Page 2 of The Heart’s Charge

He imagined it did. Ease her pain, Lord, and show me how to help.

As her left hand splayed across her belly, sunlight from the open doorway glinted off something gold. A wedding band.

“Where’s your husband, ma’am?” That fellow should be the one here, not him and Jonah. Maybe they could find him and drag his sorry, irresponsible hide back to take care of the wife who was laboring with his child.

“Wendell?” Her head came up, and something that almost looked like a smile passed across her lips. “Wendell’s coming. He’s meeting me here. We have it all arranged. I just have to get rid of the baby.”

Get rid of the . . . ?

Mark jerked a sharp look toward Jonah. His stoic friend usually hid his thoughts well, but not even the unflappable sergeant could hide the twinge of shock that knitted his brows together.

Surely she hadn’t meant that like it sounded. She’d meant deliver the baby. Rid her body of the infant who was ready to enter the world. That had to be it. No mother in her right mind would—

“The angels will watch over our baby,” she said even as her mouth turned down and her body stiffened. Another pain must be hitting her. Her breath came in ragged puffs, and her hands fisted in the sheets. “You hear me, God? Time to send them angels you promised.” She threw her head back, the tendons in her neck standing out from her throat. “I did my part. Time for you to . . . uphold your end . . . of the bargain . . . ’cause this baby’s . . . comin’!”

Jonah’s footsteps pounded toward the door. “I’ll go fetch a doctor.”

And leave Mark alone with a deranged pregnant woman? Not a chance.

“I should go,” Mark said, stepping away from the bed and following Jonah. “You grew up on a farm, right? You have at least a rudimentary understanding of what is happening here. I don’t know the first thing—”

“You’re white,” Jonah said bluntly. He nodded toward the woman in the bed. “She’s white. You can’t leave a black man alone with a white woman. If word got out . . .”

He didn’t need to finish that sentence.

“Either we both go, or I go,” Jonah said, his voice like steel. “Ain’t no third option.”

Ashamed for letting fear of his own inadequacies temporarily overshadow his common sense, Mark nodded. “You’re right. Sorry. I’ll stay.”

He glanced back at the woman muttering nonsense as her head tossed back and forth on the mattress.

“I’m coming, Wendell,” she droned over and over. “I’m coming.”

He had no idea how he was going to help her, but he couldn’t leave her alone. Childbirth had been known to steal the lives of healthy, strong-minded women. There was no telling what it would do to this lost soul.

CHAPTER

TWO

Jonah Brooks raced his chestnut gelding, Augustus, back toward Llano with a single purpose—retrieve a doctor and return before Mark ended up delivering the crazy lady’s baby. Wallace was smart. Had good reflexes. He should be able to catch the kid, should it pop out on its own. But as much as he respected Mark as a fellow soldier, the younger man had grown up in privilege, protected from the rawer side of nature. He knew guns, horses, and music. Babies were way outside his areas of expertise. If anything went wrong . . . Well, they’d just have to pray that nothing did. At least not before Jonah could retrieve a doctor.

Coming upon several town buildings, Jonah slowed his pace to avoid endangering townsfolk but kept Augustus at a trot. He spied a pair of old-timers bent over a checkerboard set up on a barrel outside the livery.

“Which way to the doctor?” he called as he drew near.

One of the gray-bearded fellows pushed his hat back on his forehead before pointing down the street. “Last building on the left. Across from the Southern Hotel.” He stroked his beard, then gave it a tug. “There some kind o’ emergency?”

“Woman having a baby,” Jonah answered as he passed them without slowing his pace. “Thanks.” He waved to the helpful fellow and guided Augustus around the wagons and pedestrians on Main Street until he came abreast of the small office across from the hotel.

The shingle read Michael Hampton, MD.

Jonah dismounted, tossed his reins over the hitching post, and jogged up the boardwalk steps, leaping over the last one. He yanked open the door and hurried inside. Two faces turned toward him. One belonged to a woman in her midthirties with a reddened nose and a handkerchief at the ready. The other was attached to a rotund fellow wearing a dandified gold brocade vest beneath his black suit coat. He didn’t look particularly ill, though his disposition did lean toward the sour side, if his scowl was any indication.

“I need to see the doc,” Jonah announced, hoping one of them would point the way.

Fancy Vest snorted. “You’ll just have to wait. He’s in with my wife.”

“Can’t wait.” Jonah bypassed the snooty fellow and strode toward the hallway at the back of the waiting area. He wouldn’t venture too far without permission, but he aimed to make sure the doctor heard him when he called.