Rain Shadow(27)

"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.