Page 38 of The Autumn Wife
“I’ve seen war,” the captain said, taking another swig. “Ugly, brutal slaughter. But I had a sword in hand. I could protect my own. This is not the same.”
The captain’s wife groaned anew. The giant swiveled on a heel for another lap of the porch.
Theo, draining the dregs in his cup, cast about for a way to distract him. “Your firstborn son,” he asked. “Where is he now?”
“He’s off with Oskanutú—a friend who winters here—about a mile away.” His massive chest rose and fell. “I brought Charles there when I went to fetch Oskanutú’s wife to help Marie.” He glared toward what must be the cabin’s bedroom at the far end. “I shouldn’t have brought her to Montreal yesterday. I should have prepared for this sooner. My firstborn came a few weeks early, too.”
Theo twisted the cup against the porch railing as the groans and grunts came quicker.
“A church,” the captain blurted, rubbing his brow as he passed Theo on another lap of the porch. “Mother Superior sent you here to talk to me about raising a stone church.”
“She did.” Theo frowned as the boards beneath the captain’s feet squealed. It occurred to him that if he and the captain could hearhercries, then perhaps the poor woman could also hear her husband wearing a furrow in the floorboards. “Captain—let’s step off the porch.”
“I’m not leaving until—”
A floorboard popped under his weight. The captain stopped in his tracks, glaring as if it had offended him. Then he settled the bottle of wine on the cask and descended the three stairs. Theo set his cup aside and followed.
“My hospitality is lacking, lad.” The captain stopped in the clearing close enough to still hear what was going on, but far enough away not to be heard. “I don’t usually greet guests like this.”
“I’m no visiting dignitary, Captain.”
“Lucas,” he corrected. “No formalities necessary, especially when you’re seeing me half mad. Best call me Lucas.”
Theo tilted his head. “Theo.”
“She’s extraordinary, you know.” Lucas grasped his hands behind his back, an act that made his barrel chest swell. “If it were me suffering in there and her out here greeting you, she would somehow have had you fed and watered while still changing the fevertowels on my brow. But, never mind, you’ll see what a fine lady she is, once she recovers.” Lucas couldn’t pull his gaze from the back window of the cabin, covered from the inside by an oilcloth. “She’ll recover quickly, too. She’s such a strong woman in every way, a true Québécoise.”
Like Cecile.
The groans from the cabin became fainter but longer and then slid into an ominous silence. The captain stilled like a deer hearing the crack of a branch in the woods. A few minutes later, the door to the cabin swung open. Cecile, bereft of her cloak and hood and gloves, tresses tumbling from the roll of her hair, stepped outside, bearing a smile that beamed light in their direction.
“Congratulations, Captain Girard,” she called as she hefted the bundle in her arms. “You’re the father of a healthy baby girl.”
“A daughter!” The captain clutched his heart. “And—and my wife?”
“Out of breath.” Cecile laughed. “But utterly triumphant.”
Even giants could move fast, for Lucas reached the porch in a blur. Beside the giant, Cecile looked the size of a corn-husk doll. When the captain crouched to take the babe into his own arms, she hefted the swaddled bundle and settled the covered head of the newborn against the ball of the captain’s arm. Cecile’s smile for the baby went tremulous as she released the infant into the captain’s arms.
Theo’s heart beat against bone. Cecile glowed with happiness for her friend, but he saw something more in her expression. A yearning. A yawning hunger. She wanted a babe of her own.
He’d known it from the first—Cecile did not belong in a convent.
How he ached to be the one to give her a child. A thousand images tumbled behind his eyes. Of him standing where Lucas now stood, taking a warm babe from Cecile’s arms. Except it was Cecile’s babe peeking out from the swaddling clothes. It was Cecile’s face pink from exertion, with that same beaming smile, but brighter. All the words he’d been so eager to tell her distilled into one undeniable truth.
He was in love with Cecile Tremblay.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Cecile’s hands still trembled as she gathered the bloody linens from around the cabin’s one bedroom and tossed them in a sack for laundering. She kept a keen eye on Marie, lying under fresh covers, her dark hair damp from sweat. It had been a little more than an hour since the birth, long enough to get Marie cleaned up, bound in dressings, and her hair combed into a neat plait. Still, her friend didn’t sleep, her eyes fluttering half open and then drifting closed again, a saint’s smile fixed upon her face.
“Will she be all right?” Cecile whispered to the Huron midwife—Hateya—now returning a bewildering array of medicinal herbs and mosses to her reed basket. “There was so much blood.”
“No more blood than usual.” Hateya nodded at a dozing Marie with affection. “She’s very strong. You have children?”
Cecile shook her head with a wince. In truth, this was the first birth she’d ever seen. When she’d been married, her husband had forbidden her to leave the grounds of his cabin, purposely isolating her from the other women and the entire community of Trois-Rivières. Nor had he wanted more children. One hungry little mouth was enough, he’d said, referring to Etienne. But it wasn’t until now, having held Marie’s warm-from-the-womb daughter against her chest, that she realized the full extent of the joy Eduard had stolen from her.
“I will come again tomorrow.” Hateya slipped the handle of the medicine basket up to her elbow, the pale pink shells around her neck clinking. “The after pains will begin soon.” Hateya nodded to a cup on a side table. “Give her that to drink when they do.”
