Saving Grace (The Grace Series Book 2) (12 page)

“Let’s just get this done.” With that, the spook suddenly sped up and Herlin had to kick Buster several times to catch up.

It took about two hours for Herlin to divvy out the money Jessica tricked Jon Kinsley into forking over. All the while the spook circled the area.

On their way back, Herlin reflected on the stunned expressions he’d seen. He’d been moved by both the ecstatic and humble gratitude. In sharing this with the spook, he chuckled aloud and remarked, “Jessica will be happy to hear how things went. I can’t wait to tell her.”

The spook didn’t say anything, but he raised a black gloved finger to his mouth, indicating Herlin should keep quiet.

In the darkness Herlin recognized by the slight angle of the spook’s head, he was listening for something. “Are we being followed?” he murmured.

The spook nodded. “There are two. But they’re keeping back, just watching. I don’t think they intend to come after us.”

Herlin’s apprehension grew. “Should we speed up?”

“No. Let’s let them think we don’t know they’re there.”

“They’re not close enough to know it’s you?” Herlin asked. If they were, there was no question in his mind they would be in hot pursuit.

“Either that or one of them finally got the bright idea that following me would be a good way to figure out who I am.”

Herlin almost laughed at the disdain in the major’s tone. He did laugh when moments later the spook said, “I guess I gave them too much credit. Our spies have left us.”

Riding was much more pleasant when one’s nerves weren’t on edge. Herlin was looking up at the stars, trying to remember constellations, when they arrived at a fork in the road. If they followed the path to the right, they would eventually make it to town. Less than a quarter mile to the left was the drive to Bent Oak Manor.

“Good night, Herlin,” the spook said.

Herlin shook his head. “I’m coming with you. Martha said if it got too late, I should stay at the parsonage tonight.”

It wasn’t long before they reached their destination.

“I’ll get the gate,” Herlin said as he hoped off Buster.

Still atop Midnight, the spook rode through the gate to the small barn at the back of the church property. Herlin bolted the gate and caught up with him, leading Buster. The major looked down at him and said lightly, “Good job, Santa.”

Herlin laughed, but his laughter died as he watched the spook’s unsteady dismount. “You shouldn’t have come with me tonight. You’re too ill, Major,” he said anxiously. “Go inside and lie down. Don’t worry, I’ll take good care of Midnight for you.”

The strain in the spook’s voice made it raspy. “You always do.”

Moments later, from inside the barn Herlin threw out a worried glance. The spook had gone half the distance to the back door of the parsonage. There, in the middle of the small yard, he stopped.

Cursing under his breath, Herlin dropped the feed bucket and made a frantic dash across the lawn. But he wasn’t fast enough. Still running, helplessly he watched the spook’s knees cave and his body crumple to the ground.

It was Martha’s turn to come down with the influenza. For more than a week Jessica had to send the stubborn woman home after breakfast every day. Despite Martha’s protests, Jessica insisted she remain in bed. It was no trouble for her to take on Martha’s chores. She didn’t mind at all.

Every evening throughout the week, Jessica had sent one of the children to deliver a thermos of hot soup to Martha’s cabin. This night, however, she was running behind schedule. She filled the thermos, but there were no children around to ask to take it. Ruth was missing, too. Jessica wasn’t sure where she’d gone.

Jessica didn’t want to keep Martha waiting any longer. Quickly she wrapped herself in her snuggly coat and scarf. As she hurried out, she thought again of Herlin’s tale of his adventure in Shanty Town. Just imagining the shocked, yet grateful faces he described made her giddy inside. She was convinced she’d done the right thing, and she was glad she’d coerced Jon into giving her the money. If he only knew how she’d fooled him, he would be so furious! But she didn’t care. What she cared about was trying to figure out a way to trick him into giving her more. And she couldn’t wait for Sunday to come, so she could share all of it with Sebastian.

Jessica hastened her steps. For late March it was unusually nippy and the wind was whipping terribly. The blustering was so strong she had to lean into it just to keep moving, and it seeped right through her coat. Herlin she knew was still in the stable and Willy was with him, which meant Martha was home alone. Poor Martha was probably lying there shivering, but too miserable to get up to add kindling to the fire. While she was there, Jessica would take care of that for her, and perhaps she would take a few moments to rest and get warm before heading back into the torrent to return to the manor house. The cabins had never seemed so far away! At least, she mused, spring was mere days away.

Finally she made it. She rapped on the door and called out, “Martha, it’s Jessica.” Normally, she would have waited for Martha to invite her in, but not wanting Martha to get out of bed, and because she really wanted to get out of the cold, she pushed the latch and stepped inside.

Briefly Jessica saw Martha in bed, propped up on pillows. Briefly she noticed Martha hastily yank her blanket up to cover the upper half of the white nightgown she was wearing. Briefly she was aware of Martha’s wide-eyed, stricken expression.

But Jessica’s focus wasn’t on Martha. Martha wasn’t alone.

Jon was there, sitting on the side of the bed. His hair was messed as if he’d been lying in bed, and he was bent over, in process of pulling on his boot, but he stopped what he was doing and abruptly straightened. The alarm in his eyes was a clear indication of his guilt.

As was the fact that he was naked from the waist up.

The thermos in Jessica’s hands crashed to the floor and shattered.

* * *

Jessica barely heard Jon calling her name. She ran as fast as she could. All she could see was Martha coming out of Jon’s hotel room. She could see his hand affectionately patting Martha’s shoulder. All she could hear were the crass comments he made about her to his Klan and that terrible double snap!

She should have never listened to Herlin! She should have stuck to her intuition and she should have insisted Herlin believe her! It was just that she so desperately wanted it not to be true! Every last shred of hope she’d clung to was gone, like a fist had reached inside of her and callously ripped it away.

She ran into the house and up the stairs to her room. There, she heatedly paced. The initial anguish turned into fury unlike any she’d ever known. She was ill, and when it was over she paced some more. Her head felt heavy and overheated. Moments later she felt faint, but she couldn’t sit down.

She didn’t know what she doing, except she needed to get out of the dress with the soup splatters all over it. She yanked another from her wardrobe, but not one of the numerous gowns Jon had paid for! But then she couldn’t do up the buttons. Her hands were shaking too badly. With a loud cry she wrenched it off and grabbed for her silk robe. She put it on over her underclothing and yanked the tie in place, just above the extended swell of her waistline.

Pain came, low in her abdomen. It was cramping pain, similar to that which sometimes occurred with her monthly courses, but worse. She held the bottom of her belly until it passed. Still she paced. When the pain came again, it only fueled her rage.

And then she heard the front door.

She flew out of her room, through the hall and down the stairs, stopping before she reached the bottom. Jon was there, in the foyer, halfway between the front door and the stairway. There was no sign of guilt, or remorse or even of apology on his face. He was looking at her with the bland, barely perceptible smile, that revolting expression she couldn’t stand. He had no right to look at her like that. He had no right to look at her at all!

“I hate you! I hate you!” she screamed. “How could you? How could you do that?” The pain in her abdomen came again, very sharply this time. She clutched her stomach with one hand, inadvertently flattening her robe over the swell of it.

Jon’s eyes moved rapidly downward and then back up to her face. “Jessica, let me exp—”

“You are the lowest scum of the earth! You are contemptible, vile, the worst kind of filth imaginable! I can’t believe I ever let you touch me. It makes me sick to think about it! I despise you! I loathe you!”

“Jessica, please.” He moved toward her. “Let me—”

“I don’t want this child! I don’t want him because he’s part of you! I don’t want anything to do with you. I hope he dies!” Lightheadedness replaced the pain and she had to grasp the railing.

“You don’t mean that.”

“Yes, I do! I don’t want anything to do with you! You are detestable, disgusting!” Fanatically, she tore the rings from her hand and flung them. “I hate you with everything in me!”

The rings separated as they flew, but Jon made no move to catch them. One hit him in the chest and fell to the floor by his boot. The other sailed past him, dinging and rolling as it landed on the hardwood somewhere behind him.

The pain came again, this time worse than before, and Jessica gasped. Something wet and warm ran down her inner thigh.

* * *

Jon regarded his wife from under half-closed lids. He opened his mouth briefly but closed it again. There was no point in trying to speak. No matter what he said, she wasn’t going to listen. There was no point in standing there enduring anymore of her ravings either. He turned and started toward his study.

Why he looked back, he didn’t know. He hadn’t intended to, but in that millisecond of time, something made him glance over his shoulder.

Jessica had already turned around, already taken three steps up. She was holding the railing with one hand. The other was pressed to the underside of her rounded stomach. A whispery cry flew out of her. At the same moment she doubled over and dropped to her knees.

Jon raced across the foyer. As he ran she cried out again, a pitiful, barely audible sound. By the time he reached her, she was clutching her belly with both hands. Her expression belayed her pain.

He knelt on the step beside her. “Jess, what’s wrong? Let me help.”

“No!” she shrieked. “Don’t touch me!”

He reached around her anyway and dusted her shoulder with his fingertips. “Sweetheart?”

“Don’t you dare call me that!” she hissed. She tried to push him away, but the attempt was so feeble it barely grazed him. And then her whole body limply dropped. It happened so abruptly, he wasn’t fast enough to catch her. The side of her forehead hit the step with a loud thud.

For one brief second, Jon stared at his unconscious wife. “Jessica! Jessica!” he was shouting and he didn’t know it. He grabbed her up and turned her in his arms. “Ditter! Ruth!”

Ditter hurtled in from the back hallway. “Oh my God! Miss Jessica!” he bellowed.

“Send Ruth up to Jessica’s room right away,” Jon ordered. “Either you or Herlin go for the doctor. And tell him to come quickly. Tell him it’s an emergency. Hurry, Ditter! Hurry!”

Ruth rushed in after her husband. “What’s happened? What’s wrong—?”

“Miss Jessica’s bleeding!” Ditter blurted.

Jon was already moving up the stairs. His step didn’t falter, but when he heard what Ditter said, his heart tripped painfully.

At the top of the stairs, Ruth scurried around him to open Jessica’s bedroom door. He carried her through it and was about to lay her down when Ruth said, “You’ll get blood on the blankets. Hold her while I fix the bed.”

How Ruth already had a stack of towels in hand, Jon didn’t know. She’d been right behind him coming up the stairs, but who was he to question housekeeping? He held his wife while Ruth turned down the bed and spread towels across the sheet. It didn’t take her long.

As carefully as he could, Jon laid his wife down, but he didn’t let her go completely. Perched on the edge of the bed, he cradled her upper body. He smoothed back the fallen tendrils of her hair, brushed his thumb under her eyes to clear away the damp, and whispered, “Sweetheart, wake up. Please, Jess, wake up. Oh my God, Jess, oh God, oh please!”

His pleas went unanswered. Jessica didn’t stir.

Ruth was there. She raised Jessica’s skirts and she shook her head.

“What’s wrong? What’s happening?” he asked.

“I think maybe she’s losing the baby,” Ruth said.

“What do we do?”

“There’s nothing we can do, except try to keep her comfortable. We need the doctor.” Ruth had more of her towels and she was pressing them between Jessica’s legs. “We should change her clothes. Put a nightgown on her.”

Jon adjusted the pillows and delicately settled Jessica upon them. “I’ll do it,” he said.

“What?”

“I’ll do it!” he repeated. “Just bring me a clean nightgown.”

But he couldn’t do it alone. Getting her robe off was easy enough, but after that there were too many tiny buttons and laces with knots his fumbling fingers were too big to undo. He had to blink repeatedly to clear the mist from his eyes and still he couldn’t see well enough. He lifted, he held, he cradled. He did everything Ruth told him to do. Every piece of his wife’s underclothing was soaked with blood. There was so much of it, it smeared over his hands. The strong metallic scent gagged him.

And then, there in front of him, was the naked swell of her stomach, the soft, pale skin stretched taught over the beautiful curve, sustaining the precious life inside.

He touched her there, but only for a moment. There wasn’t time for more. They needed to wash the blood away. They needed to dress her and cover her, keep her warm. Ruth left after that, to see about something. Jon couldn’t remember what she said.

He remained with his wife, sitting on the side of the bed, staring down at her, caressing her arms, her hands. She was so very, very pale—deathly pale, and chilled. Because he didn’t know what else to do, one by one, he took the pins from her hair. When he was done, he tenderly lifted her head and smoothed the long dark tresses with his fingers. It wasn’t enough. He remembered that sometimes she slept with it loosely braided, so he gently drew the hair over her shoulder, and did that for her, too.

And all the while he whispered fervently, “Dear God, please don’t let her die. Oh Jess, be okay. Please be okay. Oh my God, oh my God… my love, my love…”

* * *

“You can wait outside, Captain,” the stout, white-haired doctor said.

From where she stood near the foot of the bed, Ruth watched the doctor toss the blankets off and sit down beside his patient. In the time it had taken for Ditter to bring him, Jessica’s water broke, but she hadn’t roused.

“I’ll stay,” the captain said. He was but a few feet away, fists clenched, staring at his wife.

“It will be better if you—”

“No!” the captain interrupted. “I want to stay.”

The doctor looked at him pointedly. “Do you realize what I have to do here? It will be much better for you—”

“I’m not leaving!”

The doctor’s eyes narrowed. “Captain Kinsley—”

“I am not leaving this room! You’re wasting time! Help her! Now!”

Ruth jumped from the captain’s harsh tone, although she shouldn’t have been surprised by it. She’d heard him raise his voice plenty of times, and she knew very well how adamant he could be. She was glad the doctor didn’t argue again.

More than an hour passed before the infant was expelled. The doctor laid the tiny, bloody baby on Jessica’s stomach, and Ruth handed him another towel from the stack. He ran it over the infant, then cut and tied off the umbilical chord. The next cloth Ruth handed over he used to wrap the baby, leaving only its little wrinkled face exposed. He looked up at the captain and raised the baby to him.

The tiny, yet fully formed infant fit entirely in one of the captain’s hands. The other he cupped underneath, as if he was trying to waylay his trembling, but it didn’t work. The tremors were so severe, Ruth could see them. He just stood there, gazing down at the tiny lifeless child, as if it were a treasure he was not worthy to behold.