Read Dream Time (historical): Book I for Free Online Page B

storage house. “We’d best shell these, if we gonna get them cooked in time.”
    “Not now, Pulykara,” she said, her eye ever on the doorless opening, which gave full view of the veranda. Then she saw him. He had come out onto the veranda and halted at the steps. Indecision showed in his stance, the way his body was half-turned toward the hitching post and half toward her hut; the way his head was lowered, the way his hands rubbed against each other.
    You need me. You need me.
    As if her thoughts empowered his footsteps, he descended the steps and began walking in the hut’s direction. His body blocked the sunlight that had heated the entrance. Pulykara turned toward him. “Yes, suh?”
    “The lady. I would like to speak to her alone.”
    The ever-grateful, ever-protective Pulykara shot her a wondering glance, then rose from her squatting position before the mound of peas and limped past the captain.
    Alone with Nan, he said nothing. She helped him. “The baby is due in a week or so. We should be married by a clergyman soon. I’ll need a midwife. Pulykara will be worth your purchase, also.”
    She saw his dubious expression. “You won’t be sorry, Captain. I’ll be a good wife for you.”
    And she meant it.
     
     
    She hadn’t even known his name. Captain Tom Livingston. She gazed at him while he slept. The flickering light of the sperm candle lent him a little-boy look. Yet he had served in what was formerly the American colonies and against Napoleon’s forces in India.
    He had come to her twice this week. Using his rank, he had appropriated a small hut used by a night guard. The hut was filthy and the bedlinens stank, but at least she was sleeping on a mattress for the first time in almost a year. Within a few days, Tom assured her, a house on post would be vacated for them.
    Tom had a gentle touch. Out of concern for her condition, he had not taken her. Out of respect for his condition, having gone so long without a woman, she brought him to a climax. Using her hand and mouth. Acts that would have appalled her a short year ago.
    She drew the sheet up over his sprawled body. The gnats and mosqui toes were horrendous. Tomorrow, she would have Pulykara see about getting netting. Her gaze was almost tender, and she hoped she wasn’t falling in love with him. Her foolish love for Miles Randolph had brought upon her humiliation and degradation that months of captivity had only intensified. She could never let herself be weakened by love again.
    “Nan?” Tom stirred and flung out an arm across her chest.
    “I’m here, Tom. I’ll always be here for you.”
    He didn’t hear her. He was snoring softly.
     
     
    The following week, Nan began having contractions. Pain came unexpectedly, shooting up her belly as she bent over a large staved bucket to wash a pair of Tom’s trousers. At her groan, Pulykara glanced back at her. Seeing Nan’s face contorted by pain, the aborigine woman laid aside the damp clothing she had been hanging on the line of hemp stretched between two golden wattle trees.
    “Your time upon you, baby?” she asked, crossing to Nan.
    Nan grunted an assent and let the black woman lead her to the house. At that moment, she was more grateful than ever to Tom that he had put up little objection about buying Pulykara from bondage.
    If Nan expected the relieving comfort of bed, Pulykara vanquished that idea. “The stool. Sit on it, baby, and whenever you feel the pushing, you move forward and squat.”
    While Pulykara sat on her haunches and observed, Nan went into quiet agony. The pain was ripping her apart. It radiated outward from the lower part of her abdomen, firing through her veins and muscles ever upward, flicking like the overseer’s whip that rent at flesh and blood. Her brain exploded with the pain.
    Yet she bit back her screams. In silence she suffered, because she knew to be weak now would lose her Pulykara’s respect. Nan needed that authority. Some sense of control of her life.