This Place is Death (A Curse Keepers Secret) by Denise Grover Swank Page A

prompted, her voice shaky.
    He looked into his wife’s worry-filled eyes, barely able to speak. “She’s beautiful, Ellie.”
    A single tear slid down her cheek.
    Ananias’s chest burned with a joy he had never known. God had blessed him with a beautiful, loving wife and now a child. Inside this stuffy hut, his world was a cocoon of happiness. But he couldn’t forget what lay in wait outside the door. Their new world was one of hardship and pain. He would allow himself this moment of pure joy, for who knew if he’d experience it again in this lifetime, as long or as short as that might be.
    He caressed his wife’s cheek, his fingertips trailing over her soft skin. “Are you well? The labor took so long… I worried…”
    She reached up and pulled his face to hers. “I am well. Just very, very tired.”
    Ananias kissed her lightly, as though she might break if he pressed too hard. “You and this child are the most important things to me in the world. I’ll do anything to protect you.”
    “I know,” she murmured softly. “And it makes me love you even more.”
    “What do you wish to name her?” he asked.
    She closed her eyes, and he worried for a moment that her exhaustion had rendered her unconscious, but she smiled slightly. “Virginia. I want to name her after her new home.”
    If naming her after this godforsaken land brought them luck, Ananias was all for it, but he worried the opposite might be true. Would it bring her doom? No matter, for he could refuse his wife nothing.
    Coming to the New World had been proof of that.
    Shouts arose outside, and Ananias nearly jumped off the bed, ready to protect his new family of three, but when the door pushed open, his father-in-law’s face appeared in the light-filled crack. “You have born the babe?”
    “Aye,” Elinor smiled. “You now have a granddaughter.”
    John turned his back to them, facing the crowd outside their home. “I’m a grandfather!”
    Cheers and whistles filled the air in celebration, despite the fact that everyone already knew. With boredom and exhaustion as their common companions, the colonists devoured new information within minutes.
    John remained outside the door as his friends expressed their well wishes to the governor. When he ducked through the doorway into the shelter, his presence consumed the small space that had been built to hold less than a handful of people. “May I see her?”
    Elinor nodded and handed the baby to Ananias. He gathered his daughter gently in his arms. Virginia’s eyes were closed as she slept, probably worn out from the journey she had taken. As he cradled her close, love washed through him, tightening his chest so much it was difficult to breathe. This child was his blood, his hope of a legacy.
    John reached for the baby, but Ananias hesitated, wariness spiking the hairs on his arms.
    Together, Ananias and Elinor had created a precious life, and it was up to him to do everything in his power to protect her. He suddenly worried that he might need to protect her from her grandfather.
    Elinor noticed his hesitation. “Go on, Ananias. Hand Virginia over.”
    Ananias chided himself. This child was John White’s legacy as well, and there was no good reason for him to deny his wife’s request. He placed the sleeping babe in his father-in-law’s outstretched arms.
    John looked down at his granddaughter. “You have named her Virginia?”
    “Does this please you, Father?” Ananias heard the anxiety in Elinor’s voice.
    John nodded. “Very much so.”
    “I’m sorry it wasn’t a boy.”
    Ananias’s head jerked toward his wife. Though he knew of her deep-seated fear that her father would have loved her more if she had been a boy, he hadn’t understood how much she’d wished to give him a grandson.
    Ananias was now very pleased that his child was a girl.
    But John shook his head with a smile. “No, my sweet Elinor. We must be grateful with all that the Lord provides for us. Even when what He provides