The light called out all the fine lines in his striking face. She’d missed him in the short time he’d been away, forever wondering where and how he’d been. Since he’d first appeared at their door, the wind and weather didn’t seem so bitter, the pinch of supplies less vexing. She seemed above so many earthly things when he came round ... which wasn’t often enough.
As she thought it, he pulled something from beneath his wool coat and held it out to her. The sight of the small heart-shaped pendant dangling on a pale blue ribbon sent her emotions swirling anew.
“Mother-of-pearl,” he said when she took it. “I found it in the snow coming here in January. A pretty trinket.”
“Pretty, yes.” The firelight reflected pale pink and green hues.
“It belongs to someone like you.” His voice struck a chord she’d not heard before. “Refined. Deserving of genteel things.”
Heart overfull, she thanked him and studied it, the cold pearl becoming warm beneath her touch.
Rhys took Mae in, her presence filling him with a pleasure he hadn’t reckoned possible, at least in wartime. He’d never expected to find her in his very chamber, tending his fire and turning his thoughts to his own future home and the woman who’d be waiting.
She made him forget, for a few moments, war and wounds and enlistment numbers and desertions. He was weary of the war. Weary, too, of fighting his feelings for her. Could she sense that? Standing alone with her made a man lose all reason. All his reserve and self-control were felled like a tree before her.
No woman had held any sway over him before. He was having a hard time pushing past his need of her, past the innocent seduction of her softness and scent, the silken strand of hair that fell against her left cheek with a maddening twirl, as curvaceous as all the rest of her.
I wish this was our home,our only world, and we didn’tneed to say good night.
There was nothing more he wanted than to speak those words, make her his, cradle her against him till dawn intruded. As it was, the clock belowstairs chimed the late hour and reminded him they both needed rest.
“Good night, Miss Bohannon.”
“Good night, General Harlow.”
nine
I am satisfied that one active campaign, ... burning two or three of their towns, will set everything to rights.
John Pitcairn, British major
The dreaded hour had come. Mae approached the apothecary shop with lead in her steps, Coralie following. It didn’t help that Aaron was to give the inoculation, though he would administer it with the same skill and wisdom with which he did everything else. None knew the ultimate outcome, and the risky procedure was still shunned by many.
Coralie had spent the morning crying and penning another letter. From the look on her wan face, she might have been finalizing her will instead. Mae prayed privately, asking the Lord to spare them both.
“I’m sorry we waited this long,” Mae told her as they entered the apothecary through the side door. “We might have caught the pox by now with so many soldiers sick right here in Chatham.”
“I pray we’re not horribly ill from the inoculation alone.”
Hanna greeted them, concern in her eyes as she helped prepare them. “Aaron will be with us shortly as he’s seeing an infected patient ahead of your procedure. For now, remove your sleeve ruffles.”
Doing so, Mae overheard Aaron return and tell his apprentice to man the shop while he tended to them. His steady smile was reassuring as he opened his surgery kit. “Well, sisters, are you ready?”
Coralie’s distress mounted. “I prefer not to hear about it nor watch you whilst it’s done.”
“I shall go first.” Mae watched unwillingly, trying to maintain her composure and not snatch her arm away when her skin was cut with a small razor blade and a smallpox pustule from the infected patient applied.
Aaron’s calm competence made little of the matter. “As far as this variolation, I’ve now performed it on hundreds of soldiers and civilians, mayhap a few thousand. Hopefully your lesions will be few.”
“Few?” Coralie turned her face away. “We might die.”
“Your chances are better than if you contract the disease,” he replied patiently.
Mae watched him dab the blood from her forearm and bind it with a linen strip. “Is it true variolation is outlawed in Virginia?”
“Aye, the irony. General Washington’s very colony—state, rather. Yet he has saved the lives of thousands with so bold an inoculation order.”
Mae vacated her chair for Coralie, who seemed more upset by the minute. “I fear I’ll cast up accounts undergoing this. ’Tisthatrevolting.”
