A Baron for Becky

by Jude Knight

  Hugh, proud and relieved Becky had been holding tight to his hand since the first pain struck hard an hour earlier, refused to leave the room.

  “Well, stay you there, then. Her Ladyship and I will be busy enough.”

  “I need to push,” Becky said, almost a wail.

  The midwife hurried to the bottom of the bed and checked under the sheet Becky’s maid had draped to preserve her modesty.

  “Not quite, my lady,” she advised. “Pant.” And Becky panted, short hard puffs of breath until the pain crested and sank away. Her hand, clutching his hard enough to crush, had just begun to relax when the next surge hit.

  “Very good, my lady,” the midwife encouraged. “One more like that, and we will be ready.”

  One more like that and he may never have the use of his hand again, but if it helped Becky, it was a small sacrifice. Again, a moment’s relaxation. Again, a powerful contraction that had Becky whimpering even as she panted. “I cannot help it. I cannot.”

  The midwife checked again, and rose beaming. “I see him, my lady. Push when you are ready.”

  And Becky did, digging her chin into her chest and using his hand to anchor herself against the mighty effort her body was making.

  “That is it, Becky. I am so proud of you.” He was hardly aware of what he was saying, and she ignored him completely, absorbed in the work of bringing the child into the world.

  She sat half up almost before the child was fully in the midwife’s hands, demanding, “What is it?”

  “My lord, my lady.” The midwife was beaming. “You have a beautiful, healthy little daughter.”

  “A girl.” It was a despairing wail.

  Hugh took the baby from the midwife.

  “A beautiful girl. A healthy daughter, Becky. Our daughter.” He was pleading with her, but it made no difference. She was shaking her head.

  “But you contracted for a son. Oh, Hugh, I am so sorry. So sorry.” She turned away from him then, and away from the dear, little treasure he held out for her to see.

  Chapter Twenty

  There was a fog. No. Heavier than a fog. A bank of clouds. A blanket, almost, covering everything. Sometimes, she could see through it a little, or hear a few words, or feel a touch. Sarah came to visit. She was sure of that. Her belly hurt. Was it the baby? No. The baby was gone. There was a grief there, somewhere just out of reach, waiting to consume her, but she wouldn’t think of it. She was so hot. No, she was cold. So cold, she was sweating.

  Voices. Hands washing her, changing her. Hands touching her intimately. No! She wasn’t going back there!

  “Hush, Becky. Hush. Don’t struggle, my love.” Hugh’s voice. She must be dreaming, then. Hugh didn’t love her. She leant into the arms that restrained her anyway.

  Another man’s voice. It must be a dream. Hugh would never hold her for another man. “...fever, my lord... infection... best I can do... crisis...” Becky held desperately to the belief that if Hugh were there, she was safe, and tried to ignore what was happening further down: the scraping, the vile smell.

  More washing. So hot. Cooler, please... There, someone lifting her, holding a cool drink to her lips. Hugh’s voice again. “Slowly, Becky, slowly.”

  She had been sick for two weeks, her maid told her. They had been sure she would die. The master would not leave her side, “No, not for a moment, not till the doctor said the crisis was past. Then, off he went to sleep, and that was fifteen hours ago, my lady.”

  She turned, but he was not in the bed he had promised they would always share. Even the last weeks before Christmas, after she had driven him away with her sordid story, he had come each night to their bed. He didn’t desire her anymore, and who could blame him? But he had come to their bed each night and held her when he thought she was asleep.

  But that was before she failed him, of course, before she had a girl instead of the son he needed.

  The maid was speaking again, asking something. She worked back through her memory of the sounds. The baby. Did Lady Overton want to see the baby? “No. No, thank you. I think I will just sleep.”

  Hugh brought the baby to her later, the reminder of her failure. She turned her head away to hide her tears, but she couldn’t stop her shoulders from shaking with sobs, and he left. But not for long. He took the baby away and came again to sit with her.

  He was kind, always so kind. She couldn’t bear to face him. Poor Hugh. How much disappointment must lurk in his eyes, stuck in this marriage to a harlot and not even a son to show for it! After a while, the feigned sleep became real, and when she woke again, he was gone.

  Two of the maids were talking as they cleaned out the fireplace and re-laid the fire.

  “Poor master. Losing this one, too, happen.”

  “The mistress? Mendin’, an’t she?”

  “Same as t’other, the first Lady Overton. Had the bairn and was mendin’.”

  A bairn? Becky’s mind was slow and dull. Surely Hugh had said nothing about a baby?

  “But er wouldna’ look at un. Not once. Cried ever so, if we brung un. Another little girl, it was.”

  “Jus’ like this one!” said the listening maid, thrilling to the drama.

  “Then,” the story-telling maid slowed and deepened her voice, “one day ’er sent for t’bairn. And walked out of t’house and into the lake.”

  “No!”

  “True as I stand here. Both of ‘em drowned dead, and the master near demented.”

  “But why? Why did er do it?”

  Yes. Why? Becky wanted to know, too. She was holding the fog back by main force, reaching for the words the maid dripped so slowly. If she had the energy for it, she would hate that other wife, the one who had told Hugh he was ugly, who had abandoned him and taken his child. But something was wrong. Hugh had told her he could not have a child.

  “Feart,” the gossiping maid said. Afraid, Becky wondered? Afraid of what.

  “Nobbut a bit to do now, Mary. Just tha wipe the tiles while I set the fire alight. Yes, feart, I reckon. The whole house knew t’ bairn wasna’ the master’s, and er thought he’d set her aside, happen.”

  Ah. Poor Hugh. History repeats. Becky listened to the retreating maids and wept for her husband’s losses until she cried herself to sleep.

  Becky improved so slowly that Hugh had to compare one Sunday with the next, but bit by bit, she improved. Physically, at least. When he and Mrs Goodfellow held a belated Twelfth Night party for the girls, she was not well enough to attend, though she roused sufficiently to admire the new clothes Mrs Goodfellow had sewn for their dolls, and the little wooden boxes Hugh had crafted, with the help of the estate carpenter, to hold them.

  A few moments were all she could manage, and when he asked if she wanted to give the girls the shawls she had been embroidering, she shook her head. “You,” she said, so he found them in the drawer of her chest. Four. She must have made an extra one in secret, after she knew Mrs Goodfellow had a child. He was not sure which colour she intended for which child, but she didn’t answer when he asked, so he and Mrs Goodfellow decided, before the governess took the children back to the nursery floor.

  He called the doctor back the next day. The man diagnosed an imbalance of the humours, and prescribed bleeding, which left Becky so close to death’s door that when the doctor visited again, Hugh sent him away and told him not to return.

  It took more than a week before she was as well as she had been for the Twelfth Night party.

  A few days later, Becky sat up for half an hour, while the children made their daily visit after tea. She smiled and asked what they had been doing, and Hugh rejoiced, but the bleakness settled over her again, as soon as they left.

  A fortnight passed, and she was able to move to her couch, and then a week later, come down to his study, where she could recline on cushions and read or write letters. Though she didn’t. He glanced up frequently from his work. She watched the fire, or lay with her eyes closed.

  She would make an effort for the gir
ls, so he had Mrs Goodfellow bring them to her several times a day, for short visits, sending them away again before she outran her small store of strength.

  He left her only when estate business took him outside, or to spend time with their daughters, especially Sarah. She was frightened, and reassuring her broke his heart a little more every day.

  Becky wouldn’t look at the baby, wouldn’t choose a name or comment on the names Hugh suggested. Little Isabelle Eleanor Hope Rebecca Antonia Overton was baptised in the presence of her father, three of the servants standing in as proxy godparents, since Aldridge, his mother, and the Countess of Chirbury could not be expected to brave the bitter winter weather to make their way so far north.

  “Isabelle for your mother,” Hugh told Becky. He’d had to consult his copy of the marriage licence to find the name, because Becky didn’t answer when he asked her, just shook her head and looked bewildered, as if his words made no sense.

  He gave up trying to persuade Becky to take the baby in her arms, afraid she would cry herself into another illness.

  Belle, they called her, and beautiful she was, a dear, quiet little thing who only cried when she was hungry, and who would happily lie for hours sleeping or gazing up into the faces of her sisters, the wet nurse, the governess, or any of the nursery staff who could persuade her father to surrender her.

  Holding Belle comforted Hugh, and he sat rocking her against his shoulder for an hour or more at a time, while Becky sat or lay nearby with her eyes closed, ignoring them both.

  Becky ate very little, spoke even less, and only smiled when the girls came to tell her about their day. And each day her smiles grew rarer and more distant, and the bleak emptiness in her eyes spread.

  He was losing her. Each day, she faded more, even as he chivvied the cook to invent some new delicacy to tempt her appetite, or rode through the snow to the village for the post in hopes of a letter to amuse her, or read aloud to the little girls with one eye on her still form. And each day he realised anew how much he had come to love her.

  Then, one day in early February, he was called away to the stables where heavy snow had collapsed the roof of a lean-to. He returned to find her standing at the window, looking out at the garden. Filled with joy that she had stood and walked to the window on her own, he hurried to her side.

  “Hugh.” Her voice, as always nowadays, was a calm and distant monotone, all emotion leached away. She glanced sideways at him, then turned her attention to the lake, covered in thick ice on which the four children were skating, with various levels of success.

  “Would you like to go out and watch, Becky? Shall I tell the maid to fetch a coat?”

  Would that be enough to keep her warm? He couldn’t risk her catching a chill. “And a shawl?”

  She misinterpreted his frown. “Don’t be cross, Hugh. I would never take the baby. I have seen you with her. I know how you love her.” She smiled, a smile so sad, it dragged at his gut. “You are such a good man, Hugh. Polyphemia should have left her little daughter. She would have been safe with you.” She turned back to the window. “It is no use. The ice is too thick. I will have to wait.” And she made her slow and careful way back to the chaise longue by the fire.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  That day, Hugh wrote to Aldridge. “Come immediately. Any way you can. As fast as you can. Becky is threatening to kill herself and I can’t...” He crossed out the last eight words, and replaced them so the last sentence read, “Becky needs you.”

  He wrote several copies and addressed them to all the luxurious places the Marquis of Aldridge might be holed up for the winter, with a notation on the front saying they were urgent and should be sent on. Then, Hugh settled in to watch Becky even more closely, until her rescuer arrived to save her again.

  Aldridge must have been closer than Hugh expected. Three days after he sent his letters, a train of elegant sleighs coasted up the drive. Carriages, really, but with skids rather than wheels, each pulled by a pair of sturdy horses. The children, taking advantage of a break in the weather to play in the snow, stopped in their tracks and watched.

  From the study window, Hugh could see three of the ornately carved and painted sleighs turn away towards the stable yard, and the remaining two continue to the front steps. He was not surprised all five sported the Haverford crest.

  He excused himself to Becky, who didn’t look up from the fire she was examining so intently, and sent a maid to sit with her while he went down to greet his guest. He pasted on a smile. Hugh had sent for the arrogant, self-centred, wife-stealing son-of-a-bitch. And if Becky wanted to go with him, then that was the price Hugh would pay for Becky to be well again. Even if it meant losing Belle.

  Smile. He needed to smile.

  One carriage was disgorging an enormous number of retainers. How had they all fit? Sitting on one another’s knees? Aldridge stood at the door of the other, handing down a lady. Surely even Aldridge wouldn’t bring one of his paramours here!

  Then the lady lifted her head. The face under the bonnet brought his smile out in truth.

  He hurried down the steps to greet her. “Your Grace. I am so glad you have come.”

  Then Aldridge was there, right in his face. “Overton, you scum-sucking louse! What have you done to Becky? If you’ve hurt her, I’ll...”

  “Aldridge,” said Her Grace, “please do not embarrass me, my love. Lord Overton will explain all to us shortly. Now, give Cousin Agatha your hand, dear. Lord Overton.” She held out her own hand for Hugh to escort her up the steps, where the butler was standing with his mouth open.

  “Will you come into the parlour to warm by the fire?” Hugh asked. He settled her in a chair, took the cape she handed him, and went to find out what had happened to Aldridge and the cousin.

  The butler was still hovering in the hall. Hugh gave him a few terse, low-voiced instructions about chambers and refreshments. When Becky had proved to be so good at making his house a marvellously comfortable place to live, he had let his elderly housekeeper retire. He could do with her now. Even more, he could do with his wife back, and that was the truth.

  Aldridge was outside on the steps, sitting on his folded greatcoat, talking to the girls while the cousin hovered anxiously.

  “May I invite you in, ma’am?” Hugh asked her, but was interrupted by Sarah, who shouted, “Papa, Uncle Lord Aldridge says Mama and I may go with him if she wants, and I won’t, Papa. I can stay, Papa! Say I can stay? You said I could stay with my sisters forever and ever, and Mama too.” And she turned on Aldridge, fierce as a tiger cub, and shouted at him, stamping her foot. “You go away. You just go away, nasty, old Aldridge. Mama is sick, but when she is better, we shall be all happy again, like we were before. You just go away.”

  Hugh reached her as she burst into tears, hissing at Aldridge as he passed, “I should break your neck.” Then he was occupied with soothing all of the little girls, since the other three were weeping in sympathy, and the governess was doing nothing, torn between correcting her charge’s manners and attacking the invading home-breaker on her own account.

  “No need for tears, Sarah, I invited Lord Aldridge here, because he may be able to help make Mama well. You do not need to worry, girls. No one is going anywhere, unless they choose.”

  Sarah glared at her former favourite. “Then why did he say he had come to take Mama and me away?”

  Hugh thought manners should make an appearance again, now that the tears were being blotted up. “You say ‘His Lordship’ or ‘Lord Aldridge,’ not ‘he.’ Why did Lord Aldridge say such a foolish thing? Because he did not precisely understand the situation. He will meet with Mama, and then I will come and tell you all about it.” Somehow, it had not occurred to him that shocking Becky out of her lethargy might lose him Sarah, as well as Becky and Belle. How would he live without them?

  It was a struggle, but he smiled. “Now then, the snow is soaking through my trousers, and no one is going anywhere tonight, except inside to the warmth.” He stood, liftin
g Sarah with him and standing her on her feet. Then he chivvied them all inside, kissing each girl, including little Portia, as they passed him on their way to the back stairs.

  He opened the door to the parlour, ushered Cousin Agatha through, and went in behind her, followed by Aldridge.

  On the other side of the room, the Duchess of Haverford had opened the double doors into the study, and was talking to Becky.

  In the past three days, he had rehearsed Becky’s possible reaction a thousand times. It was both his nightmare and his dream that she would take one look at Aldridge and come back to herself. “Aldridge,” he imagined her saying, “I knew you would come for me.”

  When he wasn’t torturing himself with those visions, he accepted there might be no reaction at all, that the deep blanket through which she viewed the world would continue. Anything would be better than that.

  He could never have predicted what happened: all the blood draining from the already pale cheeks; the haunted distant eyes focusing in horror; the tortured scream. “No-o-o!”

  Before anyone could react, Becky was up, hurling herself across the room and through the doors with a careless disregard for furniture and the duchess, whom she brushed past as if she were not there.

  Aldridge clearly thought she was coming for him, because he tried to shoulder Hugh to one side, but Becky dodged his reaching hands and flung herself at Hugh’s feet, clinging to his knees as if losing grip would mean a fall into oblivion, repeating, “No. No. No. Oh, Hugh, please, don’t make me go back. I know I failed. I’m so sorry, Hugh. I tried. I really tried. Let me stay. Don’t send me away. Please, Hugh.”

  Aldridge, who had had the presence of mind to close the door on the startled eyes of the servants, now hissed in his turn, “I should break your neck, Overton.”

  “If you will take my recommendation, Aldridge, you will not make yourself ridiculous,” said Her Grace. “Overton, you and Lady Overton might be more comfortable in the study, with the door shut.”