The Romancing of Evangeline Ipswich (11 page)

“O-of course,” Evangeline answered in a whisper.

Hutch turned to Reverend Lloyd—a tall, spindly man, dressed all in black and with graying hair that stood up on his head as if it were wire driven into his scalp.

“Marry us, Reverend Lloyd,” Hutch rather ordered. Realizing then the tone of his demand, he halfheartedly added, “If you please, sir.”

“Hurry! Hurry, Reverend Lloyd!” Jennie begged through her own tears. “Marry them before I…before I’m gone.”

Evangeline wiped her tears on her sleeve. It couldn’t be happening. Jennie couldn’t be dying! Not after everything—not after they’d only just become so close once more!

“P-please join hands,” Reverend Lloyd instructed, nodding first to Hutch and then to Evangeline.

Evangeline trembled at Hutch’s touch. Even for the tragedy that was upon them all, his mere touch caused her pleasure.

“Here now, Jennie,” Doctor Swayze said, suddenly speaking. “Brace your leg over my shoulder here…but do not push until I tell you it’s all right to, do you understand?”

“Do you, Hutchner LaMontagne—” Reverend Lloyd began.

“I do,” Hutch growled. He was nearly glaring at Evangeline as he knelt next to her. Yet she knew his glaring was for the fear of losing his sister, not in disgust with Evangeline.

“Very well. Uh…” Reverend Lloyd stammered. “Do you, Evangeline…I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your last—”

“Ipswich,” Hutch grumbled with impatience. “Evangeline Ipswich.”

“Oh yes,” Reverend Lloyd choked. “Do you, Evangeline Ipswich, take Hutchner LaMontagne as your lawfully wedded husband? To have and to—”

“Yes! Yes!” Evangeline cried.

“Well then…I, by the powers invested in me, now pronounce you man and wife,” the reverend abruptly finished. Closing the Bible he’d been holding when he walked into the room, he added, “You m-may kiss the bride.”

“Kiss the bride?” Evangeline cried as more tears streamed over her face. “Are you mad?” she cried, looking at the reverend in astonishment.

Evangeline’s attention was drawn away from Reverend Lloyd, who stood perspiring as if he stood in a furnace, and back to Hutch.

Yet before she could even blink, he reached out, taking her face between his two powerful hands and pulling her toward him as his mouth met hers in a fierce kiss of mingled anger and desperation.

“All right, everyone out!” Doctor Swayze ordered suddenly. “I want no one else in this room while this baby is delivered.” He looked to Calvin, adding, “No one but you, Calvin, and of course Mrs. Swayze.”

Evangeline watched as Hutch stood and then leaned down, kissing his sister on the forehead.

“You take care of her, Hutch,” Jennie panted.

“I will, Jen,” Hutch promised. “But you take care of that baby. You get that baby out, and you live through it! Do you hear me?”

Jennie nodded as tears of fear and pain streamed down her face.

“Come on, Reverend,” Hutch said, taking hold of Reverend Lloyd’s arm in one hand and Evangeline’s in the other and pulling them out of the room.

The door closed just as Jennie wailed in agony.

“Do not push, Mrs. McKee!” Evangeline heard Doctor Swayze command. “Not until I tell you.”

“I-I should probably stay…in case I’m needed for…well, anything else,” Reverend Lloyd ventured.

“She’ll be fine,” Hutch mumbled. He leaned back against one wall a moment before sliding down into a sitting position. Jones was quick to go to his master, licking his face with an affectionate kiss of encouragement.

Evangeline was stunned—so stunned that she could think of nothing else but her proper manners. Jennie had a guest, after all—Reverend Lloyd—and the man looked as completely out of his element as a man could possibly look.

“M-might I offer you a piece of cake, Reverend Lloyd?” Evangeline asked, brushing tears from her cheeks. “I made one just this morning, and a little sweet thing goes a long way to settling one’s nerves, I find.”

Reverend Lloyd seemed to sense Evangeline’s need for distraction. Therefore, as Jennie cried out in agony from behind the bedroom door, Reverend Lloyd said, “That would be good, I think, Miss…rather, Mrs. LaMontagne.”

Reverend Lloyd cleared his throat, and Hutch looked up at the awkward-seeming man. Oh, he hadn’t missed the reverend’s obvious reminder that Hutch had just taken Evangeline to wife—even if it had been under curious and very traumatic circumstances. How could he forget such a thing! In what were perhaps her dying moments, his sister had given him what he had wanted most: Evangeline.

The truth was, Hutch was awed that Evangeline had agreed to marry him. Yet he knew how much Evangeline loved Jennie—loved her enough to grant her last request to marry him.

He nodded to Reverend Lloyd, an unspoken acknowledgement that Hutch was in his right mind and knew the magnitude of what had just transpired. But when Reverend Lloyd turned and followed Evangeline into the kitchen, Hutch wasn’t so certain that
she
understood the enormity of it. After all, she’d married him as seemingly willingly as he married her, but he suspected it was different for Evangeline. For only that morning, Hutch had confided to his sister his growing feelings for her friend. Yet he doubted that Evangeline felt the same for him. Otherwise she would’ve confided in Jennie as well, and Jennie would have told him.

And so he wondered, as he sat with his dog’s head in his lap, stroking the canine’s soft head—as he watched Evangeline serve Reverend Lloyd a piece of cake. He wondered if Evangeline had truly meant to marry him or if she thought it was all just a farce for Jennie’s comfort’s sake. And what would happen when Jennie’s baby was born and all was well? Would Hutch simply scoop Evangeline up and carry her back to his house, over the threshold, and to their wedding bed? Surely not! Evangeline Ipswich would never have thought of that—and least not yet—not with Jennie crying out with pain in the other room.

And what if the unimaginably worst happened? What if Jennie were lost in childbirth? Would Evangeline stay with Hutch then? Remain his wife? Live with him in Red Peak simply because she’d promised her dead friend that she would? Hutch certainly did not want Evangeline’s companionship for the sake of pity and obligation.

“Another push, Mrs. McKee,” Hutch heard Doctor Swayze instruct. “When you feel the pain begin, push as hard as you can…with all your might and strength.”

Hutch closed his eyes and listened—listened to his sister growl with agony and the exertion of attempting to push another human being from her body, with the attempt to bring new life into the world—and he prayed for hers to be spared.

“Hutch?” Evangeline asked in her beautiful, lilting voice.

Hutch opened his eyes to see Evangeline hunkered down in front of him, offering a glass of water to him.

“And this is for you, Jones,” she said, placing a bowl of water near Jones.

Hutch took the glass from her and mumbled, “Thank you.”

Jennie cried out, and Evangeline clenched her eyes tightly shut. “She’ll be all right. She has to be all right,” she whispered.

Hutch knew his time for weakness was over. Patting Jones on the head with reassurance, Hutch stood, took Evangeline’s hand, and pulled her to her feet.

“She’ll be fine,” he said, attempting to appear certain. Evangeline was his wife now, and he was her husband—her protector, her provider, her companion, and perhaps one day her lover. He would be strong for her sake—no matter what the outcome eventually was on the other side of Jennie and Calvin’s bedroom door.

Evangeline’s hand clenched tight where Hutch held it as she heard an earsplitting, agonizing scream from Jennie’s room. For a moment following Jennie’s shriek, there was silence. And then, she heard it. Hutch heard it too. Even Reverend Lloyd abandoned his plate of cake to hurry toward them.

As the baby’s cry broke the horrid silence following Jennie’s screams, a measure of comfort washed over Evangeline.

“The baby is here,” she whispered to Hutch. As the baby continued to cry, a nervous giggle rose in her throat, and she repeated, “It’s got a powerful set of lungs too!”

Hutch smiled a little, but Evangeline knew the worry that was still in his heart—for it was in hers too.

“And Jennie?” he asked.

Evangeline wanted to throw her arms around his neck in that moment—hold him close to her—draw strength from the power of his body and lend him the strength of the hope in her soul. But she didn’t. She simply said, “I’m…I’m sure all is well, or they would’ve come for us. Wouldn’t they have?”

The bedroom door opened then. Jones leapt to his three legs and began wagging his tail as Calvin stepped from the room with his and Jennie’s baby swaddled in a blanket.

“It’s a girl,” Calvin whispered almost reverently. “A strong and healthy baby girl.” He chuckled as he studied the tiny baby in his arms. “She’ll need a good bath, of course,” he said. “But I thought you both should know that the baby is fine.”

Evangeline exhaled one sigh of relief. Yet she felt that another was waiting in its wake.

As Hutch kissed the new baby’s small head and then the fingers on one tiny hand, he asked, “And Jennie?”

Calvin gulped—seemed to force a smile. “She’s…she’s unconscious and not well. But she’s alive.”

Evangeline glanced past Calvin into the bedroom. She could see Jennie lying on the bed, eyes closed, as Mrs. Swayze removed some blood-soaked towels and Doctor Swayze dabbed her head with a cloth.

The baby fussed a bit and the nervous new father, Calvin, handed her to Evangeline.

“The baby will need to nurse soon,” Doctor Swayze said as he walked to where Evangeline and the others stood. He looked to Evangeline and added, “I’m afraid you’ll have to see to nursing the baby, Miss…Mrs. LaMontagne.”

“Me?” Evangeline gasped.

“How is that possible, Doctor?” Hutch asked, obviously as astonished as was Evangeline.

Doctor Swayze, tired as he obviously was, chuckled all the same. “No, no, no,” he began. “You’ll need to be sure that the baby nurses even if Mrs. McKee isn’t conscious every time.”

“Oh!” Evangeline sighed with relief.

“But she will regain consciousness, won’t she, Doc?” Calvin asked.

Doctor Swayze nodded. “Yes. Yes, she will. But she’s lost more blood than is normal and is again with fever. I’m not sure what is wrong, so we’ll have to wait it out and see if I can tell more when she’s recovered for a few hours and awake.”

Evangeline’s second sigh of relief was not exhaled—for it was certain that Jennie was not as well as she should be.

“I’ll need some warm water to bathe her in,” Mrs. Swayze said as she approached. The woman smiled at Evangeline, and Evangeline could see the woman’s relief in the fact that the baby, at least, was well. Her warm brown eyes conveyed it perfectly.

“I’ll get that,” Calvin volunteered.

“And I’ll stay through the night with you, Mrs. LaMontagne,” Mrs. Swayze said to Evangeline. “Just in case you need help getting her fed.”

“Thank you,” Evangeline said, and she was sincerely grateful—for she couldn’t imagine how in the world she would get the baby to nurse if Jennie remained unconscious!

“I’ll be here a while longer, as well,” Doctor Swayze said. “So fear not. You’re not alone in this. It’s good that you have one another all the same. You may all be in for some long days and nights if Mrs. McKee doesn’t recover. I mean, of course, if she doesn’t recover readily.” He returned to Jennie then, again pressing a cloth to her forehead.

“Well, I think my job’s done here,” Reverend Lloyd said. “Thank the Lord,” he chuckled nervously. He reached out, shaking Calvin’s hand. “Congratulations, Calvin, on your new daughter. And my prayers are with your lovely wife…though I’m certain she will recover perfectly.”

“Thank you, Reverend,” Calvin said.

Reverend Lloyd turned to Evangeline then. He looked from her to Hutch and back, saying, “And congratulations to you too, Mr. and Mrs. LaMontagne. A wedding and a new baby…all in the same night!” He chuckled again. “I’m quite overwhelmed with joy myself.” He smiled and turned toward the door. “I’ll see myself out, but be sure to collect me if there’s any further need of my services or company.”

“I’ll start heating up that water now, Mrs. Swayze,” Calvin said then.

As he headed for the kitchen, Evangeline stood rather stunned. “Did he really marry us then?” she asked Hutch. “Legally? I mean, Jennie isn’t…she’ll recover. The baby and Jennie will…you only married me because you thought…we all thought…Jennie thought…”

Hutch gazed at her a moment, saying, “We married in front of God and everyone, Evangeline.” He pressed his finger to the baby’s palm and smiled when she clasped it. Then he looked at Evangeline again; his face was so close to hers that she could feel his sweet breath on her lips. His dark eyes fairly smoldered with the powerful allure he owned—
and
with an infallible determination. “And besides,” he continued, “I’d like to think I’m at least a little step up from that old poet back in Meadowlark Lake. Hmm?”

Evangeline stood awestruck, shocked into silence.

“Come along, Mrs. LaMontagne,” Mrs. Swayze said then. “Let’s see if we can get this little princess feeding while her daddy warms up her bath water.”