Christmas at Carnton (Carnton 0.5)(56)
“I think . . . the baby’s coming,” Aletta ground out, her legs giving way.
Jake caught her and lifted her in his arms.
“The Colonel’s and my room upstairs,” Mrs. McGavock called. “And I’ll ask the Colonel to ride for the doctor straightaway.”
Aletta groaned as Jake carried her up the stairs and laid her on the bed. She felt the telltale rush of warmth issuing from her womb and closed her eyes, concentrating on breathing, the memory of Andrew’s birth returning in vivid detail.
“Aletta”—Jake leaned close—“it’s going to be all right. We’re here with you.”
She breathed through the contraction, feeling the pain begin to subside even while knowing it would return.
“I love you, Aletta. I want you to be my wife. And no matter how long you need, I’ll wait for you. Do you hear me?”
“Of course I hear you,” she finally whispered, opening her eyes. “I’m right here, after all.”
With a wry smile, he cupped her face in his hands and kissed her, slow and deep. Already breathless, she filled her lungs and looked into his eyes.
“Jake, we might have to . . . delay that trip to town for a day or two.”
“That’s all right. It’ll still be there.”
Another pain began to build, and Aletta curled onto her side, fisting the bedcovers.
“Captain Winston!” Mrs. McGavock’s voice rang out with authority. “It’s time for you to leave now, sir. A woman in labor is not a woman of a mind to—”
“Jake,” Aletta ground out, breathing through the pain, waiting for it to ease.
“Yes, my love, I’m here. I’m right here.”
She reached for his hand and he held hers tight.
“You won’t,” she whispered, “have to wait for me long.”
He pressed a kiss to her forehead just before Colonel Carrie and Tempy chased him from the room.
EPILOGUE
SIX MONTHS LATER
SUMMER 1864
“Very nicely done, Mrs. Winston.”
Aletta smiled up at Jake, still loving when he called her that, and loving him more with each passing day. She eyed the piece of carved wood with leather straps in her hand, knowing it wasn’t perfect. But also knowing it was a far cry better than her first attempt months ago.
Jake glanced back. “Emmett, are you ready to try out your new leg?”
“Am I ever, Captain. But I don’t see how it could be any better than the one you both made me back in January.”
Aletta came alongside them, reading the fresh hope in Kate’s eyes. “That was one of our first attempts, Corporal Zachary. Which, when translated, means my husband and I were still learning.” She laughed along with them. “We’ve managed to perfect a few more details since then.”
She let Jake do the actual fitting, as he usually did, and true to what they’d thought, the new alteration they’d made to the leather strap on the artificial leg gave Emmett much greater mobility and ease of movement.
Jake’s long-range sight had never improved, which made returning to battle an impossibility. That had bothered him, she knew. Because he loved his country, his fellow soldiers, and he wanted to contribute to the cause. But he was doing that. They both were. Together. Because they’d found new purpose. And with the pair of spectacles the doctor had recently supplied—quite handsome on her husband, she thought—Jake could see close up better than ever.
As Jake and Emmett spoke together and Kate looked on, Aletta pondered all that had happened in the last few months and just how grateful she was that God had chosen to bring such indescribable joy through such painful events in her life. Not that she didn’t still have days when she missed Warren. She did. She would always carry his love inside her and would make certain that Andrew and little Gracie knew how much Warren—whose body she’d finally laid to rest in the town cemetery—had loved them.
Just as their father now loved them.
“I never would have dreamed, Aletta, that an abandoned factory could feel so much like a home.”
Aletta turned to Kate beside her. “Neither did I, at first. But when Jake shared his dream with me, when he told me the idea that God had put into his heart, I knew this was where we were supposed to be. And it’s perfect for us. We still need to renovate the upper floor, which we hope to very soon. We want to use that to welcome and house wounded soldiers as they’re finding their way again.”
“Aletta?”
Hearing her name, Aletta turned to see MaryNell coming in through the business entrance, the swell in her friend’s belly just beginning to show. Robert Goodall had returned on furlough in late January and—Aletta smiled to herself—come October, little Seth would have a new baby brother or sister. MaryNell had chosen wisely. And as it turned out, she’d managed to keep their house too. Without the least assistance from Herbert Cornwall.
Once Emmett and Kate had left, and MaryNell had delivered yet another stack of orders for artificial limbs before heading home, Aletta and Jake took a moment to eat lunch together with the children at a front table.
Aletta’s gaze drifted upward, as it so often did, to the newspaper clipping now framed over her workbench. The article Jake had written that appeared in the Nashville Banner shortly after Christmas. She read the first couple of paragraphs, already knowing them by heart, and a swell of pride for her husband moved through her.