Caleb stood, lifting Willow with him. Without a word, he carried his wife into their bedroom. The door shut softly behind them.
Sleet rattled over the windows, breaking the silence Caleb had left behind. The howling voice of the wind curled through the room, filling all space, all silence, summoning all that Jessica had spent a lifetime trying to forget.
Hands clasped together until her fingers ached, Jessica fought not to show the fear she had lived with so long she couldn’t remember a time without it. The need to cry out was a constant aching in her throat. Hiding her fear was becoming harder each day. The nights were becoming impossible. Soon she would hear a woman’s screams mingled in awful harmony with the wind’s predatory cry.
Jessica wondered whether the screams would be Willow’s or her own.
11
«Such a fine, delicate stitch,» Willow marveled, watching Jessica embroider an ornate B on a christening gown. «I tried to learn when I was a child, but I didn’t have the patience. I still don’t.»
«I’d rather be able to make biscuits.»
«Your stew is excellent,» Willow said, suppressing a smile.
«It’s edible,» Jessica corrected wryly, «thanks to you. Without your tutoring. I’d still be trying to interest a skunk in my cooking. You’ve been very patient with me.»
«My pleasure. I’ve enjoyed having you here. I haven’t really had another woman to talk to since my mother died.»
Jessica hesitated. «You must have been lonely.»
«Not since I found Caleb.»
With a sigh, Willow settled deeper into the sofa next to Jessica.
«If there’s anything else about the domestic arts you want to know, just ask,» Willow said, yawning. «I’m going to be lazy and watch you embroider while the bread rises.»
Jessica became very still. «Do you mean that?»
«Definitely. I feel very lazy.»
«I meant about asking questions.»
«Of course.» Willow sighed and shifted her weight, trying to accommodate the baby’s restlessness. «Fire away.»
«What I need to know is very…personal.»
«That’s all right. The War Between the States made me pretty shockproof. Ask whatever you like.»
Jessica took a deep breath and said quickly, «You seem to enjoy your husband.»
«Oh, yes. Very much. He’s a wonderful man.» Willow’s hazel eyes kindled with delight and her smile became incandescent.
«No, I meanyouenjoy him. Physically. In the marriage bed.»
Willow blinked. «Yes. I do.»
«Do many women actually enjoy the marriage bed?»
For a moment, Willow looked thoughtful as she remembered her mother’s laughter and her father’s low voice murmuring through the house late at night. Willow also remembered the Widow Sorenson’s eyes lighting when she talked about the pleasure of sharing her life with a man.
«I think many women do,» Willow said slowly. Then she admitted, «I never truly understood it until I met Caleb. I was engaged to a boy who died in the war. When he kissed my cheek or held my hand, it was nice but it didn’t make me want to be his woman. Yet when Caleb looks at me or smiles or touches me…»
She hesitated, searching for words.
«There’s nothing else in the world for you,» Jessica finished quietly, remembering how it had felt when Wolfe smiled at her, filling her world.
But he no longer smiled at her, and her world was the empty wind.
«Yes. Everything else vanishes.» After a moment, Willow said simply, «I never knew babies were conceived in ecstasy, until Caleb.»
The embroidery thread knotted under Jessica’s tense fingers as memories spurted through her unwilling mind. «Not all babies are conceived that way. My mother’s certainly weren’t. She fought my father. Dear God, how she fought him.»
Unhappily, Willow watched Jessica, sensing the violent tension in the other girl’s slim body. She put her arm around Jessica in silent sympathy.
«Was there no love between them?» Willow asked softly.
«My father needed a male heir. His first wife was an aristocrat, who couldn’t conceive. When she died, he took my mother as his wife. She was a common lady’s maid. She was pregnant with me at the time. The earl had bedded her, you see.»
«Then there was affection between them.»
«Perhaps.» Jessica set aside the embroidery and rubbed her hands together as though chilled. «But I think not. Mother was a commoner whose family was desperately poor. The earl was an aristocrat who desperately needed a male heir. I think desperation makes for a very difficult marriage bed. I know mother very much preferred to sleep alone, but she wasn’t permitted to unless she was breeding.»
Jessica’s bleak eyes revealed much that her careful words did not.
«It isn’t that way in all marriage,» Willow said.
«It was in the marriages I saw. It was families and fortunes that married, not man and woman. It would have been that way in the marriage my guardian tried to arrange for me.» Jessica turned and faced Willow. «But it isn’t like that for you and Caleb. You come to his bed willingly. He doesn’t…hurt you. Does he?»
Laughter and memory combined to tint Willow’s cheeks a bright pink. Under normal circumstances, she wouldn’t have spoken so frankly about the private side of marriage, but she sensed Jessica must have beenbeen ill-prepared for being a wife in more important ways than her lack of skill in the kitchen.
Willow also suspected that she had stumbled on the source of the tension between Wolfe and his wife.
«I’m more than willing to bed my husband, I fear. I’ve been known to seduce Caleb quite shamelessly.» Willow bent closer and whispered in Jessica’s ear. «In fact, as soon as possible after this babe is born, I’m looking forward to becoming Caleb’s woman in every way once more. I’ve missed it so much. I never feel so closely bound to him as I do when we share our love in that very special way.»
Jessica couldn’t help but smile in response to Willow’s sparkling eyes andpinkened cheeks. «Caleb is lucky to have you.»
«I’m the lucky one.» Willow smiled at Jessica. «Any more questions? Don’t be shy. Growing up as you did, I doubt you had many women with whom you could talk about such things.»
«I had only one friend.»
«You must miss her.»
«Him, not her. Yes, I miss him terribly. Our friendship didn’t survive our marriage.»
«Having seen how possessive Wolfe is, I can understand it,» Willow said. «Your friend must have decided that discretion is indeed the better part of valor.»
«You misunderstood me. Wolfe was my friend. Now he is my husband.» Jessica grimaced and changed the subject quickly. «There is another way in which you’re very different from my mother.»
Willow smiled encouragingly. «Yes?»
«Pregnancy was very difficult for her, yet you seem not to suffer.»
«Oh, I’ll be glad enough to carry the babe in my arms rather than in my womb,» Willow admitted. «Just as I’ll be glad not to wallow clumsily when I walk, not to visit the privy hourly, and not to require my husband’s strong arm to pull me out of my favorite chair.»
«But you’re healthy,» Jessica said seriously. «You can walk across the room without fainting, you can eat without vomiting, and you don’t…»
Jessica’s voice died as she shuddered beneath another unwanted eruption of memory.
«What?» coaxed Willow.
«You don’t weep and scream and curse your fate.»
«Dear Lord. Was that what your mother did?»
Another shudder wracked Jessica. Her hands became fists, as though that would prevent the gathering pressure of nightmares from erupting into memories she had forgotten long ago, because remembering was unbearable.
«And you don’t curse Caleb for making you pregnant,» Jessica continued urgently, determined to have it all said, all questions asked. «Do you?»