Bride in Barbados (24 page)

While the nurse was gone, Susan lathered rose-scented soap
on the soft wash cloth and scrubbed her face and hands. Then she
brushed the tangles from her hair and arranged the pillows comfortably
at her back. She felt like a new woman.

Dot entered the room carrying a white bundle. She laid it
in Susan's arms. The baby was wrapped loosely in a thin, cotton
covering with only his head showing. His eyes were closed, but he was
moving and making little fretting sounds. His head was well shaped and
capped by a shock of black hair. Susan looked into the face of her son
and felt a welling of emotion that was unlike anything she had ever
felt before. She blinked away the moisture in her eyes and folded back
the covering to examine the little, warm body dressed only in a diaper
and undershirt.

"Well, he's got ten fingers and ten toes," she said to the
nurse, surprised at the unsteadiness of her voice. She held him close
and kissed the downy softness of his cheek. "Oh, isn't he wonderful?"

Dot laughed. "You don't think I'm crazy enough to disagree
with a new mother about that, do you?"

The baby's fist found its way to his mouth and he began to
suck loudly. "My little man is hungry," Susan cooed. "Will I have milk
yet?"

The nurse helped her slip down the strap of her gown. "Let
this bruiser at you, and you'll have milk before the day's over."

The baby found her breast and began to nurse contentedly.
"Goodness, he's strong," Susan said, "for such a tiny person."

"You haven't seen many newborns apparently. He weighs nine
pounds and is twenty-two inches long. That's a big baby."

When the baby had finished nursing, Susan let the nurse
take him reluctantly. "I want you to rest until after noon," Dot said.
"Don't worry. He'll be squalling for more in two or three hours." Dot
carried the baby away and Susan laid her head back on the pillows with
a sigh.

A moment later, Travis came into the room. He looked
haggard. Unshaved stubble darkened his face and exhaustion dulled his
eyes.

"You look awful," Susan greeted him, still feeling the
lingering joy that holding the baby had given her. "Who had this baby,
anyway?"

He sat down on the bed beside her, reaching for both her
hands, which he squeezed so tightly that she winced. "Have you seen him
yet?"

"The nurse just took him back to the nursery.
He—he's so beautiful."

His mouth twisted wryly. "I don't know about
beautiful.
He was red and screaming his head off when I tried to hold him. Mala
said I was scaring him, but I'm the one who was scared. I kept thinking
how small and helpless he looked." A flash of pain crossed his face.
"Oh, God, Susan, I thought he was going to kill you."

If it comes to a choice, you are to save Susan.
I want my wife
. From some forgotten corner of her brain, the
words surfaced. Had she really heard him say them at some point during
the long night? Or had her imagination conjured up the words, mixing
them with the confusion of dreams and pain?

She stirred self-consciously under his gaze. "Dot Howard
seems to think it was a pretty normal birth. She said she'd assisted at
longer deliveries than this one."

He shook his head once, an expression of disbelief in his
eyes. "If that was normal, I hope never to see an abnormal one."

"I thought I heard the doctor telling you to leave the
room. Why didn't you?"

"I couldn't leave you alone while you were in such pain,
and yet there was nothing I could do to help. I've never felt so
useless in my life."

The earnestness of his voice touched her, but she didn't
want to be touched by him. She was too weak just yet to deal with that.
"I guess we should give him a name. Would you like to call him Travis?"
She hadn't known she was going to suggest that until the words were out.

He gazed into her eyes for a moment without speaking.
Then, "I have another idea. Why don't we give him your maiden name?"

"Warren Sennett." Susan listened to the sound of it. She
suspected that all men liked the idea of a son bearing their name,
regardless of what Travis said. They could give him both names. "Warren
Travis Sennett. That sounds nice and substantial. I like it."

"I'll tell the doctor then—for the birth
certificate." His eyes held hers, and she thought he was going to say
something more. But he got to his feet. "I'm going to shower and shave
and catch a nap."

She wrinkled her nose. "I'm dying to get into the shower.
Dot says I can get up this afternoon."

"Don't try to rush anything," he said a little anxiously.
"Okay?"

She nodded, wondering if he was referring to more than her
getting up.

"Good. I'll see you in a while."

He left her, and she lay, staring up at the ceiling. Had
she really heard that anguished plea to save her, even at the cost of
the baby's life? She couldn't believe it. Without the baby, Travis
would lose his inheritance. No, she must have imagined it. Suddenly her
arms ached to hold her child again and she drew a long, unsteady
breath. There was now no doubt about one thing: She could never go away
and leave the baby behind. She wasn't capable of it. So, what was she
to do?

She closed her eyes. Later, she told herself. She would
decide later when she had her strength back.

After lunch, the nurse brought the baby to her again, and
when he was returned to the nursery, Susan was finally allowed to get up. While she showered
and washed her hair, Mala changed the linens on her bed, thrusting her
head into the bathroom every few moments to check on Susan.

In a fresh gown, her hair wrapped in a towel, Susan came
back into the bedroom. Mala was running a dust cloth over the
furniture. "I was about to come and see if you were all right," the
older woman said.

Susan sat down in a chair and began to towel dry her hair.
"You're worse than Travis, do you know that? I've only had a baby, for
heaven's sake. Millions of women do it every day."

Mala's white teeth flashed in a grin. "Maybe I worry so
'cause you been unhappy lately. Things be all right now."

Surprised at Mala's perceptiveness, Susan murmured
something noncommittal and began to brush her hair. She wished that she
could feel as certain as Mala did that things would work out.

"That phone ringing off the hook all mornin'," Mala told
her. "Everybody hear about the baby and want to know how much he weigh,
what's his name."

Susan smiled. Any scrap of news traveled throughout the
island almost as soon as it occurred. Gossip seemed to be a favorite
Barbados pastime.

After Mala left, Travis came in carrying four floral
arrangements in his arms; he set them in various spots around the room.
He'd shaved and changed clothes, and he looked more rested than he had
earlier. "The yellow and white roses are from me," he told her.

"Thank you," she murmured.

"The carnations are from the Williams. You remember, we
had dinner with them a couple of months ago? Kay sent the
ivy—and the orchids are from Wicksham." He grinned at her
wryly, then added with reluctance, "He's a better loser than I thought."

"Loser?" Susan asked. "What has he lost?"

"You—your company, for one thing. He'll never
try to contact you again. I made sure of that."

A familiar feeling of resentment stirred in Susan. "Why do
you refuse to let me have friends?"

He sank into a chair and ran both hands through his hair,
disordering its brushed smoothness. "That isn't true. I
want
you to have friends."

"Then why are you being so stubborn and impossible in this
case?"

"Because I know Wicksham better than you do."

Susan laid her brush aside and leaned back in her chair.
Her sigh was pure exasperation. "You've hinted before that there's
something sinister about Jonathan. But, Travis, unless you can give me
some good reason, I'll continue to count Jonathan as a friend and
behave accordingly."

He studied her thoughtfully. "I didn't want to upset you
before the baby came. You were always so tired and tense. But it seems
I have to tell you now or you're going to keep rushing headlong into
things that you've no idea of. Do you remember what I told you once
about a small group of men who are trying to take over the government
of the island?"

She nodded, silenced by his serious tone.

"I've suspected for a long time that Jonathan Wicksham is
the moving force behind all our problems in that area. He has the money
to finance a coup."

"A coup!" Susan was staring at him. "Are you suggesting
that Jonathan is a—a revolutionary?"

He shrugged. "It happens to be to his advantage to avoid
bloodshed and work through the opposition political party. I can't
prove all my suspicions yet, but the evidence against him is growing
all the time. We know now that he's hired men to mix with the
unemployed and stir them up against the government and certain people
that Wicksham sees as threats to his control of the island. I'm one of
those people, Susan. I suspected from the beginning that he befriended
you simply because you are my wife. He even tried to win you over with
that rhetoric about the old families owning too much land at the
expense of the poor."

"If you know this, why isn't somebody doing something
about it?"

"We are, and we'll do more when there's enough evidence to
keep him out of the country for good."

Susan felt bewildered, and she shook her head. "It's
obvious that you believe what you're saying, but I can't. Jonathan has
never been anything but kind to me."

"Even when he almost caused you to lose the baby?"

This was even more of a shock than what had gone before,
and denial crowded into her throat. "That's preposterous! It was an
accident."

"Was it?"

Her gaze faltered and she looked away from him, frowning.
"Even if it wasn't, it was Curt who lost his footing and fell against
me."

"I see," he stated ominously. "I should have known
Wicksham wouldn't do his own dirty work. Curt left Barbados early this
morning, by the way, as soon as he heard about the baby."

None of this was making sense to Susan. Jonathan had
called Curt a clumsy oaf, and she had thought it was because he had
caused her to fall. Could it be, instead, that it was because he hadn't
caused her more serious harm? "What has the baby got to do with
anything?"

He rubbed the back of his neck, trying to sound calm and
reasonable in the face of her disinclination to accept what he was
saying. "Wicksham wants me out of Barbados because he knows I'm on to
him, and he also knows that the only circumstance under which I'd leave
would be if there was nothing to hold me here. Curt wants me to lose
control of the plantation and bank, too, but for quite different
reasons. Apparently they decided to work together to achieve a mutually
beneficial end." He lifted his head to look gravely into her eyes. "If
you had lost the baby, I'd have had no heir and Curt and Violet would
have come into two-thirds of my holdings here. They would have forced a
sale and I would have had no reason to stay."

Was it possible that Curt and Jonathan
had
been conspiring together?

"I think," Travis went on, "that Violet learned what they
were up to and, to her credit, wanted no part of it. Which is why she
left here alone so abruptly. That piece of land Curt claimed to be
considering for tourist cabins isn't for sale. I checked."

"Are you saying that Curt and Jonathan took me out there
for the purpose of staging an accident?" She swallowed the sudden
fright that dried her mouth.

He nodded. "I'd been expecting them to pull something
before the baby was born, but it never occurred to me that they would
try to hurt you. I didn't realize they had become so desperate. I'd
have stopped Wicksham's seeing you months ago if I had." His words had
become jerky, each one painful to utter. "Fortunately, I'd taken the
precaution of having one of my men follow you whenever you went
anywhere with Wicksham."

Abraham! So that's how he had happened to be in that
desolate location in the middle of a work day. If Travis was right,
Abraham might very well have saved her life—and the baby's.

She thought of Jonathan's kind gray eyes, his unfailingly
solicitous manner toward her. But she also remembered that he had
brought the word "abortion" into their conversation and had assured her
that he could find a doctor who would do it. Now that she thought about
it, it did seem rather farfetched for a successful business
entrepreneur like Jonathan to consider forming a partnership with
someone as weak and irresponsible as Curt Winston. It made a sick kind
of sense that the "small enterprise" Jonathan had mentioned was a plan
to ensure that Travis had no heir. The thought made her tremble with
delayed reaction and she looked at Travis with stricken eyes.

"Why didn't you tell me all this long ago?"

"Would you have believed me? Lately you've been determined
to pursue whatever course I opposed. Besides, I never guessed that
Wicks-ham's opposition would take such a personal turn. I thought he'd
befriended you merely to get information from you concerning my
activities. I expected him to try to discredit me in the political
realm."

It was true that she probably wouldn't have believed him.
After all, he had warned her that Jonathan was dangerous and she had
reacted with scorn. She thought of her son, the miracle of that
precious bundle of life that she had so recently held in her arms for
the first time. A wave of pure hatred and maternal protective-ness rose
in her, making her feel sick. If she ever saw Jonathan again, she would
want to fly into his face like a mother cat protecting her young with
unsheathed claws.

"I never suspected," she murmured. She shuddered suddenly.
"I think I could cheerfully kill him."