“S-seamus.”
He turned and went down on his knee again at her side, stroking the back of one of her sweaty hands. From the nearby washstand he retrieved a damp, folded towel and dabbed at the pearling beads of sweat that glimmered on her brow and cheeks.
“Give me a kiss, p-please,” she gasped as if her throat was raw.
Leaning down, he brushed her cheek with his mouth self-consciously. Good manners and upbringing allowed that a man might lightly kiss his wife there while in public.
“No,” Sam declared, tapping her dry lips with one finger. “Kiss me here.”
The Irishman swallowed hard, his eyes darting to the other women before he leaned over Sam once more and laid his mouth on hers. He felt the press of her hand at the back of his head, preventing him from pulling away.
She held his face close, whispering, “I wanted the … the feel of your l-l-l-lips—”
Then she wrenched her hands down and was gripping the sheets once more, gritting her teeth and growling as the next contraction welled over her.
“That’s good! That’s good, Samantha!” Elizabeth exclaimed, observing the progress there between Sam’s legs.
“Bear down. Go on and bear down, Samantha,” instructed Martha Luhn as she pressed up at Seamus’s elbow, taking the towel from his hand and dabbing it against the hollow at the base of Sam’s throat where the sweat had pooled.
He stepped back a step in that crush of women and their dutiful purpose. Then another step, for the first time noticing how drenched she was with this labor. Sam’s face flushed with her exertion … oh, how it stood out against the white of that loose camisole, damp, plastered to the skin across her chest and her arms as if she had just been caught out in a summer thundershower. It appeared these women had taken off her most everything else she had been wearing earlier that evening for dinner with Mackenzie … most all of it: dress and petticoats and bloomers— then draped that sheet over her legs as they began this long, agonizing process.
He suddenly wondered what time it was—feeling guilty for not knowing how long he had been down at the saloon. Drinking, sharing stories with other men, while these women had been up here with Sam.
She was his wife. He should have been here all along.
He watched as Sam gasped, then went back to panting, almost like a dog, her head bobbing in rhythm each time she exhaled in those short, rough gusts of wind. Drawing her knees up as far as she could just as the others reminded her to do in their calming voices, assisting Sam as she struggled in lowering her head as far as she could, as if she were cramping up. Sam began a low shriek—
To him the room felt suddenly very, very warm. Then he remembered he still had on his worn canvas and blanket mackinaw, sooted and smudged with the smoke of many fires, slick with wear and tattered at the elbows and wrists from long years’ wilderness service.
He pulled his arms from it, one at a time, and dropped it carelessly in a far corner.
“Oh, no—Mr. Donegan,” Nettie Capron said. “You put your coat back on. I’m afraid you can’t stay.”
“S-stay!” Samantha contradicted.
Martha Luhn turned to Sam, quietly declaring, “No. It’s much, much better that he’s not here.”
“Why?” Sam asked in exhaustion as her head fell back against the pillows and comforter.
“Yeah,” Donegan agreed, taking a shaky step back toward the bed as Sam held her hand out to him again. “Why not?”
The women looked at one another for a moment while Sam laid her wet hand in his two big paws, imploring him with those red-rimmed eyes of hers. She said quietly, “C’mere—let me hold you—”
He settled to one knee again there at the side of the bed just in time to have her clench one of her hands around one of his instead of the sheet with the sudden terrible avalanche of the contraction. Seamus sensed the blood squeezed out of the hand, felt the bones grind together as if another, more powerful man had his own callused paw caught in the grip of a vise. In a moment his hand began to tingle with its own pain, just before Sam collapsed back against the comforter and pillows, panting, her tongue lolling.
“It’s not long now,” Elizabeth cheered, her eyes flicking up to Seamus suddenly, then back down to her work between Sam’s legs.
“What … what can I do to help?” he asked them, his eyes touching each one.
Nettie answered after glancing at the others. “You can stay right there at her side. Help your wife through each contraction, Mr. Donegan. Talk to her, talk her through each one.”
“T-talk … talk her through—”
“Do you still love me?” Sam interrupted, bringing her free hand alongside his cheek, turning his face so that he looked down at her.
He gazed back down at her face, studying her at last—finding her hair plastered to her brow, at her temples, soaking at the back of her neck where she had tied it back with a ribbon upon returning to this room after their walk down to the cottonwood grove by the river.
“L-love you? Of course I do,” Seamus answered. He slipped one of his hands free, brushing her cheek with his rough fingertips as she smiled up at him through glistening eyes. “I’ll always love you, Samantha.”
He watched her eyes widen with the coming contraction, her tongue darting out to flick over her lips with a little moisture, sweeping over the droplets of salty sweat that poured from her flesh. Again he daubed her brow and cheeks as she squeezed his hand through the coming and leaving of that circle of pain.
“Do … do you really love me?” she panted as she collapsed against the pillows. “Love me even tonight?”
He shifted beside the bed, leaning his face more closely over hers as he whispered, “I love you more tonight than I have ever loved you.”
Sensing his eyes filling, Seamus drew back a little, blinked, and swiped at them with that damp towel. When he looked back down at her, he could see that Sam was weeping.
“Are you all right?” he begged, worried and anxious.
She forced a smile with the coming of the next contraction, tears suddenly gushing from the corners of her eyes. “I’ve n-never been b-better—”
The last word rushed out in a shriek as she clamped down on his hand and doubled up with the pain— panting, grunting, low and feral. The three midwives squeezed in around Samantha.
“That’s it!” Elizabeth cried. “It’s, here! Your baby’s here!”
With a jerk he looked down at Mrs. Burt, hoping for some sign of the child. Dear Mither of God—he prayed— protect them both at this moment!
“I see its head,” Elizabeth went on. “Such hair. So much hair!”
Sam fell back, her legs—indeed, her whole body—quaking with great, volcanic shudders. Back and forth he looked, his eyes moving between Samantha and Elizabeth Burt.
“The head is here,” the woman cried out, shifting her position between Sam’s legs now, climbing up on the bed herself to kneel between the knees and shoving the sheet out of the way so that it tumbled down upon Samantha’s great, round tummy. She glanced at Seamus quickly—as if to explain that duty must now dispense with propriety.
He nodded and looked away obediently, though he wanted so much to watch this child come forth. So much to watch its entrance into this world. Instead he turned back to kiss Sam on the forehead quickly at the moment she began to quiver with a new contraction, then began to growl as she hadn’t before.
“Yes, Sam!” Martha Luhn prodded. “Give it all you’ve got now!
Nettie Capron urged, “Push, Sam! Push!”
She had her fingernails digging into the palm of his hand so deeply, he didn’t know if the dampness he felt was sweat or blood. It didn’t matter. And then he glanced at Elizabeth Burt, saw her hovering close above Sam’s belly.
“Again!” Elizabeth ordered. “Push harder now, Sam. It’s here! Dear God—your beautiful baby’s here!”
At Samantha’s other shoulder Nettie Capron coaxed, “One more good push and the baby will be out. Come, now. Give us one more good push.”
“P-p-push!” Sam gasped, straining, her face flush.
“That’s it!” Martha Luhn cheered.
Then Seamus turned quickly, saw the head already cradled in Mrs. Burt’s hands. At that very moment the
