Push!” Mary Stewart responded more to her own need than the midwife’s urging. Her pale fingers clawed at the bed sheeting as another contraction shook her body and beads of perspiration glistened on her forehead and upper lip. She smiled faintly as Jenny McKee blotted her face with a cool, damp cloth. “Will it be […]

Kenna Dunne edged closer to the banister, keeping her body in the shadows on the landing. Between the smooth oaken posts smelling faintly of beeswax, one eye was opened wide and scanning the flurry of activity in the lighted hallway below. Kenna fought back a giggle as Henderson assisted the most recent guest with her […]

The small room was already smoke-filled. As if it were their voices which gave meaning to the issues, the men in the chamber talked on. Only in one area was there silence. The seat was occupied by a purposeful young man—his movements revealed this aspect of his nature—but in this cancerous haze, where men’s voices […]

She was dead. There was no question about that. Looking at her, Nathan’s wiry young body became still as stone, and his eyes, lightly gray and ringed in blue, darkened with fear. He paused half in and out of the bedroom and wondered what he should do. He had seen dead people before, but they […]

There was no room to stretch. Of all the discomforts one experienced traveling by stagecoach, the lack of leg and elbow room was at the forefront of McCall Landry’s mind. He imagined extending his long legs to the opposite bench seat and resting his bootheels between the corpulent assemblyman on the left and the snake […]