“The vicar’s eyes are kind,” Val said, “or more accurately, compassionate. Kind and understanding together. He’s not a fool, but he doesn’t judge, either. I gather his predecessor was an old dragon, and Daniel’s more humane approach to scripture is much appreciated. The ladies would be cramming into the pews for the pleasure of observing him; the men would like him because he’s unpretentious and without airs.”
“You liked him,” Fairly accused, frowning at a small pair of snowy porcelain wings.
“Very much,” Val admitted. “I was prepared not to. I wanted not to, in fact.”
Fairly hadn’t touched his drink, and peered around the confines of a roomy library the way a cit peered around in an art gallery—as if he’d never seen his own books before, never seen a hothouse rose gracing an end table. “What changed your mind about the vicar?”
“That’s hard to put a finger on. He apologized for his own untidy study; he suggested that being a vicar’s wife is hard on a woman. He rode that damned horse as if it was fun, and when I wanted to accuse him of flirting with a lovely widow, all I could observe on his part was simple concern for the woman. I could not find one iota of evidence upon which to suspect he’s a seducer of innocents.”
Fairly set the wings down on a handkerchief amid what looked like the remains of a shepherdess or an angel, and crossed to the fireplace, brandishing the iron poker like some household halberd. “Seducers are invariably charming and disarming. Did anybody mention Letty?”
“No one. I made a few comments that should have provoked mention, at least of the old vicar’s family, when I had my dinner in the common of the local watering hole. I might have caught a few raised eyebrows, an odd glance between the neighbors, nothing of substance. No one had anything to say along those lines but what a good fellow the current man is. Nauseating, really.”
“You took three days to determine essentially nothing?”
Determining that Oxfordshire had more than its fair share of pretty widows was not nothing.
“The widow suggested the vicar and his missus are disappointed not to have more children, and that their union is not blissful. What union is?”
“Damned if I know,” Fairly muttered, surrendering his poker to the hearth stand. “Certainly not my parents’, and from what I can gather, not Letty’s parents’ either.”
While Valentine’s parents still flirted after thirty years of marriage. On that baffling thought, Val rose. “If you’ve no further questions for me, I’m off to seek my bed, a hot bath, and some victuals.”
“Stay here tonight,” Fairly suggested. “It’s pouring out there, dark as pitch, and your horse has gone far enough. I keep the first bedroom on the right prepared for guests, because my brothers-in-law will occasionally avail themselves of my hospitality when they’re in Town unaccompanied.”
“Obliged,” Val said, sitting back down and tugging at his right boot. “And this potation, if I do say so myself, is superior even to what you serve at The Pleasure House.”
“It’s superior to what Prinny serves himself.” And Fairly would know exactly what the regent served his guests. “This is from Heathgate’s distillery, his personal reserve. God knows how old it is. He sends over enough to keep on my good side.”
“How fare the marchioness and the countess?” Val asked as he wrestled with his second boot.
“My sisters enjoy good, if gravid, health. I’m more concerned about Amery’s viscountess.”
Val looked up, surprised. He’d met the present Lady Amery when Moreland had taken a notion to meddle in the woman’s affairs. “Guinevere strikes me as an Amazon, one of those frighteningly competent women who could hurl thunderbolts with deadly accuracy and so forth.”
“She can,” Fairly said, and his expression suggested he heartily approved of her ladyship as a result. “But consider the prospect of, say, passing something the size of a melon from your body, and see how sanguine you become.”
“I’ve considered how much Her Grace must love His Grace,” Val replied, staring at his muddy boots. “She bore him eight melons, and none of us are petite, save little Eve, who arrived several weeks early.”
Fatigue was making him daft. Or perhaps the memory of a pretty widow had something to do with a sudden, baffling sense of envy regarding the Duke and Duchess of Moreland’s marriage.
“Did you happen to visit the cemetery?” Fairly asked, resuming his seat and recommencing his fiddling with the shards of porcelain.
“You are like a dog with a bone.” Or like a man besotted for the first time in his life. “The late Vicar Banks and his wife, Elizabeth, are interred, side by side. No other Banks there, and I read every legible headstone.”
And he hadn’t seen any sign of the widow’s late spouse gracing the churchyard either.
“So we really don’t know much more than we did,” Fairly said. “My thanks anyway. Sometimes the failed experiment tells you more than the one that simply confirms your hunches.”
Failed? Three days in the saddle, three days without a decent piano, and one stolen kiss in an overgrown wood to compensate for that lack?
The experiment, as Fairly called it, was not a failure, not for Lord Valentine. He’d be going back to Little Weldon, perhaps as a local landowner, or simply to see the lovely widow again, and sit sipping lemonade on her back porch. He took that pleasant thought up to bed with him, and dreamed in the happy, pastoral key of F major.
***
With rain drenching the morning in gray torrents, Letty went back to her private quarters, a cup of chocolate in hand.
“I love you, you know,” she told the cup.
She’d said those words a week ago to David, who had been scarce in the intervening days—and nights—suggesting Letty’s declaration had not fallen on sleeping ears. Whether he’d heard her words waking or sleeping made no difference, because in making the admission to herself, Letty had allowed some emotional safeguard, some self-discipline, to lapse.
As a result, the prospect of seeing him again had acquired another level of anxiety and another level of desperation.
Voices raised in anger, coming from the kitchen, interrupted her introspection—Etienne and Musette, having another one of their rousing Gallic differences of opinion. Half the time, the matter at issue was no more important than whether lavender was an herb or a flower, so Letty tried not to get involved. They had never escalated into violence—though some pots had been hurled in anger—and if Musette wanted to offer her favors on her own time, that was her business.
A soft knock had Letty rising from the bed, her chocolate unconsumed.
“Good morning, Letty.” Not “Letty-love,” not “my dear.” David looked as tired and worried as Letty had ever seen him.
“Come in,” she said, stepping back. “I hope you brought the coach, David Worthington. You do not need to be out in weather such as this.”
He’d shed his greatcoat in the office-sitting room, though his hair and cravat were damp. Before she could scold further, David wrapped her in his arms and held her fast. He’d always exercised a kind of restraint with her, never using his full strength to hold her. He used that strength now, embracing her so desperately it seemed he was trying to seal her body to his.
“What is it? David. Tell me.”
“Gwen’s baby. The child is coming a few weeks early, and her fancy London physician, whom I personally recommended, won’t attend her. It’s two hours on horseback out to Surrey, and I’ve every suspicion he simply doesn’t want to come out in this rain and mud, though his note pleads another urgent case.”
“You have to go.” Letty kissed his cold cheek. “Lord Amery is your dearest friend, and from everything you’ve said, his wife is his world. He’s lost too much already to lose his wife and child to a damned rainstorm.”
Particularly when David would hold himself responsible for any harm bef
alling Lady Amery or her baby.
“I’ve made the vicar’s daughter curse, for which I apologize. Will you come with me?” He put his question to Letty’s temple, which she suspected was a way to hide his face from her view. “My sisters are both quite pregnant, and I can’t ask it of them. Gwen has nobody else, nobody she’s close to. It’s a messy business, Letty, but not something to leave to servants, and there’s no midwife in the area worth the name.”
When had David asked her for something substantial? When had he truly needed her for anything?
“I’ll come. Of course, I’ll come.” How many lying-ins had she attended with her mother? Usually, she’d remained in the parlor or the kitchen, making sure the family functioned despite what transpired in the birthing room. Occasionally, with the poorer families, only Letty and her mother had attended, and once—
“Bring a change of clothes,” David said. “The birth could take that long.”
Letty took a precious twenty minutes getting dressed, packing a bag, gathering up some supplies, and giving orders to Watkins. At the last minute, she suggested David send a note around to Lord Valentine, asking him to discreetly oversee the parlors for the next few evenings.
Then they were in a well-sprung, luxuriously appointed traveling coach, speeding through the muddy streets.
“Why did you come?” David asked when they’d left the worst of the London streets behind them.
Because you asked me to. “Growing up at the vicarage, I learned that some things transcend our petty vanities. Death will bring together family members who’ve been squabbling for years, and sometimes, they finally do apologize and find some peace. When a baby is on the way, all that matters is that the baby and mother come safely through the travail. Once that has been accomplished, I can be a fallen woman again, you can be a nabob, brothel-owning viscount, and Amery can be a prosperous member of titled society. Until that happens, however, we will be focused on a shared objective, to the exclusion of all else.”
David took her hand in his, his grip blessedly warm. They’d been in such a hurry, neither was sporting gloves, and Letty was glad for it.
“On board ship, when a storm hits, it’s the same. Nobody argues, grumbles, or complains about the cold coffee. The entire ship, officers, crew, and even passengers labor to the limit of their strength to bring the ship through safely. I’ve seen it with serious illness too. Have you done this before?”
This? Violated every principle of propriety because David had been the one to ask? “I have attended some lying-ins, though I would hardly call myself experienced.” Mama had been experienced though, and she’d discussed childbirth very frankly with a daughter who could also well have ended up as a vicar’s wife.
“Medically, it’s rarely complicated.” David’s grip on her hand grew painfully tight. “But, Letty?”
“Yes, my love?” Endearments were not going to help, but that one had slipped out, and David looked more pleased than surprised.
“I want you… I want you to look after Gwen, of course, and Douglas might need some tending as well, but most especially, I want you to promise me—”
The coach hit a rut, pitching David’s heavy frame into hers. He smelled of soap, wet wool, and worry. He righted himself slowly, as if mashing his body into Letty’s were a fine idea, one he parted with reluctantly.
“Look after me,” he said. “I haven’t done this since… for quite a while, and I care for these people. I would not be doing this, but the local midwife is a horror, and there is no one else to help.”
And thus, the nature of the real problem began to reveal itself.
“Why shouldn’t you be doing this?” Letty asked. “I’ve heard you rattling off nostrums and prescriptions. I’ve seen the number of medical manuscripts littering your desk, David. You are, whether you admit it or not, a trained physician with a thorough knowledge of surgery. What kind of looking after are you asking me to do?”
“Don’t let me kill anybody. Please God, don’t let me kill anybody.”
This was not a request so much as it was a prayer, and Letty was no angel to grant such a boon. She brought his knuckles to her lips and kissed his hand.
As if he could take a life. “I will not let you kill anybody, David. I will not.
“Thank you.”
Her calm, her confidence in him, seemed to buoy him somewhat, at least to the extent that when Douglas, the present Lord Amery, ushered them into his home, David could muster a semblance of good cheer.
“Thank God you’ve come,” Douglas said. “This has been going on since last night, and Guinevere is quite uncomfortable.” Given what Letty knew of his lordship’s personality, dear Guinevere had likely been shouting down the rafters in her “uncomfortableness.”
David shook Douglas’s hand then held it between both of his. “You know Mrs. Banks. She has relevant experience, and Gwen will be glad of another woman.”
“Mrs. Banks.” His lordship bowed and turned for the stairs, his manner suggesting Letty could have been a dancing bear and she would have received the same perfunctory courtesy. “Guinevere is in the guestchamber. She claims this is a spectacularly untidy business.”
David shot Letty an amused look, while a bewildered footman stood by. His lordship had forgotten to afford his guests time to remove their capes and hats, so they extricated themselves from their outer clothing as they climbed the steps.
“Exactly what time last night did Gwen start having contractions?” David asked.
“Approximately eleven minutes after midnight,” Douglas replied, as if failing to note the seconds involved a gross oversight on his part. “We’d just gone to sleep. She woke, and her belly was mounding up, but she wasn’t doing anything to make it mound up, and she couldn’t stop it from mounding up. She said this was the way Rose had started as well. I’m babbling.” He stopped outside a heavy oak door and closed worried blue eyes. “I don’t mind telling you, I am terrified.”
When David seemed not to have any rejoinder to this heartfelt confidence, Letty patted his lordship’s arm. “Her ladyship is too, while the child is merely impatient to be born. Trust Lord Fairly and your wife. These things happen literally every day, and you did go through it once before.”
Douglas peered at her, as if noticing her for the first time. “I did?”
“When you were born,” David supplied. “As did we all. Now, chin up, old man. You have a wife to reassure, and a birth to endure.”
The viscount knocked on the door, waited a moment, took a deep breath, then sauntered into the room, all appearances of fatigue and worry apparently left outside the door in anticipation of a trip to the rubbish heap.
“Guinevere?” he inquired pleasantly. “Haven’t you had this baby yet?”
***
Two miles beyond the Welbourne driveway, Letty was still ominously silent, having withdrawn in some way David loathed. She’d been all calm good cheer in the birthing room, her competence soothing David, Gwen, Douglas, and probably—once the lad had made his appearance—the baby.
A healthy, robust boy, thank the Deity.
“Are you relieved to be away from the happy family?” David asked, staring out the window on his side rather than study Letty’s impassive expression. They sat side by side, not touching.
“Relieved, though not because Lord and Lady Amery were in any way ungracious. I simply didn’t belong there, under normal circumstances. I am pleased, however.”
“Pleased?” Letty did belong with David’s friends, who had treated her with more warmth and appreciation than even the sentiment of the moment had required. She did not belong at his brothel.
“They love you so, David. They have worried over you, and not known how to be family for you. I am pleased to see you are not alone.”
Letty had come to his rescue, risked horrendous awkwardness, and subjected herself to a front-row se
at at the most intimate, loving moment a family might share, and yet she was pleased for the man who had dragged her there.
“You don’t want me to be alone, as you are alone? No one to love you, to be family for you, to worry over you?” Seeing Letty with the new baby had done this to him, made him fierce and angry and determined—more determined.
“I am not alone,” Letty said wearily, “and please do not let us fight merely because we were together these past two days in a new way. I won’t trespass on that. You needn’t toss me off the property in anticipation.”
He wanted to marry her, not send her packing. “What are you talking about?”
She reached for the grab strap while the coach rounded a corner and David took her free hand in his.
“I saw you practicing medicine, sir. You were brilliant, with Guinevere and Douglas both. You managed to bring a child into the world without…”
“Yes…?” He’d managed to assist Gwen and Letty to bring a child into the world, which was miraculous enough.
“You never… saw Gwen,” Letty said, dropping her voice. “Intimately. You didn’t see her. You didn’t put your hands on her privy parts.”
“She and Douglas are modest.” Most mothers were modest when attended by a male physician, and Letty had been stunningly competent in the birthing room. “It was nothing of significance.”
“To her ladyship, it was very significant.” The coach was steady, but Letty kept hold of the grab strap. “When you’re expecting, the experienced mothers tell you not to worry about the indignities of birth. They want you to think that having strangers see you naked, in pain, afraid, and unable to control your body will mean nothing when you hold the child in your arms. Those women mean it kindly, but they lie.”
David didn’t interrupt her, because Letty bitterly resented this kindly lie, as, David suspected, many first-time mothers did.
“You don’t forget, David. You don’t forget a minute of it, not the smells, the sounds, the mess, the loss of privacy. Yes, the arrival of the child is special, but it’s too easy to tell a mother that she shouldn’t mind a bit of what happens to her just because there’s going to be a child. She does mind. She minds very much.”
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