Willa’s heart had crawled up into her mouth and was acting as if the coward wanted to plunge to the cabin floor and race away. She’d assisted her father at a number of shipboard births, including that of Kathleen’s younger child, six-year-old Anna, but never on her own. She opened her bag and laid out a metal forceps as well as two short pieces of cotton string on the chest next to the bunk. Some of the laundered linens she used to cover the bunk mattress and stacked the rest nearby for swaddling the baby.
Kathleen pulled herself up with Willa’s help and moved toward the bunk against the wall with a slow, rolling gait. “It’s time to get this business done.” When Willa tried to help her lie on the bunk, she shook her head hard and lowered herself to a low stool. “No time for that.” And then with a final three or four groaning pushes, the two Baker sisters had a brother.
Willa’s mouth was so dry, she could barely speak, so she set to work tying off the umbilical cord near the mother and near the baby before cutting the cord in the middle with the long scissors the way her father had shown her when she’d assisted at Mrs. Still’s disastrous delivery. She could scarcely believe how easily this child had come into the world. She took the baby and with the help of his sister, Mary, cleaned him up and swaddled him in linen before moving to her patient’s side. Together, Willa and Mary massaged the new mother’s belly to ease the expelling of the afterbirth.
Later, when Willa returned to the sick bay and sat beside her husband’s hammock, she didn’t need to read boring instructions from the tincture book. She was so exhilarated from her first delivery on her own, she chattered low into his ear for at least an hour before planting a kiss on his bandaged head and slipping away to her own bed.
When at last she fell into their bunk, sadly more spacious and lonely than when shared with her stubborn Scot, she felt the comforting lift and roll of theArethusa. They were sailing away from Gibraltar with the rising tide.
After Willa and Surgeon’s Mate Parker finished sick call the next morning at the main mast, Willa knocked lightly at the purser’s cabin.
Mary Baker opened the door with a wide grin and gave Willa a hug. “Come see him. He’s so big, and he hardly ever cries. Papa is so proud. He…”
“It sounds as though you are proud as well.” Her younger sister, Anna, joined them and plucked impatiently at Willa’s skirts to follow her.
When she trailed behind the girls to find their mother and the new babe, she was taken aback to see Kathleen already up and about, sitting at the table in the main cabin, mending stockings and absently rocking her son’s cradle with one foot.
“Are you well enough to be on your feet so soon?” Willa’s tone of concern elicited a laugh from the new mother.
“It’s like any other day. ‘Himself’ made sure Polly fed the girls this morning before he left, so I did get to sleep a little longer this morning. But that will be the last of any effort he’ll put forth. Can’t lay abed all day. The girls need tending. I’m teaching them their letters.” She pointed toward her swaddled son. “And that one. He’s as demanding as his papa. I no more than get him fed, than he’s hungry again.”
Willa bent over the cradle and lifted the baby to her shoulder. She sat on a bench with him and listened to his breathing and heartbeat. When he began to whimper, she handed him back to his mother. “He’s a fine, healthy boy, Kathleen. You’re a lucky woman.”
The purser’s wife gave her a quirky smile. “Thank you for coming to help me in the middle of the night. Your brother Wills helped your father deliver my last one. I’m lucky you’re as well trained as he was.” She gave Willa a slow wink when she stood to leave. “Please, come back to see us any time.”
Willa climbed down the companionway ladders to the lower levels of the ship before returning to the sick bay to check on Cullen. She mulled over Kathleen Baker’s parting words. Was there no one on this ship whodidn’tthink she and Wills were one and the same? And the most confounding part of that knowledge? Nobody seemed to care.
Of course, there was nothing she could do about what others on theArethusathought. They would gossip and think what they would. Her biggest concern now was bringing her husband back from the insensibility brought on by his mysterious beating on Gibraltar. His breathing was still even and deep, but there was no way to get clear broths or other liquids into him while he was unresponsive. He’d already lain unconscious in his sick bay hammock for several days.
She pulled a stool over to his side and opened the book she’d retrieved from the shelf of medical tomes near the door. She’d found the well-worn copy of “Gulliver’s Travels” at the bottom of her father’s sea chest. She’d shoved his old, battered chest to an empty corner of the surgery and had been going through the contents little by little since his death. He’d saved her favorite childhood book that they’d read together over the many miles at sea.
“You’re going to love this story, Dr. MacCloud,” Willa began. “It’s about an unwary surgeon who fancies himself a traveler. We’ll start with ‘Part I, A Voyage to Lilliput.’”
And so, she began:
My father had a small estate in Nottinghamshire; I was the third of five sons. He sent me to Emanuel College in Cambridge at fourteen years old, where I resided three years, and applied myself close to my studies; but the charge of maintaining me, although I had a very scanty allowance, being too great for a narrow fortune, I was bound apprentice to Mr. James Bates, an eminent surgeon in London…
After a half hour of reading, Willa noticed Cullen’s eyelids fluttering more than usual. She marked her place in the dog-eared book and removed the wrappings from his face. He still had good color, and the bruises around his eyes and his cheeks were healing from the deep shades of dark purple and blue to a yellow-green.
She rose to soak a flannel rag in a bit of water to wipe some of the dried blood from beneath the bandages before winding his head again with fresh linens. When she returned with the basin of water, his eyes were wide open, blinking in the light of the hanging sick bay lantern.
She dropped the basin, sloshing water on her slippers and stockings. “Oh,” was all she could manage.
Senior Surgeon’s Mate Parker joined her at Cullen’s bedside and offered to fetch some clear broth from the galley. “Is there anything else I should get for him?”
“Maybe a bit of distilled water from the stove, but I think for now, the clear broth would be best.”
Her husband had remained strangely silent while Mr. Parker took instructions. But now that they were alone, he grasped Willa’s wrist in a tight hold. “What happened? Why am I here?”
Willa’s gut clenched. He didn’t remember.
Cullen struggled to comprehend where he was and why. He was apparently a patient in his own damned surgery. What the hell had happened? Willa, his wife, was bending over him trying hard not to cry, but he knew well the look of unshed tears. Yes, this woman was his wife. That much he could remember, thank God.
Willa? Something about Willa was the last thing he could clutch from the jagged images blowing through his mind like fallen leaves in a late October wind storm back in the Highlands. He remembered well the look and feel of the tall, dark-haired, slender woman next to him. And those eyes, those seductive pools of gray a man could drown in.
He remembered arguing with her, always arguing. He remembered how stubborn she could be during their days together, only to fall apart in passion in his arms at night. But for the life of him, he could not remember what it was about Willa that had led to his current helpless state in a hammock in sick bay.
“You insisted on going in to Gibraltar our last day in port. Why? I was with a marine escort at the market. You couldn’t have been worried about me. Was it Ariadne? Did you need to meet with her one last time for some reason before she left the port?”
