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She exhaled a shaky breath, her hands clutching the blanket at her stomach.
“You don’t mean that, Einar. You don’t really wish this baby to die. Do you?”
His body was burning. Turning to ashes. Being plucked by ravens.
“I do not wish death to you,” he said. “I need you. That babe—if it kills you—”
His voice broke. No words came, held back by a rock that formed in his throat. Holly’s cheeks were flushed, tears filled her eyes and streamed down her face. Her mouth opened in a grimace of pain, her chest rising and falling.
If it killed her, he would be nothing. He would be better dead, too.
“Do you realize,” she said, “that everything that I do is faulty. That there’s been an error, some sort of mistake, in every relationship I’ve ever had? I couldn’t conceive at first. Now I can’t hold on to the baby. Will I ever do anything right?”
Her chin trembled, and her voice shook.
Einar wanted to go. He was making it worse. “I am hurting you,” he croaked. “You need to rest.”
But she cried.
“I can’t even perform this one thing all women are supposed to do. The one thing that doesn’t depend on your education, on your income or your brains. The most physical thing in the world—procreation. And I’m failing even there.”
She put her head on her knees, hugged herself, and wept. Einar could not leave her like this. He sat on the bed next to her, wrapped his arms around her, and pulled her close to his chest. He thought she would push him away, but she clung to him as if he could save her from drowning.
“You have no faults, Holly,” he whispered. “I would take you whole. I would take you with every single thing you think is wrong with you. And I would not change a thing.”
All he needed now was for her to get better. She needed a rock, and he would be her rock. He would be her anything, as long as she would live.
Even if that would mean putting her on a ship and taking her to back to her own time.
Chapter Twenty-Two
June 15
“I think the babe is still there,” Bera said.
She withdrew her fingers after doing a pelvic exam, and Holly covered herself, the corners of her mouth crawling into a smile for the first time in what felt like forever.
“Really?”
After five excruciating days of fear, of flinching from every cramp and expecting to wake up to a pool of blood, the news was like lifting a dark, heavy blanket.
“Yes,” Bera said. “There was no more bleeding. Your womb is closed. It feels like you are keeping this babe, for now.”
Holly inhaled sharply and looked at Einar. He had been so supportive of her for the last few days, hadn’t left her for a moment. She wanted to hug him, to kiss him, to feel his strong arms around her. She had thought that since he’d been so supportive, maybe he realized he wanted this baby after all…
Her smile fell.
He looked as though Holly was torturing him. His face was grim, his mouth curved in a tight, mournful line.
Right. All that she had thought was an illusion. She was pregnant, and he didn’t want her to be.
Holly’s chest hurt, as though scalded by boiling water.
When Holly and Einar were alone, she sat straight up in bed, thinking carefully about what to say. “You were taking such good care of me for the last five days. I thought you might have changed your mind about…”
He tensed, became like a giant statue.
“You needed all the support you could get,” he said.
