She stood as awkwardly as a scarecrow with everyone watching till Bronwyn pulled up a chair and gestured for her to sit down. The men moved toward the hearth, talking in low, rumbling tones. Mae felt more at sixes and sevens when Bronwyn disappeared.
“Rhys.” Words hung in her throat. It had been easier to whisper to him in the dark of night than in broad daylight. “We’re all waiting for you to get well. Your father is even making you crutches.”
Eyes still closed, hands fisted on the sheets, Rhys gave no indication he heard her. Yet she felt the need to unburden herself and tell him of the time and events that had come between them, even if he couldn’t take them in.
“I’ll start from the beginning.” She hesitated, gathering her thoughts before leaning in and speaking softly. “When you leftthe fort to go north to Saratoga, it wasn’t long before the British came. Pickets alerted everyone ahead of their arrival, and Lucy and I were able to leave with the horses.”
She still felt the fear and bewilderment of it all, the gnawing hunger and relentless unrest. “It took us days and days to clear the woods. We were lost a time or two. We even came across Indians, and it seems a miracle they didn’t see us. Your money pouch stood us in good stead, and we never needed the pistols except to kill a panther following us. When we neared Philadelphia, we realized it was still held by the British, so we went another direction.”
She stifled the urge to reach out and touch him as she had last night, her hands knotted in her lap. “We stopped at a tavern a time or two.” How many times blurred in her memory, though she’d never forget the gracious Widow Wistar outside Philadelphia. “We finally arrived here on an early November morning, Lucy and I—and Petey.”
She studied him, this husband of hers. He gave no indication he’d heard, yet she sensed he had in some ineffable way—if only the emotion behind her words, this painful recounting of all the hollow, harrowing weeks without him.
And now that he was here, would this be how she would remember him? On his back, the world shut out, unable to discern the extent of his suffering or summon a smile? Broken in body, he seemed to be shrinking before her very eyes, unable to eat, unable to even drink without help, withdrawing from the world and her in particular. This perilous, precarious dance between life and death clawed at her night and day and gave her no rest.
“Where is she?”
Would those be the last words he’d ever speak?
Somehow Mae’s hushed words penetrated the pain and the anguished haze that held him. He rode the tide of illness, rolling in and out of consciousness, barely able to keep his eyes open.Everything required herculean strength, even swallowing, but he knew he needed to eat—or die. This constant dribbling of water and tonics down his throat sustained no man.
“It took us days and days to clear the woods ... We finallyarrived here.”
Mae’s melodic voice tickled his ears and made him want to reach for her. But his hand seemed a lead weight atop the bedding, keeping him from it. His parched throat and reeling head still bespoke fever. Yet another deeper heat burned through him—ire over their unsettled past, their last confrontation needling him and demanding to be settled. But even this ebbed and flowed like the pain.
Night came. Mae left his side. He was awake now—as wide awake as the hooting owl outside in the trees. A full moon shone on the floorboards. He rolled over and gritted his teeth as he lifted first one leg then the other to the floor with his hands. Weak as a newborn foal, he was. Crutches rested at the foot of the bed and seemed a mile distant. He felt a wild, pulse-pounding resolve to reach them, even if he had to crawl to do it. And crawl he did.
By the time he grabbed hold of them, his shirt was damp with the sweat of sheer exertion. His wound seemed on fire, shards of glass embedded in his thigh where the musket ball had been. Swallowing, throat dry, he took a last look around the moonlit room.
No Mae. Had he dreamed her up, then?
His desperation to see her got him to the front door. He’d need to navigate the porch next and the now formidable stoop.Breathe, step,breathe, step.His wound screamed in protest, but he went slowly. One crutch made it across the worn planks to the stoop, only for the other to collapse, spilling him onto his back across the moonlit, frost-hardened ground.
Had he yelled? Something brought Bronwyn out the door, their father following. In their nightclothes, fright scored across their faces, they rushed to raise him, dispensing with the crutches altogether.
“We must get you back inside.” Bronwyn’s shock and exasperation were plain. “What on earth made you leave the bed?”
“I’m ... going up ... the hill,” he replied breathlessly, expecting her next rebuttal. “I don’t care that it’s after midnight. The moon’s full enough to light my way.”
“It’s a long climb for a man in your condition.” His father’s arm undergirded him as Bronwyn supported him from the other side.
“Where’s Mae?” His voice, rusty from disuse, cracked.
“She’s been by your side night and day since you came back to us. I told her to return uphill and rest. It’s not good for her nor the baby to nurse you like she’s doing.”
So he hadn’t dreamed of her, or the baby. And should he make it up this infernal hurdle of a hill, he would wake her.
“You’ve all but risen from the dead,” his father said. “Though I wish you’d have done it in daytime.”
Rhys tried to smile. For now, all he could manage was a wince. “I need to eat. Is there any food?”
“You’ve been unable to eat till now.” Bronwyn eyed him warily. “Mae made a fine soup for supper, and there’s some left.”
Mae cooking? He chuckled. Not the Mae he remembered, who could char anything she set her hand to. He smelled the smoke of a chimney fire, mayhap his own.
Halfway up the hill, his body balked. He collapsed again, fighting pain and dizziness and exhaustion. His father left his side and returned with a wheelbarrow.
“You’re lighter than when you left or I’d not be able to do it,” he said as they helped him off the ground and lowered him inside the contraption.
