Marry Me (43 page)

“Something like that, yes.” Rhyne hesitated, wondering if she dared break Whitley’s confidences. “You have to be watchful, Cole, and care for yourself. I don’t think you understand how she worries that you’ll become a victim of someone else’s illness. It’s how she views your mother’s death. It’s why she can’t sleep when you’re called away. She understands your germ theory well enough to wish you were a soldier. Never doubt that Whitley’s motivation to leave New York was to get you away from the hospital.” Rhyne smiled ruefully. “She thought you’d be safer in Reidsville.”

He closed his eyes a moment, rubbed them with his thumb and forefinger. “I didn’t know,” he said tiredly. “I didn’t know.”

“She begged me not to tell you. I suppose I’ve proven she can’t trust me, but I thought you should know. She’ll blame herself if you get sick. The way she’ll see it is that it’s mostly her fault that you’re here.” “God, what a mess.”

Rhyne stood and went to him. She stepped behind his chair and leaned forward to put her arms around him. Her cheek rested against his hair. “Come to bed, Coleridge.”

His eyes strayed to the book he’d pushed aside and then to his cup. It was empty. So was he. Recognizing that this was one of those times it was better to take advice than give it, Cole slipped out of Rhyne’s loose embrace and followed her to bed.

Neither of them was thinking about making love when they turned down the covers. It evolved without conscious thought, the expression of a mutual need for comfort and escape. She lay with her head in the crook of his arm, her hand making idle passes across his heart, and knew such a profound sense of rightness in the moment that she thought she might weep.

“I love you,” she whispered, and turned her head to place her lips against his flesh. She felt his fingers thread in her hair and begin to sift it. Her skin prickled. He brushed the nape of her neck. She thought he was probably smiling. Beneath her palm, his heart beat faster.

In spite of that, her world slowed. His touch was gentle, every caress a cautious exploration. He lingered. His kisses lasted almost as long as forever. He turned her on her side. They spooned, the cleft of her bottom flush to his groin. He rubbed her arm from shoulder to wrist. His fingertips grazed the sensitive underside of her elbow. His breath stirred her hair.

He drew her hand behind her. It slipped between the press of their bodies. Her fingers circled his erection. She raised her leg a fraction to accommodate his entry. Their breathing quickened, but nothing else. Without exchanging a word, they held themselves still and found pleasure deepening in the pause. His breath was warm against her ear. He whispered what he would do to her, and then he did nothing. Anticipation became a physical response. Her nipples tightened. Her nostrils flared.

Although she had been expecting it, she jerked when he cupped her mons. His fingers parted her damp lips. He rubbed the hood of her clitoris and his caress was both gentle and insistent.

“Yes,” she said. And again, “Yes.” She moved her bottom against him, felt his thrust in response. “There. Just there.”

He kissed her nape, found the curve where her shoulder met her neck and suckled her with the same slow, inexorable rhythm that was the coupling of their bodies. There was only Rhyne, the woman scent of her sex, her pliant flesh, the surrender of her throaty cries.

She touched his forearm, found the back of his hand and scored his skin from wrist to elbow with the same slow, incremental pressure that was the rising of their pleasure. There was only Cole, the rigid sex, his naked need, the assault of his mouth.

She shuddered, shattered. She barely caught her breath when she felt him do the same, his hoarse, guttural cry edged with something like desperation. His arm remained tight around her waist, keeping her close, keeping them joined.

They fell asleep like that. It was the first time.

Whitley’s fevered cry roused Rhyne to groggy wakeful-ness. She recalled falling asleep in Cole’s arms, but now he lay sprawled on his stomach in the middle of the bed while she was in danger of falling out of it. Before she could throw back the covers, she heard Whitley call out a second time.

Easing out of bed with more care than she’d crawled into it, Rhyne grabbed her shawl but didn’t spend any time looking for her slippers. She spared a glance for Cole before she left the room and was reassured by his abrupt little snore.

Rhyne had left Whitley’s door open and a lamp burning in the event she was needed. She saw Whitley’s distress before she reached the bed. The girl was tangled in the sheet and quilts but largely uncovered by them. Even as Rhyne reached down to pull them off, Whitley moaned and shifted, throwing her leg out over the side of the bed and trapping the twisted sheet under her.

Rhyne felt the dampness of the sheet as soon as she touched it. Patting down the quilts, she discovered they were damp as well. She placed the back of her hand against Whitley’s forehead just as she’d observed Cole doing. The heat shocked her.

She looked around to see if Cole had left his thermometer, but his bag was gone. The last time he’d taken Whitley’s temperature it had been one hundred two degrees, and she suspected it might be even higher now. With an uneasy glance toward the hallway, Rhyne decided she would see to Whitley’s immediate comfort and then wake Cole.

After stoking the fire in the stove to keep the room warm, she retrieved fresh linens from the hallway closet and began to remake the bed around Whitley. She stripped off Whitley’s damp nightgown and tossed it on the floor with the discarded bedclothes, and then she wrestled Whitley into a clean, dry gown. By the time she finished, she was perspiring from the effort.

Rhyne sat at Whitley’s side and gently sponged her face and neck. She opened the nightgown and laid the cool sponge against Whitley’s throat. Slipping the sponge under the material, she ran it across her collarbones and upper chest.

“Mama?”

The plaintive note in Whitley’s voice pierced Rhyne’s heart. She smoothed Whitley’s brow with her fingertips, pushing back damp tendrils of hair. “No, dearest. It’s Rhyne.” “Rhyne.” “That’s right.”

Whitley opened her eyes and stared at Rhyne. “I want my mama.”

“I know you do.” She dipped the sponge in the basin and bathed Whitley’s face again. “Everyone does.” Rhyne could say it confidently even though she’d never known her mother’s comforting touch. What she understood was the yearning for the care of someone who loved her.

“She sang to me.”

Rhyne had to bend close to hear. Her hand stilled. She required a moment to collect herself before she could continue her ministrations. “I don’t know any songs.” In church, she mostly mouthed the words to pretend she was singing with the congregation. “Leastways not ones like your mama knew.” Her brothers had taught her the words to exactly two songs, neither of them repeatable to a gently reared young woman. Even Rusty and Randy had had the good sense to warn her not to sing them around Judah, but oh! how enthusiastically the three of them had sung about the ladies from France and Nantucket.

Rhyne found herself unexpectedly moved by the memory. She drew a steadying breath and offered a smile that wasn’t entirely forced. “There’s one,” she said, calling it to mind suddenly. She didn’t suppose it mattered that she wasn’t certain of the tune; she knew the words.

“Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,
Men were deceivers ever,
One foot in sea and one on shore,
To one thing constant never:
Then sigh not so, but let them go,
And be you blithe and bonny,
Converting all your sounds of woe
Into Hey nonny, nonny.

Sing no more ditties, sing no mo,
Of dumps so dull and heavy;
The fraud of men was ever so,
Since summer first was leavy:
Then sigh not so, but let them go,
And be you blithe and bonny,
Converting all your sounds of woe
Into Hey nonny, nonny.”

Standing in the hallway just outside Whitley’s room, Cole listened to Rhyne’s softly lilting melody. She didn’t sing the words as much as speak them in a cadence that made her voice an instrument of music. She stirred the air with each tender measure in the same way she stirred his heart.

He waited until the last notes faded, and then he waited even longer. It was some time before either of them spoke, so long, in fact, that he thought Whitley had fallen asleep. His sister, though, was the one that broke the silence, and surprised him further by calling for him.

Cole went straight to Whitley’s bedside and greeted his sister softly, “Hey nonny.” He looked across the bed at Rhyne. “Nonny.” He observed that Whitley managed to grin while Rhyne flushed predictably. In that moment, all was right in his world.

Whitley tugged on Cole’s hand. “Sit.”

He obliged her. “What’s Rhyne doing here?” he asked his sister.

Whitley tilted her head toward him and confided in a whisper, “Much ado about nothing.” A slim smile touched her lips as both Cole and Rhyne chuckled. She closed her eyes.

Cole’s glance at Rhyne communicated his question.

“I heard her cry out,” she said. “She was restless. The fever is …” She didn’t finish because Cole could see for himself that it was worse. “I changed the linens and her nightdress. I bathed her skin.”

He nodded. Whitley still held his hand and while she didn’t speak, she did squeeze his fingers. “I’m not going anywhere, Whit. Neither is Rhyne.” He saw her head move faintly against the pillow in acknowledgment. Her hold on him eased a fraction.

Rhyne gently brushed tendrils of hair from Whitley’s fevered brow. She smoothed the blankets and caressed Whitley’s cheek with the back of her fingers. Pushing embarrassment aside, she crooned softly,

“Then sigh not so, but let them go,
And be you blithe and bonny,
Converting all your sounds of woe
Into Hey nonny, nonny.”

Long after exhaustion escorted Whitley to sleep, Cole and Rhyne remained at her side.

In the morning, Cole outlined his plan to Rhyne between bites of silver dollar pancakes and crisp bacon. “I need to start with water samples. I’m not confident anything will come of it, but water has to be eliminated as a possibility.”

“How do you do that?”

“Provided Wyatt’s not taken ill, I’m going to ask him to organize the collection for me. He could get a couple of men to help him. They’ll have to draw water from a few specific sites such as the spring, the active mine, and the Commodore’s tower. They’ll also have to take some random samples.”

“Ezra Reilly could help,” Rhyne said. “I don’t suppose that missing a hand would be too much of a hardship on an assignment like that. He’d want to help.”

Cole liked the idea. “I’ll mention it to Wyatt. I’m thinking that two dozen samples are about the limit of what I can do in a timely fashion. Chet Caldwell should be able to supply enough bottles. It would be a great help if you could sterilize and label them.”

“Of course.”

He nodded, took a swallow of hot coffee and grimaced as he burned his tongue. Ignoring Rhyne’s admonishing glance, he went on. “It’s difficult to know how many more people will be struck down today. I’m hoping it’s less than ten but would not be astonished if it were upward of a score. Every one of them needs to be interviewed about what they’ve eaten and where they’ve eaten it, particularly the night of the town social. Obviously, the interviews should happen quickly because the course of the fever is such that by the third week, it will be difficult to gather any information at all.”

Rhyne set down her fork, her appetite gone. “The social?” she asked. “Why that night?”

Cole regarded her curiously. He’d been certain she already suspected. “The timing of the illnesses,” he said. “It’s just been eight days since the population of Reidsville–or most of it–was in one place. The social is what connects young Alex Easter to Whitley to that no-account Beatty boy. Perhaps their paths crossed in some other way that involved food or drink, but it’s difficult for me to imagine how it happened.”

“The social was
my
idea.” Rhyne thought she might be sick. She placed a hand over her stomach. “Everyone came together because of us.”

“You aren’t responsible,” he said.
“We
are not responsible. The pink rods, remember?
They
are responsible. Some kind of outbreak was inevitable.”

“But the celebration brought everyone together.”

Cole had no argument for that. If the contagion wasn’t in the water, then without the social, the fever might have been confined to a single family. Thinking about it that way, though, made him realize there was yet another step to be taken. “In addition to learning what people ate and drank, we need to know what everyone brought to the table.”

Rhyne was only marginally relieved that Mrs. Longabach had expressly forbidden her to make a dish for her own reception. “Take an account from every family?” she asked. “How can that be accomplished?”

Cole considered the breadth of the problem. “Artie Showalter could post something about it in the paper. We could hang posters, asking people to report to the sheriff or to me.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Folks might be a little reluctant to come forward if they think they’re in trouble.” “No one’s in trouble.”

“But they don’t know that. You could tell them, and they still might not believe it. I feel guilty, and I didn’t take any food to the feast. Not everyone’s going to understand about those germs, Cole, and people might be afraid to come forward regardless of what they know. How do you think Rachel Cooper would feel if she thought folks got sick or died from eating her applesauce? I bet even she’d think twice about telling people what she brought.”