Sunset Embrace Read Online Free PDF Page A

Victorias death. He noticed first her hair, a. veritable bramble bush of undisciplined curls with dried leaves and God knew what else entwined in its masses. What kind of woman goes around with her hair unbound in the first place? Only one kind Ross Colemen knew of.
    From the back she looked terribly thin in the nightgown. The ankles poking out of its hem were narrow. Her feet were small. And dirty. God. He didn't need this disruption after the grievous days he had suffered.
    "I don't want that girl touching my baby," he muttered in disgust. "Just all of you please leave me and my son alone. If he must die, let him die in peace."
    "Thank heaven someone around here has held on to reason."
    "Shut up," Ma told Leona Watkins as she shoved her aside on her way to reach Ross. "You seem to be a reasonable man, Mr. Coleman. Why won't you let Lydia feed your boy and at least try to save his life? He'll starve otherwise."
    "We've tried everything," Ross said impatiently He plowed through his thick dark hair with frustrated fingers. "He wouldn't take cow's milk from a bottle. He wouldn't take the sugar water we spooned into him last night."
    "He needs mother's milk. And that girl's nipples are oozing it."
    "Oh, my Lord," Leona Watkins said.
    Ross cast another glance at the girl. She stood between him and the pale lantern light, making the outline of her body visible through the thin nightgown. Her breasts did look heavy. The voluptuousness of them repelled him. Why was she traipsing around wearing only a nightgown? Even if she were sick after childbirth, no decent woman would let other people, particularly men, see her like that. His lip curled in revulsion, and he wondered what cathouse the girl had been dredged up from. Victoria would have been horrified at the sight of her.
    "I won't have a slut nursing Victoria's baby," he said tightly.
    "You don't know her circumstances any more than I do."
    "She's trash!" he shouted. The anger he had harbored against the world since Victorias unfair death finally erupted. The girl happened to be a convenient scapegoat. "You don't know where she came from, who she is. Only one kind of woman has a baby without a husband around to take care of her."
    "Maybe once, yes, but not since the war. And not since the whole countryside is crawlin' with renegades and no-goods and Yankee carpetbaggers who think everythin' and everyone in the South now belongs to them. We don't know what she's suffered. Remember, she lost her own baby two days ago."
    Lydia was mindless of the argument. Her attention had been captured by the infant boy. His skin had an unhealthy pallor. Lydia had never seen a newborn other than her own. This one was even smaller, and his meager size alarmed her. Could anything that small live?
    His fingers, balled as they were into tight fists, were almost translucent. His eyes were closed as he breathed in light, shallow pants. His stomach rose and fell jumpily. His crying was jagged, as though he had to pause often to rest and collect his shrinking supply of air. But the weak crying was incessant. And it was like a Lorelei's song to Lydia. Inexorably it drew her to the child.
    She felt a tugging deep inside her womb, not unlike the labor contractions but without the pain. Her heart seemed to expand, crowding her already swollen breasts. They tingled, not with the flow of rich milk, but with a need to succor, a compulsion to render maternal comfort.
    She watched, unaware she was even moving, as her finger touched the baby's smooth cheek. Then her hand slid beneath his head, which she could easily cup in her palm.. Moving slowly, fearful that she would hurt him, she slid her other hand under his bottom and lifted him from the crate. Staring into the wrinkled, mottled face, she sank onto a low, three-legged stool.
    The baby's thin legs thrashed and his feet kicked against her stomach. She turned him sideways into the crook of her arm. The small head bobbed and the wizened face rooted against her