Chasing the Sunset(45)
Joanne sat down upon the floor beside the raptly listening Maggie, smoothing her skirts over her ankles.
"Years later, Mother said that she was in one of Boston’s most illustrious concert halls, when she happened to recognize the celebrated violinist who was playing there, straight from playing for the crowned heads of Europe. She was certain that he was one of the troupe of players that had been at Aunt Louisa’s that night, though he had been but a boy at the time. Mother sent him a note backstage and managed to speak to him later that same evening. He remembered Louisa and her husband fondly, he said, and my mother as well, because it was Louisa who had arranged for him to go to New York to study with a renowned musician. He regularly reserves Mother a seat at his concerts whenever he is in Boston."
"That is a lovely story," Maggie said softly.
"She was a lovely person."
Kathleen, who had been listening too, said quietly:
"I wish that you could have known her, Maggie. She would have loved you, and you could not help but love her. When she and Obadiah died, it was like losing two members of my own family. And it was not just I who felt so. They were well liked, and on the day of their funeral, I would swear that not a farm for two hundred miles had a worker on it, for they were all there in the procession. Ned practically fell into a decline over it all, and my mother was so distraught that Doctor Fell sedated her."
Maggie carefully folded the baby clothes and blankets and put them back, patting them tenderly before closing the lid of the trunk. She did not see the glance that Kathleen and Joanne shared, nor did she notice the small smile that twisted Joanne’s lips as she looked at the woman that she was determined would become her cousin’s next wife.
TEN
“Maggie, wake up!”
The hand that shook her was insistent. Maggie rolled over and buried her face in the pillow, trying to get away from the persistent person who was shaking her shoulder. She had a hard time going to sleep last night-- that is, after Joanne and Ronald had finally allowed her to stumble up to her room, yawning and rubbing her eyes. Perversely, once in bed, the longed for slumber had not come to her immediately. She felt as if she had just now dropped off to sleep, and she definitely did not want to get up yet.
“Go away,” she mumbled. “It is not morning yet.”
The hand did not go away, and Maggie reluctantly opened her eyes. Light was spilling in from the hallway, and Nick was leaning over her bed, his hair flopping in his eyes in the way that she found so utterly endearing. She smiled sleepily, lovingly, and reached up to push it off his forehead. The texture of it against her fingers, so slippery-smooth and warm, made her shiver. She let her arm fall back down, her fingers sliding down his beloved face, and shut her eyes again, hugging her pillow.
"I am much too tired to get up now, Nick, " she said sleepily. "Come back later."
Nick shook her again, roughly this time.
“Maggie, I mean it, wake up.” His voice was intense, and something in his tone had Maggie rushing to wakefulness in a hurry. She sat up and scrubbed her hand across her face, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.
“Nick? What is it?” she asked sleepily. “What is wrong?”
“Ned has been shot,” he said. “Tommy is on the way to let the doctor know we are coming, but we have got to get him to the surgery, and I am going to need your help.”
The words acted like a bolt of lightning straight to her heart. Maggie cried out and threw her covers off, scrambling wildly to get out of the bed, her whole body shaking terribly. She succeeded only in tangling herself in the bedclothes. Nick grabbed her, holding her tightly by the elbows. His eyes looked directly into hers as he forced her to be still, to compose herself.
“Listen to me, Maggie,” he said firmly. “We will not do Ned any good by panicking. He needs you to be calm, his life depends on it. Do you understand? Maggie?”
“Yes,” she whispered, her eyes darting everywhere, then settling back on his face. “Yes, I am calm now. Let me get dressed and go to him.”
Nick politely looked the other way while she dressed. He crossed his arms on his chest and tried not think of how she looked naked. God, now was definitely not the time, but he could not keep his mind off of her. He leaned his forehead against the frost-tinted window and banged it lightly, just once, hoping that it would cool his raging blood.
“It is cold out there, so dress warmly,” he said, and his voice gave no hint to the turmoil raging inside. She pulled on her warmest dress, wool stockings and boots, topping the whole ensemble with a heavy woolen cloak and the hand-knitted gloves, scarf and hat that Lanny Donaldson had made and sent over with Kathleen.
Maggie assured him that she was, indeed, dressing warmly, her voice quivering, and Nick’s heart broke at the pain contained in it. He grasped her hand tightly in his when she came to his side.
“What happened?” she asked as they clattered down the stairs to where Ronald and Joanne waited in the wagon with Ned.
“I do not know exactly,” Nick said grimly. “I could not sleep, so I went down to check on
Jet. He had a swollen hock this afternoon and I wanted to change his poultice and see if the swelling had gone down. When I opened the front door, I could hear Sadie howling. I ran down where she was because it sounded as if something were wrong with her and I thought she was hurt. She met me in the doorway and took me right to Ned. I found a blood trail leading away from the stables, and there was blood on her muzzle, so Sadie got a piece of whoever did this, that’s for sure. I found Ned lying face down beside Jet’s stall. He had been shot through the shoulder. He was freezing, so cold he was blue with it, but the cold might have actually done him a favor. I think it slowed his blood loss enough so that he will be all right. If we get him there on time.”
He did not tell her that the reason he could not sleep was that he missed her in his arms. He did not tell her that all night he kept imagining the way she looked naked, all rosy limbs and soft curves, and that his mind had driven him crazy until he had been compelled by desperation to do something, anything to get her off of his mind. Nick thought that Ned was lucky that his employer was so obsessed with his niece, or he might very well have died there on the cold floor of the stables, all alone.
Maggie caught her breath when she saw her uncle. She was stunned at how still Ned was, at how old and thin he looked. Without his usual animation, he seemed so frail and elderly, and Maggie had never thought of him that way at all. With a pang, she realized that Ned was sixty-one. Sixty-one! If he survived this, he did not have that many years left, and her face twisted with fear. Please, let him be all right, she prayed silently. Let him have all of the years that he has coming to him. Let him live so that I can tell him that I love him once more.
Joanne looked up from her place beside Ned in the back of the wagon, and smiled reassuringly. Ronald squeezed her shoulder and tossed a blanket around her. They all huddled around Ned, sharing their body heat with him. He was cold, so cold to her touch. His head was in Joanne’s lap, and he was covered with what seemed like every blanket that Nick owned. Joanne’s arms were underneath the blankets, and she looked up at Maggie now and told her what she was doing.
“I am holding a compress on his shoulder, but it is hardly bleeding right now. I am afraid that once he warms up it will start again, so one of us needs to continue holding pressure on this bandage until we get him there.”
“Go, Nick,” Ronald said urgently. “We are all settled back here. Get us there, quickly.”
Nick took them on the ride of a lifetime. At any other time, Maggie would have enjoyed it, would have loved the sharp wind that glazed her flesh with numbness, would have loved the way they flew down the poorly kept up road, the wagon careening on two wheels at times, bouncing and rocking back and forth. Now, she was just stricken with fear for Ned, unable to enjoy anything. She tucked the blankets more securely around Ned, taking over the pressure on his wound from Joanne, staring intently into her uncle’s still face and looking for some sign of life and shivering when she found none. She laid her fingers aside the pulse in his neck and was relieved to feel it thump under her fingertips, thready but there.
“Did he say anything?” she asked. “Does anyone know what happened?”
“He has never regained consciousness after Nick found him,” Ronald said gently. “When Nick woke me after carrying Ned into the sitting room, I stayed with him the whole time, only leaving when Joanne took over for me while I got blankets and cloaks. He has said nothing.”
The trip to the surgery seemed to take a lifetime. Tommy paced back and forth in front of the small building, waiting for them, and then Duncan and Doctor Fell were there with a stretcher. They transferred Ned gently, then all but ran him into the building, talking swiftly in language that was incomprehensible to her.
She paced the waiting room, not feeling the cold, staring unseeingly out the small window. Nick pressed a warm cup of coffee into her cold fingers.