Harlequin Love Inspired March 2021--Box Set 2 of 2 Patrice Lewis (i read book txt) 📖

“Sure. It’s not hard to do with a baby in the sling, or on a blanket in the shade.”

“Then yes, that would be great. Danke.”

He seemed to have gotten over his moodiness from yesterday, Jane thought. She fed and diapered the baby, tidied the house, then bundled Mercy in the sling, grabbed a blanket and a couple of buckets and headed outside to the raspberry patch.

The day was warm, and she was glad some of the patch was shaded by a generous maple tree. She stripped Mercy down to just her diaper and laid her on a blanket under the tree and picked nearly two gallons of berries before the baby got squirmy and Jane was sweaty.

“Wow, that’s a lot of berries.” Levy came around the corner of the house and peered at the buckets.

“It will certainly add to your inventory of things to sell on Saturday, once I get these turned into jam. Is it lunchtime already?”

“If my growling stomach is any indication,” he joked, and just then, Jane’s own stomach made noises. They both laughed.

He glanced at the baby. “It’s not too hot out here for her?”

“No worse for her than for you or me.” Jane leaned down and lifted Mercy, whose face was beaded with sweat. She wiped the infant with a corner of her apron. “But ja, she seems warm. I’m ready to go inside.”

She slipped Mercy into the sling and picked up one of the buckets of berries. Levy grabbed the other and she followed him into the kitchen.

“It’s just going to be sandwiches for lunch today.” She put the baby in her bouncy chair on the table and bustled around the kitchen, preparing food.

Levy washed his hands and made himself a sandwich from the ingredients Jane laid out. He sat at the table and looked at Mercy. “She seems awfully quiet today.”

“She’s probably just warm.” Jane sat down and took a bite of her own sandwich. “She was quiet while I was picking raspberries, which was gut.”

Levy gulped some cool water and finished his sandwich. He grabbed a few oatmeal-raisin cookies from the supply Jane had made yesterday. “I’m heading back to work.”

Jane looked at the buckets of raspberries and sighed. Making jam was hot work, and it was already a hot day.

At least Mercy stayed quiet while she worked. It took all afternoon, but Jane preserved sixteen pints of jam from the berries she’d picked that morning.

She shoved a damp strand of hair off her forehead as she surveyed her handiwork, satisfied. The jars were lined up on the countertop, cooling on a towel. They looked like jars of rubies. That should bring in a nice bit of extra income for Levy—and herself.

She washed up and glanced at Mercy, who had fallen asleep in her bouncy chair. Jane frowned. The child looked flushed. She laid a hand gently atop the baby’s forehead and nearly gasped at the heat she felt. Mercy had a fever! A high fever! While she was busy working on the jam, the infant entrusted to her care was burning up with fever.

Moving fast, Jane took some of the boiling water from the stove and poured it into the same washbasin she’d used to bathe the baby yesterday, then diluted it with cool water until the bath was just a bit cooler than tepid. She laid a padded towel into the water.

Then she unstrapped the baby and lifted her up. Mercy whimpered but didn’t wake. Jane stripped her bare, then laid the baby into the water, pouring liquid over the heated limbs and belly. Mercy woke up, her eyes glazed with fever, but didn’t cry.

“Please, Gott, let her get better,” Jane whispered. “Please, Gott, let her get better…”

Guilt plagued her. If she’d only paid attention to the baby, not the jam, not her tangled feelings about Levy, not her own fatigue. The baby. Her sole focus should have been the baby.

Jane spent twenty minutes trying to cool down the child. At last she lifted her out of the water and wrapped her in a dry towel, then scoured the house for medicine, anything to lower her fever. She found nothing.

By the time Levy came back in from his work, sweaty and dirty, she was nearly frantic with worry. “Mercy’s sick,” she told him. “She has a high fever. Do you have any baby ibuprofen in the house?”

“Nein, I don’t.” Concern written on his face, he peered at the infant’s flushed skin. “Should I hitch up and go buy some?”

“I think so, ja.” Jane placed the baby over her shoulder and patted her back. “Whatever you do, make sure you don’t get aspirin—babies can’t have it. It should be ibuprofen. And if you’re going out, can you stop at my aunt and uncle’s and let them know I might not be home tonight? I want to stay with her.”

“Ja.” Levy snatched up the sweat-soaked straw hat he had just discarded and put it on his head. “I’ll be back as quick as I can.”

While he was gone, Jane bathed Mercy once again in cool water, praying the fever would lessen.

Levy came back much sooner than anticipated, panting. “We’re taking her to the hospital,” he said without preamble. “Catherine said fevers in babies this young are an emergency. Peter is asking an Englisch neighbor to drive us over there.”

Panic clutched Jane at the thought of Mercy being in danger. “I’ll pack a diaper bag.”

She ran around the house, gathering bottles and formula and clean diapers and other necessary items. And all the while she berated herself for her lack of vigilance. If only she hadn’t picked raspberries. If only she hadn’t made jam. If only…

“Jane, calm down.” Levy, still filthy from his outdoor work, watched her frantic movements.

She stopped in her tracks and covered her face with her hands. “Please, Gott, let her be okay,” she whispered. She looked at Levy and felt the pressure of tears. “I feel like it’s my fault