AllFreeNovel
Share Us
ONE
Effie's scream lanced through Wystan's heart. It wasn't the first, but by God and the devil, it would be her last.
"You're killing her!" he shouted as he threw open the cottage door.
"Mr Steel, a birth is no place for a man," the midwife chided, not even looking at him as she pointed outside. "Out!"
"But she's been screaming like this all day. This canna be normal!" Wystan argued, standing his ground.
"This would not be the first bairn to take a day or even two to make their way into the world. Mr Steel..."
Effie's eyes had hell in them. "Another day of this? Oh, I cannot bear it. It hurts so!"
Wystan seized her hands and dropped to his knees beside the bed. "I will find the doctor for you, Euphemia, I swear it. I'll fetch him and bring him right back here to see to you and the bairn. I promise." He pressed his lips to hers for only a moment before he scrambled to his feet. "Just hold on a little longer until I return, Effie." He bolted out the door, as her next scream gave his boots wings.
TWO
When Wystan returned, the cottage was eerily silent. Effie and the bairn must be asleep, he decided, opening the door as quietly as he could. The midwife had been right and they hadn't needed a doctor, which was probably a good thing, for once Wystan had finally found the man, flirting with Carline Steel as he ate dinner with the girl's brother in the grand house on the hill, the uppity bastard had refused to come.
Ah, there she was, stretched out on the bed, fast asleep, with the swaddled baby sleeping on her breast. They were both exhausted from their ordeal. He did not wish to wake them, so he'd sleep on a pallet by the fire tonight.
Except...no fire had been lit, though it was nearly dark. Perhaps Effie had been too tired to even stoke the fire, so it had gone out.
He might not have been able to bring the doctor, but he could light a decent fire to keep his family warm when they woke up. Perhaps he could even put on a pot of stew to simmer while they slept...
His cousins would laugh if they knew he cooked more than Effie did. Effie could prepare meat and vegetables and even bread, but when it came time to cook anything...she just got so caught up in her sewing or whatever else she was doing that she forgot. Either she forgot to cook things or she forgot things were cooking, so everything came out either raw or burned. If Wystan wanted something in between, he'd had to take matters into his own hands.
Just as he would tonight, so there'd be something for Effie to eat when she woke. Then again, maybe he should wait until morning, for if he lit the lantern to see by, he'd surely wake her, when she needed sleep after labouring so long to bring their first child into the world. He'd make her breakfast in the morning, he told himself.
But before he lay down on his pallet by the now crackling fire, he couldn't resist giving Effie a good night kiss.
He leaned over the bed, brushing a stray lock of hair off her face, before he planted both hands on either side of her head.
The moment his lips touched hers, he knew something was wrong. Never, not even on the iciest winter's day, had her lips ever felt so cold. Nor could he feel her breath, and when he felt for the pulse he'd always felt beat so strongly at her throat...
Nothing.
Hardly daring to breathe, he reached for the swaddled bairn...
Only to howl his grief into the night, for he'd lost everything.
THREE
Years had passed, and he was half a world away, but as Wystan waited in the dark with Grant and Harlow while Stan crept through the bush to steal a bride for himself, that night he'd found Effie and his daughter dead might have been yesterday, the grief still felt that fresh.
Or perhaps it was dread, that this night held death once more.
"No, wait!" he hissed, but he was too slow. Grant charged out into the open.
A moment later, the boom of a rifle dropped him.
Harlow let out a strangled cry, maddened by grief Wystan knew all too well, as he ran to his brother. Another boom and he fell, too.
First his wife and child, and now his cousins. Wystan had no family left. No one left to live for.
He rose to his feet, spreading his arms wide like Christ on the cross in the church back in Scotland, where he'd hung above Effie's coffin on the day of her funeral. On the day he'd buried all his hopes and dreams of a future.
The first shot took him in the shoulder, blasting away a chunk of his arm. Wystan welcomed the pain. The second shot followed the first, until he could no longer feel his arm. Maybe it was gone. The third shot stole his breath as his entire throat felt like it was on fire.
