McKettrick's Choice - Linda Lael Miller [144]
Elias didn’t wait to hear more. He rode up to the house at a good clip, untied his medical bag, sprang down from the saddle and hurried inside.
Holt swung one leg over Traveler’s neck and slid to the ground, facing Lorelei. It was time to tell her about the raid on her ranch, and he searched for the words. There seemed to be a scant supply.
She searched his face. “What is it?” she asked, very softly, and without using much breath.
“Your place,” he said. “It’s been burned.”
He saw her throat work as she swallowed, and wished to God, once again, that he could have spared her this. For all the times they’d locked horns, for all the times he’d deliberately baited her, just to watch her get mad, delivering such news was among the most difficult things he’d ever had to do. And that was saying something.
She put her hands to her ears, lowered them again. “I thought I heard you say—”
“Somebody put a torch to the house, Lorelei,” Holt reiterated miserably. It felt a lot like pulling that arrow shaft out of Rafe’s arm, saying the hard but necessary truth. As with Rafe, he wanted to take the pain on himself, but he could only share it. “Burned away most of the grass, too.”
Tears glimmered in her eyes. “No,” she whispered.
Holt took her by the shoulders, as gently as he could. He was afraid she’d crumple to the ground if he didn’t hold her upright. “There were plenty of tracks—I reckon when I follow them, they’ll lead straight to Isaac Templeton’s front door.”
She put a hand to her mouth, and a sob escaped her throat, so ragged and so raw that it gouged at Holt’s well-guarded heart with the impact of a lance. “Isaac Templeton’s front door,” she said, when she’d recovered enough to speak, “or my father’s?”
He longed to pull her close and hold her, but the stiffening in her spine and the way she twisted out of his grip put paid to the idea before he could follow through on it. “Lorelei,” he said, anguished.
She turned her back, walked toward the house with quick steps, one hand pressed to her mouth.
Holt had no use for Judge Alexander Fellows after the way he’d railroaded Gabe, but he found it hard to believe the man—any man—would visit that kind of vengeance on his own daughter. Watching Lorelei disappear into the house, he pulled Lizzie’s ribbon from his vest pocket and smoothed it between his thumb and forefingers, like a talisman.
THE MOMENT she stepped back over the threshold of John Cavanagh’s house and another of Melina’s agonized shrieks met her ears, Lorelei set aside all that Holt had just told her. She would simply have to deal with it later.
Melina lay on a cot in the kitchen, where she’d been since just before the sun rose, her back arched, her face contorted and slick with sweat. Dr. Brown had already examined her; now, he was washing up in a basin of hot water, provided by an anxious and harried Heddy.
The doctor looked Lorelei over briefly as he accepted the towel Heddy had ready for him and dried his hands. “We’re about to get down to serious business in here, Miss Fellows,” he said evenly, his face calm. “If you’re fixing to swoon or carry on or some such, I would appreciate your leaving. If you’ve a mind to be of help, on the other hand, then get yourself some fresh water and scrub every bare inch of flesh with that lye soap there. Heddy, you fill some kettles and set them on to boil, then find me some clean cloth. Sheets will serve, if you’ve got them, but they won’t be good for much when we’re done.”
Lorelei hesitated only a moment—she’d never seen a baby born, by easy means or difficult ones—and she did feel a bit light-headed. Because Melina was her friend, and because she knew she wouldn’t be able to live with herself if she failed either mother or baby, now of all times, she went over to the basin, threw its sudsy contents out the back door