“Oh very good!” Juliette exclaimed.
“That wasn’t me!” Sarah protested.
Juliette laughed. “You must burp a baby after she eats or she’ll end up spitting it all up, usually right after you’ve put on a fresh gown. I didn’t realize a baby could burp herself.”
“She must get that from her father,” Sarah said, and they both burst into giggles.
“You two seem to be having a grand time!” Eleanor said as she brought a pile of fresh linens into the room. She deposited the cloths on a dresser and came to kiss Sarah’s brow and coo over the baby.
“What are you going to name her?” Eleanor asked.
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” Sarah said, then smiled as inspiration struck. “Oh I have it! I shall call her Eleanor Juliette James. Oh wait! It shall have to be Eleanor Juliette Caroline James. I can’t forget Sam’s sister.”
Juliette chuckled and said, “While I am honored to be a namesake, you may want to save a few in case you have another daughter.”
“Yes,” agreed Eleanor. “Mr. James is out there saying he hopes to have a dozen daughters all as strong and beautiful as their mother.”
Sarah winced again as she readjusted her position. “Well he’s welcome to have the next one!”
Eleanor smiled and then her eyes widened as she turned and bolted into the adjoining water closet. Sarah and Juliette looked at each other in concern as they heard Eleanor retching. Juliette was the first to realize the implication.
“Congratulations, Eleanor!” she called out over the harsh sounds.
Absorbed as she was in the minute perfections of her daughter, it took Sarah a moment to register what Juliette was saying.
“Eleanor?” she asked when her cousin returned to the room, pale but otherwise recovered.
“I don’t know for sure,” she said as she sat in the other chair beside the bed.
Sarah and Juliette burst out laughing and Juliette inquired, “Might you decide you’re sure in seven or eight months?”
Eleanor smiled wanly. “I don’t want to get Alex’s hopes up. Or mine, for that matter. It’s taken so long,” she complained.
“You’ve scarcely been married two years!” Sarah protested.
“Everything in its own time, dear,” Juliette added.
“And I hate to tell you, but if you keep losing your lunch, Reading is going to suspect,” Sarah said.
“I think he already does,” Eleanor confessed sheepishly.
As Juliette and Eleanor chatted about pregnancy symptoms and expectations, Sarah returned her attention to her sleeping baby. Only the magnetic pull she felt from across the room distracted her. She glanced up and found her gaze captured by the brilliant blue of her husband’s eyes.
She should be used to it, she thought abstractly, but after a year of marriage, she still found herself gazing into Sam’s eyes, regardless of their surroundings. In the midst of a crowded ballroom, sitting at Cousin Elizabeth’s dinner table, while distributing boxes of food in Southwark, she would look up, see Sam, and they would be lost until someone pulled their attention away.
In the depths of his eyes, she saw everything she needed to be happy. She saw passion and heat. She saw strength and support. She saw understanding and humor. But mostly she saw a love that was greater than any she had ever imagined.
Sam froze just inside the bedroom door. His breath left his chest in a whoosh and he felt his fingers tingle.
Sarah was sitting up in bed cradling their hour-old baby and he had never seen anything more beautiful in his life. It seemed like all the light in the room focused in a golden glow on her, as if she were a celestial being.
Then Sarah looked up and air flooded his chest. He was amazed as always at the intense connection he felt when their gazes caught.
With Sarah, he’d found everything he never realized he was looking for. His years of aimless flirtations he now knew had been a quest for a more intimate connection, a soul-deep yearning for his other half. And now that he had found her, his emotional, physical, and spiritual mate, he was so damned happy that it scared him at times, like now. His heart clenched painfully with the realization of what he had to lose.
Sarah must have seen a flicker of distress in his gaze for she gestured for him to draw near. The other two ladies, sensing the pull between the new parents (and how could they not, he wondered in a distant part of his brain…the pull between them was so strong, he rather fancied it was like a pulsating glow) stood and quickly left with murmured congratulations as they passed him.
Finally, it was just the two of them. Well, three, he reminded himself in amazement.
“Hullo,” he said, sounding like an idiot to his own ears.
His wife smiled at him, that radiant, bone deep smile she only gave him. She reached her hand out to draw him down next to her.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he protested. He’d heard her during the long hours of labor. Though he’d been on the other side of the door (the hired midwife not being amenable to husbands in the delivery room), he’d heard every scream and groan like a lash on his heart.
“Shh,” she said. “I’m fine. Come meet your daughter.”
He stretched out next to her and she lifted up so she could nestle in the crook of his arms. As cozy as he’d ever felt in his life, he stared down at Sarah’s shining hair, then transferred his gaze to the small face peeping out of a white blanket in her arms.
For the second time in as many minutes, he felt the breath leave his body. His small daughter grunted and wiggled until she worked one of her fragile arms loose from the blanket. He reached out to touch the tiny hand and felt a jolt when the delicate fingers closed around his forefinger.
“She’s perfect,” he whispered.
Sarah glanced up at him and he covered her smiling lips with a warm kiss.
“You’re perfect,” he said.
Sarah laughed. “I’m far from perfect. You’re just feeling sorry for me for yelling my head off for an hour.”
“An hour? More like three! But I thought you were perfect before that.”
She stared into his eyes and though she was exhausted, he could see the happy peacefulness there.
“How about we simply say, this is perfect.”
He smiled and snuggled closer to his wife and daughter. “Perfect.”
The End
About the author
Graduating magna cum laude with a degree in technical writing did not guarantee Michelle Morrison an exciting career writing about NASA’s latest discoveries. Writing historical fiction proved much more entertaining and she hasn’t looked back since. Michelle lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She is a homebody with wanderlust: she loves nothing more than snuggling in at home to write…unless it’s travelling to another country!
More by Michelle Morrison
Historical Fiction
The Stolen Crown
Medieval Romance:
A Dishonorable Knight
The King’s Rebel
Historical Regency:
Lord Worthing’s Wallflower
The Lady Ordinary
The Lady’s Secret
Visit Michelle at www.michellemorrisonwrites.com
I would really appreciate your review on Amazon! --MM
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