His Defiant Wife, the Adventures of Linnett Wainwright, Book 2 (6 page)

Linnett lay
with her head down on her arms, and she bit into her own soft
flesh, bucking and thrashing with the overwhelming lust that seared
between her legs.

Linnett moaned
her husband’s name. John gripped her thighs, holding her firm while
he continued his oral ravishment but stopping just before she
reached her climax.

He stood up and
loosened his breeches. Stepping forward, he drove his erect shaft
deep into the sweet waiting cleft. He held Linnett’s gyrating hips
still, forcing her to match his own steady pace. He moved inside
her with slow gliding strokes, deep and strong. She dug her nails
into the bark of the tree and bit her lip.

John swept the
soft skein of her hair aside, and kissed and nibbled her neck. His
hands slid beneath her breasts, gripping them as he increased the
tempo of his thrusts. She quickened under him and he drove himself
into her fierce and hard, his climax a searing rush of exquisite
pleasure that spilled over into her own sweet release.

It was a few
minutes before John stepped back and swept down Linnett’s skirts,
lifting her off the tree. She looked delicious, all flushed, pink
and golden. “You will wear me out come spring!” John complained. “I
only have to look at you and I want to tup you then and there.”

Linnett laughed
a low and sensuous chuckle. Her finger trailed across his naked
chest, making the tan pap of his nipples rise to her touch. John
clutched her hand in his and lifted it to his mouth where he placed
a kiss on her open palm before turning her towards the cabin,
giving her a little push in that direction. “Go get some victuals,
you strumpet. I need to keep my energy up if I’m to service such a
rapacious wench!”

The following
week passed in a haze of activity. Linnett had the material for her
dresses to cut and sew as well as the never-ending chores of the
home to attend to. She had successfully produced some butter,
hardly able to contain her excitement when, turning the handle of
the butter churn, at long last there came the thump, thump, thump
as the butter formed inside the barrel. Cheese, of course, took
longer, and although Linnett had attempted a roundel of cheese, she
decided that since they planned to leave in the spring it was
pointless to make more as it needed more time to cure than they
would spend in the cabin.

The weather was
getting colder. The leaves on the trees had turned to russet and
gold. The morning frosts were bitter and sharp as John finally set
off on a three-day hunting trip. He would stock their winter larder
with fresh venison. It was so cold now that the meat would stay
fresh once it was hung.

Linnett was not
at all happy with the idea of spending three days alone in the
cabin, despite John’s reassurances that she would be safe if she
did as he bid and stayed put. In the end, they were barely speaking
when John set off, having kissed his sulking wife goodbye.

John rode away
on Amber, another reason why Linnett was so upset. Amber was
her
horse and yet, the first chance that he got, John was
taking her for his own use. Linnett moped around the cabin on the
first day of John’s absence and did little other than keep the fire
in.

That night, she
woke alone in the darkness listening to the strange sounds outside
the cabin, the distant hoot of an owl and the lonely sound of a
wolf’s call. Linnett dragged herself out of the bed and put more
wood on the fire.

When she awoke
again, it was broad daylight. Refreshed and full of energy, she
built up the fire, dressed and went about her usual daily tasks,
also setting the dough to rise and sweeping out the cabin.

Linnett decided
that because the day was sunny as well as breezy, she would take
some clothes to be washed up to the stream. She remembered John
ordering her to stay inside the cabin, but she was certain that
since the stream was so close by, she would be safe enough.

Linnett also
felt rebellious and cross with John for commandeering her horse.
She gathered the stiff brush that she used for washing clothes and
a bar of strong brown soap. Then she threw them into the clothes
basket and set off.

It was a chilly
day, and Linnett was glad of the thick clothes she had put on. The
stream water was freezing cold but thankfully not yet frozen.
Linnett was able to scrub the clothes and rinse them in the clear,
swift-running water. When the task was done Linnett’s hands felt
icy, and she tucked them inside her coat for warmth.

She was
standing gazing hypnotically into the sparkling, spilling water,
when she heard a high, sudden cry. Linnett started and looked
around her. She could see nothing unusual along the banks of the
stream or in the nearby bushes. She stood listening and heard a
snuffling noise which seemed to come from nearby bushes.

Cautiously,
Linnett walked over to them and with her heart racing she half
knelt down, ready to turn and run if she needed to. She parted the
bushes, and at first she could see nothing; then, as her eyes
adjusted to the gloomy interior of the bush, she found a pair of
dark eyes looking back at her. Linnett bent lower and realised that
the eyes were set in a small, round, very brown face - the face of
a very small child.

Shocked, she
stepped back and looked around her, expecting to see a parent close
by. Nobody was near and there was no sound save the tinkling of the
stream and the calling of the birds. Linnett bent again into the
dark recess of the bush and reached in for the small child. Her
arms closed on a surprisingly warm little body and she lifted it
out. “Why, you’re only a babe!” Linnett exclaimed.

She held a
child who was no more than eighteen months old and strangely
dressed in a pale, soft leather tunic sewn with small, brightly
coloured beads. On the babe’s feet were soft shoes of the same
material held on by soft strips of leather that criss-crossed the
plump little legs -- a native child perhaps?

The babe
regarded Linnet solemnly with large, very dark, almost black
eyes.

“Goodness!
Where on earth have you come from?” Linnett spoke aloud to the
child, hoping for some response, but the baby continued to regard
her with an unblinking stare.

Linnett thought
hurriedly; she could put the child back, hoping that its parents
were nearby watching and then she could come back in a little while
to see if the child had gone. She was concerned about the stream
being so close to where the baby was and worried it may fall in and
drown. Linnett decided it was a risk she would have to take.

Parting the
bushes, she placed the baby back down on the ground, but the child
began to wail. Linnett walked a little farther away and turned back
to look. The baby was crawling out from under the bush towards
her.

“ Oh no!”
Linnett muttered as she went back to pick up the child.

As soon as she
had him in her arms he leant forward and buried his face into the
hollow of her neck. His fat little arms reached around her neck,
his hands grabbing fistfuls of her hair. In an instinctive rush of
tenderness, Linnett hugged the little body to her and patted the
small back. “Hush there shhh...shhh...little one,” she crooned
softly. Linnett walked up and down the side of the stream looking
all around for some sign of the child’s protectors.

After a few
minutes, she came to a decision. She absolutely refused to leave
such a small child outside, alone and unprotected. If the parents
of this child wanted it back, they could come to the cabin and ask
for it. With her rather cumbersome load of a baby on one hip and
the washing basket on the other, Linnett made her way slowly back
to the welcoming warmth of the cabin.

She dropped the
basket into a corner and turned her attention to the child. She
tried to disentangle the child’s hands from her hair in order to
place it on the bed but like a small leech it clung on to her
fiercely. Linnett gave up and ‘wearing’ the baby, she poured out a
cup of milk.

Linnett took it
with her and sat in one of the wooden rocking chairs. She pulled
the shawl from the back of the chair and wrapped it around the pair
of them. After a minute or two, the child relaxed its hold
slightly, sliding down onto Linnett’s lap. She crooned gently to
the babe and offered the cup of milk, holding it up to the child’s
lips.

The baby drank
thirstily, finishing the cup and then wailing for more. “Alright,
alright there’s plenty more, hush now, hush,” Linnett soothed.
After a second cup of milk, the child plugged in a thumb and
snuggled into Linnett, rapidly falling asleep. Linnett looked down
at the small, round face with its sweep of long dark lashes and was
choked with emotion. How endearing, how trusting, she thought.

She lifted the
sleeping child over to the bed and laid it in the middle, away from
the edge, and tucked the shawl tightly around the baby.
Straightening up, she put a hand to the small of her back,
massaging the ache that sitting in a cramped position with the
child had caused.

She looked down
at the sleeping babe and realised she didn’t even know what sex it
was. Carefully, so as not to wake the sleeping child, she lifted
the tunic -- well then, definitely a boy, with no napkin on either!
Perhaps not a problem for the native child, she thought, but a huge
one for me.

Linnett
remembered the pile of extra bedding that Sarah had insisted she
bring. She ran to the chest at the foot of their bed, and flinging
up the lid, Linnett pulled out the oldest and softest blanket she
could find. She tore it into as many napkin type squares as the
blanket’s size would allow. She ended up with eight decent-sized
squares and a few oblongs. Linnett gently swaddled the babe’s
nether regions in one of the improvised napkins, then covered him
up warmly and left him to sleep.

By the time the
child woke, Linnett had made various preparations. She had made
porridge with oats for a meal. She had improvised for toys, putting
a few safe household items on a rug in the corner. She had put a
large pot of water on to boil so that she had warm water for the
child’s bath. The tiny boy sat up and blinked owlishly at her from
the bed.

Linnett hurried
over to him, all the while crooning baby-talk to soothe him. He
watched her solemnly as she changed his makeshift napkin, which was
soaked through. Linnett dropped it into a pail and put the pail
outside the cabin door.

Feeding the
baby was extremely hard work and Linnett got quite hot and
flustered. He would keep grabbing the spoon and the contents landed
on Linnett, the floor, or all down the front of the child.
Eventually, he seemed to have eaten his fill and Linnett deposited
him on the floor while she went to set up a bath for him.

She had only
taken a couple of minutes to organise the tin bath and fill it with
the warm water. Yet when she turned her attentions back to the
baby, there was mess everywhere. He had found the basket of wet
washing that Linnett had dumped in the corner on her return from
the stream, pulled all the clothes out and crawled through them
with a very dirty napkin, which had failed to contain the contents
as well as Linnett had hoped it might.

Linnett groaned
and went to pick up the unsavoury little character. His face split
into a huge grin as she bent down to him and he held up his chubby
little arms. Linnett’s heart missed a beat with the flood of
tenderness that welled up inside her, “Ohh you little darling!”

Regardless of
his disgusting state, she hugged him and then stripped off the
offending garments, dropping them into the napkin pail on the door
step. “I shall be doing nothing but washing at this rate,” she told
him as she lowered him into the tub of warm water. The child loved
the warm bath and splashed and rolled about, chuckling with
glee.

Linnett,
absolutely enchanted by his happiness, played with him for a while
and then reluctantly turned her attention to cleaning up the mess
he had left all over the cabin floor. The once clean washing from
the basket now joined the overflowing pail of dirty clothing
Linnett had placed outside the door. When the cabin was once again
reasonably straight, Linnett turned back to the tub and retrieved
the child.

She dried him
in another of Sarah’s soft blankets and swaddled him in another
makeshift napkin.

“What can I put
on your top half?” she asked his owlish little face. He grinned
again showing several small, even, pearly-white, teeth. “Ah, have
you got toothy -pegs then, you little poppet?” Linnett crooned.
“Auntie Linnett must give you something harder than porridge then
for your breakfast to keep those little teeth nice and strong.”

“Tong,” the
child repeated happily.

“Oh can you
talk?” Linnett said, startled.

“Linnett” she
said slowly and then repeated her name over and over to the small
boy, but got no response.

“Ah well, come
along, baby, let Linnett put you to bed.”

She carried the
baby in his strange garb of ripped-up blankets and tucked him in on
John’s side of the bed. After a moment’s consideration she fetched
another, thicker blanket, folded it double and put it beneath the
child.

“Net,” said the
baby suddenly.

Linnett stopped
what she was doing and said, “That’s right, darling, my name is
Linnett.”

“N-n-itt,” said
the babe, “an da ka ga gwa,” he crowed and reached out, his fat
little hands grabbing handfuls of Linnett’s hair.

“What does that
mean, poppet? Hair, say hair, hair, hair.”

“Ayah,”
repeated the child obediently, “ayah.”

Linnett laughed
and bent to kiss his little golden cheek. “Go to sleep now, you
little rascal.” She tucked him firmly into the bed and he plugged a
small thumb into his mouth, his sooty lashes drooping with
tiredness.