Sea Fire (35 page)

Nothing happened. Cathy, sobbing, twisting from side to side, prayed for a surcease from pain. Jon witnessed her silent torment, and prayed himself. God, this was worse than anything he could have imagined in his worst nightmare! She had been laboring for nearly twenty-four hours in this open boat with only himself, with his memories of birthing colts and calves, to help her. He was hideously afraid that she was going to die. He had done everything he knew how to make her more comfortable, but she was clearly in agony. Gritting his teeth, he wished vainly that he could bear the pain himself. Anything rather than see her suffer so! But he could not. He could only watch, and help her as best he could. The rest was up to her, and to God!

His mouth twisted in a reflection of her suffering as another spasm contorted her face, dragging from her a tortured moan. She was being so brave! He knew she was doing her best to muffle her cries, wanting to spare him full knowledge of what she was going through. His heart bled for her.

“Scream, Cathy,” he had told her early on, when he realized that she was trying to bite back the sounds that wanted to tear from her throat. “Scream, sweetheart, if it makes you feel better.”

Finally she had, simply because, he suspected, she could hold out no longer. Each scream had torn through him like a sword thrust. Wincing, he had held her hands helplessly, not even feeling it when her nails dug bloody furrows along his wrists and upper arms.

“Rest now,”
he told her as her latest spasm eased. She lay panting, her face as white as death, her bright hair tangled and sweat-darkened, fanning out in a snarled mass around her face. Jon knelt between her drawn up knees, watching, waiting for the first signs of the child. So far there had been none. He was sore afraid that if her labor went on much longer, Cathy would be too weak to fight for her life. Grinding his teeth, he felt a surge of hatred for this thing that was killing her right before his eyes. If it had sprung from his own seed, then he was a murderer as well. If it was Harold’s—Jon’s eyes flashed bitterly. If Cathy died, he would kill Harold.

“Oh, God!” she moaned, another contraction hitting her. Jon watched her huge belly convulse, and with some hazy knowledge of having once seen Petersham do the same thing to a mare in difficulties, he placed his hand on the mound and pushed downward. Her head thrashed from side to side and she groaned, the sound making him wince. The one ray of hope lay in the fact that her spasms were getting closer together, and harder. Surely this meant that the child was on the verge of emerging? He prayed that it was so. Tears of pain and weakness coursed down Cathy’s white cheeks. Seeing them, Jon felt moisture in his own eyes.

“Try one more time, sweetheart,” he encouraged her when she seemed on the verge of giving up. “Just one more time. Cathy, you have to try!”

Cathy, dazed by pain, nevertheless heard his voice with some tiny corner of her mind that was still functioning rationally. Why did he keep pestering her? she thought resentfully. When all she wanted to do was just lie here, and quietly fall asleep. . . .

Her own body refused to let her. It convulsed agonizingly, and she screamed before she could stop herself. The sound ripped through the bright, sparkling peace of the afternoon, bounced across the gently rolling waves, and was gone for lack of an audience.
In all this vast, wide ocean, there seemed to be only herself and Jon—and the monster pain. It was devouring her like a sea serpent, and she was growing so weary of fighting it that she was ready to give up and let it pull her beneath the waves. Only Jon, with his urgent, coaxing voice and strong hands, wouldn’t let her. Couldn’t he see that she was tired . . . ?

Another stab of fiery torment racked her. Cathy tensed, screaming, feeling as if she would be split in half. Between her legs Jon gave a hoarse cry of triumph.

“It’s coming! Cathy, it’s coming! Keep pushing, sweetheart, we’re almost there!”

She could feel his hands on her, trying to help her, and she no longer had to worry about obeying his commands. Her body was doing it for her. Without her volition, it strained to expel the intruder in her womb. Gasping, sobbing, tears rolling down her cheeks, she pushed with all her might. Suddenly the thing seemed to be forced from her like a cork from a bottle of champagne. Sagging with relief, she went limp. She could feel a sticky warmth spreading between her legs.

“Cathy, you did it! God, you did it!” Jon was exultant, a beaming smile splitting his dark face, as he caught the emerging child in his hands. He saw that Cathy was pale and limp, totally unaware of what he was doing. For a moment his heart stopped. Then he noted the swift rise and fall of her breasts and was reassured. She had merely fainted with the last excruciating pains, he told himself. And it was best to let her rest until he had her squared away. Thinking that, he looked down anxiously at the tiny form in his arms, still attached to its mother by the cord. What did one do with a baby now? he wondered frantically. Vague memories of himself bursting into the room just after Cray’s birth returned to him. The doctor had held the boy up by the heels, slapping his little rear, and Cray had screamed his head off. That was what he must do now—to this tiny girl,
Jon realized as he really looked at the newborn child for the first time. But first he had to cut the cord. Laying the infant rather awkwardly on his leg, he reached into the scabbard at his belt for his knife. Pulling it out, he stared at it with a frown. He would have to sterilize it as best he could. . . . Sparingly he poured whiskey over it, and when that was done looked rather longingly at the bottle. He could have done with a hearty swig, but there wasn’t much left, and he might need it for Cathy. He put the bottle aside, and with a single swift movement cut the cord. Knotting it at both ends in a sturdy sailor’s knot, he caught the child by the heels, feeling cruel as he administered a sound buffet to its minuscule bottom. To his relief, and amazement, the baby opened her prunish little mouth and bawled.

By the time Cathy opened her eyes again, the sun was falling. Deep purple and orange pinwheels swirled out from the enormous ball. The ocean was the color of pansies, broken in long, rhythmic lines by touches of white. The little boat rocked gently up and down, and Cathy felt lulled by the sound of the water lapping softly against the hull. She stirred, lifting her head. Not far away she could see Jon, his big body folded in what must have been a most uncomfortable position as he sat cross-legged in the bottom of the boat. He was rocking back and forth, and a husky crooning sound seemed to be emerging from his throat. She stared. What on earth was he doing? Then she saw the tiny, black-swathed bundle he held in his hands, and memory came flooding back. Her baby! Stretching out her arms with a low, joyous murmur, she reached for the child.

Jon looked up at the sound she made, a smile twisting his long mouth.

“You have a daughter,” he told her, placing the child in her arms. Cathy stared down at the wrinkled little face with delight.

“A daughter,” she breathed. Then, recalling his words, she looked up and met
his silvery eyes with a slight frown. “
We
have a daughter,” she corrected.

Jon met her blue eyes, still shadowed with pain, his own unreadable.

“
We
have a daughter,” he agreed expressionlessly.

Reassured, Cathy went back to her rapt contemplation of the infant in her arms. Jon had washed her, and the red, wrinkled little face looked sweet and clean as she slept, oblivious to her mother’s inspection. She was wrapped in a bit of cloth torn from the leg of Jon’s breeches, and Cathy smiled as she unwrapped it to inspect the child’s tiny body. At this rate, Jon would soon be naked. . . . The baby was perfect in every detail, with ten tiny fingers and toes—Cathy counted. Downy tufts of reddish hair covered her head. To Cathy’s fond eyes she was gorgeous, and she smiled as she looked up to convey this news to Jon.

“She’s perfect,” she said happily, and Jon smiled slowly back at her.

“I know,” he said.

They sat there smiling rather foolishly at each other, and Cathy felt a surge of love for him. He had his faults, as who didn’t? But he was a rock to lean on in times of trouble. How many men could have got her safely away from a burning ship and delivered her baby all in the space of forty-eight hours? Not many. Most that she knew would have been as helpless as she had been herself. Jon was a man to depend on.

She opened her mouth to tell him so, then was interrupted by a small whimper from her daughter. Cathy stared down, entranced, into eyes that were as blue as her own.

“She’s hungry,” Jon said sparely as the whimper deepened and lengthened into a howl.

“Yes,” Cathy acknowledged, then felt her cheeks pinken as she parted the blanket that Jon had apparently wrapped her in after the birth. Beneath it she was naked. It was ridiculous to feel embarrassed, she scolded herself as she put the child to her
breast. But she looked up to find Jon’s gray eyes, darkened to pewter with some emotion she couldn’t read, fixed on her with the child at her breast, and felt her blush deepen. He saw her color, and tactfully turned his gaze away.

While Cathy fed the baby, Jon resumed his long-interrupted rowing. He had let the gig drift while Cathy had been in labor. They had somehow caught on a current that had pulled them due south, which suited him as well as any other direction would have. But now that the child was safely delivered, he had to pull hard for land. Their supplies, including water, were running very low. He was sure that the danger of their position had not yet occurred to Cathy, and he wanted to be safely near shore before she realized what they faced.

When he looked around again, both Cathy and the child were asleep. The infant was cradled in her arms, the blanket wrapped carefully around them both. Jon, shirtless, shivered in the rapidly cooling night air. He hoped that the blanket was enough to keep them warm.

He rowed through the night, pushing himself long past the point of exhaustion. Now was not the time to succumb to the physical limitations of his body. If he was cold, tired, and hungry, then so be it. Cathy and her child—he still had deep reservations about its paternity; that orangey hair had not gone unremarked—were dependent on him for their very lives. He meant to bring them through safely, or die in the attempt.

Dawn was just beginning to light the eastern sky when he could keep exhaustion at bay no longer. His eyelids felt as if they were being forced down by lead weights. Hugely he yawned, shipping the oars as silently as he could so as not to rouse Cathy or the child. Then he spread his arms wide, stretching his cramped muscles. The gig had caught another strong southerly current, which he reckoned should take them toward land. There was a small chain of islands somewhere in the vicinity, if
he remembered this stretch of ocean correctly. With luck they would sight them sometime tomorrow. Or maybe not. During Cathy’s ordeal, he had been so taken up with her suffering that they could have drifted a hundred miles from where he thought they were and he would never even have noticed.

Moving as carefully as he could so as not to rock the boat more than he had to, Jon settled himself down near Cathy and the baby, thinking that he could share his body heat with them, and perhaps in return garner some of their own. It was bitterly cold.

As he settled himself on his back, he glanced regretfully at the blanket securely insulating Cathy and the child from the blowing wind. Clad only in his ragged black breeches, even his boots having been abandoned in the swim for the gig, he had nothing but his body hair to warm him, and that was hardly sufficient. But he had suffered more, for less reason. Closing his eyes, determinedly ignoring the shivers that racked him, Jon fell almost immediately asleep.

Cathy was roused by a whimper and the feel of a small mouth rooting hungrily against her breast. Groggily, she offered the child her nipple, and as it greedily suckled set herself to waking up. She raised one hand to push the tangled hair from her eyes, and she blinked against the already bright morning sun. Frowning, she realized that the boat seemed to be drifting aimlessly. Where was Jon? she thought, concerned, and struggled into a sitting position, the infant still snuggled to her breast. With her back resting against the gunwale, she saw him. He was sprawled quite near, lying on his back with one arm flung over his head, his long legs draped over the rear seat in what looked to be a most uncomfortable position. He appeared to be deeply asleep. Cathy smiled tenderly, looking at him. He was shirtless, the thick black pelt covering his chest not enough to conceal the deep red of sunburn that even his
dark skin had not prevented as he had sat exposed in the sun hour after hour, delivering their daughter. His bronzed face was tinged with red, too, she saw, especially on the right side where flames from the exploding cannon had caught him. Thick black lashes lay with the innocence of childhood against his lean cheeks. Stubble obscured his jaw and chin, and his black hair was wildly disordered. Her eyes swept his long, strong body with the pride of possession; a frown marred the serenity of Cathy’s brow as she noted that his steely muscles were ridged with gooseflesh. Looking down at herself, she realized that of course he had given her and the baby the only blanket. He must be freezing! Her eyes searched for her clothing, so that she could dress herself and spare him the blanket. All she had was the linen petticoat and white blouse in which she had leapt from the
Cristobel
. Vaguely she recalled Jon tossing them aside as she had struggled to produce their daughter. Where could they have landed? Then she saw them, wadded into a ball not far away. They would be horribly wrinkled, but at least they would cover her
nakedness—she would wear the petticoat and use the blouse to clothe the baby.

The little girl finished her meal and dropped off to sleep as quickly as she had awakened. Cathy put her gently aside, laying her carefully out of harm’s way. Then she crawled painfully after her clothes, pulled the loose petticoat over her head, and gathered up the blanket to spread over Jon’s recumbent form. He never so much as stirred as she covered him. Smiling, Cathy moved to wrap the baby in her blouse. Then she settled herself as comfortably as possible and began to consider names.