Adrienne deWolfe (52 page)

She managed a feeble shake of her head. "Oh, no, you don't understand. You see—"

Ginevee's hand tightened like a vise over Rorie's upper arm. "Wait a minute, Aurora. When was the last time you had your woman's courses?"

"Ginevee."

Face flaming, Rorie glanced at Fancy, but the other woman just laughed.

"Believe me, Aurora, I'm the last person who would judge you in a matter like this. Besides, I know Wes isn't any monk."

The tremor in Ginevee's hand was increasing in direct proportion to her excitement. She looked like a child on Christmas day. "You haven't bled for over a month now, have you, child?"

Rorie, still dazed by her receding nausea, couldn't believe Ginevee was asking her such personal questions before a guest. Besides, Ginevee knew full well the state of Rorie's womb.

"Ginevee, for heaven's sake. This is not the time or

place—"

"Miss Fancy, you say the sickness came on you too?" Ginevee asked with unabashed eagerness. "Perhaps as early as the second week?"

Gazing from the black woman back to Rorie, Fancy looked puzzled. "Well, as a matter of fact it did. I had all the symptoms with Billy—tenderness, nausea, swelling, swooning." She grimaced at this last symptom. "It was so humiliating. I never faint. Not for real, anyway."

Before Rorie could even comment on Fancy's observations, Ginevee clutched her hand and held it hard against her hammering heart.

"Aurora, don't you see? You've been suffering with the same ailments for nearly six weeks now."

Fancy frowned. "You mean you didn't know?"

Rorie's head was spinning—and not from sickness anymore.

"Well, no. I mean, you don't understand. My cycles have never been what you'd call regular, and... my husband was a doctor. He said I was barren. He said he was leaving me because I couldn't have his child—"

"The bastard."

Rorie's eyes locked with Fancy's, and something passed between them then. Something profoundly female. It transcended all barriers of experience and culture. In an instant, Rorie knew Fancy had also been brutally betrayed by a man.

"You know, Aurora—" Fancy squatted, the small protuberance in her belly brushing Rorie's knee, "not every man is up to siring a child. Did your husband have other children that you know of?"

She shook her head, still too afraid to dream, to hope, to
believe.

"Well, six weeks is a long time to go without a cycle."

"It's been longer," Rorie whispered breathlessly, elation starting to get the better of her.

Dear God, was it true? Had Jarrod been the one with the affliction?

She'd never been with another man, yet on that first night with Wes, she'd known somehow, deep in the core of her being, that something had changed, that something was new.

She clasped her trembling hands, and Fancy, who'd been watching her reaction with shrewd eyes, nodded as if to dispel the last of her doubts.

"It looks like we have something in common after all, Aurora."

"Miss Rorie!"

Rorie started. The shout had been Nita's, pitched high with annoyance. Her footsteps clattered on the stairs.

"I can't find Merrilee anywhere, and it's her turn to carry the wash inside before it rains. You know Topher won't do it."

Rorie struggled to rally her wits. She'd been so busy trying to keep Fancy occupied that she hadn't checked on the children for—she glanced at the mantel clock—at least forty-five minutes now. She pressed her hands to her burning cheeks, and Nita, her fists on her hips, materialized in the doorway.

"I'm sorry to bother you, ma'am, but Merrilee just keeps disappearing, and it's about to rain cats and dogs outside. I even looked inside the barn, where Topher put Aunt Fancy's horse. I figured Merrilee had taken all those apples and that cornbread in there."

"Cornbread?" Rorie repeated uneasily. "Horses don't eat cornbread."

"Well, that's what I told her, but she just said her friend was hungry, and he was getting tired of apples. That's the last time I saw her."

"When was that?"

"Oh, I don't know. Right after Creed rode up, I reckon."

A queasy feeling, not unlike her earlier nausea, coiled inside Rorie's stomach. She remembered Merrilee's questions about Danny that morning and her talk of a hungry friend.

"Nita, send Topher here. Quickly, please."

Nita turned to obey, and Rorie glanced anxiously at Ginevee. "Do you know where Merrilee is?"

The old woman frowned, shaking her head. "No, but now that Nita mentioned it, I did think it was strange when Merrilee asked for a basket to carry her apples. And last night I noticed a cup, knife, and fork were missing from the place settings she cleared."

A footstep touched off the creaking floorboard in the hall, and Rorie looked up to see Topher standing rebelliously at Nita's side.

"I ain't doing no woman's work."

Rorie might have smiled if she hadn't been so worried.

"Topher, where's Merrilee?"

"Oh, is that all?" The boy looked greatly relieved. Folding his arms, he pasted on a scowl. "Well, you know how she's always wandering off somewhere, saying her mama told her to go, because someone's hungry, or hurt, or something." Topher rolled his eyes.

"Yes? And?"

He snorted. "She said her friend would be afraid all alone in the storm, so she headed off for the cave at Ramble Creek."

"Dear God." Rorie hastily stood, only to regret it an instant later when the floorboards spun beneath her feet.

Fancy gripped her elbow. "Aurora, maybe you shouldn't be standing so soon."

"No, I have to, don't you see? Merrilee's been feeding Danny at the cliff."

"What?"
Ginevee gaped at her.

Rorie nodded absently, her mind racing. Somehow, she had to find the children and bring them back before the storm hit. "I have to go after them."

She started to turn, only to have Fancy tighten her hold on her arm.

"Wait a minute. If this is the same Danny that Wes went after, he won't be at the cliff. Remember what his brother said? Danny's afraid of heights."

"Apparently he's more afraid of his father," Rorie said grimly.

Fancy's brows knitted, and her gaze flickered to the children. Catching her eye, Ginevee shooed Nita and Topher into the hall and closed the door after them.

"Aurora," Fancy said, "if that's true, do you realize what kind of danger you could be in? Not to mention the risks you'll be taking for yourself and your baby in a rainstorm when you're climbing some cliff?"

Rorie blanched, her hand flying to her womb. Still, the risks didn't matter. Merrilee was in danger.

"I have to go," she said firmly.

"But—"

"I have to go!" she shouted at Ginevee, who'd anxiously returned to her side.

Fancy's chin hardened. "I'll come with you."

"Don't be ridiculous, Fancy. You'll only be risking your own baby, and I can't have that. Merrilee's my child. I'll go. Alone."

"Do you have a gun?"

Rorie hesitated in midstride, the grim practicality of Fancy's question making her gut knot.

"Well, no, but—"

"My revolver's in my saddlebag. Take it and Frisco. She's gentle and a good climber, but she sometimes gets spooked by thunder. Keep a tight rein on her when the clouds burst."

Rorie nodded, glancing out the window. Forked spears of lightning were crackling ever closer, and the magnolia was shaking and moaning with the wind. She prayed the storm wouldn't unleash itself until she returned the children safely to the farm.

Her pulse jumping with every crash of thunder, she grabbed Shae's work slicker from the barn, shoved Fancy's .32 into a coat pocket, and mounted Frisco. The mare was none too pleased at the prospect of venturing out into nature's cacophony, but Rorie managed to spur her into a grudging canter.

The wind whipped her skirts and unfurled her hair; the sting of an occasional raindrop blurred her eyes. Or maybe that moisture was tears. Risking her baby terrified her, and yet she couldn't bear to think of losing the child she already knew and loved to lightning, a misstep... or Hannibal Dukker.

"Dear God, please keep Merrilee safe. Please keep Danny safe too."

Lightning crackled and popped above the canopy of trees, spooking Rorie almost as much as it did the mare. She had to grit her teeth and speak gently, threading her uneasy mount through the cedars and oaks. She wished there was some other route, but the grove was unavoidable. Dodging flying branches and wind-shorn leaves, she clung to the saddle with a will that defied even the wrath of the heavens.

At last breaking free of the grove, she urged Frisco faster beneath the roiling expanse of charcoal clouds.

"Merrilee!" She shouted the instant the cliff path came into view. "Danny!"

The wind ripped her cries from her lips. If they were dashed against the rocky walls, she never heard their echo.

"Help me, God," she whispered. "Help me find Merrilee."

"Mama!"

The word was nothing more than a murmur in the next earsplitting boom. Rorie reined in, pushing her hair from her eyes, and looked frantically around her. Tumbled slabs of limestone and scruffy sentinels of juniper were strewn all around. To her left lay an uprooted evergreen, rotting in a grave of scrubbrush and grass. To her right stretched the jagged rip in the earth that served as descent to the cave ledge below. There were hundreds of crevices and overhangs where a child could hide if he was afraid to venture down the slope.

"Merrilee, where are you?"

Only the wind responded, gusting past and carrying the scent of rain.

A tendril of dread wrapped around her heart. She urged her mount forward, toward the path, but a sudden icy prickle inched down her spine. The feeling was uncanny, like a primitive shiver of knowing, or an otherworldly finger, pointing her left instead of straight. It was compelling enough to make her rein in a second time. She peered toward the fallen juniper.

That's when she saw Danny and Merrilee sprint hand in hand from their hiding place among the browning needles.

"Run!" Danny shouted, tugging Merrilee behind him in spite of her stumbles.

Stunned to see the terror on their faces, Rorie dismounted, thinking to hurry forward and open her arms to them. Instead, she froze in her tracks. Rising out of the rocks behind the tree, like some creature from the bowels of hell, came Hannibal Dukker. His unbuttoned duster flapped around him like buzzard wings as he lurched forward, a sadistic, hulking monster who stalked the children in unhurried pursuit. He clutched a whiskey bottle in one clawlike hand, but his revolver, thankfully, was holstered.

Danny raced past her in stark panic, but Merrilee tore her hand free from the boys'.

"Mama!"

Rorie was knocked off balance when the child flung herself at her, locking trembling arms around Rorie's waist.

"It's the bad man! It's the monster!"

Tears threatened to steal Rorie's calm. She swallowed her fear, glancing at the sneering lawman as he advanced. "Merrilee, honey, I want you to run. I want you to hide."

Merrilee shook her head. "No. He'll hurt you! Like in my nightmare."

Dukker laughed, an eerie, rasping cackle that didn't sound human.

Rorie managed to detach Merrilee's viselike hold long enough to push the child behind her. "Hannibal," she said as firmly as her constricting throat would allow, "I have a gun and I'm not afraid to use it."

She drew the revolver, and he laughed again. The sound made her whole body stiff and clammy.

"So it's to be a shoot-out, eh, Aurora? You've been reading too many penny dreadfuls."

She didn't bother to contradict him.

"Merrilee, I want you to take Aunt Fancy's horse and find Danny. I want you to ride home."

Merrilee shook her head no, her slender arms practically squeezing Rorie in half.

"Stinking Injun cripple." Dukker took a swig of whiskey and wiped his sleeve across his mouth. "Now there's the thanks you get, Aurora, trying to raise Uncle Tomahawk's trash. You want the brat to mind you? Then backhand her 'til her lights go out. That's the kind of discipline a savage understands."

Merrilee's body quaked harder as she pressed closer, and Rorie battled her motherly instinct to hold the child and comfort her.

"Merrilee." She spoke more sternly, every word ripping a piece from her heart. "Do as you're told."

Merrilee cringed, raising anxious eyes to her, and Rorie nodded, pushing her toward the mare.

Dukker's lips twitched in a cruel little smile as he watched the tearful child gather the reins.

"You don't really think I'm gonna let your papoose ride out of here, do you? You don't really think I'm gonna let her grow up like you, to breed more trash all over this county?"

Rorie's gut clenched. He couldn't possibly know about the baby, yet his threat triggered deep, primal instincts she hadn't even known she possessed.