Chapter 12 #2
He kissed the top of her head as he did every morning and admitted she was getting a little better.
She never made the same mistake twice. It was just that she kept coming up with new ways to kill herself and him with her.
If they could just live out the next couple of weeks, she might turn into about the best little wife a man ever had.
He got kicked in the side, and Red almost trembled from the stunning sensation of a little life growing inside Cassie. The tiny assault drew him from his satisfying musing about marriage to a more personal inspection of his lawfully wedded wife.
Cassie’s head nestled on his left shoulder.
Her black hair had been braided when she went to bed, but as it did most nights, it escaped her ribbons.
It was spread across his chest and her back all the way to her waist. Her left leg was hooked over his.
Her warm belly rested between their bodies, and maybe the little feller was saying it was too tight a squeeze because he seemed to be trying to knock himself a little more space.
Red’s arm rested across the top of Cassie’s stomach, and he didn’t resist the temptation to brush her hair aside, smoothing it over and over.
Once in a while, the babe moved so vigorously that he must be doing a somersault.
Red laughed silently at the energetic tyke and longed for the day he’d come on out and join the family.
Red ought to just slip out of bed as he did most mornings at home, but this was Sunday, and they had a good hour to dress and eat breakfast before services.
He had no excuse to tear himself away. So he smoothed her hair and held her close and decided Sunday, already his favorite day, had just become about a hundredfold better.
Cassie’s breathing became slightly less regular, indicating that she was waking up.
He watched her face closely, eager to memorize every nuance of her expression when she realized how she was clinging to him.
Like the mornings when he hadn’t slipped away quickly enough, he expected her to pull back in alarm and put about a foot of space between them.
He didn’t mind, not too much. Her trust in him and desire to be close to him when she was sleeping was a good sign because her actions weren’t clouded with grief and embarrassment.
She honestly liked to be held in her sleep, and with time, that might spread into the daytime.
And he’d be glad to be the one to hold her for the rest of her life.
She rubbed her cheek against the bristly hair that peeked through the top of his nightshirt, even turning a bit to lightly scratch her nose.
She muttered a bit and the babe kicked again.
Cassie’s hand glided slowly across Red’s waist to rest on her stomach.
Her eyes fluttered open, and she stared straight at Red.
Quickly, before she could pull away, Red ran one finger down the curve of her cheek and said, “I like feelin’ the babe move this way. Thank you for lying close to me like this.”
She also controlled that little jump of embarrassment that accompanied her waking every morning. Instead, she let her hand rest on the baby, and Red’s hand joined hers, and they stared at the visibly moving white flannel on her belly and just incidentally went on holding each other.
After her muscles had relaxed against him, Red said, “Tell me what all Muriel and Libby and Leota said about babies yesterday.”
Cassie surprised him by laughing. Which must mean she was comfortable hugged up against him, and that made him happy.
“Oh, Red, the things they said right out loud. Private things I’d never before heard anyone say.”
Red tilted her chin up. “Now, Cass, just because you’ve never heard it before doesn’t mean no one else has.
You’ve been mighty sheltered, with your mama dying when you were so young and Griff being uncomfortable talking about such things.
I want you to talk to me about this. I’m telling you right now, nothing is too personal for a wife to say to her husband. ”
Cassie nodded. “You’re right. It just seemed so…
sort of wicked, I guess. But they aren’t wicked ladies.
I know that. So I decided to listen and learn, and we ended up laughing at the whole business of delivering a baby into the world.
Muriel asked me terribly personal questions, and I answered all I could.
She…she wanted to know how evenly my l–lady’s time was spaced.
When I told her sometimes months apart, she wanted to know how long before I missed my…
time had I been…been…” Cassie stopped talking. She buried her face in his chest.
Red rubbed one finger down the length of her nose. “Say it, Cass.”
“She wanted to know when Griff and I had…had seen to his…his husbandly…prerogatives.” She glanced at him, her face blazing red.
Red wanted to blush too. When he’d said they could talk about anything, he hadn’t expected this. He wanted to yell at her that he didn’t want to hear about her and Griff, but he stayed calm because he’d be taking back all he’d said about them talking about anything. “And what did you say?”
“I said I wasn’t sure exactly, but it was the one in the winter.”
“The one in the…” Red choked his startled question.
Cassie looked at him uncertainly, and he struggled valiantly to keep a straight face.
She looked back at his chest. “Yes, and very often, the one in the winter was toward the end, so early to mid-March. Then, when I said that, for some reason, they all three started laughing like crazy, and they wouldn’t tell me why.
I guess it’s because I don’t know anything and that struck them funny, but they didn’t want to hurt my feelings by saying so.
Then Muriel said the baby would come in mid-December.
That’s six weeks. And she told me how to know the laboring had started and that you’re to send word to the neighbors and one of the Jessup hands would come for her. Is that all right?”
Red heaved a sigh of relief at the suggestion.
He’d been terrified that he’d have to deliver the baby on his own.
He’d seen a lot of baby animals born and even aided a few cattle that were having trouble, but he’d been having nightmares about being alone and letting Cassie and the baby die because of some stupid mistake.
“Yes, that’s a good idea. The Jessups will be perfect. They’re good friends of mine.”
Cassie went on to reveal some extremely embarrassing details about having babies. Clearly, she’d taken his order to talk about everything to heart. Perhaps he’d started something he was going to regret, but he’d made the rule.
Then with dawning delight, it occurred to him that Cassie had obeyed him. The more he thought about it, the more he remembered dozens of times when she’d quietly obeyed him in the last week. He’d just been lying here thinking that she didn’t obey worth a hoot, but that wasn’t true.
She wasn’t disobedient. She was incompetent.
Her attempts to help around the ranch were well-meant efforts to obey his pronouncement the first day that he’d like her to milk and garden and gather eggs.
He hugged her a little closer and controlled a shudder at the graphic things she was saying to him.
Did women talk like this all the time, or had Muriel taken his gruff edict that Cassie didn’t know anything about having a baby seriously and swallowed her own embarrassment?
Next week was going to be different. He wasn’t going to resist her attempts to help anymore. He was going to teach her, just as Muriel had done.
Cassie took a break from her gory tales of blood and screaming women, tales that didn’t seem to be upsetting her at all, and Red said, “We have to get up and go to church now.”
“Yes, Red.” She rolled away from him, got up, and began collecting her clothes.
Red’s heart expanded at how instantly she’d submitted to him. It made him feel like a king. He wasn’t sure it was Christian to feel like a king, so he tried not to enjoy it too much.