Passion's Joy (33 page)

didn't suit his purposes. "It is a good thing for you, sir that I will find her with or without your help.”

"What shall we do?" Spiegel could wait no longer.

"Thank God that Lord Barrington's will is not joined with the devil's."

The small two-story house, buried in a snow-covered valley and surrounded by a forest of birch and pine was where the Reverend Archibald Cox often retired to write his sermons. The beauty and solitude of the surrounding tree-covered hills provided the necessary quiet to commune with his faith and impart his communion to words. It was in this private hideaway that Cory and her family lived as they worked to build their own home not three miles away on a parcel of land the Reverend Doddered had won in a card game—a card game in which nothing had been left to luck.

Wearing scarves, mittens and hats, bundled against the cold none of them could get used to, Cory, Sammy and the Reverend waved goodbye from the cart. Joy waved back from the porch. The Reverend's gaze lingered on the lone figure, waving and smiling, before she finally turned back inside.

"I got a scary feeling shakin' me bones today," the Reverend said.

Sammy cast him a sideways glance. "I know what that's about. It’s about a no good thrifty scoundrel that wants to escape another day's work."

Cushioned between the two, Cory giggled.

"Our girl's safe," Sammy said with assurance. "No one, not even him is gonna find her out here." There came a contemplative pause filled for the hundredth time with thoughts of the situation. Finally Sammy said the traitorous words out loud: "Besides,"—his voice dropped with seriousness—"I ain't all that certain hit would be that bad if’in he did find her."

The Reverend and Cory looked at him. "I knows she's afraid," he began an explanation, "Mighty afraid after what happened, but I know him; we all do. It's too late now; he ain't gonna hurt her—we all heard what he said to Reverend Cox—and well, hell, it’s just that a woman ought to be married."

"You might be right," the Reverend conceded with a sigh.

Cory's face was stern. "It don't matter none, right or not, it's what Joy wants that counts."

Sammy looked at his new wife, seeing her love and loyalty, and he slashed the backs of the nags. "Women!" Yet he was grinning hugely.

Joy looked upon the changes in her body with certain horror, fascination and plain amazement. She rarely went with the others to the house building simply because she was hopelessly useless these days. She tired so easily and was in a constant state of hunger. A good deal of her time was spent satisfying that hunger, and yet, with the exception of her midsection, she remained as slender as ever, as though the vast quantities of food went straight to the child. Her muscles, though, had at some point turned alarmingly soft, like pudding or mush and just as useless. Oddly, there was one good change: When the others battled against the cold, she was always comfortable with a healthy glow to her cheeks, as though warmed from the inside out.

Most troublesome by far was how the child stole her mind. It took enormous effort to hold serious thoughts. When they had first arrived, before she had been showing too much, the good Reverend Cox had arranged an introduction—a meeting followed with a dinner—with the Reverend Drew Paterson and his wife. How she had idolized the great man for some three years now, ever since Joshua first began talking about him and she began reading about him. He was a true hero of hers, a man she both revered and admired. Yet at the dinner she had found herself far more interested in Mrs. Paterson, the births and upbringing of their three children, than she was in the noble ideas being discussed by the men. Or, like last night, her mind drifted from the editorial the Reverend read to the family around the fire, and without thinking of the ninny she would make of herself, she interrupted to inquire in all seriousness, "What do you think? Another pair of blue booties or white?" They had all looked at her for a moment, stunned before bursting into laughter.

Joy went about her morning chores, musing with a smile over these things. This was not the end of it. She had this queer compulsion to do all those household chores she loathed in the past, a compulsion to keep everything in order and neat. The worst of it was the strange comfort in the stitchery she had always hated, whiling away many hours with needlework. Needlework, of all things!

Most of all, she thought of the child, and as she stepped outside with broom in hand to sweep the porch, she wondered not for the first time if the old woman's prophecy could possibly be true; if her child would be a humanitarian. The old woman had rescued her that awful nightmarish evening, and only the word "miracle" explained the vision that sent the old woman to Ram Barrington's house that night. Every time she thought of it, she met the miracle with increasing wonder.

Sweeping the snow off the porch, a small tingle suddenly ran up her spine and she froze. Anxiously, she looked out over the vista. The profound silence of the snow-covered forest greeted her. All was quiet; no sound save the rush of water in the nearby stream or an occasional slide of snow falling from a branch. She dismissed it, renewing the sweeps of the porch.

These mood swings were another thing! How she could move in the space of a breath from a simpleton's contentment to utter panic and fear that he was near, and that he would find her?

Hopeless indeed, she could only pray that once the child was born, not only would her strength and mind return but she could put the past behind her.

Which she vowed to do, just as soon as he gave up looking for her.

"Did you see that, my lord?" Sean asked. Mounted and hidden behind a cluster of trees on the upper most incline, they watched as Joy finished her task. That look. It was as though she sensed you were near."

Ram hardly heard, so taken was he by the first sight of her in so many months. The lurch in his heart took him unawares; he hadn't expected it, though he might have known...

Joy finished her task and returned inside. After finishing a mid-morning snack of bread and cheese, washed down with apple cider, she stretched lazily. She thought it time for a nap. She climbed the stairs slowly and slipped into the room with her small cot.

Ram never knocked. Silently he opened the door, stepping from the chilly winter air into the warmth of the house. Wood burned in the potbelly iron stove, with additional heat filling the small space from a fire dancing in the hearth. A sweep of his gaze told him she was upstairs; the quiet told him she was asleep. He removed his cloak and gloves. With his soft-skin moccasin boots, he made no sound as he climbed the narrow staircase and entered the room where she slept.

He did not know how long he stood there staring at the vision before him. She lay on her side. Long lashes brushed the curve of rosy cheeks, and the long hair, tied simply behind her, spilled in rich darkness off the side of the cot. How motherhood rewarded her beauty in kind! She wore a pale blue-gray gown of muslin, gathered beneath the fullness of her bosom where his gaze lingered. The folds of the gown might have hidden the changed shape of her figure; but her small hand gently lay there, outlining it, and the sight of his child growing inside her stirred emotions he never thought he'd feel. There was a possessiveness and protectiveness that was not surprising— except in the matter of degree. Far more surprising was how he found her more lovely with her startling femininity pronounced and accented. If he were but any other man, it would be his

pleasure to keep her permanently in this condition, to fill their lives with the happy sound of their children.

"If only," he whispered out loud. "God girl, how you bring me regret. The punishment will be mine, too, for you shall be my wife in every way save one." One child of fate was one too many; his vow now was that there'd never be another.

Joy stirred, teased by the whispered timbre of a voice haunting her dreams. She opened her eyes. For a long moment she met the devilishly handsome face with no sign of alarm, knowing it was but another of her endless dreams. When will you stop haunting my dreams? Will I ever be rid of this love so consuming as to fill my each breath, fuel my each heartbeat? Dear God, shall I never be rid of this terrible longing?

Oddly, it was an amused glint of someone who knows something another does not that abruptly alarmed her. She reached a hand to touch the warm, living, vital and all too real presence.

She cried in a gasp, lifting up to scramble away, knowing only the instinctual panic to flee, but before she even made it to her feet, Ram rounded the small cot and stopped her with gentle hands.

"Easy Joy, easy," he said, with his hands gently taking firm hold of her arms. The shock of his presence, the reality of his touch, brought a mute horror, a desperate fear twisting her face. "I know you're afraid," he said very slowly. "I do not wonder why. Upon my life, I will not hurt you. I will not hurt our child now."

She stared as the reality came in bits and pieces. He had found her! He was touching her!

She was alone; there was no one who could help her.,. "Oh God, please—"

Ram followed her anxious gaze to his hands. He released her reluctantly, then only to watch her scramble back against the wall, clutching a pillow tight against herself, looking as though she fully expected to draw her last breath. He saw it; the marked difference in her was plain. The child she carried imposed helplessness upon her—a helplessness she never knew before. He had no doubt that had she had not been with child, he would have been looking down the barrel of her pistol again or felt her nails upon his face as he was forced to subdue her.

"Do my words mean nothing?" he asked.

She couldn't understand the unmasked tenderness in his gaze, mirrored in his voice, all in direct contrast to his formidable, terrifying appearance. He wore tailored gray riding pants, baggy black-dyed suede boots—like a savage but not—a thick black belt and a loose fitting white shirt.

Her terrified gaze rested on a double shoulder harness holding two ivory-handled pistols, each weighing—she could guess—nearly twenty pounds. Yet he wore the weapons with ease, as though he no longer even knew the cold metal was there.

The question needed an answer and she slowly shook her head. "How could they?" "What will convince you I will not hurt you?" His hand brushed her face as he leaned over

to whisper. She shied from his touch, but he ignored this. "What will take this fear from these eyes

—eyes that have haunted my sleep?" "If you leave me—"

"Leave you? After searching all these past months? After worrying and wondering every blessed hour of my waking day? Don't ask me that." He smiled. "Anything but that."

His smile disarmed her, and she considered the words through the ever increasing turmoil of her panic. "But if you have not come to hurt me or... or my child, what then?"

"What then?" he repeated the question. He walked to the window, held up the thin fabric of the yellow curtains and appeared to peer out, searching carefully for something. Finally, he returned to her, the all important question. "You've left me no choice, Joy," he said softly as he sat upon the cot. "My child will be born; I'm left now with the task of seeing the child raised, of giving the child every chance I can."

She didn't have to think how she felt about it, for she had thought of it no less than a thousand times. "No!" She shook her head. "I'll not have my child raised with a father who harbors vile suspicions, who thinks his child lays on the brink of some horrible madness!"

"The child will know only a father's love from me," he said with masculine simplicity. "Love,"—his voice lowered with regret and pain. "That will be my ruin just as surely as I draw breath—"

A small hand reached up to touch his mouth, stopping the words she refused to hear. "The child will be normal! As everyone else! I know it—"

He grabbed her hand in his.

"God's prayers, that it be so," he said with naked feeling. "Though know this—if, when that changes, I will be ready. A father's love will not stop me."

She withdrew in sudden fury. "But I'll never let you!" she cried in a passionate whisper. "Don't you know? You'd have to kill me first before I’d let you—"

"Hush!" he said harshly now. "We shall speak of it no more. The child will never know my fears or worries—"

"He will not know your fear because he will not know his father! I will ask you to go and leave me be, and if or when this would-be madness appears, I will call you to your Godforsaken duty!"

Emotions shined bright in her eyes; her fists were clenched white in an effort to control the violent emotions trembling through her, and Ram saw it all, including the incredible fact that she truly thought he might leave her after all. "Joy, even if not for the curse of my ancestors, I would not leave a girl not yet twenty to raise my child alone and in poverty."

Tears filled her eyes, accenting the emotions there: fear, uncertainty, plain apprehension. "You don't trust me, this is plain," he said softly. "I can only earn your trust with the

evidence that comes with time. In time, I will prove that my fears will not shadow our child's life, that my fears will in fact never once touch it. The child will know both parents' love, Joy."

She looked down at the pillow she still held over herself. She tried but could not doubt the sincerity of his words. He believed it. He truly thought he could raise the child without the shadow of his ominous, vile suspicions. Was it possible?

She didn't know. What would happen if he failed? How awfully would that affect a child's well being? How could she take the chance?

"We will be married tomorrow. I—"

Ram stopped with her half gasp, half cry, her utter shock of it. "I'll not marry you! Not after what has happened!"

She was clearly aghast, and in other circumstances, he would have laughed at the sweet irony of it. After spending a good part of his life escaping the clutches of dozens upon dozens of women's ploys, plots and efforts to get him to marry, the one woman he'd have was horrified at the idea.

not."