yet twelve years old! Let him live, Lord Please, let him live!

Then the Devitt family took sick. All five of them drove into town in their wagon to enter Jonathan’s hospital. When the remaining infirmary bed was filled, Jonathan knew it was the beginning of the epidemic he had feared.

More cots came, this time from the Presbyterians, and Gwendolyn Shaunessey defied her aging mother and came to help nurse. Jonathan told Erika she must stay away, fearing she would catch the highly contagious disease. To protect the baby, Erika complied.

Every evening he scrubbed his hands and arms
before he walked the three blocks to his home. And each night he gobbled the sandwiches or the bowl of soup Erika or Mrs. Benbow left for him, then lay awake agonizing about his treatment of the burgeoning number of patients who had contracted the fever.

Old Mrs. Eubanks succumbed. Then two of the Devitt children, aged six and nine. Mrs. Devitt was too sick to realize the loss, but Adam, their father, stood beside Jonathan at the two small graves and wept in hoarse, racking sobs.

The following morning, dehydration and grief took Mrs. Devitt as well, despite Jonathan’s desperate efforts to save her by forcing salted water down her throat. At the end, she couldn’t swallow.

Sick at heart, he fought the pull of exhaustion and despair. Once a person contracted cholera, he could do little to save them, and the fact that the outbreak could have been prevented had the townspeople heeded his warnings early in the summer added to the helpless rage burning inside him. He drank more brandy than he knew was prudent, and he longed for Erika beside him through the long night hours.

Occasionally he heard the harp as she practiced for the charity musicale. It seemed the only ordered, beautiful element in a nightmare of illness and disillusion.

The night he lost Timmy Ellis was the worst. In
despair, Jonathan left the hospital and stumbled home, his eyes unseeing.

Erika was sitting on the cool veranda, fanning herself with a broom twist. When she saw him, she rose and came down the steps toward him.

“You look dreadful, Jonathan! What is wrong?”

“Timmy Ellis died.” He wrapped his arms about her, leaned his forehead against her crown of braids. “I couldn’t save him.” His voice broke, and he stopped to regain control. “I did everything I could think of, but it wasn’t enough!”

Erika’s arms slid around him. “Is not your fault, Jon. You tried your best. Others you have saved, many others. Think of them.”

“I can’t. Oh, Erika, I don’t know what to believe in anymore, God or medicine or—”

But he did believe in one thing, he realized. He believed in Erika. His wife.

She held him, saying nothing, and then she turned toward the house. Taking his hand, she led him up the steps and through the door.

The familiar smell of the house comforted him. Lemon oil, fragrant white roses in a crystal bowl, freshly baked bread. He stopped abruptly in the main hall and pulled a life-sustaining breath into his lungs.

“Erika. Erika! I don’t want to be alone tonight”

He hadn’t realized he’d spoken aloud until Erika
raised her arm and gently rested her hand against his cheek.

“Yes,” she said, her voice quiet. “Is time. After baby sleeps.”

Jonathan’s heart leapt Had he heard right, or was he merely hallucinating? Erika would be with him tonight? His heart beat so raggedly, he could barely voice the question.
Did she mean as his wife?

Erika insisted he have a warm bath to calm his nerves. She set about heating three full teakettles of water, poured them into the copper tub on the laundry porch, and dropped in sprigs of rosemary to scent the water. He was too tired to question her presence as he pulled off his trousers and rumpled shirt and stepped into the vessel.

Sinking into the soothing water, he closed his eyes and listened to her footsteps as she moved about the porch. He sat unmoving for a solid hour, soaking away the ache in his heart, wondering what her words had meant. Something different was happening between them. He had sensed it ever since the night they had scrubbed down the hospital together.

When he opened his eyes, his garments had disappeared and in their place lay a clean nightshirt and his lounging robe. When she bustled into the kitchen, he dried himself off. Ignoring the nightshirt, which he never wore, he shrugged into the robe.

Erika had warmed up the stew Mrs. Benbow had
made for supper and poured out a glass of cool milk from the pantry. “Eat,” she ordered when he appeared. “Mrs. Benbow watch over baby tonight. I watch over you.”

The lump in his throat dissolved, and Jonathan clenched his fingers on the edge of a straight-backed kitchen chair.

Maybe there was some meaning in life. At least there was order and caring here in his own household. He was too tired and heartsick to think beyond this moment. All he wanted was to assuage the hunger of his soul through the long night ahead of him. All he wanted was to hold Erika in his arms and forget everything else.

Erika drew the light cambric gown over her head, blew out the lamp and closed the door of her small bedroom behind her. On quiet feet she moved down the hall to Jonathan’s room, entered and pulled the door shut. She paused to let her eyes adjust to the dark.

Why am I not frightened, or nervous?
she wondered. She was neither, even though this would be her first time with a man. She didn’t know how it would be, whether she would like it or not. All she knew was that she wanted to be near him, her body touching his, had wanted it for a long time now but had held back until it felt right.

Tonight it felt right. Tonight he needed her, not only as one human being needs another, but as a man needs a woman. She didn’t know how she knew this, she just did. Witch-vision, her mother used to say. Whatever it was, Erika had never been more sure of anything in her life.

“Erika?”

Her heart caught. His voice sounded near, drowsy with need.

“Yes?”

A shadow moved toward her in the dark. “Erika, I.”

She waited, afraid to move.

“I know how a man is, with a woman, I mean,” he said at last. “What I don’t know is how Jonathan is to be with Erika.”

“I, too, do not know,” she said in a low voice.

“I feel unsure of myself. I don’t want to hurt you. Or…disappoint you.”

Erika released a pent-up breath. “Perhaps you will not do either.”

He gave a tired laugh. “Perhaps I will do both.”

“Is not possible, I think.” Then she added in a small voice, “Is it?”

Jonathan chuckled again and reached for her in the dark. “I do not know, my darling Erika. And what is more.” He gathered her unbound hair in his
hands, buried his face in it. “I do not care. By morning it will not matter.”

Erika opened her lips to reply, but found his mouth instead. After a long, heart-stopping minute, she found it already did not matter.

He knew she was untouched. He could tell by her hesitant response to his mouth and hands. Her breathing grew uneven as he deepened the kiss, and at last she broke away and clung to him, turning her face to his chest.

“I have not much practice in kissing,” she whispered. “In Schleswig, mostly I read books with Papa at night.”

Her confession surprised him. Someone as vibrant as Erika, with eyes as clear and blue as a midsummer sky and hair the color of honey, must have captured the heart of every male who laid eyes on her. “Were there no young men in your village?”

“Oh, yes, but I am not allowed. And not see young men at my school. My school is separate, for girls. After school, I study with Papa. Mama, too, until.until she died.”

Jonathan smiled into her hair. That explained many things about his unusual wife. He’d bet she was better educated than any woman in Plum Creek.

He tipped her chin up with his forefinger. “You are a remarkable woman, Erika. So wise in unexpected ways, yet so young, really.” He cupped her
face and stroked his thumbs along the line of her chin.

“I am twenty and four.”

“I am thirty and seven,” he responded softly. “And I, too, studied with my father when I was young.” He pressed his mouth against her temple. “He taught me one thing I had forgotten until this moment.”

He heard her suck in her breath as he moved his lips to her cheekbone. Her eyes were closed, her body trembling as he continued his kisses, bringing his mouth closer and closer to hers.

“What.what was it you forgot?”

“I had forgotten how sweet it is to kiss a woman, just kiss her and not have to say anything.”

She lifted her face. “Your papa taught you this?”

“My father, yes.” He grazed her lips with his thumb. “And my mother. I used to watch them together. They seemed to communicate without talking.”

“And did they kiss?” she asked shyly.

“Yes. That’s how they communicated. Like this.” He bent his head and covered her upturned mouth. Deliberately moving his lips over hers, he tasted the sweetness of her small, wet tongue, and a humming began in his brain.

“You can say anything to me, Erika,” he said against her still-open lips. “Anything you wish.” He
grasped her hands, lifted both her arms about his neck. “Or you can show me what you feel. What you want, without talking.”

“I want you should kiss me more,” she breathed.

Jonathan chuckled. “Kiss me more, but dance me loose, is it?”

“Yes,” she said with a soft laugh. “But kiss me tight.”

Jonathan’s heart stuttered. She wanted him. She might not recognize it yet, but her words and her unguarded physical response to him told him more than could be expressed in mere words. She was like a flame, a glimmer of passion flickering just beneath the surface. Before this night was over, he resolved, she would burn hot and fierce, and he would be the instrument of her most secret desires.

The thought made him hard. He kissed her again, moved both hands to the buttons at the neck of her gown. He slipped the first one free and heard her moan under his mouth.

He blew his warm breath into the hollow of her throat, slowly working the remaining buttons. Her arms tightened around his neck, and then he felt her fingers in his hair. Her hands.he wanted her hands on his skin.

Gently he turned her face away and breathed softly into the shell of her ear. She gasped and then shuddered.
He parted the unbuttoned gown and slipped his hands inside, cupping her breasts.

Erika whimpered with pleasure. “Oh,” she whispered, and then, “Oh, yes. Yes.”

Without speaking, he stepped out of his silk robe. He had nothing on underneath.

“Touch me,” he said.

She laid her palm lightly against his shoulder, then let it slide to his bare chest. When he kissed her, she brought her other hand up and smoothed the skin over his breastbone. At her touch, he began to tremble inside.

Her mouth opened under his, inviting, tentatively exploring. And then she lowered her arms and her night robe slid down and came away in his hands. Silken and warm, she pressed against him.

He lifted her, bent to kiss her neck as she curled her body against him. Her head fell back as he caressed her small, perfect breasts.

He moved then to the large double bed and lowered her to the sheet. It was cool in his room. The paned windows on two adjoining walls were propped wide open, and a honeysuckle-scented breeze wafted over them. He drew in a lungful of the soft latesummer air and forced himself to proceed slowly.

Erika gazed up at the man standing over her and felt herself float as if borne up on wings. Her heart fluttered irregularly, and her breasts ached for Jonathan’s
hands, his mouth, once more. She arched toward him.

He knelt over her, ran his palms up her sides and across her ribs and then down over her belly. Between her thighs he stroked one finger up, then up again, higher this time, so that his knuckles brushed the hair at the apex. She shivered with pleasure, then gasped and went perfectly still as he touched her. Instinctively she raised her hips, hungry for more.

With a low, satisfied laugh, Jonathan kissed her. “Show me, Erika,” he whispered against her lips. “Tell me what you want.”

She moved his hand to her thigh again. “This.”

Chuckling, Jonathan trailed his fingers up her thigh, but he waited until she began moving with him before moving deeper. When he did, she jerked and halted her motions. And then she gave a small, soft laugh.

“Is wonderful, is it not? So fine. So shaky inside.”

“It is,” Jonathan said. He kissed her breast, swirled his tongue around her nipple, and she began to breathe in soft pants.

As he drew his kisses lower, Erika moaned, and her breathing grew more ragged. She reached for him, twisted his hair in her fingers, wanted him never to stop. A ripple of pleasure began low in her belly, pulsed again and then again through her center, and she cried out.

Jonathan rose over her. He positioned his body, and she reached for him, pulling him down to her. He entered her quickly, and there was a short, sharp pain and then fullness. He moved inside her, and the pleasure began again.

And then deep, deep inside her he touched something and she exploded.

Jonathan shouted when the spasms came, wrenching her, driving her beyond herself. She heard her own voice cry out, and when it was over she clung to him and wept as his guttural breathing slowed.

He did not withdraw, but held her, rocking slowly back and forth, his hands under her hips. She convulsed again, waves of sensation tightening into a burst of feeling, and Jonathan laughed a contented laugh.

“As your physician, Mrs. Callender, I’d say you are a very passionate woman.”

Erika brushed her wet cheeks and smiled up at him.

“But as your husband.” He caught her hand, brought it first to his lips and then placed it where their bodies were still joined. “As your husband, I’d say you are now my very married wife.”