Winnie suddenly pushed hard on the baby's rear. Chloe flinched, crying out. Elise twisted and met the older woman's gaze. Winnie straightened and gave a small but significant shake of her head. Elise gently massaged Chloe's wrists before reaching for the rag floating in a water basin beside the bed. Elise wrung out the rag and wiped the girl's forehead. Chloe writhed.
"Shhh," Elise soothed. "It'll soon be over."
"Nay!" Chloe shoved at her hand. "I've killed my own bairn."
Elise wiped Chloe's neck. The girl's body clenched. "Winnie!" Elise called, but Winnie was already pressing down on the baby.
Chloe jerked and would have bolted upright, but Elise grabbed her shoulders and shoved her deep into the mattress.
"I've killed him," Chloe whimpered.
She relaxed, the contraction receding, but her weeping continued. Elise looked at Winnie, who again placed a hand over the baby's buttocks and tried forcing the head into position. Elise watched the skillful hands at work. Winnie had an uncanny knack for understanding the core of a problem. She always had some potion ready for any ailment. But no potion could be concocted for Chloe. The girl no longer wept. She lay, eyes closed, her tear-stained face resigned.
With a short nod to Elise, Winnie pressed down on Chloe's stomach again. Elise held Chloe's arms. The girl did little more than grunt when Winnie bore down on her stomach. Another contraction struck. Chloe's hips arched off the bed. Elise bit her lip to keep the tears in check. How much more could the girl endure? She'd labored for twenty-two hours. Soon, she would grow too weak to birth the child.
Winnie pressed down on the baby for an agonizing hour and a half, then abruptly took a quick step back and reached beneath the sheet covering Chloe's legs. Elise felt a sudden jerk on Chloe's body, and the girl nearly wrenched free of her hold.
"Hold her!" Winnie shouted.
Elise closed her eyes. Chloe screamed. Elise heard a loud swooshing noise and her eyes shot open as Chloe went limp.
No loud wail followed.
Chloe bolted upright. "Give him to me!"
"Now, Chloe," Winnie cooed, her back to them. "Let me take the babe and—"
"Nay!" Chloe screamed. "Give me my bairn."
Winnie looked over her shoulder. "Chloe, 'tis best if ye don't see him." Her eyes softened. "Trust me, lass, I know."
Chloe looked at Winnie, her face suddenly far older than her nineteen years. "He's mine. I have the right to hold him." Her pained expression deepened.
A pain of the soul, not the body. One Elise knew all too well.
"The bairn is a part of me," Chloe ended simply.
Winnie sighed, then faced them. Elise told herself to avert her gaze, but maternal instinct, the memory of her own lost child, brought her gaze to bear on the beautifully formed babe. Winnie placed him in his mother's arms. Chloe cradled him as tenderly as if he had lived. She wiped the blood from his face, then traced his mouth with a gentle finger. She looked up at Winnie.
"He has Daniel's mouth."
"Aye," Winnie replied.
Chloe began to rock as she sang in a low voice. The Gaelic words were as Greek to Elise but the meaning was clear. Unshed tears stung her eyes. The picture of mother and child blurred with the memory of holding her own dear Amelia, the feel of her daughter's skin, baby soft against her breast. Elise's gaze focused on the blood-smeared body of Chloe's child. Were things so different for her? Did Chloe love the nameless child any less than she had loved Amelia?
Love had deepened for Amelia as time passed. Yet she and Chloe shared the same pain that came with lost possibilities. The young woman had glimpsed her husband in their child. Elise had seen much of Robert in Amelia. Who would the children have grown up to be? Who would they have fallen in love with? What children might they have brought into the world?
Winnie snatched the child from Chloe's arms. Chloe's tear-filled gaze locked on the babe as Winnie whirled and disappeared through the door. Elise froze. She was alone with the grief stricken mother. Her own loss, instead of creating a bridge between them, had widened the chasm, bringing her to the precipice where roiled unrealized emotions, more bittersweet memories—and another, deeper, more concrete conviction that she, too, had failed as a mother.
"I killed him," Chloe whispered.
Elise stared. When had it happened? What had been the defining moment in history when womankind became convinced that if anything went awry in the lives of those they loved, they were somehow responsible? Had it begun with Eve? Had the beguiling serpent planted the seed that all mankind would suffer as a result of her misdeed? Elise fell to her knees beside Chloe's bed.
"No." She took the shaking girl into her arms. "It isn't your fault. It's no one's fault."
Chloe clung to her, her tears bathing Elise's neck.
It seemed hours later when Elise heard the creak of the door and looked up to see Winnie standing in the doorway. Winnie's gaze went to Chloe, who slept, then came back to Elise. Elise rose from the bed and tiptoed across the floor. Winnie stepped from the doorway and Elise followed, quietly closing the door behind her. The porch, not long ago filled with friends and neighbors joyously awaiting the arrival of the newest MacGregor, now held only silence.
"You told Daniel?" Elise asked.
"Aye."