"Of course he will. He's very sick, but his body is fighting the infection right now. He's strong."
"Nikolaus?"
Both women turned to Anton.
"Nikolaus?" he said again.
Sissy stood quietly, clasping and unclasping her pretty hands.
"Nikolaus is asleep, Anton," Rain Shadow soothed.
"Don't carry the lantern into the barn without me." His eyelids flickered as if he could see his son behind them.
Rain Shadow wrung a rag and placed it on his forehead. He slept. Both women slumped in rockers they carried from other bedrooms. Rain Shadow listened to the tick of Anton's pocket watch on the bedside table and remembered the first night she'd come to this room. The night she'd discovered him taking care of her son. The memory was vivid, his tall, golden form in the lantern light, his intense blue eyes. As his wife, Sissy would hear the tick of that watch echo long into every night. Had the thought occurred to her?
"Emily!"
Her pulse stopped. She jumped forward in the chair and placed her hand over her breast until her heart beat again. Sissy, too, sat forward, startled.
"Emily!" Anton shouted in his delirium. Head rolling, he thrashed against the sheets.
"Anton, lie still." Rain Shadow held his good shoulder and pressed him back.
"Oh, God, the baby!" Terror-stricken suffering glazed his voice. Torture. More pain than she could imagine sharpened his voice and transmitted long-endured grief to Rain Shadow's heart. He kicked the sheets off and fought her tenuous hold. "The baby!"
Sissy's eyes filled with helpless tears. Her cheeks blazed crimson.
"Go on to bed," Rain Shadow ordered. "I'll stay with him."
Sissy fled.
"Shh, Anton, everything's okay. Just lie back and rest." Rain Shadow struggled with his greater strength and weight, careful not to hurt his injured shoulder. "Shh," she whispered, soothingly. He responded by allowing her to press him against the pillows and cover his nakedness with the sheet. She ran her fingers through his thick, damp hair, rubbed his temples and forehead as she did when she put Slade to sleep. Long minutes later his body went slack.
Raking his hair in rhythmic strokes, Rain Shadow watched his eyelids flicker, hallucinations haunting him.
"Dear Lord, not the baby..." Racking sobs shook his broad chest.
She leaned close and touched her lips to his temple in hopes of comforting his distress.
"My baby..."
"Anton, what?" she cried against his hair. "Shh."
"I couldn't save her. I couldn't. I couldn't save the baby. I tried." Tears squeezed from beneath his tightly closed eyelids. Anguish furrowed his brow.
"You did all you could." She washed his face, wiped the tears from his cheeks. "I'm so sorry. So sorry," she whispered.
"I think my face is burned."
"No. You're fine." His expression softened, and his hand groped blindly at his side. "You're just fine here with me." Rain Shadow picked up his hand and pressed her lips against the back of his fingers. What horrors was he reliving in his delirium? What bitter agony brought tears to this strong, confident man?
This glimpse into his past and the pain he held softened her opinion of him even more. His crusty outer shell hid unimaginable pain. He grieved not only for his wife, but a baby. She wished she could soothe the pain, but even if she knew how, he had Sissy now. He'd chosen her, and she should be the one filling those empty places for him.
Once again his body relaxed. He opened his eyes and looked at her. "Rain Shadow?"
"Yes, I'm here. I won't leave."
Within minutes his breathing grew even, and his eyes closed. An hour later she changed the damp bedding and gave thanks that his fever had finally broken.
* * *
"Where is she?"
On her way past Anton's room two days later, Rain Shadow paused in the hallway. "Where is who? Sissy?"
"Of course, Sissy. Who else would I be talking about?" He flounced back against the pillows and winced.
"In the kitchen. Smells like she's baking something."
"Go down there and tell her I'm sleeping. I'll be sleeping the rest of the day. Don't let her come up here and plump my pillows or water the flowers one more time. And tell her I'll choke if I have to look at another piece of mince pie!"
"I think it's apple this time."
"Apple, mince, they all taste the same."
"Anton, her pies are heavenly. Almost as good as Lydia's."
"Whose side are you on, anyway?" he shouted.
She leaned insolently against the doorjamb and tried not to grin. "Since when have there been sides? Was a battle line drawn while I was out riding?"
Frustration lined his face. "At least you can go out riding. You don't know what I'm going through up here day after day. I really can't take another minute in this bed. And I can't take another second of her fussin'."
"Seems to me you'd better get used to it." She crossed her arms over her breasts. "She'll be fussing over you and Nikolaus for a good long time-the rest of your lives actually."
Anton's expression darkened into a scowl. He'd thrust himself smack in the middle of this quandary. He wouldn't do anything to hurt Sissy, yet how in the Sam-hell was he going to live with himself? The more he saw of Sissy, the more he fought the nagging fear that he'd impulsively done something he would regret. The doubt would never have grated on him like this if not for-
He frowned at the woman who'd undermined his confidence. "You sure know how to depress a man."
She pushed away from the doorway and went about her business.
That night the dream taunted him again-at least at first it seemed like the same dream. It wasn't. In this scenario, Anton made it as far as the splintered hole chopped in the side of the barn. But the hole was smaller, and no amount of kicking or hitting or tearing at the wood enlarged it. The opening grew so small his face barely fit through. Through it he could see a child trapped inside, a small boy standing still as stone amid the flapping flames. There was no sound from the boy, no screams or cries. In fact, all Anton could hear was the crackle and hiss of the consuming fire.
"Nikolaus?" No, no. Nikolaus hadn't been in the barn that day. Intolerable heat scorched his face, but he couldn't tear his gaze from the boy. The flames flickered momentarily, and then dropped to a level that allowed Anton to secure a better view. For one suspended moment, the heat subsided, and the fire almost sucked itself backward. The child's face came into focus with terrifying clarity.
"Slade!"
Anton jerked awake, sitting upright at the bed's edge. Slade? Why this startling alteration in the dream? His shoulder throbbed as though he'd moved it too quickly. He raised his arm and winced. A knife fight with a lunatic was probably enough to give the most stoic of men a nightmare or two.
A sliver of light appeared at the door and widened.
"Anton?" Rain Shadow glided to the end of his bed on bare feet, her white gown lit from behind like an opaque chimney lamp. The hall light defined every curve and hollow of her smooth-limbed form, displayed the size and shape of her perfect breasts and nearly stopped his heart. His body surged with the gut reaction he'd come to expect.
She scrutinized him. "Anton?"
"I'm all right." I'd be better if you'd move away from that light. "Go back to bed." He adjusted the sheet in his lap.
She padded around the side of the bed so that her gown was no longer transparent, and he breathed easier. The cotton looked soft to the touch, the cut surprisingly demure. "The dream again?" she asked intuitively.
Embarrassed but curious, he asked, "How do you know about the dream?"
"You had it several times during your fever." She picked up one of his pillows from the floor. Sissy would have plumped it importantly and tucked it behind him, but Rain Shadow held it. "Lie back. Do you want your medicine?"
"No." He took the pillow from her hands. Reluctantly, he allowed her to press him back, her cool fingers against his shoulder anything but soothing. The dream had cast an ominous shadow across his already gloomy heart. Ruiz had goaded him into the fight that had landed him here. He'd been in more than his share of scraps, most with his own brothers, and he could handle himself in a fight. But he'd never fought another person who would gleefully maim or kill him. Ruiz would.