Chapter 5: A Secret

Vincent’s eyelids fluttered.

When Vincent first became aware of the world again, he saw a beautiful sight hovering over him. “Ulani?” he said with a croak. She looked down on him. She didn’t seem happy to see him. Another face joined hers. It was an old man’s face, complete with a long white beard and the bushiest eyebrows, Vincent had ever seen.

The old man placed his hand on Vincent’s head, “I think the fever has abated, at last, Princess. If he hadn’t been so healthy, he would have died.”

Ulani huffed, “I couldn’t be that lucky,” she replied grumpily. She was tired and out of sorts from nursing him for the last four days and just having him near her.

She had been in one of the back paddocks when she heard the shooting. She had approached the new road cautiously and found Vincent. She was surprised he was alive. She had managed to get him to his feet and onto her horse. He was mumbling and seemed delirious, so she guessed that he wasn’t aware of who she was.

He had lost consciousness again when she got up behind him. She had to go slow to get him back to the house because he was a dead -weight in her arms. Her stableman helped her get him down and into a bedroom. She had stripped off his coat and shirt and noticed the deep redness around the wound.

She sniffed the wound and smelt something funny. She realised the shooter had soaked the lead of his bullets in poison before making the bullets. A cowardly act if she had ever seen one. The problem was that she didn’t know what the poison was.

Druid Feather looked at the wound and he too sniffed. “I think I know what it is my dear, I’ll make the antidote but it will be touch and go. The longer he goes untreated then the likelihood of him recovering diminishes. We need to get the shot out of his shoulder first, so the poison doesn’t keep leaking out of it.”

They were too far from town to get more professional help to save him, so they treated him themselves. The shot had hit his left collarbone. Druid Feather explained to Ulani that he must have been side-on to the shooter.

If he had been facing the shooter, he would have been dead. As it was, the bullet skimmed along his collarbone before stopping near his shoulder. It was embedded just under the skin. They dug it out and poured copulas amounts of peroxide on the long gouge in his flesh and the now open wound where the bullet had stopped.

The Druid removed a chip of bone but determined the rest of the collarbone was cracked but not broken. It and his shoulder would be painful, while the wound and bone healed. Now they needed to counteract the poison. They would need to keep the wound open for a couple of days so they could flush it and let it drain.

Vincent wasn’t happy when at regular intervals; they poured the mixture to counteract the poison and his fever, down his throat. They also bathed and repacked the wound twice a day. Vincent was in and out of consciousness and delirious until the fever broke four days later.

Ulani had been his primary night nurse during his fight with death. At one stage, he had been so cold and thrashing around so much, she feared she would lose him. She had climbed into the bed with him to keep him warm. He had quietened when she did, and he settled into her side.

She had woken several hours later to find Vincent nuzzling at her breast, and his hand was between her thighs pushing his finger into her. She had no idea how he had managed to undo the buttons of the top of her nightie with his injured arm, but he had. He had his hot lips wrapped around her nipple and was suckling earnestly.

He had also managed to pull her nightdress up and now had his fingers buried in her as far as he could get them. His leg was over hers, and his erection pushed rhythmically into her thigh. She removed his face from her breast and looked down at him.

“Vincent what are you doing?” she had said. He was still pumping his fingers into her, as hard as he could. Ulani found herself responding despite herself. It had been so long since he had last touched her and she found it hard to stop him from doing what he was doing to her.

“I love you Ulani,” he had murmured trying to reclaim her breast when she pushed him off. He wasn’t cognisant she realised, and he was still delirious. She let go of his face, and he immediately reclaimed her breast. She squirmed, trying to get out of the bed. It only made him suck harder and fuck into her harder with his fingers.

“My Ulani,” she heard him mumble against her breast before he wrapped his tongue back around her taut nipple. She finally managed to push him off her and crawled out of the bed in a hurry. She was shaken by what he had been doing to her. He groped for her.

Her throbbing cunnie wanted her to let him finish what he had started but her common sense wouldn’t let it have its way. She got the mixture down him, while she tried to avoid his wandering hands and he finally lapsed back into unconsciousness. She laid him out on the bed again and checked to see if he had stressed the wound.

He was quiet for a little while and then he murmured and started thrashing again when she moved away. She stayed and bathed him and let the tears of frustration and worry coarse down her cheeks. As long as she kept in skin contact, he lay still. His fever broke early the next morning.

Ulani woke to find her head was on his chest and his arms wrapped around her. Vincent looked at Ulani as she sat up groggily when he had moved. He vaguely remembered sucking on her lovely breasts. But he guessed it was just a pleasant dream. He felt as weak as a newborn.

“Where am I?” he croaked. His throat was very dry.

“You’re on my estate,” Ulani told him. She wasn’t really happy that he was here. She had always checked before going to visit Prue and Tah that he wasn’t in town. Plus she had something of his that he wasn’t going to be happy to find out she had.

That something came barrelling through the door. “Man wake, mummy?” the little boy asked peering intently at Vincent.

Vincent looked into the boy’s eyes and found a copy of his own eyes staring back at him. He even had the same intensity of his stare that Ty said he had perfected at a young age.

Ulani’s lips tightened. “Victor what have I told you about barging into a room uninvited?” she scolded him.

The boy looked up at her. He gave her one of Vincent’s ‘but you love me’ smiles and hugged her waist. “Mummy, see man,” he told her.

Vincent pulled himself up, slowly. His left shoulder throbbed. He knew the boy was his. The kid had Arrondale written all over him. He felt a pull towards the child, and it strengthened his belief. He guessed the boy was about three. He was a sturdy boy and tall for his age just as he had been.

He looked at Ulani. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked quietly. He felt a deep hurt that she hadn’t told him about their son.

“He is mine,” she spat. “I told you I wanted nothing from you. Would you have believed me that I wasn’t trying to trap you if I’d told you?” she said with heat.

Vincent looked at his son. He shook his head slowly. No, he wouldn’t have believed her. Now he had lost the first three years of his son’s life. For nearly four years, he hadn’t had Ulani in his bed, in his life. He still dreamed of her.

No woman felt like her, smelt like her or responded to him as she had. By the Gods, she had even filled his dreams when he had been delirious. Her smell surrounded him. He looked her up and down. She was magnificent.

Her breasts were larger than he remembered, but she had retained her figure. Her waist was still tiny. Her hips might be a bit wider, but then again in those pants that just made her even more desirable to him.

Ulani had felt too vulnerable in the nighty and had changed a couple of hours before. She didn’t remember falling back to sleep on him. Since Prue had introduced the new skirt-pants, the legs had gotten slimmer, and they didn’t look a lot different from men’s loose-legged pants.

Many women in rural areas, in particular, had adopted them for farm work. On Ulani, they just looked as sexy as hell, as far as Vincent was concerned. Vincent felt his desire for her squirm its way to his crotch. He had to lift his leg to hide his reaction.

“Victor, go find Nanny Dee. You can talk to the man when he is feeling better,” she told the boy.

Victor tipped his head and looked at his father and then turned and barrelled back out of the door. Vincent had to smile, as he watched him go. The Druid had come in as the boy left. He checked Vincent’s temperature and pronounced that he would live and then he left the room. He had a feeling that the couple had some issues to sort out.

He had always known that Ulani was in love with the father of her child, but he had never pressed her for information. One look at the boy with Vincent told him who the father was. He had suspected, by Ulani’s bad temper the last couple of days that this was who the man was.

Vincent and Ulani looked at each other. Ulani finally spoke. “You will probably have to stay here for a few more weeks until you can travel. Your collarbone won’t take much to break so you can’t even ride in a cart. I’ll send a message to Tah to tell them where you are. Druid Feather will keep an eye on you until then,” she informed him as she stood to leave.

“What about Victor?” Vincent asked.

“I’ll keep him away, so he doesn’t bother you,” she said tightly.

“You’ll deny me the company of my son?” he said angrily.

Ulani turned back. “You didn’t want him before, so what should it matter now? Get better and go away, Vincent. Forget us. Go back to your mistresses, we don’t need you or want you here,” she told him equally angry.

She stormed out of the room.

For the next week, Ulani and the boy stayed away from him for the most part.

Druid Feather kept Vincent fed and got him to make slow laps of the room to regain his strength. He was surprised by how weak he felt and was easily tired the first few days. The Druid told Vincent that the poison was the cause of his weakness. He told Vincent that, as his body purged the last of the poison from his system, he would get better faster.

Vincent did manage to send a report back to Ty. He had noticed Victor peek in on him occasionally when he must have escaped his mother or nanny. However, the boy didn’t come in when Vincent invited him to and he soon disappeared.

By the end of the week, he was sick of being cooped up in the room and made his way to the library, which the Druid had said was down the hall. He found a big comfortable chair and collapsed into it. He was surprised by how much of his energy it had taken to get him there. He felt a tap on his knee and Victor stood in front of him.

The boy handed him a book and crawled up into the chair to snuggle under his good arm. He laid his head against Vincent and stuck his thumb in his mouth, waiting for the story. Vincent read about ten pages and then nodded off.

He woke about an hour later to find Ulani gently lifting their sleeping son from his side and out of his arms where he had been cradling him. She walked out with the boy but didn’t say a word to him. Vincent felt a deep sadness and slowly made his way back to his own room.

He found himself in the library again the next day at the same time, but his son wasn’t there. He waited for an hour, but he didn’t come. Despondent, Vincent went back to his room and crawled back into his bed.

Vincent was surprised that he wept.

By the end of the second week on the farm, he had started feeling more like his old self.

Each day he had managed to walk further and further from the house and his collarbone was well on the mend. On this day, he ended up at a paddock that contained a herd of Unos. This herd had deep red fleece. The fleece was long and curled loosely. It was also all in the one shade.

The long floppy ears and the 15cm long gleaming white central horn on their foreheads made for a bizarre animal. Uno’s had longer legs and necks than their cousins the goat and. They did have cloven hooves and were known to like eating shrubs as well as grass. Any fruit or nut they found was fair game.