In His Eyes(53)

She made a funny noise. “Not that, silly man. My name.”

“Ella?”

“Aye, I like the way it sounds coming from you.”

Heat swarmed through him, and he wanted nothing more than to pull her into his arms and feel what her lips would be like under his.

Suddenly she yelped and grew stiff. “Oh, I shouldn’t have…” She scooted farther away, so near the edge of the bed that she might fall from it. “Dafty fool,” she muttered.

“Westley.”

She sucked air. “What?”

“I would like it if you called me Westley.”

She didn’t respond for several moments, and as the child barked out another cough he wondered if she’d fallen asleep.

“Probably best I call you Major, sir. Seeing as I would still like to work for you, if you would allow it.”

He tried not to let the steel in her words bother him. Of course she would first be concerned with her security. How could he expect her to learn to trust him if ever she feared for her safety? The very fact that he longed for her to trust him was something he had better not dwell on.

“You may stay, Ella.” He resisted the urge to reach for her once more. “You were correct. I need someone to manage the house in my absence.”

Her breath caught. “Truly?”

“I give my word.” The word of a Federal soldier, one she would not be likely to accept readily.

“I…thank you.”

They lay in silence for a time, and her breathing grew deep and even. He lifted on his elbow and turned to put his feet on the floor.

“Must you go?”

He stilled. “I thought you were asleep.”

“I cannot. The shadows…still they haunt me.”

He laid back on the bed, the nearness of her and the scent of her rain-washed hair making it difficult for him to keep his thoughts from drifting where they should not. He dared not ask the meaning of her words, afraid it would launch him into a place he would be unable to return from.

Lee coughed again, each heaved breath a labor. If he did not get the child a doctor soon, death may very well soon steal him from his mother.

“As soon as the storm breaks, I will get the doctor for him.”

He could feel her relax, a settling that echoed somewhere within him. “Again, I am in your debt.”

She did not argue, nor insist she had business to see to in town. Perhaps trust would bloom after all. He contemplated the silence, and then broke a vow to himself that he did not need to know the truth behind her mysteries. “You are not his mother, are you?”

The tension returned, thicker, even, than before. It settled between them, a great fortification with sharpened pickets turned against him.

“I am his mother, and he is mine.”

Westley turned her words over in his head. Without the aid of light by which to study her features, he had to rely on rhythm and tone. “Yours, yes. That I can see.”

She let out a breath that drifted across the quilt and stirred the hair on his brow.

“Even still, you did not birth him.”

She sniffled. “How did you know?”

Relief, thick as molasses, poured over him. She had not been used and forced to bring a child into the world born of man’s wickedness. Neither did she sell herself for men’s pleasures. The more he watched her, the more he did not want to believe that it could be true. “It explains much.”

Lee coughed again, rough and deep, and she nuzzled against him. “Not of my blood, but of my heart. And now I will lose him.”

His fists tightened at his sides. “I will do all in my power to see that you do not.”

“Why?” The whispered word hung in the air, tempting him to lay bare depths of him that he dare not explore.

He cleared his throat. “It is the right thing to do.”

She edged closer. “Is that all?”

What was it about the dark that tempted people to speak things they would not in the light? And what had happened to the tiny dragon that shot flames at him only hours ago? This sweet nymph had taken the dragon’s place. No more scales, the nymph was all smooth edges and an enchanting tongue, laced with a melodic accent that threatened to breach his defenses. He shifted his body and his thoughts—both tight with unanswered longing.

“Where did you get him?”

She sighed, as though knowing they had waded into waters better left unstirred. “His mother died bringing him into the world. I tried to save her, but failed in that as well.” Her words were weighted, as though there was more to her meaning than what she said. “Cynthia told me about your mother….” Her tone began to slur with exhaustion. “And she’d said I could find help for him here….”

That explained much as well. He tried to see her in the dark. If only he could watch her eyes, see what tricks played behind them. The question plagued him. How had Ella come to be at a harlot’s birthing?

Perhaps she had been in a bawdy house after all.

Yet even as the accusation raked over his thoughts, he found he didn’t care. Whoever she had been before Belmont…well, it mattered not.

“Ella?”

She didn’t respond, her breath whispering in the moonlight. She slept, the child resting in the safe curve of her body. They both needed the rest. He turned on his back.