by Martha Keyes
“What about Matthew?” She chanced a glance at Miles, whose gaze flew to hers.
He opened his mouth then shut it.
“You dislike the idea?” she asked.
He looked reluctant to respond. “It is just…that is the name I was hoping to use for….”
Lydia nodded quickly even as her heart plummeted. “Oh, yes. I had forgotten.” It wasn’t true. She hadn’t forgotten. It was the name he had spoken of so many years ago—what felt like a lifetime, really—when they had planned for their future with all the confidence of a young couple in love, certain that what lay before them was every bit as promising as the present.
But much had happened since then. And she had hoped he had become resigned to the fact that they would never conceive a child together. Clearly, that was not the case, and the knowledge settled heavily upon her.
“What about Thomas?” he suggested.
Lydia mustered a smile and a nod. “Yes, Thomas.”
Chapter 6
January 1814
Miles reached an arm out and wrapped it around his wife’s waist, setting a kiss on the soft skin of her upper arm.
There was no response to his gesture, and he pushed himself up on his elbow to see whether she was already asleep. Her ability to fall asleep quickly seemed to have increased dramatically of late. It used to take her half an hour to wind down at night, a time often filled with talk of the day as Miles struggled to stay awake enough to offer coherent responses.
Not so anymore.
Her eyes were closed, but her breathing hadn’t slowed or deepened, and he pulled her gently toward him, letting his lips seek out her neck. She smelled of violets, and he inhaled it slowly. “My love?”
She stirred slightly. “Not tonight, Miles.”
He stilled, feeling the familiar hurt wrap around his heart like tentacles ready to crush it. He had only wanted to hold her closer—to talk to her about something besides the mundane things they spoke of day in, day out. But she always insisted on reading more into his affection.
“Not tonight,” he repeated, releasing her from his hold and dropping back on his pillow. “Nor indeed any night.” He didn’t even know if she heard that last part, but it was true.
She turned toward him in bed, coming up on her elbow and looking at him with a flash of anger in her eyes. “What am I to understand from that?”
He lifted his shoulders. “There is always some excuse, isn’t there?”
Her brows contracted, and he felt himself on dangerous ground. But he had gone for months without mentioning anything, much as it had been hurting him inside, and he didn’t think he could keep silent any longer.
“You are always too tired or have the headache or have….”
She blinked at him. “Or have what?”
He pinched his lips together and sat up, debating whether he should say something. “Just the other night you told me you had started your courses.”
Her eyes took on a wary look, but she said nothing.
“You aren’t due to start your courses for another week at least, Lydia.”
She drew back. “You keep such close track, then? An expert on the matter, in fact.”
He said nothing. It wasn’t terribly difficult to keep track, honestly. Not only were her courses very regular, he always noted a slight shift in her moods as they approached. He let out a sigh. He didn’t want to fight with Lydia. He wanted to hold her. “I just fail to see what the purpose is of sharing a bed if we never speak here, let alone touch.”
She was stiff—clearly on the defensive. “The purpose of a bed is to have a place to sleep, is it not?”
“Yes, of course, but…it used to be more than that.”
“Yes,” she said with more passion than she usually displayed. “And look what we have to show for it—nothing at all!” She pushed the bedcovers back and slipped out of bed. “I cannot do this anymore, Miles—pretend that something is suddenly going to change when it has been the same these four years.”
Her words implied that the only purpose to their intimacy was that of producing an heir. He wanted an heir, of course. Desperately. But what he shared with his wife was so much more than that. Was that all it was to her?
“Well, it certainly isn’t going to change if you are unwilling to keep trying—if you won’t let me so much as touch you,” Miles said, and he could hear the irritation and hurt in his own voice.
She swallowed hard and took a step back. “Perhaps you are right. There is little purpose to sharing a bed at this point. Goodnight, Miles.” She turned away and, in a few long strides, was gone from the room.
The Present
Miles had been hesitant to agree to Lydia’s suggestion to keep the baby with them for the time being. He could see it in her eyes—the way they pleaded with him, the way they softened every time she looked at Thomas. He didn’t know what to think of it. Was it good for her? Or was he setting her up for heartache when Thomas left?
But he couldn’t see an alternative—at least one that didn’t involve leaving the baby with the parish. And Lydia was right. They couldn’t do that—subjecting a young, innocent baby to the squalor and the hardships of such a life. Such things happened, of course, but there was a difference between it happening unbeknownst to them and taking the baby there themselves. There had to be a better option, but it would take time to search it out.
Upon discovering that Thomas was to stay, Diana and Mary were thrilled. Diana took the baby in her arms and danced around the room with him. He was doted upon by all three women, but there was something different in the attention paid Thomas by Lydia. It was motherly—responsible and watchful, even when she smiled at her sisters’ antics with the child, as if she was ready to step in and call for them to take greater care if it became needed.
When it came time for sleep, Miles was grateful when Mary asked Lydia if she meant to hand the baby off to one of the servants. He wasn’t the only one who thought it the best arrangement.
“Oh, no,” Lydia said. “I am quite happy to have him sleep by me. He did better than expected last night, and I imagine he will do even better tonight.”
“And what of you, Miles?” asked Diana. “Are you so content to have your sleep disturbed by this little urchin?” She rubbed her nose against Thomas’s and was rewarded by his grabbing a handful of hair from her coiffure.
An awkward silence followed her question, but Diana was taken up with prying her hair loose and seemed not to notice. Miles wouldn’t be disturbed by Thomas where he slept.
“He is not an urchin,” Lydia said, pulling the baby from her sister with chastising brows but a teasing smile—one that faded slightly once she had turned her face from the view of her sisters. “Come, Thomas. Let us leave these unfeeling wretches and get you something to tide you over till morning.” She sent a saucy but teasing look at her sisters then left the room.
Before any more could be said on the topic of how Thomas might affect his sleep, Miles begged leave of Diana and Mary. It was too early for him to turn in for the night, but he would find something to occupy him for the next hour if it meant avoiding an awkward topic of conversation. The last time the Donnely sisters had stayed with them, Lydia and Miles had been in their first year of marriage and so unashamed of their affection for one another that it boggled Miles to remember. Diana and Mary were well aware that Lydia and Miles had always shared a bedchamber, leaving the adjoining room—and the door that connected it to Miles’s—locked due to its misuse. That was not the case anymore, though.
It was as Miles had a hand on the doorknob of his bedchamber that Diana appeared, hurrying toward him.
“Oh,” she said. “There you are! Would you tell Lydia to come out here for a moment?” She was slightly breathless, and she waited expectantly, a piece of paper in hand.
He froze, his mind running a hundred miles an hour. She assumed that he could open the door and simply call to Lydia to come out. But she wasn’t in the room.
“Yes
, yes,” he said. “Just a moment.” He slipped into his bedchamber and closed the door behind him. It might seem strange to Diana, but that was preferable to the alternative. Lydia didn’t wish her family to know of the heartache they were experiencing as they tried to bring a baby into the world. She disliked speaking of their infertility, and Miles certainly didn’t wish her to be obliged to speak of it more than she already was. The merest acquaintances somehow felt it their privilege to inquire into the intimate details of Lydia and Miles’s life.
He stepped over to the door that connected their bedchambers and knocked on it softly. Nothing.
He knocked a bit harder, and there was a pause and a fiddling of the lock before the door opened, revealing Lydia’s confused—and wary—face. He knew that face. It was the one she wore when she feared he might ask her to share his bed. He hadn’t seen it in months because he had stopped asking.
“Diana is outside my room,” he said in a whisper. “She wishes to see you.”
It took a moment for comprehension to dawn on Lydia’s face, but dawn it did. “I see.”
He made room for her to pass by, and she hurried into his room and toward the door, Thomas sitting contentedly in her arms. She disappeared into the corridor, and Miles stared after her with a frown. It was the first time she had been in his room in nigh on a year, fleeting as it had been. She would likely wait until Diana left and enter her bedchamber through its own door to avoid the inevitable encounter with Miles.
He tugged on the bell pull to summon his valet but shrugged off his coat and untied his cravat while he waited. The scent of violets had lingered behind Lydia, and it made the loneliness within him gape like the growing hole it was. He had hoped he would accustom himself to it, and in some ways he had. But there was always something to remind him of how things used to be. That was the tricky part of living in the same house with a person. There was no escaping such reminders.
He undid the button at his throat, and the door opened.
“Oh,” Lydia said, stopping short with the door still ajar behind her. Her eyes flitted to his open shirt then back up to his face.
“I am sorry,” he said. “I thought you would use the other door.”
“No need to apologize,” she said with a hurried smile. “I just didn’t want Diana to…” She bit her lip nervously. She hadn’t used to be so unsure of herself. Marriage to Miles had done that to her, and he hated himself for it.
He shook his head. “It’s quite all right. Here.” He strode over to the door between their bedchambers and opened it.
She came abreast of him and turned. “Would you like to say goodnight, Thomas?”
Thomas reached for Miles, finding purchase in the dangling collar of his shirt, which he yanked toward him, bringing Miles with it and up against Thomas and Lydia.
“Oh dear,” Lydia said, pulling back a bit with a laugh. But there was nowhere for her to go.
Thomas’s hands gripped the button on Miles’s shirt, and Miles worked to wrest it from the baby’s grasp, knowing that Lydia was likely uncomfortable with how near they were to one another, his lips close enough that they could brush her forehead if he wasn’t careful.
He finally pried the chubby hand off the button and stepped away so that his back came up against the door frame. “Forgive me,” he said on a shaky laugh.
Lydia looked up at him with twinkling eyes. “It’s quite all right. He was very determined to have your button.”
Miles relaxed a bit at her demeanor, allowing himself a smile. “I think he would have had it if I’d given him a moment longer.” He glanced down and paused. A couple of threads hung from the tip of the collar, and the button was conspicuously absent.
Lydia grabbed Thomas’s hand—poised at his mouth—and pulled it away with the type of laugh that Miles had always delighted in.
“It looks like he did manage to pull it off,” Lydia said. She took the button and handed it back to Miles, looking up at him with a smile and her hair partially pulled out of its coiffure.
He put a couple of fingers to one of the more unkempt pieces. “Is this a creation of his as well?”
Her hand came up in a self-conscious motion and brushed against his.
“Yes,” she said, tucking the hair behind her ear in a gesture Miles found adorable. “He seems to have an obsession with pulling on hair.”
As if on cue, Thomas reached for her hair, and Miles stopped him, clucking his tongue. “If you wish to pull on someone’s hair, you shall have to make do with your own—what little of it there is. Goodnight, Thomas.” His gaze moved to Lydia, and he smiled at her. “If he bullies you too much, you need merely call for me.”
Lydia smiled, and he wondered how long it had been since she had maintained eye contact with him for so long. He had begun to worry she was starting to fear him. “I promise you I shall.”
“Goodnight, Lydia.”
“Goodnight, Miles.” She passed through to her own room, and he shut the door behind her, staying for a moment to listen to the muffled sounds of her speaking to Thomas until the door to his room opened to admit his valet Bailey.
Chapter 7
Christmas Eve dawned cloudy, gray, and just as cold as the days preceding it. Miles breakfasted early and left with one of the servants to seek out things they might use to decorate the house. He wanted to be certain Diana and Mary had an enjoyable time in Town, frigid as the weather might be.
When he returned well into the day, it was with two armfuls of greenery. As he and the servant discussed where to put it all, a head appeared in the doorway to the entry hall.
“Oh!” Diana said, coming toward them. “What a wonderful surprise! I thought it would be impossible to find anything like this given the state of the weather.” She lifted a branch to her nose and shut her eyes. “It smells divine!”
Her admiration drew both Mary and Lydia into the entry hall, and Miles felt that perhaps all of the driving around Town in the freezing, ice-covered streets might be worth it if only for the look of gratitude on his wife’s face.
She mouthed the words thank you to him as both Mary and Diana discussed what the best places would be for draping the greenery. Everyone but Lydia filled their arms with it—hers were occupied with Thomas—and they made their way to the drawing room.
“And perhaps a kissing bough?” Diana said with an enigmatic look at Mary.
“To what purpose?” Mary asked. “I am more likely to pass under it while next to you than to happen beneath it in the company of a gentleman, aren’t I? Or do we have a plan I am not aware of to host a bevy of eligible suitors?”
Miles grimaced. “The best we can plan for is perhaps my brother and one or two of his friends. I believe they are in Town, but Harry rarely informs me of his plans.”
“Hm,” said Mary. “Well, we can certainly make one just in case, but I imagine all the berries will be picked off by you and Lydia anyway.”
Miles’s gaze flew to Lydia, whose cheeks began to pink. She turned away from them and reached for a blanket draped over the nearest chair. “Diana, could you set that on the floor? I wish to lay Thomas down so I can use both hands to help with the decorating. Jane was kind enough to find this rattle while she was out yesterday, and I hope it will keep him occupied for a bit.”
If Miles had harbored any hope that an encounter under the kissing bough would be welcomed by his wife, he would have added his voice to advocate for it. But it was more likely to cause awkwardness than anything else.
Diana laid the blanket down and smoothed it for Lydia to set Thomas upon it. As she rose from the floor, Diana looked at Miles through narrowed eyes and tilted her head to the side. “I have never met your brother, Miles. Is he as handsome as you?”
“Diana!” Lydia cried from her kneeling position.
Diana gave an innocent shrug. “What? You, of all people, would not deny that your husband is one of the most handsome men of our acquaintance.”
Miles bit his lip to control a smile. He hadn�
�t counted upon Diana to make the case for him to his wife, but he was grateful for it, all the same.
“No,” Lydia said, and her color was again heightened as she avoided Miles’s eye, “but how very forward it makes you sound to ask such a question.”
Miles cleared his throat. “I believe my brother is accounted by many to be the more handsome between us.”
Diana’s brows went up in an intrigued gesture. “Do you agree with that, Lydia?”
Lydia let out an incredulous breath and held the rattle in front of Thomas until he managed to grasp it. “You are incorrigible, Di.”
“And that is not an answer to my question,” she retorted. “Is it, Miles?”
Miles laughed. “Perhaps it is. She is afraid to hurt my feelings by telling the truth, but neither does she feel she can lie.” He was rather enjoying himself. There had been little teasing between him and Lydia for some time, but given that Diana was orchestrating it, he couldn’t pass up the opportunity.
Lydia primmed her lips together and stood. “Hardly. I am merely rising above the depths to which the conversation has sunk.”
“Well,” Diana said, “for my part, I am quite decided upon making a kissing bough, and I forbid the two of you”—she looked back and forth between Miles and Lydia—“from stealing all the berries before we know whether we shall be entertaining your brother and his friends or not. At least have the decency to do that.”
Miles could think of nothing he would like more than to steal a great deal of kisses from Lydia under such a bough, but in the imagined scenario, his wife was a willing party, and that was not the reality of the situation.
“I have been wondering,” Lydia said. “Do you think we might take something to the Foundling Hospital tomorrow? For the children. A little treat of some kind to brighten the day, perhaps. I haven’t been able to put them from my mind since yesterday.”