Sally shook her head jerkily on the pillow, sweaty strands of coppery hair clinging to her cheeks.

“I’d say it’s about time then,” Maree declared.

“Thank God,” Sally sighed.

“Can you hold your legs up or do you need help?” Maree asked, taking a bowl of water from Catie.

“I can do it—” Sally began, trying the pull her shaking legs back, but gave up, letting them collapse heavily on the mattress. Meredith grasped one knee to help her. Catie took the other.

Sally smiled weakly at Meredith. “This is the last one, I tell you. I’m not going through this again.”

“You said that last time, Ma,” Catie teased, patting her mother’s knee.

“Aye, well I mean it. From now on your father can sleep in the barn.”

They all laughed, the levity welcomed.

“God has a way of making you forget the pain. Then you’re left with a beautiful babe who soon grows and leaves you pining for another.” Maree grinned from between Sally’s sweat-slick legs.

“Right, love?” she asked in soothing tones.

Sally gave a wobbly smile. “Aye.”

“Fine, whenever you feel it building up on you, push,” Maree instructed.

Sally pushed, her face purpling from the strain.

Tiny wheezes of breath escaped noisily through her gritted teeth. Before long Sally’s groans grew into agonized screams. Over the din, Meredith heard a toddler weeping in the loft.

“Hannah?” Meredith commanded. “Take the little ones outside. They don’t need to be here.”

Hannah obeyed, fetching them from the loft and ushering them out while their mother labored.

At last a mewling, slippery life arrived. Maree held it upside down, slapping its bottom and eliciting a furious howling. Sally fell back on her pillow, a contented smile on her face. “What is it?”

“A girl,” Maree beamed.

“Go get the family, Hannah.” Sally weakly waved her daughter to the door. “Tell them to come greet their little sister.”

Maree rubbed the baby vigorously with a blanket before handing her to Sally.

“She’s beautiful,” Sally pronounced, watching her new daughter latch onto her finger.

“You do make pretty babes, Sally,” Maree agreed.

The entire Finney clan filed into the room, laughing and exclaiming over the infant. Sally relinquished the baby to her proud father. It was a happy time for a happy family, and Meredith felt a little lonely and apart from the scene. She took solace in the knowledge that she would soon have a child of her own, a baby to hug close. Even if she would not give birth herself, she would forever have a child to love. Someone who would not reject the offering of her heart.

As Maree tended to Sally, Meredith watched Tom Finney kiss his wife. Holding his daughter in one arm, he placed his other hand on Sally’s sweat-beaded brow in what could only be described as a possessive, devoted gesture. Looking on, she felt like an intruder, acutely reminded of her aloneness in the world. For a brief second she wondered how different her life would have been if Edmund had been a real husband, if he had not turned from her on their wedding night.

Meredith moved to stand by the door, unnoticeable and out of the way, but near enough should Maree need her. A chill draft fluttered the hairs along her nape and she rubbed her arms for warmth. Through the happy clamor, an all too familiar voice spoke near her ear. “It’s quite a celebration.”

She looked over her shoulder at Nick standing in the threshold, before turning back to observe the Finneys. “What did you expect? They’re a happy family.”

“Well, I have no experience with that.”

Meredith gave him a long, considering look. “No,” she murmured. “I suppose not.” After a pause she asked, “What are you doing here?”

“I told Nels I would drive the carriage over to collect the two of you.”

“You should not have troubled yourself, my lord.” She latched onto his title like old, familiar armor. “One of the Finney boys could have returned us. You should not lose sleep on our account.”

He shrugged. “I sleep little as it is.”

She hugged herself tighter, clinging to any conversation that kept her from lonely thoughts, and at the same time wanting to destroy the kinship she suddenly felt with him—another soul who knew what it felt like to be alone. “Is that so? Have you no need for sleep like the rest of us?”

With his arms crossed, his eyes glittered like hard chips of coal. “I didn’t say I need less, only that I sleep little. For some, sleep does not come easily.”

“My lady,” Maree called, waving Meredith over to the bed and saving her from responding to Nick’s enigmatic words.

Approaching, she looked to the bottom half of the bed as Maree indicated. The sight horrified her. The foot of the bed was drenched in blood. Too much blood for any human to lose and still sustain life.

Chapter 8

Meredith and Maree stood solemnly at the foot of the bed, unnoticed by the others. Even Sally, growing paler every moment, only focused on her family’s joy as they exclaimed over their newest member.

“Get them out,” Maree whispered.

Nodding, Meredith struggled past the tears clogging her throat and adopted a cheerful tone.

“That’s it. Enough excitement. Leave Baby with Father. Out while your mother gets cleaned up.”

Meredith waved the children out the door. Nick’s eyes met hers knowingly before exiting the cottage.

Meredith shut the door, then turned back to Maree. “What do you need me to do?”

Maree flipped the covers back and examined Sally. “She’s bleeding out. If it doesn’t stop we’ll lose her. Something must have torn inside when the babe was born.”

Sally, now aware of the danger, quietly said, “Let me hold my daughter.”

Meredith fetched the baby from Tom Finney’s arms and placed the bundle in Sally’s arms. Tom looked beseechingly to Maree and Meredith, but their helpless expressions said it all.

He shook his head violently. “No!” he shouted at Maree as she applied pressure between Sally’s legs. “Do something!”

“I’m doing all I can.”

Shock, disbelief, anger. Meredith read the emotions flickering across Tom Finney’s face, felt them in her own heart. As Sally cooed to her baby the last lullaby she would ever sing, he placed a hand over her brow. His features screwed tight with pain and shudders racked him. “Don’t go, Sally. Don’t leave me.”

As the lifeblood drained from her, her head lolled on the pillow, her eyes growing glassy, dead.

Her bloodless lips worked silently in one last attempt at speech. No sound ever came. Seconds passed before Maree removed the babe from Sally’s still arms and handed her to the sobbing father.

Then, very deliberately, Maree set about cleaning Sally one final time. Meredith helped, knowing she felt no grief like that of Tom Finney, and needed to offer whatever assistance she could.

They removed the blood-soaked bedding, maneuvering the dead woman’s body while they fitted the new linens. At last Maree nodded. “We’re done.”

Meredith braced herself and stepped outside. Maree followed close behind. Tom Finney’s sobs had no doubt carried to the yard.

“Children,” Meredith softly announced to the waiting young ones, “your father needs you now.”

Catie raced inside. The others hung back, their fear a palpable, living thing on the air. The girl’s agonized scream shattered the night. The other children stood paralyzed, clinging to one another, eyes wide and haunted. Maree pulled little Bess and Hegar into her comforting bosom.

Suddenly, Meredith couldn’t breathe. Grief clogged the air like smoke, suffocating her.

Stumbling, she rushed from the yard, heading for the fields, instinctively searching out space, ready to embrace the solitude she had earlier resented. Once alone, she took in huge gulping breaths and attempted to erect a wall against the ugliness behind her.

She had learned death’s lessons early. When her mother died, her father forbade grief. According to him, grief was the devil’s instrument. Only nonbelievers wallowed in grief. One should rejoice when another joined the Lord. It was that simple. No tears had been spent the morning Meredith awoke to discover her mother gone. For a time, she had missed her, but by the time she was old enough to understand her true loss, the opportunity for tears had passed.

Tonight had revealed that death was not simple, nor a quiet departure to go unremarked upon. It was messy, ugly, and heartbreaking. Not everyone could accept death with her father’s stoicism.

Meredith dreaded returning to the raw pain waiting for her at the Finney farm.

“Meredith?” Nick’s voice sounded behind her, its gravelly rumble sliding over her like velvet, comforting in its familiarity, in its nearness. She forgot that she did not want him at Oak Run, that she resented his presence, his interfering ways. All that mattered was that he was there.

She spun around, her eyes seeking his shape through the gloom. He moved toward her, his feet crunching over dry leaves. She covered the distance, flinging her arms tightly around his waist and pressing her cheek against his hard chest, seeking solace in another human being. There was the barest stiffening before he relaxed beneath her cheek and wrapped his arms around her, returning the embrace.

He placed a large hand on the back of her head. “It’s all right.”

Meredith clung to him, inhaling the clean scent of him as he murmured soft unintelligible words of comfort. “I don’t want to go back there. It’s selfish to say, but I can’t bear it.”

Reluctantly, she pulled back and stepped out of the circle of his arms. Wiping furiously at her tears, she muttered, “You must believe me weak and selfish to carry on so when it’s the Finney family who suffers. I did not carry on like this when I lost my own mother.”

“Then perhaps that is why you grieve now,” he suggested.

She pictured his chiseled features in her mind as she addressed his shadow. “She just bled to death right there on that bed. There was so much blood. It happened so fast. To be alive one second…”

“Death rarely makes sense.” His hands were firm as they grasped her arms, their warmth seeping through her cloak to her flesh. “I know it’s unfair, but at least there was a life given in return tonight. Few deaths can claim to bring such good.”

Meredith considered his words before nodding in agreement. “Yes, of course. It should be looked at just that way. We could have lost both of them.” A shaky smile twitched her lips. “You see to the heart of things.”

“I suspect something else bothers you. Another reason why you were so affected by tonight’s happenings.”

“What?” Meredith hedged, having an idea of what he intended to say, and not wishing to hear it.

“Could you not be afraid for yourself when your own time comes?”

Meredith stared up at him dumbly, once again disturbed that he could be capable of such consideration—especially for her, the very wretch deceiving him. But then he did not know that she was such a wretch. She released a shuddering sigh, a headache starting to form at her temples.

“I don’t think—” She halted and shook her head, pressing her fingertips against her temples. “I am not afraid for myself. The women in my family have always held up well in child labor.”

She freed herself from his grasp and began walking back to the farm, her steps quick and clumsy as she made her way in the dark—almost as if she could flee from her lies.

He fell into step alongside her, taking her elbow to guide her along. “It’s only natural to have such fears, and tonight probably did not afford you much confidence.”

“Of course,” Meredith replied, awash with guilt. She preferred him difficult and domineering. He was easier to dislike that way. Not like this. Not kind and caring.