The question startled Rhyne. She stopped staring at the ceiling and tilted her head in Cole’s direction. “About half my life. How did you know?”
“You choked on a chaw last night. You could have died. You don’t remember?” He wasn’t surprised when she shook her head. “Do you chew in earnest or for show?”
She smiled slightly at the question. “All the world’s a stage.”
He liked her answer. “You fooled a lot of people.”
Rhyne said nothing for a moment then offered quietly, in the manner of a confession, “Sometimes I fooled myself.”
Cole saw that she regretted the admission as soon as it crossed her lips. He didn’t doubt that it was the soporific effect of the laudanum that made her less guarded. “How do you feel about people in town learning the truth?”
Rhyne bit into her lower lip and turned her head away.
“You should prepare yourself,” Cole said. “You’re going to be a curiosity.”
“There’s nothing new about that.”
Cole thought he heard a faint catch in her voice. He was better prepared to face her anger than either her shame or her distress. “No one will know about the baby unless you want to tell.”
Rhyne remained quiet.
“No one will know about the baby’s father.”
“You don’t know about him, either.”
“No,” he said. “I don’t.” Cole waited to see if she would tell him now. “You can’t live out here with Judah.”
“He’s my father. I take care of him.”
The way she said it was not precisely a protest, Cole thought, but more of a statement of fact. “He’ll kill you some day. I think he meant to.”
She shook her head vehemently but still didn’t look at him. “No, you don’t understand. He didn’t. Wouldn’t. It was the baby he hated.”
Cole didn’t offer his opinion to the contrary. He’d seen Judah’s eyes when he called his daughter a whore, glimpsed the loathing that made him raise his girl as if she were his son. Perhaps it was Judah that Rhyne had fooled most successfully, not that he didn’t know she was female, just that she had been able to make him forget–right up until the moment he realized she was carrying a child. That had removed the scales from his eyes and unleashed his fury.
“We’ll leave it until later,” he said, getting to his feet. “I’d like to begin my examination.”
Cole accepted Rhyne’s permission as the absence of an objection. He took the thermometer out of the bag. “May I open your shirt? I want to take your temperature.” At her faint nod, he unfastened the first two buttons, slipped the material over her shoulder, and placed the thermometer under her arm. “It will take some time.” He withdrew his stethoscope. “Your heart now.”
“I thought you observed it was fine.”
“This just makes me thorough.”
“I liked observation better.”
“Liar.” Cole placed the bell over her heart and listened. “Now your lungs.” He helped her on her side. “Can you cough for me?” She did, but it was painful and caused her to draw up her knees. “That’s enough. Just breathe in and out, deeply and slowly. Good. Like that.” He eased her onto her back. “I want to see the welts.” He saw her tense and waited it out before he folded down the sheet. “Do you want to lift your shirt or shall I?”
It gave Rhyne some small comfort that he asked. “I’ll do it.” Closing her eyes, she scrabbled at the fabric with her fingers until the flat of her abdomen was exposed.
“I’m going to swab them with a tincture of mercury and salicylate that I asked Chet Caldwell at the pharmacy to prepare for me when I came to Reidsville. It will be wet and a little cold.” He prepared a cotton pad with the tincture and swept it lightly over each of her wales. She shivered slightly but otherwise didn’t move. “I have to remove the wadding between your legs.” He did this quickly, examining it for blood. There was very little evidence that she’d bled after the last change, but he replaced it with a clean cotton cloth anyway. “I think we can put you in a pair of drawers now.”
Rhyne nodded. She kept her eyes closed and threw up barriers one after another to keep humiliation from tearing out her soul.
“I have a pair here,” Cole said. “I found them in a trunk in the root cellar. I aired them out on the back stoop.”
“Just my regular drawers,” she said.
“You only have a union suit,” he said, lifting one of her legs. “I don’t want to cut another one off of you if there are complications.”
She didn’t ask about complications. She didn’t speak at all, accepting this was another argument she had no strength for. Although she had never had a doll, she knew what they were and how young girls cared for them. Now she allowed herself to be cared for in exactly that manner, lying back without dignity or complaint, dressed in lace-trimmed undergarments that made her feel extraordinarily vulnerable.
Rhyne imagined she should have felt some relief when he finally pushed them over her hips and drew the strings taut at her waist, but she only felt exposed, more naked now than when she’d had nothing on.
“Are you all right? Have I pulled them too tight?”
She batted his hand away then laid her forearm over her eyes. The thermometer slipped under the sleeve of her shirt, and she had to lie still while he probed under the chambray.
Cole read the thermometer. “Almost returned to normal.”
If only that were true, Rhyne thought. She tugged on her shirt, fixing it over her shoulder and smoothing the fabric across her belly. She allowed Cole to pull the sheet over her, mostly because she couldn’t stop him from helping her. She wanted to wail.
“When are you going to let me get up and get on with my business?”
“Let’s talk about it tomorrow.”
“I can’t stay in bed all day.”
“If you get up now you won’t be able to stay out of it for the next three days.” It was an exaggeration but not much of one. “You need to rest. You’re strong, healthy, there’s no reason you can’t move around tomorrow. Nothing strenuous, though.”
She lifted her forearm and glared at him.
“Will’s sending out someone to help with the place.”
“Who?”
“Johnny Winslow was his first choice. Ned Beaumont was the runner-up.”
Rhyne groaned. “Not Ned. He’ll get half the work done in twice the time. I can’t afford him.”
“Then hope that Johnny shows up.”
Rhyne supposed that was all she could do. “You’re not going to sit in here all day, are you?”
Cole shook his head. “Not if you tell me what’s to be done.”
“I meant that you could go in the other room, maybe get some sleep. You look haggard.”
Remembering Will’s comment about Rhyne finding no favor in his fine patrician looks, Cole’s mouth twisted in a wry smile as he bent to retrieve his notebook and pencil. He recorded Rhyne’s temperature and then turned the page. “Give me your chore list,” he said. “First to last.”
Rhyne found that obeying the doctor’s edicts was downright disagreeable, but she didn’t really doubt that he understood her limits better