From Runaway to Pregnant Bride

by Tatiana March

  * * *

  The wail of a newborn infant pierced the late-afternoon shadows in the upstairs corridor. Clay ceased his nervous pacing. The door to the bedroom flung open and the tall, fair-haired middle sister, Miranda, stuck her head through.

  “You can come in now.”

  Clay hurried past her. Annabel lay in bed, propped up with pillows. Beads of perspiration glistened on her forehead. Her dark hair hung in limp strands. The room smelled of disinfectant, a scent Clay had learned to associate with disaster and death.

  On the table by the wall, Doc Timmerman was finishing his ministrations to the baby. In the corner, the small, dark-haired Charlotte was stacking away blood-soaked towels. Clay turned his head away, not brave enough to ask about the blood, not brave enough to see the evidence of Annabel’s suffering. He never wanted to feel such helplessness, such terror again. “Is she all right?” he asked the doctor.

  “It’s a he. You have a healthy son. Three weeks premature, but it should cause him no harm.”

  “I meant...” Clay took a deep breath. “I meant my wife.”

  Two months wasn’t long enough for a man to get used to calling a woman his wife, not when she was about to became the mother of his child.

  “Oh, her?” The doc glanced over to the bed and feigned indifference. “She is fine. It beats me how some of these small-boned women have such an easy time over it. They push out their babies like shooting bullets from a gun.”

  Like shooting bullets from a gun? Clay winced. It had sounded more like a prolonged artillery attack. He halted by the bedside. “Can I kiss you?”

  “Yes,” Annabel replied. “I am still alive and breathing. Barely.”

  Clay bent to her and pressed his lips to hers for a fleeting kiss. “I love you,” he said, his lips moving against hers, a faint rustle of sound no one else could hear. Since the day he came to find Annabel in Gold Crossing he’d given her those words several times. He’d assumed practice would make them come more easily, but he’d been wrong. Every time he spoke them it felt as if he tore a hole in his chest, letting Annabel see right into his heart.

  “I love you, too,” Annabel whispered, keeping the exchange private between them.

  The doc snapped the jaws of his medical bag shut. “I have a broken leg and a knife wound to attend to at Desperation Hill.” He turned to address his words to Annabel. “I’ll check on you tomorrow. If you’re worried about anything, send for my wife. She knows as much about childbirth as I do.”

  With a soft thud of his boots, Doc Timmerman hurried out of the room. When he was gone, Miranda carried over to Clay the infant swathed in a square of white cotton and a small wool blanket. She held out the bundle. “Say hello to your son.”

  Clay touched the tip of his forefinger to the soft skin, then eased the baby into his arms and turned toward Annabel, intending to lower the child beside the mother on the bed.

  “You hold him for a moment,” Annabel said, watching him with wonder in her eyes. “I’ve done all the work up to now. From now on I expect you to do your share. And I like looking at you holding our baby.”

  Fascinated and a little frightened, but with a deep sense of happiness, Clay sat on the edge of the bed, his wife beside him, their child in his arms. In silence they waited while Miranda and Charlotte tiptoed out of the room, their pregnant bellies evident beneath their gowns.

  Leaning forward, Annabel studied the wrinkled features of the infant and then directed a questioning glance at Clay. “Aaron Gareth Collier? Does that suit you?”

  Clay nodded, too moved to speak. Adjusting his position on the edge of the bed, he held the infant out to Annabel. “Can you take him? I need to reach into my pocket for something.”

  When Clay had his hands free, he pulled a small velvet pouch from his pocket and shook the contents onto his palm. He lifted a necklace of gemstones set in gold in the air and dangled it in front of Annabel. The last rays of the setting sun through the window struck the necklace, making the stones glitter in deep emerald hues.

  “Do you remember how I told you that my parents perished in a fire, and I was found holding a clay cup? And that later a necklace of green stones was found hidden in my clothing?”

  Annabel nodded, her eyes riveted on the sparkling gemstones.

  Amused by her fascination, Clay told her the rest. “The nuns took the necklace. They said it would be stolen if they let me keep it. They gave me a ticket with a code on it to send to them if I ever wanted the necklace returned to me. Two months ago, I mailed the ticket off to the convent, never expecting to hear back. But a week ago this arrived by express messenger.”

  He twisted his wrist to make the necklace ripple in the sunlight. Holding the baby snug beside her with one arm, Annabel touched the string of stones that glittered like a green waterfall. “Are they real emeralds?” she asked, awe in her tone.

  “The very best,” Clay replied. “The necklace used to belong to a princess.”

  “Oh, Clay! I was right. You’re the long-lost son of some noble lady who ran off with a poor soldier or a—”

  Clay shook his head to silence her. “Annabel, I told you not to make up foolish dreams. Sister Mary Magdalene also sent me this. She said she was curious, and when she had an opportunity to visit San Francisco on some convent business she arranged to study the newspaper archives.”

  He handed Annabel a clipping from the San Francisco Chronicle.

  She ran her eyes over the short article, read out snatches of the text. “‘The Princess Sofia...priceless emeralds...stolen...actress masquerading as a ladies maid...’”

  “I told you my parents were low-class people. Drifters and thieves.”

  Annabel admired the necklace with a glint of feminine covetousness in her eyes. “If it is stolen, can we keep it?”

  “Sister Mary Magdalene thinks we can. It was a long time ago. My parents suffered for their crime, and the princess who owned the necklace no longer lives.” Clay paused. “But might be best not to wear it in public.” He slipped the necklace back inside the velvet pouch and set it down on the bedside cabinet. “I hope you didn’t dream you were marrying a prince.”

  Annabel met his gaze. “I wanted no nobleman. No great fortune. Only you. All I want is to work alongside with you. In partnership.”

  “In sickness and in heath.” Clay’s tone was solemn.

  “For richer and poorer.”

  “Until death do us part.”

  They had never had the opportunity to say their wedding vows in front of the preacher. Now they spoke them to each other, in the untidy delivery room filled with the smells of carbolic and laundry soap and the aftermath of childbirth. And yet, they both knew that to them those promises meant as much as if they had been given in a cathedral in front of a bishop and a thousand witnesses.

  “I love you,” Clay said.

  “I love you, too,” Annabel replied.

  Epilogue

  At sunrise on the fourth of July in 1890 a lanky man in a white shirt and black waistcoat walked down the street in Gold Crossing. In one hand he carried a sanding block, in the other a tin of white paint and a small paintbrush.

  Later in the day he would wear a frock coat and a top hat and the mayor’s sash, but for his early-morning chore he preferred less formal clothing. Every year he performed the same task, but this was the first time it had brought him pleasure.

  He knelt by a wooden sign just outside the town and used the sanding block to rub out the number eight. Deep contentment filled him—as deep as was possible for a lonely man whose young wife had died years ago, too soon after their wedding to have given him a child.

  A town could be almost like a child, the man mused as he put down the sanding block and snapped the tin of paint open. You gave birth to it, you nurtured and nourished it, and you hoped it would grow up
to enjoy a happy life.

  The man dipped the brush into the pot, painted the number two on the board and then the number nine. He leaned back on his heels to inspect the result. Around him, birds sang their dawn chorus. The sun was climbing in the sky, dissipating the night cool, but the gentle breeze kept the heat at bay, promising a perfect day.

  Satisfied, Art Langley closed the paint pot and wiped the brush clean with a rag he had pulled out of his pocket. Then he straightened on his feet and walked away from the sign with the fresh paint that shone white in the sun.

  Gold Crossing

  Population 29

  * * * * *

  If you enjoyed this story you won’t want to miss the other great reads in Tatiana March’s

  THE FAIRFAX BRIDES trilogy

  HIS MAIL-ORDER BRIDE

  THE BRIDE LOTTERY

  Keep reading for an excerpt from RUINED BY THE RECKLESS VISCOUNT by Sophia James.

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  Ruined by the Reckless Viscount

  by Sophia James

  Chapter One

  London—1810

  The door of the approaching carriage opened as it stopped beside her in a sudden and unexpected haste.

  ‘Get in now.’

  ‘I beg your pardon.’ Lady Florentia Hale-Burton could not quite believe what she had heard even as the stranger standing above her on the top step of the unliveried coach repeated it again more loudly.

  ‘I said get in now.’

  The man frowned when she did not move and leaned forward so that his face was not far from her own. A beautiful face, like an angel, she thought, though his voice held no notes of the celestial at all.

  ‘Look, unlike your long-suffering paramour, I am not up to playing this silly game of yours, madam. If you don’t get in this minute I will drag you inside and be done with it. Do you understand?’

  ‘I will do no such thing, sir. Of course I will not.’ Finding her voice, Florentia looked about wildly for some help from her maid, Milly, but the girl had dropped back, her mouth wide open in alarm as she turned to run. It was like some dream, Flora thought, the horror of it appalling, like a nightmare where no matter how much you wanted to escape you could not. Fright held her simply rigid. The sky was grey and the day was windy. She could smell cut grass and hear birds calling from the park across the road. An ordinary Wednesday on a walk she had done a hundred times before and now this...

  As the stranger stepped down from the carriage and took her arm she finally found resistance, swinging her heavy reticule at his face and connecting with a thump. The two books inside the bag were weighty tomes on the history of art, leather bound and substantial. The edge of one cut into the skin above his right eye and blood gushed down his cheek, though instead of looking furious, which might have been expected, he only began to laugh.

  ‘Hell,’ he said, ‘Thomas damned well owes me for this though he did warn me you might not come easily if he was not present. But enough now. We are beginning to attract some attention and if I am going to be of any help to you we have to leave immediately.’

  Grabbing at her, he pulled her hard against his body and she bit into his hand. Swearing, he brought one arm down across her breast when she screamed as loud as she could manage. Then he simply clamped his fingers on the top of her right shoulder and all she knew was darkness.

  * * *

  James Waverley, Viscount Winterton, couldn’t believe he was doing this, kidnapping his cousin’s whore before Hyde Park and rendering her unconscious. But Tom had insisted, pleaded, cajoled and finally called in any favour James had ever promised. So he had.

  ‘She’s a feisty one, you will find,’ his second cousin had insisted, ‘and if I was in any position at all to go and get her myself I would, but...’ He’d looked down at his leg cast from the ankle to the thigh. ‘She needs to be out of London, Winter, needs to be safe from those who might hurt her.’ And because one of his own unruly horses was responsible for his cousin’s broken leg, James had consented.

  ‘What does she look like?’

  ‘Blonde and sensual. She will be wearing red, no doubt, as she always does and will be waiting on the corner of Mount Street opposite Hyde Park at five o’clock precisely.’

  Lord help me, James thought. Tom hadn’t mentioned that she would be the type to scream her head off in fury or whack him with a heavy bag full of books.

  She didn’t have the appearance of a whore either, with her demurely cut pink and red day dress and old-fashioned hat, but then what was the look of one? He’d never required the services of a lady of the night before, though he had seen them around Covent Garden and the Haymarket and many of them had appeared...quite ordinary. Perhaps Acacia Kensington was one of those girls, thrown into the game by dire circumstance and the need to survive.

  She certainly had good teeth. The bite mark on his hand stung badly having cut the skin to leave it swollen and throbbing.

  Laying her down on the seat opposite, he took off his jacket and placed it under her head as a pillow. She’d wake up soon and there would be all hell to pay, the journey north taking a good few hours to complete. With a frown he looked away.

  Is this who he was now? A man who would hurt a woman? A man who might take the path of least resistance when quite plainly it was the wrong thing to do?

  Swearing, he sat back and glanced out the window. A young maid was running along the pathway and shouting at the top of her lungs, another couple joining her. When the man raised his hand in a fist the first shudder of things not being quite as they ought to be went through him and he was glad when the carriage turned into the main road north, its speed increasing.

  The blood from the cut above his right eye had begun to blur his vision and he swiped at it with the sleeve of his jacket, blotting the redness against dark linen.

  Thomas could do his own courting next time, broken leg or not, he thought, and if the girl came to as angry as she had been he didn’t quite know what he would do next. Put her out, he imagined, and let her make her own way from London, or not. In truth he didn’t care any longer.

  She had a damn expensive ring on the third finger of her right hand, the diamonds winking in the light. No false gold or cut glass either, the patina and shape of the piece telling him this was the real thing. Perhaps a paramour had gifted it to her. Tommy had the funds to procure such a ba
uble, should he have wished it, so maybe this was his doing. He was a man inclined to the grand gesture.

  The anger that had been his constant companion threatened to choke him and he pushed back the familiar fury. Once he would have told his cousin exactly where to go with his hare-brained schemes of procuring women, but now...

  The war had knocked the stuffing out of him and he had returned from Europe and the first Peninsular Campaign unsettled. He did not fit in here any more, having neither property nor much in the way of family, save a father who had taken more and more to the drink. He wanted to be away from the London set and its expectations, but most of all he needed to be away from the brutality of war. It had settled into him the aftermath of violence, making him jumpy and uncertain, the ghosts of memory entwined even in the ordinariness of his life here.

  * * *

  He swore again twenty moments later as sky-blue eyes opened and simply looked at him, the paleness of her cheeks alarming.

  ‘I think... I am going...to be...sick.’

  And she was, all over his boots and on her dress, heaving into the space between them time after time and shaking dreadfully. Her eyes watered, her nose ran and the stench of a tossed-up lunch hung in the air as she simply began to cry. Not quietly either.

  Banging his cane against the roof, James was glad as the conveyance drew to a halt, the countryside all around wide and green, the road empty before them and behind. He didn’t stop her hurried exit as he threw water he carried for the journey on to the carriage floor, drying what he could with great bunches of wild grasses pulled from the side of the road.

  She was gone when he had finished, disappeared into a tract of bushes behind a stone fence. He caught the hue of her red gown at some distance dashing between the trees of a small grove.