Page 23 of The Autumn Wife (King’s Girls #3)
Theo remained on the riverbank as Cecile, her blue skirts kicking up sun-bleached petticoats, tore full speed toward the Girards’ cabin. The captain—despite his immense size—bolted after her. Theo stared at the place where Cecile had just stood as the thousand words he’d meant to speak choked him.
He’d waited too long.
He shook himself, mentally and physically.
This was not the time nor the place to be dwelling on his own distress.
An emergency unfolded at the cabin, and he must offer what help he could.
Turning to the canoe, he grabbed one of the packets Mother Superior had ordered him to deliver—clean linens and medicines—probably meant for the birth, he realized.
He raced up the muddy path, watching Cecile fly up the three stairs to swing the cabin door open.
She twirled in the doorway and shut the door in the captain’s face.
When Theo reached the porch a few moments later, the captain still stood at the door like a soldier at attention.
Theo slung the package off his shoulder, set it on the floorboards, and raised his voice to let Cecile know he’d brought supplies and that they waited outside.
Straightening, he slapped the captain’s shoulder in sympathy, having no idea what else to do.
“It’s a damnable thing,” Captain Girard said between clenched teeth. “A damnable thing, what women suffer through.”
Theo nodded, though he knew nothing about the matter.
When his younger sisters and brothers had been born, Theo’s stepfather had shuttled him off to a neighbor’s house, saying it was bad luck to have another man’s child anywhere near the birth of his own.
By the time Theo’s sisters had grown old enough to be married and birth nieces and nephews, Theo had already been exiled.
Just another item on a long list of losses.
A twisted, agonized cry erupted from inside the cabin. Captain Girard made a guttural noise and squeezed his eyes shut. At another eruption of pain, the giant turned on one heel and bolted to the far end of the porch.
Theo couldn’t blame the man for wanting to disappear into the vast woods beyond. But as soon as the captain reached the porch’s end, he swiveled on a heel and bolted back, repeating the pacing with ever more energy.
At one turn, the captain paused and blinked at Theo, as if seeing him for the first time.
“The Reverend Mother sent me,” Theo said by introduction. “I’m Theo Martin, stonemason.”
Awareness passed across that battle-hardened face. “You must be thirsty.” The captain strode toward an upright crate and seized the wine bottle waiting on top of it. “I intended this for…after. But the birth is taking too long.”
Pulling the cork out with a small knife he pulled from his belt, the captain poured wine into a pewter cup with a shaky hand before shoving the cup and a good portion of the wine into Theo’s chest. As Theo raised the cup to his lips, the captain took a swig directly from the bottle, muscular throat flexing.
“The last babe came so fast, I missed this part.” He swiped his chin with the back of his hand.
“Women say the first babe takes the longest. Everyone told me not to worry, so back then, I came whistling home on the day she went into labor. When I got here, she was all cleaned up with our son in her arms.”
The giant wasn’t looking at him, wasn’t really talking to him, and Theo got the impression he wasn’t thinking about anything but his wife groaning behind these walls.
The size of the man struck him. Theo was used to being the tallest person in any room, but he had to tilt his chin to meet this captain’s tormented gaze.
A soldier of the bloody wars of Flanders, Cecile had said.
He was a wall of muscle who now flinched at every cry coming from within the cabin.
“I think,” the captain said in a voice as sharp as chips of stone, “she didn’t want me to witness this.”
“No woman wants her husband to hear this, I imagine.” Into Theo’s mind came an image of Cecile lying on a bed, drenched in sweat, her belly a dome, her head thrown back in a cry of agony just like the one now vibrating through these stone walls…
His heart thudded. His hip hit the railing.
“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 hear her cries, 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 fever towels 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.