For that matter, looking her father in the eye … Okay, she could see why Da would have a problem with her mother writing to John Grey. Despite her perturbation, a shocked giggle escaped her and she clapped a hand to her mouth.
“I do like women,” he’d told her once, exasperated. “I admire and honor them, and for several of the sex I feel considerable affection—your mother among them, though I doubt the sentiment is reciprocated.” Her diaphragm gave a small, disconcerted lurch at that. “Oh, really?” she murmured, recalling his last remark on the subject: “I do not, however, seek pleasure in their beds. Do I speak plainly enough?”
“Loud and clear, your lordship,” she said aloud, torn between shock and amusement. People changed, of course—but surely not that much. She shook her head. Her breathing had slowed, but her bodice still felt too tight. She put a finger in the top of her stays to pull them out a little, and then felt the tremble in her chest.
“Oh, bloody hell …” she whispered, and grabbed the edge of the stool to keep from falling. All the blood had left her head and her vision had gone white. Her heart had stopped again. Literally. Stopped.
One … two … three … beat, goddammit, beat! In panic, she thumped the heel of her hand hard against her breastbone. And then gasped when it did start beating, with shock at the startling thud in her chest, as much as with relief. And then it was off like a hare at a greyhound race, juddering in her chest, leaving her breathless and terrified, hand pressed flat to her chest.
“Stop it, stop it, stop it …” she whispered through clenched teeth. It had stopped before, the racing … it would stop again … But it didn’t.
“Bree? Where did you—Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ!”
Her mother was suddenly there, snatching the crumpled paper out of her hand, seizing her with a strong arm round her waist.
“Down,” her mother said, calm and authoritative. “Sit all the way down. Yes, that’s it—” Her skirts bloomed around her as she sank to the floor, a yellowish cloud flickering through the white haze. Hands braced flat on the floor, she resisted her mother’s pressure to lie down, shaking her head.
“No.” She didn’t seem to have any connection with her voice, but she heard it, hoarse but clear. “Be okay. It’s okay.”
“All right.” A creak of boards; her mother eased down beside her, and she heard the scrape of a wooden cup against the floorboards. Warmth … her mother’s hand wrapped round her wrist, a thumb moving in search of a pulse.
Good luck with that one, she thought muzzily. But as she thought it, the racing eased. A confused halt, one or two random beats, and then her heart quietly resumed its normal operations, as though nothing had happened.
It had, though, and she lifted her head to find her mother’s eyes fixed on her face, with a look of intent thoughtfulness she knew all too well. The heron.
“I’m fine,” she said firmly, trying anyway. “Just—I just got light-headed for a minute.”
One of her mother’s brows twitched up, but Claire said nothing. Her hand was still wrapped around Brianna’s telltale wrist.
“Really. It’s nothing,” she said, detaching herself from her mother’s grip.
Each time, she’d told herself it was nothing.
“When did it start?” Claire’s eyes were normally a soft amber—except when she was being a doctor. Then they went a sharp, dark-pupiled yellow, like the eyes of a bird of prey.
“When you told me you— Jesus, did you just tell me …” Brianna got her feet under her and rose. Cautiously, but her heart went on quietly beating, just as it should. It’s nothing.
“Yes, I did. And I don’t mean this time,” her mother said dryly, rising, too. “When did it first happen?”
She debated lying, but the urge to keep denying that anything was truly amiss was fading fast against the need—the hope—of being reassured.
“Right after we came through the stones on Ocracoke. It was—I didn’t think I’d make it.” The giddiness threatened to come back with the memory of that … that … Her gorge rose suddenly, and she leaned over and threw up, a light spatter of half-digested porridge on the clean new boards of the surgery.
“Dear me.” Her mother’s voice was mild. “You aren’t pregnant, are you?”
“Don’t even think it!” She shuddered, wiping her mouth on her apron. “I can’t be.” She hadn’t even thought of the possibility, and wasn’t about to start. She was already haunted by the idea that she might die and leave Jem and Mandy …
“On Ocracoke,” she repeated, getting hold of herself. “I came out of the stones with Mandy in my arms. I couldn’t see—it was all black and white spots, and I thought I was going to faint, and then I sort of did … I was lying on the ground and I still had hold of Mandy; she was fighting to get loose and yelling, ‘Mummy, Mummy!’ but I couldn’t answer her and then I realized my heart wasn’t beating. I thought I was dying.” She smelled something sweet and pungent, and her mother wrapped Bree’s fingers around a cup and guided it to her lips.
“You’re not going to die,” her mother said, with a welcome tone of conviction. Bree nodded, wanting to believe it, even though her heart was still skipping beats, leaving moments of emptiness in her chest. She sipped the liquid; it was whisky, sweetened with honey, and with something herbal and very fragrant in it.
She closed her eyes and concentrated on taking slow sips, willing things to settle down, to go back to normal. Her surroundings were beginning to come back. The sun from the big window fell warm on her shoulders.
“How often has it happened?”
She swallowed, savoring the sweetness that was seeping into her bloodstream, and opened her eyes.
“Four times, before now. At Ocracoke, then again the next night. We were camping, on the road.” She flinched at the memory; lying rigid on the ground next to Roger, the children asleep between them. Her heart racing, fists clenched not to grab Roger’s arm and shake him awake. “That was bad—it went on for hours. Or at least it seemed like hours. It stopped finally, just before dawn.” She’d felt wrung out, limp as the dew-damp clothes that wrapped her limbs; she still remembered the terrible effort needed to rise, to put one foot in front of the other …
The next time had been a week later, on a barge in the Yadkin River, and the last before this on the road from Cross Creek to Salisbury.
“Those weren’t so bad. Just a few minutes—like this one.” She took another sip, held it in her mouth, then swallowed and looked up at her mother. “Do you know what it is?”
Her mother was wiping up the last of the vomit from the raw floorboards, lips compressed, a pair of vertical lines visible between her soft brows.
“There’s a limit to what I can say for certain, lacking an EKG,” Claire said, eyes on the cloth she was using. “But speaking very generally—it sounds as though you’re exhibiting something called atrial fibrillation. It’s not life threatening,” she added quickly, looking up and seeing the alarm on Bree’s face.
Her heart had given a sort of flopping leap at her mother’s words, and was beating now in what seemed a tentative fashion. Her knees were quivering and she sat down, quite suddenly. Her mother dropped the cloth, got down beside her, and pulled her close. Her face was half buried in her mother’s coarse gray apron, smelling of grease and rosemary, soft soap and cider. The smell of the cloth, of Mama’s body, brought helpless tears to her eyes. Maybe it wasn’t life threatening, but she could tell that it wasn’t nothing, either.