“It’s all right,” Heather soothed, managing a brave smile. “It will all be over very, very soon. No need to fret now, dear. I’m doing fine.”
In another moment, Heather was grimacing and bearing down hard again. The baby’s head finally pushed through, and immediately a muted, angry squall was heard, evoking laughter from all who heard.
“Ain’t got de volume Mistah Beau had,” Hatti commented with a white-toothed grin. “Dis one sounds mo’ like a dainty li’l girl ta me. Very shortly, ah ‘spect, Miz Heather, yo’ gonna be havin’ yerself a looksee at your li’l daughter.”
Heather’s head came up off the pillow again as she strove through the throes of childbirth. It wasn’t long before the black woman was cackling in glee.
“Sho nuff, a fine black-haired, li’l girl. An’ she’s a real beauty, too.”
“Oh, she is,” Raelynn agreed, laughing. Of a sudden, she felt as if her heart would soar.
Hatti placed the squalling infant upon her mother’s stomach and dispensed with the rest of the necessities involved in child-bearing. Much awed by the miracle of birth he had just witnessed, Brandon thrust a finger through the tiny, bloody fist of his new daughter and immediately the baby stopped her crying and started making a sucking noise.
“Well, we know what our new little darling will soon be wanting,” her father said with a chortle.
Hatti took the newborn to a corner of the room where she cleansed and swaddled her. Within moments, the tiny girl was lowered into her mother’s arms.
“She’s absolutely gorgeous,” Raelynn observed proudly.
Heather gazed down upon the small, wrinkled face and laughed. “Only a loving aunt would be so kind.”
Brandon rose from the bed and, crossing to the door, grinned back at his wife. “I’m going down to fetch Beau and Jeff. They’ll be wanting to see Suzanne, too.”
Heather was absorbed in inspecting her new daughter and making sure that everything was as it should be. Hatti and Melody were tidying up the bedroom and repositioning the cradle near the bed. In the confusion, no one noticed Raelynn slipping out of the room and hastening down the stairs. She left through the back of the house just as quietly and hurried out to the privy, diligently seeking the privacy it afforded. She really didn’t want Jeff to see her while she was so wrought up. At the merest thought of confronting him again, she had started shaking enough to make the trip to the privy a requirement. With her pregnancy came the necessity, and she definitely needed to go.
She hardly expected Jeff to be waiting just outside the cubicle when she opened the door. She flushed red in embarrassment, as if he had never seen her scurrying toward a chamber pot in their bedroom. Nervously she smoothed her skirts. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were waiting to use the convenience.”
“I was waiting for you, madam,” Jeff corrected. “I was informed that James brought you out from town, and I was wondering if you’d care to share my carriage on the return trip to Charleston. It would save James the trip in.”
Put that way, Raelynn couldn’t see how she could refuse. “Tizzy packed a valise for me just in case I’d be staying overnight. I’ll have to fetch it.”
“James gave it to me some moments ago, madam. It’s already in my carriage,” her husband informed her. “Once I pay my respects to the newborn and her mother, I’ll be ready to leave. Will that be acceptable to you?”
Raelynn couldn’t decide whether she should feel offended because he had taken her reply for granted, or if she should be pleased that he had gathered her belongings with his usual punctilious competence. “Yes, perfectly.”
Not daring to touch her for fear of what that would lead to, Jeff swept his hand toward the narrow path leading to the house. “After you, madam.”
Raelynn hurried along the well-worn trail, even in the moonlit shadows feeling his unrelenting gaze following her. His long legs had no difficulty keeping up with her, and when she arrived at the door, he was there to swing it open.
“Thank you,” she replied, glancing up nervously. She was so intent upon eyeing him that she failed to notice where she was walking until her head met the sharp ridge of a doorjamb, the hard way. She stumbled back, completely stunned by the impact, and wished in mortifying chagrin that she had fallen into a bottomless pit somewhere.
“Are you all right?” Jeff asked solicitously, lifting her chin with a knuckle to see the damage.
She stood blushing furiously with a hand clasped over the swelling knot on her forehead, telling herself that it was perfectly sane for a woman to wish the earth would open and swallow her up. Her husband was trying to pull away her hand in a quest to see her battle scar, but she was too embarrassed to let him. “I’m fine! Just leave me be, Jeffrey.”
“You’re not fine,” he argued. “There’s blood dribbling through your fingers.”
Startled by his announcement, she yanked away her hand and stared at it in shock. It was indeed bloody, but what was even more disturbing was the fact that droplets began plummeting onto her bosom. “Oh, my gown! It’s going to be ruined.”
“It’s a wonder your head isn’t,” Jeff quipped, gently dabbing a clean handkerchief to the small cut on her brow. He swabbed up the blood there and then, with husbandly familiarity, proceeded to her bodice.
His diligent swipes across her breast immediately caused Raelynn to forget her throbbing head, for she could feel her nipple drawing into a tight little nub beneath his casual ministrations. She lost any semblance of a ladylike poise and clasped a hand over her breast, unable to ignore the hungrily throbbing peak. “Please, Jeffrey, just leave me be!”
“Your head needs tending, madam,” he reasoned, “and at the moment everyone is busy in the house, so I’d be grateful if you’d just let me take care of it.”
“I can take care of myself.”
“You can’t even see your head.”
“Oh, all right!” Much like a petulant child, she plunked herself down upon a stool near the rear door and leaned her head back, still holding her breast within her hand. “Tend me!”
Jeff drew a bucket of water from the well, poured a small amount into a tin cup that hung from a hook, and brought it near. “You needn’t act so offended, Raelynn,” he rebuked gently, wetting the handkerchief. “I’ve done a lot more than handle your breast.”
It dawned on Raelynn that she probably looked more than a little ridiculous sitting there with a hand clasping the womanly fullness. Shifting uncomfortably, she lowered her arm to her lap. Just as quickly she caught the glance her husband shot toward her bodice and looked down at herself, curious to know what had provoked his interest. Her nipple was still tightly puckered, and with a mortified groan she crossed her arms, drawing a low chuckle from Jeff.
“It isn’t as if you haven’t seen such sights before,” she fussed.
“My memory needs refreshing.” Jeff gave the excuse with a grin. “It has been awhile.”
She wanted to quip something appropriately tart, but nothing came to mind. As it was, she endured the careful cleansing of her head wound, allowed him to bandage it, and then sought the covering of her cloak before following Jeffrey upstairs to the master bedroom.
When they arrived, Beau was sitting on the bed beside his mother, peering inquisitively at the little creature his father was holding within his hands. The boy was asking numerous questions about where his new little sister had come from. Finally Brandon settled his tiny little daughter in one hand and, reaching across with the other, laid it on the blanket covering his wife’s stomach, which was now noticeably flatter.
“That’s where Suzanne and you both came from, son.”
Beau pondered this a moment, before looking up inquisitively. “But how’d we get in there?”
Jeff pressed a knuckle against his lips to subdue a chuckle as his brother looked at him with a pained expression. The elder Birmingham turned back to his wife and, clasping her hand, finally gave an answer. “Love put you and your sister there, son.”
A hoot of laughter came from Jeff, who threw his head back and guffawed to the ceiling. His amusement proved contagious, and soon the whole room was filled with sounds of hilarity.
DARKNESS HAD SETTLED OVER THE LAND BY THE TIME Jeff and Raelynn bade their farewells to the family and settled into the landau for the long ride to Charleston. Raelynn yearned for the trip to be shortened by an invitation to stay the night at Oakley, but it soon became apparent that her husband was not inclined to make such an offer.
Though at first she felt tense and nervous sitting beside Jeffrey, the day’s events had taken a decided toll upon her energy. Soon she was nodding off. She hadn’t donned her bonnet for fear of ruining the ribbons with a fresh flow of blood from her head, which left her bruised brow rather vulnerable when it brushed up against the interior wall of the carriage. She came awake with a jerk and, in deepening mortification, straightened herself upon the cushioned seat, well aware that her maddeningly stoic husband was watching her with unrelenting persistence through the moonlit gloom.
Only a few more miles had been traversed before Raelynn’s eyes were drooping closed again. She never knew exactly when Jeff lifted her onto his lap and nestled her brow against his throat, for she had ceased her struggle against an encroaching sleep. She was just as oblivious to the kiss he placed upon the top of her head.
Sometime later Raelynn became vaguely aware that she was being borne along through an area of darkness. She heard the sound of a door closing, and then muted voices seemed to drift upward from a deep well. A glowing lamp moved somewhere beyond her, casting elongated shafts of light and shadows across ceilings and corridors. A door’s hinges creaked as a portal was opened and then closed. When a moment later she was placed upon a bed, she recognized a familiar squeak. She tried to wake when she heard Tizzy’s sleepy voice, but much deeper tones banished the girl to her own room. Gentle hands plucked open buttons and other fasteners, and with a contented sigh Raelynn turned her face upon the pillow as her baby rolled within her womb. The movements seemed obscure and distant, as if she only dreamt them, much like the inviting warmth of a large hand resting upon her cool stomach. She felt a nightgown being drawn over her head and, at long last, a blanket being tucked in around her. Then a lantern at the end of a long tunnel was snuffed, and darkness closed in around her as she sank deeper into a dreamy vortex from which she had no desire to rise.
19
NEARING CLOSING TIME ON A FRIDAY A FORTNIGHT later, a tall, dapper figure of a man pushed open the distinctive green door of Ives’s Couture and swept off his top hat as he approached the lone desk near the back of the seamstress’s corridor. Raelynn was just tucking the last of her drawing supplies into a drawer when a manly shadow, cast from the hanging fixture overhead, fell upon her. She glanced up, fully expecting to find her employer with some question about one of her designs. Several moments earlier he had taken Elizabeth upstairs to search for some new fabric samples he had left there, one which he especially liked and was considering using for a gown that Raelynn had finished sketching earlier that afternoon.
When her gaze lit upon her own husband, Raelynn was struck by an avalanche of impressions closely reminiscent of those that had been instrumental in leading her to accept his proposal of marriage less than an hour after their initial meeting. His manly good looks were just as stirring, his smile with twin depressions in his cheeks just as engaging, his green eyes just as luminous as they had always been. The only detectable difference was within herself. She couldn’t remember her heart beating as chaotically, even after he had scooped her out of the path of the onrushing coach, as it now did. Surely no fear could have stirred such giddiness. Neither could that emotion have warmed her cheeks to the extent that she could actually feel them glowing.
“We didn’t have a chance to talk when I brought you back from Harthaven,” he murmured, “and I’ve been wondering how you’ve been feeling. Is your head better? I see no sign of a scar.”
Jeff swept his gaze down the length of her as she moved around the end of the desk. Though she wore a charming, dark green and blue plaid frock that served to conceal her condition, it was obvious nevertheless that she was with child, but then, when he had stripped her for bed after carrying her up to her narrow room at Elizabeth’s house, he hadn’t been able to mistake her small, rounding belly. He had noticed small movements there, motivating him to lay a hand over the gentle roundness and to feel his child moving within her womb.
“No, as you can see, it’s just fine now,” Raelynn murmured, trying to curb her elation. “And I’m feeling remarkably well myself.” More than a month ago she had departed his house, but there had been times since then when it had seemed like a year. Through all of her past debates over his guilt or innocence, she hadn’t realized just how desperately she would come to miss her husband until a goading worry began to assail her, leaving her fearing that she might never see him again. That dread had taken deep root in her heart, and she had learned a harsh lesson about what it feels like to vainly pine for a man. If Nell had brooded over Jeffrey’s aloofness as much as she had done within the agonizing weeks of their separation, then Raelynn could definitely understand why the girl had felt driven at times to demand his recognition.
“None of the usual discomforts that accompanies pregnancy?” Jeff asked solicitously.
“Nothing of any significance, only a lethargy that still makes me want to sleep at odd and sundry times, but I can’t very well do that while I’m working here.”
“No, I don’t suppose you can.”
“How is Heather and the baby doing? I’ve been meaning to hire a livery and go out to see them, but we’ve had so many customers ordering spring wardrobes that the three of us have hardly had time to take a deep breath.”
“Heather and the baby are fine,” Jeff replied. “Suzanne has even managed to sleep from dusk to dawn several times, which of course delights her parents. Nursing a babe every four hours night after night can wear on a body after a while, I suppose. But then, that duty falls entirely to the mother, regardless of a husband’s efforts to help.”
Hesitantly Raelynn approached a subject that had been worrying her of late. “I understand from recent comments I’ve overheard in the shop that we’ve now become the prime interest of gossipmongers,” she ventured, tracing a finger along the arm of a small, French fashion mannequin which resided on her desk. She dared not meet his gaze as she probed, “I’ve even heard people saying that you’ve spoken to your lawyer and have initiated the termination of our marriage.”
A derisive snort attested to Jeff’s feelings about that particular bit of hearsay. “Don’t believe everything you hear, my dear, or, for that matter, only bits and parts of what you see. I’d never do that unless it became your desire.” He tilted his head thoughtfully aslant as her eyes slowly lifted to meet his. “Has it?”
“No, of course not,” Raelynn hastened to assure him with an uncomfortable little laugh. “I was just afraid it might be true, considering how vexed you were with me before I left Oakley.”
“Afraid?” Jeff repeated, wondering at her choice of words.
“Concerned, afraid, anxious, they all mean about the same thing,” she stated gloomily.
“I agree, Raelynn, but are you telling me that you were actually concerned enough to be afraid?”
A wavering sigh escaped her lips. Jerkily she nodded. “Yes.”
“Does this mean that you’re suffering some doubts about my guilt in Nell’s death?”
His blunt question brought tears to her eyes. Diffidently she met his searching gaze. “I haven’t been able to come to any definite conclusions about what happened that night, if that’s what you mean. At times, it seems utterly foolish to even suspect that you could have had anything to do with that kind of brutality, and then I wake up from a recurring nightmare in which your appearance changes before
my eyes. The demon you become makes me quail in fright.”
Jeff certainly hadn’t been able to forget the night he had lain beside her at Red Pete’s cabin and had heard her tormented ravings. Rather than stir up past hurts, he considered it wiser by far to change the subject. “I came here, madam, to ask you to have dinner with me.”
“At Oakley?” Did he truly mean to break his self-possessed reticence and allow her to enter his home again? Hardly daring to breathe, she awaited his answer as if she were about to receive a sentence somewhere between life and death.
“At a restaurant here in the city,” he informed her and immediately wondered if the gentle radiance in her eyes had dimmed a slight degree or if it had only been a trick of his imagination. “If you’re at all acceptable to the idea, we can have dinner out, and then afterwards, I can escort you back to Elizabeth’s. I’ll hire a livery to take us there if you’re not up to walking. At the moment, I’m without the landau. I had to send Thaddeus back to Oakley to do some errands for me.”
Raelynn wished fervently she would have had enough foresight to have donned a more elegant gown earlier that morning. “I should tidy my appearance.”
“Nonsense, my dear, you look as ravishing as always.”
His magnanimous claim did much to buoy her mood. Even so, it evoked a dubious laugh. “Hardly that, Jeffrey.”
He glanced around. “Do you have a cloak? It seems unusually moist and breathless outside, which leads me to surmise that a fog may be rolling in before too long.”
Raelynn indicated the coat tree where she had left her woolen wrap. “The cloak is Elizabeth’s, the cape is mine.” From a nearby chest, she swept a pert cap that had been made on the order of a Scottish bonnet and went to stand before a tall, silvered glass where she proceeded to don it. Settling it upon her head at a cocky angle, she glanced at her husband again to reassure herself that he was still there and ready and willing to be seen with her in public. He was there all right, looking back at her as he lifted her cape from the hook. Suddenly asmile, she gave no heed to what she was doing as she thrust a long hatpin through the deep blue velvet. She promptly regretted having diverted her attention as she rammed the point of the pin into her forefinger. Her startled cry quickly brought Jeff back to her side, but by then, she had dislodged the stickpin and dropped it on the floor to clasp her bleeding finger in the palm of her hand before the tiny droplets could mar her gown.
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