They had eaten supper in the small sitting room adjoining their bedchamber. And while Antonia enjoyed succulent slices of lamb in a delicious mushroom sauce and a variety of seasonal vegetables, Marc Gallet made certain the kitchen was aware that his master the Duke of Kinross did not eat meat of any kind. Silvia and her two kitchen hands took this surprising news in their stride and Jonathon was treated to one of Silvia’s vegetable-stuffed pastas, smothered in a buttery cheese sauce.
And while the ducal couple enjoyed strong coffee and fig biscuits by the fireplace, Antonia’s tirewomen, under the direction of her lady’s maid, stripped the four-poster bed, remaking it with the Duchess’s own down mattress, fresh linens, pillows, and coverlets brought from Crecy Hall. The copper bath by the fireplace and behind a tapestry screen was filled with hot scented water, and a gilt-framed looking glass set on the dressing table along with an assortment of crystal jars, silver-backed brushes, and ribbons. The small pile of books Antonia had brought with her were placed on the bedside table, and her tabouret unfolded and set by the wingchair should she wish to put her feet up and read by the fire before retiring to the bed.
Michelle placed a heavy shawl of India silk and two tapestry cushions on the chair, then stepped back to survey the room that was now filled with those personal possessions the Duchess could not do without. Satisfied the oak paneled room now resembled the bedchamber her mistress shared with her husband at their home in Hampshire, she retreated behind the screen to help the tirewomen ready Antonia for bed.
After coffee, Jonathon slipped outside to smoke a cheroot. He strolled across to the stables in the bracing night air, and there found his major domo in conversation with the ostler. They had then walked back to the house together via an internal courtyard and discussed Jonathon’s expectations for the next few days, Marc Gallet adding mildly that in light of the urgency of the situation at hand and the need for Their Graces to return to Treat as swiftly as possible, it was imperative Christopher Bryce’s whereabouts be discovered without delay. Would His Grace like him to organize a search party at first light?
“Not at first light, no. I’d be obliged to join you, and I don’t want the Duchess woken at the crack of dawn. She needs her sleep. If the elusive Mr. Bryce ain’t found by breakfast time, then yes, we’ll send out the hounds to sniff him out.”
Marc Gallet took this in his stride, and bade His Grace a good night, leaving Jonathon to finish his cheroot.
Seven, almost eight months a duke, and Jonathon was still uneasy when addressed by his title. Except when he was with his wife, because she was every inch a duchess, and so he must be the Duke of Kinross for her—at least in public. When alone together, well, he would be the merchant she had fallen in love with and married, and that pleased them both.
So as he crossed to the enormous four-poster bed to join her, he kicked off his Moroccan slippers, stripped off the silk banyan, letting it fall to the rug, and jumped up onto the bed naked. Antonia did not take her eyes off him for a moment, and giggled when he sprawled out beside her, then propped himself on his side. And as was their practice when they conversed, he spoke in English and she in her native French.
“Did you miss me while I was north of the border?”
“Do you doubt it?”
“No. But I like to hear you say it.”
“Certainement. I missed you—very much. I missed—all of you.” She dimpled. “Did M’sieur le Duc d’Kinross sleep naked in Écosse while he was away from his duchesse?”
“I don’t own a nightshirt, sweetheart. You know that. Never have. And I wasn’t about to start the practice just because I’m a plaguy Scots duke! But I did snuggle up under a bear skin and put myself to sleep by counting the days until I’d be back here with you.” He sat up, put out his hand and smiled when she laid her fingers in his. “Being parted from you was unbearable. God what was I thinking to allow myself to be persuaded to leave you behind? Never again.”
“Never. I could not bear it either.” Antonia’s eyes filled with sudden tears. “And look at what greets you upon your return—a-a grosse femme laide!” Just as quickly she wiped her lashes and apologized. “Forgive me. As you see I am not myself.”
Jonathon’s gaze lingered lovingly on her pregnant belly, and then he leaned in and kissed her. He locked his gaze to hers. “I see what others see: A beautiful woman made more beautiful, if that is possible, by the child she is carrying. And I see what others are not privileged to see: My wife. A most desirable, sensual creature whom I love with every drop of blood in my veins.” He kissed her again and then asked sheepishly, “May I?”
She knew what he meant without asking and nodded.
He pulled back the coverlet and gently smoothed out the folds of her diaphanous silk night chemise so that her pregnancy was starkly evident. His sheepish grin turned to one of delight as he placed his large hand lightly on her belly and tenderly rubbed his hand over her roundness. The tightness of her skin, as taut as that stretched across a kettle drum, never ceased to surprise him, as did the fact that except for where the baby grew inside her, she had hardly changed at all—this despite her exclamation that she was grossly fat. She was not. He’d forgotten about the changes that occur to a woman’s body during pregnancy. In fact he had tried not to think about pregnancy at all for so many years after Emily’s death in childbed that he wondered he could be calm thinking about it now.
When he’d first received news from Antonia that she was pregnant he was elated. He had expected it. He had wanted them to have a child. He had walked about for a week as if up on the clouds, smiling at every dour face that greeted him at the ancestral home of the Dukes of Kinross on the shores of Loch Leven. And when he had shared his news with his kinsmen, there had been much rejoicing and toasts made that their new duke was to have an heir. And that’s when he was struck by the enormity of what Antonia’s pregnancy would mean for her and ultimately for him. He felt as if he had been hit in the chest by a runaway wagon loaded with timber, full force, and it sucked the air right out his lungs.
An heir…
Sixteen years ago, his first wife Emily had done her best to give him a son, and she and the infant had died in labor. It took years for him to come to terms with their deaths, and then, finally numb, he forced himself to forget that traumatic episode. But now, with his fingers splayed across Antonia’s belly, the past filled his mind’s eye and he could not stop himself from remembering the most harrowing day of his life.
Emily’s pregnancy had been uneventful. There was no cause to think anything was wrong or could go wrong. This was her second pregnancy. Three-year-old Sarah-Jane’s birth had been long and painful, as all first births are, but Emily had come through that exhausted but happy. And so they approached the birth of their second child with excitement and anticipation. The labor started well, but by the end of the second day, Emily’s Indian servants were wailing in despair, and the English physician from the East India Company factory advised him that mother and child were unlikely to survive. He must decide: Mother or child.
How could he make such a choice? He would not. Emily and the baby would both live. He believed that unequivocally. The physician must save them. And if he could not, then the Indian midwife and her helpers would. But the decision was taken out of his control. The baby was a boy, perfect in every way, but he came into the world dead, and then the exhausted mother, upon learning her infant was stillborn, had simply given up, or so it seemed. Later, the physician was of the opinion she had hemorrhaged internally.
They were buried in the English cemetery at Hyderabad, leaving him a widower at twenty-three, with a three-year-old daughter without a mother. And now here he was with a wife several weeks away from giving birth, and she at an age when childbirth came with the greatest risks of all. Emily’s death had been traumatic, but should anything happen to Antonia, he would lose the will to live.
He suddenly felt chilled, and pulled the coverlet up over them both. Resettling himself, he snuggled down b
eside her, resting his ear and his hand lightly against her belly. And there he stayed, content, barely aware that Antonia was lightly stroking his curls while she returned to reading her book.
He dozed. For how long, he had no idea. And then he found himself prodded awake. The prodding continued near his ear, and long enough for him to roll onto his back and look at his wife. She had put aside her book and was lying back against the bank of pillows, grimacing. He sat up and was about to ask if there was anything he could do to help her be more comfortable when she grabbed his hand and shoved it under the covers and onto her belly where his ear had been resting. He wondered why and then of a sudden he felt that same prodding motion but this time it came and went, and then all of a sudden there was a great ripple of movement, and it was all happening under the palm of his hand. It took him several seconds to react and realize what it was he was experiencing, and then he stared at Antonia in wonderment, face splitting into a grin.
“Did you feel that? Did you? She moved! She kicked out at me. I’d lay good odds that was her foot. There she goes again! By Jove, she’s quite an acrobat!”
Antonia laughed, any uncomfortableness forgotten in his boyish excitement. “You think this baby it is somehow detached from me? Of course I feel it, all of it, you foolish man. I suspect she has had enough of such confinement. And I do not blame her for wanting to stretch out after so many months curled up, and she is telling me so.”
Jonathon fell back on the pillows with a self-satisfied smile, hands behind his head, and stared up at the pleated canopy.
“I predict she’ll be a graceful dancer, and an excellent horsewoman who can jump fence for fence with her male admirers. And she’ll have many of those, because she’ll be the spit of her divine mama. So she needs to be able to defend herself. Lessons in the art of sword play wouldn’t go astray. Knowing how to use a rapier, she’ll be able to keep at a safe distance all those young dogs who try to make up to her.”
“Dancing, riding, and fencing? Parbleu! While you are making this list why don’t you add lessons in how to use a small pistol. There would be no need then for her to dally with these poor puppies in sword play. She can just shoot them dead and be done. Not that I think you, as her doting papa, will allow such men near her in the first place.”
Jonathon sat up again and swiftly kissed Antonia’s hand.
“Capital notion! Scrap all those years of fencing practice. Target practice is a more practical use of her time. And that will free her up to sit at her books, for I am very sure you have plans for her to be tutored in all manner of learned subjects and languages. Oh dear… Sweetheart, what have I said now to upset you? Or are your eyes watering of their own accord as one of the many wonders of being with child?”
Antonia shook her head and again quickly dabbed her lashes dry. But this time the tears would not stop so readily, and she groped for one of her lace-bordered handkerchiefs from the side table.
“Shall I have Michelle fetch you some hot milk? Tea? Coffee? No…?”
When Antonia had mastery of her voice, she swallowed and said, “You say she and daughter as if the sex of this baby is a known thing. It is not. Perhaps you do to placate me because you know I want a little daughter very much? But if you want a son you should say so. And you should say so, because a son is what you need. Perhaps you forget you are duke and a duke must have a son to succeed him. Even though I am certain Monseigneur he would have welcomed a daughter because he loved me, he was so very happy I gave him a son and heir to continue the dukedom on after him. He was just as ecstatic when Henri-Antoine he was born. It is the way of all men.”
“Is it? Well, it ain’t my way!” Jonathon stated categorically. “I want a daughter just as much as you do.”
“I love you for saying so. And you say it with such conviction because you know this baby will be my last. It is selfish of me to want a daughter when the needs of the dukedom must come first. You have a daughter and no sons. You are the last of your family. If you do not have a son, the dukedom dies with you. This is what I must focus on—”
“—but in your heart of hearts you want a daughter.”
Antonia’s green eyes filled with tears again and she nodded.
“I am a disloyal wife to have such thoughts—”
“Rot! Sweetheart, the main thing is that our baby is healthy,” he replied buoyantly. “More important for me is that you live through the ordeal. Whatever the sex of the child, I will not be happy or content, and there will be no celebration, until I know you are safe and well. And I will not risk your life to save the child’s, so do not ask that of me—ever. And if that’s being selfish, so be it. But I can ease your mind on one all-important matter,” he added and smiled into her eyes. “The future of the dukedom is secure, whether you give me a son or a daughter.”
Antonia struggled to sit up off the pillows. “Oh? Did a long-lost relative come forward to claim kinship with you while you were in Scotland?”
“No. Nothing like that.”
“You have that look on your face—smug and secretive—that says you have outfoxed me in some way.”
“I can’t take credit. My Scottish lawyers told me as a matter of course, almost as an aside. They offered apologies that should the unthinkable happen and you present me not with a longed-for son but with a daughter, all is not lost. And when I rubbed my hands together with glee at what they told me, they wrongly assumed it was because I was thinking of the dukedom, when what I was thinking was that should God grant us our wish, we could both have what we so desperately want: A daughter.”
Antonia’s eyes went very round.
“You truly want a daughter?”
“Weren’t you listening to me just now? Sweetheart, I want a second daughter. I want to have a daughter with you. I love being Sarah-Jane’s papa. I raised her without a mother from the age of three. I know how it is with girls. It’s all hair, tea parties, and conversation. Can’t think of a better way of spending my time.”
“But our daughter you say is to learn to fence and discharge a pistol, to have a learned education, and be taught many languages.”
“French, English, Gaelic, and Italian should just about suffice for a woman in her position. And she’ll need to have much more wit than hair, but that’s a burden I’m sure she’ll cope with most admirably because girls are smarter than boys. Boys take longer to grow into themselves. We’re clumsy clods for the longest time. It’s a wonder females can be bothered with us at all until we’re at least in our third decade. The Spartans got it right and kept their men away from their women until they turned thirty. But most of all, I want a daughter because it will make you happy. And your happiness is all that matters to me.”
Antonia needed no convincing about his love and devotion, and now she believed him about his wish for a girl. But she was still puzzled as to how having a daughter would not be an impediment to the continuation of the Kinross dukedom, and so said, frowning to understand,
“But how is it your lawyers they advise that if we have a daughter and not a son, the Kinross dukedom it will still have a future?”
“Because, love of my life, a Scottish dukedom is not an English dukedom. An English dukedom requires the title to pass down through the male line, so a son is necessary. But a Scottish dukedom stipulates that the title pass to the heirs of my body. Male or female is not stipulated, so if a duke—me—has an only child who is a daughter, she will inherit, and be the next Duchess of Kinross, and then it is her son who will inherit after her. Now that’s clever! So you, my love, wife to not one but two dukes, and mother of a duke, should you give birth to a female infant, will also be mother of a daughter who will one day be a duchess in her own right.”
Antonia gasped and then said, dimpling, “That pleases me very much.”
“Yes, I thought it would. Now let’s get comfortable and sleep. You’re forgetting why we’re here, and tomorrow is not going to be pleasant, for any of us.”
He kissed her, then reached over
and snuffed the candle on the bedside table, and in the darkness snuggled in beside her.
But Antonia had not forgotten about tomorrow. She had merely pushed to the back of her mind what had brought them all the way from Hampshire into the Cotswolds, and tried not to dwell on the task that was ahead of her. Tonight she concentrated on being in the arms of the man she loved, and the baby she was carrying; all going well, they would have a healthy baby girl. But as she drifted into sleep, it was not a longed-for daughter that occupied her thoughts but how to tell her cousin Mary the disturbing news about her much-loved daughter, Theodora Charlotte, known simply as Teddy.
TWENTY-FIVE
ANTONIA WAS BEING dressed by her tirewomen when Michelle returned from downstairs with the news the boy Luke had been true to his word and led M’sieur le Duc straight to the Squire. They had now all returned to the house, and with them was Mme la Duchesse’s cousin, the Lady Mary. When Michelle paused on a breath, Antonia looked up from inspecting the sit of the neckline of the pair of jumps secured across her ample bosom. She did not give away her thoughts, but asked blandly,
“Mary she is now here, too?”
“Yes, Mme la Duchesse. She was one of the party that returned with M’sieur le Duc from the cottage in the woods. So it must be assumed she was with M’sieur Bryce because—”
“No, Michelle. One does not assume anything of the sort.”
“But her petticoats they are all grubby and her hair it truly is a tangle, so it would appear her ladyship has not had the services of her maid for—”
Michelle stopped mid-sentence and bit down on her tongue, because Antonia’s back had stiffened and she had a look in her green eyes Michelle knew very well indeed but rarely saw: A warning—that if she dared to continue her line of reasoning along its present path there would be consequences for her assumptions, regardless if they proved true or not.
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