"That seems like a very long time ago. When I was slim and pretty."
When Melissa didn't continue, Alanna said what she thought she should. "You're still a beauty. You mustn't be so concerned about the changes in your figure, when they don't bother Ian at all."
"So he has spoken with you. What did he say?"
Melissa appeared to be eager to hear it, but Alanna veiled the truth. "He said that he loves you very much. That's all."
Relieved by that thought, Melissa relaxed against her pillows. "He does really love me, doesn't he?"
"Yes, of course, he does. How can you doubt it?"
"Forgive me." Suddenly Melissa wanted to be alone. "I didn't sleep well or I wouldn't be behaving so badly. I think I'll try and nap for a while. Do you mind?"
"No, not at all. Shall I wake you at noon?"
"Yes, please do."
Melissa closed her eyes, but the strain of their conversation still showed in her face. Sorry that she had been of such little help, Alanna carried the breakfast tray downstairs and then outside to the kitchen. "The eggs were delicious, Polly. Melissa just wasn't hungry."
Polly wiped her hands on her apron and eyed the remnants of Melissa's meal with a suspicious glance. "This is real odd, Miss Alanna. She ought to be eating more than usual, not less. How's her poor baby gonna thrive, if she don't eat?"
"She eats, Polly." Dismissing the cook's worries, Alanna left the kitchen and went out into the garden to cut some chrysanthemums for a bouquet to brighten Melissa's room. She supposed the moist air was good for the plants, but she was as tired of the foggy days as Ian. She was moving down a row of mums, when she spotted a scrap of paper caught in the leaves. She unrolled it to find a fragment of a carefully drawn map with notations in Elliott's handwriting. Will's Creek was marked, and she recognized it as a souvenir of their failed expedition against the French.
Why would he have torn up the map and thrown it away? she wondered absently. Unwilling to do the same, she slipped it into her pocket. The valiant effort to stop the French had been important, even if it hadn't been successful. Her thoughts turning again to Hunter, she wondered what he was doing, and if he had found an Indian maiden as eager for his loving as he had been for Melissa's. She plucked another bright yellow chrysanthemum and prayed that he had.
* * *
Hunter had not merely fulfilled his backers' expectations, he had exceeded their wildest dreams. He had proven himself to be not only a very talented fighter, but one with endless reserves of rage he could not only tap into at will, but skillfully control to defeat every man who had mistakenly assumed an Indian would be dumb and slow. He had left one man with a shattered wrist, and another with a dislocated shoulder. He broke most opponents' noses, and inflict
ed cuts and bruises that were so deep they took weeks to heal. As for Hunter, as his reputation grew, his only visible scars were on his hands.
Emotionally, however, his carefully nurtured aggressiveness was becoming increasingly difficult to channel solely into scheduled bouts. Once regarded as aloof, he was now considered surly. Where before he would have walked around a group of men, he now walked right through their midst, and none dared call him rude.
His long house was kept warm by the heat from the fire pit dug into the center of the dirt floor, and his bed was comfortable, but there were nights when the villainy of his thoughts kept him awake until dawn. He had continued to suppress thoughts of Melissa as unworthy of his attention, but the anger of her betrayal fed the worst part of his nature with an unceasing stream of bitterness. Hatred created in him a superbly determined fighter, but each day he felt diminished as a man.
The first time he heard the howl of a wolf echoing on the crisp autumn air, he knew the beast was again calling to him. Death was approaching, but life now held such little appeal, he began to welcome its end.
* * *
Melissa went into labor a few minutes past midnight on November eleventh. She had dreaded the ordeal of childbirth, not for the pain it would bring, but for the damning truth which she feared she would no longer be able to conceal. Believing she had until early December before that inevitable horror overtook her, she was as unprepared as the rest of the household to give birth prematurely. Her mother had told her labor would begin slowly with only mild discomfort, but the pain that tore through Melissa's insides ripped her from her dreams with terrifying zeal.
She grabbed for Ian and shook him. "Ian, it's time!"
Still half-asleep, Ian's first thought was that he had overslept, but as he opened his eyes, he saw no hint of dawn at the windows. "Time for what?" he asked.
Frightened nearly out of her wits, Melissa grabbed for his hair and yanked him awake. "It's the baby. Get help."
Wide-awake now, Ian was in such a hurry to leave the bed, he got tangled in the sheets, but after slipping and sliding, anchored his feet firmly to the floor. He lit the lamp and then peered at his wife's agonized expression. "It's too soon," he blurted out.
A second pain caught Melissa, and she grabbed a pillow to muffle the scream it wrenched from her lips. She had never thought of herself as a coward, but she hadn't been warned that the pain of childbirth would be so intense, and already on edge, it completely unnerved her. "Do you think I'm lying?" she gasped.
"No, obviously not." Ian yanked on his britches and ran downstairs to wake her parents and Alanna, but his panicked pounding on their doors brought Byron and Elliott out into the hall as well. The Englishman had scared all five of them so badly they beat him back up the stairs. Rather than being comforted by her family's presence, Melissa began to cry huge tears.
"My darling, you mustn't carry on so," Rachel warned. She smoothed back her daughter's hair and patted her shoulder lightly. "First babies take hours to arrive. When did your pains begin?"
"Just now, but—" Melissa doubled over as another one tore through her.
"They're only a few minutes apart," Ian explained, as he moved to his wife's side. "Send Andrew for Doctor Earle. I don't want to leave her, or I'd go myself."