Chapter 18 Re
James looks as if he has been carved out of sleeplessness and restraint.
He stands at the foot of the stairs in the gray dawn, hat in one hand, coat dark with rain, face pale beneath the kind of control that fools everyone except people who have seen it crack. The moment he sees me, that control fails.
Not dramatically. James is still James. He does not sprint across Carlton House like a man in a melodrama, which is frankly disappointing because I have earned at least one melodrama.
But his eyes move over me—ruined gown, bloodstained sleeves, hair escaping pins, hands scrubbed raw—and something in him breaks quietly.
“Emma.”
One word.
That is all it takes.
My knees, which have survived thirty hours of royal obstetrics, decide now is the appropriate moment to resign.
He catches me before I hit the last step.
“Charlotte?” he asks against my hair.
“Alive.”
His arms tighten.
“The child?”
“A son. Also alive.”
For a second, the whole palace seems to inhale.
James closes his eyes.
I should say something profound. I have altered the succession, bent history, possibly created a future where entire textbooks need revision and some poor graduate student has a nervous breakdown over why everything after 1817 is wrong.
Instead, I say, “I would like to sit down before I become part of the carpet.”
“Carriage,” he says immediately.
“Bossy.”
“Barely holding myself together.”
That is honest enough to silence me.
He leads me outside. The morning smells of wet stone, horse sweat, and London waking up unaware that history has been mugged in a palace bedroom.
Kitty is asleep in the corner of the carriage before the wheels turn, chin tucked to her chest, one hand still wrapped around my medical bag like a dragon guarding treasure.
James sits opposite me for exactly fourteen seconds.
Then he moves to my side.
“Come here,” he says.
I go because I am too tired to pretend not to want to.
He gathers me against him with such careful strength that my eyes burn. No demand. No performance. Just his hand at the back of my head, his cheek against my hair, his breathing rough enough that I realize he has been afraid in a way even the attack did not teach me to measure.
“Beatrice’s message reached me at Ashbourne Park,” he says. “I rode through the night.”
“That explains the tragic lack of sleep and the excellent coat abuse.”
His laugh is more breath than sound. “I arrived too late.”
“No.” I pull back enough to look at him. “You arrived after.”
His eyes search mine.
“There’s a difference,” I say. “Learn it. I am too tired to keep explaining that not every disaster is your personal failure.”
“You saved her.”
“We saved her. Kitty, Leopold, one accoucheur who eventually became useful, and a baby with the lungs of an opera singer.”
“Emma.”
There is something in the way he says my name that makes every joke retreat.
“Yes,” I whisper.
“Marry me.”
My brain stops.
Apparently it has survived time travel, attempted murder, social ruin, poisoning conspiracies, royal childbirth, and postpartum hemorrhage, but one emotionally compromised duke in a rain-damp carriage is too much.
“That was not a question.”
His mouth softens. “Forgive me. Will you marry me?”
“Now you sound like you’re asking whether I want tea.”
“I am trying not to sound as if my entire life depends on your answer.”
Oh.
Oh, unfair.
My eyes sting. “James.”
He takes my hands, raw skin and all, and bows his head over them.
“I have no ring with me. No witnesses, unless one counts a sleeping pickpocket. No pretty speech that does justice to what you are. But I love you. I love your courage, your maddening tongue, your impossible mind, your compassion, and the way you keep choosing life even when this world gives you every reason to become hard.” His voice roughens.
“I am free now. You are free, if you will be. Marry me, Emma Hart. Not because I can protect you. Because I want to stand beside you while you refuse to be owned.”
The tears spill over.
“That was better than tea.”
His laugh breaks, and so does mine.
“Yes,” I say. “Obviously yes. Terrible timing, no ring, sleeping pickpocket witness and all.”
Kitty, from the corner, mumbles, “Ain’t sleeping.”
We both freeze.
One dark eye opens. “Congratulations. Can I sleep now?”
James stares at her.
I wipe my face. “See? Witness.”
Kitty closes her eye. “Want extra wages for witnessing.”
“Extortionist,” James says, sounding almost dazed.
“Assistant,” she corrects.
I love everyone in this carriage so much it hurts.
* * *
There are several reasons not to kiss a duke senseless in a carriage containing one adolescent assistant, two exhausted footmen, and a driver who has probably heard worse but does not need my help expanding his education.
I remember most of them.
Barely.
By the time we reach Ashbourne House, Beatrice is waiting on the steps in a wrapper, hair loose down her back, face pale with worry.
“Well?” she demands before the carriage door is fully open.
“Charlotte lives,” I say.
Beatrice presses both hands to her mouth.
“The baby?”
“A boy.”
She makes a sound that is half sob, half laugh, then launches herself at me with enough force to remind my ribs they still exist.
“Ow. Love. Pain. All related but distinct.”
She pulls back immediately. “Sorry.”
James descends behind me.
Beatrice looks between us once.
Twice.
Her eyes narrow.
“What happened?”
“Royal childbirth,” I say.
“After that.”
James clears his throat. “I have asked Miss Hart to marry me.”
Beatrice’s face goes absolutely blank.
Then she screams.
Not a genteel exclamation. Not a ladylike gasp. A full-throated shriek that sends a footman stumbling and Mrs. Finch appearing in the doorway with murder in her eyes.
“Beatrice,” James says, horrified.
“You proposed in a carriage?”
“I had been riding all night.”
“Without a ring?”
“There were circumstances.”
She turns to me. “You accepted?”
“I have questionable judgment and a fondness for forearms.”
Mrs. Finch closes her eyes.
Kitty, climbing down with the medical bag, says, “I witnessed it. Extra wages pending.”
Beatrice starts laughing and crying at once, which seems like a reasonable response to the last several months.
James looks at the sky as if asking it for patience. I take his hand.
He looks down at our joined fingers.
Then he stops looking anywhere else.
* * *
The next two days are a blur of sleep, broth, official messages, and Mrs. Finch attempting to restore me to human condition with the grim determination of a woman laundering a national flag after battle.
News travels faster than infection and proves harder to contain.
Princess Charlotte has delivered a living son.
Princess Charlotte lives.
Miss Emma Hartford, the strange American physician, attended.
Depending on who tells it, I either saved the monarchy, bewitched the monarchy, endangered the monarchy, or bullied the monarchy into washing its hands.
That last one is closest to accurate.
James announces our engagement in the most formal way possible, which is to say he writes to the papers, calls upon several terrifying people with titles, and stands beside me at Lady Pemberton’s hastily arranged breakfast as if daring anyone to object within punching distance.
People object anyway, but politely.
“Unconventional,” murmurs Lady Markham.
“No family,” says a gentleman who has clearly never had the pleasure of being adopted by a housekeeper, a duke’s sister, and a teenage former thief.
“Royal favor changes matters,” says another.
“So does saving the heir,” Lady Pemberton replies, loud enough to qualify as artillery.
Weston attends.
That hurts more than I expect.
He bows over my hand and smiles with only a little sadness at the edges. “I did promise to make you blameless.”
“You also promised to be insufferable later.”
“I am saving it for the wedding breakfast.”
James approaches, careful and courteous.
For one terrible second, I expect male posturing. Cravats at dawn. Honor in boots.
Instead, Weston extends his hand.
James takes it.
“Take care of her,” Weston says.
“She would object to the phrasing.”
“Violently,” I confirm.
Weston’s smile warms. “Stand beside her, then.”
James looks at me. “Always.”
Fine.
Excellent.
I am crying into punch now.
Very dignified.
* * *
We visit Carlton House a week later.
This time, I enter through the front like someone expected rather than smuggled by scandal. The difference is subtle but intoxicating. Servants bow. Courtiers stare. Thornbury is nowhere visible, which improves the architecture considerably.
Charlotte is propped in bed, pale but sharper-eyed, her son asleep in a cradle beside her. Leopold rises when I enter. The gesture is small, formal, and devastating.
“My physician,” Charlotte says.
“Your Royal Highness.”
“Do not curtsy so low. You look as if you may fall over, and I refuse to be responsible for another medical emergency.”
“A considerate policy.”
She smiles. Color touches her cheeks. The baby snuffles in his sleep, tiny fist curled beside his face. A living child where history left silence.
I check Charlotte’s pulse, her bleeding, her milk supply, her temperature. I check the baby’s breathing, color, latch, cord. All ordinary miracles. All precarious. All real.
“You will continue to attend me,” Charlotte says when I finish. “And other women, if they have sense enough to ask.”
“Society may object.”
“Society objects to drafts, French cooks, and women having opinions. It will survive.”
James, beside me, makes a sound suspiciously close to a laugh.
Charlotte’s gaze moves to him. “You are to marry her.”
“With her permission,” James says.
“Wise man.”
“I am learning.”
Leopold looks at the baby, then at me. “A written appointment is being prepared. It will not make the College love you.”
“I had not planned to build my life around their affection.”
Charlotte’s mouth curves. “Good. Build it around usefulness.”
Usefulness.
The word lands deep.