JADE STAR by Catherine Coulter

‘I don’t know if I want to hear any more of this story, Saint.’

‘It ends well, I promise.’

He waited, hearing her scream, softer now because her throat was raw from her cries, saw her arch, and said, ‘Push, Byrony!’ He knew she was trying, but she was weakening. Jules, where are you?

It was four o’clock in the morning. Nearing dawn. When most deaths and most births occurred. He shook himself.

Byrony struggled to hold to something real, not to be dragged into the endless pit. ‘Tell me, Saint!’

‘Yes, well, one day they wheeled in the body of a man who’d just expired at the

hospital. The professor, Old Hook Nose, we young men called him, was waving his scalpel about, on the point of demonstrating to us stupid students how one was to proceed. But you see, Byrony, the man wasn’t dead. I grabbed Old Hook Nose’s wrist just as it was descending. There was a lot of shouting and cursing that 1, a wretched student, would dare attack such a venerable man. But I’d seen the eyelids of the ‘dead man’ flicker. I thank the good Lord to this day that I’m a large man. I had to fight off a good ten men, Old Hook Nose included. Then, my dear, the supposed dead man opened his eyes. It was he, Robert Gallagher, who named me Saint.’ ‘Saint, make it stop!’

He wondered briefly if she’d even understood him. He held her, felt the awful wrenching pain, and knew he must do something or she would be too weak to birth the child. She would die, and the child with her.

‘Byrony, listen to me!’ He clasped her face between his large hands, shaking her until her eyes focused on his face. ‘I’m going to help You, do you hear me? No, don’t close your eyes. Look at me, Byrony! Here’s what you’ll do.)

He felt her tears wet his hands and wanted to weep himself. For her, for Jules. For poor

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Robert Gallagher, who’d been run down by a carriage six months after Saint had saved hin-I from being cut open by Old Hook Nose.

Dear God, what was happening? Sunlight poured through the bedroom windows. He glanced a moment toward the clock.

‘We got company, Mr. Wilkes,’ Hawkins said, poking his head into the cave. ‘Six, seven men, riding slow, tracking.’

‘Ah,’ Wilkes said., his eyes turning toward Jules. He saw the wild hope in her eyes. ‘No, my dear, it won’t be your husband, at least it shouldn’t be. He wouldn’t leave a woman in labor, now, would he?’

‘I bet it’s that gambler Hammond, the man who started the nigger town.5

‘Yes, I suppose so. They’re all so honorable, aren’t they?’

‘They aren’t scum like you,’Jules said. ‘Now, little girlie – ‘ Hawkins began. ‘Shut up, both of you,’Wilkes said, and got

to his feet. He cursed the damned pain, but managed to keep his expression impassive. He wanted more opium, needed it desperately, but he couldn’t allow himself to escape, not yet. He said to Jules, ‘You will stay put, my dear, or I will kill Mr. Hammond.

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Hawkins, you come with me.’

Jules watched the two men leave. She scrambled to her feet, looking about frantically for a weapon, any kind of weapon. She feverishly clawed through the bedrolls. Nothing. She felt dirty, her bones ached from sleeping on the dirt cave floor, and she was more afraid than she had ever been in her life. Before, it had been just her. Now it was Brent.

She crept toward the cave opening and peered out. She could see Wilkes’s back, Hawkins just behind him, and Grabbler off to her left in the notch of a pine tree. She saw the ocean beyond, calm, gray like a whitetip reef shark.

‘This is it,’ Josh said, his voice low, nearly a whisper.

‘Yes,’Brent said, nodding. He looked up at the cliff above them and scanned the wall. He heard a horse nicker. He held up his hand for silence, then rode forward a bit.

He called out, ‘All right, Wilkes. We are here. What the hell do you want?’ ‘Hammond?’

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