He dropped his head and groaned softly before straightening up and backing off a pace.
‘I should have spoken to you before I left but I knew what would happen if I woke you,’ he admitted softly. ‘I’d been working with you and watching you and learning as much as I could about you for months, but I was too afraid to tell you what was going on in case you didn’t want to know. I couldn’t risk it, not when you were the first ray of sunshine and warmth I’d had in my life for such a long time.’
‘So where did you go?’ Ella was calmer now, and filled with a rapidly growing sense of anticipation.
‘First, there was the funeral, then there were all the legalities and all of Fran’s belongings and the house to dispose of. It was still in our joint names but I knew I would never want to live there again. And then, when I’d done it all and drawn a line under the whole episode I was finally able to admit that I was completely exhausted and slept the clock round…several times. And in my arrogance, I just assumed you would be there, in the background, like some sleeping princess just waiting for me to turn up and claim you.’
Ella was honest enough to admit that, princess or not, if she hadn’t been pregnant, she would have been waiting. If only he’d spoken to her, asked her to wait, they could both have been spared so much unhappiness.
Increasing discomfort broke into her thoughts and she held her hand out. ‘Could you give me a hand, please?’ she groaned. ‘I don’t feel very comfortable sitting too long these days.’
He took both hands and braced her, but as she straightened there was a sudden strange sensation deep inside and a swift gush of fluid.
‘Seth!’ she squeaked, looking down in disbelief at the puddle spreading around her feet.
‘Oh, Lord,’ he breathed. ‘Not here. Not now.’
‘I don’t think we’ve got any option, unless you can come up with some bright ideas.’
‘Where’s the nearest hospital…? No. That’s no use because we’ve no means of getting there. An ambulance. How do I get in contact with the nearest one?’
‘Telephone, but there’s no point trying,’ she gasped, gripping his arms as she concentrated on breathing her way through an enormous contraction. ‘Even if the lines are still up, they won’t have anything that can get through that much snow.’
‘What about the air ambulance? I could phone them on my mobile. They’d be able to make it up here.’ He was sounding increasingly desperate while she was feeling unaccountably calmer with every minute.
‘Specially equipped ones can go out in the pitch dark, but none of them can when it’s snowing that hard.’ She gestured towards the window he’d uncovered before he’d sat himself down to contemplate the flames half a lifetime ago.
It looked pitch black outside, without a single street light for miles, and it took a minute before the miniature drifts building up rapidly in the corner of each pane became obvious.
‘Apart from anything else,’ she added, ‘the mobile phone companies’ boasts about their coverage are wildly inaccurate. Very few people can get a signal up here unless they’re sitting directly under one of those ugly masts.’
Seth exhaled heavily, the mixture of groan and growl perfectly demonstrating his frustration.
She drew in a breath of her own, feeling another contraction building already and knowing she didn’t have much time.
‘I know it brings the situation a little too close to two centuries ago for either of us,’ she said quickly. ‘But look at it this way. At least I get to have my baby delivered by my favourite consultant and you get to be the first one to see your child coming into the world.’
He groaned again but this time it was mixed with a measure of laughter until she leant against him with a deep groan of her own.
‘Another contraction already?’ Seth’s tone had sharpened and she knew he had switched into consultant mode. ‘How far apart?’
She shook her head. ‘Your guess is as good as mine,’ she panted. ‘Wasn’t looking at the clock.’
‘Let’s get you to the bedroom,’ he suggested, wrapping his arms around her for support.
‘I’d rather…dance,’ she retorted, swaying gently from side to side as she focused on relaxing her muscles. It was definitely a lot harder now that she was actually doing it rather than just handing out all that glib advice, and she wouldn’t have the benefit of any analgesics.
‘I’ll dance with you when this is over, but I need to have a look at you now.’ He tried to guide Ella towards the bedroom but she dug in her sock-clad heels.
‘Promise?’
‘What?’ His expression was totally confused.
‘Promise me a dance,’ she said insistently, although she couldn’t have explained why it was suddenly so important.
Until she saw the way his expression softened, and then she knew.
‘I promise you a dance,’ he said with a gentle smile, then brushed her lips with a tender kiss. ‘Preferably another Argentinian tango that will blister the paint off the walls.’
‘I’m going to hold you to that,’ she promised, just before giant hands seized her again and tried to rip her in two. ‘Ow! That hurts!’ she whimpered, and her knees refused to hold her up any longer.
‘Ella, no! Don’t do that!’ he exclaimed, trying to support her weight long enough to get her into the other room, but it was hopeless. ‘You’re determined to do this as unconventionally as possible, aren’t you?’ he panted when he’d finally managed to get her settled on the makeshift bed in front of the fire.
‘It’s warmer here,’ she murmured, desperately grateful for the few moments’ respite from pain, but there was no time to waste, especially if her labour proceeded at this headlong pace.
‘Seth, help me, please. I need to get some things together.’ She held out her hand but he didn’t take the hint.
‘You don’t need to do anything except lie there and practise all that controlled breathing you’re always teaching the mums to do. I’ll fetch whatever you need if you’ll just tell me where to find it.’
It was frustrating, lying there shouting directions when it would have been so much faster to have found things herself, but even Ella had to admit that she was in no fit state to be wandering about the croft.
When Seth had helped her out of her wet clothes and performed his examination her contractions were already almost continuous, and by the time he’d assembled his makeshift delivery kit and a set of clothes each for mother and baby, she’d already passed through the ambiguities of transition and was ready to push.
Each pain seemed interminable but in an amazingly short time the head had been delivered and he was warning her to pant while he checked that the cord wasn’t wrapped around the baby’s neck.
‘Ella, look,’ he said in an awestruck voice, positioning the mirror so that she could catch a glimpse of their child. ‘I can’t tell in this light whether the hair is dark or auburn, but she’s beautiful.’
‘How do you know it’s a girl?’ she demanded just before she took another breath, the urge to push undeniable.
‘If it’s a boy, I’ll apologise for calling him beautiful, but that doesn’t mean I’m not thinking it,’ he said, his hands gently and lovingly supporting the emerging child. He gazed up at her and held her eyes, his own gleaming suspiciously brightly in the lamplight.
‘You’re both more beautiful than I can tell you and I love you more than I can say,’ he said softly, the words as powerful as a vow.
‘You’re going to have to work on your timing,’ she grumbled, torn between elation at his words and the urgent need to push again.
There was a sudden explosive rush as the baby slithered out into his hands with an indignant squawk followed by a tremulous wail.
‘I apologise,’ Seth murmured before she could catch her breath, glancing from the child cradled in his hands to his mother. ‘I shouldn’t have called you beautiful.’
‘It’s a boy?’ Ella breathed, tears of delight seeping into her hair as sh
e gazed from one to the other. They were both equally precious to her.
‘Are you going to feed him yourself?’ Seth asked, his voice husky as he moved forward on his knees to place the child in the crook of her arm. ‘Letting him suckle should help to expel the afterbirth.’
Something in his tone made her take a moment from admiring her precious son. Suddenly she realised how different childbirth was from the other side. Now that she was the patient, she was lying here perfectly content with the result of her labours. As the professional, Seth was still worried about the final stage of the delivery, especially as he had no means of summoning help if anything were to go wrong.
‘I want to give feeding a try,’ she said. It seemed crazy after the intimacy of what they’d just gone through that she should suddenly be shy when it came to something as relatively simple as setting the child to her breast. Except the last time that this had happened to her it had been Seth suckling her, and she knew from the way his eyes had darkened that he was thinking about it, too.
‘He’s quick on the uptake,’ Seth murmured with a ridiculous amount of pride as his son latched on eagerly. ‘There won’t be much there yet, apart from colostrum, but the suckling will trigger the milk production.’
‘Wow! It also triggers another contraction,’ Ella complained, helpless to do anything other than grab for a hasty breath and push.
‘Where did you have your scan done?’ Seth asked a moment later, a strange tone in his voice. He’d waited until the pain had ebbed before he’d spoke again but Ella knew there was something he wasn’t telling her.
‘I never had a scan,’ she said with an uncertain frown as she tried to read his expression. ‘The day I was booked to have it there was a problem with the computer system, and as all my other signs and symptoms were perfectly normal I didn’t bother booking another one. They were going to do it when I went into hospital to have the baby if they were worried about anything. Why do you ask?’
There was a brief cry of complaint as she switched the child to the other breast and then it was her turn to complain.
‘Ouch! I’ve heard other mothers saying…that breast-feeding makes the uterus contract quite strongly…until it’s returned to size…I hope the contractions…aren’t going to be this painful for long,’ she gasped. ‘I might change my mind about bottles.’
‘Oh, I don’t think they’ll continue for long,’ Seth said with a definite chuckle in his voice. ‘At least, not after the baby’s been born.’
‘But he’s already been…’ she’d begun when the penny finally dropped. ‘Twins!’ she yelped in a mixture of disbelief and delight, just before the next pain demanded her total attention.
This time things didn’t move quite so smoothly or so quickly and she knew enough about Seth to see that he was worried.
‘Tell me,’ she said urgently. ‘What’s wrong?’
He paused for a fraction of a second with agony in his eyes before he spoke. ‘She’s a breech.’
‘She?’ Ella challenged again and was rewarded by a glimpse of a smile.
‘This time I can tell the sex but not whether she’s beautiful,’ he said, then quickly put all joking aside. ‘Ella, this is taking too long and there’s a danger that the contractions could detach both placentas at any minute. We need to get her out as fast as possible.’
She gasped, understanding immediately just how dangerous the situation was for her baby. If her placenta did detach itself from the wall of the uterus it would be the end of the baby’s blood supply, and with no blood supply she was going to run out of oxygen, fast.
The whole situation was frighteningly similar to one of the first cases she’d ever seen Seth operate on. That time, only the fact that he’d had a full complement of highly trained staff and all the resources of a modern hospital at hand had saved the mother and her child.
‘Tell me what you want me to do,’ she said steadily, knowing she was placing her life and that of their unborn daughter in his hands. She loved him and would have to trust him to do his best.
‘She’s a twin so she’s smaller than she might otherwise be, and she’s two or three weeks early. Also, the birth canal has already been opened by the first head, so the situation’s not as bad as it could be.’
‘But her head could still get caught like a cork in a bottle and I still need to use every second of every contraction…’ she finished for him.
It hurt to see the look of despair in his eyes again, but she knew that he had already considered and discarded any idea of a Caesarean section to save the baby’s life. They had absolutely no surgical equipment and the conditions couldn’t have been less favourable.
‘Contraction coming,’ she gasped, drawing in a big breath and beginning to push, absolutely determined that her child wouldn’t be lost through lack of effort on her part.
Over the next couple of minutes, every atom of concentration went into pushing harder and longer than ever. Seth was encouraging her every millimetre of the way, giving a running commentary as the legs were delivered and then the arms were freed one by one. Finally, in the dying seconds of the contraction, when Ella was so exhausted she didn’t think she had any energy left, he ordered her to stop pushing.
‘Pant, Ella. Pant,’ he begged in a voice grown husky with unremitting tension.
She barely had the energy to do that much, peering out of half-closed eyes just in time to see him lift a tiny pair of feet up in the air as though teaching the baby to do a handstand. Clasped firmly between his fingers, he brought them towards her head while his other hand pressed almost brutally into the pit of her stomach as he tried to free the baby’s head, stuck inside her like a cork in a bottle.
The indignant wail wasn’t as vigorous as her brother’s but it was definitely there and Ella closed her eyes on a swift prayer of thanksgiving.
‘She’s alive!’ she heard Seth whisper in a choked voice. ‘Oh, thank you, God, she’s alive.’
There were tears gleaming on his cheeks as he tenderly passed her over and a trace of an exhausted smile.
‘Let’s see how much energy we’ve got between us to get those placentas out,’ he joked tiredly as he gently persuaded the traumatised infant to accept the nipple. ‘Come on, sweetheart. Try.’
‘That’s it,’ Ella said, looking up at Seth as she felt the first tentative tug. ‘Try again…for Daddy.’
She saw Seth blink, his expression priceless as the truth finally sank home.
‘Ah, Ella, if you only knew…’ He shook his head. ‘I came up here under duress, a man who wouldn’t admit how perilously close he was to some sort of breakdown, and within a matter hours you’ve completely changed my life.’
He drew in a shuddering breath as he fought for control and Ella took pity on him.
‘You’re very welcome,’ she said softly. ‘But I hope you remembered to move the lamp.’
‘Move the lamp?’ he glanced towards the one he’d placed on a stool near her feet so that it would throw as much light as possible on the pile of towels he was using as a delivery table.
‘Well, these babies seem to be attracted to the light like moths and I think two is quite enough for this time.’
‘Idiot,’ he said with a chuckle and turned to check on progress.
This time the contractions weren’t as strong but she could tell that Seth was worried right up until the second afterbirth was expelled.
It was there in his face as he straightened up and looked at her, the wide smile of relief that told her everything was well.
‘Remind me, next time you’re close to term, that you’re not allowed anywhere where we can be snow-bound.’
Ella grinned. ‘Does that mean there’s going to be a next time?’
Seth just looked smug as he took first one and then the other sleeping baby from her, wrapping each in a clean warm towel and placing them side by side in the old family cradle already polished and waiting for their arrival.
‘That seems to be what happens when the two
of us spend the night together,’ he said as he scooped her up and carried her into the bathroom, seeming to know how much she wanted a warm wash. ‘And I hope we’re going to be spending many nights together from now on,’ he continued when he finally deposited her in her clean nightdress in a bed warmed by a newly filled hot-water bottle.
‘Seth?’ Her heart was so full she wasn’t certain she could find the words to tell him everything she was feeling. In the end it was easiest to concentrate on the most important fact. ‘I love you,’ she finished simply.
‘I know.’ He smiled and sat on the side of the bed to hold her hand. ‘I knew when we shared that mistletoe kiss and it nearly broke my heart because I couldn’t do anything about it, least of all tell you that I felt the same way.’
‘Why did you learn to dance?’ Ella asked, anticipation racing through every nerve as Seth led her out onto the floor and took her in his arms. ‘It’s unusual unless you come from a family that’s mad keen on competitions, and I’ve been meaning to ask you ever since Sophia’s wedding.’
‘Blame that on my mother,’ he said with a wicked grin. ‘She was the dance enthusiast and she conned my brother and me into learning. She promised it was a good way to meet girls, then I found I enjoyed it.’
‘And did you?’ she demanded with a flash of her green eyes. ‘Meet girls, I mean?’
‘Only one special one,’ he whispered as he drew her against his body and began to sway with her in time to the music.
It was the Christmas Ball again, and Seth was finally fulfilling his promise to dance with her. This time they wouldn’t have to worry about wagging tongues if their dancing betrayed the way they felt about each other. The fact that as soon as the roads had been cleared of snow they’d taken a detour through Gretna Green on their way south had quickly become fodder for gossips and romantics alike.
Tonight they didn’t have to worry about hurrying back to let the babysitter go home either. Sophia and David were babysitting the twins for the whole night and while it was the first time they’d been away from the children for a whole night, there was a suite waiting upstairs…
Mistletoe Mother (Medical Romance) Page 15