Lady Mary had come and gone several times from the drawing room, but with nothing new to report, other than the Duchess’s labor was progressing as well as to be expected. This information the two women took in their stride, but it left the men feeling even more anxious, as everything was out of their control. When Mary disappeared back down the corridor towards Antonia’s bedchamber for what seemed the umpteenth time, Jonathon could no longer contain his thoughts and burst out in annoyance,
“Why are we waiting here, and not there—at least we should be in her sitting room next to the bedchamber, damn it! I can’t hear a thing from here!”
“I gather that’s the point,” Roxton replied. “So we can’t hear what’s going on.”
“Why not? Why can’t I be in there—now? I should be in there with her, not sitting here like a prize stuffed pheasant!”
“You’ll be in there soon enough—”
“Will I? Will they let me in there, d’y’think, eh? You were in there from the off, weren’t you? A plaguey physician and a pack of women wouldn’t have stopped you from being with your wife at such a time.”
“I realise this is none of my business, Your Grace—” Christopher began and was cut off.
“It seems it’s everyone’s bloody business but mine, so speak up!”
“From the short time I have known her, I would suppose it is Mme la Duchesse who is making the decisions, and so it is she and not her attendants who will determine when you are to join her—or not.”
“Ha! Y’know, you’re damn-well right, Bryce. I’d not thought of that. Thank-you.”
Jonathon was suddenly less troubled than he had been in the previous hour. But then Roxton negated Christopher’s verbal calmative with an unguarded observation.
“I know I should be telling you not to worry—that all will go well. And I’m sure it will. But I can tell you from experience that even after five children, being in the stalls and not on the stage doesn’t get any easier. Every birth is different, every infant, too. So even though I was there with Deb, I was never any less apprehensive with birth number five than I was with my firstborn’s welcome into the world. Bloody harrowing business—and this birth has to be the worst time of all!”
“Why? Why is this worse?” Jonathon demanded, turning to stare at Roxton. “Why do you say so? Has the physician said something to you that he hasn’t said to me? Has she?”
“No. It’s because it’s my mother in there, that’s why! That changes everything. Deb has given birth to five healthy children, with as little drama as possible. Whereas my mother has had two births, and neither one was particularly uneventful. And here she is at age fifty about to give birth again. To say the prospect scares me witless is putting it mildly.”
Jonathon shot to his feet. “Jesu—I feel bloody useless!”
“She’s my mother, too,” Henri-Antoine said through his teeth, fingers curled about the edge of the settee cushion.
All three men stared at the youth, who had not spoken since Antonia’s labor pains had begun in the pavilion a couple of hours ago. He was paler than usual, and biting his lower lip as if to keep himself in control. Roxton was instantly contrite, and affectionately pulled his brother to him and kissed his temple.
“I’m sorry, Harry. Of course she is,” Roxton murmured near his ear. “We’re not going to lose her, too. You know that, don’t you?”
Henri-Antoine nodded quickly, then pulled out of his brother’s embrace and got to his feet.
“I’ll see what’s keeping Jack and Teddy.”
“Excellent notion. Tell them to join us here for supper, and if Teddy wants to bring her puppy to show her Uncle Bryce, she’s most welcome.”
Henri-Antoine nodded, and in a rare show of sentiment he gripped Jonathon’s shoulder.
“She’ll be fine, sir. She has to be. I think Mr. Bryce is in the right. Maman will send for you when she’s ready.”
Jonathon acknowledged the boy’s affectionate gesture, patting his hand and smiling.
“Thank-you, Harry. Your mother always knows what’s for the best—and what’s for my own good.”
In the silence that followed Henri-Antoine’s departure, Roxton said, to fill the void and divert their thoughts,
“I’ve had a letter dispatched to Martin. He’ll be here by tomorrow night. I had it written and ready to send at a moment’s notice before Audley went away. Bryce! A note from Shrewsbury said my secretary is helping him with his enquiries, and that he’d tell me all about it when he came visiting just after Christmastime. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
“Your Grace…? About Philip Audley or Lord Shrewsbury’s visit?”
“Either or both. I’m mystified.”
Christopher smiled in spite of himself.
“What I do know, Your Grace, is that you’re a far more congenial fellow than your secretary.”
“Am I? I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“You should. Bryce was being diplomatic about your secretary. I won’t be. Audley’s a muckworm,” Jonathon stated bluntly, pacing before them. When Christopher gave a crack of laughter, he added, “There. He agrees with me.” He patted his frock coat pocket and breathed a sigh of relief to feel the outline of his silver cheroot case. “I need to smoke… Think the ladies will mind?”
“Under present circumstances? Not a whit,” replied Roxton.
Jonathon moving to the fireplace to light his cheroot gave Roxton and Christopher the excuse to follow him and join the ladies. The Duchess had finished feeding, and the Duke welcomed the opportunity to take his infant son and to pace the room with him at his shoulder, rubbing his little back to settle his stomach. This gave Deb the chance to speak with Christopher, who returned from the tea trolley with a cup of tea for her, one for Kate, and one for himself.
As ever with Deb, she came straight to the point.
“Would you have come to Treat if not for Teddy’s predicament?”
“Perhaps…” Christopher smiled over his cup. “If I’d been summoned to give an account of myself.”
Deb chuckled. “No you wouldn’t! You’d have found an excuse not to. Of course you’d have written Julian a long and detailed letter with a polite refusal as a postscript.”
“Ha! Ha! So you read your husband’s correspondence, Your Grace?” Kate asked with a grin.
Deb smiled cheekily. “Only when it is thrust under my nose and I am asked to agree that the correspondent is the most frustratingly annoying obscurantist His Grace has not had the pleasure yet to meet. Naturally I agree with him, but had I known the correspondent was my brother, I may not have been so quick to do so. Is it true you play the lute?” she added quickly, because she could see Christopher was uncomfortable with her familial appellation.
“A mandora, Your Grace.”
“Musicality must run in the family. And it’s Deborah. Deb. I would like you to call me by my Christian name. We are brother and sister after all.
Christopher glanced at Kate. “Half-brother and sister. But thank-you.”
“Otto and Gerald were brothers, but they were my half-brothers. We all share the same father but different mothers. So other than the fact Sir George was married to their mother, you and I are as related by blood as I was to Otto and Gerald, and as you are to them.” Deb looked to Kate. “Did that make sense?”
“Perfect sense, my dear.”
“It is very generous of you to say so, Your Grace—”
“Christopher! The Duchess is not being generous, she is stating fact,” Kate countered with annoyance, then turned to Deb and said with a smile, her hand out across the sofa, “Thank-you. I hear the sincerity in your voice. But you must understand it will take my obstinate son far more time to adjust to your welcome than it will for you to accept him into the family fold.”
“Obstinate? Kate! I would never be presumptuous—”
“Wouldn’t you? It simply won’t wash, my boy,” Kate interrupted dismissively. “How can you not be presumptuou
s when your greatest wish is to marry into the family?” She turned to Deb and asked lightly, “Is he blushing with embarrassment or fury?”
Deb chuckled. “I fear it may be a bit of both, my lady.” When Christopher turned his head, jaw tight, she asked him gently, “You have asked her?”
He met her open look.
“I have.”
“And she has yet to give you a response?”
“She is presently occupied with something of far more immediate importance, Your Grace. If you will excuse me. I had best see how Kinross is holding up.”
He bowed and walked off, depositing his teacup and saucer before crossing to Jonathon’s side just as the door at the far end of the room opened, and in stepped the physician; behind him was the Lady Mary. Both looked worn thin, and both were worried, though Mary did her best to hide her apprehension for fear of upsetting everyone concerned. The physician had no such qualms.
JONATHON FLICKED his cheroot into the fire and strode over to meet the physician, Roxton giving his infant son into the care of his nurse, and joining Jonathon on the other side of the room.
“Well? Can I see her now?” When the physician took a moment longer than Jonathon presumed he needed to say yes, his breathing quickened and he rasped out, “What? What?! Tell me! Out with it!”
“Everything is progressing as it should, Your Grace.”
Jonathon wiped a hand over his mouth and let out a deep breath that saw his shoulders drop.
“Thank God.”
“So while Her Grace is having a moment of respite I thought it prudent to enquire again that if the circumstance arose where there was cause for alarm—”
“Alarm? What alarm?”
“—what would be your wishes if it came to the unspeakable—”
Jonathon looked about, but saw nothing. “Unspeakable? What are you blathering about, Pratt?”
“You’ll save my mother, that’s what you’ll do, Pratt!” the Duke of Roxton growled.
The physician cowered but managed to say with a sniff, “Your Grace, my question is directed at His Grace of Kinross. He is the Duchess’s husband and thus legal guardian, and thus it is to him—”
“Don’t be ridiculous! You’ll save my mother’s life, and that’s an end to it!”
Jonathon turned on Roxton.
“I don’t interfere in your marriage, so stay out of mine!” He took a step closer to the physician, towering over the short man in his brown bob wig who leaned back to look up into the sun bronzed face. “Are you a blockhead, Pratt? We’ve had this discussion. You know my wishes. You save the life of the Duchess. If there is any risk—any—you save her. She is all that matters.”
“Just to be clear—”
“Oh, for God’s sake!”
“—after all, I must point out that she is carrying your heir, and giving birth to an heir is what is of paramount importance to most men.”
“Well I ain’t most men, wiseacre. The Duchess’s life is what’s important—to all of us. Got it?”
“Understand, Pratt?” the Duke of Roxton added menacingly, standing at Jonathon’s shoulder.
The physician looked from one furious ducal face to the next and nodded.
“Perfectly.”
“So can I see her now?”
“Soon, Your Grace. Allow me to return to the bedchamber and speak with Her Grace. I’ll send out one of her women…”
Jonathon threw up a hand in frustration and turned away, pulling at his head of auburn curls as if he meant to yank them out.
The physician left, but Mary remained, and she came up to Jonathon and put a hand on his sleeve, which made him turn and look down at her. She smiled up at him reassuringly, a look over at Roxton to include him in their conversation.
“She is as comfortable as to be expected for a woman in labor. Gabrielle and her ladies are providing her with the confidence she needs to get through this. And she did call out for you—”
“She did?” Jonathon interrupted, hopeful.
“—to be consigned to the gates of hell for putting her through this,” Mary quipped, smile widening when Jonathon’s face fell. “At least that is what I think she said… Her French tongue becomes ever more rapid when she is agitated. I believe there were a few other more colorful words thrown in there for good measure, because her ladies clapped their hands over their ears. Gabrielle’s response was to laugh and encourage Cousin Duchess to shout those words as loud as she pleased, and while she was at it to add a few of the more interesting phrases picked up from Parisian gutters which Monseigneur had taught her, and which she had hurled back at him while in labor with her firstborn.”
“Did she, by Jove?” Jonathon said with a chuckle and a shake of his head. “I wish I’d been there to hear that string of abuse.”
Roxton was surprised. “I can’t imagine mon père teaching her such language—”
“Of course you can’t! She’s your mother.” Jonathon grabbed Mary’s arm. “Walk with me, Mary.” He led her away, down the room, to have a private word and stopped out of earshot of everyone else and came straight to the point. “You’re in a better position than anyone else to know—What is that blockhead physician not telling me, eh? And what do you think I should do about it?”
Mary took a moment to formulate a considered response and it was almost a moment too long for Jonathon, who was so tense he wanted to cross to the fireplace and light another cheroot just to have something to do. But then Mary spoke, and her soothing delivery coupled with her sensible counsel was enough to ease the tension in his limbs, and he relaxed his grip on the silver cheroot case.
“Cousin Duchess knows what you went through with your first wife,” she said calmly. “And while she has not said so openly, I sense that the traumatic experience of losing your wife and child weighs heavily with her. I believe that is the reason she has stopped herself from asking for you to be at her side until the last possible stages of the birth. To be perfectly candid, and this should not surprise you,” she added, looking up into his troubled gaze, “Cousin Duchess is afraid. She is afraid for her life, for the life of her baby, and afraid for you. And who can blame her? Childbirth is a terrifying experience for most females. It is sixteen years since she gave birth to Harry. And he was born under—under trying circumstances—”
“I know all about that episode,” he interrupted brusquely.
Mary nodded, relieved not to have to elaborate.
“Then you are aware that she had a very short labor with Harry. It was almost over before it began, and she was so ill afterwards she hardly remembers any of it. And then there is the fact she was only eighteen when she had Julian—a lifetime ago now… So that this labor is for her as if she is experiencing childbirth for the first time. Is it any wonder she is frightened?” Mary squeezed his arm. “What she needs at this time is you. Now more than ever you need to be brave, for her, and for your baby.”
Jonathon’s dark eyes sparked. “So I should storm m’lady’s bedchamber, to hell with the physician and everyone else?”
Mary smiled and nodded. “To hell with everyone, Your Grace. But do take your armor. You’ll need it against the verbal abuse which will inevitably be flung at you.”
Jonathon grinned, slapped his hands together and rubbed his palms with glee. “Good. Looking forward to it! Thank-you, m’dear.”
He gave Mary an impetuous kiss to the top of her head, turned on a heel and strode away. Without a word to anyone, but with a wave of acknowledgement above his head, he followed the physician down the hallway that led to the bedchamber he shared with his wife. Arriving at that apartment, he flung wide the door without warning or ceremony and went into battle.
Mary did not immediately return to the bedchamber, though she wished to be a moth on the wall, to see the faces of the physician, her cousin’s attendants, and Gabrielle de Crespigny, to have her intuition confirmed when Antonia berated her husband, only to then throw her arms about his neck and hold on for dear life, relieved he was fi
nally there by her side and to make him promise not leave her until their baby was born.
Mary hoped that if she were ever blessed with more children, her husband would want to be with her, holding her hand during childbirth. Giving birth to Teddy had been a lonely and terrifying experience that did not bear repeating, and would not be with Christopher by her side. He would most certainly want to be with her when she gave birth to their child… Their child… She was already thinking of children, and yet she still had to accept his proposal. But she owed it to Evelyn to speak with him first, to tell him her true feelings and where her heart lay. She loved Christopher—no, she was in love with him. She loved Evelyn, too, but she was now very sure her love for her cousin was not the same as the love she had for her neighbor.
She dared to let her gaze wander across the room to where Christopher had rejoined the Duke on the settee. She smiled to herself to see them in amenable conversation. She would never have predicted they would like each other on sight. But it should not have come as a surprise, because both were sticklers for exactness and truthfulness, both were honorable and honest, and both could be frustratingly pedantic at times, and she admired and esteemed them equally.
Why, when Christopher had asked her to marry him, had she not thrown her arms about his neck and kissed him and said yes, and told him he had made her the happiest woman alive? That’s what any free-thinking, free-spirited female would have done. That’s what she should have done if not for her ingrained self-restraint. This constant need to think through the consequences of her actions had surely drained her of spontaneity? If only she would allow herself to be who she wished to be rather than who she had been taught she ought to be…
“Mary! Who is that individual talking with the Duke?” asked a strident female voice at her shoulder.
Mary let out a tiny sigh of contentment, gaze still very much on Christopher. “The man I wish to marry.”
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