Tender savage (53 page)

To make matters worse. Erica decided she had been a fool not to run away as soon as she had learned she was pregnant. She wasn't well enough to flee now, and she couldn't leave Mark in so sorry a state even if she were. Despite her pleas that he stay away. Viper continued to come to her room each night. While they did not make love, she clung to him until, finally exhausted by her fears, she fell asleep, knowing even those brief hours of peace would soon come to an end.

While Viper had tried in every way he knew to set Erica's mind at rest with reassurances of his love, nothing he said seemed to have the slightest effect upon the nervousness of her mood. Thinking she was overwrought from the strain of her pregnancy, he tried to be patient, but he was as

unhappy as she. The wife he adored would not admit they were wed, but he still considered their marriage a valid one. As for Mark, his headaches had become more frequent, and often he had to give him laudanum to help him sleep, but he kept that practice a secret from Erica, thinking she was already overburdened with the worries he feared he could never understand or relieve.

As fate would have it. Erica's contractions began in the early hours before dawn. At first they were so gentle she did not even feel them, but when they became more intense they jolted her awake. She found the room very dark, and Viper's arm draped over her swollen waist. At first she refused to believe her time had come and lay very still expecting the pains to stop, as she had heard they sometimes did. When the contractions not only continued, but came between shorter intervals and grew increasingly sharp, she finally accepted the fact that her child intended to be born that day. The next pain sliced through her with the tearing agony of Wren's knife, and she could not keep from crying out.

Awakened as rudely as Erica had been. Viper sat up and shoved the hair out of his eyes. "What's the matter?" he inquired in a hushed whisper, then, recalling he had given Mark laudanum again, he ceased to worry about waking him and spoke in his normal voice. "Are you all right?"

"No, I'm not," Erica admitted with a terrified gasp. She reached for his hand and held on as the pain of the next contraction swelled to a nearly unbearable level. "My father told me to expect a long labor, but I think he was wrong."

When the pain subsided and she released her grip upon his hand. Viper scrambled out of bed and fumbled around through his scattered clothes for his pants. After yanking them on, he lit the lamp on the dressing table, but when he reached for the one on the nightstand Erica stopped him. "No, leave the lamp unlit."

Thinking she was objecting to the lamp's glaring brightness rather than to what it would soon reveal. Viper did as she asked. "You told me the midwife lives just a few

blocks away. In the big white house at the comer of Walnut and Eighth, wasn't that it?"

"That's right." Erica had no time to say more before the next contraction caught her in its paralyzing grip. Viper reached for her hand of his own accord this time, but when she could again draw a breath, she forbade him to go. "No, you can't leave me all alone now. It's too late."

"How can it be too late?" Viper asked as he surveyed what he could see of her anguished expression in the dim light provided by the lamp on the opposite side of the room. "Have you been lying there all night suffering like this without waking me?"

"No, but—"

Viper could almost feel the pain himself now as it again swept through the fragile young woman. It seemed to him the contractions were coming very close together, and while he knew absolutely nothing about bringing children into the world, he thought that was a sign that this one would be coming soon. Sioux warriors did not serve as midwives, but he knew Erica would not be reassured if he offered that excuse out loud. "Look, I will go to the closest house and awaken their servants. One of them can go get the midwife. I will only be gone a few minutes."

"Nol" Erica screamed the word this time, and Viper discarded that plan as too great a risk in her agitated state. While dreading the birth, Erica had prepared for it. There was a stack of towels on the comer of the dresser, scissors, and string. He had noted the collection of useful items, never suspecting he would be the one to use them.

Sitting down on the edge of her bed. Viper gripped Erica's hand more tightly. "All right, I will stay. Can you tell me what to do to help you?"

Erica shook her head. Midwives usually delivered infants, not physicians, so she had never witnessed a birth. From the gossip she had heard, this babe was far too impatient to be bom, but she had no idea how to help him do it. She had never expected the pain to be so excruciating, and she tensed as it came again in an agonizing wave. She looked toward the windows, but the sky had not begun to lighten. Mrs. Ferguson wouldn't be there for hours, and Mark would be no help. She and Viper were all alone, and as helpless as children. For the first

time, Erica realized she could die, from the severity of the pain alone, if not from the trauma of the birth itself.

"You must forgive me," she begged hoarsely. "Please forgive me."

Viper had no idea what Erica was talking about, but he quiclcly agreed. "I will forgive you anything, my love." He laid his left hand upon her belly and felt the muscles tighten as the next contraction began. "It can't be much longer," he assured her. "Try to hold on to me and think how pretty your child will be."

While Erica continued to cling to his hand, thoughts of how handsome her child would surely be were anything but reassuring. She grabbed up her pillow and shoved the corner into her mouth to muffle the scream she couldn't contain.

Since anything would be better than listening to his wife scream, Viper got up to fetch the stack of towels and carried them back to the bed. "I think we should take off your gown."

"No." Erica wasn't about to show off her swollen figure nude. "We can just push it up out of the way."

While that seemed silly, Viper did not argue. He picked her up to carefully move her aside while he draped the towels across the bed, then he placed her upon them. When in the next minute her water broke, he laughed. "You see what a good midwife I am? I know enough to protect your bed."

Erica didn't care if he set the damn bed on fire. She was drenched with perspiration, worn out from the pain that wracked her whole body, and terrified that if giving birth to Viper's child didn't kill her, he soon would. How did any woman keep her sanity if giving birth was always so hard as this? her tormented mind asked herself. "Your things are in my closet," she whispered, her thoughts still of him. "Your knife, hiow, all your things."

"You kept them?" Viper was surprised Mark had allowed it.

Erica nodded, as engulfed in pain she could no longer find her voice, except to scream. The sound echoed in her mind with an eerie howl, like the wind blowing off the sea, and she felt herself slipping ever closer to the brink of an endless void in the most horrifying premonition of death

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imaginable. Terrified, she couldn't catch her breath as every muscle in her body seemed to be straining to force the babe from her body. The pain tore through her in blinding waves, pressing her down upon the bed with the enormous weight of the secrets she had kef>t for so many months. The water surrounding the babe had been warm, but what she felt now was the stickiness of blood. In her mind she saw a horrifying vision of her body being ripjjed apart by the daws of a thousand demons, and when her son gave his first frail cry she feared it was her own dying gasp, and able to stand no more, she fainted.

Not even the horror of facing execution had been as hard on Viper as having to watch Erica suffer so badly when he had neither the medicines nor the skills to ease her pain. He now understood why men did not tend their women during childbirth, for what man would ever put his wife through this agony twice? He had seen newborn infants only after they had been bathed and made ready to be

Presented to their relatives. He had had no idea they were om all slippery with their mother's blood. It was all he could do not to vomit as the child slid into his hands, but he laid the boy on Erica's now hollow stomach and ran to get the string and scissors to cut the umbilical cord. He then wrappea the baby, who had still not ceased crying, in one towel, and the placenta in another, but Erica was still bleeding, and he feared if he couldn't stop it, she might soon bleed to death.

That the baby seemed angry that his birth had been so arduous convinced Viper the child could be left with his unconscious mother long enough for him to call at the neighbor's house for help. He left the noisy little tyke snuggled in Erica's arms, pulled on the rest of his clothes, then dashed down the back stairs to summon aid. He had done all he could, but he would not allow Erica to die just because he did not know how to do more. He awoke the housekeeper of the closest home and implored her to send someone for the midwife, then raced all the way back to Erica's room.

Nothing had changed in the minutes he had been ^one, and feeling as sorry for the whimpering infant as he did for his wife, he brought a pan of water to rinse him clean. He wanted Erica to be proud of her son when she saw him for

the first time, and supporting the lad upon his left arm he splashed the water on him with his right hand. It was not until he had washed the boy's head thoroughly that he realized his hair wasn't simply dark with blood, but as black as his own. For a newbiorn, he had a thick thatch of hair, and it was as black as pitch. Wrapping the babe in a clean towel, Viper carried him back to the bed, but this time he held him in his arms rather than lay him beside Erica. Content to rest in his father's arms for the moment, the baby finally stopped crying and opened his bright gray eyes for his first Iook at the world.

When Erica had begged his forgiveness, Vip)er had never imagined she could have been burdened with the guilt of a deception so monstrous as this must have caused. The sympathy he had felt for her suffering now vanished in a furious fit of temper. She had repeatedly tried to send him away. Had he gone, he knew without a doubt she would never have told him he had a son. Was so vile a lie her idea of love?

Before Viper could confront Erica with her lies, the midwife arrived. Accompanied by two of her daughters, the buxom woman quickly banished him from Erica's bedroom, but he wouldn't let her touch his child. He took his son outside to the garden and sat down uix)n the grass with him cradled comfortably in his lap. Awaiting the coming dawn, Viper's handsome features were set in a dark scowl, for he could not wait to shake the truth out of the lying bitch he had once stupidly believed he would love for all eternity. She had made a mockery of his love, and that was a sin he would never forgive.

It was Mark who came outside to find Viper. He had gotten dressed by himself and looked it. The buttons on his shirt were misaligned, the cuffs undone, his hair uncombed, his face unshaven, and he was barefoot. He was also crying as though his heart were broken.

Shifting the sleeping child in his arms, the Indian brave rose to his feet and called out to the blind man as he approached him. He had intended to end his masquerade that very morning, but seeing that Mark certainly wasn't up to learning who he really was, he continued using the French accent everyone expected to hear when he spoke. "I am coming, monsieur. Wnat has happened to put you in such a state?"

Mark continued to sob as he tried to explain. "Erica had the baby and I wasn't with her. I wanted to be with her. Now the midwife says she's worried about her, and she's sent for Dexter. What are we going to do if Erica dies, Etienne? Whatever will we do?" Mark tried to wipe his eyes on his shirtsleeves, but succeeded only in getting the garment sopping wet rather than drying his torrent of tears.

"Who is Dexter?" Viper asked quickly.

"A physician. He's a friend of Lars," Mark mumbled between loud gulps and sniffs.

"Of course, I recall the name now." Once the midwife had arrived. Viper had ceased to worry over Erica,

believing she was in capable hands. While he was not frightened to the point of tears, since he doubted Mark fully understood the situation, he was greatly disturbed to learn the delicate young woman wasn't making as normal a recovery from her orofeal as he had assumed she must be.

"Let's go inside, monsieur. I have the baby right here with me. Find a place to sit down, and you may hold him. He's sleeping, so you must be quiet."

"The baby? Oh no, I had forgotten all about him." Mark turned and hurried back through the french doors and took the first chair he came to in the dining room. Patting his knees, he held out his arms. "Give him to me. I wanted to name a girl for our mothers, to call her Eva Elizabeth, but I don't think we ever decided upon a name for a son. Does he look like me?"

As Viper placed the small bundle containing the sleeping child in Mark's arms, the young man's face lit up with such radiant joy that the Indian could not bring himself to tell the truth. "It is difficult to say who a babe resembles when he is so small, monsieur, but yes, I think he does favor you."

Afraid he might drop him, Mark held the baby boy very tightly. "Does he have all his fingers and toes? Is he perfect^" he asked excitedly.

"He is a fine son," Viper assured him. "He will need a fine name."

"Maybe Erica has thought of one." Then, recalling his wife was not doing well, Mark hugged the babe even more tightly, then asked Viper to take him again. "I must go back upstairs to Erica. If she calls for me I want to be there this time. Will you watch my son?"

"I will do my best." Viper scooped the babe from Mark's arms, then stood aside to let him pass on his way upstairs. He had no idea what to do himself, since whether or not Erica called for him, he wasn't ready to see her. When William Dexter arrived, Viper opened the front door to let him in, but turned away so the man could get no glimpse of the black-haired child. Dexter was a tall man, quite thin, with dark curly hair. After mumbling a hasty "Good morning," he tossed his hat aside, and, eager to see his patient, he nearly sprinted up the stairs. Margaret, the younger of the midwife's daughters, had gone to fetch