“Tell me what to do,” he pleaded, his throat so raw he could barely speak.
“Check for the head….” Her voice was a whisper, frighteningly weak. “If you don’t find it…if the baby’s lying wrong…you’ll have to turn it.”
“All right. Lie still.” Donovan’s stomach clenched into a cold ball as he imagined what he was about to do—the awful pain his fumbling hands would inflict on Varina, the risk to her fragile, unborn infant. Steeling himself, he reached for the hem of her flannel nightdress.
His quaking fingers could not even grasp the cloth.
“Donovan—?” She was waiting, her fists balled against the pain. But Donovan was paralyzed by his own dread. He could not move.
Racked with self-disgust, he wrenched himself away from the bedside. “I’ll be right back,” he growled. “Rest a minute if you can—and try not to push.” Donovan shoved past the quilt and strode across the cabin. He groped for the door, then stumbled out onto the porch. His ribs heaved as he gulped the fresh, cold air.
He had to go back in there and help Varina. If he didn’t, she and her child would die. But he was so afraid of hurting her, afraid of doing some terrible harm to the baby-Snowflakes danced around him, diamond white against the darkness. They swirled down in infinite spirals from the murky sky as Donovan raised his eyes to heaven.
“Lord,” he murmured, “I’ve tried not to trouble you much over the years. But right now I need your help. I have two lives to save, and I can’t do the job alone.” He paused self-consciously, cleared his throat and forced himself to continue. “You understand, it’s not for myself I’m asking. I don’t deserve any favors, least of all from you. But Varina, she’s a good woman who’s never done a lick of harm in her life. And she’s got three fatherless little ones to raise—four, counting the baby—”
Donovan broke off in frustration. God could count, he reminded himself. As for the rest, he’d be better off inside, helping Varina, than standing out here stalling like a coward.
He cast one final, desperate glance into the snow-specked heavens. “Please,” he muttered. “Just—”
The sound of hoofbeats riveted his thoughts. He could hear them pounding up the gulch trail, moving rapidly closer. As Donovan’s eyes probed the snowy darkness, a big dun mule burst out of the aspens and into the clearing.
Two dark shapes, one of them very small, clung to the mule’s back. As the animal wheeled to a stop, Annie sprang to the ground and dashed toward the cabin. “Uncle Donovan, I brought Miss Sarah! Is Ma all right?”
“She’s fine,” Donovan lied. “Go on in and take care of Katy and Samuel. I’ll see to the mule.”
He loped off the porch and across the yard, to where Miss Sarah Parker was climbing down from the saddle, a canvas satchel clutched beneath her dark wool cloak. Relief jellied Donovan’s knees. At that instant, he could have swept the spinsterly Miss Sarah into his arms, plucked off her pince-nez glasses, and kissed her full on her prim mouth.
“It’s about time!” was all he could say.
“Sorry.” She tossed him the reins. “I just finished delivering Minnie Hawkins down on Panner Creek. I couldn’t get here any sooner. How is Varina?”
“Bad. The baby’s not coming the way it should. I hope to heaven you haven’t gotten here too late.”
Miss Sarah swung resolutely toward the porch, her boots crunching the new-fallen snow. Her plain, dark skirt swished against her legs as she turned with one foot on the rickety bottom step.
“Put Nebuchadnezzar in the shed and give him some oats,” she ordered crisply. “Then wash up and come inside. I expect I’ll be needing your help.”
She strode into the cabin. As he led the mule toward the shed, Donovan heard her instructing Annie to take the younger children to the cabin of old Ike Ordway, their nearest neighbor down the gulch. By the time he’d stabled the stubborn beast, they were on their way, trooping past him in the sad little coats Varina had pieced from old blanket scraps.
Donovan dipped water from the porch bucket and used a sliver of lye soap to lather his hands. He worked the suds carefully around his fingers, shivering as the wind penetrated his worn flannel shirt. Everything was going to be all right, he tried to reassure himself. The midwife was here. She would know what to do.
All the same, he’d have felt better if the woman had been older—say, a stalwart matron of forty who looked as if she’d borne a half-dozen children of her own.
Washing done, he entered the cabin to find Sarah Parker standing by the stove with her back to the door, rolling up the sleeves of her gray shirtwaist. Strangely, the first thought that flashed through his mind was how attractive she appeared from behind. The lamplight melted on the coil of her glossy brown hair where it lay low on the nape of her neck. And even her drab clothes could not hide the elegant set of her shoulders or the grace of a slender torso that curved from hand-span waist to sensually rounded haunches.
Donovan stared at her, galvanized once more by that feeling he could not even name—as if the sight of her had forged a dark link to some secret memory buried in the depths of his mind. What was it…?
A frenzied moan from Varina burst the unfinished thought like a bubble. Sarah Parker turned and frowned at Donovan, as if she’d known all along that he was there.
“I just finished checking her. It looks like a breech birth.”
Donovan nodded his understanding, mouth grimly set to hide his fear. “Then I guess you’ll have to turn the baby. Can you do it?”
“I…hope so.” Her gray eyes were pools of anxiety behind the pince-nez spectacles. Her fingers quivered as they fumbled with the cuff of her left sleeve. Midwife or not, she wasn’t offering him much reassurance.
“Have you done anything like this before?” Donovan probed.
“I’ve never had to.” She had turned her back on him again. “This is only my seventeenth baby. But I know how. I’ve read about it.”
“Read about it! Good Lord, woman—”
“Would you rather do it yourself, Mr. Cole?” Her Yankee voice crackled like splintering ice.
Donovan surrendered with a ragged sigh. “All right. What can I do to help?”
“Come on.” With an abrupt swish of petticoats, she strode behind the quilt, where Varina sprawled damp, tearful and exhausted on the rumpled sheets. Donovan’s heart contracted at the sight of her. His questions about Sarah Parker evaporated as he knelt to take his sister’s hand.
Sarah had taken a tin of greasy salve out of her satchel and was rubbing the stuff on her hands. “How long ago was the last pain, Varina?”
“Three…maybe four minutes.” Varina’s tired voice was so faint that Donovan could barely hear.
“We’ll wait for the next one to pass. Then I’ll try and turn the baby.” Sarah hesitated, then continued. “It will hurt. I’ll be as gentle as I can, but—”
“I know,” Varina whispered. “It’s all right. Do what you have to. And Sarah—”
“Yes?”
“If it’s a question of saving me or the child…I want this baby to live.”
“Hush!” As Sarah leaned over to squeeze Varina’s hand, Donovan caught the glint of tears in her eyes. “Don’t talk that way, Varina Sutton! You’re going to be just fine, and so is your baby!”
Varina did not answer. Donovan watched the contraction take his sister. He watched it seize her swollen body in its cruel talons, squeezing and twisting until he wanted to scream for her.
“Get ready.” Sarah shot him a hard glance through her round glass spectacles.