“I am well aware of that.” He gave her a cold, impatient look, as if angered that she had reminded him of the fact.
This friction between them was intolerable. Ruth crossed the space separating them with a rush of quick little steps to assure him that she hadn’t spoken to hurt him. She stopped when she reached his side, lifting a hand to rest it tentatively on his forearm and claim the attention he’d turned away from her.
“I’m sorry, Webb. I had no right to say that.” It was simply that she had lived so long in hope that he would forget Lilli—and that, when he did, he would finally turn to her.
For a long second, Webb looked at the hand on his arm before he lifted his gaze to her face. The muted coloring of her hair and eyes appeared nondescript, yet despite the blandness of her features, he saw something that appealed to a weakness in him. Everything about her was leaning toward him, wanting to please him and wipe out that coldness.
As he set his drink on a side table, Webb wasn’t conscious of the silent debate he had with himself. Then he turned to Ruth and heard her quickened breath with a certain detachment. When he took her into his arms, he wasn’t seeking the gratification of his male needs. There were women who took care of that for a living.
He wanted to bury himself in the softness of a caring woman and find a respite from this consuming loneliness. She was yielding in his arms, her body pressing itself to his length. Her lips were pliant to the demands he made of them. All things were as they should be, but it wasn’t enough.
The lonely ache became more intense, tinged with a bitterness. Her kiss couldn’t fill the emptiness inside him. Webb became disgusted with himself for using her without a care for her feelings. His hands lifted to her shoulders to push her from him. He tightened his grip and forced Ruth away from him. The sight of the little girl-hurt look in her expression turned him from her, and Webb reached for the drink he had so recently discarded.
“I shouldn’t have done that, Ruth,” he said grimly and heard her make a little wounded sound. “You have my apology and my word that it won’t happen again.”
“No, Webb—”
He brutally cut across her protest. “Ask Virg Haskell to supper. He’ll appreciate the invitation more than I do.”
There was a kind of finality in the silence that followed. It was several more seconds before he heard her slow footsteps carrying her out of the room. He drank the rest of the whiskey in his glass in one burning swallow, but it deadened nothing.
As she dipped the damp cloth into the basin of water, Lilli cast a worried glance at the unconscious man in the bed. His face was unnaturally flushed and his skin was afire to the touch. Stefan mumbled in his native German tongue, fever carrying him to the point of delirium. She wrung out the cloth and pressed its wetness over his face, trying to cool him.
It had begun so innocently yesterday morning with a throbbing in his head, a stomachache, and diarrhea. Stefan had insisted on going out to the fields, overriding Lilli’s suggestion that perhaps he should rest. That night, he was so weak Lilli had had to help him into bed. In the night, this raging fever had claimed him.
Her hearing strained to catch sounds outside the shack. She thought she heard something, but it was so faint she wasn’t sure whether she had imagined it or not. She turned her head, glancing at the blond-haired woman by the stove, heating some broth so they could force some nourishment into Stefan.
“I think I can hear a buggy. Check and see if it’s the doctor, Helga,” Lilli urged the pregnant wife of Franz Kreuger.
“Of course.” Helga Kreuger left the stove and walked to the door to look outside.
Frightened by how rapidly Stefan’s condition had deteriorated overnight, Lilli had gone to their neighbor for help that morning. She hadn’t wanted to leave Stefan alone for even that short period of time, but she had to send someone for the doctor. Franz had ridden into town to fetch him, and Helga had left her children in the care of her oldest daughter and returned with Lilli to help however she could.
“It is Franz,” she confirmed. “The doctor is with him.”
“Thank God,” Lilli murmured and blinked at the tears to keep them at bay. This fever seemed to be shrinking Stefan right before her eyes, sinking in his cheeks and shriveling his gaunt body.
When the young doctor entered, he didn’t waste time with preliminaries and went straight to the bed. His eyes were already making their examination of the stricken man as he opened his black bag. He didn’t appear surprised by what he saw; rather, the straight line of his mouth seemed to indicate it was what he had expected.
Lilli was reluctant to leave the bedside, but Helga Kreuger took her by the shoulders and led her to the other side of the single room. She pushed a cup of broth into Lilli’s hands.
“You need your strength, too,” she insisted.
It was easier to accept it than make the effort to argue. Her hands encircled it as Lilli moved to the window. There were glass panes in it, virtually the only improvement they had made in the shanty. A film of dust coated the glass and blurred her view of the fallow field outside. A swirling wind ran across the dry ground, kicking up dust devils to spin and swoop in wild abandon. The air was so dry it sucked up any moisture it found.
Off to the side, Lilli could hear Franz Kreuger and his wife speaking to each other in low, unintelligible voices. Her mother had been this sick before she died—different symptoms, but there was still the smell of death. It was something Lilli couldn’t forget. Until this moment she had been too busy caring for Stefan to let her mind dwell on the possibility he could die. All her attention had been devoted to making him better; now her thoughts were turning to what would happen if he didn’t recover.
Her mind flashed to memories of her parents’ deaths, the grief and the anguish, the endless number of things that had to be done. If Stefan died, she’d have it all to do again—finding the money to pay for the coffin, arranging for his burial, and going through all his personal belongings. If he died—she’d be free to go to Webb.
The instant the thought leaped into her mind, Lilli was sickened by it. It was a terrible thing to be thinking at a time like this. She despised herself for it and stamped out the seed before it could grow by brutally reminding herself of her face in the mirror and the sobering fact that years had passed without Webb’s making a single attempt to see her. He was bound to have forgotten her long ago.
She lifted her gaze to the dust-laden sky. Her lips formed the silent words, “Stefan, forgive me.” There was a sound from the corner of the room where her husband lay, and Lilli turned to look at the erect figure tending him. She walked to the foot of the bed and searched the expressionless face of the physician.
“What is it, Doctor?” She asked for an answer that would rid her of these gnawing fears.
He seemed not to want to meet her probing eyes. “Where do you get your drinking water, Mrs. Reisner?” He swung a raking look over her, catching the signs of youth the sun hadn’t burned out. “You are his wife?” His patient was considerably older, although he’d learned that was hardly uncommon among some of these immigrant marriages.
Lilli nodded affirmatively to that question and answered the first. “We have a cistern outside.”