There was smoke in the air, and the noise was making the baby restless. She'd had him with her down in the parlor, and Delilah's Daniel, almost three years old now, had been laughing and entertaining the baby with silly faces. But then Cole Gabriel Slater had decided enough was enough, and he had jammed one of his pudgy little fists into his mouth and started to cry.
"Oh, I've had it with the entire day anyway!" Kristin declared to everyone in the room and to no one in particular. She picked up the baby and started up the stairs. Delilah, sewing, stared after her. Shannon, running her fingers idly over the spinet, paused. Samson rolled his eyes. "Hot days, yes, Lordy, hot days," he mumbled. He stood up. "The hands will be back in soon enough. I'll carry that stew on out to the bunk-house."
Upstairs, Kristin lay down with her fretful baby and opened her blouse so that he could nurse. She started, then smiled, as he latched on to her nipple with a surprising power. Then, as always, an incredibly sweet feeling swept through her, and she pulled his little body still closer to her. His eyes met hers. In the last month they had turned a silver-gray, just like Cole's. His hair was hers, though, a thatch of it, blond, almost white. He was a beautiful baby, incredibly beautiful. He had been born on the tenth of February. Stroking his soft cheek, she felt her smile deepen as she remembered the day. It had been snowing, and it had been bitterly cold, and she had been dragging hay down for the horses when she had felt the first pain and panicked. It would have been impossible for Dr. Cavanaugh to come out from town, and it would have been impossible for her to reach town. Pete had been terribly upset, and that had calmed her somehow, and Delilah had assured her that it would be hours before the baby actually came.
Hours!
It had been awful, and it had been agony, and she had decided that it was extremely unfair that men should be the ones to go off to war to get shot at when women were the ones stuck with having babies. She had ranted and raved, and she had assured both Delilah and Shannon in no uncertain terms that she despised Cole Slater — and every other living soul who wore britches, as a matter of fact — and that if she lived she would never do this again.
Delilah smirked and assured her that she was going to live and that she would probably have half a dozen more children. Shannon waltzed around in a daydream, saying that she wouldn't be complaining one whit if she were the one about to have the baby — if the baby belonged to Captain Ellsworth.
The pain subsided for a moment, and Kristin had smiled up at her sister, who was pushing back her soaked hair. It was "colder than a witch's teat," as Pete had said, but she was drenched with sweat.
"You really love him, don't you, your Captain Ellsworth?"
Shannon nodded, her eyes on fire. "Oh, Kristin! He saved my life. He caught me when I fell. He was such a wonderful hero. Oh, Kristin! Don't you feel that about Cole?"
She hesitated, and she remembered how happy she had been to see him. And she remembered how they had made love, how tender he had been with her, how passionate. With a certain awe she remembered the way his eyes had fallen upon her, how cherished that look had made her feel. And she remembered the ecstasy…
But then she remembered his anger and his impatience, and how he had grown cold and distant when she had mentioned his past. He was in love with another woman, and though that woman lay dead, she was a rival Kristin could not best.
"Cole was a hero!" Shannon whispered. "Kristin, how can you forget that? He rode in here and he saved our lives! And if you think you're having a difficult labor, well, then… that is God's way of telling you you had no right to keep the information about this baby from your husband!"
I meant to tell him… Kristin almost said it. But if she did she would have to explain how he had acted when she had mentioned his past, and she would have to think about the fact that he didn't love her, right in the middle of having his child. She shrugged instead. "What can he do? There is a war on."
A vicious pain seized her again, and she assured Shannon that Cole was a rodent, and Shannon laughed. And then, miraculously — for it had been hours and hours, and it was nearly dawn — Delilah told Kristin that the baby's head was showing and that it was time for her to push.
When he lay in her arms, red and squalling, Kristin knew that she had never imagined such a love as swelled within her.
And she prayed with all her heart that her son's father was alive, that he would come home to them all. She vowed that she would ask no questions he could not answer, that she would not ask for anything he could not give.
Lying with the baby, nursing him as she did now, was the greatest pleasure of her life. Kristin forgot the world outside, and she forgot the war, and she even forgot that his father probably did not know he existed. She loved his grave little eyes, and she loved the way his mouth tugged on her breast. She counted his fingers endlessly, and his toes, and she thought that he was gaining weight wonderfully and that he was very long — even Delilah said he would grow to be very tall — and that his face was adorable. He had a little dimple in his chin, and Kristin wondered if Cole had a dimple like it. She had seen all of his body, but she had never seen his naked chin. He had always had a beard.
Delilah had warned her to let Gabe, as they called him, nurse only so long at one breast. If she didn't he would ignore the other, and she would experience grave discomfort. Consequently she gently loosened his grasp on her left breast, laughing at his howl of outrage.
"Heavens! You're more demanding than that father of yours!" she told her baby, cradling him against her shoulder and patting his back. Then, suddenly, she realized that she was not alone. She had been so engrossed with her son that the door had opened and closed without her noticing it.
A peculiar sensation made its way up her spine, and suddenly she was breathless. She dared to look at the door, and found him standing there.
Her hero.
He was in full-dress uniform, tattered gray and gold, his sword hanging dangerously from its scabbard. He was leaner than she remembered him, and his face was ashen, and his eyes… his eyes burned through her, seared into her.
"Cole!" she whispered. She wondered how long he had been standing there, and suddenly she was blushing, and it didn't matter that he was the child's father, she felt awkward and vulnerable and exposed.
He pushed away from the door and strode toward her, and despite herself she shrank away from him. He reached for the baby, and she clung to her child. Then she heard him speak, his voice low and hoarse.
"My God, Kristin, give him to me."
"Cole —"
She had to release the baby for Cole meant to take him. She nervously pulled her dress together but he had no eyes for her. He was looking at the baby. She wanted to shriek his name, wanted to run to him. It had been so long since she had seen him last, and even that had seemed like a dream. But she couldn't run to him, couldn't throw her arms around him. He was cold and forbidding. He was a stranger to her now.
He ignored her completely, setting the squalling child down on his back at the foot of the bed, freeing him from all his swaddling so that he could look at the whole of him. Kristin could have told him that Gabe was perfect in every way, but she kept silent. She knew he had to discover it for himself. Suddenly she was more than a little afraid of her husband. Should she have written to him? What good would it have done? Cole shouldn't be here even now. There were far too many Union troops around. Was that the real reason? she wondered. She had hesitated once because he had made her angry, because she had realized that he did not love her. But she hadn't written, she knew, because she had been afraid that he would be determined to come home, and that that determination would make him careless.