Midwife of the Blue Ridge (40 page)

pulled his wet shirt over his head, and tossed it on the fl oor.

Accustomed to seeing men shirtless, toiling the day long under

the hot sun, Maggie was shocked by the nobleman’s unhealthy

pallor. It was as if the man’s skin had never been exposed to the

sun—his hairless chest an eerie, opaque expanse.

Cavendish preened in the center of the room and took a sip

from yet another glass of port before slipping his arms into the

robe offered by the other brother. “Thank you, Castor—see my

shirt delivered to the laundress.”

Castor scooped up the shirt. He and Pollux arranged them-

selves side by side and waited.

“Dismissed.” The viscount waved the twins away. The boys

beat a path out the door, and Maggie hurried to follow. Caven-

dish stepped between Maggie and the open door.

“I do not recall giving you leave.”

He belched. A rank blend of bilious sputum and sour port

hung in the air. Maggie took a step back. Cavendish kicked the

door shut, shot the bolt home, seized her by the wrist, and pulled

her across the room. Exhibiting a strength that belied his frail

pallor, the viscount fl ung her onto the bed.

Maggie scuttled back on elbows to hug the bedpost in the far

Midwife of the Blue Ridge
285

corner. Pale blue eyes, bloodshot and tinged yellow, tracked her

every movement. His cold appraisal chilled Maggie to the bone.

“Please, sir . . . ye seem worse for th’ drink . . .”

“La, mademoiselle”
—his accent precise—“intemperate I may

be, but I shall perform admirably nonetheless. According to

Papa
”—Cavendish gestured with a flourish to the portrait on

the wall—“drunkenness and debauch are the areas in which I

excel.” Strutting like a crow that had just scavenged a shred of

meat from a bone, he unfastened the buttons on his drop-front

breeches and groped between his legs to produce a sad, limp

member.

Too drunk to do the deed!
Maggie felt like clapping. She si-

lently blessed Pollux and his bottomless bottle of port.

With scowling brow Cavendish assessed his organ, flaccid as a

stalk of rotting celery. He looked up at Maggie and smiled, al-

most apologetic. “But a moment . . .” Spitting into the palm of

his hand, the viscount attempted to propel himself to erection.

The sight of him encouraging his vile flesh to life acted upon

Maggie like a violent purgative, vanquishing all selfl ess reason

and resolve from her mind. She choked back the bitter bile snak-

ing up from her belly. She clung helpless to the bed curtains, her

heart thumping like a military drum, beating a call to quarters in

her brain.

The man’s mouth was moving and Maggie knew he must be

speaking to her, but she could not hear his words for the blood

that rushed screaming into her head. She covered her ears, for the

noise was deafening—screams, drums, and the clatter and clank

of soldiers at the quickstep—heavy boots scuffling along the

loose scree of the village road.

Maggie squeezed her eyes tight and could see it all just as she

had so many years ago. Red jackets running from croft to croft

with torches set. Thatched roofs

alight—crimson and orange

tongues licking billowing black smoke. She clung to her mother’s

skirt—fabric slipping through her desperate, little fingers as the

286 Christine

Blevins

trooper dragged her mother away—Mam’s stricken face and the

terror in her voice as she shouted,
“RUITH! Ruith, Magaigh!”

RUN. Run, Maggie.

A growl gathered in the pit of Maggie’s being, balled up, and

burst from her lips as she sprang from the bed. Mindless of

where she was going—knowing only that she had to be away—

Maggie pushed past Cavendish and ran to the door.

He was right behind her as she fumbled with the bolt. Caven-

dish pressed one hand to the door to prohibit her escape. “You’ve

not been dismissed.”

Ruith, Magaigh!
Her mother’s voice echoed in her head. A

bolus of rabid fury burned in her throat. She turned and feath-

ered into the man like a wild thing, clawing, kicking, screaming,

and biting.

“Mad bitch!”
Cavendish caught her by the left arm and pulled

her toward the bed. Maggie dug her heels in and flopped to the

floor—carpets rolling and bunching as he dragged her along. She

fumbled under her skirts for the knife and freed the blade from

its sheath.

“UP! Up, on your feet!” Cavendish jerked hard on her arm.

And she complied, jumping to her feet brandishing honed

steel.

He let loose her arm in time to leap back and evade the full

force of her attack. Swinging the blade wild, Maggie slashed

through his silken robe and sliced a red pinstripe across his chest.

They both froze—immobilized by the sight of bright blood bead-

ing, then trickling scarlet tendrils down the viscount’s white

chest.

“You wretched
cunt
!” Cavendish pounced and wrested the

dagger from her hand, flinging it to hit the wall and fall clatter-

ing behind the bed. In an instant, his enraged fist came full force

to her face, knocking Maggie to the fl oor.

A blazing rod of pain pierced her skull and set her ears to ring-

ing. Maggie rolled from side to side, moaning and sobbing.

Midwife of the Blue Ridge
287

“Get up.” He prodded her with his foot like one would nudge

a dog lying in his path. Maggie struggled to hands and knees.

“On your feet.”

Threads of bloody spittle linked her aching mouth to the car-

pet. She turned her head slow and looked up with one eye already

swollen shut.

Cavendish stood over her, his part erect and quivering. Mag-

gie hawked up a glob of red-tinged mucus to land on the toe of

his boot.

The savage kick he delivered to her gut lifted Maggie inches

from the floor and sent her sprawling—gulping for air. Caven-

dish wound a hand around her hair and yanked her to her feet,

wrenching her right arm behind her back.

Every feeble struggle she offered was now met with a furious

ratchet of her arm and tearing at her scalp. She was racked and

rendered helpless with pain. Cavendish drove her forward, slam-

ming Maggie to bend face down over the writing table.

“Please, I beg ye . . .” She flailed with her free arm. “Please.

Stop.”

He answered her plea with a brutal twist to her arm, stretch-

ing tendons and muscles in agony. The man laughed in triumph

as a sickening pop sounded and Maggie’s shoulder dislocated

from its socket. The viscount tossed muddy skirts over her back

and kicked her feet apart. Pinning her to the table with one hand

planted between her shoulder blades, he rammed himself into

her.

Maggie arched her neck and cried out, writhing to escape his

onslaught.

Grinding in deep, Cavendish leaned close. Mouth to her ear,

he hissed, “An angry, snapping cunt makes for a nice, tight

ride.”

Maggie caught her sobs in her throat and lowered her head to

the table. Her cheek pressed to the smooth polished wood slid

back and forth in a slick of blood and tears. She forced herself to

288 Christine

Blevins

lie lifeless, chewing the flesh inside her lip to keep from moving

or making any noise.

An eternity passed. Candle fl ames wavered and wavered as he

pounded and pounded into her body. She shut her eyes but could

not close her ears to the teacups and silver spoons tinkling in

alarm with his every thrust.

A grunt. A shudder. He slumped forward and pushed off.

Maggie lay still and listened to the scuffle of erratic footfalls as

he skinked away—the bed cords creaking with sudden strain as

he fl ung himself onto the mattress.

She tugged at her skirts with her good arm, drew a shuddered

breath, and slowly stood upright. Her right arm hung painfully

useless at her side. Picking at strands of hair plastered over her

mouth and eyes and without a backward glance for her attacker,

Maggie staggered out the door. She braced her good hand to the

door frame and vomited, hacking and heaving till empty. Caven-

dish’s seed seeped gummy between her thighs. Maggie hugged

her battered ribs, retching anew, gagging up dry, painful spasms

of air.

The guard peered down from the blockhouse roof, snickering.

“Looks like his lordship treated you t’ a ride, missy . . .”

Maggie shuffled forward and lowered to sit on a wide tree

stump. She squinted one eye at the last rosy light of awful day. A

small, striped lizard ran up her skirt, danced for a moment in the

upturned palm of her useless hand, then scurried away to disap-

pear in the scrub carpeting the fortyard.

Would that she could, like a lizard, slip her wretched

skin . . . she’d leave it to dry paper thin in the hot sun, and wait for

a strong breeze to come along and blow the battered, empty husk

far, far away. Then like the wee lizard, she’d scurry away to disap-

pear and blend into the bark of the world, new and whole again.

A gentle arm wrapped around her shoulders and urged Maggie

to her feet. “Come along now, baby . . . we need care for those

bruises.”

Midwife of the Blue Ridge
289

Maggie yelped and winced, squinching eyes tight against the

pain shooting down her arm to her fi ngertips.

“Oooh, sugar . . . I’m sorry,” a soft voice soothed, and a gentle

hand smoothed her hair. “That devil-man sure done beat you

bad . . . real bad.”

“Devil-man . . . aye.” Maggie leaned her head to rest on the

shoulder of her Samaritan. Wiry curls tickled her cheek and she

was comforted by wholesome, good smells—lye soap and sun-

dried linen pressed with a hot fl atiron.

The laundress . . .

20

Better to Bend Than Break

If Maggie lay perfectly still—kept her head straight, fi ngers laced

over her middle—the racking pain in her shoulder melded with

the ache in her head and the soreness between her legs, forming

an overall pulsing throb that was somehow . . . tolerable.

She lay on one of three straw-stuffed pallets lined up along the

wall of the very same cabin she had shared with so many others

during the Shawnee uprising. One eye swollen shut, Maggie fi xed

her good eye on the ceiling. Gloaming light keeked between the

same chinks in the same roof shingles and she watched the same

brown spider repair the web spanning the same pair of rafter

beams.

Everything the same, yet everything so different . . .

The recollection of the viscount’s hand planted between her

shoulder blades, pinning her helpless to the table, caused her to

shudder, then cringe with the sudden pain radiating out from

her shoulder to the tips of fingers and toes.

To keep from being drawn into the abyss of self-pity and

self-loathing yawning at the back of her mind, Maggie closed

her good eye and concentrated on drawing deep controlled

breaths. Never in her life had she been brought so low, to a po-

Midwife of the Blue Ridge
291

sition so tenuous—so reliant on the whim of strangers. She lay

still and quiet, straining to hear the voices muttered outside the

door.

A swoosh of skirts and a whiff of lye soap. Maggie opened her

eye and leaned her head to the left, not surprised to see the slender

laundress framed by the open doorway. The woman’s honey skin

was aglow with perspiration and the dusky light fi ltering through

her wispy curls. She asked, “What they call you, sugar?”

It took forever to force her lips to form the words. “Mm-

Maggie . . . Maggie Duncan.”

The laundress settled her skirts so she could sit comfortably

on Maggie’s left. “My name’s Aurelia, an’ this here’s Tempie—th’

root doctor. She gonna make you good as new.”

Maggie tipped her head to the right. A very small, very odd

woman stood there, like a pixie come to life from the faerie tales.

She was dressed in a brilliant saffron blouse and a clover-green

skirt, her thin neck strung with many strands of multicolored

seed beads. Tempie looked as though she’d sprung from the earth,

her complexion as dark and smooth as the glazed umber cup she

held in her delicate hands.

The tiny root doctor set the cup on the dirt floor. She sat

down, tailor style, all the while considering Maggie with a wise

smile and merry eyes bright and black as two jet buttons. Laying

her little hands on Maggie’s injured shoulder, she probed gently

with knowing fingers. Teeth clenched, Maggie focused on the

woman.

Tempie’s hair was cropped short. Dense as a sea sponge, it

clung to her head like a fleecy black cap. A salting of gray at the

temples and the stamp of crow’s-feet at the corners of her eyes

were the only indications of any maturity. The woman seemed

ageless—neither young nor old.

Aurelia loosened the laces on Maggie’s bodice. “Tempie say

she got to get yo’ arm fi xed quick or it won’t never be right. You