Embrace the Day (21 page)

"Gennie, Lord, but it's fine. What's an old lout like me to do with such a fine piece?"

"What does any gentleman do with a proper drinking cup?" She tipped a bit of cider into it and held it to his lips. "You make a toast to your wife."

He raised it obligingly and nodded at her. "To card games," he said in his deep voice.

She lifted an eyebrow at him. "Card games, Roarke? But we don't hold with—"

"Shh," he said. "It'll be our secret. 'Twas a card game that brought you here, to Virginia. And eventually to me." He took a sip with a satisfied smile.

She shook her head, "You're impossible," she said, striking him playfully on the chest.

He brushed his lips over her temple. "Ah, Gennie, have I told you today that I love you?" He scowled a little. "I haven't. Nor did I yesterday, or the day before. I've been remiss, love."

"No, you haven't, Roarke." She nuzzled the warm flesh at the side of his neck. "I've learned that I needn't hear the words day in and day out. I know you love me. I see it in all the little things you do for me, the small smiles meant only for me, the way you hold my hand in church, your incessant boasting about the way I manage the farm…"

They came together in a fiercely tender embrace, celebrating their love in a way that transcended words and time.

In a distant part of the house, Matilda cried again. Then the back door slammed, causing Roarke to stiffen. It wasn't the first time Hance had disappeared into the night with Matilda, to whisper secret dreams to the baby under the stars.

Genevieve's brow furrowed. "I feel helpless when it comes to Hance. He seems so unhappy."

"That he does, love."

"It used to be so simple when the things that troubled him were a scraped knee or a stubborn pony. I knew how to fix those things. But now…"

Roarke nodded. "I feel the same way. But what can we do, Gennie? We can only give him love and guidance. We can't live his life for him."

"Roarke, do you think he knows?" Genevieve asked suddenly, lowering her voice.

He shook his head. "Of course not," he said curtly. "Mimi would never breathe a word, and Nell Wingfield… She's not one to trust, but she's stayed out of our lives."

"But I don't even feel like I know him anymore. Why won't he talk to us, Roarke?"

He shrugged. "He's a thirteen-year-old. Not a man, yet no longer a boy, either. Perhaps the best thing to do is allow him space, and time…" He fitted his arm around her and hugged her close. "Let's not worry about it, Gennie, just for tonight."

She kissed him. "Yes," she murmured, inhaling deeply, filling her senses with him. "Tonight, let there just be the two of us…" Roarke never let her worry for long.

Hance trudged back up the stairs, his parents' words echoing in his ears. He put Matilda back in her cradle, and she settled softly against her favorite shawl.

Resentment prickled within him. Why did they go on about him, wringing their hands and wondering about their own inadequacies? It was obvious all fault lay with him.

And what were the whispers about? What was it they were hiding from him, that even the razor-tongued Nell Wingfield didn't dare divulge? The secret was something they feared; Hance had heard it in their voices. He supposed it had something to do with his nature, that wild streak in him that even he could not control.

As he slipped into his nightshirt and crept beneath the sheets, taking care not to awaken Luke and Israel, who shared the other bed, Hance swore under his breath. His parents weren't inadequate; quite the opposite. If anything they were almost too indulgent, too forgiving of his many flaws. Genevieve, whom he'd always unabashedly called Mother, went out of her way to give him the same acceptance she gave her own children.

She shouldn't do that, Hance thought. She shouldn't have taken the load of corn to the gristmill last week when that was his duty. She shouldn't spend her money on books for him when she hadn't had a new frock in years. She should expect—demand—more from him.

And he should be willing to give more. Each night he went to sleep resolving to contribute more to the farm, the family. But when day dawned bright and golden, the woods so fragrant and blessedly empty, his good intentions fell away and Hance found himself stealing off to enmesh himself in anything but farming or school with the backwoods parson who could barely spell his own name.

Hance sighed heavily. God knows, he tried. He tried to be a good brother to Luke, but the big, handsome lad seemed to need nothing from his brother. He had no head for book learning, but was possessed of a God-given way of working the land. Never had Luke shown any interest in Hance's enthusiasm for political discussions and the odds of gaming.

Israel, quiet and pensive beyond his years, seemed to have no notion that Hance existed; the little boy's hero was Luke. As for Rebecca, the girl was so wrapped up in her confounded prayers and psalm singing that the only thing she spared for Hance was an occasional fiery condemnation that would do the Reverend Carstairs proud. She was fond of telling Hance that his idleness would lead him into the hands of Satan, occasionally succeeding in making him feel like a sheep-killing dog.

A small mewing cry issued from the room across the hall. Matilda was cutting a mouthful of teeth and had been having trouble sleeping lately. But Hance didn't mind soothing her, no matter how many times she roused him. Matilda was the one member of the family who didn't judge him. Granted, she was an infant, but from the day of her birth they had shared an almost mystical bond, which was Hance's one secret joy.

He padded across the hall to his parents' room, rounding the still-empty bed, and lifted the baby into his arms. Sighing, Hance rubbed his chin over the fine wisps of fair hair and inhaled Matilda's warm, milky fragrance. She quieted as soon as she recognized her brother and settled comfortably into the crook of his arm.

"There you are, little one," Hance whispered. "Did something give you a fright?"

She blinked and worked a tiny thumb into her mouth, giving Hance a look that made his heart swell. Grabbing a shawl from the cradle, he made his way down the back stairs again and out into the warm, dark yard.

It was a soft night of late summer, alive with the chirrups of crickets and tree frogs and the scents of ripening crops and mountain laurel. The new moon, with the old moon cradled in her arms, rose in a star-sprayed sky, hanging above the Blue Ridge and illuminating its rippling peaks. Across the towering barrier was an awesome forest, a patchwork of oak openings and prairie drained by a huge system of rivers and streams.

"See that, Mattie?" Hance said. "That's the Blue Ridge. There's a whole part of Virginia out there that we've never even seen, called Kentucky. Mr. Daniel Boone spied it all out, once upon a time."

Matilda waved a chubby fist toward the mountains.

"Me, too," Hance said, interpreting her gesture. "I'd like to go beyond the mountains, to the other side of the world. Reckon I will one day, and I'll take you with me, little sister."

The baby squirmed and burrowed her face into his shoulder with a small sound of contentment.

"Lord, but I love you, Mattie," Hance told her gruffly. She was the only one he could say those words to. Stroking the moist softness of her cheek, he smiled. And she answered him, wordlessly, with a round-eyed stare and a gurgle of unmistakable contentment.

Above the mantel
the clock ticked ominously, ceaselessly, breaking the stillness in the house with its age-old rhythm. Summer blazed again over the land at the foot of the Blue Ridge, but Genevieve and Roarke sat gripped by the bitter chill of terror.

Outside, another rhythm could be heard: the sound of Luke's ax descending again and again on a log. It was his way of coping with the tragedy in the house, a way to empty his mind of everything but the screaming protest of his aching muscles.

Below the window, Hance and Rebecca argued volubly, raising their voices over Israel's confused sobbing.

"She'll be an angel soon," Rebecca insisted.

"Oh?" Hance asked cuttingly. "And what the hell is Mattie now, the devil's spawn at the ripe old age of three? Christ, Becky, what good are all your hymns and prayers if this is what your God does?"

"Hance," she gasped, "listen to yourself. You're talking blas-blasphony!"

He snorted derisively at her mispronunciation. But when she began to cry, he softened a little. "Go on and pray, Becky, if it comforts you. But don't expect me to join you. Mattie already is an angel and always has been. No amount of psalm singing will convince me that this is just."

Inside the house, Genevieve agreed. She couldn't tear her eyes from Matilda, who lay flushed and wheezing in her arms, as she had for two days now.

"Let me take her, love," Roarke offered, his voice ragged with fatigue. "You'd best try to eat something, take a nap—"

"No. No, I've little enough time with her as it is." Genevieve shuddered at the sound of her own words. Shuddered because she'd spoken the awful, dark, gut-twisting truth. Matilda had lung fever, and it was eating up her barely lived life with dreadful speed.

"Oh, God, Roarke," Genevieve said. "Oh, God, I can't stand this…" The words came quietly, suffused with the full horror of all she felt.

"I know, love," he said. Unshed tears roughened his voice. "I know. Sweet Christ, I feel helpless." They'd had the doctor from town, and Mimi with her Indian remedies, and Mimsy Greenleaf, who years ago had lost one of her own to the same raging disease. But none of them could help.

Roarke lowered himself to the bed where Genevieve sat with the child and encircled them both with his arms. Sensing his presence through her delirium, Matilda clutched at his sleeve with a fever-flushed hand. Her eyes, tiny slits of blue in her swollen face, regarded him with confusion. Matilda was unable to comprehend the pain she was in.

"Oh, please, God spare her," Genevieve murmured. But she knew her prayer would be ignored. Matilda was too weak and small to battle the fires of this illness. She grew more feeble with each passing moment.

Genevieve tore her eyes away from the child and gave Roarke a tortured look. "What can we do?"

"Nothing," he told her. He wished he could comfort his wife in this time of aching sadness, but his own sense of grief and hopelessness equaled hers. " 'Tis the greatest ill we could ever be dealt, Gennie."

Her tears splashed down on Matilda's shawl. "How will we go on after this?" she asked brokenly.

"I don't know, love. I don't know. We have the others…" His voice trailed off. There was no comfort in that. The preciousness of all the other children could never fill the void Matilda would leave in their lives.

There was a sound of muffled protest outside the door— Mimi's voice. And then the door was pushed open.

"Hance, no!" Genevieve said, instinctively drawing the child against her. "The fever—"

"Fever be damned," Hance growled. "I'm sick of waiting out there, not knowing—"

Genevieve opened her mouth to protest again, but Roarke stopped her. "Let him, Gennie," he said quietly, and motioned Hance to the bed.

The boy shot his father a grateful look and approached slowly, fearfully. It wasn't the disease he was afraid of but of what he was about to see. Genevieve pulled back the blankets to reveal Matilda's pitifully flushed face.

He drew his breath in sharply. Even his darkest imaginings hadn't prepared him for this. Matilda looked unutterably fragile, her flesh burning beneath his touch, her breathing the faintest of wheezes, like dead leaves rustling in the wind.

Genevieve winced at the look on Hance's face: the disbelief as he stared at the baby, the naked terror that haunted and darkened his sky-blue eyes.

"She's very sick, Hance," she said quietly.

"She's dying." The words were torn from him.

Roarke put a hand on Hance's shoulder. "There's nothing we can do, son. Nothing but wait, and hold on to each other."

"Let me have her."

Woodenly, Genevieve handed him the child. With heartaching tenderness, Hance gathered her to his chest and turned away, toward the window.

The dormer gave out to the west. Hance's gaze moved restlessly over the acres of the farm. The gnarled white oak where he'd pushed Matilda in her swing, laughing as she squealed, "Higher! Higher!" The patch of green where they'd lain on their bellies, their chins tickled by soft grass as they watched a cricket. In the distance the Blue Ridge brooded in its soft haze, changeless, ever present.

"See it, Mattie?" Hance whispered. "See the Blue Ridge? I said I'd take you there some day—to see the other side of the world."

For a brief moment the glazed look left her eyes, and she turned her face toward the light. Her dry lips curved into a ghost of her sunny smile, as if forgiving Hance for not fulfilling his promise. Stricken to his core, Hance brought her back to Genevieve.

The child's mouth formed the words "Mama" and "Papa." Then she turned her face into Genevieve's chest and died with the softest of sighs.

Genevieve felt the life shudder out of her child. She, too, stopped breathing, her throat constricting painfully. But she wasn't granted the mercy of death. Inevitably, she dragged in a reluctant breath. She had to go on. She had to spend a lifetime missing her baby.

Roarke took Matilda and covered the rapidly cooling face with kisses, his entire body convulsed with ragged sobs.

"No." Hance whispered the word, desperately, stepping back. Then he ran to the window and gripped the sill and repeated his denial, screaming it this time.

Days of warmth and brilliant light ended the summer of
1790
. The crops grew straight and tall, yielding bounty. But within the family all was darkness. Genevieve went through the motions of living, drawing her children to her with desperate ferocity. But there was a gaping hole within her heart that couldn't be filled, not by Luke's steadfastness, nor Rebecca's constant prayers, nor Israel's quiet affection, nor even the grief-tinged sweetness of Roarke's abiding love.

The farm prospered, and the children grew. Eventually, Genevieve learned to smile again, but it was a smile haunted by sadness, for life was no longer a dream fulfilled. The nightmare of Matilda's death colored everything in shades of bleakness.

Hance was inconsolable. The one thing he'd loved above all others had been snatched from him. Unlike his parents, who grieved in quiet desperation, Hance raged. His temper flared at the slightest provocation. His absences became more frequent, longer. Often he escaped to Richmond, seeking out the lowliest of taverns, drinking and wenching himself into a state of torpor.

"I'm worried about him, Roarke," Genevieve said as they lay together in the dark one night. "I'm worried about the company he keeps and the things he does when he's away."

"I've tried to talk to him about it, love," Roarke said. He sighed and flung his arm over his brow. "But I can't stop him. If I'm too hard on him, we'll lose him completely."

"He's so angry, Roarke."

"Aye. At all the world and at himself, too, I think."

"People in town talk. They swear he'll come to a bad end."

"Do you believe that, Gennie?"

"I don't know. There's so much good in him, Roarke, so much he could share. But he keeps it all to himself."

He stroked her hair, weaving his fingers into soft curls. "He knows we're here, should he need us. 'Tis all we can do, love."

Genevieve hoped that a baby would come of that night, and all the years of nights that followed. She still loved Roarke desperately, even more deeply now with the tragedy they'd shared. A baby would give her new hope, new faith. But the fulfillment Genevieve longed for eluded her. It seemed she was as barren as the region of her heart Matilda had occupied.